Cauldron

by Jack McDevitt

  “Of course. Give us a few days to look it over, and we’ll get back to you.”

  Silvestri had obviously been hoping for more. Those dark eyes clouded. He looked down at Paul. The decision-maker. “Be aware,” he said, “I could have gone elsewhere. Orion would love to have something like this. Tours to black holes. To places where stars are being born. They’d give a lot.”

  Rudy’s mouth tightened. “So why didn’t you take it to them?”

  Silvestri looked directly at Rudy. “I know how they’d use it,” he said. “I’d prefer you have it.”

  WHEN HE WAS gone, the room went quiet. Paul stared at the notepad he’d been using. Rudy’s eyes swiveled from Paul to Hutch to the door and back to Paul. Hutch shifted her weight, and her chair squealed. “What do you think, gentlemen?” she asked. “Any of that make sense to you?” She was, of course, really talking to Paul.

  Paul stared straight ahead, past her, past Rudy. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s too much to digest at one time.”

  “You must have a sense of it, though,” insisted Rudy. “Does he sound as if he knows what he’s talking about?”

  Paul was nodding and shaking his head no at the same time. “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe.” He picked up the chip, turned it over, examined it, put it in his pocket. “My gut reaction is that it can’t be done. Nobody seriously believes it’s possible to outrun the Hazeltine. And by the way, that could be the real reason he didn’t go to Orion or Kosmik. They aren’t going to spend money on a boondoggle.”

  “Then you think—what?”

  “Give me some time. We’ll keep an open mind. There’s nothing to lose, and Henry Barber thought the project was sufficiently worthwhile to spend his last years on it. And he must have trusted Silvestri. So I’ll take everything home and get back to you as soon as I can.”

  “Paul,” Hutch said, “when Barber was running his tests, the drive system kept blowing up. They lost, as I recall, three ships.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you think it might happen again?”

  “Might? Sure. Will it? I don’t know.”

  THE ACADEMY OF Science and Technology had not collapsed in the usual sense. The government hadn’t wanted to be accused of neglecting an organization with so many accomplishments. So, less than two years after Hutch left, they had reorganized the Academy, centralized it, according to the term then in vogue. It meant it had been subsumed into the federal structure, designated semiautonomous, and eventually taken over wholesale by the Department of Technological Development.

  Since leaving the Academy, Hutch had lived a quiet life. She’d stayed home and reared her two kids, mostly. She’d also set up as a guest speaker, and had discovered there was no end of audiences who were willing to pay to hear her talk about her Academy years. She drew lessons for them in leadership and management, explaining why it was important to encourage subordinates to speak freely, why decision-makers should sit down with people who disagreed with them. She talked about what happens when managers intimidate people. She gave examples, sometimes naming names, of life-and-death decisions that had gone wrong even though information to make a rational call had been readily available. “If things blow up,” she was fond of saying, “and if the boss survives, he’ll inevitably claim that some underling dropped the ball. Didn’t tell me. Harry should have spoken up. Said something. But the truth is that when your people don’t tell you what you need to know, it’s a failure of leadership.”

  She had seen much of it in her lifetime, at the Academy, in government, and in the private industries with which she’d had to deal during her years as director of operations. There was a tendency everywhere to believe that if you could perform a job, you could supervise others performing that same job. It was a view that led to mismanagement, inefficiency, failure, and sometimes carnage.

  Life at home was quiet. Tor was gone, the victim of undiagnosed heart disease. Maureen and Charlie were both away at school. Maureen would graduate next year with a degree in history. She planned to teach, and had shown no interest in following the career arcs of either of her parents. Charlie, on the other hand, seemed to have his father’s artistic aptitude. Very few people, however, made a living moving paint around on a canvas. But however that turned out, it seemed clear there’d be no more star-pilots in the family.

  Hutch never said anything, never pressed her kids about it. Careers were their call, not hers. And, of course, star pilots barely existed anymore. Another ten years, and she suspected nobody would be leaving the solar system.

