Coyote

by Allen Steele

  Reflected in the window behind the bell he can see the URS lieutenant who escorted him to the pavilion. The park ranger who met them there is young and nervous; his hand was sweaty when Lee clasped it, and he stuttered as he commenced a long-winded recital of the bell’s history until Lee politely asked to be left alone. Now they wait patiently behind him, respectfully giving him a few moments alone.

  Through the pavilion window, on the opposite side of the grassy mall, lies Independence Hall. The reception was already under way, yet Lee’s in no hurry to join it, even though the party is being held in honor of him and his crew. It’s a distinct privilege to be allowed to view the Liberty Bell; one of the first acts the government took after the Revolution was to close the site to the public. Citing the risk of a terrorist attack, the Internal Security Agency claimed that the bell was too valuable to be left unguarded during a national emergency, yet it’s been nearly twelve years since the Revolution, and still the Liberty Bell is off-limits to everyone save the Party elite. Lee can’t help but wonder if the government fears what the average citizen might think if he saw for himself the artifact from which the Liberty Party had taken its name and read the words inscribed upon it.

  There’s still time to call it off. A few words whispered to the right people, a couple of discreet phone calls using innocuous code phrases, and the conspiracy would not so much unravel as it would simply cease to exist. Everyone involved would stop what they were doing and assume fallback positions, and with any luck the Prefects would never know that a conspiracy had existed.

  Tonight’s his last chance to back out. After this, there’s no turning back, no acceptable alternative except success; failure means treason, and treason means death. Which is why he’s come here, to this particular place; not as a symbolic display of patriotism, as everyone assumes, but simply to give himself a few minutes to think.

  So is he going through with this or not?

  Lee still hasn’t answered his own question as he turns away from the bell. The lieutenant snaps to attention; the ranger self-consciously does the same even though it isn’t necessary.

  “All right, Lieutenant,” he says quietly, “I’m done here. Let’s go to the party.”

  As appropriate for the Fourth of July, the President’s Reception is being held in the cobblestone square behind Independence Hall. Once the guests make their way through the security checkpoints, they find that an enormous screen has been unfurled across the rear of the redbrick colonial courthouse, upon which real-time images of the Alabama are being projected. Lee ignores the screen as he saunters through the crowd, untasted glass of champagne in his gloved left hand, his right hand held formally behind his back. In the humid warmth of the July evening, his white dress uniform clings to his skin. He deliberately arrived after his senior officers; attending this fete is the last thing he wants to do, yet his appearance is mandatory. Besides, there’s one last bit of important business that needs to be settled.

  So Captain Lee mingles with the gentlemen in their batswing ties and frock coats and the ladies in their bodices and gowns, smiling and bowing, pausing now and then to shake some stranger’s hand or be photographed with another, yet taking care to remain in motion so as not to be cornered for very long. Along the edge of the crowd, he can see the uniforms of URS soldiers: black berets, jodhpurs tucked into leather knee boots, polished rifles held at parade rest. The red softball-size spheres of surveillance floaters hover above the partygoers, watching, listening, scanning. Security is tight; the President is supposed to be flying up from Atlanta for the occasion, although Lee has little doubt that he will be unavoidably detained. Philadelphia is a little too close to the New England border for the President of the United Republic of America to consider himself entirely safe. Indeed, very few people ever see him outside the capital, although the news media regularly show footage of him attending events in places as far distant as southern California.

  Spotting another pair of white Service uniforms beneath the boughs of a walnut tree, Lee makes his way through the crowd and finds Tom Shapiro, the Alabama’s first officer, huddled with his executive officer, Jud Tinsley. He can’t make out what they’re saying until he’s nearly beside them. Tinsley sees him coming and briefly touches Shapiro’s elbow as he straightens his shoulders.

  “Evening, Captain,” Shapiro says.

  “Gentlemen…”

  “Enjoying the party, sir?” Tinsley raises his bare hand to stifle a burp. “Pretty nice send-off they’re giving us.”

