Boundary

by Eric Flint

  "Yeah, because if the initial data I got from scanning the disc is right, they've encoded the data just a little bit too fine for our regular sensors to pick up. So I have to pull off a major enhancement trick. Image enhancement really relies on the fact that you can increase the information content of your data through more resolution in space and time, and that with very small shifts in the perspective from which your data is accumulated, you can often derive much more data which is hidden within your apparently too-coarse data stream. You can average out noise, you can take pictures from multiple sequential perspectives and see how things change at borderline points . . . Oh, there's about a million and one ways to do it."

  He gazed with great satisfaction on the Fairy Dust now covering the alien artifact. "I've coated the surface of that thing with over a billion sensors, all examining the surface as closely as they can, and the sensors are shifting points of view slowly as they record the data. By the time they've done a ten-times-redundant scan—sometime late tomorrow evening—Nike will be able to shift her work from maintaining the network to doing serious, serious number crunching—using everything from simple image enhancement with interpolation all the way to synth aperture and a whole bunch of other approaches to get that hidden info out."

  He checked some telltales on his HUD; everything okay so far. "Assuming the Fairy Dust network holds out. What I'm doing here is way off the beaten path. Those little black boxes at the corners are RF transmitters supplying the power to the Fairy Dust, on a frequency which shouldn't mess with the rest of the work too much. But, basically, what I'm doing to these little guys is running them on overdrive for a whole day. Way out of spec. Theoretically they should be able to do it, but . . . " He shrugged. "If it works, though, you guys get to do your work making a full-scale translation protocol, and together we just might read this thing before we even leave Mars!"

  Ken Hathaway's expression on Thoat's screen was solemn, as he looked at Madeline.

  "You're sure?"

  "Yes, Ken, I'm sure. Just pass along the transmission to Earth exactly as I send it up to you."

  "I'll be glad to—"

  "No. First, because there's no reason for your name to be on it anywhere. Mine is enough for the authorization. Second, because I see no reason in the world that we need to sink two careers here." She gave Hathaway a very warm smile. "Thanks, Ken. I appreciate the offer, I really do. But there's still no point to it. For the record, you heard nothing, saw nothing, said nothing. Just-Following-Orders-Hathaway, that's you."

  He looked away, seeming to swallow a bit. "Okay."

  "Hey, look on the bright side. It's not as if they can actually have me shot." Now she gave him the great gleaming Fathom smile. "We didn't bring any guns down here with us. Security issues, you know?"

  That got a laugh, at least.

  "Sending now, Captain Hathaway."

  To her surprise, Joe was waiting for her when she came out of the rover. She'd deliberately timed the transmission for a period when everyone would be occupied elsewhere.

  "Joe? What're you—"

  "You just sent it, didn't you?" He cleared his throat so noisily it was quite audible over the radio. "Whatever it was you decided to clear, I mean."

  She could feel her expression going blank. "Yes. I did."

  "Yeah, I figured that was what you were so tense about, the past day or so."

  She hadn't thought he'd noticed. The knowledge that he had warmed her, at a moment when she felt very cold. So much so, that she almost explained.

  But . . .

  No. Let it be on my head alone.

  "Okay," Joe said. "I just wanted to know because . . ."

  He was acting, for all the world, like a high school boy trying to work up the nerve to ask a girl on a date. More precisely, the way a geek acts when he's trying to work up the nerve to ask out the high school head cheerleader. Even in the suit, Madeline could see him fidgeting.

  She almost burst into laughter. "Joe, what's on your mind?"

  As if by sheer force of will, she could see him settling down. "Sorry. It's just . . ."

  His head turned for a moment, looking across the Martian landscape. Madeline's gaze followed his. The sight was a splendid one. The sun was beginning to set over the far distant rim of Valles Marineris, casting lengthening shadows over the crimson-pinksalmon landscape. The colors always seemed at their richest, then.

  Still not looking at her, he reached into one of the pouches of his suit and brought out something. Quite small, whatever it was, completely hidden in his glove.

  "When A.J. told me he was making one of these up for Helen— last night, he told me—I asked him to make me one. Real quick, so I'd have it in time."

  "In time for what? And what is it, anyway?"

  Finally, he looked at her. His glove opened up. Nestled in the palm was a ring. The band itself was some sort of utilitarian metal. But the stone set in it was a shimmering, multicolored brilliance like nothing Madeline had ever seen.

  "I wanted to ask you before I knew what the message was you sent. Just . . . Well, so you'd know. That it wasn't any kind of condition, I mean. Whatever decision you made is okay with me. Even if I don't agree with it."