  Still, it hurt that her passion for the interstellar deeps had not passed down into the family.

  THE PROVIDED WISDOM was that when you had an AI, you never came home to an empty house. He (or she) was always there to greet you when you walked in the door. Even if he’d been instructed to say nothing, as some were, you still felt his presence. But, of course, it wasn’t the same. AI or not, her home still had echoes.

  She missed the kids. When they’d left for school, much of the family’s energy had gone with them. Now, as the flyer angled down out of the traffic stream and settled onto the pad, she looked at the house, dark despite the lights that came on to greet her, and it seemed abandoned.

  After the chindi business, she’d retired from piloting to marry Tor and had taken an administrative job with the Academy. That had lasted about a year. She’d been unable to cope with riding back and forth to work every day. (They’d lived in Alexandria then.) And she’d felt horribly bored preparing personnel reports and staff studies. Tor had encouraged her to quit, and finally she had.

  But it had been more than that. She’d wanted to go back to the interstellars. They’d talked it over, and Tor reluctantly had given his blessing. She could still recall his going up to Union that first day when she was heading out to Beta Pac with a team of assorted specialists who were going to try to discover whether anyone on that unhappy world remembered the days when they, too, had moved among the stars. (They found nobody. There were a few inscriptions, a few legends, that seemed to hark back to the Monument-Makers, but their descendants had no memory of who they had once been. And it struck Hutch as the ultimate irony that the race that had left monuments all over the Orion Arm because they wanted to be remembered by whatever other species might eventually show up had been forgotten by their own.)

  Tor had gone with her to Union, had helped carry her bags, had gone on board the Phyllis Preston with her. It was then brand-new. Eventually, after years of service, it would be transferred to the Prometheus Foundation. At the time, she’d almost been in tears when she took her seat on the bridge, said hello to the AI, and began running down her preflight check-off list. It had been one of the most emotional moments in her life. There was a time she’d thought that a sad commentary, but that was years ago. She was wiser now. She loved the superluminals and the vast deeps between the stars and she was simply never going to get past that.

  Tor had stayed while her passengers, one by one, filed in. They’d introduced one another, and he’d lingered until it was time to start. She still remembered him as he went out through the hatch, and moments later appeared at one of the station viewports. He’d waved, and she’d waved back, and the Preston had come to life. The countdown had hit zero, and she eased the yoke forward. She’d taken it out herself, rather than let the AI do it. She’d waited too long not to milk the situation for every ounce of pleasure. But she’d watched Tor, with his right hand raised, sliding past the viewport until he was gone. Outside the launch bay, she’d accelerated, poured the juice to the main engines, but she kept seeing Tor drifting away. Less than a year later she’d been back full-time at the Academy.

  She had no regrets.

  Not really. Had she stayed in space, her marriage could not have survived. She’d have missed all those years with her husband. Maureen and Charlie would not exist. And she’d have gone down with the Academy, as so many others had.

  Tor, of course, was gone now. Yet something else was missi
ng in her life.

  She’d have liked to take the Preston out again.

  When she was a teen, her father had schooled her on the importance of setting priorities. “I could have had a decent career cataloging star clouds and speculating on the properties of black holes,” he’d once told her. It would have brought prestige, recognition, better money.

  Instead, he’d spent his time at the Drake Center listening for that first intelligent murmur from the stars. While his colleagues learned not to take him seriously. Even after it had actually happened, after the historic signal had come in and the first link with an advanced civilization had been established, he was written off as a kind of bystander to an event that was a matter of pure luck.

  Anyone could have done it. All that was necessary was a little persistence.

  He’d told her that everything else paled beside first contact. In the end, who would really care what the temperature range was inside the Korialus Cloud?

  Like Tor, he’d been taken from her too soon. Her dad had died young of a heart ailment no one knew he had. Disquieting similarity there, too. But he’d lived long enough to know his life had mattered. As had her husband.

