Just you wait a second.
At first it is white, vaporous, and odorless as it tapers up from underneath her seat, like the sort of dry-ice smoke produced for theatrical effects. But it rapidly darkens and thickens, rising in dirty gray billows that fill her mouth and nose, threatening to overcome her with its choking stench.
“Go on, Annie, what are you waiting for?” the man in the bed asks in his familiar gibing, goading tone. He props himself up on his pillow, thrusts his seared-to-the-bone finger at her through the smoke, and wags it in front of her face. “Reach for the lever and you’re up and out!”
“No!” Annie is even more forceful, more adamant than she had been a second earlier. “I won‘t, you hear me? I won’t!”
“Cut the crap and reach for it, ” he snarls. “Reach—”
“No!” she again shouts back defiantly, and then pushes herself off the seat against the resistance of her buckled harness straps and does reach out—though not for the eject lever. No, not for the lever, but for his hideously burned, reddened hand, taking it between both of her own with careful tenderness. “We’re in this together, and that’s never changed. Not for me.”
The smoke wells blackly around her now, congealing so Annie can no longer see the bed only inches in front of her, or the man lying under its sheets. But she can still feel him, can still feel his hand in hers. And then she realizes with a jolt of surprise—the first she’s experienced in this latest twist on what some small portion of her sleeping mind realizes has become a recurrent nightmare—that he isn’t pulling it away.
“It’s all on the tape, Annie, ” he says.
His voice now clearly that of her husband, but without the sneering, disdainful quality it has had in each previous version of this scene.
“Mark—”
“On the tape,” he repeats.
Kindly.
Gently.
Oh, so heartbreakingly gently from behind the shroud of smoke, reminding her of how he had been before the cancer, how she had come to love him, how much about him she had loved what seems such a very long time ago.
“You already know everything you need to know,” he says, all at once sounding as if he has moved further away from her.
Then Annie realizes that is exactly what is happening. She feels his hand slipping out from between her fingers—feels it slowly, inevitably slipping into the black. Try as she does, struggle as she does, she can’t seem to hold onto it.
Hold onto him.
“Mark, Mark—” She breaks off in a fit of coughing and gasping, her lungs crammed full of smoke. Wishing she could see him in the blinding smoke. Wishing, wishing she could just hold on. “Mark, I—”
Annie awoke with her arm outstretched and her fingers clutching at empty air. Awoke in her darkened bedroom, sweaty, trembling, and breathless, her heart tripping wildly in her chest. The trailing edge of her inarticulate cries—cries that, in her dream, had seemed to take the form of her husband’s name—were still on her lips.
The dream, she thought.
Once again, the dream.
Annie reached over to her nightstand for the glass of water she had brought in from the kitchen before climbing into bed, took a drink, another, a third. She swept the hair back off her forehead, released a long, sighing breath. Thank heaven she hadn’t startled the kids with the noise she must have been making.
She sat there for several minutes, pulling herself together, letting her heartbeat and respiration slow to a normal rate. Then she put down the now-half-drained glass of water and pressed the illuminator button of her Indiglo alarm clock.
3:00 A.M.
She had fallen asleep less than two hours ago after poring over the written transcript of the Orion-to-LCR communications, concentrating on the final transmissions from the flight deck. It was obviously what had precipitated the dream this time around, just as reading the newspaper story about Orion had originally brought it on. Which made, what now, four occurrences in less than a week?
“Shit,” she muttered aloud. “Better find a way to clear your head before hitting the sack or you’re going to burn out fast, Annie. Listen to some music, watch those Seinfeld reruns on TV, anything besides taking your work to bed with—”
Her eyes snapping wide open, her heart pounding again, she straightened with such an abrupt jerk that her headboard struck the wall behind her with a bang.
Mark’s words to her in the dream ... those last words.
She could recall them as if they had actually come from his mouth and not her own subconscious mind. As if he were repeating them from beside her in bed at that very instant.
It’s all on the tape, Annie. On the tape. You already know everything you need to know.
She switched on her reading lamp and grabbed up the bound pages of the transcript from where they lay on the nightstand, unaware that she’d barely missed knocking over her water glass in the process.
Everything you need to know.
“Oh, my God,” she said into the pin-drop silence of the room, slapping the transparent binder onto her lap and opening it with a jerky, almost violent flick of her hand. “Oh, my God.”
EIGHTEEN
FLORIDA APRIL 23, 2001
NO MATTER HOW HEAVY ANNIE’S WORKLOAD AT THE JSC, she’d routinely driven the kids to school every morning rather than hustle them off with their nursemaid, and she hadn’t wanted that to change while they were in Florida. When the phone rang she was helping them pack their book bags, impatient to get under way, having jumped out of bed, showered, and dressed almost immediately upon awakening from her dream long hours before sunrise.
She motioned for them to keep packing and snatched up the receiver.
“Hi,” she said. “This is Annie.”
“Good morning,” a man’s voice said at the other end of the line. “My name’s Pete Nimec. I’m from—”
“UpLink International.” She glanced quickly at the wall clock. Seven-thirty. Some people had their nerve. “Mr. Gordian called yesterday to tell me you’d be coming to Florida, and I’m very appreciative of your assistance. Hadn’t expected to hear from you so soon, though.”
