Earth

by Ben Bova

  “They’re excited,” Tray said to Loris.

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Yes…” He hesitated, then added, “Because you’re here with me.”

  Loris’s smile widened and she leaned closer to Tray. He bent toward her and kissed her lips.

  Takeoff was an anticlimax.

  * * *

  To Tray, the trip to the L-1 station was much too brief. Holding Loris’s hand in his own, nuzzling her cheek, feeling the warmth of her smile: it all ended much too quickly. One moment they were at Selene’s spaceport, a few heartbeats later, it seemed to him, they were making rendezvous with the docking facilities at L-1.

  Reluctantly he released Loris’s hand, murmuring, “Time to go.”

  She nodded wordlessly.

  “PLEASE USE EXTREME CAUTION ON DISEMBARKING,” the overhead speakers warned. “WE ARE EFFECTIVELY IN ZERO GRAVITY. IF YOU FEEL DISCOMFORT, PLEASE USE THE SANITARY BAGS IN YOUR SEAT BACKS.”

  Tray unbuckled and got to his feet carefully, Loris beside him. Para, in the row behind them had no difficulty, of course. Tray felt his stomach throb, but he managed to control himself. Zero gee can be fun, he reminded himself. Yes, replied a voice in his head. If you don’t throw up all over yourself.

  The other passengers seemed to be handling the weightlessness with little trouble. Some of them are regular employees of Selene, Tray realized. They’ve handled zero gee all their lives.

  Several of the children among the passengers happily floated toward the compartment’s ceiling, while their parents angrily or laughingly reached up and hauled them down beside them. Smiling flight attendants guided the passengers out of the ship and into a long windowless corridor.

  With each step along the corridor, Tray felt his weight increasing. The overhead speakers explained, “YOU ARE APPROACHING THE PASSENGER LOUNGE AREA. GRAVITY IN THIS AREA IS ONE-SIXTH GEE, THE SAME AS YOU EXPERIENCED ON THE MOON.”

  By the time they reached the passenger lounge, Tray felt quite normal. His stomach quieted and he could turn his head without feeling woozy.

  A dapper little man in a sharply creased dark suit edged his way through the crowd.

  “Mademoiselle De Mayne?” he asked, dipping his chin respectfully.

  “Yes,” said Loris, raising her voice slightly to be heard above the hubbub of the crowd.

  Turning to Tray, the man said, “Then you must be Monsieur Williamson.”

  “Right,” said Tray.

  Eyeing Para somewhat warily, the man added, “And your android companion, Para.”

  Para nodded and replied, “I am Para.”

  “Follow me, please. Your transport is due to arrive in one half of an hour.”

  APPROACHING EARTH

  Their transport was a sleek aerospace plane with delta-shaped wings. Tray stared at it as he, Loris, and Para followed their escort along a connector tube made entirely of transparent plastic. Tray felt as if he were walking in empty space, almost, as he held Loris’s hand in his. Para trudged along behind them, chatting with their escort about the aerospace plane’s design.

  “It goes right down to Earth’s surface?” the android asked.

  “Oui … yes. It is designed to reenter the atmosphere and land at an airfield. No need to transfer to another vehicle.”

  “Efficient,” said Para.

  The plane was much smaller than the shuttle on which they had ridden from Selene, obviously a private vehicle, not a commercial one.

  Their escort stopped at the end of the connector tube, where it was sealed to the plane’s main hatch. With a slight bow, he gestured for the three of them to enter the plane.

  “Have a pleasant flight,” he said, adding a deeper bow.

  As Tray stepped through the plane’s hatch, he couldn’t suppress a low whistle of surprised appreciation. The interior of the plane was decorated like an opulent sitting room: luxurious armchairs, carpeted floor, a well-stocked bar tucked into one corner. The bulkheads were covered with softly decorated draperies. A smiling brunette hostess in a short-skirted scarlet uniform smiled at them from the front of the compartment.

  “Welcome aboard,” the young woman greeted. “Mademoiselle De Mayne, it is a pleasure to see you again.”

  “And you, Honoré,” answered Loris sweetly. “How is your grand-père?”

