“He’s all right. Besides, the world’s full of slimy people,” Knecht stated flatly.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.”
Griffin could tell from her voice that it wasn’t “nothing.”
If I could get her to open up, talk about what makes her so angry, he thought. “Okay,” he said. “I understand.”
“I doubt that,” she snorted, almost mockingly.
“I’ve had my problems,” he said. “I know what it’s like.”
“No,” she grumbled, “not like me.”
“What do you mean?”
Momentarily her eyes flashed in anger. Then they softened and he could see deep, searing sorrow. “When I was fourteen,” she said softly, “I ran away from home. My stepfather liked me too much. I was just a thing to him to get what he couldn’t get or didn’t want from my mother. It was typical–I’ve read up on this kind of thing. When I told my mother, she said she didn’t believe me and called me a slut. I went to her for help and she rejected me, I think because she did believe me and was jealous; I’d taken her husband away. I sure as hell didn’t want him.”
“Oh, God,” Griffin whispered. “I’m sorry.” This confession was not what he had expected.
Knecht shrugged her shoulders. She knew his sympathy would do nothing about what she felt. “I ran away,” she said, “to Seattle. I met a man in a bus station. At first he said he loved me. Then he beat me and was worse than my stepfather. To him I was just a thing to make money.”
“You mean…?” Griffin asked.
“Yes, I prostituted for him. At first he was all sweetness and love. Do you know what that will do to a love-starved fourteen-year old? It was like a drug. I’d do anything for it. And I did, even after the ‘love’ was gone. I blamed myself when he beat me, thinking I’d failed him and deserved it. And he beat me almost daily for not making enough money, for not pleasing some john just right. All a man had to do was look at him funny and he’d think I hadn’t done a good job. He almost killed me a couple of times.”
“Oh, God,” Griffin said softly.
“I finally got away. He said he’d kill me. That’s why I joined SRI. I figured he couldn’t find me off Earth. But I was just a thing to them to make a profit: although the prostitution wasn’t as personal.
“Then I met Linda Trent in L.A. She convinced me I could find what I was looking for in the Gaia Alliance. But even to her I was just a thing to advance the revolution.” She shook her head. “I’ve known since I was eleven and a half what sex is. I still don’t know what love is.”
Griffin looked at her. Like this, open and trusting, she was a lovely woman, not a guerrilla soldier. He took a chance.
“Is that why you hate so?”
“I don’t hate, except my stepfather, my pimp, and SRI. I just can’t trust. I put up a barrier between myself and others that I never let down.”
She looked at him and for a moment their eyes locked.
Then she looked away. When she looked back, Griffin could tell her armor was back in place, protecting her from any possible hurt another may cause her. “Anyway,” she said, “Trent told me about the real danger of taking asteroids out of the belt. That’s why I agreed to help with this attack.”
“You mean,” Griffin asked, “the GRT? That taking asteroids upsets the gravitational balance and having asteroids’ orbits decay so that they could hit Earth?”
“Yes,” Knecht acknowledged. “I resigned from SRI and joined the GA. How about you?”
Griffin shrugged. “My parents were Earth Firsters. They taught me what you said about no compromise. But their methods were ineffective. Hell, Earth Firsters have been around a hundred years.
“When I heard about the GA, I joined. I agree that chaining yourself to trees isn’t enough. Nothing is ever going to change without violence. Revolution is the only way to change society.”
Knecht nodded in agreement. Griffin smiled and she smiled back. They’d found a common, albeit bloody, ground.
***
“I’m sorry about your reception,” Freeman said, driving Charlie to the FBI building in his nondescript, late-model Fiat the next morning.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” Charlie growled, shaking her head. “I was just so damn mad. Now I know why I got the hell out of the United States.”
“Yeah,” Freeman said. “Like rats leaving a sinking ship.”
“Huh?” Charlie asked angrily, not sure if she’d just been attacked verbally again.
“It’s just that some of the best Americans are going into SRI, or NESA. Some are even going to the Russian Federation. I know the U.S. has problems, lots of problems, but I’m not going to abandon it.”
Charlie looked at Freeman differently. He was a patriot and a man who took duty and loyalty seriously. Charlie admired that even if she felt the U.S. was a long lost cause.
“Okay,” she said conciliatorily. “How can I help you?”
“I need your help to nail Linda Trent.”
“I understand. Mitch said she could look into FBI files.”
“That’s not totally true. But she has a friend, Congresswoman Polasky, on the Congressional FBI Oversight Committee, who can. So I can’t move against her without her knowing it. Then she can put pressure on the administration and my boss, the director, is part of that administration.”
“Why does she have so much power with the administration?” Charlie asked. “She’s not in its party.”
“No,” Freeman said. “But that party is bending over backwards to cater to the Greens. They see part of their power being eroded by small, one issue parties like the Greens, the National Party for Womyn, the Economic Justice and Peace Party. The majority coalition in Congress would fall apart without support from the minor parties.
“Also, the president was partially elected on an environmental platform. They say they’re going to clean up the environment.”
