The scandal sheets and the sex magazines and the yellow media could say what they liked about the notorious love lives of the Concordski Club, and they never tired of doing so, but the code of the Club worked.
Like the flight profile of the plane itself, the life of a Concordski pilot was mostly a long, weightless, high-speed glide.
But now the flight was descending from its apogee, and the computer had turned the nose down, and a slice of the planet was barely visible at the bottom of the windshield, and it was time for Franja to tighten up her harness again and prepare herself for reentry, into the atmosphere, into the Earthbound cares and travails of the real world.
Ordinarily, she welcomed the return to another turn at manual flight, looked forward with eager anticipation to coming down into the excitement of another city half a world away.
But not this time.
She had been en route from Lisbon to Melbourne when the accident happened, and by the time Mother had called there, she was already on her way to Vladivostok, and by the time word got there, she was in Peking. Mother had finally caught up with her in Singapore, but she was scheduled to fly to Tel Aviv, and it was too late to find a trade-off to Paris.
In Tel Aviv, it had taken endless complex trading to get her on this flight to Paris at the beginning of her next four-day shift. She had managed to trade her scheduled flight to Vienna for a hop to Kiev, where she connected with a flight to London that enabled her to take a hop to Barcelona, where she managed to get herself a flight to Tokyo, where she was forced to spend three days on the ground before the regulations would allow her to fly this run to Paris.
And all the while, via phone conversations with Mother, she learned what had happened in disjointed fragments. In Singapore, she had learned about the explosion, Father’s head injury, that he was on life-support machinery, that some sort of permanent machinery was being flown in from Moscow.
By the time she spoke to Mother from Tel Aviv, electrodes had been implanted in Father’s brain, he was hooked up to a permanent portable life-support device, and his life was out of danger.
And before she had left Tokyo, Mother had told her that they were about to release Father from the hospital, and he would be there at Avenue Trudaine with her when Franja arrived.
The computer fired the Concordski’s control jets with a series of chuffs and judders, flipping the plane head for tail, so that it was falling backward. The main engine fired up for three minutes, killing velocity, then the computer turned the craft again, so that it was descending belly-first with its nose in the air.
Once, twice, thrice, the Concordski skipped through the upper reaches of the atmosphere, bleeding off more velocity with atmospheric braking, and then it eased into a shallow downward hypersonic glide.
When it was deep enough into the atmospheric envelope for the scramjet to run on external air, the computer fired up the main engine again, and returned the Concordski to manual control, flying at 4,000 kph at 100,000 meters, descending directly toward Paris at a shallow glide slope of 20 degrees.
Franja pulled back on the yoke, flew a tight downward spiral with the nose in the air, throttling back the main engine, until the airspeed was down to 2,000 kph. Then she shut off the scramjet and continued to fly high-aspect spirals until the airspeed dropped to the point where the turbofans could endure the airstream.
Then she retracted the turbofan intake cowls, fired up the conventional jet engines, and voilà, the Concordski was a conventional airliner descending into the holding stack over De Gaulle at subsonic speed.
And for once, she was not displeased when the tower told her that there would be a twenty-minute delay for a landing slot. For once, she was in no hurry to be on the ground.
For in their last conversation in Tokyo, Mother had pleaded with her to stay with them on her layover in Paris. And Mother had already prevailed upon Aeroflot, via the Red Star Tower, to grant Franja four days of emergency leave.
It would have been heartlessly cruel to insist upon staying in a Concordski Club apartment against Mother’s wishes under these dire circumstances. She was committed now to four days with the two of them en famille at Avenue Trudaine. With a mother who had assumed responsibility for a man she had not lived with for the better part of a decade. With a father who had disowned his daughter years ago.
What sort of family mise-en-scène that was going to be did not bear thinking about.
Franja sighed as she banked the Concordski yet again into another circle around the holding pattern. The acceleration might be negligible, but the pressure was there, gently pushing her into the padded seatback.
The weightless floating freedom of free-fall was long gone.
The Earthbound ties of gravity had returned with a vengeance.
CONGRESS OF PEOPLES TO DELAY VOTE ON KRONKOL REQUEST
Ian MacTavish, Secretary of the Congress of Peoples, told a press conference today that no action would be taken on Vadim Kronkol’s request that the Congress declare its support for Ukrainian independence.
“While we have welcomed the Ukrainian Liberation Front as a member organization, and while there is overwhelming support for their position among the other nationless peoples of Europe, if we vote such a resolution before the Ukrainian election, we will only open ourselves to the usual charges of subverting national political processes,” Mr. MacTavish said.
“After the election is over, and Mr. Kronkol is able to resubmit his resolution as the duly elected President of the Ukraine, you may be sure the Ukrainian people will then receive our fraternal endorsement,” he added.
—The Guardian
“Hello, Franja,” Jerry said, not knowing what else to say to the daughter he had not spoken to in years.
“Hello, Father.”
