“If you do it, the high school will get a new science lab. Isn’t that worth an evening of your time?”
“Don’t even try it, Matthew. I won’t be hustled into this thing. If I participate, I become part of the project. It blows up again, and my reputation takes a beating.”
“You’re already part of the project, Priscilla. You were standing with the others in the control room on Union, weren’t you, when they lost the Happy Times?”
She smiled at him, but there was something menacing in that look. “There’s a difference between participating in a failed experiment and participating in the same failure a second time.”
“I’m sorry to have bothered you, Priscilla. I’ll try to get somebody else.”
“I’m waiting to be persuaded. Why should I do this?”
“Because,” he said, “it might work. Do you really need another reason?”
Somewhere, down the street, he heard kids laughing and shouting.
“When and where?” she asked.
ARCHIVE
This AKV Spartan model, from the William Jenkins, is awarded to the Thomas MacElroy High School by Armis Reclamation, in recognition of the accomplishments of staff and student body, and of their many contributions to the community. Presented this date, June 3, 2250. Fly High, Explorers.
—Engraved on the marker at the lander site, Thomas MacElroy High School, Alexandria, Virginia
chapter 12
ONE THING COULD be said about Priscilla Hutchins: She didn’t do anything halfway. She let Matt know that when she came for the fund-raiser, she’d be bringing guests. Eight of them. Could he arrange to seat them up front? They would be, she said, part of the show.
With no idea who was coming, or what she was planning, Matt and the Liberty Club accommodated her. So on the second Wednesday of June she arrived with a small contingent, consisting of six men and two women. Matt recognized two of them, the British actress and singer, Alyx Ballinger; and the gadfly editor, Gregory MacAllister.
Hutch shook his hand, introduced him to everyone—several of the names rang bells—and told him she was looking forward to the evening.
They had a choice of roast beef or chicken dumpling, with broccoli and mashed potatoes. It was a detail that, for whatever reason, he would always remember.
They had drawn a substantial crowd, bigger than they’d had in a long time. When the dinner was finished, the club president went to the lectern. There was some business to take care of, a treasurer’s report and announcements about one thing and another. Then she paused and looked down at Hutch’s table. “As you’re aware,” she said, “we made a late change in our guest speaker for the evening. We have with us tonight the former director of operations for the Academy of Science and Technology, a woman who has been about as far from home as it’s possible to go. Please welcome to the Liberty Club, Priscilla Hutchins.”
Hutchins rose to polite applause, exchanged a brief word and a hand clasp with the president, and took her place at the lectern. She nodded to someone in the audience, thanked the club for inviting her, and paused. “It’s a pleasure to be here tonight,” she said in a clear, casual voice. She had no notes. “Ladies and gentlemen, we all know the interstellar program has gone into eclipse. That hasn’t happened because of a conscious decision by anyone. It’s simply the result of a reallocation of resources. Which is to say, we don’t consider it important anymore. We know, however, that eventually we’ll be going back. The question before us now is whether we will do it, or whether we plan to leave it to our grandkids.”
She looked around the room. Her gaze touched Matt, lingered, and moved on. “Matt Darwin tells me you’re community leaders. Businesspeople, lawyers, planners, teachers, doctors. I see my old friend Ed Palmer over there.” Palmer was the Alexandria chief of police. Darwin was surprised she knew him. “And Jane Coppel.” Jane ran an electronics business in Arlington. She greeted a few other people. Then: “I know, as long as organizations like the Liberty Club exist, the future’s in good hands.”
That brought applause, and from that point she had them.
“You may have noticed I brought some friends. I’d like you to meet them. Kellie, would you stand, please?”
An African-American woman in a striking silver gown rose. “The lander from the Bill Jenkins is on display at the high school. The Jenkins is a famous ship. It led the rescue effort at Lookout when an omega cloud arrived and threatened to engulf the nascent civilization there. Kellie Collier”—she nodded toward the woman in the gown—“was its captain.”
