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us diversify into submarine reactor engineering, microgravity nanotechnology fabrication, and hotel management.” Her face is a well-polished mask as she recites the company line, but he can sense the sardonic amusement behind it as she adds, “We are more flexible than the American space industry . . .”
    Manfred shrugs. “That’s as may be.” He sips his Berlinerweisse slowly as she launches into a long, stilted explanation of how Arianespace is a diversified dot-com with orbital aspirations, a full range ofmerchandising spin-offs, Bond movie sets, and a promising hotel chain in LEO. She obviously didn’t come up with these talking points herself. Her face is much more expressive than her voice as she mimes boredom and disbelief at appropriate moments—an out-of-band signal invisible to her corporate earrings. Manfred plays along, nodding occasionally, trying to look as if he’s taking it seriously: Her droll subversion has gotten his attention far more effectively than the content of the marketing pitch. Franklin is nose down in his beer, shoulders shaking as he tries not to guffaw at the hand gestures she uses to express her opinion of her employer’s thrusting, entrepreneurial executives. Actually, the talking points bullshit is right about one thing: Arianespace is still profitable, due to those hotels and orbital holiday hops. Unlike LockMart-Boeing, who’d go Chapter Eleven in a split second if their Pentagon drip-feed ran dry.
    Someone else sidles up to the table, a pudgy guy in an outrageously loud Hawaiian shirt with pens leaking in a breast pocket and the worst case of ozone-hole burn Manfred’s seen in ages. “Hi, Bob,” says the new arrival. “How’s life?”
    â€œÂ â€™S good.” Franklin nods at Manfred; “Manfred, meet Ivan MacDonald. Ivan, Manfred. Have a seat?” He leans over. “Ivan’s a public arts guy. He’s heavily into extreme concrete.”
    â€œRubberized concrete,” Ivan says, slightly too loudly. “ Pink rubberized concrete.”
    â€œAh!” He’s somehow triggered a priority interrupt: Annette from Arianespace drops out of marketing zombiehood with a shudder of relief and, duty discharged, reverts to her noncorporate identity. “You are he who rubberized the Reichstag, yes? With the supercritical carbon-dioxide carrier and the dissolved polymethoxysilanes?” She claps her hands, eyes alight with enthusiasm. “Wonderful!”
    â€œHe rubberized what ?” Manfred mutters in Bob’s ear.
    Franklin shrugs. “Don’t ask me, I’m just an engineer.”
    â€œHe works with limestone and sandstones as well as concrete: He’s brilliant!” Annette smiles at Manfred. “Rubberizing the symbol of the, the autocracy, is it not wonderful?”
    â€œI thought I was thirty seconds ahead of the curve,” Manfred says ruefully. He adds to Bob: “Buy me another drink?”
    â€œI’m going to rubberize Three Gorges!” Ivan explains loudly. “When the floodwaters subside.”
    Just then a bandwidth load as heavy as a pregnant elephant sits down on Manfred’s head and sends clumps of humongous pixilation flickering across his sensorium: Around the world, five million or so geeks are bouncing on his home site, a digital flash crowd alerted by a posting from the other side of the bar. Manfred winces. “I really came here to talk about the economic exploitation of space travel, but I’ve just been slashdotted. Mind if I just sit and drink until it wears off?”
    â€œSure, man.” Bob waves at the bar. “More of the same all round!” At the next table, a person with makeup and long hair who’s wearing a dress—Manfred doesn’t want to speculate about the gender of these crazy mixed-up Euros—is reminiscing about wiring the fleshpots of Tehran for cybersex. Two collegiate-looking dudes