“Are they kidding?” Charlie asked. “The environment is the cleanest it’s been for centuries. Don’t they remember when cities had smog because of gasoline and diesel burning cars? There’s hardly a hydrocarbon burned in the U.S. except for plant-based ones. The water’s clean. Per person, man pollutes less now than since we first crawled out of the slime.”
Freeman held a hand up. “I know, I know. I’m on your side. Anyway, under the last administration, the FBI investigated environmental groups to determine if they were possible terrorist threats. But we were a bit overzealous and newspaper reports that we were investigating little old ladies that contributed to the Sierra Club were not too much of an exaggeration. Now the FBI Oversight Committee frowns on any action against environmentalists.”
“But the GA blew up SRI’s antenna field in the Mojave,” Charlie protested.
Freeman nodded. “I know. But according to the GA, that was an individual act of a member, Trent, and not sanctioned by the group. The indictment was thrown out after it was shown that Trent’s car had been illegally searched so the fuses and explosives couldn’t be admitted as evidence.”
“Right,” Charlie said sarcastically.
“Fourth Amendment protection,” Freeman intoned.
“Don’t talk to me about Constitutional protection,” Charlie grumbled. “I learned about that last night.”
“I know, I’m sorry.” Freeman added, “I’m in a tenuous position because I don’t have the ‘proper sensitivity’ to the environment, minorities, the homeless, the differently abled, etcetera.”
Charlie shook her head. “Okay, what do I do?”
“First, get close to Trent.”
“How?”
Freeman looked at Charlie. “That shouldn’t be too hard.”
***
Bente Naguchi didn’t enter the lab but, from the door, watched her father work. He moved purposely and exactingly from instrument to instrument. She knew he was working on low-pressure superconductors. High temperature superconductors were common but all were pressure sensitive and beca
me resistant to electrons as the atmospheric pressure decreased. None worked in vacuum. A low-pressure superconductor would be a great help to all space work. The Moon was the perfect place for her father’s work. On Earth a vacuum is an expensive and tenuous thing to create. On the Moon, vacuum was free and on the other side of every exterior wall.
Mr. Naguchi finally noticed his daughter’s long form filling the doorway. “Come in, Bente,” he said. “I’ve just about got this machine programmed.”
She watched him work silently for a few minutes. She realized just how much she loved this cranky old man. Finished with his machine, he walked over to her and looked up at her face. She sat in a chair to be polite, almost bringing them face to face.
“Father,” she said, “I’m leaving today. I’m going to the asteroid belt.”
He nodded. “Be careful, Bente.”
“I will, Father. But there is really very little danger.”
“Yes, of course. Have you said your farewells to your mother and brother?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Good.”
There was heavy silence.
A chromatograph beeped anxiously.
“Now what is wrong?” Mr. Naguchi exclaimed. He walked to the petulant instrument and looked at the display. “This will take a while, Bente.”
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “I’ve got to go.”
“Fine,” he replied, waving over his shoulder but already enmeshed in working the instrument.
She watched him work, already in total concentration. His work was always so important to him. She guessed that was true of any dedicated scientist, or anyone committed to their work.
She loved him for it, but wished he’d find time for her.
“Good-bye, Father,” she said.
“Good-bye,” he replied perfunctorily.
***
It was the first truly spring morning of the year in Boulder. The sky was a dome of lapis lazuli etched with high, white cirrus clouds. The wall of the Rocky Mountains, which ran right up to the city’s western edge, was dressed in frosty white and cool green. The morning sun was like a warm klieg light highlighting their best features. From the kitchen window in their house, Alex could imagine they grew right out of the backyard.
Alex, while washing his breakfast dishes, thought it was just his luck. The first nice day and he was leaving. His southern California childhood and the shirtsleeve, temperature controlled environment of space had given him an unusually large aversion to cold weather.
He heard Kirsten walk up behind him. She enveloped him in her long arms and kissed his neck. She smelled of soap and the clean towel she was wrapped in. Alex turned in her arms and found her mouth ready for a quick kiss.
“‘Morning,” she breathed a moment later. “You’re up early.”
He nodded. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“Anxious about going back into space?” she asked, sitting at the small breakfast table in a sunny atrium just off the kitchen.
Her towel almost fell off but she caught it and adjusted its tension.
He shrugged. “I guess.” He dried his hands on a dishtowel and joined her at the table. She’s damn sexy like this, he thought. He wondered briefly if she was doing this on purpose.
“You want some breakfast?” he asked casually.
“I’ll just have a grapefruit,” she replied.
Alex made a sour face but went to the ‘fridge after securing a knife.
“Is it because you’re the director you’re nervous about going back?” she called after him.
“No,” he said with his head in the refrigerator, “it’s that you look too good to leave behind.”
“Thanks,” she purred. Then she took on a more serious tone: “But really, Alex, is it that you’re the director now?”
He returned with a spoon and half the pink citrus on a small plate.
“Maybe,” he mumbled, setting the fruit down in front of her. “It’s kind of intimidating.”
