The Year's Best Science Fiction, Thirty-Second Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  That was it looked like to an engineer, though. To Matt, the rocket resembled nothing more or less than an enormous penis. The Giant Space Weiner, worshipped by a roomful of people with a Freudian phallic fixation.

  “Why is it yellow?” It was the only thing he could say which wouldn’t have offended the young woman sitting beside him.

  The people seated around them cast him patronizing looks, as if he was a child who’d asked an obvious question. “So they can find it easily when it splashes down after re-entry,” Chandi said, visibly annoyed. “Didn’t your mother teach you anything?”

  Matt almost laughed out loud. It wouldn’t do, though, to explain what he thought was so funny. “That’s something Mom and Dad are interested in,” he said, keeping the joke to himself.

  “T-minus sixty seconds and counting.”

  Chandi raised an eyebrow, and Matt distracted himself by glancing over his shoulder. His mother sat a couple of rows behind him, surrounded by the handful of reporters who’d flown down to Ile Sombre for the launch. She caught Matt looking at him and gave him a brief nod, then cupped an ear to the journalist who’d just asked her a question.

  Matt knew that he should be sitting with his mother, learning the job he’d soon be taking. But he’d spent all yesterday with her doing what little he could to help the press office get ready for the launch, and he’d become tired of being attached to her elbow. So when he’d seen Chandi enter the gallery along with the other specialists who’d been on the plane, he contrived a reason to take the seat beside her: he’d told her that he wanted to watch the launch with someone who’d explain things to him.

  Chandi didn’t seem to mind, although he caught hostile looks from a couple of other guys who’d aspired to be her companion. Matt told himself that he didn’t really have a crush on her. He might even believe it, if he repeated it to himself long enough.

  “T-minus thirty seconds and counting.”

  “They’re retracting the gantry arms,” Chandi said quietly, bending her head slightly toward him as she pointed to the center wallscreen. “The rocket’s now on internal power.”

  “That means it’s pulling juice from only itself?” Matt asked and she nodded. “Okay … um, so what happens if something goes wrong?”

  “Shut up,” growled an older man sitting behind them.

  “Hey,” Matt said, glancing back at him, “I’m just asking.”

  “Don’t.” Chandi scowled in disapproval. “It’s bad luck.” She paused, then went on. “They can abort the launch right up to the last two seconds, but that’s only if the computers pick up a mission-critical malfunction. After main-engine start, we’re pretty much committed to…”

  “T-minus twenty seconds.”

  She abruptly stopped herself, and Matt was startled to feel her nervously grab the back of his own hand. She’d apparently meant to grasp the armrest only to find it already occupied, because she immediately jerked her hand away.

  “It’s okay,” he murmured. “You can, if you want.”

  Chandi gazed at him, her dark eyes embarrassed. She returned her hand to the armrest without shaking him off.

  “Thanks,” she whispered.

  “T-minus fifteen seconds.”

  All of a sudden, she rose from her seat. “Follow me,” she said, still clutching his hand.

  “What are you…?”

  “Hurry!” She pulled him to his feet, then turned to push her way past the other people seated in their row. “Excuse me, excuse me…”

  Matt dropped his slate, but Chandi didn’t give him a chance to pick it up. He caught a glimpse of his mother’s face; she stared at him in bafflement as Chandi tugged him toward the gallery’s side entrance. Chandi let go of his hand to shove open the door; Matt followed her as she raced down the stairs leading to the control center’s rear door. In seconds, they were outside the dome and running around the side of the building.

  Although he was a newcomer, Matt was aware of the safety rules which mandated that everyone witnessing a liftoff had to do so from inside Mission Control. The pad was less than three miles away; if the Kubera blew up, the dome would protect them from the blast. He knew he was going to catch hell for this from his mother, but Chandi hadn’t given him any choice.

  “T-minus ten seconds.” The voice came from loudspeakers outside the dome. “Nine … eight … seven…”

  “Stop.” Chandi grabbed him by the shoulders, halting him in mid-step. “Watch.”

