Aftermath

by Charles Sheffield

  13

  By six o'clock it was already dark. Outside, the snow fell steadily. President Steinmetz had been sent safely on his way, after a hectic hour and a half in which Auden Travis had tried to do two days' work. Now Auden could take off his coat, roll up his shirtsleeves, and catch up on some of his other duties.

  The emergency power system of the White House had not been designed for extended use. A week and a half was well beyond its intended lifetime, and now and again the lights flickered and dimmed. Each time Auden stopped, sat back, stretched, and allowed himself a moment of rest. If the power reduction lasted more than a few seconds, he would have to find out what was happening.

  It was during one of those moments of power reduction that Nick Lopez quietly entered the little office.

  Auden, flustered, sat up and took his hands from behind his head. "I'm sorry, Senator. I didn't know you were still here."

  Lopez just grinned. "I wasn't here. I left, and I came back. Any chance of a few more minutes with el Presidente?"

  "Not tonight. He's on his way to Indian Head—by boat."

  "Is he, now?" Lopez gazed at Auden shrewdly. Without being asked, he pulled up a chair and settled onto it. He moved easily, and with unusual grace. "May I ask why?"

  "He has a meeting there with one of the staff." Auden was going to say no more, but Nick Lopez was staring at him with quiet sympathy. "With Yasmin Silvers."

  "Ah." Lopez winked at Auden in a knowing way. His broad, good-natured face showed understanding and no hint of censure. "Well, I'm sure Saul has earned it. You know what they say, all work and no play . . ."

  "It may be a business meeting."

  "It may." Lopez smiled at Auden. "Then again, it may not. Your loyalty does you credit. Meanwhile, you are left here, to work and work and work. What time do you stop?"

  "When I feel I'm not being productive anymore." Auden gestured to his desk, piled high with notes and folders and clipboards. He knew Nick Lopez's reputation, but it was flattering to have so important a man take a personal interest in what he was doing. "There's always plenty of work—especially now, when the support systems don't function."

  "Of course. Work is important. But you are young, it ought not to be all work. You should have some social life."

  "Is there any? I thought the city was at a standstill."

  "In some ways. But life goes on, even now. As a matter of fact, this very evening—" Lopez paused. "Look, a couple of my friends are having a little party. I told them I couldn't make it, because I knew I would be coming here and I hoped to spend some time with the President. But now I can go. It's not far from the White House, across Lafayette Park and a few blocks north. The streets are dangerous, but I'll get a security escort. Why don't you take a break and come along with me?"

  It was tempting. Auden was tired to the point where he wasn't sure he was getting anything useful done. On the other hand . . . "Senator Lopez, thank you for the invitation. But I don't think I should. I don't know your friends. They don't know me."

  "It's quite informal, and there will be a fair number of people there. I suspect you will know some of them already." Lopez moved his chair closer. "I've been close to Jeremy and Raoul for years, you don't need an invitation if you arrive with me. And they are nice people. I'm sure you would like them."

  "I wish I could. But I have a lot of work to do." Auden stared at Lopez's big, brown hand, with a thick gold band on its index finger. It was a contrast to his own forearm, white and freckled and golden-haired and just a couple of inches away. He withdrew his arm a little, trying to make the movement look natural. "It's really nice of you to ask me."

  "I think you would enjoy yourself." Nick Lopez pulled his hand away and smiled warmly at Auden. "Look, this is going to sound peculiar. But are you scared of me?"

  "Scared? Well, no, not scared, I wouldn't say that." Auden did his best to smile back. "But you have a—well, let's say, a reputation."

  "Auden, for Christ's sake." Nick Lopez laughed aloud. "I'm a politician, and this is Washington. The original city for, 'Unless you've got something horrible to say about him, I don't want to hear it.' Remember Harry Truman's advice? 'If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.' Sure, people say things about me. They say things about your boss, too. One day they'll say things about you."

  "But there was—well, that court case . . ." Auden couldn't bring himself to be more specific.