  It occurred to her that, if the Locarno Drive actually worked, if it gave them a decent range, they could send somebody out to Sigma 2711. Maybe find out who had sent that long-ago signal. To her dad.

  ARCHIVE

  THE DOWNSIDE OF INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL

  A general sense of well-being set in around the world when we were able to destroy that oncoming omega cloud a few years back. In the wake of that happy event, though, we’ve had time to consider the level of technology that produced the object, and the malice, or indifference, of its makers. It’s hard to say which is worse. Which more threatening. But never mind what the intent might be. We know what the effect has been.

  Shortly afterward, we concluded, or most of us did, that the moonriders were really out there, and not simply computer malfunctions or delusions. And they, too, seemed to have a hostile streak.

  The world beyond the solar system is largely unknown country. A dangerous place. The discovery of a billion-year-old starship in the Jenkins incident should warn us that there are presences, beyond the solar system, that are enormously far ahead of us. And, as much as we would like to believe that the passage of time necessarily tempers the natural hostilities we bring with us out of the jungle, or out of whatever passes for a jungle in remote places, it does not appear to be the case. If our recent encounter with the moonriders proves anything, it is that they are no friends of ours. Are they a danger to us? We’d be prudent to assume so. However much those with a more liberal view would like to reassure us, we cannot rely on the goodwill of extraterrestrials.

  Earth has been a safe haven for thousands of years. It is a very small place in a very big galaxy. We now have every reason to suspect our security lies principally in the fact that we are effectively unknown. We should keep it that way. We should withdraw our starships, and keep our heads down. In a universe that may house hostile creatures with technologies millions of years beyond ours, it is the surest road to survival.

  —Martin Kobieleski, “The Long Night,”

  in Weapons of War, edited by Bryan DosCirros, 2255

  chapter 6

  FOR RUDY, THE Locarno Drive presented the moment of truth. The loss of the Jenkins had severely damaged the Foundation’s reputation. Despite the response to Hutch’s luncheon appearance, support had dropped off significantly.

  The first call had come from Lyle Cormier, the organization’s most generous single supporter. He was in his office, dressed in one of his trademark black-and-white ensembles. “Probably best to give it up, Rudy,” he’d said. “The world is moving on. There are historical forces at work here, and there’s just no point trying to fight them.” Cormier always talked that way. He hadn’t said outright that he would cut his support, but it was implicit.

  There’d been a flood of others. During the first few days, longtime contributors had gotten in touch, had called or come by, and the message had always been the same: Rudy, you know I’ve always been a hundred percent behind you and the Foundation. But times are changing. No point beating a dead horse. It’s just money down a rathole. No matter what we do, does anyone expect we’re really going back out to the stars? When was the last time a new superluminal rolled off the production line?

  That was another expression he heard all the time. Going back to the stars. As if we’d ever really been out there. The deepest penetration had been the Trifid, three thousand light-years away. An eleven-month flight. They had never really gotten clear of the immediate neighborhood.

  Environmental problems had proved to be every bit as intractable as originally predicted. The solutions were expensive. No real value was forthcoming from the interstellar effort. So it was inevitable that it would come to be perceived as a boondoggle. Boondoggle became the title of the book by Gregory MacAllister that had so effectively summed up the arguments against the superluminals. It was a worthwhile effort, he’d said. Acquiring knowledge is always worthwhile. But we need to leave it to another generation. First we have to get the planetary house in order.

  MacAllister was right, to a point. But there was a good chance that, when this generation died off, people would forget how it had been done. Give it up now, Rudy thought, and we may be giving it up forever.

  They needed a jump start. And the Locarno might provide that. If it worked.

  After his conversation with Silvestri, he waited anxiously for Paul’s reaction. When he heard nothing over the course of a week, he initiated the call himself. “Working on it,” Paul said. “Best not to rush. These things take time.”