  “Six … five … four…”

  They had a clear view of the launch pad. From the distance, the rocket was almost toy-like, dwarfed by its gantry and the four lightning-deflection masts surrounding the pad. Matt had just enough to regret no longer having the close-up view afforded by the control room screens when a flare silently erupted at the bottom of the rocket, sending black smoke rolling forth from the blast trench beneath the platform.

  “Three … main engine ignition … two … one … liftoff!”

  The Kubera rose from its pad atop a torch so bright that it caused him to squint. The eerie quiet that accompanied the ignition sequence lasted only until the rocket cleared the tower. The silence ended when the sound waves finally crossed the miles separating him from the rocket, and then it was as if he was being run over by an invisible truck: a crackling roar that grew louder, louder, louder as the rocket ascended into the blue Caribbean sky. Seagulls and egrets and parrots took wing from all the palmettos and cocoanut trees around them as Nathan 2 became a fiery spear lancing up into the heavens. It was no longer the Giant Space Weiner, but something terrifying and awesome that seemed to take possession of the sky itself.

  Breathless, unable to speak, Matt watched as the rocket rose up and away, becoming a tiny spark at the tip of a black, horn-like trail forming an arc high above the ocean. The sudden, distant bang of the sonic boom startled him. He wasn’t aware that Chandi was quietly observing him, savoring his fascination. It wasn’t until the spark winked out, and the loudspeaker announced main-engine cut-off and that Nathan 2 had successfully reached low orbit, that he remembered she was standing beside him. His ears were ringing when he looked at her again.

  “That was … incredible,” he said.

  “Yes, it was.” Chandi nodded knowingly. “Now you see why we’re here?”

  V

  The launch team celebrated with a party that night at the hotel. Instead of the customary buffet in the former restaurant, a cookout was held by the swimming pool. A propane grill was brought out of storage and tiki lamps were lit, and a couple of hundred pounds of Argentine beef, purchased by the foundation and stashed away for special occasions, emerged from the kitchen’s walk-in freezer. Hamburgers and steak fries and cocoanut ice cream and an ice-filled barrel of Red Stripe beer: Nathan 2’s foster parents were in the mood to party. Their child had finally left home.

  Matt went to the party expecting to hook up with Chandi, only to find that she was less interested in him that evening than she’d been that morning. She smiled when he approached her, and didn’t object when he brought her a beer and asked if she’d join him for dinner, but no sooner had they sat down at one of the patio tables when a half-dozen other scientists and engineers carried their paper plates over to their table. They sat down without asking if they were interrupting anything, and the conversation immediately shifted to technical matters: integration of Galactique’s beamsail within Nathan 3’s faring, the timeline for recovery and turnaround of the Kubera booster once it returned to Earth, the problems anticipated with meeting the schedule for final testing and checkout of the Nathan 4 module.

  Matt tried to keep up as best as he could, but it was all above his head. Within minutes he was lost, and no one at the table was willing to stop and provide explanations. Chandi made a polite effort to include him in the conversation, yet it was as if he was dull schoolboy who’d been mistakenly invited to eat at the teachers’ table. No, worse than that: everyone at the table was his age, more or less, but some of them were probably
earning their doctorates about the same time he was working in a convenience store.

  After Matt asked Chandi if she’d like another beer—she impatiently shook her head and returned to the discussion of maintaining Galactique’s extrauterine fetal incubation system during the mission’s cruise phase—he quietly picked up his plate and left. He tossed the plate in the recycling can, fished a couple of Red Stripes from the beer barrel, and found another place to sit, a neglected chaise lounge on the other side of the pool. And there he proceeded to drink, listen to the reggae music being piped over the loudspeaker system, and wonder again what he was doing here.

  He was on his second beer when his father came over to join him. Ben Skinner ambled around the end of the covered swimming pool and into the place where his son had chosen to hide. By then he’d removed his dress shirt and absurd tie and replaced them with an equally ugly Hawaiian shirt, and he stopped at the foot of Matt’s lounger to gaze down at him.

