by Larry Niven
"I see. Thanks, Vicki. Uh—I’ll get back to you, shall I?"
"You’ll have to. We need to go over your gear, find out what David left you, and what you have to take. I’ll help with that."
"Thanks. There’s a lot of it here. I’ll get it out. Thanks for inviting me."
"Sure. Bye."
Jeri put the phone down and thoughtfully pulled at her lower lip.
Aliens. Coming here, soon.
And they hid at Saturn. No sign of them, nothing that made sense, anyway. They stayed hidden for more than a dozen years. Is that a sign of friendship?
Don’t be paranoid, she told herself. But it might be a good idea not to be in a big city when they came. Just in case.
She and David and Melissa had visited George and Vicki at the Enclave house in Bellingham. That had been nice, a good vacation—
It had been their last vacation together. A month later, David was transferred to Colorado.
"It’s a big raise," he’d told her. He sounded excited.
"But what about my job?"
"What about it, Jeri? You don’t have to work,"
"David, I don’t have to, but I want to." When Melissa started school, Jeri needed something to do, and became an editorial assistant with the West Coast branch of a big publishing house. She’d been good at the job. Her experience with the alumni paper had helped. Within a year she’d become an associate editor, and then there’d been a lucky break: she’d discovered a woman who needed a lot of help, hand-holding and reassurances, and lots of editing, but whose first book became an instant best-seller.
After that, Jeri became a senior editor. "I’m important at Harris Wickes."
"You’re important to me. And to Melissa."
"David—"
"Jeri. It’s a big promotion."
I was a damn fool. So was he. Why didn’t he tell me they’d fire him if he didn’t transfer? That a lot of eager young petroleum geologists were graduating from the schools, and the big firms would rather hire a recent graduate than a man so long out of school . . .
He didn’t tell me because he was ashamed. They didn’t really want him anymore, but he couldn’t tell me that. And he wouldn’t beg me.
Damn it, I begged him! But it’s not really the same, and David, David, why can’t I just call you and say I’m coming to you . . .
Why can’t I?
* * *
It was a beautiful spring day in Washington. The city was surprisingly calm, despite the headlines. It took a lot to shake up Washington people.
Roger Brooks walked from NASA headquarters back toward the White House. There’d been nothing for him at the NASA press conference. It was great for Congressman Wes Dawson that he was going to go up to the Soviet Kosmograd space station to watch the aliens arrive. It might even make a story, but Mavis would take care of the news part, and there was plenty of time to collect background.
For a minute he’d thought he had something. Jeanette Crichton discovers the satellite and Wes Dawson goes to the President.. Not too many would know about the connection between Linda Crichton Gillespie and Carlotta Dawson. He was still thinking about that when the NASA press people explained it all in loving detail. Captain Crichton calls her brother-in-law, who calls Congressman Dawson, who goes to see the President. All out in the open for everyone to see. Nothing hidden at all. Damn.
It was a good twenty-minute walk to the Mayflower. Even so, Roger got there before his lunch appointment. The grill at the Mayflower was convenient, even if the food wasn’t distinguished. Roger would have preferred one of the French cuisine places off K Street, but today he was meeting John Fox. Fox wasn’t someone you ate an expensive lunch with, no matter who was paying. Brooks ordered a glass of white wine and leaned back to relax until Fox showed up.
You can’t get anywhere in Washington, D.C., without a coat and tie. Sure enough, Fox was in disguise, in a gray business suit and a tie that didn’t glare. It wouldn’t have fooled anybody. His shirt cuffs gave him away: they were much larger than his wrists. Lean as a ferret, with bony shoulders and fat-free muscle showing even in the hands and face, John Fox looked like he’d just walked out of a desert.
Roger worked his way out of the booth to shake his hand. "How are you, John? Have you heard the news?"
"Yeah." They slid into the booth. "I’m surprised you’re here."
For a fact, this wasn’t the day a militant defender of deserts could get the public’s attention! Roger had toyed with the idea of chasing after news of the "alien spacecraft." But those who knew anything would be telling anyone who would listen, and he’d be fighting for scraps.
