Callahan's Key

by Spider Robinson

  I looked at Tesla, and saw it in his eyes. He did indeed have a plan to save the universe. It was a fine plan. A logical plan. A clever plan. Maybe even a workable plan. I stood up and threw my Irish coffee at him, missing his famous head by maybe an inch.

  “No!” I roared. “NO FUCKING WAY IN HELL, you Serbo-Croatian son of a bitch!”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I Have a Plan…

  “Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child.”

  —J. Danforth Quayle

  MOST OF THE COFFEE

  had impacted on Acayib. It scalded him like it would have anybody, but at least he didn’t mind. Somehow that made it even worse.

  But I was too enraged to register guilt just then. Anger is always—always—fear in drag. I was as scared as I’ve ever been in my life, and consequently mad enough to kill. I moved toward Tesla, and I’ll be honest, I have no idea what I intended to do when I reached him. But the point is moot, because all of a sudden there seemed to be an awful lot of Jim Omar in the way. And when I tried to deke around him I ran into a wall of Doc Webster, and in the other direction a tangle of McGonnigle blocked the path, and just then Zoey moved in from behind and I was boxed.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she hissed in my ear, just as Omar said, “What’s the matter, Jake?”

  For an instant I considered blasting them all and about an acre of surrounding countryside into cinders with a Tesla Beam of pure rage. Then I felt the tugging at my pants leg.

  “Daddy,” Erin said, looking up at me with those huge eyes, “you’re allowed to feel anything you feel. You’re allowed to scream if you have to. You’re not allowed to hit.”

  My rage deflated. It did not go away, but a relief valve popped open somewhere, and just enough of it escaped to keep the container from bursting. I stopped trying to muscle past my friends, and looked around at them instead. They were all concerned, all alarmed—and all baffled. “You guys don’t get it, do you? You don’t see what he’s asking of us.”

  “I ask nothing,” Tesla whispered, looking down at his lap.

  “Tell us,” Omar suggested.

  Another increment of my anger converted itself to its less unstable isotope, exasperation. “What’s the matter with all of you, for Chrissake? Think it through!”

  “Help us,” Mei-Ling said gently.

  “What do you need, a goddam diagram? Think about our fucking problem! Think about what we all just got finished saying. What is it we have to do next?”

  They all tried…but it was clear they didn’t yet see what was now transparently obvious to me.

  So I spelled it out. “The universe is in danger because of an event with four causes. These are: a solar maximum, a hurricane, a Soviet science experiment, and a DoD satellite. We have contracted to save the universe, so we have to eliminate one or more of those factors. So where do we start? Come on, anybody.”

  “The satellite,” three people said at once.

  “Naturally,” I agreed. “We haven’t got access to the remote control for the sun. All of us put together aren’t blowhards enough to affect a hurricane. There’s no way we’re going to influence the Russians. That leaves the Deathstar.”

  Nobody disagreed.

  “Now: how do we neutralize a Deathstar? Bearing in mind that whatever we do, we mustn’t get caught doing it—mustn’t enter the record of history.”

  A lot of blank looks. A lot of frowns. A few thoughtful thousand-yard stares.

  “Once it’s in orbit, we can’t affect it without building and launching our own spaceship, which I think we can all agree would be difficult to pull off in five months, and would probably get us talked about. Plus we’d need at least one spacesuit, and EVA skills that you can’t get out of a book.”

  No disagreement.

  “While the Deathstar’s still here on Earth, we can’t affect it without infiltrating DoD or its contractors, and let’s face it, none of us is the type.”

  “Wait a minute, Boss,” Fast Eddie said. “How ’bout Nikky does dat Transit ting? Beams one of us inta da satellite factory wit a monkey wrench?”

  Tesla stayed silent, looking down at his lap.

  “Eddie,” Omar said, “the very last thing they’ll do before sending that satellite out the door and shipping it to the Cape is test it from top to bottom, hardware and software. Then just before they load it aboard, they’ll test it again.”

  Tommy Janssen spoke up. “So what we need to do is figure a way to reprogram it: hide a bug in the software that won’t show up until just after the thing is inserted into orbit. Very tricky…but not impossible.” He glanced down at Erin. “Not for us.”

