Legacy

by Bob Mauldin

  Pulling up in front of a nondescript house on Billings near-west end, the driver stopped his vehicle and said, “Well, gentlemen, here we are.” A young man in shipboard uniform minus the insignia stepped up and opened the passenger door. The first to step out of the vehicle was the man Lucy had dubbed Mister Anonymous, who wasted a scathing look on the earnest young ensign. When the last of the four had stepped out, the young man closed the door and said, “Gentlemen, if you will go to the front door, you are expected. This vehicle will be here when you are ready to leave.” He then stepped back into the shadows provided by a lilac hedge and a westerly sun and all but disappeared from view.

  The four men walked up to a shingle-sided house that would have fit perfectly in any middle-class neighborhood in the country. Light seeped around the edges of the curtain that closed off the big picture-window and they could see shadows moving around inside as they stepped up onto the porch. Galway looked at his three companions and hesitated. He looked back at the door and noticed the small sign taped over the bell: ‘Bell out of order. Please knock.’ He did so.

  A handful of heartbeats later the door opened and there stood a petite red-head. She smiled and said, “You must be Mister Galway. Please come in. I’m Katherine Hawke, but you can call me Kitty.”

  She held out her hand and smiled. Galway hesitated for a fraction of a second, took her tiny hand in his, and replied, “And you can call me Brandon.” At this she positively beamed.

  “Please, gentlemen, come in. My husband is changing and will be out momentarily. We get so tired of uniform black that I welcome the chance to come down and relax. She waved a hand down her body to indicate the outfit she had on: a cream blouse, tan slacks, and open-toed sandals, none of which could hide a striking figure.

  As each of the next two men came in, Kitty greeted them by name, showing that she was up on what was going on. “Lucy described you to us, and I’m happy to meet you Colonel Babcock, Mister Mitchell.” As the fourth man walked into the room, she put out her hand and said, “Good evening, I’m Kitty Hawke.” He shook hers in turn and said nothing. As he started to pull his hand free, she clamped down.

  Having grown up on a farm, she had a grip most men found disturbing unless she toned it down. This time she let the little man feel the power in her arm. “Where I was raised, it’s customary to respond to an introduction with an introduction. Now, maybe you don’t want to give your real name, and that’s entirely your business. But, sir, in my house, you will give a name for someone to refer to you by or you can wait outside. And before you say anything else, I said ‘where I was raised.’ It just so happens, sir, that this house is where I was raised. Now,” she said with a smile on her face, “we’ll try this again.” Still maintaining her grip, she said, “Good evening, I’m Kitty Hawke. Welcome to my home.”

  The man reddened visibly and said,” Uh, good evening, Mrs. Hawke. I’m John Anderson.”

  Kitty bestowed one of her glowing smiles on the man, and said, “I’m very pleased to meet you, Mister Anderson. And I like that name.” She waved her hand toward a couch and some chairs to one side of the room and said, “Please, gentlemen, have a seat. What would you like to drink? Ensign Martin will take your orders.”

  A young man dressed in black uniform pants and a white shirt stepped forward. “Gentlemen, we have coffee, iced tea, various colas, caffeinated and de-, and domestic beer. What can I get you?”

  Simon emerged from the bedroom dressed in a V-necked pullover, blue jeans, and cowboy boots, making quite a contrast to Kitty’s outfit. “Make mine beer, if you please.” Turning to the four men seated in his living room, he said, “Good evening, gentlemen, I’m Simon Hawke.” After another round of introductions, hand shaking and drink orders, three beers and an iced tea for Anderson, the five men sat down.

  “Sugar and lemon, sir?” the ensign inquired.

  A nonplussed Anderson said, “Uh, just sugar, please.”

  Simon and Kitty were sitting in a love-seat arrangement facing the four visitors and Mister Anderson noticed the two empty chairs. “Expecting company?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact,” Kitty replied. “Captain Grimes and Commander Marshall, our security chief, will be along shortly. Do you mind if they just beam in?” she asked in her straightest face.