For a while Roger had wondered. Aliens, coming from Saturn. It didn’t make sense, and Roger was sure it was some kind of trick, probably CIA. When he tried to check that out, though, he ran into a barrage of genuine bewilderment. If there were any secrets hidden inside the President’s announcement, it was going to take a lot more than a few hours to find them. And John Fox had given Roger stories in the past.
So he said, "The day I skip an appointment with a known news source, you call the police, because I’ve been kidnapped. Now tell me what you’re doing in Washington. I know you don’t like cities."
Fox nodded. "Have you heard what they’re doing to China Lake?" When Brooks looked blank, he amplified. "The High-Beam."
For a moment nothing clicked. Then: of course, he meant the microwave receiving station. An orbiting solar power plant had to have a receiver. "It’s just a test facility. It’s only going to cover about an acre."
"Oh. Sure. And the orbiting power plant only covers about a square mile of sky, and won’t send down more than a thousand megawatts even if everything works. Roger, don’t you understand about test cases? If it works, they’ll do it bigger. They’ll cover the whole damn sky with silver rectangles. I like the sky! I like desert, too. This thing has to be stopped now."
"I wonder if the Soviets won’t stop us before you do."
"They haven’t yet." Fox looked thoughtful. "All the science types say this thing isn’t a weapon. I wonder if the Russians believe that?’
Roger shrugged.
"Anyway, I thought I’d better be here. Flew in on the red-eye last night. But nobody’s keeping appointments. Nobody but you." He glanced up to see the waitress hovering. "Bacon burger. Tomato slices, no fries. Hot tea."
"Chef’s salad. Heineken." Brooks made notes, but mostly out of habit. Of course no one was keeping appointments! Aliens were coming to Earth. "They tell me it’ll be Clean power," Roger said. "Help eliminate acid rain."
Fox shook his head. "Never works. They get more power, they use more power. Look. They tell you an electric razor doesn’t use much power, right? And it doesn’t. But what about the power it took to make the damn thing? You use it a few years, maybe not that long, and Out it goes.
"The more electric power we get, the more they’re tempted to keep up the throw away society. No real conservation. Nothing lasts. Doesn’t have to last. Roger, no matter how clean they make it, it pollutes some. They’ll never learn to do without until they have to do without."
"Okay." Brooks jotted more notes. "So they’ll clutter up the deserts and block the stars and give us bad habits. What else is wrong with them?"
Roger Brooks listened halfheartedly as Fox marshaled his arguments. There weren’t any new ones. They weren’t what Roger had come for, anyway. Fox could argue, but the real stories would come from learning what tactics Fox intended to use. He had loyal troops, loyal enough to chain themselves to the gates of nuclear power plants or clog the streets of Washington. Fox had led the fight against the Sun Desert nuclear power plant, and won, and his tips had put Roger in the right place at the right time for good stories.
Not today, though. No one was listening to Fox today. Not even his friends.
Not even me, Roger thought. This wasn’t going to make any kind of news. Brooks was tempted to put away his notebook. Instead he said, "This could be just a puff of smoke tomorrow, o
r later today, for that matter. Have you thought about what an interstellar spacecraft might use for power? By the time the aliens stop talking, these orbiting solar plants could look like the first fire stick, even to us."
Fox shook his head. "Hell we may not even understand what these ETI’s are using. Or maybe it’s worse than what we’ve got. Anyway, nothing changes that fast. Whatever that light in the sky does for us, the High-Beam is going ahead unless I stop it. And I intend to. I had an appointment with Senator Bryant. He canceled, for today, so I’ll just wait him out."
Brooks jotted, "John Fox is the only man in the nation’s capital who doesn’t care beans about an approaching interstellar spacecraft."
"Hell, I wish I had something more for you," Fox said’. "Thought I did."
"It’s all right."