  “He is doing much better since the stem-cell injections, thank you.”

  They’re speaking English, Tray realized. So I don’t feel left out. Then he remembered that English was the lingua franca of the airlines. He couldn’t suppress a low chuckle at the unintentional pun.

  Raising her voice slightly, Honoré instructed, “It will be necessary for you to fasten your safety belts for our departure from the space station. Once we are in flight, the captain will tell you when you may remove them.”

  Tray followed Loris into the cabin and sat in the armchair next to the one she chose. Para sat across the way and immediately called up the plane’s safety lecture on the viewscreen set into the bulkhead next to its seat.

  Leaning toward Tray, Loris said, “We’ll be landing at our private airfield, not far from the chateau.”

  Tray nodded. Private airfield, he thought. Not far from the chateau. Grinning broadly, he realized, I’ve fallen into a featherbed!

  Loris stared at him, her expression puzzled. “What is so funny?” she asked.

  Tray extended his arm and swung it in a half circle. “All this,” he said. “This all belongs to your family?”

  “To my father, yes.”

  “And you live in a chateau?”

  A slight smile bent her lips. “It’s can be drafty and cold in the winter.”

  Shaking his head in wonder, Tray said, “No wonder Mance is after you.”

  Loris’s smile winked off. “Mance is fairly well off too, you know. Have you ever heard of Bricknell Industries?”

  Tray shook his head.

  “Pharmaceuticals, industrial construction, asteroidal mining … and more,” she said. “There’s no need for Mance to go fortune-hunting.”

  “Like me,” Tray heard himself reply.

  Loris’s eyes went wide with surprise. “Oh no, that’s not what I meant, Tray.”

  “I’m pretty close to penniless,” he said flatly. “My father worked all his life running machinery for a construction company.”

  Staring into Tray’s eyes, Loris made a minimal smile and said, “So I won’t be marrying you for your money.”

  Tray’s breath caught in his throat. But then he realized, “But if we get married, people will think I’m marrying you for your money.”

  Her smile widened. “It’s my father’s money. And who gives a damn about what people think?”

  If they both hadn’t still been pinned in their chairs by their safety harnesses Tray would have gotten up and swept her into his arms. As it was he grinned at her and reached out to squeeze her hand.

  BOOK FOUR

  RETURN TO EARTH

  LANDING

  The rocketplane’s departure from the L-1 station was so gentle that Tray barely noticed it. But then he felt his stomach floating away from him as the ship fell into zero gravity.

  Loris apparently had no problem with weightlessness. While Tray swallowed down bile and tried to keep from moving his head, she began explaining:

  “You’ll like my father. He’s a kind old man, but he covers his kindness in a sort of gruff attitude. When you first meet him he’ll probably challenge you with an intellectual puzzle or two. Get the answers right and he’ll love you like the son he’s never had.”

  Tray blinked. “Intellectual puzzles?”

  “It’s a sort of test he gives any young man that I bring home for him to meet. Nothing to worry about.”

  But Tray felt worried. “If I flunk this test of his, what then?”

  Loris smiled. “Then I’m afraid you’ll have to sit and listen to Papa lecture you for a few hours.”

  Tray tried not to frown. He almost made it.

  Loris t
alked on about the chateau, the grounds, the history of Normandy, the trial and execution of Joan of Arc, the great invasion in World War II, the evolution of stem-cell agriculture.

  “The entire province is a huge natural park,” she explained, “now that we no longer need to grow crops or raise animals to be slaughtered for food.”

  Tray nodded in what he hoped were the right places as Loris rattled on as if she were reciting her family history. Tray realized that she was.

  As he listened to her his eyes drifted to the small window next to their seat. Earth filled its view, deep blue oceans and purest white streaks of clouds; brown mountain chains and broad swaths of greenery sliding past the descending plane.

  Earth, he said to himself. The real paradise.

  “Oh, one other thing,” Loris said, as if she had just thought of it.

  Focusing his attention on her once more, Tray asked, “What is it?”

