Cradle of Splendor

by Patricia Anthony

  eventhorizonpg.com

  CNN, Live

  ... and at the end there, that is the general who six years ago sent tanks into the streets of Brasília to give Ana Maria Bonfim absolute control of the country. General, ah, Fernando Machado. The man on her left, and the boy ... I’m not sure ...

  Susan? Should we attach any importance to the general’s placement at the end of the row, and Director Carvalho at her right hand?

  I really ... Sorry, Bernie. There’s quite a bit of blowing dust. It’s windy here, as it usually is in this interior desert state. As you can see, the flags are flapping. Uh, in answer to your question, no, I don’t think we can read anything into ... Certainly there’s some rivalry between the Army and, I guess you could call O.S. a mixture of FBI and CIA—Ah. And here’s the first national anthem.

  Short program.

  Yes. And right on time.

  As usual, President Bonfim cuts right to the chase. We should point out that there is a lot riding on the president’s shoulders. But it looks like they couldn’t have asked for a better day for a launch. Hardly a cloud in the sky.

  Yes, Bernie. A very pretty morning.

  THEY PLAYED “Deutschland, Deutschland Über Alles” as a samba. They played it lento, full of Lusitanian nostalgia and African dreams. A miracle that it was Germany. Dolores could see Pakistan or India taking the chance. Perhaps even Italy. Despite their leap of faith, the Germans on the podium below seemed composed, all but the pudgy CEO of Siemens, whose hands were clasped fervently behind his back. Whose fingers were crossed.

  “This is so cool,” the young man next to Dolores said. His tenor voice, the American English, carried. Ambassador Crowley frowned a warning from the bottom of the bleachers up, up, up to the ghetto of Third World ambassadors and unofficial visitors from the Economic Seven.

  “This is so damned cool. I’m Roger.”

  An open hand was offered toward her concha belt and thickening midsection. Roger’s palm was sweaty. His diminutive size and eagerness gave the NASA windbreaker a high school letter—jacket charm.

  “I mean, can you believe? A free trip to Brazil, the weirdest space shot of the century, and I get to stand by somebody famous, too. Un—fucking—believable. I usually want paintings to look like something, you know? But I like some of your stuff.”

  A pro forma smile. She quickly looked away. To her right was a gathering of press and a CNN satellite truck, its dish cupping the heavens. Order and Progress. When did the Brazilian motto stop being a joke?

  “Whoa, mama! Willya look at that?” Roger peered through a pair of Zeiss binoculars to the silver—green grass and the white pillar in the distance. “First major space mission, and they lose their cherry to the Germans. What a mind—trip. They underbid the Chinese. They even came in cheaper than the fucking Russians!”

  The anthem ended too soon. Roger’s last two words blared over the gathering. The diplomats, being diplomatic, pretended not to hear.

  A—one, and a—two, and the Army Band struck up the Brazilian national anthem. The musicians played it straight, not so much from reverence, Dolores suspected, but out of resignation. It was a Gilbert and Sullivan sort of tune.

  Flags snapped importantly in the wind. To the left of the Germans, Edson Carvalho, Brazil’s chief spy, listed. One hand gripped a champagne bottle as if for ballast. In direct line from the director of Operações Sigilosas stood a sad—eyed child, a stranger with the gawky manner of a farmer, and the president: one small dark woman amid a gathering of men.

  Look at me, Dolores thought, but Ana Maria Bonfim faced the band, the wind whipping her skirt about her legs, her gaze riveted to popcorn clouds and the azure Goiás sky. Look at me, Aninha.

  Eighteen months of phone calls that had never been returned. Eighteen months of seeing her on TV, an empty living room and half a city between them.

  The anthem ended. The crowd, except for the podiumful of principals, took their seats. Ambassador Crowley smoothed his hair over his bald spot with a furtive hand. An impish breeze exposed it again.

  This should have been the time for a presidential speech, but none was listed on the single—page program.

  Why won’t you talk, Aninha? Why won’t you answer my phone calls? Don’t need the dollars anymore?

