Flare

by Roger Zelazny

  "Has this ever happened before?" Dixon asked. Although he technically outranked his tracker, he also happened to be fresh out of Meteorology School. In emergencies, the Weather Office's ever-pragmatic handbook dictated that experience must come before status. Still, Dixon himself tried to think of a case, something they might have reviewed at school, in which the Master Weather Modeling Program had gone down. Nothing came to mind—which was reasonable because, after all, the Cray IXs were supposed to be uncrashable. Or else Dixon had been playing hooky the day his class covered it.

  "Not to my knowledge, sir. WEATHERMAN is God in this business. He just doesn't go down."

  "Until now… Well, I guess, in this case, we ought to… Hmmm…"

  "I suppose we could issue a bulletin or something, sir."

  "That's it, we can issue a weather watch to the media list Now, what do you think it ought to say?"

  "Well…" Wynans hesitated. "We could use the forms for a tornado or blizzard warning or something. Except, I guess, we maybe ought to tell people there isn't any danger. I mean, we had nothing negatively active on the screens when they went out. At least, that's what I was seeing—sir."

  "Very good. That's exactly what we'll do. Tell people that their weather is under control, for now anyway, even though it isn't. Then we can just sit tight and wait for instructions from Washington."

  "Sounds like a plan to me, sir."

  And it would have worked, too. But when Dixon went to activate his media list, he found that the phones were all tied up, with nothing going out or coming in, and no system notice to prep him for the emergency.

  "Never rains but it pours," Wynans observed. "As we say in this business, sir."

  So the two weather operators sat at their consoles and started a fast dual game of JAXI. When the system came back up, they'd hear about it soon enough.

  Chapter 14

  Star-Crossed Lovers

  Gribble

  Chirp

  Squeal

  Gribble

  Cabin B9 aboard ISS Whirligig III, March 21, 18:26 UT

  The transfer disk whirred and burbled as the flying heads unpacked its tightly compressed bits, which had been sent in a solid blip of high-speed transmission. The logics quickly converted them into an analog video signal at one-to-one timing.

  The radio shack of the International System Survey Whirligig III had received the transmission an hour ago. It had taken Peter Spivak that long to locate someone with a disk player and then find a private moment in his cabin.

  Whirligig was a cluster ship. Three to seven cylindrical hulls—the number depending on the paid manifest for the run—each boosted separately on reaction mass from the vicinity of the Earth-Moon system and flew alone until they attained enough velocity to put them on a widening spiral that would eventually intersect the orbit of Mars. Upon reaching freefall, the ships rendezvoused, lashed themselves into a rosette, and fired angular thrusters to establish a slow, centrifugal spin which would provide artificial gravity for the nine-month voyage, protecting the crew and passengers from any debilitating calcium loss. At the opposite end of the run, the ships would brake their spin, unlash, and decelerate separately, maneuvering for orbit and unloading by shuttle to the red planet.

  Even spread among five hulls, the accommodations were not great. Peter shared his fifteen-cubic-meter cabin—the ship's manuals called it "cocoon space," after the hanging sleeping bags they'd been issued—with four other men. When he was not sleeping or amusing himself with games and prerecorded entertainments, Peter had duties as a dishwasher first class in the mess. He quickly learned that the main difference between "crew" and "passengers" on a survey ship was the former were licensed to navigate and work the ship in orbit; everyone else was "casual," or unskilled labor, fit for scraping dishes.

  He sat on the cabin floor with his back against the wall and started the disk player. Although the message's heading cipher had shown only Whirligig's registry codes and Peter's name, he had a good idea who had originated the transmission—and it wasn't his mother, either. What he couldn't figure out was, why did Cheryl send a one-way blip-tape when she could as easily, and for about the same cost, have bought a two-way communication slot? The lag was still only about five seconds, so they could have talked back and forth and it would almost be like they were on the same continent Anyway, with a disk from his girl—if she still was his girl—he wanted to be alone. For the first viewing at least.

  The player's microscreen came up a blank white, and it never picked up much more definition after that. At first Peter thought the unit was broken, then he looked more closely at the image.