  "Raymond Silvers, and his attempt to kill me? That's a perfect example of what I mean. If you want to know what really happened, you should read the actual court hearings. You'll see that I didn't do a thing except reject his unwanted advances. But the media all hate me, I'm much too patriotic for them. They distort everything. I can't let their rumors and lies control my life. Or yours." He moved his hand again, this time placing it lightly onto Auden's forearm. Auden felt the goose bumps rise, as unwanted and as uncontrollable as a blush.

  "Look," Lopez went on, "I'll make you a promise. You arrive at the party with me, but after that you're on your own. You talk with anyone you want to. You do whatever you want to. You leave anytime you want to. What do you say?"

  "It sounds very interesting. I've hardly left my desk for two weeks. And I haven't been out to a party in months. My clothes—"

  "—are fine, just the way they are. I told you, this is informal. One question, though. Do you have anybody at the moment?"

  "You mean, anybody, like—"

  "Yes, that is exactly what I mean. Look, Auden, I'm not being nosy, but I know one thing for sure. When I show up at the party with somebody looking like you, and people realize that the two of us aren't an item, that's the first question I'm going to be asked. So I'm asking you ahead of time. Do you have someone?"

  "Not right now, Senator. Last year."

  "Not 'Senator,' please. Call me Nick, or Nicky—you'll have to call me that at the party; everyone else does. And last year was last year, it doesn't count. We all have pasts. Now the New Year, reviving old desires . . . Ah, my beloved, fill the cup that clears, today of past regrets and future fears . . . " He took Auden's hand and squeezed it. "Now, I'm really in your power. You have a secret of mine that all Washington would love to know, something you must never reveal. Nick Lopez, quoting old poetry—and not even good old American poetry. It would ruin my reputation. Let's go."

  And, as Auden rolled down his shirtsleeves and picked up his jacket, Lopez added softly and in a different voice, "There's one other thing I have to say, Auden. You can make what you like of this, forget it or ignore it or use it any way you choose. But so far as I am concerned, I'm really thrilled that you don't have anybody now."

  14

  When would the orbiters leave the space station to make their reentry?

  Where would they land?

  Who would be on each one?

  Zoe Nash had taken total responsibility for those three decisions. "I'll tell you, when, and where, and who."

  Zoe was confident, if not casual, and for that Celine was profoundly grateful. Thinking about the situation as she made her way through the silent interior of ISS-2, she knew she would have agonized endlessly and never been able to come up with answers. She was a natural procrastinator, able to see a hundred roads to failure.

  How much preparation was enough? To Celine, two days was a ridiculously short time. On the other hand, you could check instruments and programs forever and still miss something. How did you divide the group in two? It was absolutely necessary, but how did you decide the mix of skills to place on each orbiter? The whole point of the Mars expedition crew was that it worked best as a single integrated unit.

  Fortunately, Celine had a practical task to occupy her mind. She had been told to search the derelict for a dozen of a particular type of bonding clamp, needed in the orbiters, and she had located a whole cabinet of them in the central supply room of ISS-2. Now she was heading back through the desolate corridors. The previous two days had not hardened her to the sight of the frozen corpses, but she kn
ew where they were and she had learned not to look at them.

  At the open airlock she paused. In front of her, framed against the backdrop of a sunlit Earth, hung the Schiaparelli. It had been home for so long, the very idea of leaving it was frightening. To leave it in one of those—she glanced to her right, at the tiny, vulnerable orbiters—was doubly daunting. The interiors, even with the padded seats pulled out, were impossibly small. They were definitely one-person ships.

  If everything went well, Lewis and Clark—Reza Armani's off-the-cuff names for the twin orbiters had stuck—would return to a torn and battered planet, whose peculiar cloud patterns and high dust clouds were evidence of the physical trauma that the world had suffered. What would the crew find when they landed? The radio signals remained sparse and weak, with some countries and continents totally silent. The Schiaparelli had sent calls for help and information on all frequencies. It had received not a word or a beep in reply.

