Quantum

by Patricia Cornwell

  Because he didn’t make me feel that way. Didn’t like me as much as her, and couldn’t be bothered. Always looking right through me like the air he flew through.

  “The reason I’m asking is you and your sister look exactly alike, sound exactly alike, and people can’t tell you apart, now isn’t that so?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Cut out with the same cookie cutter, you’ve probably heard that expression. And I hear you dress alike, do your hair alike, do everything alike.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sometimes you play tricks on people. Now isn’t that right? The two of you swapping places now and then. From what I hear, you’ve done it a few times at school, and even at church not so long ago. And you get away with it, now don’t you?”

  “I don’t know . . .” Shaking inside, trying not to cry.

  “But you’ve done it many times, now isn’t that right. You tell people you’re Carme. And she tells people she’s you. And you trick people. You get away with it.”

  “Calli, answer his question.” Dad puts his arm around me, pulling me close until my ribs hurt. “He’s just trying to help.”

  “It’s hard on all of us, George. I need her to fess up to the fact that she and Carme are so identical they can fool people till the cows come home if they put their minds to it.” The lawyer peering over his glasses at me. “Isn’t that right, Calli?”

  “Yes, sir.” About to choke on shame, the lawyer sizing me up, knowing I’m to blame.

  “Did you ever play that trick on . . . ?”

  “Stop!” Mom cutting him off. “He no longer has a name. Just call him the stunt pilot, please.”

  “Did you ever play your little trick on him, Calli?” The old cracked leather creaking, he’s leaning so close I smell dirty cigarettes and garlic.

  “No, sir!”

  00:00:00:00:0

  THE LAWYER was mistaken, although I never corrected him. Trading places wasn’t the sort of stunt (no pun intended) that Carme and I would have played on the stunt pilot (even if it’s what he deserved) for the simple reason that she was madly possessive of him.

  She didn’t want me within a nautical mile of the two of them, and he knew what he was doing. In that regard, the lawyer was exactly right. Our former family friend was a predatory opportunist, sick and unable to change his pedophilic ways, never to be forgiven or trusted, by all accounts. While one doesn’t always know when a wolf might be in sheep’s clothing, it doesn’t matter at the end of the day.

  Not to me because I shouldn’t have allowed Carme to drive off into the sunset with him. No matter what sort of harangue she might have pitched, I should have refused to leave her. I don’t care how much she screamed her head off, her pretty face about to explode with rage like an overfilled balloon. I know what a jury would say when faced with the question of whose fault it was. I’m willing to place a large bet on the verdict.

  Nobody’s going to blame me, a child. But that doesn’t seem to make it any easier to live with the damage that was done. Just ask Rush if you can track him down. I’ll never understand why he puts up with my sister’s dysfunctional behavior. On and off. Pushing away, pulling close. Within reach, then a ghost. Loves him, loves him not, Carme good and bad, her rhythms as predictable and powerful as gravity and solar flares.

  If I didn’t know before, I’m sure of it now, my twin sister is in serious danger and trouble. I have an awful feeling that the information Dick passed along to me only begins to scrape the surface. Even as such thoughts are streaking by like comets, I have no impulse to contact my mentor and former boss. I’m not thinking of him as my commander or friend.

  I feel no sense of conflicted obligation or pressure, not like I did when we were together but a few hours ago. No temptation to do his bidding, and I’m not about to interrupt him during his so-called important dinner, whatever he’s actually and in truth doing. I can’t trust what he says when it doesn’t add up, and I have a funny feeling he didn’t spend his evening with the secretary of state.

  Therefore, I also can’t accept as gospel his spin on the missing Pandora employee from Houston, and I feel manipulated, handled. When I think of the Secret Service cruising around as if taunting me to notice, I don’t feel charitable, not happy when left out of important conversations. Not happy when someone withholds from me, especially if it’s critical data, leaving me to conclude my loyalty to General Richard Melville isn’t reciprocal after all. And why would it be? Dick isn’t my flesh and blood, and I’m not inclined to inform him that yes, I might have news about Carme.