  “It’ll do.” Lee knows the XO is drunk even before he notices the empty champagne glass on the low wall beneath the tree. “Just make sure you don’t enjoy yourselves too much. Jud, button your tunic and put on your gloves. We’re in public.”

  “Sorry, sir.” Tinsley’s face reddens; he digs into his trouser pockets for his gloves. “It’s kinda warm tonight.”

  “Enjoy it. You’ll be cold soon enough.” Lee steps forward to fasten the top brass button of the younger man’s uniform. Shapiro, at least, is properly dressed and reasonably sober. “You’re not talking about anything you shouldn’t, are you?” he murmurs when he’s close enough that only the two of them can hear him.

  Tinsley starts to mutter a halfhearted denial. “Just a couple of details,” Shapiro says quietly. He glances up at the low tree limbs above them. “We figured the floaters couldn’t sneak up on us over here.”

  Good thinking, but not good enough. “Not the time or place,” Lee says. “Save it for…”

  He catches himself. The next meeting, he was about to say, yet there aren’t going to be any more meetings, are there? After the reception they’ll driven straight to the airport, where they’re scheduled to board a jet to Gingrich Space Center. By 0600 tomorrow morning they’ll be in quarantine along with the rest of the crew, and there will be no opportunity for any of them to have a conversation without risk of being monitored. If they wait until they reach the Alabama, by then it may be too late to make any changes. Perhaps Tom has the right idea after all.

  “Has something come up?” Lee casually gazes up at the walnut tree, just to make certain a floater isn’t hiding among the leaves. “Anything I should know about?”

  Neither of his senior officers says anything, although they give each other a silent look. “Nothing we haven’t already gone over, sir,” Shapiro says at last. “It’s just…I mean, the ignition lock-out…”

  “Don’t worry,” Lee says. “We’re taking care of…” Tinsley coughs into his fist, his right foot innocuously prodding Lee’s shoe. The captain glances his way, sees the XO gazing past his shoulder. A swish of a crinoline skirt from close behind, then a soft hand touches his arm.

  “If I didn’t know better, Robert,” Elise says, “I’d swear you were avoiding me.”

  She’s half-right; if Lee had known she would be here, he would have avoided her. Yet as soon as he hears her voice, he realizes this particular encounter is inevitable: it’s only natural that she would attend this reception, and not only because they were once married.

  Yet, as the captain turns toward Elise Rochelle Lee, he feels no regret over having left her. Their marriage lasted for more than seventeen years, and yet she remains as icily beautiful as when they first met at an Academy mixer; it’s only in the last eighteen months that he’s come to realize that he barely knows her. The fact that she’s kept his name long after their legal separation is yet another indication that she married him for reasons that had more to do with social stature than love; for all intents and purposes, she’s still the wife of Captain R.E. Lee, commanding officer of the URSS Alabama.

  “I wasn’t. I simply didn’t see you among all these people.” Lee takes her silk-gloved hand, gives her a quick buss on the cheek. “You look splendid…is that a new dress?”

  “Flatterer.” Elise folds her hand around his elbow as her gaze shifts to Shapiro and Tinsley. “Pardon me, gentlemen, but may I borrow your captain? There’s someone who wants to meet him.”

  �
�By all means.” Shapiro assays a formal bow as he steps back. Tinsley does the same, and Lee can’t help but notice that his eyes never leave Elise’s cleavage. Those breasts once attracted him, too; it took him a long time to discover that the heart beneath them is cold. “Captain, madame…”

  “Your father?” Lee murmurs, as Elise escorts him away. “I figured he would send you to find me.”

  “Perhaps.” Her smile becomes enigmatic as they stroll through the crowd. “Why, is it such a burden for you to see him one last time? After all, he had quite a bit to do with your selection.”

  A soft purr from somewhere just above his head. A floater has picked them up; now it’s following them as they move through the reception. Even if he was inclined to give a candid answer—thank you, but I’ve accomplished this on my own—now isn’t the time. “For which I’m grateful,” Lee says. “And no, it isn’t a burden.”