  “Care for some company?”

  “Sure.” Matt regarded him with eyes that were becoming beer-fogged. “Have a seat.”

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Ben eased himself into the chair beside him. “Saw you earlier. Thought you were making friends. Now…”

  “Now I’m here,” Matt said, finishing his thought for him. “They’re nice enough, but…” He shrugged. “Y’know, you’ve heard one conversation about the quantum intergalactic microwave whoopee, you’ve pretty much heard ‘em all.”

  “Oh, yeah, that. I think I read a paper about it in BIS Journal just the other day.” A grin appeared, and quickly faded when he saw that Matt wasn’t appreciating the joke. “Can’t blame you. If you’re not on their wavelength, it’s going to be pretty hard to understand what they’re talking about. Here, let me see if I can cheer you up.”

  He reached into his breast pocket, and Matt was astounded to see him pull out a joint. “Dad? Since when did you…?”

  “Before you were born.” His father smiled as he juggled the hand-rolled spliff between his fingers. “I don’t indulge all that often, but I picked it up again when we came down here. I don’t mind if anyone here smokes, so long as it’s after hours and they don’t do it at the space center. Got a light?”

  “I thought marijuana was illegal here.” Matt dug into his shorts pocket, searching for the lighter he habitually carried. “That’s what the customs guys told me when they took away my smokes.”

  “Old island law from the smuggling days that’s still on the books. Only time the cops enforce it is when they get it in mind to shake down a gringo. Otherwise, no one cares.” Nonetheless he gazed at the crowd on the other side of the pool, wary of anyone spotting him smoking pot with his son. “I don’t do this very often, really. Just on special occasions. Then I go down to Ste. Genevieve and buy some of the local stuff.”

  Matt handed his lighter to his father. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Just be careful to take someone with you if you go. Someone who doesn’t look like a white guy from the states.” Ben flicked the lighter, stuck one end of the joint in his mouth. “Maybe the young lady you were with tonight.”

  “Chandi.”

  “Umm-hmm.” The joint flamed as his father touched it with fire. It burned unevenly as he took a long drag from it. “Dr. Chandraleksha Sanyal,” he went on, slowly exhaling. “I recruited her myself, from Andru & Reynolds Biosystems. Very smart woman.”

  “Out of my league, you mean.”

  “No, that’s not what I mean.” Ben leaned over to pass the joint to him. “Sure, you’ll have to run a little harder to catch up with her, but … well, she must see something in you if she’d taken the trouble of dragging you out of the dome during the launch.”

  “You know about that? Your back was turned to … oh. Mom must have told you.”

  “Yes, she did.” His father frowned. “That’s against safety regs, by the way. Don’t let me catch you doing it again.”

  Matt drew smoke into his lungs. It was unexpectedly strong; not harsh at all, but still more robust than the processed and preserved commercial stuff to which he was more accustomed. He felt the buzz as soon as he let it out. Nice. “It was her idea.”

  “I’m not going to bust your balls over it. So how did you like it? The launch, I mean.”

  “It was…” Matt struggled for the right words. “Awesome. Just … I dunno. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  His father smiled, “Yeah. I’ve seen a lot of rockets go up, but I’ve never gotten used to it.” He paused. “Y’know, you could have asked me anytime to take you to one of these things, back when I was still working for NASA. I could have arranged for you to get a visitors pass for a launch before they went bust.”

  It was an old story, Matt’s lack of enthusiasm for that which his parents had devoted their lives. There was a brief period, when he was a child, when he had been fascinated by space. He’d even wanted to be an astronaut. But he’d left that behind along with his toy spaceships and astronomy coloring books. Now he was back where he’d started, and the last thing he wanted was to have his father pushing at him again.

  “Guess I wasn’t interested,” he said.

