No guilt? Rue dead. Tumaini invalided for no one was sure how long. And Morgan...
"Rue was my observer pilot," Morgan said. "Tumaini's already said he wants to go along on the next big ride. He's not scared. Let me have the guilt, if that's the problem, Brenna. I don't mind. I haven't got very much else to do with my time, in here..." There was the faintest intonation of irony in that. Maybe he was learning how to manipulate the vocal apparatus more skillfully!
Brenna weighed what he had said. "Okay. Partner, we have to make the big decision. You and me. Yuri doesn't have a vote. Neither does Tumaini or anyone else. They can volunteer, but we're running the show."
"I say go." Just like that. Morgan Saunder McKelvey had given as much to Breakthrough Unlimited as any human being could and still live. He knew the terrible risks. And he still was willing to shoulder that responsibility and that guilt on future pilots' behalf.
Brenna was obligated to play devil's advocate. "Maybe we're wrong. Maybe graviton spin resonance drive isn't the answer."
"It is. And you know it. Nakamura's M-AM is fifty years away, if that. Tachyon and photon bypass are theories, cruddy ones. If we're going to reach the stars in our lifetimes, it's graviton drive."
"... in our lifetimes..." How much of a lifetime could Morgan expect? There would be no berth for him aboard a Hiber-Space Corporation ship, no cubicle waiting on New Earth Seeker II or on the stasis ships that would follow the first colonizer out to Sol's near neighbors. Morgan wasn't an able-bodied specimen anymore, nor a man capable of fathering children the "natural" way. Besides, he couldn't take a long space voyage of any sort. The potential speed of FTL was Morgan's only hope of ever seeing the stars and worlds beyond the Solar System in his lifetime. Was it selfish of him to vote for going ahead with Breakthrough Unlimited, under those circumstances? Or was it selfish of Brenna to doubt and consider the possibility of abandoning the only project that could give him those hopes?
"Maybe you have private reasons for wanting out?" Morgan said.
Another form of selfishness. Derek. Hiber-Ship Corporation.
A guaranteed way out to the stars—for Brenna Foix Saunder. But not for Morgan.
A new life, with Derek, starting civilization all over again on a world no human had ever set foot on. Challenge! A name in the history tapes, right alongside her father's, and Mariette's, and her grandfather Ward's—and even alongside Jael's, another Saunder woman who had been willing to push aside those she loved for causes she loved even more.
Hiber-Ship. A safe trip, but a slow one. Seventy-five to a hundred years, estimated. The figures were a weight, crushing Brenna's mind. Calendar readouts spinning—ten years, twenty-five, forty—her parents would probably be dead by then. Morgan would certainly be long dead. Any children he had sired by sperm bank or cloning would be adults, never knowing "Cousin Brenna." Sixty, seventy-five—all her contemporaries who had stayed behind would be reaching the ends of their lives, unless medicine improved dramatically beyond its present miracles in geriatrics. Meanwhile, Brenna Saunder would sail on into the future, sleeping, unaware. The lure was there. And the horror. Those imaginary passing decades hit her like tangible blows.
No!
"We can do it," she said. Then, timidly, fearfully, "Can't we?"
Make me believe, Morgan. The way you used to, when we were kids and you spun those crazy yarns ...
"We can. I can concentrate on test analyses and stress factors more clearly than I ever have, Brenna. It can be done. If we believe in it."
Morgan had believed. Look at him now.
Brenna clasped her fingers around his, through the pli-ma-terial. He could sense some pressure, if not vivid tactile impressions. And he could see the symbolic handshake—in his eyes' vid picture built of geometric shapes.
"That makes it unanimous, partner," Morgan said. He didn't try to smile. There were no mirrors in his room, but he was aware of how his appearance affected others. "I can go anywhere with you, via ComLink. I can still be useful. Don't shut me out."
"I won't"
"But you'll have to go to Earth for the franchise meeting. Those old codgers on the Council don't trust vid images. They want to press the flesh."
"Okay. But some of them..." Brenna warned, remembering the last meeting.
"You can convince them," Morgan assured her, trying to boost her confidence. After a lengthy pause, he added wistfully, "I wish I could go with you. PR's always been my job."
