Energized

by Edward M. Lerner

  Yakov took a pawn and began rolling it between fingers and thumb. “As you say, we both aspire to high energy prices. I fail to see what troubles you.”

  “People died, damn it!” Only a few caged animals in the Nature Conservancy’s wildlife research center were supposed to roast, and that had been difficult enough for Dillon to accept. True, he hoped humanity would develop the wisdom to let itself become extinct. That was a far cry from slaughtering a little girl. “Innocent people, Yakov.”

  “A few dead birds would not have served my purpose, so our people pointed the transmitter elsewhere. But be at peace. The man owned a yacht. How innocent could he be?”

  A not-so-veiled threat? Dillon owned a yacht, too, and Yakov knew it. “You and I are through. Your engineers no longer work for me, no longer will have access to … anything I see. That is what I came to tell you. You can forget we ever met.”

  “I think not.”

  “It isn’t for you to decide.” Trembling with rage, Dillon turned to leave.

  “You must see something before you go.” Yakov smiled dangerously. “I promise. It will be worth your while.”

  Setting down the pawn, Yakov pressed a thumb against the sensor pad on his desk. Emitting a red laser beam, the computer—no mere datasheet—scanned his face, seeming to linger on an eye. The computer announced something in Russian and the beam disappeared.

  “With certain information, one cannot be too careful.” Yakov typed a long string of commands. Finally, he turned the display so that Dillon could see.

  Video, but of what? The color balance was odd. Night vision? As the imagery jittered and bounced, Dillon needed a few seconds to parse a gigantic pillar rising from the sea and a man waiting on a spidery catwalk.

  The vessel with the camera glided to a stop, and the image stabilized. The camera zoomed into a tight close-up of a face. Dillon’s face. Sick to his stomach, he saw himself lower the gangplank and welcome three men dressed all in black onto the oil platform.

  “Shall I fast-forward to the cheery wave with which you send off our colleagues, their mission accomplished?”

  “You’re bluffing.” Dillon struggled to keep his voice steady. “You won’t show that to the police because then I would tell them everything.”

  “An accessory to murder? I imagine you would cooperate.” Yakov shrugged. “I am an accredited diplomat. Worst case, your government declares me persona non grata and sends me home. The only one interested in releasing this recording to the police is me.”

  Dillon stared. “But why would you…?”

  “Your task is complete, a timely reminder to the public of the dangers of microwave beams.” Yakov reclaimed the chessman. “This is you, Dillon: a mere pawn. At this moment, by your own choice, a sacrificial pawn.

  “Still, let us for a moment consider our options. You can go to prison, humiliate your wife, and destroy everything for which you have labored. Or you can trust me again and, pardon the terminology, be promoted to a queen. Stay with me and we will advance both our interests. You choose.”

  Knowing that he had no choice—and, too late, that Yakov could never be trusted—Dillon asked, “What do you have in mind?”

  Sunday, August 20

  Valerie collected the scraps and wrappings from a very pleasant picnic lunch, while Simon rammed around nearby—up, down, and all around the nearest trees. “Look at me!” he shouted about every ten seconds.

  “Wow!” Marcus answered every time.

  After lunch he had stretched out on the blanket, a slight smile on his face, his eyes closed. He looked as relaxed as Simon was manic. Or maybe, after three sandwiches, epic quantities of deli salads, and two brownies, the man was going into hibernation.

  “The amazing thing,” Valerie said, “is that the running and climbing won’t tire him out. I’m exhausted just from watching.”

  “Then don’t watch. As long as he keeps up yelling, you’ll know he’s fine.”

  “Spoken like an engineer.”

  “Guilty as charged,” Marcus said. “It’s very nice here. It’s as if we have the forest to ourselves.”

  Because they more or less did. “Green Bank does have its charms.”

  Sitting up, he gave her a quick hug. “It only needs the one.”

  The line was awkward, and she was awkward. To have someone in her life again—even though that usually meant texting and a nightly phone call—felt wonderful.

  And scared the hell out of her. She shivered.

  “I need to be up there,” Marcus said. “Engineering is a contact sport.”

