The Cassandra Project

by Jack McDevitt

  “I know. It’s sad. I never thought things would go this way.”

  Jerry kept him talking for a few minutes, about the state of space travel, about what might have been. And, when he thought Cobble receptive, he asked about the Myshko and Walker missions. “We keep hearing rumors that they landed in ’69. Before Armstrong. Richard, does that make any sense to you? At all?” “No,” he said. “I can’t imagine why they’d have wanted to do it. I mean, I know that the guys in the ships would have liked to make the landing. But they weren’t going to go down without NASA’s okay. And they didn’t have it. Even assuming one of them had been a maverick, how could they have kept it quiet for a half century? We’ve both worked for the government, Jerry. You know how the government is at keeping secrets.” “Is there any way it could have been done without your knowledge?” Cobble was seated in an armchair. But he didn’t look comfortable. He started to say no, stopped to rearrange himself, and started again. “Look, Jerry, anything’s possible. I wasn’t actually in a position during that year, during ’69, when I had a handle on things. Is it possible they could have done it? Sure, it’s possible, but do I believe it? Why don’t you ask me if I believe in Area 48?” “I think it’s Area 51, Richard.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Okay. Thanks. If you think of something, let me know, okay?”

  —

  Barbara stuck her head in. “Anything else, Jerry?”

  “No, Barb,” he said. “See you Monday.”

  The phone rang. It was Cobble again. “There was one thing, Jerry. There was something back then, I think it was the same year, ’69, they called the Cassandra Project.” “Cassandra?” That was the project Cary Blankenship had referred to.

  “Yeah. I’m pretty sure it was ’69. Anyhow, I’m not sure it ever really existed. I just remember the name because there were rumors. But I don’t recall anybody who actually knew anything about it. So— Oh, hell, it’s probably my imagination. My memory doesn’t work very well anymore.” “Do you know anything about it, Richard?”

  “No. Just that—Well, let it go. I don’t know what I’m talking about.” He clicked off.

  Barbara was still standing in the doorway. “Who’s Cassandra?” she asked.

  Jerry googled it. “I think she was the Greek woman who could tell the future.” There were multiple entries. “No, I guess she was Trojan,” he said.

  There was also a Cassandra software system, a Cassandra school for actors, a Cassandra chain store that sold furniture. But of course there was nothing connecting the term with spaceflight.

  “So she could predict the future,” Barbara said. “Any reason why NASA might name a project for her?” Jerry read the entry. “Maybe there is. Nobody ever believed her.”

  7

  Bucky hated having facial makeup applied. Every time he went on television, they put it on him, and every time he objected, they explained that everyone, even the president, even the pope, wore makeup for television. And every time they told him that, he rattled off thirty or forty current baseball and football players who didn’t wear makeup during postgame interviews (and he’d occasionally toss in a mud-spattered jockey who’d just ridden a winner on an off track). It didn’t make any difference; as much as he complained, they applied the makeup. He drew the line at their wanting to damp down his hair and then blow-dry it to make it look thicker.

  “I am not Cary Grant!” he would snap. “I don’t have to look like a romantic lead.”

  “Cary who?” was the usual response from the young makeup artists.

  He would update it to Burt Lancaster, then Sylvester Stallone, who weren’t quite the romantic stars Grant was, but after that he was out of names because he’d been too busy the past thirty years to watch any films and see who women were swooning over these days.

  Jason Brent leaned against a wall, looking vastly amused.

  “You’re supposed to be protecting me,” growled Bucky.

  “I’d rather watch you squirm.”

  “You’re fired.”

  “That’s the fifth time this month,” noted Brent amiably.

  “I guess I’d better not fire you again this month. You’d never think to start counting the fingers on the other hand.”

  Brent chuckled. “Come on, Boss. It’s just makeup. They put it on you every time, and you bitch every time. It hasn’t done you any harm yet.”

  “They’re supposed to be listening to me, not looking at me,” muttered Bucky.

  “Then make it a radio address.”

  “You’re fired again.”

  “You can’t,” said Brent. “Not until you hire me back first.”

  “I don’t mind having a deadly killer in my employ,” said Bucky, “but if there’s one thing I hate, it’s an uppity one.”

  Brent laughed again, and this time Bucky joined him.

  Ed Camden entered just then, couldn’t figure out the joke, and waited patiently for them to calm down.

  “Anything more?” asked Bucky at last.

  “Like what?” replied Camden. “You saw the damned diary.”

  “Have you checked to see if anyone else kept diaries?”

  “Bucky, most of them are dead, and the handful who aren’t are spread all the hell over the country, probably the world, and I just got the damned diary the day before yesterday.”

  “Have you talked to Aaron Walker’s shrink?” persisted Bucky. “Was he prone to delusions?”

  “He didn’t have a shrink,” said Camden.

  “You checked?” said Bucky, surprised.

  “I haven’t worked for you all these years without knowing a little something about how your mind works,” replied Camden. “No shrink, no aberrant behavior, no DTs, no nothing.”

  “Damn!” said Bucky. “I have to address, I don’t know, thirty million people in a few minutes, maybe forty million . . . and all I’ve got is guesswork and supposition.”