  “My father was horribly injured in a battle, many years ago. The history tapes call it ‘The Neoluddite Uprising.’ My père calls it ‘The Idiots’ Last Stand.’ He helped to put down the rebels, but they nearly killed him.”

  “How badly was he hurt?”

  “He was blown up in an explosion that destroyed one entire wing of the chateau,” Loris said. “It’s a miracle that he survived.”

  Tray didn’t know what to say.

  “So when you meet him, please don’t act shocked or surprised. He lives in a portable medical device. Like an old-fashioned wheelchair, but it helps his heart to pump blood, helps his lungs to breathe, keeps his body alive.”

  “He can’t survive without the chair?”

  Loris smiled grimly. “It’s part of him. He’s as much a machine as a human being.”

  Inadvertently, Tray glanced across the compartment at Para.

  “So please don’t stare at him,” Loris implored. “Don’t make him feel … less than human.”

  Tray dipped his head in acknowledgment. And heard himself reply, “Humanity lies in the mind, Loris. The rest of the body is nothing more than supporting hardware.”

  She nodded back at him. And Tray saw there were tears in her eyes.

  * * *

  The rocketplane shuddered slightly as it bit into Earth’s upper atmosphere.

  “Please fasten your safety harnesses,” the red-uniformed stewardess said. “Reentry can get rather bumpy.”

  But except for a pair of stomach-hollowing drops, the plane made it through the upper atmosphere and smoothed out to an easy, graceful descent to the ground.

  Tray saw green fields and rolling hills flash by, and what looked like an immense cemetery, row upon row of stark white crosses marching across a wide green field.

  “Landing in three minutes,” said the captain’s voice over the speakers set into the compartment’s ceiling.

  A soft thump and then they were rolling along the ground. Home, thought Tray. Then he amended, France. Normandy. Loris’s home, not mine.

  BARON LOUIS ST. ETIENNE BAYEAUX DE MAYNE

  Loris literally pressed her nose against the plane’s undersized window. “Look!” she shouted to Tray. “Papa’s limousine! He’s come here himself to meet us!”

  Past her tousled hair, Tray saw a trio of automobiles waiting at the runway’s edge, including an oversized limousine that looked as large as a tank. My god, he thought. It’s big enough to hold a New Year’s Eve party inside.

  Half a dozen men and young women in livery were standing outside the enormous car. No one in a wheelchair, though.

  Excitedly, Loris flung off her seat harness and started rising out of her chair even before the plane stopped rolling. Tray grabbed her wrist to steady her.

  “Be careful,” he admonished.

  Loris babbled something in French, then, realizing Tray couldn’t understand her, she translated, “He’s come here to greet us! Himself! He left the chateau to come and greet us!”

  Tray grinned up at her and, once he sensed the plane had finished its landing roll, he unbuckled and got to his feet beside her.

  They hurried past the plane’s scattered furniture to the main hatch, where the red-uniformed stewardess was swinging the hatch open. Tray felt a warm breeze, smelled flowers.

  Turning her smiling face to Loris, the stewardess said, “Welcome home, mademoiselle. I hope you enjoyed the flight.”

  Loris brushed past her with perfunctory, “It was lovely, thank you.”

  She ducked through the hatch and fairly flew down the plane’s ladder to the ground, with Tray and Para following more slowly behind her.

  A tall, stately, elderly man in black livery held out his hand to Loris, who took it while looking past him toward the huge limousine waiting some twenty meters from the plane.

  “Mon père?” Loris asked the servant.

  The man replied, “Dans l’automobile, mam’selle.”

  Loris raced to the limo. Another waiting servant opened its rear door for her.

  Tray, with Para behind him, went to the car, then hesitated, uncertain of what was expected of him. From inside the limo he heard Loris’s excited voice, “Tray! Come in!”

  The servant gestured, stone-faced, for Tray to enter the limousine. Suddenly nervous, Tray heard Loris and a thin male voice talking excitedly in French. He swallowed once and ducked inside. Para remained out in the sunshine.

