Odyssey

by Jack McDevitt

  Marge came in, carrying a copy of Guts, Glory, and Chicken Soup. She had changed clothes and was smartly set out in shades of brown and blue, white collar, gold bracelet. “They told you we were going national?” she said.

  “No. Why? What happened?”

  “The Heffernan. It’s become a big story.”

  “And I’ve become an expert?”

  “Oh, Mac, it’s not you. Valentina is an Academy pilot.” She glanced at a clock. “Our segment will be twenty-two minutes plus break time.”

  “I assume Valentina is the other guest?”

  “Yes. It turns out to be nice timing.”

  “I assume they haven’t heard anything yet? About the Heffernan?”

  “Not a word. Our sources tell us things are a bit rattled at the Academy. This may not have a happy ending.”

  MacAllister tried to remember the details. “Five on the ship. Was that what I heard?”

  “Yes. It’s one of the research missions.”

  “Pity. I’m sorry to hear it.”

  She looked down at the book. “My people tell me this is hell on wheels,” she said. She’d probably read it, but she was sending MacAllister a message. You don’t intimidate me, big fella. “How’s the tour been going?”

  “Okay.” He pulled out a chair and sat. “How’s life in showbiz?”

  “Same as always.” She was all warmth and charm. “I suspect you’ll be glad to get home, Mac. Are you free for lunch today?”

  MacAllister thought about it. Actually he’d prefer to eat alone, but it was to his benefit to keep Margie happy. “Sure,” he said, “that would be nice. I know you’re very popular here, though.” A little stroking never hurt. “Can we find a place where the peasants won’t recognize you?”

  “No problem,” she said. “We’ll go over to Carmen’s.”

  WITH ABOUT THREE minutes to go, the kid producer came in and rearranged the seating. “You’re here,” he told MacAllister, moving him to his right. “It gives you the library backdrop. You’ll look very literary. Exactly the effect we want.” He checked his notes. “Just relax.”

  Irritating little squeak.

  Marge seated herself in the center, asked what the next book would be, but pressed her finger over her earpiece before he could answer. “Valentina’s here,” she said. “She’ll be right in.”

  “What’s her last name?”

  “Kouros. She says her friends call her ‘Valya.’ She’s Greek.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’ll like her.”

  “I’m sure I will.” MacAllister couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to spend most of her waking hours sitting in a tin can traveling between Tampa Bay and Arcturus. Priscilla Hutchins had spent years doing that. As women went, Hutch was no dummy, but she couldn’t have been all that smart.

  He heard voices in the adjoining room. A woman appeared at the door, talking to someone he couldn’t see. She was a striking creature, tall and athletic. The sort of woman who had probably starred on her college soccer team. She finished her conversation, nodded, and came in. A hand closed the door behind her.

  Valentina had red hair, intense blue eyes, sculpted cheeks, and she looked at MacAllister as if she thought there was something vaguely comical about him.

  Marge did a quick set of introductions. Valentina spoke with a mild accent. She said she was pleased to meet him, but she didn’t seem to know who he was. Poor woman needed to keep up. The producer, now sealed in the control room, was whispering into a mike.

  Marge signaled they should leave the studio. “We want to make an entrance,” she said, leading them off to the right. “What we’ll do,” she said, “is talk about the Academy’s mission, whether starflight is safe, what we’re getting from it, and so forth.” She smiled at them both. “Try not to agree with one another any more than you have to.”

  Somebody was doing the weather. While they waited, they did some small talk. Valentina had been piloting for the Academy twelve years; she was originally from the Peloponnesus; and she had the impression MacAllister might once have flown with her.

  “Not me,” he said. “I’ve only been off the planet once.”

  “You’ve missed quite a lot,” she said.

  Red lights flashed, the show’s theme music came up, he heard a voice telling viewers they were watching the 282nd edition of Up Front with Marge Dowling. Fingers pointed their way, and Marge returned to the set while a virtual audience applauded enthusiastically. She welcomed the greater Tampa Bay area, and the nation at large, and summoned first Valya, then MacAllister. They took their assigned seats while she reviewed the latest update, which was that the Heffernan was still missing. She went on to provide some background on the mission, why they were going to Betelgeuse, how big the star was, and so on. MacAllister’s eyes started to glaze over. What he was willing to go through to sell a few books.

  THE FIRST QUESTION went to Valentina: “We’ve had starflight now for more than two generations. The common wisdom is that superluminals are a safe form of transportation. Is that true?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I know how this sounds in light of the event you just reported. But nevertheless, considering the distances traveled, there is no safer mode of transportation in existence.”

  MacAllister rolled his eyes. “What is it, Mac?” Marge asked.

  “Look out for statistics,” he said. “At the beginning of the space age, the first space age back in the twentieth century, they used to measure transportation safety by the number of fatalities per passenger-mile. Using that method, the safest form of travel in 1972 was the Saturn moon rocket. We don’t really want to measure distance. If you simply count fatalities against the number of flights, the superluminals don’t look quite so good.”