I wish it still was, Morgan. Oh, God, how I wish it was. And I wish there was some way I could help you.
Morgan's eyes lowered, focusing on their still-clasped—or almost—hands. "I can't feel your fingers, Brenna. Even if the wall wasn't here, I couldn't. When the medics lead me around for my exercises, I can't feel the texture of their sterile suits when they brush against my bare skin. I can't tell if the floor's hot or cold under the soles of my feet. Can't feel this hospital robe. Or the bed. Crazy, isn't it? I can measure distances down to the millimeter; little numbers print up, inside my eyes, just like I was reading a computer screen. But I can't make real contact with anything."
"Morgan..." Brenna stopped, unable to think of anything to say.
"Never mind," he said suddenly, using one of her pet phrases. "Excuse the self-pity."
"You're entitled to a few indulgences, as long as you don't overdo it."
He flexed his free hand, examining it as if he had never seen it before. He had dropped into one of those increasingly frequent phases where he seemed unaware of anyone else. Morgan had momentarily forgotten, apparently, the closeness of their hands, or that Brenna was talking to him. He turned the too-pale, too-scrawny, pitiful copy of Morgan McKelvey's hand, gazing in disapproval. "I'm so weak. So damned weak. I've got to ... got to take more rehab exercises, if they'll let me. Get ... get back in shape."
Not possible. He knew it, intellectually. Yet...
"Do that," she encouraged him. What else could she do?
"But you mind Helen. Mental energy's cheap. You said you'd concentrate on that and solve those stats for us. Brains. Let me supply the legwork and brawn for the time being..."
"Hasn't it always been that way?" Morgan couldn't wink. The syntha skin wouldn't stretch and retract that well. But some of his former humor was there, under the artificialities.
"Listen, you're the lucky one. I'm the partner who has to go to Earth and jabber at all those stuffy old T.W.C. members. And show up at Aunt 'Rissa's obligatory after-the-P.O.E.-awards soiree. Just picture me putting up with her yappy dogs and trying not to knock out Stuart's teeth and cause a scandal."
The corners of his mouth quirked. A grin, or what passed for it. "I will. Have fun."
Brenna hammed a ferocious scowl, glad of the chance to play the goat and amuse him. He had so damned little to be amused about!
"Show them how it's done, Brenna. These new dogs know a lot of old tricks."
"Right!"
A hand touched her arm, making her jump. Brenna glanced around and saw Dr. Ives. "Sorry to startle you. Your time's up, Morgan. You're pushing it. Your pulse is elevated."
"It's a good elevation," he retorted, his mouth curving a bit more. That was an effort, but he obviously thought it was worth it. Morgan reluctantly withdrew his hand from the pli-material. The limb fell back limply onto the chair-bed. The wheeled robot was scuttling around, assisting the waldos as they pulled the covers up over the support frame again, taking care of Morgan as they would a helpless infant. Morgan accepted the machines' ministrations without protest. "That's all right. The business conference is over. We got a lot settled, didn't we, Brenna?" She nodded vigorously, so that he would be able to pick up the movement easily with his prosthetic eyes. "You'll remember?"
"Everything," Brenna assured him.
As she turned to go, he called, "Keep in touch!"
She paused at the monitoring station, watching Morgan on the screens. The vid and audio circuits were working once more. The chair-bed had carried Morgan back to the cen
ter of the room. Lights dimmed. Helen was telling him to get some rest or she would use medication to get his pulse rate down where it belonged. Doctors and servo mechanisms were running his life—business as usual.
"He was really animated today," the medic on duty exulted. "Your visit did him a lot of good, Miss Saunder. He's a little excited, but nothing to worry about. The important thing is, he came out of his shell."
Brenna muttered something that might be taken for agreement. The medic had understated the case. Two months and more of "museum display" existence. No privacy. Physical problems compounded beyond what any human should bear. No power to do much of anything for himself. Total dependency plus severe sensory deprivation. Little wonder he had suddenly broken out of the shell! He must have been storing up this confrontation in his mind for weeks: "Am I still your partner?" Brenna reproached herself. She should have started the dialogue. But Morgan had been so damned uncommunicative. Until today.
Well, he had done it. The vote was taken. They were committed, for whatever that might lead to.
