by Bob Mauldin
Marsha nodded her head slowly. “So it is a council of war. You plan to attack the United States less than three years after Sept. 11?”
“No,” Simon stated flatly. “Just one small part of it. At night, and preferably overcast, if possible.”
Lucy sat quietly in the corner of the ready room watching the bantering, questioning and planning go back and forth. The newest member of this august group, she watched the interplay between the various personages, but held her tongue. She specifically noted the way Kitty stood beside Simon, lending her support both visually and vocally. The two played off of each other almost as if it was rehearsed. Then she realized that it was. This scene had been planned two months before, at least in a general way.
She wondered at her role and realized as well that it didn’t really matter. The answers had already been figured out, and courses of action plotted. All else was just window-dressing.
Lucy was jerked out of her reverie by Simon’s question. She didn’t register it at first, so lost was she in trying to figure out what was next. As it was addressed to the room in general, her lapse wasn’t noticed. “Why me?” Simon asked, complaining again that he wasn’t the best person for the job. “Why should it be me that runs this show? There are any number of people who are better at organizing a group as disparate as this outfit is. There’s one example right there! Two years ago, I would never have used the word ‘disparate’ in a sentence. What qualifies me to sit at the top of the heap handing out edicts from on high?”
Lucy was amazed to hear the question. She started to answer, but Kitty spoke up first. “Because you’re right,” she said. “Everyone agrees that Galileo can’t be given directly to Earth. Doling out the technology is the only safe way to see that the people benefit before the governments and militaries do this time.”
Gayle said, “The crucial test is whether our way costs fewer lives to accomplish.”
“Is that lives lost or lives destroyed?” Stephen asked. “The technologies we are able to introduce will put so many industries out of business. Of course it will create more, but some of those displaced people won’t be able to acclimate to the new reality. No matter what we do, we’re bound to hurt somebody.”
Lucy surprised the whole room, herself included, when she spoke up. “Are you kidding?” She let the front legs of her chair bang onto the deck and continued on to her feet. “You’re the Captain and you,” she said, turning to Kitty, “are Captain Kitty.” She looked at Stephen and Gayle, including them in her next words. “You four are the Firsters. That’s with a capital ‘f,’ in case you didn’t hear it. You found Galileo and figured out how to run her.”
She turned her attention back to Simon. “Why you? Because you had a vision. The kind of vision that people can get behind. The kind of vision that can transform a world, Simon. And all those people out there? They’re behind you one hundred percent. Why? Because you let them come along on the journey. You allowed them, us, me, to be a part of what you’re building out here. There are nights,” she heard herself saying, “when we don’t sleep. We talk instead. And we can see the future, too. Why do you think we’re all still here? Especially after what happened with Orion?”
Stunned by her own temerity, Lucy sank back into her chair. “There’s just something about you two that just makes people trust you.” She was silent for a few seconds, then scrunched down in her chair and added, “And the people you pick to be in charge, and God help me, I’m one of them now!” she muttered quietly.
Simon looked at Kitty after Lucy’s outburst then at the rest of the room. “Who says I’m right? And even if I am, why can’t someone else be just as right and sit here instead of me? There’s an entire government down there, ours, since we are mostly Americans, that says I’m wrong and is trying to take it all away from us. And until they got caught at it, were fucking with our families. Still are with Kitty and me and a few others. Do they know more than I, than we, do?”
“We have the strength and power to do whatever we want,” Stephen said almost apologetically. “As long as we don’t abuse that power, we have the right to choose for ourselves how we deal with this situation. No one down there is any better equipped to deal with this than we are. You’ve drilled that into all of us from the very first day.”
Marsha snorted. “Give me two hours with a history book and I will give you at least six examples in recorded history of larger, less technological societies absorbing smaller, better equipped ones. Of course, I can name a few where the reverse is true, too. Just proves that history is a crap shoot.” She smiled slightly. “Now that I’ve got everyone’s attention, which I didn’t want, by the way, I have to say that I agree with Lucy. And to put a word on it, you’ve become a legend, the four of you. There is a mystique that follows you around, makes people listen to you and concern themselves with your ideas and opinions.”
Lucy, finding strength from Marsha’s support, said, “Look at where you have us, and what we have accomplished because of you. Most of us are sci-fi freaks and you’ve given us outer space. I remember you talking about a dream of an independent group, a nation, why not call it, existing not on the Earth, but above it. Others heard it as well. Eventually you quit talking about it. We thought, those of us who got together for talks after hours, that you quit talking about it because your dream was on track. Hell, after all this time, it has become a vision, if not of yours, then of the rest of us. And the women share the vision as much as the men. They see half of the First Four being female. Besides, aren’t we calling ourselves the Terran Alliance now, anyway?”