  Whereas astronomers only watched. Likewise guilty as charged, but she was still offended. And relieved that he had misunderstood her reaction, not that his upcoming adventure was much easier for her to discuss. “You want to be up there.”

  “That, too.”

  “Space is dangerous,” she blurted out.

  “It isn’t just something I want to do, it’s something I have to do, and I don’t mean because Ellen asked. This is about the future. It’s for you, me, and Simon. It’s for the whole country.” He sighed. “And Keith must have said much the same before he went overseas. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” They both knew it wasn’t.

  What a pathetic mess she was! After almost four months, they were hardly—together. Every time things got hot and heavy, she had pulled back. “I’m not ready,” she had told him just last night. She guessed he was not quite ready, either. He had somehow seemed almost relieved.

  So maybe they were both pathetic messes.

  “Look at me!” Simon called.

  “Be careful, hon,” she answered without looking.

  “I’ll be fine,” Marcus tried again. “Space is a tourist destination.”

  “Of spoiled, indulgent zillionaires.” Oversexed zillionaires. Commercials for The Space Place were about as subtle as Viagra ads. Would zero-gee sex really be out of this world?

  “You make my point, Val. Allowing any harm to befall a zillionaire guest is terrible for business, even before the lawyers get involved.

  “Flying as a mission specialist, I’ll get twice the training any tourist gets.” Training for which he left tomorrow, a detail he neglected to mention. “And rather than being a tourist, gadding about playing space polo or whatever, I’ll be on Phoebe or at the powersat the whole time, surrounded by old hands from NASA and Kendricks Aerospace.”

  That made perfect sense, damn it. Everything about him going made sense—except how the very idea tied her insides into knots.

  No one was more committed than Marcus to the project’s success. He knew PS-1 inside and out. His boss trusted him. He was qualified to train for spacewalks in the neutral buoyancy tank. (Learning to scuba had been Lindsey’s idea—one more reason to resent the woman.) And even I, unwittingly, played my small part to make him a stronger candidate, as our bots explored Phoebe together.

  “Look at me!” Simon called.

  Something in Simon’s voice was different than the last many shouts, and she did look. He was at least fifteen feet off the ground and still climbing! Her heart leapt to her throat. “Come down! This minute!”

  He kept climbing.

  “Simon!”

  “We don’t want to scare him,” Marcus whispered. “Simon, you little monkey.”

  “Or to encourage him!” she hissed.

  “It’s okay,” Marcus whispered back. “Monkey want a banana? Peel it with your feet?”

  Simon stopped to look down at Marcus. “You can do that?”

  “Well, I can. At least I used to be able to. Silly monkey, you won’t find any bananas up there. The bananas are all in the picnic basket.”

  Simon considered. Making eep-eep noises, he started to climb down.

  Whistling nonchalantly but moving fast, Marcus headed for Simon’s tree—

  And with an oof, caught Simon as he slipped and fell.

  “I want a banana,” Simon said, wriggling.

  Valerie dashed over and took Simon,
squeezing the boy so tightly that he squealed. “We’re out of bananas, hon. We’ll buy some on the ride home.” Over Simon’s head, she mouthed to Marcus, “Thank you.”

  “No problem,” he mouthed back.

  To see Marcus as a possible companion, maybe she had had first to see him as a possible dad. For whatever the reason, a lot of her doubt had just evaporated.

  While her fears for him had redoubled.

  Tuesday, September 5

  Valerie had had it wrong. Space training was not dangerous. Some of the people in the zero-gee trainer just wished that they could die.

  Not Marcus. Not, anyway, today. So far.

  On his first flight, the training plane porpoising across the Gulf of Mexico, he had blown chunks. He had made lots of rookie mistakes. Skipping breakfast. Launching into aerobatics at his first opportunity, without acclimating first to the sensation of freefall. Turning his head during one of the high-gee pullouts. Thinking about how this worked: the plane tearing from steep, full-throated climbs, its turbofans belching black smoke, into great parabolic arc-overs, into steep dives, into screaming pullouts. Climbing and dropping ten thousand feet—over and over and over. And maybe the worst slipup of all, psyching himself out.