To say that this was an awkward moment would have been the understatement of the century, Jerry thought. There he was, sitting on the couch in the living room, where Franja had not seen him in years, and there she was, standing before him, cold and aloof and justifiably so he had to admit, unsuccessfully trying to hide her shock at the sight of what he had become.
He found himself feeling sorry for her. What was she supposed to feel? How could she react? Here she was, confronting the father who had disowned her, and instead of being able to express the anger, the bitterness, even the hate, that she must surely feel, all that had been instantly consumed by the pity he could see in her eyes.
Jerry knew what a pathetic sight he must be, with the induction electrode secured to the back of his skull by a cross of tape and a wide rubber band looped around his head over it for safety’s sake, with the cable leading from his head to the reel atop the hibernautika console beside the couch.
He saw it constantly in Sonya’s eyes, in the way she had babied him these past two days back in the apartment, fetching him coffee, bringing him pillows, speaking nothing but soft tender words, treating him like a frail old man.
Now she stood there beside Franja, her lower lip trembling, her eyes all misty, paralyzed like the two of them, unable to find the words to break the long awkward silence.
Jerry sighed. He had been forced to do a lot of unaccustomed thinking since he woke up in the hospital, still more in these two days in the apartment that had once been their home.
There was only one reason why Sonya had taken him back into her life, and that was because there was no alternative. He simply couldn’t take care of himself. It was this, or a nursing home. And Sonya could not have lived with the guilt of leaving him to that.
If this was love, it was strictly a love born of pity, a love that stuck in the back of his throat. It was shameful, it was unmanning, and for the first time in his life, he had been forced into endless introspection.
Riding to work on the day of the accident, he had suddenly felt the distance that he had opened up between himself and ordinary human emotions. He had given up everything to walk on water, and in the process had turned himself into a Man from Mars.
The accident
had changed all that. He could no longer afford to remain a Man from Mars. Now he was dependent on Sonya for everything, and he had to find what ways he could to give her something, anything, back. Or else be nothing but a burden, a guilt, an object of pity, a thing, not a man.
And so it was up to him to say what needed to be said to break this silence now.
“Look, I want to thank you for coming here at all, Franja,” he blurted out. “I know what a shitty father I’ve been, and—”
“Please, Father, not now!” Franja shot back. “I mean—”
Jerry forced a grin. “I know, I know,” he said. “It’s quite a shock seeing your own father turned into a cyborg.”
“Father—”
“And a Russian cyborg at that!” Jerry said, patting the console beside the couch. “I’ve got a bunch of Soviet circuitry replacing a part of my brain, who knows, give it enough time, and maybe it’ll turn me into a good Marxist.” And he managed a laugh at his own stupid joke.
Franja’s frozen face actually cracked into a ghost of a grin. Sonya’s eyes filled with tears. “I’ll go put on some coffee,” she said awkwardly, and left the two of them alone.
Jerry stared silently at his daughter for a long moment, once again not knowing what to say. Franja stared back, looked away, then sat down on the opposite end of the couch from him.
“So . . . so how do you feel?” she said, looking away from him across the room.
“Okay, despite all appearances,” Jerry told her.
Another long silence.
“Look, Franja, I know how difficult this must be for you . . . ,” Jerry finally said.
“And for you too, Father,” she replied coolly.
Jerry sighed. There was nothing else for it. And after all, it really was up to him.
“I know how lame this has to sound after all these years, but I really am sorry,” he said. “For everything.”
Franja looked down at the carpet.
“I was wrong,” Jerry told her. “I was so wound up in what Russian meddling had done to my career that I couldn’t see that you had to do what was necessary for yours. You were just doing what you had to.”
“What I wanted to do, Father!” Franja snapped, looking up at him angrily. “I always wanted to be a Soviet citizen, and I’m proud to be one now!”
“And I’m proud of you, Franja,” Jerry told her. “I used to hope that it would be Bob who . . .” He winced at the thought of Bob, stuck inside America by the damnable National Security Act, and who even now, under these circumstances, could not get an exit visa for a simple visit home.
“But here you are,” he managed to go on, “with Concordski pilot’s wings, and someday, it’ll be you who gets to go where I . . . where I . . .”
Franja’s face softened. “Please don’t talk about that now, Father,” she said. “I know how much it must hurt you to . . . to . . .” And she looked away again.
“I . . . I only wanted to tell you how proud of you I am . . . ,” Jerry stammered.
“You’ve taken a long time to say so, Father!” Franja snapped, looking back at him with hurt in her eyes. Then, more softly, “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want your pity, Franja, but I do want us to try and be a father and a daughter to each other again,” Jerry told her. “I can’t honestly tell you that I’m going to try and make it up to you, because I can’t. But . . . but can we start over?”
Franja looked into his eyes. “I don’t know, Father, I really don’t, it’s been so long, and so much has happened. . . .”
“Can’t we at least try?” Jerry begged her. “For your mother’s sake? You know, it’s not easy for her, suddenly having me back here again like . . . like this. She’s . . . she’s going to need your support. At least, let’s try to be civil to each other for her sake, okay?”