  The NASA representative, Steven Mitchell said, “I, for one, would like to see this beaming phenomenon at a time when everything around me isn’t going to hell in a hand-basket.” Getting no refusal from the rest of the group, Kitty let it drop, and when no one was looking her way, pressed a button on her wristband.

  Simon said, “I really didn’t see a need to have a third or fourth member here, but my wife plans these affairs.”

  Kitty picked up the thread of the conversation as Ensign Martin returned and began passing out drinks. “Well, I felt that four on four was a much more balanced arrangement. So I invited Lucy and John, whom you folks are familiar with, anyway.”

  The ensign stopped beside Kitty. “Ma’am, you neglected to give me your order.”

  Kitty answered, “My apologies, Ensign. Make that three more iced teas, and sugar and lemon for all, if you would. Captain Grimes and Commander Marshall will be with us shortly.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. Right away,” he answered and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Kitty held up her wristband for all to see. “This serves a variety of functions, gentlemen. One, of course, is to identify one of us to another. It can be used as a communicator over short distances or a bio-monitor/locator at longer distances. Our ship is, of course, monitoring us at all times. A few minutes ago, I pressed a button that informed our ship, Galileo, we named her, that we were ready for visitors. I expect them to, ah! Here they are now.”

  All eyes went to a corner of the room as two columns of sparks began to form. After about four seconds, Lucy and John stood there in uniform, got their bearings and walked out into the room. Kitty waved them to chairs and said, “Sit down. Ensign Martin will be in shortly with your drinks.”

  As they made their way to the chairs left vacant, Galway stood up. He stuck his hand out to John and said, “Nice to see you again, Commander.” He then turned his attention to Lucy. “I see and hear that congratulations are in order, Captain. Which ship is yours?”

  Lucy looked at him sharply. “I have the honor to command the McCaffrey, Mister Galway.” Barely hiding her discomfiture at his knowledge, she shook his proffered hand and nodded her head slightly. “You’re pretty good at your job, sir.”

  Sitting back down, he grinned. “That’s why I get the hard jobs, Captain. But, sometimes even being good at what you do isn’t enough. For example, I’m not getting as far as my bosses think I should as fast as they think I should. You should hear some of the things I have to listen to about you folks. Especially the way you get even.”

  Simon waved his hand grandly. “Had to level the playing field, so to speak. And send a message. Besides, we did North Dakota a favor. Instead of a useless, closed down airbase, they’ve got a brand new recreational area. Lake Burgess.” The impact zone had touched upon the Ox River. Unfortunately, it had caused tremors felt as far away as Minot and Grand Forks.

  Lucy seated herself, still watching Galway warily. Kitty, not missing the by-play, decided to re-direct the conversation; whether for good or ill, she wasn’t sure, but the subject definitely needed to be changed for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the tension she felt between Lucy and Galway. “Captain Grimes, I believe you know this man also. You know him under another name, but may I present Mister John Anderson?”

  Lucy cast a startled look at Kitty. “How did you... never mind.” She nodded formally in the man’s direction and said, “Good evening, Mister Anderson.”

  After a few more minutes of amenities, none of which were joined in by Anderson, the real reasons for the meeting began to come out. Simon began, “Gentlemen, you know what it is we want, and you know what we’ve offered, and the last tim
e we were on Earth,” Simon grinned inwardly at Mitchell’s wince at his turn of phrase, “we had delivered to us an invitation.” He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a much-folded piece of paper. He tossed it onto the coffee table in front of Galway. “I assume you have some idea as to what this is about.”

  Galway picked it up and glanced at it. “I should. I helped draft it. Specifically, since you are not a head of state, meeting with President Drake first is out of the question. Or more to the point, would not be à propos. That leaves Vice-President Reese. You and he will discuss bases and technology transfers. Our job is to set up that meeting.”

  Simon nodded. “That’s good. I wouldn’t want to do anything to upset the apple-cart.” He waved his hand dismissively. “But what about our request that the general populace be officially informed of our existence?”

