Spindrift

by Allen Steele

  The air was thinner than he expected, cool with the advent of early evening, yet nonetheless it was the first air he’d tasted in a week—longer than that, he reminded himself—that hadn’t been reprocessed and filtered. At the bottom of the ramp, he stole a moment to take a deep breath, savoring the aroma of tall grass. Beneath the soles of his moccasins, he felt not the hard surface of floor plates, but the coarse, granular texture of dirt. He never thought common soil would ever feel so good.

  Yet Coyote wasn’t Earth. One glimpse of the ring-plane of the nearby gas giant, just beginning to rise above the western horizon, was sufficient to remind him of that. Even so, it was enough like Earth that he felt like he’d returned to a familiar place. These people were lucky, he thought, remembering the cold, barren landscape of Spindrift. I hope they appreciate this.

  He didn’t have long to reflect on that. The three people whom he’d spotted from the cockpit were coming closer. An older couple, both apparently in their fifties, with a younger woman in her thirties close behind. All three were dressed in what looked like homespun clothes that nevertheless were a little more fancy than he would have expected: long dresses for the two ladies, a jacket, vest, and tie for the gentleman. Harker wondered if they’d dressed so formally for this occasion, or if, by some chance, some other matter merited their appearance.

  The older of the two women led the others. She strode forward with a sense of purpose that marked her as a leader. Harker had little doubt who she was. He hesitated for a second, then stepped forward. “President Gunther?” he asked. She nodded. “Theodore Harker, first officer of the EASS Galileo…” Damn! he thought. Screwed that up. “Or perhaps,” he quickly added, “former first officer. As I told you earlier, the Galileo is no longer with us.”

  “I understand.” President Gunther extended her hand. Harker shook it, trying not to show his nervousness. “This is my husband, former president Carlos Montero, and Commodore Anastasia Tereshkova, former commanding officer of the EASS Drake…”

  “Now the Robert E. Lee, under the flag of the Coyote Federation. It was our skiff that intercepted you.” Although Tereshkova came forward, Harker noticed that she didn’t offer her own hand. Even in the dim light, there was no mistaking the distrust in her dark eyes. “I’ve heard of you, Mr. Harker. The disappearance of the Galileo has become something of a legend.”

  A European Alliance starship that now belonged to an off-world government? There had to be a story behind this. Once again, Harker realized how much things had changed while he’d been away. “I imagine it has,” Harker replied, trying to warm her with a smile. “Fifty-six years ago, or at least so I’ve been told.”

  “You’ve been told?” Tereshkova raised an eyebrow. “By whom?”

  Perhaps it was only the thin air, or perhaps the dissonance of the moment. Either way, he felt dizzy for a second. Harker took a deep breath. “A long story, believe me.” Remembering his companions, he turned to introduce them. “Jared Ramirez, astrobiologist, and Emily Collins, the Celeste’s pilot.”

  On sudden impulse, he reached out to take Emily’s hand. After all they’d been through, this was the first chance he’d had to express his feelings for her. The patterns of her sha, until now a neutral grey, suddenly took on a warm yellow hue. I intend to marry her, he wanted to add, but decided that a less intimate introduction was more appropriate just then. “We owe much to her,” he said instead. “She’s the one who brought us safely here.”

  Emily’s grasp, tentative at first, became tighter. She understood what he meant, and gave him a smile in return. President Gunther seemed confused, though, not only by what he said, but also by the shift in colors of their robes. “Here from where? Mr. Harker, you said that you’ve come from Rho Coronae Borealis. We’ve checked our star charts…that system’s over fifty-four light-years from Earth.”

  “And fifty l.y.’s from 47 Ursae Majoris.” Ramirez spoke up at last. “We know. We came through a starbridge.”

  “But not one built by us, I gather.” Commodore Tereshkova peered more closely at him; there was suspicion in her eyes. “Haven’t I heard of you before, Dr. Ramirez?”

  Ramirez quickly looked away, yet his sha couldn’t hide his emotions. It turned purple, the color of shame and embarrassment. “All in the past,” he murmured. “A lifetime ago…”

  He’ll never live down what he once did, Harker thought. Yet we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him. Perhaps, once all was said and done, Jared Ramirez would find peace.