  Her eyes were still riveted on the ring, and . . . whatever it was glimmering in its center.

  "We don't have any diamonds, of course," Joe said apologetically. "And no way to get any, for . . . God, who knows how long? I don't think there are any on Nike, either, except for industrial use. And those are . . . well. Not pretty."

  "Joe, it's beautiful," she whispered. Her mind was trying to grapple with the real issue, but kept getting distracted by the mystery. "But what is it?"

  "A.J. showing off, what else? He told me he could do it." Joe picked the ring out of the palm of the glove with his other hand and held it up. "It is gorgeous, isn't it? Prettier than diamonds, if you ask me. Of course, you'll have to get it recharged periodically, which you wouldn't have to with real stones."

  Her eyes widened.

  "Yup. What a show-off, huh? Genuine 24-carat solid Fairy Dust."

  "Yes," she said firmly. Then, she shook her head. "I'm not talking about A.J. Yes, he's a show-off. Who cares?"

  She looked up from the ring, to Joe, to the landscape. Her vision got worse as it went, from the tears watering them.

  "Damn, there are things I hate about spacesuits," she muttered. "Can't wipe your eyes, can't blow your nose. Yes, Joe Buckley, I will marry you."

  A while later, she added: "And that's another thing. Hugging in a spacesuit is a pain, and kissing's impossible."

  Joe laughed. And laughed. Never once letting her go.

  "I warn you," she whispered, as close to his ear as she could get. "You'll have to be the only breadwinner, for a while. I'm pretty sure your bride-to-be is about to become unemployed."

  "Who cares?"

  "Well. And you may have to visit me in prison, too. I don't think that's likely, but . . ."

  Finally, he pulled back. "Like that, huh?"

  "'Fraid so. And, yes, I understand and appreciate the fact— believe me, I do—that you didn't wait to know before you proposed. But you might want to reconsider now that—"

  "Oh, bullshit." Joe keyed the general band used by Thoat's company. "Hey, A.J.! Madeline thinks she might have to take it on the lam, in a few months. That be enough time for us to figure out how to make our getaway into the badlands of Valles Marineris?"

  The answer came immediately. "Sure. Biggest badlands in the Solar System, too."

  Chapter 53

  The director of the Homeland Investigation Authority stared out of the window. At a distance, he could see a little stretch of the Potomac River.

  The sight of the river was soothing. A little reminder, if he needed it, that politicians and bureaucrats came and went—not exempting himself, even if his tenure had been much longer than usual—but the nation remained.

  Throughout, half his mind—but no more than that—remained attentive to the cont
inuing prattle coming from the National Security Adviser. The rest of his mind was busy recalling every NSA who'd passed through Washington in the years that Hughes had sat in the director's office. Had any of them been quite the unmitigated ass that Jensen was?

  The answer kept coming up: no. Close, in one or two cases, but no cigar.

  "—charges of treason not out of the question, I tell you!"

  Enough was enough. He'd listened politely, now, for well over fifteen minutes.

  "That is perhaps the silliest statement I've ever heard in this office, George—and I've heard quite a few."

  He swiveled his chair to look at the NSA sitting on the couch some distance away. Jensen had insisted on the couch, as usual. This time, though, Hughes had insisted on remaining at his desk.

  "The charge of treason is a very specific one, whose parameters are clearly spelled out in the Constitution. You couldn't find a shyster anywhere—not even in this town, not even in the Justice Department—who'd agree to bring that charge against Madeline

  Fathom. They'd be afraid of being disbarred for incompetence."

  A pity we can't do the same for NSAs. But he left that unsaid.

  "George," he continued, "if you do so much as try to charge her with violating this or that security law—oh, you could certainly find something, we've got so many of them—you'd still come out of it on the short end of the stick. 'Short end' as in—"

  He held up his pudgy hand, with only a millimeter or two separating the tips of his thumb and forefinger. "—you'll be clutching the itty-bit tip fighting desperately for your political survival, while Fathom uses the great big meaty part of it to club you silly. Well . . . not her, personally. She'd stay out of it, directly. If I know Madeline—and I do—she won't even make any statements to the press. Doesn't matter. The media will beat you to death."

  He leaned forward, plucked a small stack of magazines from the top of his desk, and flicked them over to the coffee table.

  Hughes had been a pretty good basketball player in his youth, until the certain knowledge that he'd never be taller than five and a half feet put paid to that ambition. All but one of the magazines landed squarely on the table. Even that one landed face up on the carpet.

