The Cassandra Project

by Jack McDevitt

“We’ll find lots of things for Ed to do, but Jerry has to be our public face for this project.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he quit NASA as a matter of conscience rather than continue lying to the public, and that makes him the most trusted and believable spokesman we could have.”

  “Most people don’t know why he quit.”

  Bucky smiled. “They will,” he assured her.

  “Okay.” She didn’t always love the way Bucky’s mind worked, but she admired its efficiency.

  “And if we find what I expect to find, I need a spokesman whose veracity and integrity are above reproach.”

  She checked her screen. “He’s here now.”

  “Let him in.”

  Gloria got to her feet, walked to the door, and escorted Jerry inside. Bucky found himself facing the man he’d seen so often on television: an inch or two under six feet, brown hair beginning to recede at the temples, intense gray eyes, a slender man just starting to add a little poundage with age.

  “Welcome aboard, Jerry!” said Bucky, walking forward and extending his hand. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to have you on the team.”

  “Thanks.” Jerry shook his hand. “Sorry I couldn’t get you any more information, but that publishing house took everything I had.” He paused and made a face. “One more day there, and I’d sure as hell have killed someone.”

  “Anyone in particular?”

  “About six in particular.” Jerry smiled ruefully. “Maybe seven.”

  “Well, if you’re going to work in an industry where the practitioners tell you up front that they’re lying, you can expect that,” replied Bucky.

  “I’m just about ready to agree with you.”

  Bucky nodded. “Well, let me give you a little orientation tour. We’ll start right here. This is my office . . .”

  “I know that.”

  “And this”—he indicated Gloria—“is my executive secretary, Gloria Marcos, who’s been with me longer than anyone else. If you need to contact me, she’ll always know where I am, and if I’ve given orders that I’m not to be disturbed, she’ll know how to circumvent them because I am always available to you.”

  Jerry nodded pleasantly to her. “We’ve met online.”

  “You know Ed Camden,” Bucky continued. “There’s a burly guy who pretty much leaves me alone in here but is my shadow everywhere else. You’ll meet him soon enough. He’s Jason Brent, my number one bodyguard.”

  “You have more than one?” asked Jerry curiously.

  “I have eight.”

  “I knew you had a few enemies, but I didn’t think that many people hated you,” said Jerry with an attempt at levity.

  “For every one who hates me, there are a dozen who’d like to kidnap me and hold me for ransom,” answered Bucky.

  “Of course. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “As I told you, if you need to dig up any information, especially information that someone doesn’t want you to have, we’ve got a young woman named Sabina Marinova who’s pretty good at ferreting it out. She’s the one who was the first to have a face-to-face with Amos Bartlett.” Bucky paused. “There’ll be a few more people I want you to get acquainted with, but let’s take a tour first.”

  “What did Bartlett say? Did he admit to anything?”

  “You can draw your own conclusions, Jerry.” He turned to Gloria. “See that he gets access to the video.”

  “Will do.”

  “Now, Jerry, let’s go take a look at our transportation.”

  “The spacecraft?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good! I’m anxious to see it.”

  “Let me show you where you’ll be doing your most important work first,” said Bucky, leading Jerry out of the office to his private elevator.

  “My office?” asked Jerry, as they descended to the third floor.

  “Your office is a minor part of it,” answered Bucky.

  The elevator came to a stop, and they got off. “That’s yours to the left.” Bucky indicated a large office filled with up-to-the-minute electronic equipment. “The one on the right belongs to Ed Camden. He may be a little upset for a few days, since you’re replacing him as our spaceflight spokesman.”

  “I can do some other job . . .” began Jerry.

  “Do you think you’re the best at what you do?” demanded Bucky. “Tell me the truth.”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, then—no false modesty. You’re our spaceflight spokesman, and that’s that.” He walked to a very solid door and opened it.

  “My God, that’s impressive!” said Jerry as he walked into a state-of-the-art video studio.

  “It should have everything you need,” said Bucky, indicating a number of digital cameras including 3-D, acoustical microphones, teleprompters, and lights, plus half a dozen video and audio recording and dubbing devices. “Our technicians can be ready to work on a moment’s notice. We can broadcast you all the hell over the world on television, radio, the Internet, you name it. We can also transfer images from the ship, and from the Moon itself, and send them out from here. We have experts who can put together any kind of presentation you need on almost no notice.”

  “This is a far cry from where I was working at NASA,” said Jerry, looking around.

  “If there’s anything else you think you’ll need here, just ask for it. My priorities are different from NASA’s”—he smiled—“or at least from those of NASA’s boss over on Pennsylvania Avenue.”

  “I can’t imagine that this studio needs anything.”

  “It needs the right spokesman,” said Bucky. “And now it’s got him.” He paused. “You want to look around a bit?”

  “I can do it later,” answered Jerry.

  “Okay, let’s go look at my new toy.”

  They reentered the elevator and, to Jerry’s surprise, descended past the ground floor and even the basement level, to the subbasement.

  “What the hell’s down here?” asked Jerry, as they emerged into a dimly lit area of concrete floors, walls, and ceilings.