It was as far as she got. The audience rose as one and applauded. She let them go, then collected another round of applause: “An entire civilization lives today because of her courage and ingenuity.”
During those years, everybody’d loved the Goompahs, pretechnological creatures who had gotten their name from their resemblance to popular children’s characters. Most speakers at this point would have asked the audience to hold their applause. But Hutchins was too canny for that. She wanted everybody revved up.
Eventually the noise subsided, and Kellie started to sit down, but Hutch asked her to stay on her feet. “Her partner at Lookout,” said Hutchins, “was Digby Dunn. Digger to his friends. It was Digger who discovered that Goompahs believed in devils, and that the devils looked a lot like us.” The place rocked with laughter, then, as Digger stood, broke into more cheering.
“The gentleman on Digger’s right is Jon Silvestri. Jon has been working on an interstellar drive that, we hope, will give us access to the entire galaxy.”
Silvestri was reluctant to stand. Digger pulled on him, and the crowd laughed and gave him an enthusiastic hand. They were on a roll and would have cheered anyone at that point.
“Eric Samuels,” said Hutchins. “Eric was a major part of the rescue at the Origins Project.” Eric stood, waved, smiled. He was moderately overweight, and he looked not at all heroic. More like somebody who’d want to stay out of harm’s way.
“The gentleman to Eric’s left is Gregory MacAllister. Mac was one of the people who got stranded on Maleiva III a week before it got sucked into a gas giant.” MacAllister, a global celebrity on his own, rose to a fresh wave of enthusiasm. “Mac was there because he’s never stopped being a good reporter. There were moments, though, when I suspect he wished he’d stayed on the Evening Star. I should point out by the way, that the Evening Star was stripped a few years back and set in orbit around Procyon. There is no Evening Star anymore. Nor any ship remotely like it.
“Across from Mac is Randall Nightingale, who was also with us on Maleiva III. I owe Randall a special debt. If it weren’t for him, I would not have survived the experience. Ask him about it, and I’m sure he’ll tell you anybody would have done what he did. All I’m going to say is that he knows how to hold on to his women.”
That brought some wisecracks, and Nightingale waved and grinned. “Somebody that gorgeous,” he said, “only an idiot would let go.”
“Alyx Ballinger,” continued Hutch, “came all the way from London to be with us tonight. She is one of the first people ever to set foot in an alien starship. She’ll be appearing in the fall in Virgin Territory, which, I understand, will have a run on Broadway before opening at home. Am I right, Alyx?”
Alyx flashed the smile that had won the hearts of two generations of guys. “That’s right, Hutch. Opening night is September 17.”
“Finally,” Hutch said, “the first guy to understand what the omega clouds were, and to engage with them: Frank Carson.”
All eight were on their feet now, and the audience was having a good time. People who’d been outside in the lobby and in an adjoining meeting room crowded in to see what was going on. Eventually the place quieted, and Hutch made her pitch for donations. When she’d finished, volunteers moved out among the diners and took pledges while she thanked them for their help, explained how the money was going to be used, and warned them it was a gamble. “But everything worthwhile involves a gamble,” she
said. “Careers are a gamble. Marriage is a gamble. Think about that first guy to try a parachute. If we wait for certainty, life would be terribly dull.”
She thanked the audience, invited them to stay for the party to follow, and turned it back to the president.
MATT HAD A hard time getting near her afterward. When finally he got to her side, he thanked her and told her she should have been a politician. “The way you orchestrated that thing in there,” he said, “you’d have gone to the Senate. Easily.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Matt, I didn’t say anything in there I didn’t mean.”
“I know that. That’s not what I was trying to say.”
“Good,” she said. “You probably need a drink.”
“Bringing your friends was a stroke of genius.”
“Thanks. It was Eric’s idea.” She glanced over at Samuels, who was waving his arms as he described the attack at the Origins Project. “He’s a PR guy. He worked for the Academy at the time. Now he helps politicians get elected.”