  Every zero-gee training plane since the dawn of the space age had carried the nickname Vomit Comet. Knowing that hadn’t help.

  Feeling great, Marcus soared across the padded main cabin. All around, people in boldly colored flight suits drifted and hovered, twisted and darted, like so many tropical fish in a gigantic tank. Blue for the real astronauts and space workers in training. Green for NASA’s guests: everyone prepping for the PS-1 inspection. Red, the most common color, for the tourists. In the spectrum of visible light—scientist humor—red was as far as possible from blue.

  The sad truth was that red suits outnumbered blue and green, and the Cosmic Adventures training center—once the NASA Johnson Space Center—had been a shock.

  His flight to orbit, like his training, would be commercial. Before arriving at the training facility, he had not internalized that. NASA Goddard’s usual research was too esoteric to interest industry, and its campus did not offer enough unused land to draw speculators.

  Approaching the cabin’s back wall, Marcus tucked and rolled. A thrust of his legs sent him gliding back the way he had come: sixty feet to the opposite bulkhead. “It gets better,” he called to two men and three women, their faces pale, belted into their seats and waiting for the misery to end. Both men and one of the women wore green.

  The review team was limited by budget, schedule, security clearances, and, Ellen had intimated, acceptability to the White House. At least two of the team candidates would stay behind. He guessed there would be volunteers.

  “Better?” one of the seat-belted men groaned. “Any time would be fine.”

  One of the seated women turned her head toward Marcus—and as quickly away, lunging for her airsick bag.

  “Honest, it does,” Marcus said, floating away.

  Many of those loose in the cabin, while faring better, still flailed about unproductively. Swimming in air did not work well.

  Marcus gave a shove to a woman (he guessed from the long, bobbing ponytail) stranded in midair. The recoil sent Marcus soaring on a new trajectory. He kicked off the wall, throwing himself into a corkscrew spin just for the fun of it.

  Because it was fun. His parents, of the attitude that fun was all this was, had commended him on his government-paid boondoggle. Sean had mused aloud about the Seven Thousand Mile High Club—never mind that it would have been seven thousand kilometers—and whether Phoebe, like The Space Place, kept “escorts” on staff.

  And Mom and Dad called him cynical.

  “Feet down,” a loudspeaker warned. Inside five seconds, gravity would return.

  Marcus extended arms and legs to slow his spin. He twisted, getting his feet oriented, trying not to land on Savannah Morgan when he came down. Once down returned.

  Of the onsite inspectors whom he would be babysitting (as Ellen would have it, with whom he would liaise), so far only Savvy had gotten her space legs. She and Marcus grinned at each other as they positioned themselves.

  With a howl of the plane’s engines, gravity returned.

  Vomit spattered the floor and Marcus’s flight suit as he landed steadily, if not yet quite gracefully. He stretched out flat as gee forces surged. Not that 1.8 gees at the bottom of the arc could compare to the four gees he had experienced riding the centrifuge, but that acceleration was steady. None of this up-and-down, on-and-off—

  His stomach lurched.

  So, okay, he did not entirely have his space legs.

  Almost before he knew it, the engines were throttling back and the loudspeaker advised, “Going over the top.” Zero gee came in not-quite-half-minute spurts, about one every minute.

  Spurt was an unfortunate image, but he powered past it.

  Zero gee returned with a feeling deep in his gut like at the top of a roller coaster, for an instant before the rest of his body caught up. Then he was up and away, turning lazy somersaults in midair, a bigger-than-ever smile on his face. He had just gotten a mind’s-eye view of Simon Clayburn, space monkey, afloat in zero gee and peeling a banana with his toes.

  When he called Val tonight, Marcus thought he would keep that picture to himself.

  * * *

  Bearing a loaded tray, Marcus surveyed the cafeteria’s crowded dining area. He recognized faces, but saw no one he actually knew. Between the hectic flight-training schedule, futile efforts to stay current with PS-1 progress, and random summonses from the candidate inspectors, he had yet to achieve a routine.