  “Transportation system,” answered Bucky, leading him to a small vehicle that looked like a souped-up golf cart. It was parked next to a dozen identical vehicles.

  “But why? I mean, all your buildings are on the same piece of property, right? I read that you own about two square miles.”

  “A mile and a half,” said Bucky. “This is Jason Brent’s idea. If they don’t know where I am, it’s hard to set a trap for me—or shoot me, for that matter.”

  “Why do they want to shoot you?”

  Bucky shrugged. “Why did anyone want to shoot John Lennon? There are crazy people out there, and if you make the news, and I do, you’re automatically a target.”

  “I guess you are at that.”

  “It shouldn’t surprise you. Your previous boss is protected around the clock by the Secret Service.”

  “You expect a president to be a target,” responded Jerry. “You don’t think of it in terms of normal people.”

  “I won’t even resent being called a normal person,” said Bucky with a smile. “But consider this: In the almost two and a half centuries the United States has been in business, four presidents have been assassinated—Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy. How many nonpresidents have been shot down in that same amount of time?”

  “I wasn’t arguing,” replied Jerry. “I just hadn’t considered it.”

  The route was well marked with glowing signs and arrows, and after a couple of minutes, Bucky came to a stop next to a freight elevator. They got out of the vehicle, walked over to the elevator, and ascended to ground level. There was an armed guard standing right at the elevator door, and others were posted at the various entrances and exits. Bucky nodded to him, which seemed to be all the guard needed to know about Jerry, and he stepped aside to let them pass.

  They found themselves in a huge area, some two hundred feet on a side, forty feet high, with a number of cranes not in use lining the bac
k wall—and right in the middle was the ship that would be taking Bucky and four others to the Moon.

  It was a glistening white vehicle, slim and elegant, with more than a hint of raw power, pointing to the ceiling and, beyond that, the stars.

  Jerry let out a low whistle of admiration. “Somehow I thought it would be bigger,” he said. “It seems dwarfed in a place like this.”

  “I wish it were bigger,” said Bucky. “I’m going to feel awfully cramped after a couple of days.” Suddenly, he smiled. “I wish we could at least have added a flush toilet.” He paused. “It takes off vertically and lands horizontally. The Moon lander lands and takes off horizontally. Everything’s magnetized or somehow attached to the bulkheads since we’re going to be out of gravity pretty soon.”

  “Where the hell’s the booster?”

  Bucky pointed to it. “It looks like it’s part of the ship. But we’ll be jettisoning it not long after we take off.”

  “I’m impressed,” said Jerry.

  “It looks even smaller when it’s on its belly, which is the way it’s going to touch down,” replied Bucky. “I never know which parts of it they’re working on from day to day, so I never know if it’s going to be pointing to the ceiling or to a wall.” Suddenly, he smiled. “We could make it bigger,” he added, “but if we did, I don’t know if we could get it off the ground.”

  “You know,” said Jerry, “I’ve never seen one of these close-up, at least not before it’s taken off and returned minus a couple of stages. I signed on after the last shuttle launch.”

  “It’s not a shuttle anyway,” said Bucky. “This baby was built to reach the Moon.” He pointed to a smaller section of the ship. “And that baby was built to land on it.”

  “Well, I’m impressed,” said Jerry. “I just think it’s a shame that you had to do this yourself, that NASA couldn’t get the funding.”

  “It’s not a shame at all.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m a capitalist. I think it’s a shame that we ever needed NASA in the first place, if in fact we did. There’s money to be made up there, exploring the planets, mining the asteroids, building colonies.”

  “I agree with mining the asteroids, but when you talk about building colonies, you’re making it sound like science fiction.”

  “Am I?” said Bucky. “As best we can tell, there are oceans hidden beneath the Moon’s surface. If they’re H2O-type oceans, there’s a lot of oxygen to be pulled out of them until we can create enough hydroponic gardens to sustain life for a few hundred or a few thousand people. You think five hundred heart patients wouldn’t pay whatever it takes to live out their lives—their much-longer lives—in a low-gravity hospital on the Moon?”

  “You’d make a profit from them?”

  “Don’t hospitals?” retorted Bucky. “Don’t ambulances? If I invest a couple of billion, don’t I deserve a return on my money?”

  “That’s why we have organizations like NASA, which don’t exist to make a profit.”

  “They don’t exist at all if the government doesn’t take your money to fund them,” said Bucky. “There’s a little less charity in the world than you’ve been led to believe. But that’s neither here nor there. There’s a little less truthfulness, too. And that’s why I’m engaging in this enterprise, and why you’re going to be reporting it to the public, whatever the results.”

  Jerry sighed deeply. “There’s no sense arguing about lunar colonies and hospitals, or about charities and economics. I’m here to help disseminate the truth about the Myshko and Bartlett missions, whatever that truth may be. And now that I am working for you, I’ll tell you something else I’ve been able to find out: Just about every shot you’ve seen of the Cassegrain Crater taken since 1959 has been doctored.”

  “Cassegrain?” repeated Bucky. A grim smile crossed his face. “Damn! I thought it might be Cassegrain.”

  Jerry frowned. “What do you mean? Why Cassegrain?”