  Anderson finally chimed in. “That’s not a good idea. The average citizen isn’t going to be able to handle this kind of revelation.”

  Lucy leaned forward. “And just what do you think we are, Mister Anderson?” she asked. “Remember, before Simon and Kitty found the Galileo, they were average citizens. And what about the rest of us? Are you saying that we aren’t average? And if you are, sir, I for one, want to know in which direction you think we aren’t average. Above or below?”

  Kitty stepped into the fray before Anderson could answer. “I think the answers to those questions are ones we don’t need to hear right now, although I do want to hear them later. You, Mister Anderson, may be called on to answer them. If I were you, I’d think real hard about the answers and the people you’ll be giving them to.” Turning to the head of the delegation she said, “Mister Galway, Brandon, my question is: what will happen to those personnel of ours who, for one reason or another, choose to leave our service and return to their lives here on Earth?”

  Galway squirmed in his chair. “Well, they will have to be quarantined, of course, to make sure they don’t bring any dangerous viruses down.”

  “That,” Simon said dangerously, “is a load of bullshit the size of Delaware. You don’t seem to be worried about viruses right now. And you haven’t at any meeting you’ve had with our people up to this point. You want to use that as an excuse to detain and interrogate our people. Hold them incommunicado, I expect, until they give up all the information you can get from them. And then what will you do with them? Hold them in some special facility? You know, we need to start playing straight with each other right now, or we might as well not play at all.”

  Kitty, looking to defuse a testosterone explosion in her living room, spoke up. “Brandon, you need to be aware of something. There are people here on Earth, a very large number of them, from what I hear, who don’t know what happens when they flip a light switch. They don’t know where electricity comes from, and they don’t care. If the light doesn’t come on, they’ll change the bulb. If it still doesn’t come on, they call the light company. I worry about what would happen if the lights went out along with the phones for more than a short while, I really do.” She could see the look of confusion in his face. “What I’m getting at is this: we found something. We figured out how to make it work, but we don’t know why it works. Even after borrowing all the scientists that we did. We stick space debris in one end of a thing we’ve come to call a smelter and processed material comes out the other end. This we send to various places we call factories. The finished products we put together the way the plans we found in a computer tell us. And what do we have? Three space factories and two crewed ships. Also, one ready to crew and two more ready soon. Another in the not too distant future.

  “We’ve got scientists working on some of the questions, but not enough of them. Not enough scientists, and not enough of the questions. For every guesstimated answer, we get about a thousand more questions. I think that about sums it up. And we still don’t think that the government should have the ship. You can’t do any more with it than we have. Probably a whole lot less. I like Simon’s analogy best: the one about the caveman who wakes up in thirteenth century England. He might be able to use some of the stuff, but he wouldn’t understand it. We are quite literally cavemen, Brandon. Granted, we have a better grounding in science. Granted that what we see up there we don’t ascribe to magic. But we still don’t understand it. We have too large a gulf to bridge, yet. Give us time. We’ll get the job done.”

  Mitchell from NASA was waiting for his chance to weigh in. “What makes you think that you are better able to figure things out than people who have studied all their lives for space exploration, Mrs. Hawke? We’ve been at this since the fifties, you know.”

  “Earlier than that, if you count Von Braun,” John interjected. “Surprised that I would know that? Well, some of us have been studying, too. We are encouraged to. And just what are you studying, Mister Mitchell? Ion drives, ram-scoops, atomic drives? Tell us, please. Hell, you’re still using liquid hydrogen and solid propellants. I’ve got news for you, sir. There is nothing up there that you would understand. The scientists we have aboard right now can’t say why most things work. We have atomic physicists, nuclear physicists, quantum physicists, string theorists, you name it. And none of them can say for sure why what we have works.”

