“You know,” he had told her a few years before his death, “I don’t think we’d still be married if we didn’t have Chelsea. There wouldn’t have been enough to hold us together.” Cruel as the statement seemed, she knew it to be the truth. Rooted in conventionality, toiling at her own work and taking care of all the practical matters he saw as distractions, she knew that they had begun to drift apart even in the earliest days of their marriage. Having their daughter had linked his quicksilver brilliance to her stolidity; he had loved Chelsea enough to again feel some love for Hillary. She could look at their child and see what she herself might have become growing up in a different world, a world of sun and sand and a father who could reveal the wonder and beauty of that world.
After his death, she gave him the simple burial he had wanted, with no ritual and only herself, their daughter, and Dick’s sister and one of his cousins to mourn him at the graveside. A month after that, his friends and colleagues at Caltech held a memorial gathering in his honor. Hillary found herself in a large auditorium packed with fellow physicists, graduate students, former students, engineers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, old girl friends, and eccentrics Dick had met on the beach or in bars and cafes while playing his bongo drums. The written eulogy she had prepared suddenly seemed inadequate; it was conventional, sentimental, stodgy—all the things her husband was not.
She was to be the first to speak. She left her written remembrance on her chair; she would speak from her heart.
Chelsea watched her with Dick’s eyes as Hillary walked to the podium, looked into the sea of faces, and said, “Toward the end of Dick’s life, my dear husband and I used to talk about—pardon the cliché—the meaning of life. I can think of nothing more appropriate now than to offer some of his own remarks on that topic.” He had expressed such sentiments often enough, and the outlook they expressed was so central to his life, that she could easily recall his words. “He would say, ‘I have approximate answers and different degrees of certainty about things, but I’m not totally sure of anything and there’s a lot I don’t know, such as whether it means anything at all to ask why we’re here. But I can live with that, and die with it, too. I’m not scared by not knowing, by being in a universe without any purpose, and as far as I can tell, that’s how it is. It doesn’t frighten me. I’d rather admit I don’t know than grab at some answer that might be wrong.’”
Hillary paused, afraid for a moment that she might cry again. “That was how he lived his life, and that’s what he believed right up to the end.” The certainties of her Methodist youth were of little use now; Dick would have been furious at her and disappointed in her if she had invoked them. Over the years, some of his doubt and uncertainty had crept into her view of the universe. Her occasional prayers and Scriptural readings were more a nostalgic reminder of a comfort her spiritual beliefs had once provided than an affirmation of faith. She wondered if she ever would have come to that kind of agnosticism without her husband’s influence. Against everything she had been taught in childhood, she could even believe that her doubts might have made her a better person. There had always existed in her a tendency to self-righteousness; doubt made her more conscious of her failings.
Hillary bowed her head. She would honor her husband’s memory by not praying for him.
* * * *
Hillary strapped herself into her seat. “I don’t know about you,” Evelyn said from her pilot’s seat, “but I’m a little scared.” It was an admission none of them would have made had any male astronauts been present. The ship’s drive might fail, stranding them in orbit around Venus. The Sacajawea might accelerate until the midpoint of their return journey and never decelerate. If the mission failed, it would almost make certain that they would all have Venusian geological features named after themselves, which wasn’t exactly consoling.
“Maybe someday, people will settle Venus,” Chelsea had told Hillary in a phone call from M.I.T. a couple of months ago.
“No way,” Hillary had said. “You’d need a completely different planet.”
“That’s what I meant, Mom.” Chelsea had gone on to speak of terraforming—engineering algae to seed the sulfuric clouds, finding a way to shield Venus from the sun so that it could cool, maybe even using the nanotechnology Richard Feynman had envisioned, twenty years before there was even a name for that field, to build microscopic machines capable of altering the planetary environment on a molecular level. Hillary had suddenly wished that Chelsea’s father could have seen what his daughter had become, how much of him there still was in her.