  Still, eating alone tonight had been his choice.

  The would-be inspectors did everything together. He was not one of the group, not exactly, but still he would have to work with them. And so, often, he ate with them. Some evenings, though—and tonight was one of them—he was not in the mood to be treated, as some of them would, as the enemy. When push came to shove, Ellen had had very little influence over the composition of the team.

  Maybe, he thought, if the Vomit Comet had tamed Olivia and Reuben. (Did he wish that on them? Not really. Not very much.) But to judge from their sniping that afternoon, his chief critics had recovered from their ordeal.

  Olivia Finch, quick-witted and sharp-tongued, presumed that NASA and its contractors—all of them, including Marcus—would hide everything they could. Her skepticism was ironic, given how Phil Majeski and the rest of the Kendricks crew expected Marcus to hyperventilate about the most trivial variance. She was a quality assurance specialist from Caltech. And Reuben Swenson, for all his good-ole-boy affectations, was twice as sharp and almost as distrusting. He was a power systems engineer from the DOE Oak Ridge Lab.

  The way Marcus’s luck ran, he knew Olivia and Reuben would end up among the chosen.

  Midday, pleading the press of work, Marcus had IMed Savvy—they had become friends, pure and simple—not to wait for him tonight at dinner. He could work 24/7 and still never catch up, so he had not even been lying.

  But before even opening his message queue, Marcus had called Val at home. She had another long night ahead at the observatory. He had thought the appeal of radio astronomy was that you did not need to work nights, but the big radio telescopes were too expensive not to schedule around the clock.

  They had talked for more than an hour. By the time she had had to dash to work and he had gotten to the cafeteria, the hot entrées had sold out. He would cope: as long as the grill line stayed open he would never go hungry. He could eat a cheeseburger and fries every day.

  A table at the back of the dining area had two empty seats and he headed that way. The four men sitting there were deep in conversation. Marcus had noticed them before. It was his impression they were bound for The Space Place.

  “Are these seats taken?” he asked.

  “Help yourself,” one of the four said. “We’re leaving.” And kept talking.

 
Marcus ignored them, taken with the impulse to send Val flowers. His datasheet, only one-fourth unfolded, drooped off the end of the table. As he entered the stiffen-for-typing command, a shopping-bot icon started to flash. Bargain found. Tapping the icon revealed an unbelievably good price for the upscale 3-V set he had been coveting.

  Had he been naïve enough to believe the offer, the urgent instruction that he needed to reconfirm his banking information stood to correct him. Damn! Another generation of agent software compromised.

  Google confirmed the break-in. The Russian mafia was suspected. Or the infamous hacker, Psycho Cyborg. Or freelancing students from any of three notorious Chinese hacking academies. Or maybe organized crime in Botswana. The only element of the reports that Marcus found credible was that digital forensics folks were on a merry chase from computer to computer around (and around, and around) the world, hoping to track the exploit to its source.

  Good luck with that.

  Flowers would wait. First he had to shop—the slow, geezerly way, directly at the websites of a few trusted estores—for new agent software.

  Three of his tablemates did, finally, leave; one offered an ironic-sounding, “Bye, boss.” Their most solemn member stayed behind, seated catercorner to Marcus.

  The straggler had a long, gaunt, almost ascetic, face, with a deeply cleft chin. He was wiry and even seated managed to seem athletic. His blond hair, worn short, had begun to recede. He squinted so much that Marcus could scarcely tell the man had blue eyes.

  “Hi. Marcus Judson.” He leaned close enough to offer his hand. “I’m headed for Phoebe soon.” Anyplace else, Where are you from? or What do you do? were the standard icebreakers. Here, everyone opened with something about their upcoming flights.

  “Dillon Russo. The Space Place.” Dillon seemed awfully dour for someone going to the world’s most exclusive tourist destination.

  “Enjoying your training?” Marcus asked.

  “It’s been … interesting.”

  “That it is.” Marcus searched his table in vain for a saltshaker. He snagged one from another table and sprinkled his fries, then took a big bite from his burger.