  “What are you going to say?”

  “I’m still thinking about it.”

  “You know . . .” began Camden.

  “Yeah?”

  “You could still cancel it. They’ve got DVDs and films they can run on a minute’s notice, probably even some old Sid Caesar or Ernie Kovacs kinescopes, any number of things for emergencies.”

  “I paid for the time,” said Bucky adamantly. “I’m going on.”

  “You’re going to make some crazy statement in front of zillions of people. Why?”

  “Crazy?” demanded Bucky.

  “It’ll sound crazy,” persisted Camden. “Myshko played golf on the Moon. They smuggled a woman aboard the ship. They brought back a little green man. Whatever it is, whether you wind up being able to prove it or not, it’ll sound crazy—and we’re planning a Moon trip in just a few months, for all I know even sooner.”

  “Your government has been keeping a secret for half a century,” said Bucky. “It’s time to bring it out into the light of day.”

  “We don’t have proof of anything yet.”

  “Then I’ll encourage some viewers to help find the proof.”

  “Bucky, you’ll encourage forty-three wackos. The remainder of the forty million will think you’re crazy or a clown.”

  “Let ’em,” said Bucky.

  “Think of what it’ll do to our Moon shot!” urged Camden. “Weren’t you the guy who didn’t want it to look like you were easily bamboozled?”

  “I’ve decided that this is more important,” answered Bucky. “And it’ll get more people interested in what we’re doing.”

  “They’ll think it’s being orchestrated by a looney tune!”

  Bucky shrugged. “I repeat: Let ’em.”

  “I don’t know how many years you’ve spent building your reputation,” said Camden, “but it’ll only take one telecast to destroy it.”

  Bucky stared at Camden for a long moment. “That’s the way I was thinking yesterday. I was wrong.”

  “In what way?”

  Bucky smiled. “Who’s going to
fire me?”

  Camden stared at him uncomprehendingly.

  “Who’s going to say I can’t go to the Moon?” Bucky continued. “I think what I’m going to suggest is correct. But if I’m wrong, the only thing that will change is the public’s perception of me, and since I’m never running for political office, I don’t give a damn about that. You’ll still have a job, none of my corporations will miss a step, we’ll still send a rocket to the Moon, the IRS will still harass me every year. The only people it might affect are Jason and his crew. If everyone thinks I’m a harmless idiot, there’ll be fewer attempts to kidnap or kill me.”

  “There have only been two since I came to work for you five years ago,” noted Brent.

  “Good,” said Bucky. “Then if I’m right, you can apply for early retirement.”

  Brent laughed again, and Camden just shook his head in defeat. “Well, I tried,” he said at last.

  “And believe it or not, I appreciate it,” said Bucky. “You’re trying to defend my image. The thing is, my body may need protection from time to time, but I’ve reached the point where my image can take care of itself.” He paused. “Whatever we find, whatever we see and experience up there, we’re going to bring back proof, and once we do, what they think of me will have nothing to do with the importance of anything we find.”

  “All right,” said Camden. “Do it your way. Hell, you always do.”

  “That’s why most of my staff has been with me for years. I never have anyone to blame but myself.”

  “So what are you going to say?”

  Another smile. “Why don’t you listen?”

  And another sigh. “I will.”

  Gloria entered the dressing room.

  “Ah! A fourth for bridge,” said Bucky.

  “I’m glad to see you’re not nervous,” she said. “I’m just here to tell you you’re on in six minutes.”

  “Who’s introducing me?”

  She frowned. “You never said anything about that. I assume one of the announcers from the network.”

  “That’ll be okay,” replied Bucky. “Though I’d have loved to have had Jerry Culpepper do it.”

  “It’d cost him his job.”

  “I know,” said Bucky. “Then he’d have no compunctions about coming to work for me.”

  “I never know if you’re kidding or not,” said Camden.

  “Tell him, Gloria.”

  “Half the trick is never letting them know if you’re kidding,” she replied.

  “Right,” agreed Bucky. He stood up and looked at himself in the mirror, adjusted his tie, studied his face, and ran his fingers through his hair. “So it won’t look like they groomed me right before I came out,” he explained, then looked around. “Now where did I put that damned book?”

  “You mean the diary?” asked Camden.

  “Yeah.”

  “I know you paid good money for it, but if you hold it up in front of the camera, you’ll cost Ralph D’Angelo his job.”

  “He won’t go broke before he finds another,” said Bucky. Suddenly he stood still, shrugged, and turned to the door. “What the hell. You never know when we’ll need a friend in Baltimore.” He stepped out into the corridor. “Which way do I go?”

  “I’ll take you,” said Gloria, grabbing him by the forearm and leading him away from the dressing room.

  “Hello, Mr. Blackstone,” said the director, as Bucky reached the soundstage. “Would you prefer to be seated or standing?”

  “Makes no difference.” Bucky scanned the soundstage. “I don’t see a desk or a chair, so I’ll stand. Where do you want me?”

