Starhawk

by Jack McDevitt

  Gilmore’s was filled with people dressed for an evening on the town. In the center of the table, a small candle burned inside a red globe. They were seated by a window looking out across Nassau Street. The University Chapel was lovely in the moonlight.

  “How long will you be here?” asked Cal.

  “Just a few more days.”

  “Must be great.” His eyes locked on her, full of hope. “I imagine riding around all day in one of those starships makes everything else seem pretty pedestrian.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “It can have that effect.”

  He smiled, and she caught a glimpse of Mark Klaybold in there somewhere.

  * * *

  WHILE THEY ATE, Cal confessed that he suspected he’d spend the rest of his life with Martin Gable Finance. “Unless my movie career takes off.” Again, she saw that self-effacing smile that somehow nevertheless suggested he still hoped good things would happen.

  “You know, you’d make a good Rick Cabot.” Cabot was, of course, the superspy who’d leaped from the pages of Carol Goldwin’s novels.

  “Ah, yes,” he said, mimicking Cabot’s British accent, “just keep smiling, Ms. Hutchins, and don’t make any sudden moves.” He was perfect.

  “Very good,” she said.

  “Thanks. So what do you expect to happen with you? Where will you be going next?”

  “I’ll be working at the station for a while. Nothing very exciting.”

  “If you had a choice, where would you like to go?

  “Someplace where there’s another civilization. Where there’s somebody we could talk to.”

  “Really? Wouldn’t that be kind of scary?”

  “I suppose so. But it would be nice to sit down with someone who’d never heard of Earth. And maybe find out whether he enjoys music. Whether it enjoys music.”

  “That’s very poetic. But aliens on HV aren’t usually very friendly.” He took a moment to sip his coffee. “Well, it sure sounds more exciting than tracking security equities.” He tried the coffee again. Hesitated. “Will you be coming back once in a while? To Princeton?”

  “I expect so,” she said. “My family lives here. Are you from this area originally?”

  “I was born in Cherry Hill. Grew up there.”

  “Where’d you go to school, Cal?”

  “Princeton. How about you?”

  “Same,” she said. “Did you major in finance?”

  “Of course. But I did some theater, too.”

  Priscilla smiled. “You were beautiful last night.”

  * * *

  THEY HIT A couple of the nightspots. And, finally, the evening tiptoed to an end. He made no overt move, took her home in the Benson, and told her how much he’d enjoyed being out with her. Priscilla pulled her coat around her. Cal climbed out and opened her door. The wind seemed capable of taking a couple of the trees down. Had she been traveling with Mark, he would have said something to her in the restaurant about how he’d miss her, how he wanted to make something happen. The piano and the fireplace would have provided the background. But Mark had never really shown up. She was disappointed.

  He hovered beside her, apparently trying to decide whether to attempt a kiss. “Priscilla,” he said as they walked slowly up to the front of the house, “I’d like to do this again. If that would be all right.”

  “Sure,” she said, withholding any sign of enthusiasm. “I won’t be back for a while, though, Cal.”

  “That’s okay. I just—”

  “What?”

  “Well, I don’t know. I just don’t want you to walk out of my life after one evening.” He leaned forward, pressed his lips against her cheek, and backed off.

  Oh, Mark, where did you go?

  * * *

  LIBRARY ENTRY

  Yung Sun Yeun, speaking last week in his State of the World address, outlined the endless problems the World Group faces in confronting widespread famine, peacekeeping issues, and climate change. The global population is completely out of control. Numerous species are dying off. And these were, of course, only the tip of the iceberg. Dr. Yeun, fortunately, is a realist. He understands the planet’s resources are limited and should not be wasted on initiatives that contribute nothing toward global survival. We do not need more maglev train routes, he said. We have no use for enhanced space-born energy systems when the ones in place are performing more than adequately. We can get along without bigger navies. It’s hard to see how we profit from interstellar exploration. We don’t even need, he says, to ensure the survival of the human race by establishing off-world bases. Our first obligation, he maintains, is to take care of our home world. Any action that diverts resources from that single objective should cease. Our prime concern is the people we have, not the ones who may one day be running around the Orion Arm. It’s clearly time for the members of the World Group to follow Dr. Yeun’s leadership. We’re discovering that intelligent life seems to have gone missing among the stars. Unfortunately, we don’t see many signs of it here, either.

  —Gregory MacAllister, Baltimore Sun,

  December 30, 2195

  Chapter 25

  FOR JAKE, THE good life had arrived. He loved spending time with Alicia, whether it was in the Ferrante Club in Roanoke, or wandering through the woods, or watching movies at his place. He went to the Hawks’ games, at home and on the road. She claimed she played better when he was in the stands. “You provide a little extra energy, Jake,” she’d told him one night after they’d won on her last-second jump shot. The reality was that no woman in his life had ever affected him the way she did.

  Everything else was falling into place also. There was a Thursday poker game in town, which he attended except on those evenings when the Hawks were playing. Several of the local schools asked him to talk to their students about spaceflight. He put together a show that included a virtual trip to some of the local stars, and to Iapetus. He made a change in reality, though, by coordinating it so that Iapetus was no longer in tidal lock. That allowed the students to gather on a ridge and watch Saturn rise in the east, with those magnificent rings jutting vertically into the sky.

