Grounded!

by Claremont, Chris

  “You ever consider, Lieutenant, we might try that ourselves?”

  “Hardly the way, Mr. Cobri, to build trust between two peoples.”

  “Since when does trust have anything to do with national interest?”

  “The minute the national interest left the atmosphere. Trust is the only thing that keeps us alive up here.”

  “Are we playing cards here, or what?”

  “Sorry, Ramsey,” and she dealt the last up card.

  “Forget I said anything,” he muttered after taking a look, “the way this hand went we were better off with politics.”

  “You missed your calling, Ms. Shea,” Alex told her, “Russell ought to have you on his payroll, writing speeches.”

  “I already have a job, thank you,” thinking, Such as it is these days.

  The game was down to her and Alex. Ramsey had three to a straight flush until this last card busted it; that was why he’d stayed in so long, in the face of Alex’s succession of five- and ten-dollar raises each round. This was the biggest pot of the night, the one that had done the most damage along the way; she was fairly certain it would also be the last. The game was as much about companionship as winnings and no one seemed to have much interest in the former with Alex. She hadn’t a clue how to read him, either; with the others, after an hour and more of play, she had a sense of how they thought, what moves were strategy and what emotion, when they were bluffing and how they could be bluffed—just as she was sure they were trying to do the same with her.

  Based on what she could see, he potentially had anything from two pair to a full house, pushing the bet to the limit every time. Half the table had dropped, not because they had bad hands—a couple appeared quite formidable—but because the cost of losing was getting way too bloody. From what she’d seen on the table, though, plus in her own hand, she was pretty much certain she had him beat, even if he wasn’t bluffing.

  “Ten to you, Ms. Shea,” he said, adding one more bill to the pile. Still one more card to go, with its own betting round. Twenty bucks more, absolute minimum. Anything she raised, Cobri looked ready to match without a second thought, with all the gambling finesse of a sledgehammer.

  She turned her cards face down, the game was over.

  “Sorry about that,” Ramsey said as she excused herself to the bar for another seltzer.

  “You shoulda stayed,” Sue chided her.

  She shrugged. “Wasn’t worth the effort.”

  “If not for the money, sweetheart, the pride. You let him chase you.”

  I’ve already fallen, Suze, she thought, I got no need for this kind of pride, thank you very much.

  In the background, Alex had gotten involved in a heated exchange at another booth with a couple of pilots.

  “It registered on the sensor package as the target drone,” he said, “of course the remote executed the intercept, that’s what it’s programmed to dol” Upset as he clearly was, he still managed to convey the contemptuous impression of a bored grown-up explaining the blindingly obvious to a hopelessly backward child.

  “Mr. Cobri,” an officer said patiently, “your jinxing through the passes swung you into the wrong pattern, the target was twenty klicks the other direction.”

  “You saying it’s my fault, Captain?”

  “What’s he talking about?” Nicole asked Ramsey.

  “Don’t you know?”

  She shook her head.

  “Oh, jeez, Nicole, I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “The remote... ” Ramsey’s voice trailed off.

  “Him?”

  “If you’d followed flight profile,” the pilot was saying.

  “Straight and level at a safe altitude, we’d have learned nothing. The remote coped with low-level, max-speed maneuvers as well and better than most of your manned beasts, it proved itself beyond all shadow of a doubt!”

  “Except,” Nicole said quietly, moving into view, “its operator couldn’t tell the difference between a target and a civilian aircraft.”

  “If that were true, Ms. Shea, the accident investigation team would be picking tiny pieces of you and your plane off the desert.”

  “So sorry. My error.”

  “You had no business being in an MOA.”

  “Excuse me, mister, I was on profile, on track. If anyone had business there, it was me!”

  “You should have been under TRACON direction.”

  “And what good would it have done? They’d have told me then what my uplink did this morning, that you were operating twenty klicks away, on the other side of the damn mountains.”

  “It’s only a plane, for God’s sake.”