  Celine floated her way across to Clark, the nearer orbiter. She confirmed that the clamps were the right size and style to attach the hammocks to the walls, and performed the simple installation. The hammocks were tough, made of Mars tent materials that by good fortune had neither been landed on Mars nor discarded before the return trip. Without seats, hammocks would be the crew's only cushion against the high accelerations of reentry.

  Celine tested that the bonds would hold for body loads up to thirty gees. Beyond that, humans would not survive even if the clamps could. She moved across to Lewis and performed the same task of installation. Then she headed to the home ship—home, at least, for another few hours—and passed through the Schiaparelli's airlock. She removed her suit, rubbed her itching eyes, and floated on to the main cabin.

  The other crew members were already there. Zoe gave Celine an inquiring glance, and she nodded.

  "I found them. They fit."

  "Good. Jenny?"

  Jenny Kopal was crouched over a diagnostic pad. She shrugged. "I can only debug to a point using simulated inputs. According to every test routine that I have, the chips we put into the orbiters from this ship will perform identically to the dead ones they replaced. I loaded them all from the general program library for single-stage orbiters. But you know what they say. No matter how much testing you do, every program always has one bug left in it."

  "Let's hope it's a bug we don't encounter before we're down on Earth." Zoe leaned back. "Alta?"

  "I don't know." Alta paused and thought for thirty seconds. "I guess the orbiters are as ready as they'll ever be. I'm still worried about center-of-mass changes because of the unusual loading. But I think any one of us could fly one."

  "Coming from a pessimist like you, I take that as a rave report. All right." Zoe leaned back. "It's showtime again, folks. And here is the plan. Lewis will perform reentry first. As you know, it can only hold three people. Those three are going to be Zoe Nash, Ludwig Holter, and Alta McIntosh-Mohammad. I will pilot Lewis. Then, unless someone wants to stay up here and wait for the next shuttle up from Earth"—Zoe smiled at her joke, but no one else did—"Clark will take Reza Armani, Jenny Kopal, Celine Tanaka, and Wilmer Oldfield. Reza will pilot Clark.

  "Lewis will send telemetry back here all the time during reentry, except when it goes through the period of radio blackout. I believe the increased mass load on the second reentry will be more than compensated for by the opportunity to fine-tune Clark's control parameters using the data from Lewis. Any questions so far?"

  There was silence. It was obvious to Celine, as it must be to all of the others, that Zoe had included factors other than mass balance in deciding the complement of the two crews. She had placed the people pairs, Jenny/Reza, Alta/Ludwig, and Celine/Wilmer, on the same orbiter as each other. To some, that might suggest sentiment on Zoe's part. To a worrywart like Celine, it said that the reentry dangers were more than Zoe was willing to admit. She was offering them a chance to die as the couples that they had become.

  "Now there is the question of where," Zoe went on. "Where should we aim to land? I think we can make one decision very easily: we avoid the Southern Hemisphere. We've picked up hardly a radio signal from there. Also, if we are off in our final along-track position, the Southern Hemisphere offers a higher chance of landing in water. The orbiters are not designed for an ocean splashdown, and even if they were I don't feel like a thousand-mile swim.

  "The majority of the radio signals we have received come from North America, with considerably more from the northern states than the southern, and more from the east than the west. So north is good, and east is good. We are in a low inclination orbit, so a very high latitude touchdown is not possible. I think we can reach forty degrees north, and I propose that we try to do so. I will aim to make Lewis's landing close to the fortieth parallel, near the eastern seaboard but at least a hundred miles from the Atlantic Ocean. Normally the orbiters can land on a dime, but we need a margin of error. I will not try to specify a final landing location now, because we have not been able to obtain a clear picture of surface conditions. We'll see what we have available when we get there. An airport would be nice, but any decent highway will do at a pinch. Naturally, once Lewis is down we'll send a message telling Clark what to aim for or what to avoid. We've been over all this before, in smaller groups. But does anybody have a question or a comment?"

  She waited a few moments, and went on: "Then the only remaining question is, when?