  Valentina sighed. “You’re right, Gregory,” she said, putting a slight stress on the name, informing him he was out of his league here. “You can prove pretty much anything statistically. I’ve been riding the Academy’s missions all my adult life, and I never have a qualm.” She smiled. “And I’ve never lost anybody. Nor has anyone I know lost anybody.”

  Her adult life probably consisted of about fifteen years, but he let it go.

  “What’s your best guess?” Marge asked. “How serious is this Heffernan thing? How’s it going to turn out?”

  “I think we’ll find them,” she said. “It’s just a matter of getting to the area where they were lost and picking up a radio signal. Of course you never really know, but it shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “I hope not,” said MacAllister. “But the real issue here is, why do we bother to go out there at all? What’s the point?”

  Marge tossed the question to Valentina.

  “This is our backyard,” she said. “We’d be remiss not to look around. To see what’s there.”

  “Our backyard,” said MacAllister, “by your reckoning is pretty big. And I can tell you what’s there: rock and hydrogen. And empty space. And that’s it. We’ve spent billions on starflight, and we have nothing to show for it. Zero.”

  Valentina looked as if he were being irrational. He drew a condescending smile from her. “A year ago,” she said, “we intercepted an omega cloud that would eventually have destroyed the planet. I know Mr. MacAllister thinks that is of no real consequence, but I’m sure your viewers would have their own opinions.

  “We also rescued the Goompahs. You’ve probably forgotten that, Gregory.” Again that offbeat stress on his name. Poor Gregory. He’s not too bright.

  “Saving the planet is good,” MacAllister said with a straight face. “But it’s done. I’m obviously glad we were able to do it. That doesn’t mean we should stay out there indefinitely, at an escalating cost to the taxpayer. Look: There are millions of people in undeveloped countries who never get a decent meal. Every time we wipe out one plague, we get another. Meantime, the oceans continue to rise. They’re talking about a collapse of the Antarctic ice shelf within the next ten years. If that goes, folks in Pennsylvania are goi
ng to get their feet wet. Right now, we charge back and forth between Sirius and the Dog Star—”

  “Sirius is the Dog Star,” said Valentina.

  “And what do we have to show for it? We get a physical description of another place nobody cares about.”

  “You want to save us from the greenhouse problem—?”

  “Of course.”

  “And from famine?”

  “That would seem to be a good idea.”

  “Solving either problem will require technology. We can learn a great deal more about planetary maintenance by studying what goes on elsewhere. We have to do more now than simply raise the cities another three or four meters. We have to find a way to get control of the climate. That means experimentation. But I don’t think we want to be conducting experiments of that nature at home.”

  “I think, Valentina, that may be a little over the top.”

  “Maybe. But if you’re right, and nobody really cares what’s out there, I wonder whether we’re even worth saving.”

  MACALLISTER FOUND HIMSELF thinking of Hutchins sitting in her office at the Academy. She wouldn’t be watching this live, but she’d hear about it, would probably see it that evening. So he tried to go easy. But it wasn’t in his nature. Pouring big money into starflight at a time like this was unconscionable. And dumb.

  “Dumb?” said Valentina. “You remind me of the guys in the Spanish court who said something like that about Columbus.”

  “In those days,” he said, “you could breathe the air in America. It makes a difference. I say, if people want to go to the Big Dipper, let them buy their own canoe.”

  “You’re talking as if only a few of us have gone to the stars. In fact thousands of people have experienced superluminal flight. And anyhow it’s not really individuals who’ve gone to Arcturus, it’s the species. We’ve all gone.”

  “Tell that to the people on East Fifty-third in the Bronx.”

  “Gregory, we’re wired to go. You and I can sit here and talk all we like, but that won’t change anything. There’s a destiny involved. We could no more not go than you could sit through a conversation like this and not say a word.”

  He sighed. “When people start talking about destiny, it means their argument has hit the wall. What we should do is get the people who are always going on about the stars, pile them onto a few ships, and let them go colonize Alpha Boobus III. With the single proviso that they stay there.”

  IT’S MORE OR less traditional after these on-air debates to shake hands after the show. MacAllister had even gone for drinks occasionally with people with whom he’d conducted blistering debates. This one had been innocuous enough, but Valentina wasn’t a professional. She took everything personally, and when Marge congratulated them on a good performance, the Academy pilot glanced at him as if he were not worth her time, said good day in a voice an octave lower than the one she’d used during the show, and stalked out of the studio.

  Normally, MacAllister was proof against beautiful women. They were okay for ordinary males, but they could prove a major distraction for somebody who operated at his level. Still, he liked to be admired by the fair sex, enjoyed the occasional come-hither glance, and was inevitably willing to follow up on the invitation so long as he could see no downside. But when Valentina strode out in that uncivil manner, his feelings were hurt.

  And there again was evidence of the damage women could do. Had she been a male, he wouldn’t have given a damn. As it was, riding back to the hotel in his cab, he sat uncomfortably holding up his end of a conversation with the publisher’s rep, wishing Valentina had been a better sport about things.

  Female star pilot.

  He owed his life to one of those. And he resented that, too.

  He wondered what Hutch was going to think about his performance.

  Damn.