  A bland hospital room. White mounded pillows and draped sheets. Part of a neutral-gray wall studded with fittings for oxygen, water, and electric power. A hospital gown in white with a pattern of light-blue stripes. And Cheryl's face, pasty and flat, swathed in a turban of white bandages. As he stared, Peter saw that the bandages went down her neck and enveloped one shoulder, where the corner of the gown was left open, just pinned to the medicated gauze.

  The only real colors in the picture were Cheryl's right eye, still a blazing jade green, and the skin around her other eye socket, which was closed to a squint with a violent purple bruise. Red scratches crossed her nose and descended her left cheek. By staring hard Peter could see the black wicks of sutures in those claw marks.

  The image was so shocking, so little what he had hoped to see, that he missed her opening words and had to track back.

  "Guess this wasn't what you were expecting, huh?" she said in a tiny voice. "Honestly, Peter, it took me a long time to decide to even make this tape, let alone send it to you—and I certainly didn't want to talk to you in person. Not looking like this. And, anyway, the nurses here put up enough of a fuss over having Dad bring in a camera. So you can guess what they'd say to a full conferencing rig....

  "As to what happened… well, you don't want to know. Let's just say I met someone who wasn't what I thought.... Enough said on that subject."

  Cheryl tried to swallow, made a face, and someone off camera passed her a glass of water. She sipped it, handed it back.

  "Mother thinks—and Dad agrees with her—that I ought to get out of this city for a while. You know they think the world of you....They're suckers for a nerd with a technical degree, I guess....Anyway…"

  She looked directly out of the screen, one green eye and a patch of bruise, for five full seconds.

  ''Anyway, they think that, just because jobs are so scarce around here, maybe I ought to apply for something off-planet. They still make a big deal of how quickly the Foundation responded on your application. And that crazy idea you had, about my doing technical illustrations or mechanical drafting or whatever, well, Dad thinks it would probably fly. But I don't know…"

  Her free hand settled on top of the sheet, folded back a wrinkle, pressed it flat.

  "I don't want to go just anywhere. I mean, I'd want to be assigned somewhere that I knew some people, somebody at least—so I wouldn't feel alone. I haven't contacted the Areopolitans yet, so I don't even know if they have an opening, or anything."

  Cheryl's fingers caught at the fold in the sheet, scissoring back and forth over it, until the fabric took a crease.

  "You know… like, if they could assign me to your station, or something, then we could be, could keep each other company. If you didn't mind it, I mean… It's true we didn't part on very good terms, Peter. I know I was kind of mean to you. Not very supportive. And I said some things… whatever."

  Cheryl suddenly looked down at her hand, quickly unclutched the fold of sheet, and spread her fingers wide above it. Then she absently went back to smoothing the material flat. She looked directly into the camera.

  "What I'm trying to say is, if you still want to see me, well, I could apply to the Foundation. Try to get a position with them, if that was what you wanted, too."

  By this time Peter was gripping the sides of the player and chanting, "Yes! Yes!"

&nbs
p; "All this will heal without even a mark," she went on, waving the hand in front of her face. "And there's no neural damage, the doctor tells me, although he says I'm lucky on that one. So, by the time you see me, I'll be good as new. If you do want to see me, Peter…"

  Cheryl held her gaze steady on the camera, looking deep into his eyes. Then, after a few more seconds, she pursed her lips and nodded. The image faded out.

  Peter Spivak didn't have to go through the message a second time to make his decision. Leaving the player on the cabin floor, he ran out the door.

  Tick

  Tick

  Tick

  Click!

  U.S. Post Office, Sag Harbor, GNYC, March 21, 12:43 p.m. EST

  The light below the transfer spindle went off, and the slot spat Cheryl's datadisk back into her hand. The diode array showed $8.55, which was a reasonable rate considering she was sending forty-two megabytes of text and graphic images to Tharsis Center, Mars. She had elected batch mode, which was the least expensive kind of transmission, bundling her file with other electronic documents addressed to the same station. The machine estimated they would arrive sometime within the next twenty-five minutes, plus or minus fifteen, and asked for her money code. Cheryl Hastings punched it in.