  “A lifetime, indeed.” President Gunther slowly exhaled, as if frustrated by having no immediate answers to all the questions that nagged her. “Look, I’m…we’re pleased you’ve managed to find your way here, but you must understand…”

  “What happened to the Galileo?” Her husband, silent until then, suddenly became impatient. “Why were you fifty light-years from here? What…?”

  “Did you make first contact?” President Gunther demanded.

  Harker didn’t know whether to be irate or merely amused. These people wanted explanations for things that he barely understood himself, with no comprehension of what he and his crew had suffered to discover what little they knew. “Of course,” he said dryly. “You haven’t figured that out already?” He raised his hand before the president, her husband, or the commodore could interrupt him. “Look, I know you’ve got a lot of questions, but…” He sighed, not knowing where to begin. “It’s a long story, and there’s something important you first need to know.”

  President Gunther stared at him, “And that is…?”

  Harker opened his mouth to speak, only to find himself suddenly reluctant. At this moment, he abruptly realized, it was in his power to lie. Or, at the very least, not tell everything he and the others had learned. He could concoct a story that would spare humankind the terrible truths they had learned…but also the wonders they had seen.

  Behind them, aboard the Maria Celeste, an emissary from a distant star was listening to their words. Jas knew how to control their craft. Heshe could leave at any time, return to Talus qua’spah and inform the High Council that humankind wasn’t yet ready to join the more mature races of the galaxy. And his own kind—capable of individual acts of stupidity, yet nonetheless able to travel to the stars—would never know of the chance that it had once been given.

  He looked at the others. Emily smiled, and Jared nodded slowly. The time had come.

  Harker turned back around, faced President Gunther once more. “We are not alone,” he said, and so began to tell the tale.

  EPILOGUE

  FEBRUARY 1, 2344—HIGHGATE

  Shillinglaw reached the end of Harker’s report. He read the closing paragraph, then read it a second time. Staring at the screen, the Director General took a deep breath and slowly let it out; after a couple of minutes, he stood up from the desk where he’d been sitting for the last few hours and walked to the door.

  Just down the corridor from the office he’d borrowed was a lift. Shillinglaw noticed that his hand trembled slightly when he pressed the button for the level where the isolation ward was located. He clenched his fists at his sides and sought to keep his temper in check. Whatever else might happen, he had to remain calm. A confrontation wouldn’t do him any good.

  Yet his resolve weakened the moment a guard opened the door leading to the visitors’ booth. On the other side of a thick window, Harker, Ramirez, and Collins were seated in the lounge; Harker and Collins were watching a soccer game on the wallscreen, while Ramirez dozed on a nearby couch. Shillinglaw noted that they no longer wore the hjadd robes they had been wearing when they disembarked from the Lee; instead, they were dressed in the one-piece jumpsuits supplied by Highgate’s doctors to those who’d just gone through the decontamination procedure. With luck, perhaps ESA scientists would have a chance to examine the robes before they were returned to their owners.

  Harker looked up as Shillinglaw entered the booth. He murmured something to Collins, and she glanced toward the window as well
. Neither made an effort to get up, though; there was an insolent sense of disregard for him, as if they couldn’t have cared less whether the Director General had come to see them. As if to rub it in, Ramirez opened an eye, peered at him for a moment, then rolled over on the couch so that his back faced the window.

  Enough. Shillinglaw touched the intercom beneath the windowsill. “Commander Harker? I’ve read your…”

  “Don’t bother to use my rank.” Harker didn’t look away from the game. “If you’ve read it all the way to the end, then you know I’ve tendered my resignation.” Collins smiled, then briefly raised her hand. “So has she,” he added. “We’re civilians now. And before you say we can’t do that, better read the fine print. Our terms of service ended more than fifty years ago.”

  “Score!” Collins clapped her hands, then grinned at Harker. “Told you Liverpool still has it! Edinburgh hasn’t put up a good team in…”

  “Cut it out, both of you.” Shillinglaw turned his attention to Ramirez. “And you’re not getting out of this either, Jared. You’re still serving a life sentence for collaboration with…”

  “You don’t have jack on me.” Wide-awake now, Ramirez rolled over again, then sat up straight. “Political amnesty…remember? Received it straight from President Gunther herself. So far as their government is concerned, I’m now a citizen of the Coyote Federation.”