  “Good. I rather hoped not.” Her hand slides down to take his own. “Besides, he has a treat for you.”

  They find Joseph R. Rochelle, the senator from Virginia, standing in front of the screen, surrounded as always by aides, Liberty Party apparatchik, local political cronies, and sycophants of one sort or another. A short, avuncular man for whom somatotropin therapy has erased nearly twenty years from his real age, he now looks only slightly older than his former son-in-law. His back is turned as they approach; he must have just finished another one of his anecdotes, for everyone laughs out loud. Senator Rochelle rarely lacks for an audience, in or out of Atlanta.

  “Oh, very good! You’ve found him!” Senator Rochelle beams as his daughter leads Captain Lee into the midst of the circle, then he half turns to make an expansive gesture at the screen looming above them. “I was just saying that someone…I won’t say who, of course…in Atlanta had insisted upon christening your ship the Virginia.” A broad wink that everyone understands. “But of course, that particular someone didn’t have quite as much clout as the gentleman from another state.”

  More laughter from the senator’s entourage, and Lee forces himself to smile appreciatively. While the Alabama was still under construction, there had been considerable infighting within Congress over which state the vessel would be named after. In the end, the President settled the dispute by christening it in honor of the state whose NASA center had been most responsible for its research and development. An ironic choice since NASA itself no longer exists; it’s now yet another civilian agency dismantled under the National Reform Program, its primary functions folded into the Federal Space Agency, an arm of the United Republic Service.

  But Lee doesn’t say anything, nor does he need to; it’s only necessary for him to smile and bow as the senator introduces him to a dozen or so men and women whose names he forgets as soon as he shakes their hands, while Elise stands between them, playing the role of the loyal daughter and loving wife. When all was said and done, this is about appearances; once again, Lee realizes that he hadn’t chosen his wife so much as she had chosen him, and then only with her father’s pragmatic approval. The senator needed a son-in-law from the Academy of the Republic, an up-and-coming URS officer whose career he could advance from a discreet distance in order to further his own political ambitions. Tonight’s the big payoff for everyone.

  As the senator begins telling another one of his stories, Lee’s attention drifts to the screen towering above them. The Alabama hangs suspended in low orbit above Earth, the spotlights of its skeletal dry dock reflecting dully off the ship’s light grey fuselage. A tug gently maneuvers a cylindrical barge into position below the ship’s spherical main fuel tank, in preparation for onloading another ten thousand tons of deuterium and helium-3 strip-mined from the mountains of the Moon. Fueling operations will continue nonstop right up until ten hours before the beginning of Alabama’s scheduled launch at 2400 tomorrow night.

  Once again, Lee finds himself wondering if he should call it off. Everything depends upon the timetable being kept. Nothing can be allowed to go wrong between now and then…and yet there are a hundred different ways it could all fall apart.

  “Why the long face, Captain?” One of the nameless men to whom he had just been introduced nudges his left shoulder. “Concerned about the mission?”

  “No, not at all.” Out of the corner of his eye, Lee catches Elise studying him. “Just observing the fuel-up, that’s all.”

  “Robert doesn’t worry. He’s the coolest officer the Academy has ever produced.” Senator Rochelle favors his former son-in-law with something that might resemble fondness unless one happened to look closely at his eyes. “He just wants to get out of here and see to his ship. Isn’t that right, Bob?”

  “Anything you say, Duke.” Lee addresses the senator by his nickname, and this elicits more laughter from the cronies. No one ever says no to the senator from Virginia; by much the same token, Duke knows that Lee doesn’t like to be called Bob. Tit for tat.

  Rochelle chuckles as he pats Lee on the shoulder, then he takes him by the arm. “If you’ll excuse us,” he says to the others, “I’d like to have a few words with the captain.” They nod and murmur as Rochelle leads Lee away, Elise falling in behind them. “This will take just a moment,” Rochelle says softly once they’re out of earshot. “There’s someone here who wants to meet you.”