"No, it’s not," Fox said. "You’re like me, Brooks. A nut. Monomaniac." He held up his hand when Roger started to protest. "It’s true. I love my deserts, and you love snooping. Well, heft, I’d help you get a Pulitzer if I could. You’ve always played fair with me." He chuckled. "But not today. Nobody’s paying attention to a damn thing but that ETI comin’. Do you really believe in that thing?"
"I think so. You know that army officer who was in Hawaii when they saw it coming? I know her. I just don’t think she’s part of anything funny. No, it’s real all right."
"Could be."
"There are a lot of scientists in the Sierra Club," Roger said. "Any of them have an opinion?"
"On High-Beam? Damn right—"
"I meant on the ETI’s, John."
Fox grinned. "I haven’t heard. I will, though, and I’ll be sure to let you know."
* * *
Jenny surveyed her office with satisfaction. The furniture was battered. Fortunately, there wasn’t much of it, because if there’d been more, the office couldn’t have held it all. She had a desk with nothing on it but a telephone. There were also a small typing table, three chairs, and a thick-walled filing cabinet with a heavy security lock. They said they’d get her a bookcase, but that hadn’t come yet. Neither had the computer terminal.
The room was tiny and windowless, in a basement—but it was the White House basement, and that made up for everything.
The phone rang.
"Major Crichton," she said.
"Jack Clybourne."
"Oh. Hi." He’d come in for coffee after he drove her home. They’d sat outside under Flintridge’s arbor, and when they noticed the time, two hours had passed. That hadn’t happened to her in years.
"Hi, yourself. I’ve only got a moment. Interested in dinner?"
Aunt Rhonda would expect her to eat at Flintridge. "What did you have in mind?"
"Afghan place. Stuffed grape leaves and broiled lamb."
"It sounds great. But—"
"Let me call you after you get home. No big deal, if you can’t make it, I’ll go to McDonald’s."
"You’re threatening suicide if I don’t have dinner with you?"
"I have to run. I’ll call you—"
"I haven’t given you the number," she said. "How will you call?"
"We have our ways. Bye."
She put the phone carefully on its cradle. Holy catfish, I’m actually light-headed. Stupid. I just need lunch. But I was thinking about him just before he called.
* * *
The private phone on Wes Dawson’s desk was hidden inside a leather box. It rang softly.
"Yes?" Carlotta said.
"Me."
"How’s Houston?"
"Hot and wet and windy. I’m in the Hilton Edgewater, room 2133."
She made a note of the room number. "I miss you already," he said, "Sure. You probably have a Texas girl already." "Two, actually."
"Just be careful. I’ve seen the Speaker. We’ll arrange for you to be paired whenever we can, so it’ll go in the Congressional Quarterly."
It was standard practice: a congressman who couldn’t be present for a vote found another who intended to vote the opposite way, and formed a pair. Neither attended, and both were recorded as "paired" so that the outcome of the vote wasn’t affected, but neither congressman was blamed for missing a roll-call vote.
"Good. Can you ask Andy to look after my committee work?"
"Already did. What kind of administrative assistant do you think I am, anyway?"
"Fair to middling."
"Humph. Keep that up and I’ll ask for a raise I suppose Houston’s full of talk about the aliens?"
"Lord, yes," Wes said. "And the TV shows-did you watch the Tonight Show? Nothing but alien jokes, some pretty clever I think the country’s taking it all right."
"So do I, but I’ve got Wilbur checking things out in the district," Carlotta said. "So far nothing, though. Not even phone calls, except Mrs. McNulty."
"Yeah, I expect she’s in heaven." Mrs. McNulty called her congressman every week, usually to insist on protection against flying saucers. "Look, they’ve got me on a pretty rigorous schedule. Up before the devil’s got his shoes on. Physical training, yet! Ugh."
"You’ll be all right. You’re in good shape," Carlotta said.
"I’ll be in better in a month. You’ll love it—"
"Good. Call me tomorrow."
"I will. Thanks, Carlotta."
She smiled as she put the phone down. Thanks, he’d said. Thanks for looking after things, for letting me go to space. As long as she’d known Wes, he’d been a space nut. He’d even signed up to be a lunar colonist, and was shocked when she told him she wasn’t really interested in living on the Moon. His look had frightened her: he would have gone without her if he’d had the chance.