Sitting down, he noticed the room’s computer monitor was displaying “ordering more grapefruit” with a choice to cancel or modify inventory. He saw that the half he gave her had the chip embedded in the skin that the refrigerator used to count grapefruit. Since only Kirsten ate the, in Alex’s opinion, disagreeable fruit, she wouldn’t have to adjust the computer’s inventory records since he was leaving.
“How’s that?” she asked, ignoring her food.
“Well,” he said, “there’s about 130 people on a typical asteroid. I’m responsible for all of them. People get killed out there, Kirsten. Accidents happen and now this damn Gaia Alliance. I don’t know what I’d do if I screwed up and someone died.”
Kirsten looked at him intently. “You’re good at your job, aren’t you?”
“Yes. But am I good enough?”
“I don’t know, Alex. You’ll have to decide that.”
Alex looked at her askance. “I hate when you do that.”
“Do what?”
“Psychoanalyze me.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was just trying to help.”
“I know. And I guess I’ll just have to do my best and hope it’s good enough.”
“I’m sure it will be,” she said. She looked at her bare wrist. “What time is it?”
Alex looked at the computer (now noting, “grapefruit will arrive next delivery”). “Ten after ten.”
“Damn, I really slept in. I’d better get dressed if I’m going to drive you to the airport.” She stood up and kissed him. “I won’t be long.”
The separation at the airport was, as usual, painful.
“I love you,” Alex said. Two weeks had gone too fast. Kirsten held him tight. He had to turn his head or be smothered in her shoulder. “I love you, too,” she replied. “Be careful.”
Alex nodded. “Aren’t I always?”
“I know, but this GA thing–it scares me. Nobody knows what happened to that ship and what they’re going to do with it.”
Alex pulled away so he could look at his wife. “Yeah, it scares me, too. You can predict the dangers of space but these fanatics are unpredictable.” He’d thought hard about it. The Rock Skipper accelerated at one and a half gees; it could build up velocity, and therefore kinetic energy, very quickly. If the terrorists were on a suicide mission, just ramming the ship into something like an asteroid at a high difference of velocity could be devastating.
The P.A. system announced, “Last call for United flight 102 with non-stop service to Los Angeles at gate seven.” In L.A. Alex was going to connect with a spaceplane for the flight to
Esmeraldas on the Ecuadorian coast, where SRI’s space facility was located.
“I’ve got to go,” Alex said quickly.
“I know.”
“Love ya.”
“You, too.”
Kirsten watched him wave his wrist-mounted computer over the sensor at the gate, which opened to let him pass. He walked into the secure area, getting ready for inspection, and out of her sight.
They never did talk about Frank’s death, she realized. She mentally kicked herself and returned to her car.
***
The red Ford pickup maneuvered along the road. It was old and dirty with enough dents and bends in its sheet metal to look like a refugee from a demolition derby. But William Thorne knew that, to his father, a vehicle was a tool and, if it could do its job, its appearance did not matter.
“This road is terrible,” the younger Thorne observed as the truck was jostled over the crumbling asphalt.
“Every year it gets worse,” his father said. “Winters are hard on the roads around here; gets harder to get the harvest to market. They keep raising taxes but we don’t seem to see the benefits.”
Bill looked around. The fields were barren now, as the last of the snow had disappeared. The mountains bordering the arid Snake River Valley were still snowy-white, but the irrigated potato farms around the river were quagmires of mud. The interstate highway followed the
general course of the Snake River south where, in a Nile effect, the only towns of any consequence lined up along its shores.
“You’ve been living in Saigon?” his father asked perfunctorily.
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“No. I lived with a local woman.”
“Why?”
“I dunno,” Bill said. What could he say to his father that the old man would understand? That she was the best damn thing in bed he’d ever known? That it ended as all his affairs did: with a painful rupture that left Bill, at least, hemorrhaging emotionally. He assumed the women felt the same, but didn’t know. Could he tell his father he wanted to fall in love and make it last? No, his father would want to know—
“Bill,” Mr. Thorne said, cutting off his son’s thoughts, “when are you going to settle down and have a family?”
“My job, Pa...”
“No one working for SRI has a family?”
Thorne thought briefly about Alex Chun and his wife. “Some do.”
“Then, why not you?”
“I dunno.” What was it about being with his parents that turned him into a child?
“You should have stayed here,” his father continued. “You could raise a family here.”
“I know, but...” But what? How could he tell his father what it was like having your feet in Idaho mud while your head was full of stars? Those damn stars that, in the pitch-blackness of the night sky over the family farm, called to Bill as he finished his chores late at night? No, his father never looked up–always down at the dirt, not able to see beyond next season’s planting and harvest.
So he’d stayed away from his family and rejected their simple values. Everything was black and white to them, good or evil. He wished his life was that simple but it never could be again. How you going to keep them down on the farm when they’ve seen the stars from space?
“Thanks,” he said, “for driving me to the airport, Pa.”
“You’re welcome, son. And thank you for visiting. It meant a lot to your mother. You should come more often.”
“Pa, I haven’t been here in ten years, at least.”
“I know, son.”
The pickup bounced down Interstate 15.
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