  Believing the senator wants to introduce him to yet another politician, Lee suppresses a sigh as he lets Rochelle walk him past the edge of the crowd. Yet Duke surprises him; instead, he takes him behind the screen, toward the back entrance of Independence Hall. A pair of soldiers stand guard near the door, their rifles at ready; behind them is a Prefect, wearing the calf-length dark grey overcoat and braided cap that is the uniform of ISA officers. The soldiers step aside when they see the senator, but the Prefect doesn’t budge. He silently waits as Rochelle produces his I.D. folder; Elise reluctantly does the same, giving the intelligence officer a haughty glare as she holds her card out for him to inspect. Only Lee is spared; apparently the Prefect recognizes him, for he shakes his head as Lee reaches into his pocket. Satisfied, the officer turns and opens the narrow wooden door leading into the building.

  The hallway is silent, vacant save for another soldier inside the entrance. Their footsteps echo faintly off the old plaster walls as Rochelle beckons Lee and his daughter toward double doors to the right; he gives them a quick look-over as if to check their appearance, then he quietly taps on the door. A moment passes; the door clicks as it’s unlocked from within, then it’s opened by yet another soldier standing just inside.

  Lee immediately recognizes the place from history texts he’s studied since childhood: the Assembly Room, where the Declaration of Independence was signed and the First Constitution debated and framed. Small wooden desks, each with its inkpot and quill pen, arranged in semicircular rows around a low platform on which a long table had been placed in front of three high-backed chairs. And here, in the middle of the oak-paneled room with his back turned toward them, stands Hamilton Conroy, the President of the United Republic of America.

  Senator Rochelle stops at the wooden railing at the back of the room. “Mr. President,” he says formally, “may I present to you Captain Robert E. Lee, commander of the United Republic Service Spaceship Alabama.”

  Hearing the senator, President Conroy turns away from the gaunt middle-aged man with whom he had been conversing. Rotund and short of stature, with narrow brown eyes set in a broad face, the President is smaller than he seems on government netv; now he seems diminished by the room itself. A pretender to history, Lee reflects. A charlatan aspiring to greatness.

  “Indeed.” The President smiles briefly as he walks toward the railing, his hands clasped together behind his frock coat. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, Captain. Your father-in-law has told me great things about you.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President.” Lee doesn’t relax from the rigid stance he automatically assumed the moment he saw the commander in chief. “I hope I live up to your expectations.”


  The President laughs drily, without much humor. “At ease, Captain. You’re among friends here.” He glances at Senator Rochelle. “Duke, you should have let him know I would be here. This reception is in his honor, after all. No need for surprises.”

  “The ISA requested I keep your presence secret,” Rochelle says. “Security considerations.”

  “Yes, of course.” The President dismisses the senator with scarcely a nod, his attention solely focused upon Lee. “Sorry to take you away from the party, Captain. I only wished to meet you in person. I haven’t had a chance to do so before, and after tonight I’ll never have an opportunity to do so again.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. President.” Lee clasps his hands behind him. From the corner of his eye he sees Elise doing a slow burn. She’s probably been awaiting this moment for several weeks; now she’s being ignored, with no one bothering to introduce her to the President. “I apologize if I’ve taken you away from urgent business.”

  The smile fades from the President’s face. “Only matters of state.” He turns toward the man with whom he had been speaking. “I don’t know if you’ve ever met our Director of Internal Security before…Mr. Shaw, Captain Lee.”

  “Never before now, Mr. President.” Roland Shaw glides down the aisle to extend his hand. “However, I believe we have a meeting at the Cape tomorrow morning.”

  “Yes, sir, we do.” Lee clasps Shaw’s hand. “A last-minute detail before the shuttle launch. Security procedures…”

  “Of course.” The left corner of Shaw’s mouth tics upward. “We were just discussing a similar sort of thing.”