Kitty sat beside Simon in shock. Her contact with his body told her that he was in at least the same condition. The words of the two younger women, Lucy and Marsha, didn’t threaten her sanity as much as shake it for a minute or two. To think that she had a mystique! More to the point, she realized that they were right. Multiple confrontations, associations, and interactions raced through her mind and she saw how the crew acted differently toward both her and Simon, and to Gayle and Stephen.
She didn’t have time to go into some of the deeper ramifications before Simon stood up, breaking her train of thought. The expression on his face was one she could only think of as distasteful. His words, when he finally spoke were quiet enough that some had to strain to hear them. “All I ever wanted, from the first day we came aboard, was to be a ships’ captain, not ‘The Captain.’ Remember, I’m a sci-fi freak, too. I want to go where no man has gone before first, damn it! I need to think.” He looked around the room, bent down, kissed Kitty on the forehead, and said, “Someplace where nobody is sitting around waiting for an answer.”
The door closing on Simon’s hasty departure engendered only one comment. “Damn, I’m glad I don’t have to make his decisions,” Victor said, concern and relief evident in his voice.
Simon automatically made his way to the observation bubble that unique blister on the outer skin of the ship. A favorite place for crew members to visit, Simon was surprised to find it empty. He walked over to one of the walls and stared out at the stars. Galileo’s speed, such as it was, sitting next to Libra in the asteroid belt, meant that the perspective didn’t change much from minute to minute, hardly at all even from hour to hour.
Simon looked through the transparent metal of the bubble wall, “What a contradiction in terms,” he thought. “Transparent and metal, too.” He looked to the left and saw Heinlein and then to the right and got a view of McCaffrey riding shotgun. The bulk of Libra was out of sight beneath the body of the huge factory ship, although a portion of construction spar was visible below McCaffrey, pod jockeys carefully moving another beam into position. Nobody knew why every ship in the database that was a battle cruiser-size and larger had one of these bubbles built into the plans, but it was one of the things that the engineers decided not to change when they began to redesign the ships for human convenience.
Simon had never been a deeply religious person. His view was that though he felt
that the human race was more than just a cosmic accident, no caring God would let some of the things that had happened happen, free will be damned. But standing here, looking out at the vista that drew visitors like a Mamba drew pilot-hopefuls, he experienced something more than a vague feeling of something greater. Not a conversion, exactly, but a willingness to believe.
Simon was peripherally aware of others coming into the bubble, much as he was aware of the faint vibration bleeding up through the deck plates into his legs. Most visitors tended not to stay long when they saw The Captain, hands clasped behind his back, staring out at the infinite dark, obviously lost in thought.
In actuality, though, Simon wasn’t really thinking. All the thoughts had been thought, all the arguments made, both pro and con. Now he waited. He waited for his subconscious to reveal the decision. After a time, he no longer saw the stars outside the bubble, nor did he see the other ships, running lights ablaze, parked on either side. His mind began to lay out the possibilities, much as a chess player laid out the game, moves ahead.
Simon’s mental state was not one that lent itself to straight-line thinking. More closely akin to something Native Americans produced intentionally, it was brought on by a combination of factors that would not normally exist simultaneously in his life. Worry over family, never close, but still family, had been lurking in a deep, dark part of Simon’s mind for months, pushed there by the rationalization that the government wouldn’t really do anything to hurt them to get his cooperation. This was heaped on top of stress, which was heaped on top of exhaustion, with a bit of hunger thrown in for good measure. Now, though, he opened his mind to all the possibilities.
He wandered through the possible futures, the patterns forming and re-forming, the scenarios playing themselves out, sometimes logically, sometimes not. His mind sifted through the various possibilities, evaluating, discarding, searching for a Way through the clutter of possibilities that would lead to the outcome that he, and a lot of others, felt was best for the human race. The feeling of not being alone pulsed up through the floor with the ship’s vibration, helping to crystallize his decisions.
The visions ended, and Simon finally stirred from the position he had held for so long, feeling the ache in his knees and back. Decisions and goals finally accepted, Simon stretched the kinks out of his muscles, and with a determination that had not been in his step when he walked into the room, headed off to find something to fill the void in his mid-section.
Kitty sat in bed and looked at Simon over the mangled remains of the snack tray he brought in at three AM. She shook her head slowly, red hair swaying almost hypnotically. “No apologies, Dear. You had to travel your own road to reach the same destination. I had faith in you. So did everyone else. You just needed to learn to trust yourself.”
Simon pushed a piece of cantaloupe across the plate to Kitty, then speared the last piece of watermelon for himself. “You’ve known for a long time, haven’t you?” he asked. “That you were committed to this vision Lucy and Marsha are babbling about.”
“Ever since Orion,” she admitted, nodding. She stuck her tongue out as Simon bit into the watermelon, taking the last piece of fruit from the plate. “At least consciously. On the other hand, I think my sub-conscious may have been a little behind my conscious, you know?” She smiled slightly, unconsciously rubbing the numb spot on her right hand, the final physical reminder of her own recent digression from reality.