  She had come out of the hospital three days ago, and it had taken her all this time to finally decide to send that embarrassing video—ultimately unedited, because she could think of no way to fix it—off to Peter on his outbound voyage. But she didn't hesitate nearly as long over her other decision, which was to submit her resume and work samples to the Areopolitan Foundation.

  Even if Peter didn't want her, or had found someone else, or had taken a monk's vows, or whatever—she still wanted a real job that paid real money for real effort and offered real prestige for solid accomplishment. And none of that seemed to be available in New York, or in the United States, or anywhere else on Earth for that matter. Not right now, at least.

  That limited her options dramatically.

  Cheryl realized she could continue living at home with Mother and Dad, dabbling in her fantasy painting and knowing it wasn't very good. She understood that her parents were scrimping to make room and board available to her. Stuff all that.

  Or she could join one of the Gray Market Groups and deal in whatever the commodity of the moment happened to be: counterfeit certificates and permits, junk paper and freeloaded securities, unapproved pharmaceuticals and illegal stimulants, toxic wastes, unlicensed landfills… or her own body. That option was only marginally dangerous, since almost no one in the grays was getting caught these days. Or, if caught, they went unsentenced. Or not to real prison time, at least. And copping a record was just a nuisance—unless you were looking for a position in the straight world. Of which there were none anyway.

  Or she could emigrate to the Moon. That was a one-way trip—if she stayed longer than six months or so, and she would have to work at least that long to earn her return fare. The colony's government made no provision for indentured immigrants to get access to the centrifuges or other exercise machines that would maintain her body against one gee of acceleration, which she needed if she wanted to continue living on Earth. And although the colony had an open offer to hire at bonus rates in certain categories, Cheryl didn't happen to have a degree in plasma physics, cellular electrobiology, fourth-order cybernetics, or any kind of medicine.

  No, if she wanted to work, earn money and respect, and feel useful, then she had to move beyond the Earth-Moon system entirely.

  The Areopolitan Foundation had accepted Peter for a geophysical survey crew. Or was that areophysical? Anyway, the three years offplanet would pay well enough, he'd said, to give them—him and her—a nest egg, or an annuity for life, or whatever they wanted. And the Foundation would provide for all gee-maintenance, so they could return to Earth and live normally.

  Peter had told her the Areopolitans needed technical illustrators. So Cheryl had selected, as samples to submit, from among the most mechanical, least shapely or organic, of her recent drawings. Her resume couldn't claim an actual work history, of course. But then, who on Earth, who was willing to go to Mars for a job, was able to show that? Instead, she listed the sales records—buyer, date, and price—for all five of the drawings that had actually sold.

  Cheryl reasoned that if the Foundation had been willing to take her as part of a package deal with Peter Spivak, then they might still consider her for a job even without him, or separate from him, if he wanted it that way.

  Anyway, it would only cost her time and postage to apply. Right now, with her time worth about less than nothing, those eight bucks in postage were the biggest investment she was in a position to make. And the worst that could happen—at least with this transmission, if not with the other—was that the Areopolitan Foundation might reject her.

  Cheryl Hastings kissed her fingertips, patted the disk slot, then turned and walked away.

  Thump

  Thump

  Thump

  Bump!

  Radio Shack, ISS Whirligig III, March 21, 18:51 UT

  Communications Specialist 1C Wilbar Fredrix looked up from his handheld Skeedaddle game and pushed back the curtain on his cubicle to see what had caused the commotion out in the hallway.

  That young geophysicist, Peter Spivak, had collided at an ell turn with Whirligig's ferocious first mate, James B. Wyvern. They were both now picking themselves up with the fluid, almost lethargic grace of point-three gee. But the look on the mate's face was anything but easygoing. Eye-popping, that's what it was. After all, it was almost sixteen hours since Wyvern had lunched on an articled passenger, and that was too long for the man's notorious mouth. This should be interesting.

