Odyssey

by Jack McDevitt

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “That sounds a trifle odd, considering what Orion’s just been through.”

  “Is there another asteroid coming in?”

  “Not that we know of, but we have reason to believe a strike may be imminent.”

  “Hutch, look, I can’t just grab some liners and send them off on a wild goose chase. What’s your evidence?”

  “I’m not free to say.”

  “Then I really can’t help. I’m sure you understand. We’d be happy to do what we can, but you’ll have to take us into your confidence.”

  “Let it go,” she said.

  She also needed to warn Origins. There was no indication Allard was likely to pass the Academy’s concerns on. She knew a few people at the facility. But if she communicated directly with them, it would constitute defying the director. If nothing happened, the Academy would be seriously embarrassed, and she would be making profuse apologies. Maybe there was a better way. She asked Marla to get Mac back on the circuit.

  “Hi, Beautiful,” he said. “What do you need?”

  “You have any contacts at Origins?”

  “I know a few people there. What did you need?”

  “Can you get a warning to them? Without involving the Academy?”

  “What did you want them to hear?”

  PETER SENT A schedule listing everything that was currently at Union, or that was expected within the next twenty-four hours.

  A lot of people on the orbiter owed Hutch favors. Over the years, the Academy had supplied ships and information to virtually every off-world corporate entity. They’d provided training, and even occasionally gone to their rescue. She’d included their VIPs on survey runs, when it was feasible, and had encouraged Academy technicians to help where they could.

  She looked over the list of ships, their current status, and their capacities. Then she made her first call to Franz Hoffer, at Thor Transport, which specialized in servicing the deep-space stations. “Probably not going to be a problem,” she said, “but if you can arrange things so a ship is available in the event we need it, I’d be grateful.”

  “We can let you have the Carolyn Ray,” Franz said. “It’ll only hold twenty people. But it’s all we’ve got.”

  “We’ll take it, Franz. And thanks.”

  Franz was a small, thin man. Blond hair. Mustache. Always perfectly pressed and combed. “We’ll have to do some preps.”

  “Okay.”

  “Bring in a pilot. It can be out of here Friday.”

  Two days. “Okay,” she said. “Thanks.”

  Nova Industries moved capital equipment to interstellar construction sites. Lately business had been slow, and they’d officially mothballed the Rikart Bloomberg. But it could be made ready to go in a couple of days. “It will accommodate thirteen,” they said.

  Maracaibo would send an executive yacht, the Alice Bergen. They apologized. It could only carry five, but it was all they had. They’d bring in a pilot immediately. Get it under way late Thursday.

  Beijing FTL agreed to send the Zheng Shaiming as soon as they could refuel and run systems checks. Probably Friday night. No later than Saturday morning. It had a capacity of twenty-six. Mitsubishi donated the Aiko Tanaka, an experimental craft that had been undergoing testing. That gave her sixteen more.

  WhiteStar, which operated the big cruise liners, could have settled the issue had any of its three mainline ships been available. But they weren’t. They could however provide two service vehicles. “Not comfortable,” Meaty Hogan, their maintenance boss told her, “but they’ll each hold four passengers, and they can leave as soon as we get the pilots over to them.”

  “How many in an emergency?”

  Meaty thought about it. “Five. But not for an extended period.”

  The French government had a vehicle in transit. The Christophe Granville. “It can accommodate twenty-two, and be at the site in a few days, Priscilla,” said their operations chief. “You wish us to divert?”

  “Please.”

  “It is done.”

  The Norwegians contributed the Connor Haaverstad, capacity fourteen. It was undergoing maintenance, however, and would not be able to leave for three days. “Send it when you can,” said Hutch.

  “We’ll try to hurry things along.”

  When she got home that evening and told Tor what she’d done, he was as supportive as he could manage, considering he believed she’d committed a major-league blunder. Thrown away her reputation and her career. As she lay beside him on that darkest of nights, she suspected in her heart he was right.