  “As are Emily and I.” Harker took Collins’s hand in his, lifted it to kiss the back of her palm. “In fact, we’re engaged. Wedding’s next Tuesday, after we get back.” His brow furrowed, and he glanced at Collins in mock-confusion. “Or is that next Anael? Still getting used to that calendar of theirs.”

  “Next Raphael, dear. Two days from now…I think. Can’t keep it straight either.” Collins giggled, then looked through the window at Shillinglaw. “Think you’ll be able to attend? We haven’t had time to send out invitations, but…”

  “You’re not leaving, if that’s what you’re trying to say.” Shillinglaw glared at all three of them. “You’re no longer aboard the Lee. You’ve passed through quarantine, which means…”

  “Sorry, but you’re wrong.” Harker waved a hand across the wallscreen to silence it, then stood up and sauntered over to the window. “We’re still in quarantine, if you haven’t noticed, which means that we still have the right to return to the vessel that brought us here. In fact, all we’ve been doing is waiting for you to read our reports while Ana…pardon me, Commodore Tereshkova…off-loads her cargo and takes on passengers. When she’s done, we’re going to walk right back through that door and board the Lee for the ride home.”

  “Our new home, that is.” Ramirez stood up, sauntered over to a nearby table to pour himself a glass of water from the bottle resting there. “Give Warden Torres my warmest regards, will you?” Then he shook his head. “Or maybe not. He’s probably dead by now.”

  Shillinglaw tried to ignore him, although it was hard to do so. From the moment he saw that Ramirez was still alive, all he wanted to do was return him to the place where he’d found him. Which had been his intent all along. Instead, he struggled to remain focused on what had brought him there in the first place: the summation of Harker’s mission report.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” he said. “Whatever happened to you out there, it wasn’t my doing.”

  Harker stared at him through the window. He said nothing for a few moments, only regarded the Director General with bleak, cold eyes that, Shillinglaw suddenly realized, had seen things that would have stopped his heart. Shillinglaw started to say something, but suddenly found that his mouth had become dry.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” Harker said at last. “It might have been someone else’s idea to put a nuke aboard Galileo. Beck, maybe, or even Cole. But you had a hand in it, no doubt about it, and that’s what I’ve written in my report. And you’ll have to answer to that, one way or another.”

  “You can’t prove it.” Shillinglaw swallowed what felt like a handful of sand. “Even if it gets out…”

  “Oh, but it will.” Ramirez took a sip of water, then put down his glass and ambled over to the window. “In fact, you should count on it. Right after we docked, Ted and I accessed the local net node through Maria’s comlink. When we saw that you were still alive, we downloaded everything.”

  Shillinglaw felt his face grow warm. “Everything? I don’t…what do you…?”

  “Everything you’ve just read.” Raising her arms above her head and arching her back, Collins stretched luxuriously. “Final reports, logbooks, flight recorder transcripts…all that’s on that disk. Sent to every major media source they could find.”

  “By now, everyone has the story.” Harker continued to gaze at him through the window. “The great mystery, revealed at last…the disappearance of the EASS Galileo. Or maybe first contact with an alien race will be the story that grabs the headlines.” An offhand shrug. “Either way, it’s your problem, not ours.”

  “Sorry we won’t be attending the press conference.” A fatuous smirk on Ramirez’s face. “We’ve got a wedding to attend.”

  Shillinglaw’s legs felt weak. His heart pounding against his chest, he grasped the windowsill for support. Suddenly, he felt like the old man he’d become. And meanwhile, impervious to the years, Theodore Harker gazed at him, not only through a quarter inch of glass, but also from across an abyss of time and space that he could barely comprehend. “Why…?”

  “Why did we come all this way, just to do this to you?” There was no hint of remorse in Harker’s face. “Because I wanted to look you straight in the eye and tell you what I’ve learned. The most destructive force in the galaxy isn’t the Annihilator. It is arrogance and stupidity.”

  He paused. “Good-bye, John. With luck, we’ll never meet again.”

  Without another word, Harker turned away from the window. Jared and Emily followed him toward the door that would lead them back through the quarantine facility to the airlock. On the other side of the airlock lay the gangway to the Robert E. Lee, which would carry them to the starbridge. Coyote lay just beyond, and from there…

  A galaxy, one whose wonders and terrors he would never know. Shillinglaw watched them leave, then turned to face the consequences of his actions.