  She leaned over the table, staring him down, the two officers not quite sure which way to jump, whether to pull her off or enjoy the show. Cobri certainly seemed amused.

  “It’s my life, chum.” And even as she spoke, she felt the suspicion that he didn’t understand a word she was saying, not in any way that mattered. “Not the one I almost lost, the years I spent putting that Baron back together, the joy it’s given me. Those moments have meaning, mister, you don’t dismiss them with a airy wave of the hand.”

  “Please, Lieutenant, the moments—as you call them—haven’t been touched. Only the machine that helped provide them. And it can be repaired. Or replaced. You did it yourself.” He grinned, a disturbingly disarming grin for what she decided was such an enthusiastically royal prick. “I probably did you a favor, actually. More work, more ultimate satisfaction, more joy.” Without thinking about it—again, that dangerous lag between physical response and rational decision—she’d balled her right hand into a fist. Screw it, she decided, time for the boy to lose some teeth.

  “I believe, Lieutenant Shea,” Colonel Sallinger said from behind her, “I have sole claim on your attentions this evening.”

  With a curt turn of the head—as much acknowledgment to the others in the room as summons to her—Sallinger motioned Nicole to follow him to a corner around the bar, as far from everyone else as it was possible to get. Not bothering to look back to make sure she followed, as though daring her to try anything else, Cobri nattering derisively on while his companions exchanged looks of true amazement, silently asking how any even marginally aware person could have been oblivious to what had very nearly happened. Alex knew though, Nicole accepted that like she did the morning sunrise. He was the kind who lived perpetually on the edge of the abyss; what was the point, where was the thrill, in anything less, especially when you never had to face the consequences of your actions. Always more money to cover a bet, always someone to step in the way—and why care what happens to your vehicle, you’re not really aboard to share its fate.

  The table was already set and as Nicole followed the Colonel’s lead and sat down, Sue appeared with salad.

  “I took the liberty of ordering,” Sallinger said, “we’ve both had a hard day and there didn’t seem any profit in delay.”

  “Thank you, sir.” The lettuce was fresh and crisp, the dressing delicious—nothing terribly fancy about the cuisine, Sue did simple things here supremely well—and with the first bites Nicole decided she wasn’t hungry at all, but starving.

  “Feel better?” Sallinger asked, partway into the main course.

  She answered with a sigh and a smile.

  “Amazing what a full stomach will do to your sense of perspective,” he noted.

  “I still want to kill him, sir,” she said, thinking, The arrogant little shit.

  “An hour ago, Lieutenant, you were ready to give it a shot. Understandable. But unprofessional.” She didn’t have an answer for that, he was right. “Most new arrivals,” he continued in that same infuriatingly relaxed tone, changing the subject without missing a beat, “fly into LAX and drive up.”

  “What’s the point of having wings if you don’t use ’em?”

  “Fair enough. Nice bit of flying, by the way. Castaneda says you cracked the piston chamber on the left, a couple of cylinders on the right,
gonna be a bear finding replacements.”

  “I know a place.” Thinking, Sonofabitch, he checked before coming here. Surprisingly pleased that he cared.

  Sallinger smiled. “So does he.” Seated, they looked each other in the eye; standing, she had the edge by about a head. His was the classic high-G fighter pilot’s bod—short and stocky—with a stevedore’s broad, muscular chest that came to him from a Russian peasant ancestor along with a slight epicanthic tilt to the eyes that bespoke some Tartar blood from even further back. Lot more grey in his close-cropped hair than last time, deeper lines gouged in his craggy features. He was the kind of man who somehow didn’t look comfortable in uniform, the ideal for him was a flight suit. Yet for all the supposed casualness of his attire, there was no mistaking the aura of command and it was a rare, foolish individual who didn’t recognize right off the bat that you crossed him at your own (considerable) risk.

  “Dave Elias thinks a lot of you,” he said suddenly.

  For all the good that does me, she thought and the look Sallinger gave her made her wonder—with a small flash of panic—if she’d somehow spoken aloud.