  Roger said in his shrill tenor, “Why not use their base at Natal so they’re closer to the equator? A space shot the hard way? Fucking incredible. And look! Those damned tanks are too small. I tellya, that thing’s never getting off the ground.”

  The loudspeakers came to life. “Sistemas prontos. Começando o countdown.”

  “Hey. So you’re just an artist, okay, but how does this look to you?” Roger handed her the glasses.

  “Cinco minutos.”

  Dolores raised the binoculars and studied the side of the president’s face—the sagging skin at the jawline, the crow’s—feet, the graying black curls near her ear. Ana Maria, melancholy and distracted, wasn’t looking at the rocket. But she wasn’t looking at the crowd, either. So easy. One marksman with a scope. That’s all it would take.

  Roger tugged at the sleeve of Dolores’s peasant blouse. “So? Whaddya think?”

  The whole world is watching, Ana. You took too much of a chance.

  Grass bent with the wind, now silver, now light green. And in the distance, the proud little rocket jutted up from the plains.

  “A boob,” she said.

  Roger looked blank.

  “You know. A jug. A bazoom. Don’t you see it? It’s a big white hooter with a gray nipple.”

  Roger whooped and nearly fell onto the Sudanese ambassador’s wife. “God! So cool! I love it when a woman talks dirty.”

  “Quatro minutos.”

  Four minutes and not even Saint Ana could stop it. Dolores said, “Useless as tits on a boar.”

  * * *

  Hiroshi Sato was curious. He knew who was laughing at the top of the bleachers. He recognized their voices. He had read every entry in their dossiers. What he didn’t know was what they were doing together, the young NASA engineer and the suspected American spy. And he couldn’t fathom what they found so funny.

  He would not show weakness and look. Instead he watched the ungainly rocket. Brazilian incompetence. He was used to that. But how could the Germans have gotten involved? In less than four minutes, a team of astronauts would burn to death, along with a ninety—million—dollar German satellite.

  Over the loudspeakers: “Tres minutos.”

  An anxious flutter in his belly. Hiroshi forced himself to relax. The week before, his CIA contact had studied the data, the photos, then said, “Those Krauts’ll find out that you get what you pay for.”

  Americans might be deluded about the quality of their engineering, but one thing they understood was capitalism. They understood space.

  Hiroshi sought comfort in Kinch’s pledge: That lardassed bird’ll never fly.

  * * *

  Edson Carvalho was very drunk, so drunk that he was afraid he would fall off the podium. At the top of the bleachers, two Americans were laughing: the NASA investigator and the president’s oldest and fondest friend. Edson supposed they were laughing at him.

  “Dois minutos.”

  As if his eyes gave him no other choice, he looked at Freitas. Thirty years of espionage. Everything but the hunger in Freitas’s face had lost the power to scare him.

  Freitas’s five—year—old, José Carlos, was quietly and doggedly playing some child’s game. An odd amusement. What was its point? Then Edson realized what he was seeing wasn’t a game at all. The boy was trying to get his father to hold his hand.
He intently folded and refolded the callused fingers over his own. They never held a grip. Freitas never looked down.

  Poor little shit. Edson punched the kid in the shoulder. “Hey,” he whispered.

  And the loudspeakers said, “Dez.”

  “Hey.”

  The boy’s eyes were round and brown with just a hint of slant. Some Índio in him. “You see down there?”

  A hesitation. The boy shook his head.

  “Want me to hold you?”

  “Oito.”

  José Carlos lifted his arms. As Edson hoisted him up, the boy slipped his arm around his neck. His body was warmer than Edson expected, compact and firm. He fit comfortably in his arms, teddy—bear right.

  * * *

  “Temos ignição.”

  A rumble that tickled Dolores’s belly, the soles of her feet. Across the rolling prairie, the rocket caught fire.

  Over the loudspeakers an excited, “Liftoff! Liftoff!” Smoke billowed. The white pillar mounted the sky, hemorrhaging orange.

  “Not enough power,” Roger said, without taking his eyes from the glasses.