  Not a good idea to tell him that she’s turned into a drone, so to speak, and currently is roaming the ceiling inside my bathroom, where I just got out of the shower. Talk about sounding loony, and guess what? Not happening and forget it. I’m not telling anyone. Not Dick. Not Mom or Dad. Not Fran.

  Arguing and making declarations in silence all by myself if I don’t count the PONG watching over me like an autonomous angel. Unlocking my phone, I check on the launch countdown again. The closer it gets, the more I can’t take my eyes off it, my adrenaline pumping.

  −1:47:03:6 . . .

  Still on track, not even two hours to go, the live video feed showing the rocket on Launch Pad 0A (LP-0A) glowing brilliant white like an egret, an American flag on the side of the nose, snow swirling like confetti. Thick hazard-yellow fuel lines snake up the 39-meter (128-foot) body, encircled by glaring lights and the 58-meter (190-foot) lightning-protection masts, before a backdrop of the ocean, choppy and pewter gray in the dark.

  I can just make out the edge of the water tower off to one side, the storage tank for the acoustical damping system that will activate seconds before the rocket’s main engines and solid boosters ignite. I tell people to imagine setting off a firecracker in an oil drum as you deluge it with a firehose to diminish the blast effect, the noise and shock waves. Then envision a 300,000-gallon tsunami roaring from the water tower through two parallel 7-foot-diameter pipes, emptying onto the pad in a kick-butt 41 seconds. NASA at its finest, the ingenious system dreamed up decades earlier to prevent 7.5 million pounds of thrust from tearing up the Space Shuttle and its payload.

  These days it’s mostly rockets and what’s in them that we don’t want shaken to death, and as I study the video feed, checking for any alerts or messages, all looks fine. As long as I ignore Rush ignoring me. Other than that annoyance, I get no sense that anything is out of order. I detect no activities or messages that might imply a possible scrubbing of the launch. Nothing concerning on the home front at Langley, either.

  Nothing beyond Rush being his irritatingly elusive self, completely incommunicado, and it’s starting to bother me a little right about now. In truth, more than bother, and more than a little, since we’re partners last I heard. Rush is the primary communications officer, the mission manager for the EVA that’s scheduled to begin about the same time the rocket lifts off from Wallops Island.

  I’m just the telerobotics nerd on standby for the faux LEAR installation, and he sure as shooting better still be planning to show up at Langley’s Mission Control. He’d better not be leaving me by my lonesome to deal with our two astronauts out on a spacewalk with a top secret on a tether. That sure as hell-o wouldn’t be a nice thing to do, and then not letting me know?

  I wouldn’t do that to him or anyone, always there to be helpful, accommodating. Hauling his darn birthday present around in my backpack for weeks. Not including the time spent customizing it after hours and at my own expense in the home workshop. Wrapping the gift in an outdated sectional flight chart, wishing him smooth flying in the years ahead. Even going to the trouble of saying in the card that it’s been a pleasure working on special projects with him.

  And he can’t bother answering a simple text or email, leaving me in the lurch after the darn
day I’ve had. Well, actually, that day’s over, I realize as I unzip my toiletry bag with an impatient sigh. And this day’s starting out worse.

  Something’s wrong.

  Not giving me the courtesy of a heads-up so I don’t get sucker punched when I walk into Mission Control shortly before 2:00 a.m. to find him not there. Well, that ain’t happening.

  −1:35:44:4 . . .

  I try Rush’s cell phone, and it goes straight to voice mail again, his mailbox full just like it always is.

  “Jeez!” Standing at the sink brushing my teeth, the orb overhead in a corner as if staying out of my impatient way.

  Just like Carme does when I get like this, what Mom says is me finally going off like a whale spouting. There she blows, and Carme’s response is to head to shore, flee as fast as possible. If she’s watching me on a live video feed, and I have no doubt of it, then she can see what’s coming as I finish drying my hair while interrogating Langley’s security system. Entering Rush’s badge number in a search field.