  "We will do one final start-to-finish checkout of everything, which ought to take no more than a few hours. After that, Lewis will take the next available reentry window. The main requirements are that we have a daytime landing—it's currently night in North America—and that Lewis has line-of-sight communications with those of you who are still here on the Schiaparelli. That means there has to be some orbit matching, but Jenny already did those calculations. Once Lewis is down, we can decide the schedule for Clark based on our experience. Any other questions?"

  "I have been thinking."

  To Celine's surprise, the speaker was Wilmer. He almost never contributed to group meetings. Quite often, he didn't seem to be listening. But he was. He would go away, brood over what he had heard, and return to offer crucial suggestions or devastating criticisms.

  Celine decided that Wilmer understood, better than she had, the nature of this particular meeting. There would be no chance for later discussions. This was it, the final meeting of the Mars expedition until they were all once more on Earth.

  "All right, Wilmer," Zoe said. "What's your worry?"

  He put his hand up to scratch the top of his bald head—a habit that looked ludicrous and that Celine had not been able to change. It gave him a permanent and ugly red patch. "This is a suggestion, not a worry. You speak of a line-of-sight requirement for communications, and I assume that you mean radio signals. But I think we should also track the descent of the Lewis visually, using the biggest scope on the Schiaparelli."

  "What would be the point of that?"

  "Suppose that you encounter trouble during that period of reentry when ionization around the orbiter prevents the transmission of radio signals. Visual observation might then offer the only evidence of the nature of the difficulty."

  "We don't anticipate trouble." Zoe glanced around the rest of the group, who were showing uneasiness in various ways at the implications of Wilmer's suggestion. "I guess we all like to think positive. But Wilmer is right. If anything were to go wrong with Lewis, the rest of you will need to learn all you can from our difficulties before Clark makes its own return from orbit. Celine, please make sure that the big scope is set up for continuous visual coverage of the reentry of Lewis.

  "Anything else? No?" Zoe went on casually, as though orbital reentry to a radically changed Earth in an untested ship was the most routine operation imaginable. "Let's get to it, then. I'm fond of the Schiaparelli, and it's been good to us. But I'm a little bit itchy to get home."

  * * *

  "Day" and "night" on the Schiaparelli violated human na
ture and common sense. The Mars ship was locked into the same orbit as ISS-2, and every ninety minutes brought a new dawn and a new sunset. It took five of those "days," almost eight hours, before the motion of Earth and ship were synchronized, and Zoe was able to say from the controls of Lewis, "We have thrust. See you all down there."

  Celine and the other three were in the control room of the Schiaparelli, where they could receive radio inputs from Lewis and visual images from the biggest of the onboard scopes. She looked at Jenny, Reza, and Wilmer and felt a strange uneasiness. Zoe, Ludwig, and Alta had not always been in the same cabin with her on the Schiaparelli; for much of the time on the return journey, they had all hidden themselves away from each other. But in a sense the other six had been "there," all the time. They had formed a unit, working together in the greatest feat of human exploration ever undertaken.

  Now they were split, and even when they came together again on Earth it would not be the same. Something had been lost in that moment of Lewis's departure. Celine hated the feeling of loneliness.

  At the moment the orbiter was still close to them, and they did not need a scope to see the blue-white flare of its nuclear rocket. But Lewis dropped away steadily, losing altitude and velocity, and as the minutes passed the ship as seen without the scope dwindled to a fiery spark. It was beginning the long arc down to the atmosphere of the Earth.

  "Everything is nominal." Zoe's voice was clear over the telemetry. "The control routines are behaving exactly as we hoped and expected. You will lose radio contact with us in eight minutes."

  Even when ionization induced a temporary radio silence, the image of the orbiter would still be picked up by the big onboard telescope and displayed on the control-room screen. Celine looked, and saw that Lewis had already switched off its engine and turned for the nose-first reentry. The image of the orbiter was tiny but quite clear. She even imagined she could make out the dots of people's heads in the cabin's transparent viewport.