  "Now see here, you puppy!" Wyvern was drawing himself up to his full 160 centimeters and spreading his chest to at least 175, drawing breath for a full gale. "If you think the captain maintains these passageways so you can endanger—"

  "Excuse me, sir," Spivak interrupted him earnestly, smilingly, pleadingly. "This accident was entirely my fault, I know, for running in the corridors without looking where I'm going like you must have told me not to a thousand times or more but I really had to get to the radio shack because I need to send off an urgent message in a matter of life and death that has to do with my family or someone who's going to be my family really soon and so it's really an emergency and as soon as I'm done in there then I'll certainly come back out here and listen to you tell for the thousand and first time how important it is for me to look where I'm going."

  By the finale to this waterfall of words, Spivak had edged around to the doorway in front of Fredrix, slid himself through, and snapped the curtain shut. Then he turned to face the comm spec.

  "Sparks! I've got to send a message."

  "So I've heard," Fredrix smiled. "Two-way, one-way, or night letter?"

  "Gee, I… What's fastest?"

  "Two-way gets priority—if, that is, your party's at home and receiving calls. Do you happen to know your person's local time?"

  "I, unh—" Spivak squinted his eye.

  "Fear not. We'll do it one-way. That only takes as long as it takes me to get out the old camera and cabling, find my light filters, set up a patch, and locate a blank disk that doesn't have girlie pix or anything else on it."

  "I see. What's a night letter?"

  "You type into that terminal." Fredrix pointed. "The machine encodes. And I stick an address en clair on the first ten bytes. Poof! It's gone."

  "That's what I want." Spivak spun around, bent over the terminal, and laid his fingers on the keyboard. 'Just type?"

  "Be my guest."

  The young man rattled away for ten seconds without pause. Then he straightened up. "And it's gone?"

  “Just tell me who to."

  "Ms. Cheryl Hastings of 112 Duck Pond Circle, Sag Harbor, Greater New York City."

  "Hell, fella!" Fredrix laughed. "Time there is just short of one in the afternoon. We could have done you a conference call."


  “Just send the letter, okay?"

  "You got it."

  Spivak gave him a parting grin, made a crack in the curtain, looked through to make sure First Mate Wyvern was nowhere in sight, and then slipped out.

  Fredrix typed the address and was about to initiate transmission when curiosity got the better of him. Not that he was a natural snoop, really. But he did like to know what messages his passengers were sending, in case they turned out to have implications that would come back to haunt Whirligig on his watch. And anyway, if he knew the passengers' business, he'd be in a better position to help them, wouldn't he?

  He dumped the archive of Spivak's text onto his console and read it:

  YES YES YES PLEASE COME PLEASE COME + +

  I DO LOVE YOU AND ALWAYS WILL LOVE YOU ++

  FORGET HOW YOU LOOK ++

  DOESNT MATTER TO ME++

  JUST COME AS SOON AS THEY LET YOU ++

  LOVE PETER ===

  Now that was a really nice sentiment, Fredrix decided, especially for a girl with a sweet, old-fashioned name like "Cheryl." In this case, "come" probably meant "come to Mars," because that's where this ship and Articled Passenger Spivak were headed. Maybe Ms. Cheryl Hastings would be coming out on Whirligigs next run. It would be interesting to see a girl who could inspire such blind passion in an otherwise sensible and able-bodied young man like Spivak. In that case, Comm Spec Wilbar Fredrix would just have to look her up.

  His curiosity satisfied, Fredrix compressed the message, fed it into the buffer, and queued it for dispatch. A second later, his computer log noted the transmission.

  He went back to his interrupted Skeedaddle game.

  Two moves into the set, his communications board lit up like the Fourth of July. His computer screen filled up with garbage, blinked itself green, tried to reset, failed, and buzzed at him.

  "What the—?"

  Fredrix scrolled it down and began sieving the computer's transient memory for clues to what might have happened. From the broken bits and other nonsense, he could only guess that some kind of electromagnetic emission, a really capacious blast of static, had temporarily overwhelmed the system's filters. The computer had tried to register the blare as an incoming signal and interpret it according to one of the binary or raster codes the machine knew. When nothing worked, the computer had given up and cried uncle.