  No records found.

  It would seem he’s not been on the Langley campus since late yesterday afternoon when his smartcard was removed from his computer at 1738 hours inside Building 1220.

  “Where the hell-o are you!” Yelling now.

  −1:33:14:2 . . .

  I need to find him, and there’s a sure way to do it. But this close to launch isn’t a good time to be bird-dogging Ken, the chief mission controller. Not at Langley or any of NASA’s 10 centers nationwide, each staffed by a skeleton crew because of the government shutdown. Only essential NASA people need attend. Of course, in my mind, that’s all of us.

  Ken and I go way back, even went to the same high school, where I was quiet and he was a star wrestler and our senior class president. I’m not surprised he’s in charge of Mission Control at Langley, easygoing, not a nerve in his body. But he’s going to have his plate full, and I hope he won’t kill me. Because I wouldn’t bother him if it weren’t important.

  −1:33:00:0 . . .

  What if something’s happened to Rush? And no one is the wiser? I feel confident that not a single mission controller already at his or her station has given it a thought if he isn’t. Maddeningly elusive and most definitely not the early-bird type, Dr. Delgato, as he’s more formally called, is notorious for rolling in like an ambulance in the nick of time.

  Never hours in advance of a launch, an EVA or anything else, Rush just shows up when required, and I’m not much better. Both of us hate sitting around, and it’s not like we have much in the way of disposable time. I’ve not had a chance to eat in 14 hours, for example.

  “Good morning, it’s Captain Chase,” I say to the woman who answers the phone in Mission Control. “Know you guys are crazy over there . . .”

  “No more than usual. Just not as many of us to go crazy. We’re actually kinda lonely. Kinda bored.”

  “Yeah, as lonely and bored as a cat in the middle of a freeway. Wondering if I could grab Ken for a quick minute.”

  “I see him across the room getting another muffin. Gonna put you on hold.”

  −1:32:14:0 . . . Rooting through the toiletry bag . . .

  Nobody, including Ken, is going to sweat when it’s only an hour and a half out and Rush isn’t in his chair. No one’s worried if both of us aren’t in Mission Control this moment because they know what we’re like. We’re also not the only smart people in the room, and the astronauts probably could install the node just fine without our help.

  −1:31:54:1 . . . Where are the eye drops . . . ?

  As long as every jot or tittle goes as planned. As long as there’s not the slightest question or concern that might come up during an EVA that’s extremely dangerous and could last hours.

  −1:31:33:0 . . . Opening the medicine cabinet . . .

  As long as nothing unanticipated happens during a task that hasn’t been done before in outer space. Ever. Involving a device that can’t be jettisoned. No matter what.

  −1:31:22:1 . . . Rummaging for Visine . . .

  Plus, the top secret part of the equation means no one is supposed to know about it, for better or worse.

  −1:31:10:1 . . . Getting the red out . . .

  But again, I’m a worrier, and maybe I’m the only one who wouldn’t find it normal that Rush suddenly and with no warning is off grid, not on campus, and hasn’t been all day. Something’s wrong. I don’t care what anybody says.

  −1:30:54:1 . . . Looking up at the PONG, looking up at Carme . . .

  Waiting on hold while Ken and his muffin find their way to the phone, staring up at the mirror ball slowly turning. Wondering if my sister would sneak home and not let Rush know. Especially since today is his birthday. A big one. As of 28 minutes ago he’s 40 years old, and it’s difficult for me to fathom that she would spirit herself back to Hampton and not be desperate to see him.

  Until she isn’t. That she wouldn’t want to do something for his birthday. If she remembered it. That she wouldn’t want to sleep with him. Unless she’s sleeping with someone else.

  “Hey! Sorry I made you wait,” Ken’s voice sounds from my cell phone, and I turn off the water running in the sink.

  “What kind of muffins?” I want to know as my stomach grumbles loud enough to hear from space.