  “And we’re getting off topic,” Kitty said. “I’ll answer your question with one of my own, Mister Mitchell. Since the scientists we have enlisted say that some of the technology is so far out there that they have a bare glimmer of what the math would be like, what makes you think that you could do any better than we have?” Not waiting for an answer, she turned back to Galway. “What about our people, Brandon? That is one of the points to be decided with Vice-President Reese. The only reason it was brought up was so that you could apprise him of what will be on the table for discussion. Bases, technology, and freedom from persecution for our people. Is Mister Reese a veteran? One way or the other, I’m pretty sure he will have a vested interest in seeing everybody’s freedom preserved, don’t you?” she asked sweetly.

  Galway sat there uncomfortably for a time. “I’m sure he will, Kitty. I’m sure he will.”

  Simon took a long pull on his beer and waved the empty at the ensign standing silently in a corner. While he waited for the replacement to arrive, he looked at Galway. “You know what I like most about our finally meeting, Brandon? Can I call you Brandon? Call me Simon. What I like is that we can look each other in the eye and spit if we need to. What I mean is that we can get to the bottom of things in a hurry. So. We have several topics for discussion with your boss. Embassies. Tech transfer. Safety for our people. But you haven’t even mentioned the one thing we’ve wanted from the first. And that is revealing us to the general public. How about that, Brandon? Why haven’t we heard anything official on the radio or television about our little group?” Into his third beer, Simon was beginning to feel the effects and started to bait his guests. He knew that the answer was going to come from another quarter than the one he had thrown the ball to. “And if we were to get the embassies without public recognition, how would you go about keeping it secret?”

  John Anderson had just put his tea on the table when Simon put the question to Galway. He stood up, and in a belligerent tone said, “The general population, Mister Hawke, isn’t ready for the revelation that there are aliens out there. Most of them couldn’t handle it. We have it on good authority that the best we could hope for would be mass hysteria and panic. At the worst, whole-scale revolt.”

  Simon had been waiting for an opening of this type. He landed on it with both feet. “I assume that your good authority was someone hired by the government and paid by either you or someone so like you as to make no difference. That particular attitude comes right out of the middle ages and has absolutely no basis in fact. Another way to say what you just did is to say that the human race is too stupid to handle the information.

  “Are you also saying that the largest portion of the population shouldn’t be informed of the smallest? I seem to recall a tri
be of twenty or thirty members from the Amazon basin that was a real nine-day wonder some years back. And they won’t have near the impact on history that we will. We’re over two thousand strong and about to double in the very near future with a technology that dwarfs anything that you have. And you think that the people of Earth shouldn’t know about it?”

  Simon stood up and walked over to Anderson, intentionally stepping into his space. “You know, I have to wonder just who you really are, sometimes. Not so much who you are personally, but who you represent. We’ve pretty much ruled out CIA. And since we have an FBI agent aboard ship, I’m relatively certain you aren’t with them.” He looked Anderson up and down disgustedly. “And I don’t think that the Office of Naval Intelligence would have you, so that leaves the DIA which, if you are any specimen, I’m sorry to say that I was one of for several years.” At the slight narrowing of Anderson’s eyes, Simon knew he had scored.

  “DIA. I should have known. Confirmation is always appreciated. I knew a few of your kind when I was in the business. It’s nice to know that some things never change. Now I’m going to have to fumigate my house.” He shook his head. “You seem to think we’re a threat to you, Mister Anderson. Are we a threat because we won’t give you our shiny new toy? Or because we’re going to let everybody else play with it, too?”

  Anderson tried again. “Your weapons and technology are so far ahead of ours that we have to have a serious threat assessment. We don’t know what you can do, or will do. If the videos we’ve seen are real, and I don’t doubt that they are, then we have a real problem. And you are the problem.”

  Simon sighed. “You do realize that you just acknowledged that they are our weapons and tech? There are a hell of a lot more of you than us. We can’t survive without you, but you can survive without us. These are facts even I can see, and you should be able to see them, too. The problem is that if we have to try to survive alone, you could very likely wind up without any of the technology. And we keep trying to tell you that there are others out there who know we are here, now. Add to that the fact that we don’t think they are the ones we got the ship from. They want to keep us out of space for one reason or another. Then, there’re the ones we call the Builders. When those guys show up to get their ship back, what are you going to do?”