"So?"
Marrett stopped. Two steps above Kinsman, he loomed in the shadowy lighting like a menace from an old Gothic tale. "So here you are," he said quietly, rationally, "pulling off your revolution. You stop the United States and Russia from using their missiles on each other, but they've still got other ways to fight. Germ warfare or nerve gas or some old manned bombers to drop nukes."
"We can stop them," Kinsman said. "And cruise mis- siles, too, if we have to."
"Can you stop tanks? Artillery? Genetically engineered disease viruses smuggled into a country in somebody's lug- gage?"
"No," Kinsman admitted.
"Okay! In the meantime you want to be recognized as an independent nation—what the hell you gonna call yourself, anyway?"
"Selene."
"Ugh. Okay, Selene, if that's what you want. You think the U.S. and Russia are gonna recognize an independent Selene?"
"Not at first."
"Damned right they won't! And what makes you think 479 any of the other nations are gonna run the risk of alienating the big boys, just to make you feel good?" Marrett leaned down over Kinsman and jabbed a forefinger against his chest. "They won't. Not unless there's something in it for them."
"We can act as an international policeman," Kinsman said, "as long as we control the ABM satellites."
Before Marrett could reply, he added, "And we can knock out any orbiting satellites we want to. We could cripple communications satellites, for example. Military and civilian communications would be screwed up all around the world. The economic threat alone—"
"Negative advantages," Marrett snapped.
"Huh?"
"Those are negative advantages. So you prevent a nucle- ar war and all the fallout and crap. That doesn't put any rice on the table in Burma. Neither will shooting out commsats."
"I don't follow you." Kinsman got the feeling that Marrett was being deliberately non sequitur.
With a sigh, Marrett hunkered down and sat on a stair. His long legs straddled four steps- Kinsman leaned back against the tube's curving bulkhead. The metal felt chill.
"Look," Marrett said, with great patience. "Suppose you could go to the smaller nations of the world, especially some of the Southern Hemisphere nations—although the Europe- ans would be interested in it, too, come to think of it—well, anyway, suppose you went to 'em and promised not only a policeman in orbit, but weather control."
"Weather control^
"Right. Not modification. Control. We can control the goddamned weather all across this planet. Optimize crop yields, improve health, make fortunes for resort areas, divert storms, improve fish populations, maybe even save the dol- phins before they go the way of the whales—the whole big ball of wax. But we need two things: these space stations as bases of operations, and the political muscle to override the objections of individual nations and the big power blocs."
"They're against weather control?"
Marrett frowned. "It's a long and bloody story. Big- power politics. Basically, the big nations are against letting the UN have any real power. The only way weather control 480 can possibly work is on a worldwide basis. You can't slice off a chunk of the atmosphere and separate it from the rest of the world. No single nation can achieve weather control all by itself. And the big powers won't let the UN have a shot at it, either."
"Orbital police and weather control." Kinsman's mind was churning.
"It'd give the UN some godawful power," Marrett said. "If a nation doesn't behave, we'll just turn off their water."
"You could do that?"