“Sorry, I know it’s very early,” he said. “But I was hoping we could get together for breakfast.”
“No can do,” she said. “You caught me as I was practically heading out the door, and I need to get to the Cape—”
“Let’s meet there,” he said. “I’ll bring the coffee and muffins.”
She shook her head.
“Mr. Nimec—”
“Pete.”
“Pete, I’ve got a million things on my plate this morning, one of which is tracking down one of our more quirky volunteer investigators, and I haven’t got time—”
“I can tag along with you. If you don’t mind. Be a good way to gain my bearings.”
Annie glanced out the terrace door and considered his proposition. Bright sequins of morning sunlight glittered on the blue Atlantic water, where a small recreational sailboat was tacking along parallel to the beach. Dorset had promised a view, and a view she’d gotten. She wished she were of a mind to enjoy it, to try spotting those dolphins and manatees that were supposedly frolicking around out there.
“I really don’t think that’s advisable,” she said. “You may not realize how hectic and crowded it gets in the Vehicle Assembly Building. There are dozens of people scrambling around. Sorting, examining, whatever. It can be pure chaos.”
“I’ll stay out of everybody’s way. Promise.”
Pushy guy, she thought. Just what I needed.
“Look, there’s no sense in dancing around this,” she said. “Some of the things I’ll be doing today are highly sensitive. I realize we’re both on the same team, and it isn’t that I’m trying to keep any secrets. But right now I’m following up on a hunch that involves some highly technical particulars—”
“All the more reason you can trust me to stay out of your hair, since I won’t have the faintest idea what I’m looking at,
” Nimec said.
“I’d still rather we try for later,” she said. “Maybe we can arrange to have lunch—”
“Mom, Chris keeps calling me monkey-face!” Linda shouted from the living room.
“That’s ‘cause she untied my shoelaces!” Chris rejoined.
Annie cupped a hand over the receiver.
“That’s enough, you two, I’m on the phone,” she said. “Your books packed?”
“Yeah!” In unison.
“Then go into the kitchen and wait for Regina to give you your snack money.”
“Chris called me monkey-face ag—”
“Enough!”
“Hello?” Nimec again. “You still there?”
Annie uncovered the mouthpiece.
“Sorry, I’m getting the kids ready for school,” she said.
“Understood, I’ve one of my own. A nine-year-old.”
“You have my sympathies,” she said.
“Lives with his mother.”
“She does then,” Annie said. “Where were we?”
“You were about to invite me to the Cape in exchange for me springing for lunch later on.”
She sighed in acquiescence. Roger Gordian had sent him, after all. And what harm could there be in letting him come?
“I’m not sure that’s quite my recollection, but okay, we can meet at the official reception area in an hour. With one stipulation.”
“Shoot,” he said.
“This is my show, and nothing’s to be disclosed to the press, or anyone else, until I explicitly give the okay. Acceptable?”
“Sounds fair to me.”
She looked at the clock again.
“Mommee!” Linda cried from the kitchen. “Chris said I stink like a monkey’s butt!”
“See you at eight sharp,” Annie said, and hung up the telephone.
The “quirky” volunteer Annie had mentioned to Nimec was a twenty-five-year-old research scientist named Jeremy Morgenfeld, whom she was able to reach on her cellular after depositing the kids at school—and just in the nick of time, Jeremy explained over the phone, since he’d been about to set out on his catamaran and had intended to remain incommunicado for the rest of the morning, his usual habit being to work no more than four hours a day, Monday through Thursday, beginning neither a moment sooner nor later than the stroke of noon. The living definition of a prodigy, Jeremy had graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology a month before his sixteenth birthday with a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering, and had later gained four master’s degrees in that and other related fields, as well as three doctorates in the physical and biological sciences. By the age of twenty-one he had started up the Spectrum Foundation, an independent think tank financed almost entirely by the sale of its own diverse technological patents, with a small percentage of additional grant money coming from MIT in exchange for participation in several joint projects, which included what he was presently describing to Nimec as magnetohydrodynamics—
“Plasma theory,” Annie said. “You’ll have to excuse Jerry. Every now and then he likes to remind people that was once the exclusive subject of a MERF study.”
“That an acronym for something?”
“The Mensa Education and Research Foundation,” she said. “They’re interested in measuring the upper levels of intelligence ... identifying the cultural, physiological, and environmental determinants of people with genius IQs.”
“Nature or nurture,” Nimec said. He was seated between them on the KSC tram, crossing from the reception area to the Vehicle Assembly Building. “The eternal debate.”
“Look, I’m not into making anybody feel dumb,” Jeremy said. Nimec guessed that was an attempt at being charitable. “But getting back to MHD, Annie’s definition is much too broad. It’s kind of like how every gerbil’s a mammal, but not every mammal’s a gerbil, you know? Plasma theory covers everything from the creation of the universe to these weird electrical surges in space I call Kirby crackle—after Jack Kirby, the comic book guy who outclassed all the megabucks special effects you’ve ever seen in sci-fi movies with only a pencil, an art board, and his imagination. Talk about genius.” Jeremy paused. “Anyway, MHD’s about the behavior of plasma in a magnetic field, which can lead to majorly immense practical applications. Power from atomic fusion, for example. It’s the cleanest way known to generate energy, assuming we can figure out how to build reactors that are big and powerful enough to do the job on a mass scale without turning them and everything around them to melted slag.”