Franja’s expression softened. She studied his face narrowly, as if looking at someone she had never seen before. And perhaps she is, Jerry thought, perhaps she is.
“All right, Father, if you put it that way . . . ,” she said quietly.
Jerry reached hesitantly across the couch and touched her hand. Franja’s face showed no reaction. But at least she didn’t pull away.
Los Angeles Times: “Mr. President, what will you do if the Russians use the Red Army to suppress a Ukrainian secession by force?”
President Carson: “Support the Ukrainian freedom fighters.”
NBC: “With what?”
President Carson: “With all my heart and soul, like any other freedom-loving American!”
CBS: “With arms?”
CNN: “With American advisors?”
New York Times: “With military support?”
President Carson: “Wait a minute, wait a minute, who said anything about getting into a shooting match with the Russians?”
Houston Post: “You did, Mr. President! You just pledged your full support for the Ukrainian freedom fighters!”
President Carson: “Oh no I didn’t!”
NBC: “Now you’re saying you’ll stand by and do nothing while the Red Army invades the Ukraine?”
President Carson: “Who did you say you represented, Bill, Tass? Of course I support the Ukrainian freedom fighters, but I’m fully confident that they’ll be able to make the Russians see reason without any American military intervention.”
CNN: “How can you say a thing like that, Mr. President? How can the Ukrainians hope to hold off the Red Army on their own?”
President Carson: “Because Gorchenko won’t dare send in the Red Army.”
San Francisco Chronicle: “Why not?”
President Carson: “Uh . . . ah . . . let’s just say we have intelligence data that lead me to . . . uh . . . believe that . . . ah . . . the Ukrainian freedom fighters have what it takes to . . . stand up to Russian aggression.”
—Presidential Press Conference
“How can you submit yourself to this, Mother?” Franja said as they sat across the dining room table from each other over coffee, late that night, after Father had gone off to bed. “Have you really thought out what it’s going to be like?”
Mother sat there with her shoulders hunched over, staring down into her coffee cup. Franja had to admit that the evening had gone far better than she had feared. Mother and Father hadn’t fought at all. Dinner had been quite civilized. Mother had even seemed rather cheerful, though Franja suspected it was a bit forced.
And Father . . . She had to admit that this had not been the man she remembered. He had forthrightly apologized to her. He had tried to make his peace as best he could for Mother’s sake. He seemed quite different now. Perhaps the years had mellowed him, or more likely, the accident had changed him. After all, she hadn’t seen him for years.
But still . . .
“There isn’t anyone else to take care of him, Franja, you know that,” Mother said. “What would you have me do, put him in a nursing home for the rest of his life?”
Franja sighed. “But what kind of life are you going to have like this?” she said softly.
“He can take care of himself during the day. I’ll be going back to work on Monday.”
Franja reached out and took her mother’s hand. “I’m not being hard-hearted, really I’m not,” she said. “I can certainly understand how you must feel now. But two years from now? Five? Ten? Twenty?”
A sob wracked Mother’s body. And then she burst into tears.
“Mother . . . ?”
Mother continued to cry, her head hanging limply from her shoulders.
“Mother, what is it?”
Mother choked back her tears, rubbed her eyes, looked up at her. “He’s dying, Franja,” she said. “He’ll be gone in a year or two. That thing isn’t perfect, it only approximates what he’s lost. There’ll be little strokes, cerebral hemorrhages, emphysema, mental deterioration. . . . He’s going to die slowly and horribly over the next couple of years, aware, and awake, and watching himself slip away . . .”
“My God!�
�
“. . . I can’t let him go through that alone, can I? Locked away in some nursing home, some hospital, all by himself, with no one by his side, no one to love him, nothing to do but sit around and feel himself rotting away.”
“But . . . but he seems so . . . cheerful . . . so . . .”
“Brave?” Mother said. “Oh yes, he’s been very brave, it’s enough to break your heart.”
“You haven’t told him, have you?” Franja blurted numbly.
“Of course not! How could I do a thing like that? And you’re not going to tell him either, Franja! We can’t let him die like that, we can’t take away his hope.”
“But sooner or later . . .”
“Better later than sooner!” Mother declared. “We’ve got to give him at least that! It’s all that we can do.”
“Of course,” Franja said. The walls seemed to be pressing in on her. First the accident, then a painful and awkward reunion with the father who had not spoken to her for years, and now . . . this.
“I know you’ve got your own life to live, Franja, but please, please help me!” Mother pleaded.
“Of course,” Franja muttered. “But what can I do?”
“Make your peace with him, Franja. Come home whenever you can. Be a daughter to him. Let him be a father to you. Forgive him, Franja, everything he’s ever wanted has been taken away from him, and now . . . now it’s his life.”
Franja stood up, walked around the dining room table, threw her arms around her mother’s shoulders and hugged her. “You can count on me, Mother,” she said. “I won’t let you down.”
Mother rose shakily to her feet and threw herself into Franja’s arms.
“Oh God, I hope so!” she cried. “Oh, Franja, I really need a friend! And you’re the only one that I have!”
Russian Spring Page 57