  “To be honest, sir, while I’m glad to be here, Edwards is the last place I expected to be assigned.”

  “Why?”

  “You know.”

  “Yes”—a small smile—“I do. I thought Harry was out of line. But sometimes, for the right people, exceptions can be justified. He proved me wrong. That’s why I asked for you back. Insisted upon it, actually. Even without this medical decertification, I was prepared to move Heaven and earth to get you.”

  “Why?”

  “Let’s take a walk.”

  Full panoply of stars tonight, notwithstanding some midlevel cirrus speckled silver by the rising crescent moon, and it would only take a short drive—to get clear of the base and out where the desert was still properly and completely dark—to reveal a view of the heavens that was truly spectacular. Next best thing to being there. To anyone who hadn’t actually been.

  But there was no more hinting about the chill Nicole had felt earlier, the air was cool enough to send a stream of condensation from mouth and nose with every breath; she zipped her jacket, turned up the collar, and shoved her hands deep into its pockets while Sallinger led her back through the park.

  “Don’t tell me this bothers you?” he asked. “Girl like you, grew up in Nantucket, all that open-water sailing?” Terriffic, she thought sourly, he’s read my dossier.

  “You deal with cold by preparing properly for it. And I was better at it then.”

  “What changed?”

  She paused by the X-15, amazed at how small the rocket plane was, but also admiring its sleek, slab-sided lines. “That first day,” she said, “after the raiders ambushed us, before we jury-rigged the systems back on-line, Wanderer had no power. Couple or three billion klicks out from the Sun, the local temperature isn’t that much above absolute zero. Spacecraft’s insulation helped, but as time passed, it got colder.” Such a calm and matter-of-fact word for a sensation unlike any she’d ever experienced. She shrugged, “Even after we jump-started the Carousel”—the habitat module—“back to life, we didn’t dare put too much pressure on the systems. Set the heaters on a very slow and gradual warming curve. That was the worst, when the cold was still close to unendurable and you knew the heaters were on and that things would get better—didn’t dare consider anything else—it was just a matter of hanging on ’til they did. Only seemed to take forever.”

  “And then you found the Halyan’t’a.” Sallinger pronounced it the way most people did, the way its English transliteration was spelt, without the sub vocal resonances indicated by the apostrophes. Human throats didn’t appear to be constructed for those kinds of sounds, or ears to hear them.

  “The dumbest of luck, sir.”

  “Discovery, perhaps. What came after, no way.” Off in the distance, a sudden flash caught Nicole’s attention; as she turned her head, the sound caught up to her, a thunderous roar cresting like a wave over a bar as the pilot waiting at the end of the runway keyed in his afterburners. Takeoff was almost too fast to be believed, the plane had barely started moving before it was off the ground, canting into an impossibly steep angle of attack atop a cone of blue flame half as long as the aircraft itself. In another twinkling, it was gone, navigation strobes lost among the myriad of natural stars, its exit announced by a soft boom as it went supersonic.

  Overlooking the park, and the dry lake beyond—a vantage point that gave a surprisingly comprehensive view of the entire working area of the base—was a memorial. Severe cenotaph, dignified plaque bearing the names of every pilot who’d lost his or her life here from Glenn Edwards—who’d given the base its name—on up. This was for the tourists; the real memorial, as far as the test pilots were concerned, was on the wall in Hotshots.

  “You have any idea, Lieutenant,” Sallinger asked conversationally, “how many people are currently conversant in Halyan’t’a?”

  Puzzle began locking into place and she felt a sudden icy-electric thrill up her spine, but as she started to reply, he interrupted, “On Earth, that is.”

  “Three,” she said, hazarding a guess because her information was reasonably out-of-date.

  “Main delegation goes to New York, to deal with the United Nations—those lucky devils”—this in a tone that really meant, those poor bastards—“but three of the Hal get spun off our way.” She looked questioningly.