She was suddenly overwhelmed by a vision of Venus as a future home for humankind. A terraformed Venus would not isolate colonists and their descendants from Earth, as a colonized Mars would through the necessary adaptation to a much lower gravity. People would come and go freely. She remembered all the stories of Venus she had read as a girl, from the swampy planet of the earliest tales to the vision of hell transformed into a new garden.
“All systems go,” Evelyn murmured. “Girls, we’re ready to roll.” For a moment, Hillary had the sensation of being outside herself, as though everything around her were no more than a dimly imagined possibility that had never come to pass, and then the thrust of the Sacajawea’s engines pressed her against her seat.
They were on their way home—but with the success of this mission, Hillary was sure that Earth would not remain humankind’s only home for long. The Moon’s research outposts would soon welcome settlers, and there would be Mars to explore. As Venus shrank on the rear view screen, Hillary recalled the fifteen-year-old girl in Park Ridge who had dreamed of becoming an astronaut, and knew that in spite of the setbacks and delays, the years of postponing her dream and finally winning a place as an astronaut and then of waiting for a chance at a mission, that all of the hard work and the sacrifices and the disappointments had been worth it.
She had kept faith with her younger self.
* * * *
Evelyn Holder had brought her husband to the White House reception and dinner in honor of the four astronauts. Judith Resnik was accompanied by Senator Bob Kerrey, who was rumored to be getting more serious about her; if he did decide to run for president, having an astronaut as a wife could only help. Victoria Cho had her good friend Ellison Onizuka, fellow astronaut and space station veteran, in tow.
Hillary stood with her daughter, smiling and nodding as she shook hands and exchanged pleasantries with the other guests. Chelsea Feynman, who had given up her usual uniform of jeans and sweatshirts for a long blue silk dress, was holding the medal that the president had presented to Hillary. She proudly opened the small box to show the medal to the vice-president, as she had earlier when former president Glenn had asked to see it.
“You know,” the vice-president was saying, “I truly envy your mother. I would have loved to have been an astronaut myself. You should be very proud of your mother.”
“I am,” Chelsea said.
Hillary smiled as the vice-president turned over her medal to read the inscription on the back; he was both a space policy wonk and a big supporter of NASA, so she had resolved to be as pleasant to him as possible, despite his reputation as something of an opportunist and a hatchet man for the president. At any rate, Vice-President Newt Gingrich seemed on his best behavior tonight.
“To Hillary Rodham Feynman,” Vice-President Gingrich read from the medal, “for the courage she has shown in the exploration of space.” He beamed at her and her daughter. Hillary remembered how, a year after Dick’s death, she had impulsively added his last name to her own on her application to NASA. In public, she was still known by her own name, the name she had kept throughout her marriage, but in NASA’s records and any awards she received for her service as an astronaut, she would always be listed as Hillary Rodham Feynman. Her feminist soul was at peace with that; her husband, perhaps in more ways than even she realized, had helped to make a better space program possible. His consultations with the NASA scientists and engineers at the Jet Pro
pulsion Laboratory, she was sure, had saved the space agency many mistakes, perhaps even disasters.
The First Lady, taller in person than she seemed on TV and with a mass of attractive curly brown hair, bore down on them, apparently about to rescue Hillary and Chelsea from the vice-president. Mary Steenburgen Clinton might give the appearance of a soft-spoken Southern lady, but it was widely believed that her husband might never have risen to become president without her. Not long after marrying the up-and-coming young Arkansan politician William Jefferson Clinton in the early Eighties, Mary Clinton had given up a promising career as an actress to become her husband’s closest advisor and unofficial campaign manager. A charming but disorganized, undisciplined, skirt-chasing, and only intermittently successful politician had gone on to win election as his state’s governor, as a senator, and finally as president in 1992. Mary Clinton’s gentle demeanor, it was said, was only part of a public performance that concealed a sharp political intelligence and the well-honed instincts of a female Machiavelli.