  Loris was on her knees in front of an older man who smiled down gently at her. Tray stopped. Half of the rear seat of the limousine was filled with medical devices beeping and gurgling softly. In their midst sat a smiling man who looked old: thick gray hair and a face that seemed chiseled out of granite, with sharp cheekbones and the imperious beak of an eagle.

  He was swaddled in blankets. What Tray could see of his legs looked like slim steel struts that ended in normal comfortable loafers, but the feet inside them were made of metal, not flesh. His arms looked normal enough, although they were covered in sleeves of royal blue. His hands, clutching Loris’s, were human hands, except for several fingers made of glistening plastic.

  Loris scrambled up to sit beside her father, saying, “Tray, this is mon père—the Baron Louis St. Etienne Bayeaux De Mayne.”

  Loris’s father smiled up at Tray, who stood stooped next to the limousine’s open door.

  “How do you do, Mr. Williamson,” he said, in a slightly quavering reedy voice. Gesturing to the seat next to the window, he added, “Please make yourself comfortable.”

  As Tray slid into the seat, Baron De Mayne asked mildly, “And pray tell me, who was the first American ambassador to the court of Louis XVI?”

  Without hesitation, Tray replied, “Benjamin Franklin.”

  De Mayne’s light gray eyes lit up. “Ah, that was too easy. But we begin well. Do you know where Franklin lived while he was in France?”

  Tray hesitated, then answered quite seriously, “From what I’ve read, he spent a good deal of his time in women’s bedrooms.”

  The baron threw his head back and laughed heartily. Loris smiled approvingly. Tray noticed that the soft-pitched beeping of the medical equipment notched a few notes higher.

  “You have a good head on your shoulders, my boy. A good head. We will get along very well, I’m sure.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Do you play chess?”

  “Poorly.”

  “Good! I need an opponent I can beat.”

  Loris said to Tray, “Don’t wager any money on his chess game.”

  De Mayne put on a scowl. “Daughter! You spoil my fun.”

  “Trayvon is not a wealthy man, Papa,” Loris said, looking sternly at her father. “You mustn’t fleece him.”

  “Too bad,” said the baron, shaking his head. “Too bad.”

  “Shall we go home now?” Loris suggested.

  The baron nodded. “Let us show our guest some of the grounds, eh?”

  With that, he called in a surprisingly powerful voice, “Allons, mes enfants.”

  The limo’s motor roared to life and they
started moving out of the airfield and into the rolling hills of Normandy.

  * * *

  Nearly two hours later, Tray marveled that the baron did not seem the slightest bit wearied by their winding sojourn through the countryside.

  “You will find this interesting, I think,” De Mayne was saying to Tray.

  The limousine topped a small hill and suddenly Tray was staring out at the ocean.

  “Omaha Beach,” said the baron. Tray noticed that his fists clenched on his lap. “Here your American ancestors landed to drive out the Nazis who were occupying much of France. It was a mighty battle.”

  “D-Day, nineteen forty-four,” Tray breathed.

  The blue sea was tranquil. The beach was empty, except for a few tourists walking along the sand.

  “You know your history,” said De Mayne.

  “Our history,” Tray replied. “We fought together against the Nazis.”

  The baron stared at Tray, who saw that there were tears in the old man’s silvery eyes. It’s as though it happened yesterday, as far as he’s concerned, Tray realized. History is real to him. And personal.

  CHATEAU DE MAYNE

  At last the impromptu tour ended and the baron ordered his driver to take them to the chateau. Tray watched as they passed through the open gate of an impressive wrought-steel fence more than two meters tall. Then the limousine rolled down a long, pleasant, winding road through a well-tended garden of graceful trees and flowering shrubs.

  At last the chateau came into view: stern gray walls pierced by tall narrow windows, more than a dozen chimneys poking up from the canted roof.

  And the far end of the building was a ruin: The walls were half-demolished; the roof had collapsed.

  Baron De Mayne said grimly, “That is where the pigs nearly killed me. Rebelling against the future. What nonsense!”

  Tray started to ask, “How long ago—”

  De Mayne did not wait for him to finish his question. “Several decades. When I was younger than you are now.” With hard-edged bitterness in his voice, “When I had my legs and my vital organs.”