“There is just one more question to be answered,” Simon noted.
“And that is?”
“My decision. Is it fate, destiny, or just colossal arrogance?”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Those same two months before Libra’s completion also saw design changes in the newer ships to be produced that moved medical services to various places throughout the ships rather than consolidate them in one place, wider corridors, and generally speaking, a more user-friendly design.
It was during this time also that Dr. Penn signed off on Kitty’s complete recovery. She began to fly Mambas again and always had her particular craft either serviced by or signed off on by the head of Flight Services, trained by Chief Anson Hargrove.
This was the time, as well, to formulate plans for the meeting between Simon and the Vice-President. The Alliance’s technological advantages evident, and in large part available as trade goods, it was only left for the governments of Earth to reveal the existence of the Alliance formally and supply the bases Simon needed for open recruitment, and negotiations for technology rights could begin. After the rest of the hostages were released.
Trying to decide what to say to the man, how to respond to possible questions or comments from the opposing side, and who, more importantly than any of the above, was going to be involved in the planning process and negotiations was a nightmare from the word go.
One of Kitty’s contributions was to get a complete roster of all personnel actually in space at the moment, finding out what they knew, what they had studied, what their hobbies were, anything that might shed some light on who they could go to for this most delicate of proceedings. Up until this point, anyone who wanted to volunteer only needed to be at a collection point and they were beamed aboard, trained and moved to a more permanent station. Now finding out who each and every one of those people were and what each one knew became a priority.
Her thought had been that with as many college-age people aboard the ships and stations as there were, surely some of them had been studying something that would be of some use to them. Sure enough, three political science, poly-sci, majors were working aboard Orion and Gemini. Simon sent Marsha Kane in the Heinlein to pick them up and trade personnel so neither station would be shorted.
As this project worked its way towards completion, Dr. Penn used the radio and the Collier/Brandt connection to try to find a replacement and see if he could recruit volunteers from the medical community for the basic medical teams and more for the slowly expanding Alliance fleet.
Using Stephen to plan most of the details and getting Victor involved in the production planning, Simon got a blueprint for a planet-side base started. What he was looking for was something eye-catching and futuristic, since it would be one of the most televised structures on Earth for a while, and at the same time perform the functions of recruiting center, headquarters building, living areas and embassy. Simon agreed that it would be a good idea to build their own structure to show their expertise, not to mention the fact that there were some aboard who remembered stories about the fiasco of allowing the Russians to build the American embassy in Moscow. It had been so riddled with surveillance devices that it had to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up. Another consideration was the fact that the material would be proof against anything on Earth except a nuclear bomb, and the new shield technology could cover even that eventuality.
Simon had originally favored having the first base constructed in the United States, since that was his home country as well as most of the folks crewing the various ships and bases, and brought this up at one of the first sessions. But after discussion with his new planning staff, it was deemed best to place the first base somewhere in Europe. Most likely Switzerland, if possible, as that country had such a long tradition of strict neutrality.
Another topic that got a lot of attention was the requirement that anyone who wanted to could come to any one of the bases to apply. How the various countries worked that one out was going to be something to see, that was for sure, since so many applicants were going to be from places outside the host countries. Another thing to be put forth was that only four things would prevent anyone from volunteering: a physical inability to perform a job, having a record, intolerance of others, and not being able to speak English. No one thought this last requirement to be troubling as English was the most widely spoken language on the planet for business purposes anyway and had been for years. And the press would have a field-day with the fact that race, religion, gender, country of origin or adherenc
e to a particular governmental system wasn’t a going to be a consideration.
“So,” Simon commented, “we’ve chosen a location, assuming those on Earth will agree to it. We’ve set a platform of who we will accept as volunteers, which is virtually anybody. We do need to keep in mind that from the very first applicants, any or all of them could be spies or plants looking to steal the technology we don’t want to release. I still want to accept volunteers from outside the official channels. That is, from the groups of people that our present people know. Friends, family, associates known to them. These will provide a continuing group of people we can be relatively certain we can trust.”
Ken Baker, a former construction coordinator on Gemini, asked, “How will we keep people out of sensitive areas, Captain? They will have to be placed in positions all over the ships and stations. What keeps them from sneaking in and say, photographing some installation or something?”
Kitty decided that it was time to let one of the secrets of the wristbands out. “They can be programmed to sound an alarm on the command deck or to shock the wearer mildly. The shocks get stronger if an attempt is repeated or if someone keeps getting too close to a proscribed area or thing. She went on to relate a little about the incident with Agent Daniels’ wristband the day he tried to get to see a Mamba. “Of course, that function isn’t to be bandied about. We may want to see if someone will try to get into a restricted area. We can set their wristband to not shock them and just alert Command. Easier to catch them in the act, so to speak. And, just pictures of things isn’t going to help much without the specs and the factories to produce them.”