  I held my temper. “And when exactly do we do this?”

  He looked blank.

  I sighed. “Jim? You and Shorty and Acayib are the real space buffs. You know more about it than me. Is there ever a time when a satellite that’s being built and readied doesn’t have at least a few people standing around looking at it? Especially in the last five months before launch, when they’re working on it round the clock?”

  “Well, no,” Omar agreed reluctantly. “Not reliably, anyway. I mean, there might be a random hour or two, but how could we know when? You’re right: a satellite is pretty much under continuous observation, right up until…” He trailed off, and his face changed. “Oh.” Then it changed even further, and he said, “Oh, man,” and I knew he got all of it. His eyes met mine, and his big hand settled on my shoulder.

  “Till what?” Eddie asked.

  “Until it’s loaded onto the Shuttle for launch,” I said.

  “The crew probably don’t even glance in its direction from the time they climb aboard until the moment they’re ready to inject it into orbit,” Omar said. “Could be as much as forty-eight hours.”

  Silence, while everyone pondered all this, looking for a booby trap that would turn me into a raging madman.

  “Jake,” Doc Webster said, “I admit it: I’m stumped. You have succeeded in redefining our specific problem admirably. A few minutes ago, I didn’t have the slightest clue what the hell we were going to do. Now, if I understand you, it seems all we have to do is somehow place one of us on the Space Shuttle, have him bollix the Tesla Beam, and bring him back to Earth again, without being caught at it. I grant you that sounds like a hell of a problem…but for the life of me, I still don’t see what you’re so upset about. We’ll think it over, we’ll take our best shot, and what the hell, maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “Dat Transit stuff, Boss,” Eddie insisted. “All we do, we…aw, shit.”

  Eddie got it too, now. Not an articulate guy, Eddie, nor a knowledgeable space buff—but he tested high on intuition. And others of us, I could see, were beginning to suspect now.

  “One of us,” I said, spelling it out for the rest, “has to, Transit aboard the Space Shuttle, and remain aboard undetected, until there’s a chance to reprogram the Deathstar’s computer without being spotted.”

  Rooba rooba. “How?” Long-Drink asked for the group. “They monitor the launch weight on a Shuttle down to the pound—they have to. You know that. And exactly where the hell do you hide on one? The part that’s pressurized ain’t very big, and it’s damn full.” Several people looked equally skeptical.

  I didn’t say anything. After a moment Omar took a deep breath and answered. “I’d have to check some specs to be certain…but I’m 90% sure there’s only one possible place. The stowage lockers. Over a hundred identical Kevlar boxes—and they hardly ever actually use more than a dozen or two in flight; the rest are empty. They’re in five different locations. The forward flight deck, where the crew sits for takeoff and landing. The aft flight deck—where the payload controls are. The middeck, where the tunnel to the payload bay is. The equipment bay, where the crew don’t normally spend much time. And the airlock. If you could Transit directly from one site to another, you could be pretty sure of staying out of sight almost indefinitely.”

  “But what
about the extra weight?” Long-Drink insisted.

  Omar sighed. “Well, Drink, that’s not too big a problem. No pun intended. Those lockers measure eleven by eighteen by twenty-one inches—call it two cubic feet. So anybody who could fit into one in the first place just isn’t going to weigh a whole lot.”

  There was a collective gasp, as the implications sunk in, and everybody started to get it.

  “You’ve told me yourself a thousand times, Daddy,” Erin said. “I can’t help it if I’m little.”

  With a bellow of primeval fury, Zoey flung me aside like a curtain and went for Tesla’s throat.

  Fortunately Omar was able to contain her long enough for Isham and Tanya Latimer to arrive. She strained mightily in their grasp and screamed hair-raising obscenities at Tesla, her face so red I was afraid she was going to have a stroke or a coronary. Tesla cowered in his chair, deathly pale, eyes wide, hands half lifted as if to fend her off, and I suddenly remembered that this was a man who could pull balls of fire from his pockets and produce Death Rays on request. I clambered to my feet and wondered what to do. And then a strange and wonderful thing happened.