  He became a volunteer at the local animal shelter (where, coincidentally, Alicia also served). He went for long, solitary walks, and felt the difference immediately in his muscles, which had absorbed too many years in low or zero gravity.

  The food was considerably better than the fare to which he’d become accustomed. He never ate in the cabin, though, unless Alicia made the meal. He visited every restaurant within sixty-five kilometers. And for the first time since he was about twelve, he played occasional bingo, with Alicia, at one of the local churches.

  He had blundered into a golden age. He’d always expected that, when he retired, he’d sleep late and spend most of his time just lying around. Maybe do some bowling. But Alicia wasn’t a bowler, and he just didn’t have time.

  She took him to an indoor swimming pool in Roanoke. The woman looked glorious in the water, smooth and synchronized, moving swiftly, leaving Jake to manage as best he could. Jake could swim reasonably well, but he’d fallen out of practice. “I’m going to suggest to the people on the Wheel that they need one of these,” he said.

  Both The Roanoke Times and The Christiansburg News interviewed him and did stories. He became a local celebrity.

  * * *

  NEVERTHELESS, HE’D BEEN there barely three weeks before a disquieting restlessness set in. He didn’t want to admit it to himself, but he missed the interstellars. Missed looking down on other worlds. Missed the admiration that the silver-and-blue uniform commanded from passengers and anyone else who happened to be in the neighborhood.

  He missed the occasional voyage during which he started with no idea what waited at the other end. He missed the simple things, the exhilaration that came during the first minutes after launch, when the acceleration pressed him back into his seat. The shocked reactions of passengers who were, for the first time, looking out the portal at an alien moon or a star cluste
r or a passing asteroid.

  And as the weeks went by, he became more aware of what had gone missing from his life. But there was something else: He had not been able to let go of Joshua Miller.

  It was not that he was still overwhelmed by a sense of guilt. He’d been able to convince himself that he had probably not been aware of what Joshua had intended. But even if that were so, he knew that somehow, a set of scales were out of balance.

  Whatever the exact nature of what he was experiencing, he was unable to keep it hidden from Alicia. She knew something was wrong. Life was not going off the track completely, but rather it was out of sync. “Are you okay?” she would ask occasionally, even when he was not conscious of contemplating whether he needed to feel the push of the star drive, or perhaps owed something to Joshua. “Is everything all right, Jake?”

  It wasn’t.

  But he assured her it was only her imagination. I’m fine.

  When he was alone in the cabin, however, he felt the weight of solitude as he never had when he was riding the interstellars.

  * * *

  LIBRARY ENTRY

  What we do is who we are.

  —Marissa Earl, Narrow Roads, 2025

  Chapter 26

  PRISCILLA HAD NOT been able to get Monika Wolf out of her mind. On her way back to the Wheel, she decided to call her. Monika sounded pleased to hear her voice. “I’ve been wondering how my favorite pilot’s been doing,” she said. “Wish we were close enough to manage an occasional lunch.”

  “Me, too,” said Priscilla, as they rose above some storm clouds. “Have you gotten a job yet?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m with Baxter Intelligence. Not as interesting as what I used to do for Kosmik, but at least I’m not causing any harm anymore.”

  “I quit them myself,” she said.

  “Good for you. I wish we could get everybody to walk out.” It was strictly an audible conversation, but Priscilla sensed that she was smiling. “Political pressure is building. A lot of people are unhappy about what’s going on. I think eventually we’ll be able to shut them down.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Priscilla said.

  * * *

  IN THE MORNING, she checked in with Frank Irasco. “I’m glad you’re back. I hope you enjoyed your vacation.”

  “Very much,” she said.

  “Good. We’re ready to put you to work. Can you come in today?”

  Twenty minutes later, she took the elevator up to the third floor. He was standing in the passageway talking to a couple of staff people when the doors opened. He looked toward her, finished the conversation, and came over. “Welcome back, Priscilla. You ready to start?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Excellent. Let’s go this way.” He showed her a small office just around the curve of the corridor. “It’s yours,” he said.

  “It looks nice.”

  “Your formal title will be support assistant. You’ll have a variety of responsibilities.” He invited her to sit down behind the desk. She did, and he leaned over and pressed the comm pad. “Janna,” he said, “would you bring us some coffee, please?” Then he settled into one of the two chairs. “Your most critical job is to be our backup pilot. Which means, if there’s an emergency, and there’s nobody available to send out, you’ll get the assignment. Are you okay with that?”

  “I can live with it,” she said.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Why backup? Why borrow somebody else’s pilot and ship if we’re having a problem?”

  “Priscilla, I understand how you feel. But we have an established method for dealing with emergencies. The method is that we use whatever vehicle might be available. The deep-space corporations have an obligation to assist. And they do. When something happens, we want to get someone to the site as quickly as possible. Usually, that means somebody who’s already within a reasonable range. We could keep an emergency vehicle here at the Wheel, and years might go by before it would get used. So we can either use the corporate vehicles that are scattered around, or we can construct a fleet and spend a hell of a lot of money maintaining them in strategic locations.”

