Russian Spring

by Norman Spinrad

  Sonya stared right back. “I’m afraid we do, Ilya Sergeiovich Pashikov,” she said in the same tone.

  “I cannot order you to do such a thing, Sonya,” Pashikov said more breezily. “There will be no official repercussions if you refuse, of course, but . . .”

  He shrugged yet again, threw up his hands in quite a Gallic gesture. “But speaking as your friend,” he said, “all you are really being asked to do, after all, is report a little family table talk for the good of your country, really just using what you happen to be in a position to know when you write your report, da?”

  Sonya continued to stare at him. “And if I do this thing?” she said with a coldness that quite surprised her.

  “It will look very good in your kharakteristika, I can promise you that much,” Ilya Sergeiovich Pashikov said, “and that is your superior in the bureaucracy talking. But speaking as your friend, Sonya Ivanovna, we both know how much you need it.”

  FIRST HINT OF EXTRATERRESTRIAL CIVILIZATION?

  An official spokesman for the astronomy section of the Soviet Academy of Science downplayed the hasty conclusions leapt to in the popular press over the anomalies reported in observations of the recently discovered fourth planet of Barnard’s star by observers on Cosmograd Copernicus.

  “Yes, it definitely is a solid body, not a miniature gas giant, and yes, the nightside glow is clearly from surface sources, and yes, there certainly is a suspiciously regular halo of medium-sized bodies in perfect Geosynchronous Orbit,” said Dr. Pavel Budarkin. “But to announce that we have discovered an extrasolar civilization on such circumstantial evidence would be quite premature at this time.”

  —Tass

  Emile Lourade’s office was a mess. There were half-unpacked cardboard boxes all over the place, shelves heaped with as-yet-unorganized books, journals, and discs, his desk was piled with more of the same, as were the three chairs before it, and there were half a dozen framed pictures still lying on the conference table waiting to be hung. The new Director of ESA sat there in his shirtsleeves with the air of someone who didn’t have the time or inclination to get his office organized before getting down to serious business.

  But Jerry grinned when he noticed the one item of personal decoration that Emile had managed to get hung on the wall—a big framed blowup of the lead illustration from the old article in Esprit et Espace which had introduced the Grand Tour Navette to the world all those years ago.

  “Sit down, Jerry, sit down,” Emile said, “just throw some stuff on the floor and don’t worry about it.”

  Jerry laughed, cleared himself a chair, sat down on it. “So here I am,” Emile Lourade said, with a wry grin and a little shrug. “A long way from the quality-control atelier, n’est-ce pas?”

  “A long way from where you were a few weeks ago, is what everyone is saying, Emile,” Jerry told him. “What on earth did you do in Strasbourg?”

  “I took the chance of a lifetime, Jerry, I risked everything,” Emile said much more seriously. “And I won.”

  “Obviously,” Jerry said dryly, “or Labrenne would have had your ass instead of a sudden attack of ill health. But what the hell did you say to the damned politicians?”

  “That I knew the only way to get the Russians to put more money into the merged space budget than they were going to take out for their own projects,” Emile said.

  Jerry glanced at the rendering of the Grand Tour Navette that was the only thing hanging on the walls of the new Director’s office, then looked back at Emile Lourade, his spirit soaring.

  Emile nodded. “What else?” he said. “As far as the Russians are concerned, Spaceville is just something that allows them to make money at no financial risk by selling us Cosmograd modules and obsolescent old Energia boosters. They think we’re crazy for pumping most of our space budget into the thing, and they certainly want no part of it themselves.”

  He shrugged, giving Jerry a wry smile. “And who are we Space Cadets to deny that they have a point?” he said. “The only reason their space people are even talking about a joint budget is that the politicians on both sides are requiring that they cut a deal with us as part of the deal for the Soviet entry into Common Europe. Space is only a small part of something much more important as far as both Moscow and Strasbourg are concerned, and if a deal is not made between our space agencies on its own merits before the treaty is ready for signatures, the politicians will simply force their own terms upon both of us. . . .”