  LIBRARY ARCHIVE

  Our preliminary review of the global defense posture indicates that arming vehicles operated by the Academy, the Alliance for Interstellar Development, and the European Deep Space Commission will constitute, at best, a temporary fix. The hard truth is that we cannot ensure security against an enemy whose capabilities are unknown, and may far exceed our own. However that may be, a fleet of ships whose armament is jury-rigged will not provide a long-term answer. We need to start thinking seriously about a battle fleet whose capabilities will be of the highest possible order our technologies can support.

  —Joint House/Senate Report, Wednesday, May 6

  The rush to arms is just one more glorious boondoggle. We’ve been on this planet for a million years or so, and nobody’s bothered us yet. The last thing we need is battle cruisers in space. If there are really intelligent aliens out there, surely we can talk to them. We haven’t even tried. In any case, there are plenty of empty worlds. Why would they bother us?

  —Epiphany, Wednesday, May 6

  PART THREE

  valya

  chapter 35

  Most people, other than politicians and CEOs, mean well. The problem is seldom with their intentions. It is rather with their tendency to sign on with a superorganism, a political party, a creed, a nation, a local action committee, and in its name to support deeds they would never undertake as individuals.

  —Gregory MacAllister, “The Hellfire Trial”

  Eric caught the eight o’clock flight from Reagan to Union. Valya was already there. She’d gone up on the Dawn Rider. He felt good about himself. Vaguely heroic. “Are we ready to go?”

  Yes indeed. She gave him a hand with his bags, and he walked up the boarding tube and back into the ship. “It feels as if I’m coming home.”

  “I guess it does,” she said. “We had two days on the ground, and here we are again.” She hesitated. “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but I couldn’t figure out why you went the first time. Sightseeing, maybe. Whatever, I surely have no idea why you’re here now, Eric. I asked Hutch, and she just said you wanted to go.”

  “I enjoy taking flights with beautiful women.”

  “Seriously.”

  “I’m serious.” He let her see he meant every word. A few weeks ago he’d have been reluctant to say such things to her. “It also occurred to me there might be an attack. If there is, you could probably use some help.”

  “To do what? Fight them off?”

  He laughed. “The truth is, I just wanted to be there. In case something happens.”

  “You’re going to be disappointed,” she said. “We’ll go out there and ride in circles for a week or so and see nothing. Then we’ll come home.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Come on, Eric, we both know the girl was scared. She was scared, and you and Mac were asleep.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I just think it’s a waste of time. But I’m glad to have you along.”

  “Valya—”

  “Yes?”

  “If you feel that way, why are you making the flight?”

  “It’s my job, Eric. Hutch says go, and I go.” She went up onto the bridge, and he heard her flicking switches and talking to the AI and to the operations people. He went back to his old cabin and unpacked.

  After about twenty minutes she warned him to belt down. He thought about joinin
g her up front, but decided she’d be happier alone for the moment. He knew Hutch planned to keep the Salvator on station until Blueprint had been completed. Probably two weeks. He had heard the rumors about the possibility of a cosmic catastrophe. If it happened, he’d be right there to see it.

  He spoke into the commlink. “Valya?”

  “Yes, Eric?”

  They’d begun to move. “If there’s a time-space rip—”

  “A what?”

  “A time-space rip. Do you know what that is?”

  “It doesn’t sound good.”

  “If it were to happen, could we outrun it?”

  DOWNTOWN DERBY, NORTH Carolina, was awash with demonstrators carrying signs reading HELLFIRE HURTS and SAVE YOUR SOUL WHILE YOU CAN and FIRST AMENDMENT ON TRIAL. Others waved banners declaring NO MORE CHILD ABUSE and PEOPLE INVENTED HELL; NOT GOD. Police did what they could to keep them apart. They lined the streets for several blocks in all directions. Vendors sold T-shirts carrying slogans on both sides of the argument. Others hustled Bibles out of trucks. Organ music drifted through the morning air, and local and network journalists were everywhere.