  Higher, higher, its voice sometimes a roar, sometimes a nervous stutter. The rocket fought to rise as if the earth was determined that it should stay.

  When it was halfway to heaven, Roger shouted, “Oh, man! It’s not gonna make it!” Gasps of anxiety swept the crowd.

  Pity should have shut Dolores’s eyes. Macabre fascination widened them. At the top of its arc the rocket was a mere elongated speck in the blue. She saw it stop rising. She heard the engines sputter. She watched as the nose lazily began to tip. The wife of the Sudanese ambassador let out a ladylike scream.

  For an instant, the rocket seemed to hang in the sky, suspended by apathy. Then, as if God pulled a curtain on the disaster, a cloud drifted north and screened the spacecraft from view. The engines coughed twice. And fell silent.

  Bright flags riffled: the German tricolor, the Brazilian green and azure. A puff of wind turned the sea of grass silver.

  * * *

  Hiroshi heard the NASA engineer shout, the crowd gasp. He saw Trade Counsel Shuma Kasahara squeeze his eyes shut. Saw his mentor’s hands clench so hard that the knuckles paled: not with fear, but with hope.

  This would halt the meteoric rise of Brazil’s economy. They might have stumbled onto room—temperature superconductivity, and an easy answer to fusion. But that sort of success could not be sustained. Space travel required precision. Teamwork.

  Wearing his public face, smirking inside, Hiroshi looked at the podium. The president of Brazil was checking the status of her nails.

  * * *

  Edson tickled the little boy’s belly, eliciting a giggle. “You had breakfast?”

  The child shook his head. Poor little shit. “Tell you what. From now on, I will order my men to fix you breakfast. On pain of death. Would you like that?”

  “I’m hungry,” José Carlos said.

  Edson shifted the boy’s weight to his left arm. “Just a minute, and this will all be over. Can you wait just a minute, then?”

  “Uh—huh.”

  “Good boy.” Edson kissed the top of José Carlos’s head. The dark hair was sour from neglect. “That’s a good boy. You wait. Then we’ll sneak inside to the buffet. They have chocolate.”

  For the first time he dared look at the silent white cloud, the one that had swallowed the rocket. So this—an engineering miscalculation—would topple Santa Ana and send Edson plummeting with her. Strange how anticlimactic and liberating the inevitable was. He wondered if suicide jumpers, seeing the ground approach, felt the same dull relief.

  * * *

  Where was it? Dolores wondered. Where had the rocket gone? The Siemens CEO’s head was lifted, but his eyes were closed, waiting. All waiting. The crowd held its breath for the plummet. Even the wind was hushed.

  * * *

  A loud pop. Hiroshi stepped closer to Kasahara, his eyes busy.

  There. On the podium. Edson Carvalho was laughing. He balanced a spewing bottle of champagne in one hand, a child in the other.

  Crazy countries. Crazy people. And crazy rockets. It should have fallen by now.

  That’s when he heard the NASA engineer scream, “Jesus fucking Christ! How did they do that?”

  * * *

  Of course Roger spotted it first. He had the glasses. Then even Dolores could see the rocket emerge from the cloud, rising soundlessly and fast, no fire on its tail. Up and then up. Mesmerized, she watched it vanish into the blue.

  No one moved. No one spoke. A minute or two later, a calm anticlimax from the loudspeakers: “Orbita.”

  The president leaned toward the microphones. “We will go in now and celebrate.”

  Not even the Germans clapped.

  NBC, Live

  Right there, Dr. Maynard. Please explain what we are seeing on the video.

  Yes. At this point something starts to go wrong with the main engines. I would say they are experiencing insufficient lift. Almost ... almost without a doubt.

  I realize I’m a layman, but still, it almost looks like, at least at this magnification, that the burn ...

  Yes. Definitely, Tom, that—that flicker that you see along the left, that’s uneven burn. Very dangerous.

  So the rocket shouldn’t have—

  No. That’s why it tips left. And there, just now, you can see the fuselage turn—not normal rotation at all.