“Better stop,” Nimec said. “You’re scaring me.”
“Why’s that?”
“Can’t talk about it.” Nimec kept a straight face. “Childhood trauma.”
Jeremy raised his eyebrows.
Pleased, Nimec sat back and regarded him with his old cop’s eye for noting standout physical characteristics : straight brown hair worn in a step cut, gold wire-framed glasses, smallish chin, teardrop-shaped whisker under his lower lip. Wearing a Boston Red Sox baseball cap backward on his head, a Red Sox T-shirt to match, baggy khaki shorts, and Nike sneakers sans socks.
Nimec gestured to the insignia on his shirt.
“Take it you’re a Red Sox fan,” he said, seeking a bit of common ground.
Jeremy nodded. “I have a place on Sanibel Island about an hour’s drive from where the Sox do their spring training, and fly down to watch them get primed every year.”
Nimec gave him a curious look. “Sanibel’s a couple hundred miles south and west of us, isn’t it?” he asked. “You told me that you were going out on your cat’ when Annie contacted you this morning ... how’d you make it here so fast?”
“Easy,” Jeremy said. “Got a place in Orlando too. I’ve been staying there since Annie asked me to help with the investigation.” He leaned forward and gave her a wink. “My girl beckons, I come running.”
Annie smiled a little. “Jeremy and I met about three years ago when he arrived for payload specialist training in Houston.”
Nimec tried not to sound surprised. “You,” he said, “were an astronaut?”
Jeremy adjusted his glasses. He seemed suddenly uncomfortable.
“Not exactly,” Annie interjected, moving in for an obvious save. “Non-NASA payload specialists fall into a unique category and are chosen by a sponsoring organization—usually a concern that’s arranged to perform a set of low-gravity experiments or launch some orbital hardware aboard a flight. These would include chemical and pharmaceutical companies, educational institutions, military contractors, and communications outfits like your own.”
“And the Spectrum Foundation?” Nimec said.
Annie nodded.
“At the time Jeremy was doing a study on crystal formation.”
“Crystallization patterns under varying environmental, thermodynamic, and thermochemical conditions,” Jeremy said. “Here’s an example: Everybody’s heard the old saw that no two snowflakes are alike, but that’s one of those sucky oversimplifications that always gets corrupted into a popular fallacy. Way back in the nineteen-thirties Ukichira Nakaya, a brilliant professor from Hokkaido, charted all the basic forms of snow crystals, and the temperature and moisture conditions that cause them to occur. His work laid some of the groundwork for research by another high-wattage Japanese scientist named Shotaro Tobisawa, who studied and described the crystallization of various chemical substances under controlled-implosion conditions.” He ran a fingertip down over his small tuft of beard. “Another example: Drop a nuke of a specific megatonnage somewhere, you get a predictable, unvarying type of mineral and atmospheric crystal formation in equally specific zones radiating from the blast epicenter. We’ve known that since Los Alamos. But the kinds of research I’ve been talking about are just the first steps toward understanding these phenomena. It’s one thing to know what set of conditions will result in a certain kind of crystal geometry, and another to figure out why they do. That fascinates me, because it leads into a whole area of physical law
that’s virtually uninvestigated. Nobody thinks much about it now, but in the future when we get to areas of deep space exploration like terraforming or genetic adaption to other planetary environments, that sort of knowledge can be applied toward—”
“Jer,” Annie said. “We’re moving off-point.”
He frowned, shrugged.
“They said I wasn’t a team player,” he said.
Nimec looked at him. “Who’s they?”
“The director of the National Space Transportation System, plus his two deputies, plus the associate administrator of the Office of Space Flight. An amorphous group of gods known to us mortals as the Lords of the Great Kibosh,” Jeremy said. “The only NASA exec who spoke up for me was Annie, but even she couldn’t duck their lightning bolts.”
“Didn’t you say payload specialists fall outside government management?”
“Subject to final approval by the agency,” Annie said. “Jeremy being somewhat unorthodox in his ways, certain people at the top came to feel he might develop personality differences with his crewmates, and that those differences could blow up out of proportion in the extended confinement of a shuttle mission.”
“They thought I was a total pain in the ass, is what Annie’s trying to tell you without offending me,” Jeremy said. “You know that payload specialists don’t even have to be American citizens? But somehow I can’t go up for a miserable ten days without driving everyone else aboard to either leap into the void or dump me out of the cabin without a spacesuit. At least according to NASA.”
Annie smiled fondly and reached over to pat his arm.
“Jeremy could have handled it, and the crew could’ve handled him,” she said. “The upside to the whole affair is that he and I got acquainted, and have stayed friends ever since.”
“I’m here for you, babe,” Jeremy said, pitching his voice down to an exaggerated macho tenor.
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