“That Bill Clinton was always a right smart young feller,” one of the president’s old mentors from Arkansas had said in a television interview, after President Clinton had won a second term by a landslide, “but it was Mary who done whipped him into shape.” Hillary could well believe that. President Bill Clinton, despite his many accomplishments in office, struck her—in his public persona, anyway—as the kind of charming rogue, weak at the center, who might never have won over the American public had he not been preceded in his office by the upright John Glenn and the dour Bob Dole. He could be grateful that people had grown tired of such rectitude and now wanted to enjoy the fruits of prosperity with a more congenial and lax chief executive.
“Ms. Rodham,” Mary Steenburgen Clinton murmured as she shook Hillary’s hand, “I am so glad you and your daughter could both be with us. I must tell you that of all the dinners we’ve had in the White House so far, I have looked forward to this one the most.”
Hillary very much doubted that, but the sincerity and warmth in the First Lady’s voice was enough to win her over. “You gave a wonderful performance in ‘Time After Time,’” she responded. “It’s one of my favorite films.”
“That British dude who played H.G. Wells in it wasn’t bad, either,” Chelsea added.
Hillary glanced at her daughter, who probably didn’t know that it was widely rumored that Mary Steenburgen Clinton had been romantically involved with her leading man in that movie, which had been made before her marriage to Bill Clinton, but the First Lady was still smiling.
“Malcolm McDowell, you mean,” Mary Clinton said. “No, he wasn’t bad at all.”
This President and his wife had a reputation for informality, and people were already moving toward the entrance to the dining room in no discernible order. Hillary lingered near her daughter, who was answering Ms. Clinton’s queries about her postgraduate work and her life in Boston, uncertain of what to do now, when she felt a hand gently touch her elbow.
“Ms. Rodham?”
Hillary turned and found herself looking up into the eyes of the President of the United States. He had shaken her hand impersonally at the earlier ceremony, when the members of the Venus mission had been presented with their medals, but now his gaze was definitely focused on her. With that broad grin and that twinkle in his eye, she could almost believe that he was flirting with her, unlikely as that was with his wife standing nearby.
“Mr. President,” Hillary said.
Bill Clinton took her right hand and pressed it between both of his. “You and your sister astronauts have accomplished a wonderful thing,” he said, “traveling to Venus and back. I’ve always had great admiration for brave and brilliant women, and it’s a privilege to have you all as our guests.”
He was a charmer, all right.
Their eyes locked…and then the moment passed.
The president moved away and gracefully took the First Lady’s arm.
Chelsea glanced at Hillary and smiled.
Hillary followed her daughter toward the White House dining room, where the tables waited beneath the glittering chandeliers.
MAYBE JUST A LITTLE ONE, by Reginald Bretnor
Maximus Everett, who taught physics at Woodrow Wilson Union High School for nearly twenty years, was the first man to accomplish nuclear fission in his basement.
It really wasn’t much of a basement either. Along one side was the workbench, littered with tools and wire and dusty old books. On the other side was an empty birdcage and a utility sink with a dripping faucet. A couple of shabby trunks stood in a corner next to a broken lawnmower, and some baled magazines the Red Cross people had forgotten to call for were piled up behind the cyclotron.
The final result of his scientific labors pleased Everett. After observing it quietly for a while, he went upstairs to the kitchen, where his wife was making chopped-olive-and-egg sandwiches. He sat down on a stool, wiped his long bald forehead, and remarked that it certainly was hot in the basement. Without turning around, his wife assured him that this was not abnormal. “Here in Arizona,” she observed, “right near the border, it’s always hot in summer.”
Everett did not dispute the point. “Oh, it’s not only that,” he told her. “I’ve just been working pretty hard. It’s been a tough job.” He leaned back with a little sigh of satisfaction. “I’ve invented atomic power, hon.”