She strode down the corridor to the main part of Morgan's estate, crossing the great room. Morgan used to spend a lot of his at-home time in this area, enjoying the view. The room was still clean. Bar and refreshment alcove fully stocked. Furniture neatly placed. Drapes pulled to reveal the magnificent vista of the Martian rift valley. As if any moment the owner of the mansion would walk in, a beautiful woman on his arm, laughing guests in his wake, ready for a party.
Life had changed, for Morgan, and for Brenna. She had never been besieged by so many "what-ifs" and nervous-making questions. Had Morgan tricked her? There was nothing wrong with his brain cells. Those worked fine. Better than before, he insisted, without former distractions. No, he hadn't manipulated her. She had made her choice freely. Breakthrough Unlimited would go ahead. Build another ship. Train another crew. Locate the flaw and correct it—they hoped and prayed.
One more gamble, and the stakes were incredibly high—win or lose.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Action and Reaction
There was a spring in her step when Brenna left Morgan's estate. She mounted the connecting bridge leading to her father's residence, bypassing her own private mansion. Some guests at Saunder Estates refused to use the outer bridges. They would take the underground tunnels or the roundabout tramway which offered no view of Valles Marineris. Brenna had to admit it might be a trifle daunting for some people to peer down through the transparent floor of the bridge and realize it was a three-kilometer drop to the bottom of the gorge. It didn't bother her, however.
The shared properties of Saunder Estates: Mars had been designed to fit into the natural terrain. Mansions and bridges complemented rather than clashed with the surrounding jumble of native rock and red dust. Lichen patches crawled along the cliffs outside the Estates' life-support domes, evidence of Terraform Division's success in nurturing flora in Mars' skimpy atmosphere. Most of the mansions' structures were underground, for energy efficiency, but here and there windows peeped out of cliff walls or afforded a view. Streams issued from deep-drill wells, spilling over the boulders, forming pools that sparkled in the morning sunlight. Some quasi-nations, with the Saunders' resources, would have built slide ramps, not walkways, to connect the three separate estates. That had always struck the Mars-based Saunders as ostentatious and silly. If Morgan had been able to leave his hyperbaric room, their opinion might have changed, and they surely would have motorized the bridges for his convenience. Since he couldn't, the bridges remained as they were, attractive ways to sightsee while getting from one side of the property to the other.
SE Security patrolled the outer grounds, driving rock-rovers, bumping over the unspoiled land. Down on the main parking lot, Brenna noted some visitors' mass driver cars amid the off-duty Security rock-rovers. Diplomatic markings on the strangers' vehicles. Terran Worlds Council. Escort for Quol-Bez, who would be taking Brenna's father to his personal launch site for their trip to Earth, probably leaving shortly after lunch.
Brenna stepped off the bridge at the garden gate and wandered through the greenhouse. The SE security guards posted there touched their caps politely. Brenna read their name badges and wished them a good day. The gardener interrupted supervising his weeder robots to say hello as she strolled along the path. Mechanical pruners and waterers continued their work without pause. Brenna wound her way through a miniature forest of deciduous trees and conifers, transplants from Earth. Outside the dome, only lichen and a few hardy molds grew in the harsh Martian climate, even this close to the equator. Inside, the climate resembled a cool spring in Beijing or New Chicago of the United Ghetto States back on the home world. If you had a life-support bubble and a good water-retrieval system, solar energy, and plenty of money, you could bring Earth to Mars, as the Saunders' designers had done here. Brenna had long thought that even her space-travel-hating aunt Carissa would feel comfortable in this garden. But they could never convince her to make the trip, not even for kinship's sake. Carissa Duryea Saunder wasn't alone in that bias. A lot of powerful leaders on Earth had never taken a space voyage. Political analysts insisted that was why Protectors of Earth was losing its power to the space-roving Terran Worlds Council, which represented all the human habitations in the Solar System, not merely Earth.
Another SE security guard was posted at the main door. The woman acted as if she were personally holding open the door for Brenna, when in fact servos had identified Todd Saunder's daughter and cleared her for entry when Brenna was still ten meters from the door. The portal sighed open at exactly the right time to let the least amount of controlled-humidity garden air into the living quarters.