  Glock had sent MacAllister a pass he had to show three or four times to get to the courthouse. At the door, weary-looking officers inspected it again, compared it with his ID, and let him in. The courtroom was small and jammed. Imagers were set up so the proceedings could be sent around the world. He had lost his day with Valya, but it was almost worth it.

  Glock, stationed up front, waved and pointed him to an empty seat near the defense table. Henry Beemer, the defendant, sat nervously beside his much taller lawyer. He was pale and thin, an introvert by appearance. Not married. MacAllister, appraising the man, decided it was not by choice. He looked like the kind of guy who takes authority seriously. And therein, Henry, he thought, lies your problem.

  He pushed through the crowd and sat down. Glock leaned back and shook his hand. “Good to see you, Mac,” he said.

  Every time the courtroom doors opened, the noise in the street, people yelling and ringing bells and singing hymns, spilled in. “The idiots are out in force,” MacAllister said. “What kind of judge do we have?”

  “Maximum George. Despite the name, he’s okay. As I said yesterday, he won’t overturn the First Amendment, but he’s not unreasonable.”

  The Reverend Pullman sat on the opposite side of the bench, wearing clerical garb and one of those unctuous smiles that proclaims a monopoly on truth.

  There was no jury. Glock had opted to leave it to the judge, who was, he said, less likely to be influenced by the religious goings-on than a crowd of citizens, however carefully chosen.

  At precisely nine A.M., Maximum George entered. The bailiff called everyone to attention, the judge took his place behind the bench and rapped his gavel twice. The crowd quieted, and the trial was under way.

  After a few preliminaries, the prosecutor got up to make his opening statement. He was long and lean as a stick, with mid-Atlantic diction laid on over a Southern accent. He described the unprovoked assault on the unsuspecting Reverend Pullman. Mr. Beemer had approached the preacher in the Booklore bookstore, right across the street from the courthouse, Your Honor. He had accused the preacher of promoting the gospel. Not satisfied with the preacher’s response, he had begun pushing and shoving. And, finally, he had assaulted the puzzled victim with a book.

  The book was lying on the prosecution table. MacAllister was unable to read the title but he knew it was Connecticut Yankee. He couldn’t restrain a grin. If you were going to go after one of these hellfire guys with anybody, Mark Twain was your man.

  The prosecutor expressed his sincere hope that the street demonstrations would not detract from the essential, and relatively clear, facts of the case. And so on.

  Finally, he sat down. Glock stood, explained that the defense would show that the attack was not unprovoked, and that the aggrieved party was in fact Mr. Beemer. “I think,” he concluded, “that will become very quickly evident, Your Honor.”

  MacAllister’s attention drifted back to the book.

  To Sir Boss.

  To his attempts to bring nineteenth-century technology and capitalism to Camelot.

  To the sequence he remembered most vividly: the Yankee, who has been sentenced to the stake, recalls a coming solar eclipse, which knowledge he uses to terrify Merlin, the king, and everybody else by announcing he would darken the sun, and then apparently doing it. An unlikely piece of fiction, of course. Still, it made for a riveting sequence.

  “The prosecution calls its first witness.”

  It was a leather-bound copy, red-brown with a red ribbon, the title in gold.

  “Ms. Pierson, is it true you were on duty at the Booklore when the defendant wantonly and deliberately attacked the Reverend Pullman?”

  “Objection, Your Honor. The prosecution has presented no evidence—”

  The pages were gold-gilded.

  “Sustained. Rephrase, Counselor.”

  “Attacked, Your Honor.”

  It was all about gold.