“Oh.”
She shrugged.
People had clustered around each of the guests, and he found him-self wandering from one group to another. Digger Dunn was entertaining Julie and a few others with a description of unearthing what had appeared to be a television broadcasting station on Quraqua. “We actually had the tapes, but we couldn’t lift anything off them.”
“How old were they?” asked the superintendent of the Arlington school district.
“Thirteen hundred terrestrial years. Give or take. When I think what might have been on them.” He laughed. “An alien sitcom, maybe. Or the late news.”
“Maybe a late-night comic,” said Julie.
“Listen.” Digger became suddenly serious. “We’d have loved to know whether their sense of humor matches ours. Whether they even had a sense of humor.”
“Is there any reason,” Matt asked, “to think they might not?”
“The Noks don’t have one,” he said. “Other than laughing at creatures in distress.” He grinned. “You’d love the Noks.”
“It probably explains,” said a communications technician, “why they’re always fighting with each other.”
Alyx Ballinger was talking about Glitter and Gold, which she’d produced. Somebody changed the subject by asking her how it had felt to go on board the chindi. “Spooky,” she said. “But good spooky. I loved every minute of it.”
Adrian Sax, the teenage son of a restaurant entrepreneur, asked what was the most alien thing she’d seen.
“The Retreat,” she replied.
“I’ve been there,” said Adrian. “It didn’t seem all that alien to me. Oversize rooms, maybe. The proportions are a little strange. But otherwise—”
She nodded. “Well, yes. You’re right. But it’s overlooking the Potomac now. It used to be on a crag on one of the moons circling the Twins. Two big gas giants orbiting each other. In close. You’ve seen them, right? Three systems of rings. A gazillion moons. You go out and sit in that living room there, and you’d feel differently.
“Remote doesn’t quite do it, you know what I mean? They were a hundred light-years from anywhere. People walk around talking about what it means to be alien, and they start describing the physical appearance of the Monument-Makers or how the Goompahs stayed in one part of their world and never spread out. You know what alien means to me? Living in a place like the Retreat and not going crazy.”
Somebody asked Randall Nightingale about the sea lights on Maleiva III. “According to what I read,” he said, “you guys were doing mathematical stuff with something out in the ocean that kept blinking back. Was it a boat?”
“I don’t think so,” Nightingale said. “It was night, but we still could see pretty well. Neither of us saw anything that looked like a boat.” He was referring to MacAllister, who’d been with him that evening.
“So what were you looking at? A squid that could count?”
Nightingale sighed. He was discouraged, not by the question, Matt thought, but by not having an answer. Matt wondered whether people asked him all the time about the lights in the sea.
“We’re not ever going to know,” he said. “Something more valuable than we’d been aware of was lost when Maleiva III went down.”
Matt talked with Frank Carson about that first encounter with the omega clouds. “Hutch figured out it was trying to destroy the lander,” Carson said. “That it didn’t have anything to do with us personally.”
“So what did you do?”
“We landed, got out of it, and ran for the woods.” His face shone as he thought about it. “She’s also the one who put things together about the omegas,” he said. “She’s always more or less given me credit for it, but she was the one who discovered the math patterns.” He hadn’t been young at the time, and a half century had passed. His hair was white now, and he’d gained a little weight, and added some lines around his eyes. But he seemed to grow younger as he thought about those earlier years. “It was a good time to be alive,” he said.
WHEN THE EVENING finally ended, and the guests had gone, and the first tallies came in, the Liberty Club was pleased to discover they’d exceeded their objective by a considerable amount. Matt was now in a position to trade a laboratory for the Jenkins lander.
“What’s wrong, Matt?” asked one of the volunteers. “We couldn’t have done much better.”
“Just tired,” he said. Just a real estate agent.