  Uh—huh. Interesting. Entering the cloud now, and ... quite long. They’re telling me one minute, two point three seconds. Doesn’t that seem to be excessive—can I call that ‘hang time’?

  It does, well, hover. Or seem to.

  And there it is again on the screen, headed straight up. The rocket does not appear to be—now, at least—uh, be spiraling out of control. And the engine flame has apparently extinguished. Any thoughts on how that propulsion system works, doctor? ... Doctor? ... Dr. Maynard?

  Um?

  Any ideas on how the Brazilian space agency did that?

  Uh, no.

  CHOCOLATE MADE a grubby circle about José Carlos’s lips. He held a shrimp in one fist, and he was beaming. Speakers piped Villa—Lobos through the tent. Against a blast of “Bachianas Brasileiras,” Edson hummed an off—tune, offbeat “Chão de Estrelas,” held the boy, and danced.

  “Where’s papai?”

  Edson didn’t answer. He shuffled close to the table and bent him over a tray of stuffed crabs. His balance lost, José Carlos shrieked and clutched Edson’s lapel.

  “You don’t like the crabs? Let’s see what you do like, neh?” Edson dangled him over a platter of quail eggs. He was drunk, and it took him far too long to realize the boy was squealing with terror, not delight. He pulled him up.

  “Where’s papai?”

  “Our fun—loving channeler extraordinaire? He’s kissing foreign—dignitary ass in the other tent. He’ll charm us with his presence in a few minutes.” Edson closed his eyes. Drunken vertigo sent him crashing into the table. A papaya and coconut cake fell, whipped cream down.

  “Puta que pariu,” he mumbled, then caught the boy’s self—righteous expression, one he must have learned from his father, when his father was still whole. “Don’t look at me with those eyes. You’re too little to be pious. And too young to know what puta means. Come on. Laugh for me.” He tickled the child’s ribs.

  José Carlos twisted away, frowning. “What’s this?” he asked and stuck his hand inside Edson’s jacket.

  “Don’t play with that. I shoot people with that.”

  “Why?”

  “For Ana Maria, Our Lady of Economic Development.”

  Edson shouldn’t have closed his eyes a minute ago. Now he seemed to have lost all notion of center. He took a step left, and his foot nearly pulled his body with it. Only a fierce act of will kep
t him upright. Afraid he would drop the boy, he backed up until his buttocks hit the bar, and waited for the room to stop spinning.

  “You shoot lots of people?”

  “I’m a puto. Another word for ‘patriot.’ You can understand that, neh? I’m paid to fuck others for my country.”

  “You shoot lots of people with your gun?”

  “Oh.” Edson took a deep breath. The room made a giddy half—turn and halted. “Thousands.”

  Hot sticky hands plucked at his collar. “Listen. Listen.”

  “What?”

  Soft, frightened voice. Breath like moth wings on his cheek. The smells of chocolate and shrimp. “Can you kill it?”

  “What?” Edson shook his head, a mistake that nearly sent him to his knees, retching. “Um ... let you down.”

  But before he could, tiny fingers seized his jacket, put a stranglehold on his tie. “Please. Can’t you kill it?”

  Crying. That’s what was happening. The boy was crying. And José Carlos’s sobs made the room reel until there was nothing, not even dignity, to hold on to. Edson’s grip loosened. The child slid to the floor, and the director of Operações Sigilosas dropped to the Astroturf.

  A tug on the hem of Edson’s jacket. “I want my pai back.”

  When Edson understood what it really was that the boy wanted, he muttered, “God have mercy,” and the room went round and round.

  * * *

  “This disappoints me,” Hiroshi said.

  Kinch’s eyes, the color of pond scum, were magnified by his Coke—bottle glasses. He wore heavy black frames when gold rims or contacts would do. The tall, egg—shaped, hunch—shouldered vice president of Raytheon Brazil even slicked his dark hair back like Superman’s alter ego.

  “Yeah, well ...” His eyes focused on something beyond Hiroshi’s shoulder—Dr. Clark Christopher Kinch in search of a phone booth. “We shouldn’t be talking here. You’re blowing the hell out of my cover.”