  32

  “BLUEBERRY. Got plenty of coffee and the usual fruit, pastries waiting for you,” Ken says, and I can hear the low murmur of voices in the background.

  “Look, I’m running a little behind but will be there just like always,” I make sure he knows. “Sorry to bug you, but I’m trying to track down Rush and not getting any response . . .”

  “He’s at Wallops.”

  “What?” As my thoughts blank out. “He can’t be,” I blurt out stupidly. “He has to be at Langley talking to the astronauts during the EVA . . . ,” and who am I to be telling the Mission Control chief anything? “And I sure as heck can’t get to Wallops, certainly never in time, can’t begin to figure out why nobody told me . . .”

  “You can copilot from here,” Ken says, and I don’t like that word anymore.

  Copilot. It sounds like second banana, second string, second fiddle. Once again, the manager while Rush and Carme are the stars.

  “I figured that’s what you were going to do,” and Ken must be back at his station, computer keys clicking.

  −1:29:52:1 . . . Rubbing myself down with an intense moisturizer.

  “Sure, I’ll be there doing whatever is needed. But what’s going on?” and I’m furious inside my steamy bathroom, naked as the day I was born as a Carme-possessed PONG drifts around.

  Rush is my partner in a top secret project that we’ve been working on for many months, and why he wouldn’t keep me informed is beyond strange. It’s infuriating and humiliating, and I can’t help but take it personally even as I wonder what’s gotten into me. I feel selfish. Maybe the most selfish I’ve ever felt in my life. Clicking back to the app while on speakerphone, checking on messages and the countdown.

  −1:29:34:1 . . .

  “. . . Change of plans,” Ken is saying, “orders from on high. Suits in DC got involved, sniffing out a chance for publicity. Some big-deal film crew. And with the furlough? It’s a good thing because NASA won’t be filming anything, not for public consumption.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t have voted for Wallops,” is what I have to say about it. “Not with everything going on. Not that I was asked,” stopping short of adding that I thought the idea was for Rush and me to tag-team.

  That’s why we’re partners. I don’t know why he wouldn’t inform me that he’d been sent to Wallops. Unless there’s something else going on that he’s not able to discuss, and Dick enters my mind even as I’m keenly aware of my sister’s presence in
the mirror ball.

  Someone’s told Rush not to talk to you.

  And all roads lead to Dick. He doesn’t want Rush and me communicating for some reason, and while I have no proof of this, it’s what I suspect strongly. As elusive as Rush is, he wouldn’t be this unfair or unprofessional, and even as I’m thinking all this, I feel Carme in the faint vibration and wind of the device that channels her psyche.

  “. . . You know, all those kids from Iowa or whatever, a huge PR opportunity,” Ken continues to explain, and I can hear him drinking something. “They’ll get to see Rush talking to Peggy Whitson as she installs their prizewinning science project, LEAR, as you know better than anyone . . .”

  −1:28:34:1 . . . Don’t forget deodorant . . .

  “. . . Too bad about the timing, glad at least someone will capture it on film,” Ken says, and he hasn’t a clue that what’s about to be installed up there is a quantum node.

  Not even the chief mission controller would know, only those of us directly involved who have a top secret security clearance.

  Jeez, I can’t believe this!

  “Then Rush is at Wallops as we speak,” I make sure, calmly, nicely, despite what’s raging inside me.

  “Affirmative. He’s already established contact with our astronaut on Space to Ground 1,” Ken says. “All according to plan,” he adds, and I thank him, telling him we’ll see each other shortly as we end the call.

  “If you know something,” I say to the PONG hovering near the ceiling and witness to it all, “now would be a good time to weigh in.”

  But the orb remains silent, its internal rotor system invisibly spinning in the barest whir, the blades a transparent composite as delicate as gossamer. Dad and I designed the stacked rotor system to mimic dragonfly wings moving too fast to see, the downwash redirected away from the target almost imperceptibly. Like the flutter of an angel wing. Or a sigh.