  Madeline Fathom's face up, to be precise. That was Celebrities Today, which, as usual, had gone for a full-face glamor shot. Most of the other magazines, being news magazines, had run a different picture—the image taken by A.J. Baker's recorders as he'd first found Madeline in the collapse of the ice tunnel.

  "She was on the cover of half the magazines in America, that week. With 'America's Supergirl' as the banner in most of them. She's better known to the public than you are these days, George, and—I guarantee you this much—one hell of a lot more popular."

  He chuckled heavily and added, in an exaggerated Southern drawl, "A popular security agent, if that don't beat all! Created one heck of a problem for us, o' course. The HIA's been flooded with applications since, at least half of them girls about to graduate from high school. Betcha that a few months from now, 'Madeline' will be the most popular name for newborn girl babies. Give you ten-to-one odds."

  Jensen was staring at the magazines as he might stare at so many venomous snakes set loose from a cage.

  "Face facts," Hughes said coldly. "Start with the fact that she's way smarter than you think. There was not a single military secret in that entire transmission. Not one. That was her assignment. Defined in precise and narrow terms, I admit, but that's exactly how a hostile press will define it—and what are you going to say? Much less charge her with? 'She failed to read our minds properly'?"

  "Who cares, Andy?" Jensen exploded, half-rising from the couch. He was so agitated he lapsed into profanity, something he normally avoided. "The whole fucking transmission's a violation of national security! She told the whole world everything, God damn it!"

  Now, he did rise fully to his feet, and dramatically started counting off on his fingers.

  "Start with item one. The whole world now knows that such a thing as a reactionless drive is possible. Which means that every relevant university lab and research institute in the world—not just ours—will be kicking into high gear to figure out how to make one.

  "Item two. The whole world now knows that we've found the key to translating the Bemmie language."

  Almost—not quite—he sneered at Hughes. "So big deal if it'll take years to decipher that key, assuming the linguists are right—and who's to say they haven't been compromised? One of them is a foreign national, you know."

  "'Compromised,'" Hughes drawled, again exaggerating his accent, as if he couldn't help do so while savoring the word. In the dialect of Washingtonese favored by Jensen and his type, that translated as: can't be certain to get with the program in every jot and particular.

  He sat up straighter and went back to his usual manner of speech, which had only a trace left of his Mississippi rural origins. "Yes, one of the linguists is a foreigner, indeed. A citizen of our well-known archenemy, Great Britain. The only country, let me remind you, to ever invade the United States—and who's to say their conduct for the past two centuries hasn't just been a ploy to get us to lower our guard so they can do it again?"

  "This is no time for jokes, Andy!"

  "Who's joking?" He twisted his head slightly, gesturing in the direction of the Pentagon. "You and I both know perfectly well that somewhere buried over there are plans for repelling a British invasion— and invading them, for that matter. They're called 'contingency plans' and we've got them for just about everything. A surgical strike at Antarctica's penguins, I imagine, if that's ever needed. And so what? Nobody in their right mind really expects them to be used— just like nobody in their right mind really thinks Ms. Jane Mayhew is Mata Hari. Including you, so don't give me lectures about telling jokes. And will you please sit down? As short as I am and as tall as you are, you're giving my neck a crick having to look up at you."

  After a moment, Jensen did so, his long and angular body folding up on the couch like a collapsing pile of sticks.

  "What a nightmare," he hissed, closing his eyes and rubbing them. "It's the combination that makes it such a mess. A reactionless drive in the abstract would be one thing. Such a drive and the possibility we might someday be able to interpret what might be blueprints for building it has every nation in the world hollering bloody murder. All of them are now insisting that the United States has to open up the space program and give everyone equal access to Melas Chasma. The Central African Republic, Mongolia, Paraguay, you name it."

  He lowered his hand and stared gloomily at the opposite wall. "Those we can brush off, of course. But the Chinese and even the Europeans are every bit as adamant, and . . ."

  "Those we can't. Or, if we did, wouldn't do any good. I've seen the intelligence. If they really put their money where their mouth is, the Europeans can build a Nike or its equivalent inside of three years. It'd take the Chinese longer, but not that much. The Indians could eventually manage it, too—possibly even the Brazilians—although that would take a couple of decades or so."

  He swiveled his head to look out of the window again. The Potomac settled him down, as always. That very same river had flowed there, after all, more than two centuries earlier when the British burned the capital. Hughes' long career, if nothing else, had convinced him that most political uproars were a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing once a few years went by.

  "And then what?" he mused. "Do we instruct our people on Mars and Phobos—that mighty military host—to fend them off with . . . I'm not sure what. I believe Captain Hathaway has a few pistols stashed away somewhere, in the event he ever had to suppress a mutiny."