  THERE WASN’T MUCH to the prosecution side of the case. Four witnesses took the stand to describe how Beemer had been standing with a stack of books, about to check out, when he’d abruptly turned around and walked into the back of the store. One witness testified that he had clearly been following the Reverend Pullman. Two of them saw him come up behind the preacher, still carrying his books, and demand to know whether Pullman knew who he was. When Pullman demurred and tried to edge away, Beemer kept after him. “In a threatening manner.” Finally, the defendant had laid the books on the floor—one witness insisted he’d simply dropped them—seized the biggest book in the pile, and tried to hit the preacher in the head with it. The Reverend Pullman had warded off the blows with his hands, begging the defendant to stop. And had finally gone down. Several bystanders had dragged a still volatile Beemer away.

  Glock made no serious effort to cross-examine the witnesses. He told the judge that the defense did not dispute that the attack had happened as described.

  They broke for lunch. In the afternoon, Pullman took the stand. The prosecutor asked if he understood why he’d been attacked.

  Pullman said no. “Mr. Beemer claimed to have been a student of mine years ago at the church school and said I’d ruined his life. He kept screaming at me.”

  “Were you injured during the attack?”

  “I was severely bruised. When the police came, they wanted to take me to the hospital.”

  “But you didn’t go.”

  “I don’t like hospitals. Anyway, I didn’t feel I’d been injured seriously. Although that was no fault of his. Not that I haven’t forgiven him.”

  Glock stepped forward to cross-examine. “Reverend, you say that, at the time of the incident, you did not know what provoked the attack.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Are you now aware why Mr. Beemer was upset?”

  “I’ve been informed of what he said. And I should add that hundreds of children have attended our school, and this is the first incident of this kind.”

  “No one has ever complained before, Reverend?”

  “No. What is there to complain of? We teach the word of the Lord.”

  “May I ask how old the students are who attend the school?”

  “They are grades one through six.” He considered the question. “About seven to thirteen.”

  “Reverend, what is the word of the Lord regarding hellfire?”

  “That it is eternal. That it is reserved for those who do not accept the Lord and His teaching.”

  The prosecutor objected, on the grounds that none of this had anything to do with the charges.

  “We are trying to establish a rationale, Your Honor. The Reverend Pullman doesn’t understand why Mr. Beemer was upset with him. It’s essential that we all know what provoked a man with no history of lawbreaking, no history of violence, to attack a former teacher.”

  “Very well, Mr. Glock,” s
aid the judge. “I’ll allow it. But let’s get to the point.”

  “Specifically, Reverend Pullman, hellfire sounds like a dire punishment, does it not?”

  “It certainly does. Yes.”

  “How hot is it, would you say?”

  “The Bible does not say.”

  “What would you say?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Enough to scorch your hand?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Enough to sear the flesh?”

  “I would think so.”

  “And it goes on for a thousand years?”

  “It goes on forever.”

  “Without stopping.”

  “There is no lunch break.” Pullman turned a broad smile to the onlookers.

  “Very good, Reverend. Now, if I am, say, twelve years old, what might I do that would incur this sort of punishment?”

  “You mean hell?”

  “Yes.”

  “There are various sins.”

  “Could you give us some examples?”

  “Murder. Adultery.”

  “A twelve-year-old, Reverend. Let me put it to you this way. Is it possible for a twelve-year-old boy to warrant hell?”

  “Yes.”

  MacAllister found himself again fixating on Connecticut Yankee.

  “What can he do that would deserve that kind of punishment? Aside, perhaps, from murder?”

  “He might miss Sunday service.”

  He saw the Yankee in the courtyard while the light drained from the day.

  “That in itself would be sufficient?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “What else?”

  “Dancing.”

  And he thought of the Galactic.

  “Dancing?”

  “Yes. It is strictly forbidden. I know that, for godless people in a godless society, the reasoning can be difficult to grasp.”

  MacAllister lost the drift of the proceedings. The courtyard at Camelot floated before his eyes, and gradually dissolved into the skeletal gridwork of the Galactic. He saw it as he had from the Salvator, turning slowly, reflecting light from nearby Capella.

  He watched the asteroid, growing larger on one of the screens. Recalled how difficult it had been to gauge its size until it got close to the hotel, which, at the end, had been only a brief glimmer of light going out.