Brenna checked the terminal in the foyer. "Where's my father?"
"In the solarium, Miss Saunder."
Each residence on the Estates was tailored to the occupant's taste. Brenna's ran to free-form art and holo-mode scenes of spaceflight and lots of cubbyholes and functional furnishings. Morgan's house—the part of it he couldn't use now—was strongly oriented toward sensual effects, with plush couches and thick carpets and erotic art. Todd Saunder's preferences were walls full of holo-modes—scenes of Earth and Mars—and chairs backdropped by illusions of watery horizons and open skies. Brenna walked through rooms where the ceilings glowed with Earthly fair-weather clouds and light blue heavens rich in oxygen. In one room, the holo-modes spun out their projections against Mars' real scenery, the Valles Marineris, showing fluffy cumulus hanging over the dark canyon rim. Someday, if humans kept working on Mars' climate, that might not be just a pretty fake. There were, of course, vid and audio devices in every corner and niche. ComLink, everywhere. This was, after all, the home base of the illustrious president of that corporation. Mars and Earth, tied together through technology generated from Ward Saunder's patents and his children's and grandchildren's industry. The Saunders, one of Earth's—and Mars'—most powerful dynasties.
Brenna walked up the long ramp leading to the solarium. Below the balcony she saw a group of Saunder Enterprises guards and a few diplomatic staffers and some Terran Worlds Council Space Fleet troopers, standing around and snacking on food supplied by the auto dispensers. A caste system prevailed.
A few guards and troopers chatted with the diplomats, but for the most part the private police and Space Fleet personnel segregated themselves. Brenna had noticed the same patterns on Goddard Colony and even at Kirkwood Gap Asteroid Station. For all the contrasts in gravity, living conditions, and space-oriented philosophies, humans seemed to carry their social habits with them, surprisingly often.
The solarium's triple temp-control locks dilated in smooth sequence as Brenna went through the well-lit passage. Each compartment was warmer and stickier than the one lower down. When she finally reached the solarium, she had adjusted to the change fairly well. The garden surrounding this estate was Earth-temperate zone. The solarium was Earth-tropic zone. There were exotic plants, pet birds, and insects to pollinate the flora. Brenna had sometimes complain
ed about that last. In her opinion, it was carrying slice-of-Earth realism too far, especially the stinging bugs. Todd gave her a tall story about ecosystems and enjoyed lolling about on his miniature tropical beach. He and Dian spent as much time here as they could, when they were on Mars. Ambassador Quol-Bez seemed to like the solarium, too. Once, when humans had asked, he had said his home world was a warm one, and the solarium's life-support balance was very close to what he had been used to. In his embassy in Pavonis City he had had a similar one built. Terran Worlds Council had copied the design from Todd Saunder's estate, as the ultimate in flattery of his taste.
Todd's chef and her helper were setting up a brunch. There weren't a lot of servants on Mars, not even at Saunder Estates. Colony worlds generally attracted a different economic level-tech and mech and computer experts and com specialists. But there were a few, and working for a Saunder paid well. Todd Saunder employed an excellent kitchen staff, though he had to put up with his wife's and daughter's teasing as a result. He wasn't a gourmet, they claimed, he just liked to eat.
Brenna's father and Ambassador Quol-Bez were watching Chef Reva set out the table while Derek and Chin Jui-Sao stayed out of the way. When Derek saw Brenna he broke off his conversation with the Chinese woman as courteously as he could and hurried across the domed room, cornering Brenna in a thicket of bamboo. They took advantage of the moment of concealment. Then Brenna chuckled, wriggled out of his smothering embrace. Derek peered up at the lush foliage. "What a romantic setting! I love this place!"
"You and Dad. I think it smells like a jungle. Just like Aunt 'Rissa's-Saunderhome, Earthside." Brenna tugged at the lapels of Derek's captain's uniform, pulled his head down for another kiss.
"Please!" he protested unconvincingly. "What will the others say?"
"I doubt if they'll be shocked. If they are, I'll tell them I have to grab you while you're available, which isn't often, these days. But you're right. We shouldn't be rude." She linked her arm through his and started toward the little pool in the center of the solarium. It was difficult walking side by side, because the path was so overhung with immense leaves and vines.
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