“So that’s what you’ve been doing,” said Mrs. Everett. “I thought you were still working on your perpetual motion machine.” She cut the last sandwich diagonally in half, put some sliced pickle on the platter, and turned around, smoothing her ample apron. Then suddenly she looked accusingly at her husband. “Why, that’s ridiculous!” she exclaimed. “What do you mean, you invented it? How about Hiroshima?”
“That was different,” said Everett simply. “That was just a big bang. Anybody can invent that kind.”
Mrs. Everett—a librarian, and rather dogmatic—showed signs of irritation. “All the authorities,” she declared, “say that you have to have uranium, and that it’s very rare. Then you have to make it into something else, and it costs millions and millions of dollars.”
“That’s what they think,” replied Everett, shaking his head mildly. “Well, they ought to know, if anyone does!”
“I have the utmost respect for them,” he conceded. “After all, their work did help to make mine possible. It’s just—well, you see, it’s just that I don’t need uranium. I discovered a new element about a week ago, and.…”
Mrs. Everett was wearing the expression she usually reserved for people who tried to explain away overdue books. “Just how could you discover a new element when they’ve all been discovered?” she asked bleakly. “And what is it called?”
“Frijolium,” Everett replied. “I discovered it a week ago Tuesday. And it hardly costs anything.”
“Yes, but where did you get it?”
“I made it. That is, I purified it. Pure frijolium, for the first time in history.”
“Well, it sounds sort of familiar to me,” mused Mrs. Everett. “Frijolium—now wherever…?”
“Sort of familiar?” Everett echoed. “Well, it should! Frijolium. You know, from frijoles.”
Marriage and the public library had hardened Mrs. Everett; she took it all in her stride. “Maximus Everett!” she snapped. “Do you mean to sit there and tell me that you’ve found a new element in plain old Mexican beans?”
Everett hooked his thumbs in his belt and tilted the stool back on its hind legs. “We-ell,” he said, obviously weighing the question carefully, “it would not be quite correct to say that frijoles contain a new element. As a matter of fact, they are the new element.”
“But frijoles are just beans!” protested Mrs. Everett, rather loudly. “Anybody’ll tell you that. They contain proteins, fats, and carbohydrates.”
“Those substances,” Everett said, “are impurities. Fresh frijoles are 92.733 per cent pure frijolium. I have isolated it. It has a relatively low
atomic weight, but is adequately unstable. The nucleus may be split quite readily by…”
“Oh, never mind!” Mrs. Everett cried, stamping her foot. “Do you really expect me to believe that? Why, there would have been an explosion.”
“No, there wouldn’t. I didn’t want an explosion. I used the frijolium from one small frijole—that’s the minimum critical mass—and it’s really quite easy to control. You can turn it on and off just like a vacuum-cleaner.”
“Well, I don’t believe a word of it! All the experts say atomic power can’t be controlled like that.”
Everett shook his head, pityingly. “That’s what they think. I’ve had it running the washing-machine for three hours.… And,” he added, “if I didn’t turn it off, it would run for almost exactly seventy-two years. What do you think of that?”
After this, of course, Mrs. Everett followed him back into the basement to see for herself. The washing-machine was busily churning away next to the cyclotron, quaking and rattling just as it always had. Mrs. Everett sniffed. Warily, she walked around it, peering at the chipped enamel of its framework. As far as she could determine, its appearance had not changed—and she said so rather acidly.
“If this is your idea of a joke,” she said. “I don’t think it’s at all funny. Of course, if you haven’t broken my washer, there’s no real harm done, but.…”
Everett interrupted her. He pointed to the back of the washer. “Look!” he said, with great dignity.
Looking closely, she saw a small aluminum box, with a round hole in the top and an insulated cord leading to the motor. “Wasn’t it there before?” she asked.
“It was not!” Everett said. “That is the generator. You drop the frijolium through the hole. That little switch on the box works a shield inside that turns the energy on and off.” He flipped the switch, and the washing-machine chugged twice and was silent. He flipped it again, and the machine came back to life.
The Sixth Science Fiction Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Science Fiction Stories Page 10