  “Politique politicienne,” Jerry muttered.

  Emile Lourade frowned. “That was Armand Labrenne’s attitude too,” he said. “And that is why I am here and he is not. One must learn to speak the language of the politicians. And one must also learn to factor their equations.”

  A change seemed to come over Emile Lourade, or perhaps it was merely that Jerry was finally recognizing a change that had long since occurred. For this was not the young Emile who had worked under him; this was the Director of the European Space Agency.

  “Labrenne was demanding that the Russians fund 50 percent of a merged space budget,” Lourade said. “This would mean a significant bailout of what Spaceville is costing us. The Russians have been standing firm for 25 percent, meaning that Strasbourg would instead be financing a big piece of their advanced programs. In a few weeks the treaty will be ready, and Strasbourg simply will not allow this minor detail to hold it up. If the Soviets just sit still and stonewall us, they know they will have things more or less their way.”

  Lourade curled his lip contemptuously. “Labrenne was a fool for believing he could wait the Russians out, they have had asses carved out of stone since Gromyko and Vyshinsky,” he said.

  “And this is what you told the politicians in Strasbourg?”

  Lourade nodded. “What I told them is that what we needed was a new bargaining chip right now, and fortunately enough we had one, just waiting to be funded. . . .”

  “The Grand Tour Navette. . . .”

  Emile Lourade grinned. “The GTN is something the Russians will really want, something they can be forced to fund heavily as a joint venture. What is more, as part of a joint program, the project will finally make economic sense, as it never really has for us. . . .”

  “What?” Jerry exclaimed. “But you always agreed that—”

  “That it was a visionary program that was man’s next step out into the solar system,” Lourade said coldly. “But for ESA, it would be Spaceville all over again, and worse! Why do you think we’ve never been able to get it funded? Because the politicians are all imbeciles?”

  “The thought had crossed my mind from time to time. . . ,” Jerry said dryly.

  Lourade sighed. “You really always have been naive, haven’t you, Jerry?” he said. “What would we do with Grand Tour Navettes? We already have the Concordskis and the Icarus and the automated freighters, which is to say we have a complete logistical system in place for Spaceville—”

  “Are you crazy, Emile?” Jerry snapped. “With the GTN, we could have our own Moonbase, colonize Mars, go to the Belt, and Jupiter, and Titan—”

  “And how are we supposed to pay for all that after we’ve sunk most of our budget for years into the GTN itself?” Emile Lourade demanded. “What return could we show on the enormous costs?”

  “I never thought of that . . . ,” Jerry muttered.

  “Well they certainly have in Strasbourg all these years!” Lourade said harshly. “Labrenne was never against the GTN as a program. How could anyone who cared about the future in space enough to work in the Agency fail to fall in love with it? But neither Labrenne nor anyone else who understood the real world dared to present it as a budget item because everyone knew the politicians would never buy it.”

  “Until you, Emile. Until now.”

  Emile Lourade leaned back in his chair, clasped his hands behind his head, and gave a smile of self-satisfaction. “Not even me until the negotiations with the Russians reached this impasse,” he said. “Then I realized that the merger
of the Common Europe and Soviet space programs would change everything. The GTN fits into their program perfectly. They already have a scientific base on the Moon that they want to turn into a real colony. They have already gone to Mars and have plans to establish a permanent base. And dreams of going to Jupiter. And a preliminary feasibility study for bringing back ice with shaped nuclear charges from the Jovian moons to terraform Mars. For them, the numbers come out. The Grand Tour Navette can give them the solar system.”

  “This is what you told them in Strasbourg?” Jerry exclaimed, his head reeling.

  “Of course,” Lourade said. “Next week, a supplementary appropriation will be passed by the Common European Parliament, and the Grand Tour Navette will become an officially funded design study, and since, thanks to you, the results of such a study already exist, our negotiators will present them to the Russians as our dowry, as it were. And if they want the marriage to go through, as they surely will, they will have to agree to fund at least 40 percent of the joint space program, or the GTN will stay on the drawing boards. That will be our final offer, they will know it, and they will have to take it.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Jerry moaned. This was the dream of his lifetime about to be funded into hardware; why this sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach?