That chance never came. The U.S. Lunar Base was a tiny affair, never more than six astronauts and currently down to four. The Russians had fifteen people on the Moon—and they made it clear that a larger U.S. effort wouldn’t be welcome.
What would they do to the Americans sent more people to the Moon? President Coffey hadn’t wanted to find out. Maybe it wouldn’t matter now.
Carlotta went back to the papers on Wes Dawson’s desk. Aliens might or might not be coming, but if Wes Dawson wanted to remain in Congress, there was a lot of work to finish here in Washington.
6
PREPARATIONS
There are periods when the principles of experience need to be modified, when hope and trust and instinct claim a share with prudence in the guidance of affairs, when, in truth, to dare, is the highest wisdom.
—WILLLAM ELLERY CHANNING, The Union
COUNTDOWN: H MINUS FIVE WEEKS
Academician Pavel Bondarev sat at his massive walnut desk and flicked imaginary dust specks from its gleaming surface. The office was large, as befitted a full member of the Soviet Academy who was also Director of an Institute for Astrophysics. The walls were decorated with photographs taken by the new telescope aboard the Soviet Kosmograd space station. There were spectacular views of Jupiter, as good as those obtained by the American spacecraft; and there were color photographs of nebulae and galaxies, and the endless wonders of the sky
There was also a portrait of Lenin. Pavel Aleksandrovich Bondarev needed no visit from the local Party officials to remind him of that. Visiting Party officials might know nothing of what the Institute did—but they would certainly notice if there was no picture of Lenin. It might be the only thing a visiting Party official was qualified to notice.
He waited impatiently. Because he was waiting, he was startled when the interphone buzzed.
"Da"
"He has arrived at the airport," his secretary said.
"There are papers to sign—"
"Bring them," Bondarev said brusquely.
The door opened seconds later. His secretary came in. She carried a sheaf of papers, but she made no move to show them to him.
Lorena was a small woman, with dark flashing eyes. Her ankles were thin. One wrist was encircled by a golden chain which Pavel Bondarev had given her the third time they had slept together. She had been his mistress for te
n years, and he could not imagine life without her. To the best of his knowledge, she had no life beyond him. She was the perfect secretary in public, and the perfect mistress in private. It had occurred to him that she genuinely loved him, but that thought was sufficiently frightening that he did not want to deal with it.
Better to think of her as mistress and secretary. Emotional involvement was dangerous.
She came in and closed the door. "Who is this man?" she demanded. "Why is Moscow sending an important man who does not give his name? What have you been doing Pavel Aleksandrovich?"
He frowned slightly. Lately she had begun speaking to him that way even at the office. Never when anyone was around, of course, but it was bad for discipline to allow her to address him in that way inside the Institute. A rebuke came to his tongue, but he swallowed it. She would accept it, yes, but he would be made to pay, tonight, tomorrow night, some evening in her apartment . . .
"It is not a difficulty," Bondarev said. "He was expected."
"Then you know him—"
"No. I meant that someone from Moscow was expected." He smiled, and she moved closer to him until she was standing beside his chair. Her hand lay on his arm. He covered it with his own. "There is no difficulty, my lovely one. Calm yourself."
"If you say so—"
"I do. You recall the telephone call from the Americans in Hawaii? It concerns that."
"But you will not tell me—"
He laughed. "I have not told my wife and children."
She snorted.
"Well, yes. Even so, this is a state secret. It is a matter of state security! Why should I deceive you?"
"What have we to do with state security? How can the state be affected by distant galaxies?" she demanded. "What have you been doing? Pave I, you must not do this!"
"But what—"
"You wish to go to Moscow!" she said. "It is your wife. She has never been happy here." Her voice changed, became more shrill, accented with the bored sophistication of a Muscovite great lady, daughter of a member of the Politburo. "Yes, the Party found it necessary to send Pavel here for a few years. The provincial people are so inefficient. I suppose we simply must make the sacrifice."