  “Over here will be just fine,” said the director, indicating a spot. “I’ll have the teleprompters move over to—”

  “Don’t bother. I don’t use them.”

  “The anti-Obama,” said the director with a smile.

  “I never use a prepared text, so there’s nothing to read.”

  The director looked dubious. “You mean you’re just going to speak off the cuff to thirty million people?”

  “Forty million,” said Gloria.

  “However many,” said the director.

  “Yes, that’s what I mean,” answered Bucky.

  “I’ve covered six presidential campaigns,” said the director. “No one does that.”

  “Maybe that’s why we have so many problems,” said Bucky. “Tell me when you want me to stand there, and have someone give me a countdown when I get there.”

  He found a folding chair and sat down, totally relaxed, while those who knew him and those who didn’t marveled at the total lack of tension in his face and his bearing. Presidents who addressed the country every week were usually immersed in their notes, or practicing their opening lines to themselves, three minutes before they went on camera. But as Bucky had mentioned earlier, he wasn’t running for any office, and there was no one who could take away what was his.

  “All right, Mr. Blackstone,” said the director. “Take your position, please.”

  Bucky stood up and walked over to the spot where he’d been instructed to stand.

  “Very good. Look into whichever camera is showing the red light.”

  “I’m looking into this one,” said Bucky, pointing to the closest of the three cameras. “You do whatever you want, but that’s where I’ll be looking the whole time.”

  “Please, Mr. Blackstone! I’m the director!”

  “And I’m the guy who’s paying for the airtime. As long as everyone remembers that, we’ll get along fine.”

  “I doubt it,” muttered the director.

  “Then I’ll buy this network and get along fine with your replacement,” said Bucky, and, suddenly, the director fell silent.

  A makeup woman came up to wipe a couple of drops of perspiration from his forehead. He simply shook his head no, and she made a right turn and walked away.

  “Twenty seconds,” said the director.

  Bucky cleared his throat.

  “Ten.”

  The countdown continued to zero, and he heard a voice say: “At this time, we bring you a special address from Morgan Blackstone, the owner of Blackstone Enterprises.”

  You could have added Blackstone Innovations and Blackstone Development, thought Bucky irritably as the red light flashed on.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen—and select politicians,” he added with a smile. “I’m Morgan Blackstone, and I’m here to talk to you about something important.

  “First, a little background. Since the last Apollo mission, it’s been close to half a century since man has set foot on any world except our own. This is little short of shameful. Earth is part of a solar system, a number of planets in orbit around a star. It’s estimated that there are more than one hundred billion stars in our galaxy, which we know informally as the Milky Way. And it’s estimated that there are more than one hundred billion galaxies in the universe. Since the creation of the Hubble telescope, we are learning that more stars have planets than do not. There are over a billion G-type stars in the Milky Way, which is to say, the same type of star our Sun is. And all this is a roundabout way of saying that there’s a lot of real estate up there, probably a lot of it habitable, and, somehow, we’ve lost interest in it.

  “Yes, I know, every president has found better things to do with the money that should rightfully have kept NASA flying to Mars and the asteroids and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. And even NASA officials admit that a hungry child or a sick senior needs that money more than they do, so it has become incumbent upon private industry and entrepreneurs to continue man’s exploration of space. There have been a number of successful manned orbital flights, and as many of you know, my own corporation is planning to make the first manned landing on the Moon since the end of the Apollo program, which means since more than two-thirds of you were born.”

  Bucky paused and stared into the camera, ordering his thoughts for a few seconds, then continued: “All this is background, information that you can find on the
Internet, or see on any newscast, or read in any local newspaper on the unlikely assumption that your community still has a local newspaper.

  “What I’m about to tell you next, however, is something you won’t be able to find in any of those places, no matter how hard you look. I’m telling you because the government is going to do everything they can to discredit me once this talk is over. They may try to keep us from taking off for the Moon though they have no legal right to, and when I bring back proof of what I’m about to tell you, they will put the entire machinery of the government to work trying to convince you that I’m a flake or a con man.”

  He put on his most open and trusting face. “I’ll leave it to you to decide. Just remember: They work for you, not the other way around. I won’t let them bully me, and you must stand up to them, too.”

  Now came the fatherly smile. “All right, I know you weren’t expecting anything like this. I’m going to give you a minute to come back from the kitchen, the bathroom, wherever some of you have wandered off to, and then I will tell you something that your most trusted public servants have been hiding from you for all or most of your lifetimes.”

  He fell silent and signaled Gloria for a glass of water, which she promptly brought to him. He wasn’t the least bit thirsty, but he wanted to be doing something during his minute-long break, if for no other reason than that people just tuning in wouldn’t think they were watching some idiot who was too nervous to say anything and just stared dully into the camera.

  He counted the seconds as he toyed with the glass, handed it back to Gloria—who again walked in a kind of half squat so she wouldn’t be seen on camera—and once again faced the red light. “I trust you’re all back,” he said. “Now I have a question for you. What were the first words spoken by the first man to set foot on the Moon?”

  He paused to give them time to mouth the answer. “I’ll wager all of you said, ‘One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.’ Am I right?”