MACALLISTER’S DIARY
Hutch is as persuasive as ever. Pity she can’t see reason. The last thing we need is starships. The problems are along the coastlines and in the agricultural areas. Until we get the greenhouse situation under control, this other stuff is a waste of resources. I was embarrassed being there tonight. Still, there was no way I could say no when she asked me to come. And she knew that. Sometimes I think the woman has no morals.
—Wednesday, June 9
chapter 13
MATT BROUGHT IN technicians to inspect the MacElroy High School lander and get it ready for flight. They spent several days working on it, seated an AI and a new antigrav unit, replaced the attitude thrusters, installed a pair of what Jon called Locarno scramblers on the hull, and upgraded life support. When they’d finished, Myra arranged a brief Saturday ceremony. It rained, and they had to move the proceedings indoors. A lot of kids came anyhow. Some media arrived, and that was what Myra cared about. She took advantage of the occasion to comment formally on the proposed state sales tax, which she opposed. She hoped to ride that opposition to the senate. When she’d finished, she summoned Matt to the lectern and formally handed over the keycard. “Bring it back to us, Matt,” she said. And everyone laughed and applauded.
The vehicle was scheduled to be delivered to Vosco Labs to be fitted with the Locarno Drive unit. Vosco was in North Carolina, and would have provided a pilot, but Matt couldn’t resist delivering it himself. In preparation for the event, he’d renewed his license. He strode out under stormy skies with Jon Silvestri trailing behind. “Got to get my luggage,” Silvestri said, peeling off and heading for the parking lot. The attendees came out and gathered under a canopy.
Matt unlocked the vehicle and opened the hatch. He turned, waved to the spectators, and climbed inside. It was like coming home. He slid into the pilot’s seat, pushed it back a notch, and started the engine. He did it manually rather than instructing the AI to take care of it. He ran through the checklist. Fuel. Antigravs. Thrusters. Navigation. Everything seemed in order.
Silvestri came back, carrying a bag, and got in. Matt closed her up and locked down the harnesses. “All set?”
“You sure you can fly this thing, Matt?”
He answered by easing her off the ground. The people under the canopy waved, and he cut in the engine and swung around in a long arc toward the south. He didn’t have to do that. The lander could have turned on a dime. But he did it anyhow.
HE FELT FIFTEEN years younger as they soared over southern Virginia. “You okay?” Si
lvestri asked.
“Sure. Why?”
“You look funny.”
“Second childhood, Jon.”
THEY DELIVERED IT and returned home the next morning. Hutch asked how the test was to be conducted.
“Same as last time,” said Jon. “We’ll send it out and have it tell us when it gets there.”
“Okay,” Hutch said. “But if it works—”
“Yes?” said Jon.
“If it works, you’ll need a way to retrieve it. The school’s going to want it back, right? How are you going to handle that?”
“We’ll bring it back the same way it went out,” he said. “That’s why we have the Locarno.”
They were at Cleary’s, in the back, with Matt. A piano tinkled show tunes from the previous decade. “Can I make a suggestion?” she said.
“Sure.”
“When it comes back, it’ll be too far out to return to Union on its own. Unless you’re willing to wait a few years. Somebody will have to go get it.”
“There’ll be plenty of volunteers,” said Matt.
“I know. But I suggest you invite Rudy to do it. He’ll have the Preston available. And I think he’d like to be part of this.”
“Hutch, I thought he wanted to keep his distance from us.”
“Not really. He was just acting out of frustration. He doesn’t want to see the Foundation go under. It’s because he’s a believer, Matt.”
“Okay, I’ll ask him.”
“Good. He’ll be grateful for the opportunity.”
VOSCO, WORKING UNDER Silvestri’s direction, needed three weeks to complete the job. Silvestri looked irritated when he called Matt to say they were ready to go. “The techs are all retros,” he added. “They swear by the great god Hazeltine. They kept telling me I’d kill myself.”
Matt was in his office, after having spent a futile day showing medical buildings to people who, he now realized, had never been serious. “Maybe you can go back and say hello after we ride the lander to glory.”
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