  “Evidently, we face similar problems in our space programs—namely, the difficulty in getting from orbit to the surface and back again. Pity matter transmission didn’t come to us as easily as star flight. Anyway, the suggestion’s been made that we pool our resources, see if together we can’t find a solution that evades us individually.”

  “Won’t this strike some as favoritism, sir, the Halyan’t’a working with us?”

  Sallinger laughed and shook his head. “How the hell do you make that little noise, Nicole? I mean, I’ve heard it in the tapes—from you and that Marshal, Ciari—but I can’t even come close. Gives me a helluva sore throat.”

  “Me, too, sir, and it only sounds right to our ears. Heaven knows what the Hal make of it.”

  “The fact that you can make it at all—rough and rude approximation or not—is why I asked for you. And to answer your question, they won’t be working with just us. We’ve spent the last six months culling the best and the brightest from all over—we’ve got Russians coming and Brits and French and Israelis and, God help us, Iraqis and Japanese, it’s going to be a goddamn zoo. In which the ones who look to us the most like animals will probably turn out to be the most civilized. Your job’s to make sure there’s as little trouble as possible.”

  “Colonel, my knowledge of their language—not to mention their culture—is rudimentary at best.”

  “My understanding is Marshal Ciari’s been sending you regular updates from their homeworld.” She was shaken, he did know her dossier.

  She made a semihelpless gesture, started another protest, “Ranjamaryam and Szilard... ”

  “A, will be busy as hell in New York with the President. And, B, are not pilots.”

  “The Halyan’t’a’ll probably have a Speaker with them, their own translator, who’ll be a lot more familiar with us than I can possibly be with them.”

  “Granted. I want one of my own. You’re it.”

  “I’m not qualified.”

  “Nicole, I understand the premise behind this Speaker of theirs, someone who’s been genetically engineered to comprehend not simply our language but the cultural and societal context. Great. All for it. Wish to hell we could do that with one of our own. But he still comes with a bias. He still sees through their eyes, comprehends through their thought processes. The same words don’t necessarily have the same meaning. No matter how clumsily—and I suspect you’re selling yourself short—you can do that same service for me. Give them a sense of our perceptions. And maybe give their Commander and me the extreme
parameters between which we can find a viable middle ground.”

  “Christ on a crutch,” was all she could say.

  “And, of course, help them deal with the media.”

  “Of course. What fun.”

  “We’ll still hold to your cover story, that you were a participant in the Wanderer First Contact but not a major player. That’s one of the nicer things about this still being a military installation, we can restrict access. There’ll be some obligatory dog and pony show-and-tells, but we will most definitely keep the bullshit to an absolute minimum. Again, fortunately, they’re coming to work.”

  They’d been walking some more, paralleling Rosamond Boulevard past the athletic fields and on towards another cluster of single-family houses.

  “You’ll be part of their test program, primarily responsible for liaising between them and our own people.”

  “Will I be flying?”

  “Probably. Another major point in your favor was your familiarity with our own ReEntry Vehicle project. You know the territory.”

  “As of three years ago.”

  “Not to worry. Everything we’ve done since has been uploaded into your house memory. I expect you up to speed within the week.”

  “ ‘House’?”

  “Assignment has a few perks. We don’t know what they’d like, so we’ll be quartering them here on G Street. They have the residence at the end, you’ll be in the one next door. We’re light on personnel this season, so the rest of Golf, and Hotel beyond, are empty.”

  “All by ourselves.”

  “Being so close to the main road creates a potential problem, so we’ll be increasing security along this stretch.”

  “You worried about someone getting in or them busting out?”

  “You tell me, you’re the closest I got to an expert. We have a century and change of bad video and worse books describing what it’ll be like when the aliens land. Well now, they’re here. And to one degree or another, everybody is scared shitless.”

  “This is nuts.”

  “Absolutely. But this is one pooch, Lieutenant, that can’t be screwed, ’cause we got no way to bail out. All of a sudden, the best of us are just pudknockers again, hardly know which way is effing up, ’cept we’re expected to fly the hottest bird built. With the whole world watching.”