She paused. The van raced on through the spring morning, while those inside became totally silent. The television in the background babbled on, but no one was listening to it.
At last Pearl Lazenby continued, "At the end, disaster. In that final hour of chaos, the Eye of God will rise again. And we will triumph."
Celine could feel the power, reaching out beyond the woman's body. She didn't know about the strike force members, but she could resist it. What she could not do was explain how Pearl Lazenby knew what was going on, now in Washington and soon around the world. Had Wilmer talked to her of the need for the great shield, of the size of the project, of the inevitable and massive global cooperation, of the implied social and racial mixing?
Or had Pearl Lazenby been listening with eyes closed to the television speech, still going on in the background? Saul Steinmetz had outlined what must be done, now he was introducing other speakers to give the Grand Design their personal endorsements. Celine saw Senator Lopez, with his broad and amiable face, shaking Saul's hand and smiling into the cameras.
Global cooperation; and, as part of it, a space development program that dwarfed the Mars expedition to insignificance. Building the shield would evolve an infrastructure in space strong enough to open the whole solar system to humans. Celine's dream.
But: At the end, disaster. In that final hour of chaos, the Eye of God will rise once more. And we will triumph.
Pearl Lazenby might well be right. Celine shivered. She could imagine a hundred ways that a gigantic, long-term international effort could fail. It would be a technological, sociological, and political tour de force. There was no model for its success. The rebuilding of Europe and Japan after the Second World War didn't even come close, in either scale or duration. Saul Steinmetz must know that as well as anyone.
"Are you all right, ma'am?" The captain had seen her shiver, and he was looking at her anxiously.
"I'm fine." Celine forced a smile. "I was just thinking that there's a lot of work ahead, that's all."
His young face cleared. "Oh, I'm sure you'll do it, ma'am. I mean, you went to Mars and back. Nothing could ever be as big a job as that."
It suggested a new way to look at things. Not that you had been to Mars and come back, therefore nothing in the rest of your life could ever approach that summit of achievement. But that the Grand Design guaranteed harder problems, bigger challenges, and worse dangers than anything you had met so far. The future would be no easier than the past, and it would probably be much more difficult.
And the Mars expedition?
Celine could feel within her a rising tension, the same shortness of breath as in the final hours preceding liftoff for Mars. It told her something that she would not mention to any other person: the Martian landing and return was not the greatest space exploit in human history.
It was an opening act before the main event.
EPILOGUE
From the secret diary of Oliver Guest.
Even Jove nods.
I do not know what mistake I made, and in a sense it does not matter. But, cursed as I am with a mind obliged to "wear itself and never rest," I cannot help wondering. What contingency did I fail to cover? Why was not my "perfect" disappearance a total success?
I can only offer as excuse my need to improvise action when I arrived with Seth Parsigian at Catoctin Mountain Park, and discovered that more people were involved than I had expected. I am not at my best when given little time to develop and consider alternatives.
Of course, I have not been recaptured. But I gather from the media that I am still officially alive, and therefore subject to potential pursuit.
It is, in one sense, quite unfair. I am an honorable man and I give fair value. Seth and his companions freed me from the syncope facility, and for that I was in their debt. The telomod therapy that I provided for them should work for at least three years, by which time other centers of treatment will surely be in operation. I left them full notes. I cited Otto Redman's name, over in England, my old colleague Bousson on the Canadian West Coast, and Akhtar Parvali in Iran. All of them have done significant work on telomod therapy, and at least one of them ought to have survived.
What more could be expected? My actions should have been enough to earn my complete freedom, freedom in perpetuity.
It has not done so, but I will not complain. What though the field be lost? All is not lost.
I still have Methuselah. Hidden away within his introns lie my darlings' full genetic codes. He and I are safe in another country, where my little hobby is quite unknown. The temptation to indulge it again burgeons within me.
Meanwhile, the reconstruction, cloning, and training of my darlings must wait a little longer.
That can be endured. I know I will not wait forever.
THE END
Aftermath Page 51