  Emile leaned forward and peered at him in puzzlement. “What’s the matter, Jerry?” he said. “This is what we’ve been dreaming of for years!”

  “Well yeah, but . . . but . . .” Grand Tour Navettes of his design opening up the solar system, going to Mars and Jupiter and Saturn, a city on the Moon, a colony on Mars, all he had ever dreamed of and worked and hoped for . . . but . . . but . . .

  “You’re going to give it all to them?” he cried.

  “Them?” Emile said ingenuously.

  “The fucking Russians!” Jerry exclaimed.

  Emile Lourade peered at him narrowly. “Don’t you even read the papers, Jerry?” he said. “Them is us, or soon will be! We’re not going to take our petty old national chauvinisms out into the solar system, we’re going to build the future out there together as Europeans!”

  “We . . . ?” Jerry said slowly. “As Europeans?”

  Lourade shrugged. “As the human race, then,” he said rather offhandedly. “Mon Dieu, Jerry, you were the one who believed enough in this dream in the first place to leave America to work for it here! Surely after all you’ve gone through, you’re not going to tell me you don’t want to be a part of it now that it’s about to really happen because it means sharing our dream with the Russians! It wouldn’t be happening without the Russians. You’re married to a Russian! All of a sudden you’re going to tell me you’ve turned into a Yankee chauvinist?”

  “No . . . ,” Jerry muttered sadly. “Of course not, I’m your man, Emile.”

  No, it was not anything he felt against the Russians that made him feel like crying in his hour of triumph. He was going to build his Grand Tour Navettes, and they were going to go to the Moon and Mars, and the moons of Jupiter, and the grand adventure would truly begin.

  That soaring vision filled his mouth with the taste of Hershey’s chocolate syrup over Häagen-Dazs chocolate ice cream, and the memory of chocolate on chocolate brought another vision to his mind’s eye, the grainy video image of the onrushing lunar landscape.

  And he could hear the glorious words of long ago through the years and across the vacuum and over the static: “The Eagle has landed.”

  And he knew it was not himself he was crying inside for.

  For the first time since he had left its shores in the service of the very vision which now was to be fulfilled, Jerry Reed found himself weeping inside for what had once been America.

  “Are you okay, Jerry?” Emile Lourade said in a much softer tone, and for a moment the Director of ESA was the young Emile again, peering at his mentor with friendly concern. “You do want in?”

  “Of course I do, Emile,” Jerry said quickly. And in ways, he thought, that a European like you can never quite know.

  “Good,” Emile said, “it just wouldn’t be right without you.” And he was the Director again, thumbing on his intercom and speaking crisply. “You can send in Patrice Corneau now.”

  Jerry rose to greet Corneau as he entered the office, and allowed Patrice to kiss him on both cheeks, French-style, a casual European gesture that he had gotten over being embarrassed by, at least when it came from someone who was more than a mere acquaintance, as Patrice Corneau certainly was.

  Corneau was another of Jerry’s original Space Cadets, whose first job with the Agency had been under Jerry in the testing atelier, and he had worked under Jerry in the prototype équipe too, before climbing on the fast track. He had been a tall, gangling, sloppily dressed young engineer type in those days, with a mop of unruly black hair and a holder full of pens in his shirt pocket. Now he was assistant project manager on Spaceville, his hair was expensively coifed and streaked with gray, and he wore an elegantly tailored lime-green suit.

  “You will be working with us on the Grand Tour Navette, of course, Jerry?” Patrice said as they seated themselves.

  “Us?” Jerry said. “You’re moving over from Spaceville, Patrice? But I thought you were in line for the project manager’s job over there. . . .” He was quite touched that Corneau was apparently willing to give up such a career opportunity to work under him on the Grand Tour Navette.

  Corneau gave Lourade a surprised look. The Director gave him a furtive and uncomfortable-looking glance back.

  “You haven’t told him, Emile?” Patrice said.

  “Told me what?”