  TIMELINE:

  COYOTE HISTORY

  Earth Events:

  JULY 5, 2070—URSS Alabama departs from Earth for 47 Ursae Majoris and Coyote.

  APRIL–DECEMBER 2096—United Republic of America falls. Treaty of Havana cedes control of North America to the Western Hemisphere Union.

  JUNE 16, 2256—WHSS Seeking Glorious Destiny Among the Stars for Greater Good of Social Collectivism leaves Earth for Coyote.

  JANUARY 4, 2258—WHSS Traveling Forth to Spread Social Collectivism to New Frontiers leaves Earth for Coyote.

  DECEMBER 10, 2258—WHSS Long Journey to the Galaxy in the Spirit of Social Collectivism leaves Earth for Coyote.

  AUGUST 23, 2259—WHSS Magnificent Voyage to the Stars in Search of Social Collectivism leaves Earth for Coyote.

  MARCH 4, 2260—WHSS Spirit of Social Collectivism Carried to the Stars leaves Earth for Coyote.

  AUGUST 2270–JULY 2279—The Savant Genocide; 35,000 on Earth killed; mass extermination of Savants, with the survivors fleeing the inner solar system.

  APRIL 2288—First sighting of Spindrift by telescope array on the lunar farside.

  JUNE 1, 2288—EASS Galileo leaves Earth for rendezvous with Spindrift; contact lost with Earth soon thereafter.

  JANUARY 2291—EASS Galileo reaches Spindrift. First contact.

  SEPTEMBER 18, 2291—EASS Columbus leaves for Coyote.

  FEBRUARY 1, 2344—CFSS Robert E. Lee returns to Earth, transporting survivors of the Galileo expedition.

  Coyote Events:

  AUGUST 5, 2300—URSS Alabama arrives at 47 Ursae Majoris system.

  SEPTEMBER 7, 2300/URIEL 47, C.Y. 01—Colonists arrive on Coyote; later known as “First Landing Day.”

  URIEL 52, C.Y. 02—First c
hild born on Coyote: Susan Gunther Montero.

  GABRIEL 18, C.Y. 03—WHSS Glorious Destiny arrives. Original colonists flee Liberty; Western Hemisphere Union occupation of Coyote begins.

  AMBRIEL 32, C.Y. 03—WHSS New Frontiers arrives.

  HAMALIEL 2, C.Y. 04—WHSS Long Journey arrives.

  BARACHIEL 6, C.Y. 05—WHSS Magnificent Voyage arrives.

  BARBIEL 30, C.Y. 05—Thompson’s Ferry Massacre; beginning of the Revolution.

  GABRIEL 75, C.Y. 06—WHSS Spirit arrives. ASMODEL 5, C.Y. 06—Liberty retaken by colonial rebels, Union forces evicted from Coyote; later known as “Liberation Day.”

  HAMALIEL C.Y. 13—EASS Columbus arrives; construction of starbridge begins.

  NOVEMBER 2340/HANAEL C.Y. 13—Columbus shuttle EAS Isabella returns to Earth via Starbridge Coyote; United Nations recognition of Coyote Federation.

  MURIEL 45, C.Y. 15—Galileo shuttle EAS Maria Celeste returns to Coyote via alien starbridge.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The author wishes to extend his gratitude to his editor, Ginjer Buchanan, and his literary agent, Martha Millard. Many thanks as well to Rob Caswell; Jeff Hecht; Thomas Peters; Dr. Horace Marchant, PhD; Terry Kepner; and Sara Schwager for their support and advice; and to the staff of Wilton Park for their hospitality. And, as always, special thanks to Linda Steele for her love and support.

  —Whately, Massachusetts

  August 2005–April 2006

  SOURCES

  Arnold, Luc. F. A. “Transit light-curve signatures of artificial objects”; Astrophysical Journal, July 1, 2005.

  Bracewell, Ronald N. The Galactic Club: Intelligent Life in Outer Space; W. H. Freeman and Company, 1975.

  Brown, Michael E., et al. “Discovery of a planetary object in the scattered Kuiper Belt”; Astrophysical Journal, August 29, 2005 (submitted).