  Harry the parrot came sailing out of nowhere, landed on Tesla’s head in a riotous flurry of color, and began shrieking equally hideous obscenities right back at Zoey, obviously overjoyed that at long last, somebody else wanted to play.

  Even Zoey, in her condition, simply could not help joining in the avalanche of laughter that ensued.

  I laughed with everyone else—it was funny—but by the time the laughter faded, I had gotten back a second wind of anger. I opened my mouth to take my second turn at abusing Tesla, and perhaps Zoey and I could have rotated indefinitely all night long. But again I felt an insistent tugging at my pants leg.

  “Daddy,” Erin said, once again using those baby blue tractor beams of hers to hold my gaze immobile until she was done with it, “it was my idea, not Uncle Nikky’s. He spent hours trying to talk me out of it. You know how he feels about little girls.”

  I closed my mouth and opened it again.

  “Could you have talked me out of it?” she asked.

  I closed it again.

  “That’s why you’re scared, right? ’Cause you already know I’m gonna do it, no matter what you say.”

  I nodded, and thought about bursting into tears.

  “Then stop blaming Uncle Nikky, you jerk.” She released me. “You too, Mom! If anybody else comes up with a better plan, I’ll go for it in a shot. But nobody’s going to, and it’s not Uncle Nikky’s fault, okay? He feels shitty enough that they’re using his Death Ray.”

  I looked at Tesla—and did suddenly feel as if I’d been beating up a child. He really looked whipped. He wouldn’t meet anybody’s eyes.

  “Besides,” Erin said, “think about the first American to try and go to space, the one that didn’t really do it, but everybody said he did anyway. What was his name, Daddy?”

  She knew it as well as I did. “Al Shepard,” I said.

  “Well, I only have to do one thing he didn’t. I just have to travel a little more than three times as far in space as my height above the center of the earth. What do they call that ratio again, Daddy?”

  I was too shocked to answer.

  Doc Webster and Long-Drink and Jim Omar and a couple of others did it for me, gleefully chorusing, “Shepard’s Pi!”

  My daughter wanted to reach me so badly, she had made a pun. A little more of my anger melted.

  Which did not end the discussion—not by a long shot. Just the tantrum part of it.

  Zoey, of course, tried to discuss next whether or not we did or would ever allow this thing. But she was ruled out of order by Doc Webster, on the grounds that there was no point considering that until we had settled whether the trick was actually possible, and just how we’d go about it. Until then, he pointed out, Zoey and I didn’t really know what we were being asked to assent to. His strategy worked: we got so involved in the intellectual puzzle of how to pull this off that we tabled indefinitely the question of whether or not to permit it.

  Tanya the organizer broke it down into parts for us, the first question being: Could we get Erin aboard the Shuttle without being caught at it? To my surprise, that part turned out to be trivially easy. In less than five minutes, Omar and Tesla had devised a strategy that seemed to have every chance of success. I hated it, of course—because it involved placing Erin on board just before liftoff, and retrieving her after the Shuttle landed.

  “Why should she have to endure blastoff, and risk landing—and risk discovery by the crew for days?” I argued. “Teleport her aboard when the damn thing’s already in space, and wink her back home as soon as she’s finished the job.”

  It sounded reasonable, and still does. The problem was, we couldn’t do that. And I’m not sure I can explain why not, because I don’t really understand it myself.

  Mike Callahan could have done it, blind drunk. Lady Sally could have done it without working up a sweat. Their daughter Mary would have had no trouble. But none of those people were available. All we had was Tesla, to whom they had imparted some, repeat some, of their magic before they left for parts unknown. He could Transit himself and/or an inorganic load to just about anyplace with known coordinates. He could not Transit Erin, or any other living thing—not and have it arrive at its destination still alive. But what he could do—what he had already in fact done, long since—was teach her to Transit herself. Turned out she’d been practicing all the way down the East Coast, whenever Zoey and I both happened to have our eyes off her for a moment or two. It explained a few things.