  RUDY HAD NO family. He’d been married three times, but his wives had all left, citing different reasons. He was inattentive. He was cold. He came on too strong. He was inexpressibly dull. That had been Eve, the last one. He had argued that he didn’t think dull was reasonable grounds for divorce, but this was an enlightened era in which one needed only cite a reason to the soon-to-be ex-spouse. The law required no more than intent by either party.

  “I’m sorry, Rudy,” she’d said. “You’re nice and everything, but all you ever want to talk about is the North Star. For God’s sake, you really need to get a life.”

  Rudy had a life. He loved what he did, and his days were lived on the knife-edge of passion. On more than one occasion Hutch had told him that he was a fanatic. But she’d meant it as a compliment. Why were there no available women around like her? (Technically, of course, she had been available since the death of her husband, but he sensed she did not see him as a prospect.) However all that might be, there was no evading the reality that the Foundation was down to the Phyllis Preston.

  One ship to explore the universe.

  And Jonathan Silvestri wanted to take her, tear out her Hazeltine drive and replace it with something from Switzerland that might, or might not, take them deeper into the Orion Arm. And if it didn’t work, he’d have to put the Hazeltine back, assuming there was a ship to put it back into. How much would all that cost?

  He was paging through the financial report. There was enough to buy one more ship. It wouldn’t be a new one, of course. There were no new ones anymore. Grosvenor, Hudson Bay, and the other onetime major manufacturers were turning out interplanetary ships, oceangoing vessels, farm tractors, and aircraft. And, in the case of Hudson Bay, entertainment centers and robot dishwashers.

  He scanned the listings for available vehicles. Kosmik was offering three from its onetime fleet. Orion had a couple up for sale. No guarantees on any of them. Caveat Emptor.

  The Foundation had taken good care of the Preston. The rational thing to do, if Paul approved the Locarno effort, would be to pick up one of these bargain-basement jobs and use that for the test. It would strain Foundation resources, but it was a better idea than risking the only ship they had.

  He called the operations center at the space station. A technician blinked on. �
��Union Ops,” he said in a bored voice.

  Rudy identified himself. Then: “We have some new equipment to check out. We may want to set up a test flight within the next few weeks. Control it from the station. How much of a problem would it be to do that?”

  “You mean no pilot?” asked the tech.

  What else could he mean? “That’s right.”

  “Sir, all you’d have to do is turn it over to the ship’s AI. Just tell it what you want done, and it’ll run the test for you.”

  AIs were not really independent intelligences. They were software packages that mimicked intelligent entities. At least, that was the common wisdom. But nobody could prove it was indeed the case. Rudy was obsessed with the notion that AIs were alive. Chip, in his office; Amanda, at home and in his flyer; and the assorted voices that made life easier in restaurants, hotels, wherever. Maybe they were sentient, and maybe they weren’t. Whatever the truth, they put on a good show. And Rudy was taking no chances. He intended to remove the AI from whatever ship was used, in case the drive blew up during the test.

  It was no coincidence that the ship was named for the celebrated twenty-first-century humanitarian. But he couldn’t give his real reason to the technician without getting laughed at. “The nature of the test requires the AI be disconnected,” he said.

  The technician shrugged. “There’ll be a charge. But we can do it that way if you really want to.”

  “How much advance notice would you need?”

  He made a sucking sound. “When are you going to do this?”

  “Not sure yet we will. If it happens, it’ll probably be within the next few months or so.”

  “Hold on.” He consulted another screen. Talked with someone Rudy couldn’t see. Nodded okay. “Depending on how busy we are, I’d say a few days would do it. A week, maybe, if you want to get a berth at a specific time.”

  HE SPENT THE next three days reassuring Prometheus subscribers that the end had not come, that the Foundation was not going under, that it was true this was a dark time, but that was all the more reason to rally round the flag. He actually said that. Yes, it was the oldest of clichés. But it worked. Some callers said okay, Rudy could count on them. Somebody even thanked God for people like Rudy, who didn’t give up as soon as things began to go south.