  “It’s the area with the smallest number of photos and almost no description of it.”

  “That’s your destination?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What are you looking for—footprints?”

  Bucky shook his head. “We’ll look for them, of course, but I would imagine they were swept clean.”

  “It’s a big crater, maybe forty miles across,” said Jerry. “How will you know exactly where to look—and what will you be looking for, if not footprints?”

  Bucky led Jerry around the ship to the smaller lunar lander. “Do you see this?” he said, pointing to a section of it.

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s a descent stage. If we’re right about this, there should be two of them on the ground.”

  “Damn!” exclaimed Jerry. “I never thought of that!”

  Bucky flashed him a grin. “I’ll bet George Cunningham never thought of it either, or he’d find some obscure law to prevent us from taking off.”

  “So it’s not going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack!”

  “We probably won’t be able to see them from orbit, but we’ll have instruments that can find them and pinpoint their location. Then maybe we can finally find out why nine presidents in a row have lied to the American people.”

  Cassegrain. The word kept running through Jerry’s head. And then he realized—“There’s something else,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “There was a secret project back during the Apollo days.”

  “Really?”

  “Its name has an echo.”

  “Its name?”

  “They called it Cassandra.”

  Suddenly, Jerry began to feel very excited again. It was a feeling he hadn’t experienced since he first began working for NASA. He’d forgotten the sensation, and now that it was back, he never wanted to lose it again.

  22

  “They’ve had the breakthrough, Mr. President. Wescott tells me, assures me, that the average American born this year will be able to look forward to a life expectancy almost twice that of people in the last century.” Laurie Banner, his science advisor, was standing three feet in front of the president’s desk. Abraham Wescott was a Nobel Laureate who’d been leading the charge toward extended life spans for years. He was known to be extremely conservative in his official statements. So if he said so—Laurie was a tall, thin African-American, impeccably dressed, wearing a conflicted expression. Good news and bad news. They’d known this was coming, but Cunningham had hoped it would hold off until he was out of office.

  “Well,” he said, “I guess we should raise a toast to Professor Wescott.” “There’s more,” Laurie said.

  “They’re going to do resurrections as well?”

  “Almost. He says they’ll also be able to reverse the aging process. But we knew if they could do one, they could manage the other.” “Well, I’m glad to hear it.” George simply would have liked it to come when someone else was in office. “Seniors also get a break.” “Yes. It’s hard to believe, Mr. President.” She walked over to the couch and sat down.

  “When?” he asked.

  “They’ll be ready to start treatments in six months.” “How much will it cost? The individual, I mean?”

  “Wescott promised it would be affordable for most people. He’s estimating less than a thousand dollars per patient. For another eighty years of life.” “People playing basketball at a hundred and twenty.”

  “I know it will create some problems, Mr. President.” “We can’t very well deny something like this to the poor. Everybody will have to get access.” “I know.”

  “Can’t have a quarter of the population ageing twice as fast as everybody else.” “Do we have a plan to deal with it?” She’d understood the societal impact from the beginning. And she read the answer in his clamped lips.

  “I’m working on it.” Life extension was okay in small increments. But doubling the game. And some of the science magazines were saying that was just a start. Huge advances lay ju
st ahead. “First thing, I guess, Laurie, will be to revamp Social Security.” She nodded.

  The country would be faced with bosses who never retire. Politicians who never leave office. The population would double within a short time. The highways were jammed now. They’d need twice as much energy. Twice as many houses. And that was only the beginning. He was going to have to sell family planning, which would put him even more at odds with the nation’s conservatives. And he could probably expect complaints from the union of funeral directors and embalmers. “Just in time for the election,” he said.

  “It’s okay, sir. People are going to be very happy about it.” “At first. Within a few years, we’re going to be asking people to do their patriotic duty when they hit the century mark and jump off a pier. “ “They’re also getting serious about genetic manipulation.” “I know. Want a kid with double your IQ? We can handle it.” “I don’t think they’re going to be able to do that,” said Laurie. “At least not for a long time.” “Well, that’s a blessing, anyhow.”

  “They’ll be able to give you a pretty good politician, though.” She smiled. “Kidding. But they will be able to tinker with people’s looks. What’s that old radio show about the town where everybody was above average?” Then there were the two wars in Africa, with local dictators massacring protestors while the U.N. debated the issue and half the country was enraged that Cunningham had not yet committed American forces. Group marriage had shown up in—where else?—California, and was now a constitutional issue. Cunningham’s father had told him at the start of his presidential campaign that he couldn’t imagine why anybody would want the job. Now, of course, he was locked in.

  His phone sounded. He leaned forward. Pushed the button. “Yes, Kim?” “They’re here, sir.”

  “Thanks. I’ll just be a moment.” He turned back to Laurie. “Anything else?” “I understand Maurice Barteau and his team have successfully cloned a child.” “Okay.” He’d known that was coming, too. He had no control over the French, of course, but there were already storm clouds in the United States. It was just what he needed: one more major fight. “Thanks, Laurie. I think I’ll just hide under the desk for a while.” She smiled. “One more thing, sir.”