  “Okay,” said Priscilla.

  “Good. I’m glad we have that settled.”

  “What will I be doing when I’m not functioning as a backup pilot?”

  “You’ll be doing administrative work.”

  That sounded exciting. “All right.”

  “You’ll be keeping track of every underway mission to ensure that our support facilities know well in advance what’s going on. There’ll be some interesting stuff crossing your desk, so don’t think of it as just an office job. For example, you’ll have access to the reports from the Quraqua dig sites, and there’ll be information coming in from Pinnacle. You know what that is?”

  “Yes,” she said. Pinnacle had been home to a high-tech civilization three-quarters of a million years ago. “Have we figured out yet what happened to them?”

  “No. It’s going to take a while. Anyway, we’ll also be getting reports on the Noks. On Orfano. On Barton’s World. Wherever we have a presence. Your job will be to scan them to make sure they get correct distribution. It’s all in the manual. Anything that looks interesting, especially if there’s an indication something has gone wrong, make sure you get it to me.”

  “Okay, Frank.” Orfano, she knew, was a world adrift. Torn from its sun millions of years ago.

  “You’ll be responsible for tracking the maintenance work on the Baumbachner. Rob Clayborn will handle the actual maintenance, making sure it gets done and whatnot. Rob’s our pilot. He’s the guy you’re backing up. But he doesn’t go out on any long-range missions. He’s strictly local.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, technically, the job doesn’t exist. Don’t push it, okay. We don’t want to get involved in operations run by the corporates if we can help it.”

  “Okay, Frank.”

  “You’ll also be responsible for managing schedules and accommodations for VIP guests, for maintaining personnel records, for setting up tour groups through the station and making them happen, and for assorted other stuff.” He paused. Looked at her. “Think you can handle it?”

  “I can’t see where there’d be a problem,” she said.

  “Okay. And I know what you’re thinking: that it sounds like make-work. Basically, you’re on hand to help in an emergency. The office job has been created so you actually have stuff to do. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t serious about the work. Okay?”

  “What does Rob do?” she asked.

  “Well, the truth is he’s getting ready to retire. His health has been a problem, and I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t bail out within the next month or two. By the way, he hasn’t said anything like that, so I’d appreciate it if it doesn’t leave this room.

  “One other thing. There’ll be a staff meeting”—he glanced at the time—“at one. In the Altair room.”

  * * *

  NIKKI WAS HER office AI. Every day, as Priscilla came into work, Nikki greeted her with a sparkling “Good morning, Priscilla.” The AI was relentlessly cheerful. Priscilla thought of herself as being reasonably upbeat, but there were limits to what she could endure. When she got buried in routine administrative matters that stultified her brain, the last thing she needed was that happy gurgle from Nikki. She asked her finally to tune it back. But that seemed to be beyond Nikki’s capability, so Priscilla made the adjustment as best she could.

  Despite whatever desperation she might have known at becoming an office worker, she was still able to feel some satisfaction when, at night in her apartment, she could look up at the framed certificate, hanging on the wall over her working table, which stipulated that she was competent to direct the movement of an interstellar.

  Her mother was happy with the situation. “Well,” she said, “I think it’s a distinct improvement from running all over the place in those rockets. At least I don’t have to worry about your getting lost out there somewhere.” And then
: “We can still get you into law school in the spring if you like.”

  She’d been six days on the job when she got a call from Calvin. “I miss you,” he said.

  “How’s the show going, Cal?”

  “It’s okay. The audiences like it.”

  “You have any more coming up?”

  “Well,” he said, “the Players do, but I won’t be auditioning for the next one.”

  “Why not?”

  “It takes a lot of time. Anyhow, they’ve decided to do Hamlet.”

  “Hamlet? And you’re going to pass on a chance to perform in that?”

  “You want the truth, Priscilla?”

  “Sure.”

  “I don’t think we’re anywhere near good enough to pull it off. You need professionals for something like that.”

  “You guys are pretty good.”

  “Priscilla—”

  “Yes, Cal?”

  “Any chance you’ll be coming home again soon?”

  “Probably not right away. I’m trying to adjust to a new job.”

  “What kind of ship are they giving you?”

  “Actually, I’m not really going anywhere. I’m in an office. And in a couple of weeks, I start taking tour groups around.”

  “Oh. Sure. Well, listen, when you do come home, I’d love to take you out again. Okay?”

  * * *

  THE FOLLOWING DAY she was adjusting paychecks to fit the new standards being applied by the financial services division when she got a call from Irasco. “Priscilla,” he said, “can you come over for a minute?”

  The boss was relaxed behind his desk, bathed in sunlight. “Good morning,” he said. “Come on in.” She took a seat. Irasco was reading one of the news sheets. He asked if she had seen the latest statement by Andy McGruder. McGruder was revving up his presidential campaign. He was a former Minnesota governor running for the Gold Party nomination. His platform seemed to consist mostly of trying to scare the voters about the size of government. And especially the cost of maintaining what he saw as a nonproductive space program. “As if the country doesn’t have real problems—” He shook his head.