  “Hmm … no, I suppose you weren’t.” Ben took another hit from the joint and was quiet for a moment, as if contemplating the years gone by. “Maybe I made a mistake, trying to get you involved with all this too soon. I’ve lately thought that … well, if you hadn’t grown up with me and your mother constantly discussing this stuff over the dinner table, it might not have killed your interest. That and your grandmother…”

  “I’m not blaming her for anything.” The joint was half-finished and he was enjoying the high he already had; he shook his head when his father tried to pass it to him again, and reached for his beer instead. “Grandma’s … y’know, Grandma. The foundation is her life. But you and Mom … I mean, with you two, this whole thing is like some kind of religion. The Church of Galactique. Praise the holy starship, hallelujah.”

  His father scowled at him. “Oh, c’mon … it’s not that bad.”

  “Yes, it is,” Matt insisted, “and you’ve had it for as long as I can remember. That’s why I went away. I had to find something else to do with my life than follow this obsession of yours.”

  Despite himself, he found that he was getting angry. Maybe it was just a headful of marijuana and beer, but it seemed as if a lot of pent-up frustration was boiling out of him, whether he liked it or not. On impulse, he pushed himself off the lounger, nearly losing his balance as he stood up again on legs that suddenly felt numb. “Maybe I better take a walk,” he mumbled. “Get some fresh air or something.”

  “Sure. Okay.” His father was hurt by the abrupt rejection, but he didn’t try to stop him. “Whatever you want. But Mattie…?”

  “Don’t call me that. I’m not a kid anymore.”

  “I know … sorry.” Ben shook his head. “Look, just a little advice, all right? You can knock this so-called obsession of mine all you want, but…”

  He lowered his voice as he cast a meaningful look across the pool to where Chandi and her friends were still seated. “If you want to get anywhere with her, you’re going to have to learn to appreciate the things she’s interested in. And she joined our religion a long time ago.”

  VI

  Even if he didn’t care to follow his father’s advice, Matt had no choice in the matter. His mother found him in the dining room the following morning, nursing a hangover with black coffee and an unappealing plate of scrambled eggs. The party was over, and so was any hope he might have still had of making this trip into a tropical vacation. It was time for him to go to work as her new assistant.

  Before he’d left college to pursue a half-baked fantasy of becoming a movie actor, Matt had been a journalism major. That hadn’t worked out either, but he’d learned enough to know a little about what it took to work in a media relations department. This was Jill Skinner’s job at the Arkwright Foundation, and even before Matt had decided to come down
to Ile Sombre, she’d been complaining about being short-handed. So his arrival had been fortunate, for her at least. She now had someone to do scut-work for her, giving her a chance to take care of more important tasks.

  Over the course of the next several days, Matt tagged along with his mother as she went from place to place in the Ile Sombre Space Launch Centre. A large part of her job involved keeping up with daily events and writing press releases about them for the news media; since she wanted him to start doing some of this for her, it was important that he learn the Galactique Project from top to bottom, beginning with the preparations leading up to the launch of Nathan 3, scheduled for six weeks from then.

  It was more interesting than he thought it would be. Nathan 3 was being checked out in a dust-free, temperature-controlled clean room in the Payload Integration Building next to the VAB. The clean room was the size of a basketball court, and everything in there was spotless and white, down to the one-piece isolation garments that made everyone wearing them look like surgeons. Matt couldn’t go in there, but his mother showed him where to stand quietly in the observation gallery overlooking the floor.

  From there, he could see Nathan 3. Resting within an elevated cradle, it was an enormous, tightly-wrapped cylinder made of tissue-thin carbon-mesh graphite, dark grey with the thin silver stripes of its lateral struts running along its sides, resembling a giant furled umbrella. Galactique’s microwave sail had been built and tested in the same southern California facility that manufactured solar power satellites, but it served a completely different purpose. Once Galactique was completed in orbit and ready to launch, the sail would gradually unfold to its operational diameter of a little more than 62 miles. It seemed unbelievable that something so big could be reduced to a payload only 120 feet long and 22 feet wide, but the sail material had a density of only the tiniest fraction of an inch. Still, it would take all of the Kubera’s thrust to successfully get it off the ground.