  MACALLISTER’S DIARY

  I can’t imagine why the peasants are so upset about enhancement. It doesn’t work. Anybody who looks could see that. A recent study showed that approximately 8 percent of people who are products of the technique failed to graduate high school. Fifteen percent can still find time on a regular basis to watch talk shows. And almost half describe themselves as sports fans. If people want smart kids, they might try reading to them.

  The reality is, we don’t want our kids to be smart. We want them to be like us. Only more so.

  —Monday, February 16

  chapter 5

  Most government and corporate leaders would have trouble getting people to follow them out of a burning building. One way you can tell the worst of them is that they talk about leadership a lot. I doubt Winston Churchill ever used the word. Or, for that matter, Attila the Hun.

  —Gregory MacAllister, “First Man Out of Town”

  “Hutch, I keep thinking about the Heffernan. We’ll have to get rid of Louie Alvarez.” Asquith sucked in air, a gesture designed to indicate firing Louie was a painful necessity.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “It’s a maintenance failure.” He shook his head. Pity. “But there’s no way around it.”

  “It’s not his fault.”

  “How do you know? You haven’t looked into it yet.”

  “Nor have you. Louie’s warned us repeatedly that something like this was inevitable. When it turns out that he can’t work miracles, that four of those ships have slipped past their termination dates, then we’ll have to find another excuse.”

  “Is that true? Four of them?”

  “Yes. You have several memos on the subject.”

  “Is the Heffernan among them?”

  “No. Not yet. Give it a few months.”

  “Then we’re off the hook.” He came around the desk, vastly relieved. Everything’s going to be all right. “Hutch, you and I have been through a few problems over the last year or so. Let’s calm down. Keep cool about this.”

  “People’s lives are involved, Michael.”

  “I know that. And I’m not suggesting we put anyone at risk. Let’s just not get excited. What we need to do is concentrate more on maintenance.” He patted his stomach and let his gaze wander over the various plaques and trophies on display. It was the way he reassured himself of his capabilities. “Look, let’s get the Heffernan back. Then we’ll figure out where we go from here.”

  She got up, started for the door, but stopped short of the sensor area. Didn’t want the door open yet. Asquith had already gone on to something else, was looking down at a stack of folders, signaling that the interview was over. He was not an impressive figure. Barely taller than Hutch. His thin brown hair was combed carefully over his scalp. He’d just been through a messy public divorce, one of those ugly things with his wife claiming adultery and demanding a huge settlement while he maintained she was deranged. Everything had been played out in the media amid rumors that there was pressure on him to resign. Hutch wouldn’t have been unhappy to see him go, but she knew what political appointments usually were, and she’d prefer dealing with Asquith, who was at least open to argument.

  He knew she was standing there, and his eyes rose to meet her. “Something else?” he asked.

  There was a silent plea in the way he asked the question. Please don’t make waves. “Louie stays where he is. And I’m starting the administrative procedure to take the Colbys out of service. You’ll have to sign off on some of it.”

  He shook his head. “No. I told you we can’t do that. Not possible. Look, call them in if you want, check them as each one reports. Make sure they’re okay.”

  “We already do, Michael. It’s the routine.”

  When he got frustrated, he literally threw up his hands. He did that now. “We need to make sense,” he said. “We don’t have enough ships as it is to carry out the missions.”

  She stood her ground. “Then do what you said you would. Put some pressure on the politicians. They want the programs, they have to be willing to fund them.”

  “I’m doing that, Priscilla. What do you think I do up here?” />
  She wasn’t sure, but she knew it had nothing to do with pressuring people above him. “Talk’s not enough,” she said. “We need to cut back. We can reduce survey operations. Maybe stop them altogether until somebody comes up with some money.”

  “Or they call our bluff.”

  “Don’t make it a bluff, Michael.” That was the problem with him. Even if he did threaten, nobody would take him seriously. “We have to mean it. We can also stop hauling research and support personnel around. And shut down the Nok mission. We don’t need it. What are we learning from those idiots anyhow?” The Noks were eternally shooting at one another while humans mostly hid and took notes. “And I’ll tell you something we could cut that would make the point. Stop our support for the Origins Project.” Origins was a largely European effort, a hypercollider under construction out on the other side of 36 Ophiuchi.

  He rubbed the back of his hand against his mouth. “I’m not sure I’d want to go that far.” Origins had the potential to confirm or reject various long-held speculations about the nature of the universe. Unfortunately, none of them held promise for showing a monetary profit. Because they were blue-sky operations, the most that could be said was that maybe there would be a practical benefit. Unfortunately, that sort of talk carried no weight with Congress or the World Council. “Priscilla, do you have any idea what the political price would be if we did that?”

  “I don’t much care about the politics.”

  “You damned well better. Check your job description.”

  “Michael,” she said, “do what you want. You’ll have my resignation this afternoon.”

  He looked pained. “I don’t want your resignation. I want you to help me get past this. This is a bad time for all of us. I know you too well to believe you’d walk out.”

  There was nothing more pathetic than watching Asquith when he was genuinely scared. He had reason to be. A resignation by the director of operations at a time like this would point a finger directly at him. “It’s your call, Michael.”