  She demonstrated for us. One second she was standing there talking to us; the next second she was gone, and her voice was coming from inside the house. Just as we turned that way we heard her climbing out of the pool behind us. As we turned and saw her there, she disappeared again, and this time played possum until someone happened to look up and spot her at the top of a palm tree. To my horror, as soon as I saw her she simply stepped off the tree and dropped. But before I could draw breath to scream, she was on the ground—instantly, without having covered the intervening distance, landing so lightly that her knees barely bent. She drew thunderous applause from the crowd, and curtsied beautifully. Pixel the cat couldn’t take his eyes off her, and there was new respect in them.

  The problem, Erin explained to us when I began to renew my objection, was that even after a great deal of surreptitious practice, she couldn’t Transit reliably to a rapidly moving target. Not reliably enough, anyway.

  “Think about it, Daddy. There goes the Shuttle overhead, 200-odd miles up, doing just under 17,000 miles an hour, woosh. I determine its position and vector as precisely as I can—and I can maybe even do that a hair better than NASA can, with Uncle Nikky to help. Then I Transit, and try to work it so I come out the other end not only in precisely the right spot, but traveling at the right speed in the right direction. I can’t tell you just how I do that, but it’s real hard. If I make a very small error, I end up in vacuum, which sucks.” Two puns in one day. A lifetime record. “If I make even a teeny-weeny error, maybe I end up materializing in the same spot as some solid object aboard the Shuttle, and blow us out of the sky. If I make only a nanoerror, maybe I come out in the wall between the locker I want and the one next door, with the same result: boom. Trust me, it’s a lot safer if I do it when the Shuttle is standing still, relative to me, and I don’t have a long distance to go.”

  “But will there—”

  “—be enough room in that locker for me and enough padding for liftoff? Of course, Daddy. And I can bring along all the food I want. Any wastes I produce, I’ll just Transit over the side and forget about them.”

  Zoey spoke up, her voice tight. “Honey, a Shuttle takeoff is really…” She trailed off, and I saw her dilemma. Somewhere deep inside she knew we had already lost this argument, and Erin was going to go. Therefore, why frighten her?

  Tesla spoke up for the first time in a long while. Stil
l looking down at his lap, he said quietly, “Zoey, I guarantee there will be no Challenger disaster this time. This Shuttle will launch and return safely.”

  We all knew how much he hated to pass along information from the future. Zoey bit her lip, and said, “Thank you, Nikola.” He nodded.

  Omar spoke up, to argue that Erin didn’t absolutely have to stay aboard the Shuttle until it landed. Once her work there was done, he said, she could always Transit back out again right away—if she did it in two stages.

  “Pick an arbitrary spot a mile above the Earth’s surface, aim for an arrival vector matching the planet’s rotational speed, and live with any small errors that crept in. From there, Transiting the rest of the way down to the surface ought to be easy.”

  “Not without a backup parachute!” I insisted.

  “And how small an error are we talking about?” Zoey demanded. “She hasn’t got any damn tiles on her, you know.”

  “It may be simpler and safer if I just stay aboard,” Erin said. “The worst problem I’ll have is to keep from being bored. Five days is a long time.”

  Tanya ruled her first question settled, for now at least, and proposed the next one: Could we communicate with Erin while she was on the Shuttle, without NASA overhearing? Tesla spoke up, plainly happy to finally have something he could say besides “I’m sorry,” and told us that part was a boat race: with gear he would furnish, we could definitely talk with her, even during the eight-hour intervals when she was around the other side of the planet, with better audio fidelity than NASA could have provided, and a few microseconds faster.

  The third question—Could Erin reprogram the Deathstar without getting caught at it?—took a little longer to settle, but the prognosis was just as positive. The reason it took time was, the only one of us who really knew what she was talking about was the one the rest of us were all arguing with, and we were too ignorant to understand her answers. But we all knew perfectly well that Erin had been interfaced with the world’s first Artificial Intelligence literally before she was born, and posthumously tutored by it ever since. If Solace had been able to outhack the NSA—and she’d had to, to survive in cyberspace as long as she did—then surely her star pupil and protégée Erin could outhack NASA and DoD combined, at least for long enough to get us through the present crisis. Tommy Janssen was able to follow her arguments, and she convinced him: that was good enough for the rest of us.