  “I’ve appointed Patrice project manager on the GTN, Jerry,” Emile Lourade said evenly.

  The words hit Jerry like a sock in the gut. For a long moment he just sat there frozen, staring silently and woodenly into the Director’s eyes. Emile Lourade stared just as fixedly back, with no readable emotion on his face.

  Time seemed to lapse into slow motion as Jerry’s mind wrestled with his emotions. Lourade, to his credit, just sat there giving him time, and that, more than anything else, finally allowed Jerry to assess the reality with cold clarity and pull himself together before he finally spoke.

  “Well, I can’t honestly tell you I’m not a little disappointed, Emile,” he finally said, and then managed a wan little smile. “But I suppose you’re right. I’m a designer and hands-on engineer, I’m no administrator, never have been, and I guess I never will be. . . .”

  He turned to face Patrice Corneau. “Pas problem, Patrice,” he said. “Who cares if I was once your boss? I’ll be happy to work under you as chief project engineer, I mean that sincerely.” And he held out his hand.

  And as Patrice Corneau took it somewhat hesitantly, Jerry found, to his own surprise, that he did mean what he said. After all, he would not really enjoy hassling budgets and dealing with subcontractors. Designing the spacecraft and supervising the construction of the hardware was where the true joy of it all lay for him.

  In a way, Jerry thought, I should be feeling sorry for Patrice. He gets to deal with all the crap, and I get to have all the fun.

  “I’m afraid not, Jerry,” Emile Lourade said sadly.

  “What?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t make you chief project engineer either,” the Director of the European Space Agency said, staring down at his desktop, not meeting Jerry’s eyes. “You’ve got to understand my position. . . .”

  “I’ve got to understand your motherfucking position!” Jerry shouted.

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand either, Emile,” Patrice said. “If you think I’ll have any trouble working with Jerry, you’re quite wrong, I want him as my chief engineer, he’s the only logical choice.”

  “You can’t have him,” Emile Lourade said.

  “Why on earth not?”

  “Two reasons, Patrice. First and foremost because Jerry would not be at all acceptable to the Russians in such a high position in the project. Not an American, renegade or not,
and certainly not someone whose . . . political unreliability was demonstrated when he betrayed the American sat-sled technology to us. . . .”

  “Son of a bitch!” Jerry shouted.

  “C’est la merde, Emile,” Patrice Corneau said.

  Emile Lourade shrugged. “La merde peut-être,” he said, “but that is the politics of the situation, and I am forced to deal with them. And with one thing more—the Soviets in any case will want a Russian in the job.”

  Corneau pursed his lips, frowned, nodded. “Of course,” he said.

  Jerry found himself on his feet shouting, madder than he had ever been in his life. “Where the fuck would this project be without me? Where would you be without me, Emile? If you hadn’t had my project to sell out to the fucking Russians, you wouldn’t be sitting in that chair now in the first place! You make me want to puke! You were my friend, Emile! When did you turn into such a piece of shit?”

  Patrice Corneau seemed quite aghast at this outburst, shrinking back in his chair with his eyebrows raised and his eyes bugging out. But the Director of ESA just sat there quietly and took it, waiting till Jerry was finished before he spoke. And when he did, it was in a quiet voice, leached of all anger or recrimination.

  “You had a dream, Jerry,” he said. “It was a worthy dream, and you gave it to me, and to Patrice, and to many others like us. You had to leave your own country to do this, and unjustly enough, endure indignities and discrimination, and a certain amount of contempt here precisely for having done the right thing. That is the price you had to pay. . . .”

  Emile Lourade shrugged. “This is the price I have to pay to make that dream a reality at long last,” he said. “I have to betray an old friend to whom I do indeed owe much, I have to endure your hatred, and I have to endure my own disgust. In order to make the Grand Tour Navette a reality, I must commit a great injustice against an old friend whom I deeply admire. I ask you to forgive me, Jerry, knowing I have no right to do so, but knowing also that in terms of what we both believe in, I am doing the right thing. The only possible thing. And you know it too, do you not?”