Power Failure

by Ben Bova

  “But we live here in Washington.”

  “For now. I explained to the guy who recruited me that I couldn’t go until after the elections. He’s willing to wait until the Republican convention, next summer.”

  Going to the sofa and dropping wearily onto it, Jake said, “Tami, I can’t go to California. For god’s sake, by next November I might be science advisor to the president of the United States.”

  Her happy smile fell apart. Sitting down next to him, she said softly, “Oh Jake, you know Frank’s not going to make it. He’s way behind Sebastian and even Governor Hackman. Not to mention the Democrats.”

  “I can’t walk out on him. I’d feel like a Judas.”

  Almost pleading, Tami said, “Jake, this is a wonderful opportunity for me.”

  “But not for me.”

  Tami stared at him for a long, silent moment. Jake could feel his pulse thumping in his ears.

  “I was afraid of this,” Tami said at last. “I knew there’d be a problem but I was too excited to think about it.”

  “I can’t go to California,” Jake repeated.

  Then he saw the disappointment in her eyes, and realized he was crushing her hopes.

  “Honey,” he said, trying to explain, “a lot of Frank’s campaign is tied up with the space plan. My plan, my ideas. I can’t walk out on him.”

  Tami hesitated, then said, “I could go to Fresno after the Republican convention. If Frank gets the nomination you could stay with him until the election in November.”

  “And what if he wins?”

  “He won’t.”

  “He might. He could. I’m doing everything I can to help him win. You’re on his payroll, too, you know.”

  “I’m just one of dozens of PR flunkies. His campaign doesn’t depend on me.”

  “But it does depend on me,” Jake said. “At least a little.”

  “A lot,” Tami corrected.

  Jake spread his hands in a gesture of futility. “So you can see why I can’t go to California, can’t you?”

  Tami nodded, but said, “Can you see why I’ve got to go to Fresno?”

  He nodded back at her, but said, “Honey, maybe, if Frank gets elected, you can get a position here in Washington.”

  “Jake, I can’t turn down this offer. They don’t grow on trees, you know. Anchor on the evening news! I can’t turn it down.”

  “I know,” he said. “I understand. But…”

  “But this could break up our marriage, couldn’t it?”

  “No!” he snapped. “I won’t let that happen.”

  But inside, Jake wondered what he could do to keep Tami with him.

  Billy Trueblood

  The next morning when Jake got to his office he saw that a message from Nicholas Piazza was waiting for him.

  Too early to call California, he thought. But I can at least let him know I got his call.

  To his surprise, instead of a machine’s message, Piazza himself answered.

  In Jake’s office wall screen, Piazza was smiling widely, looking pleased with himself, wearing an Astra Corporation T-shirt. It must be just past five a.m. out there, Jake thought, taken aback that Piazza was awake, let alone at his desk.

  “You’re up early,” Jake blurted.

  Piazza’s smile turned smug. “I’m always up early, Jake. That’s how I stay ahead of the competition.”

  Somehow Jake felt subtly put down.

  “Jake, Harry tells me you want to add a Mars training facility to the lunar base.”

  Hiding his surprise, Jake said, “It could swing Vermeer and the Mars lobby to support the space plan.”

  “Ah, you’re thinking like a politician.”

  That is a put-down, Jake thought. But he ignored it and asked, “Do you think it’s doable? Can we set up a facility without screwing up the rest of the lunar base?”

  “You ought to come out here and talk with my tech guys about that.”

  “I don’t have time for that, Nick. What with the debate coming up and everything—”

  Piazza countered, “I’ll send a plane out for you, fly you here and back the same day, just about. But you really ought to talk with my geeks face-to-face.”

  Jake closed his eyes briefly, then agreed reluctantly. “Okay. I’ll make room. But will your technical staff have enough time to make a decent assessment of the problem?”

  His grin widening to show lots of teeth, Piazza said, “Hell, Jake, I’ve had ’em working on this possibility for the past couple of months.”

  “You have?”

  Breaking into a chuckle, Piazza revealed, “I saw this coming long before you did.”

  “I guess you did,” Jake replied weakly.

  * * *

  The very next day Jake was awakened at five thirty by a call from California.

  “Sorry to call so early, Dr. Ross,” said a sharply nasal woman’s voice, “but Mr. Piazza wants you to know his personal jet will be landing at Reagan National at 8:19, your time.”

  Groggily, Jake muttered, “It’s already on the way here?”

  “Yes indeed,” said the woman.

  Jake hung up, blinking sleep from his eyes, then turned to explain what was happening to Tami, who was barely conscious. “Go back to sleep,” he told her. “I’ll phone you when I’m heading back home, probably late tonight.” Or more likely early tomorrow morning, he added silently.

  He took a taxi to the airport and got to the private plane terminal exactly ten minutes before Piazza’s Cessna Citation touched down. The newly risen sun cast long shadows across the airport gateways. He watched through the terminal’s freshly washed window as the twin-engined plane rolled to a stop outside. By the time Jake had made it down the stairs and out onto the rampway, he saw that Billy Trueblood was clambering down the plane’s aluminum ladder, his dark plaited queue bouncing on his back.

  “C’mon, Dr. Ross,” Trueblood called urgently. “We don’t want to miss our takeoff slot.”

  “Nick sent you out to get me?”

  “He sure did. Told me to take good care of you.”

  With only his slim briefcase, Jake hustled up the ladder. Trueblood closed the hatch and the Citation surged forward.

  Gesturing to the empty cabin, Trueblood said, “Take any seat you like.”

  The seats were all luxurious: wide and deeply cushioned. A private flight, just for me, Jake thought as he slid into the second one. He found that it pivoted almost a full three hundred and sixty degrees.

  The pilot’s voice sounded over the speakers built into the cabin’s overhead. “Fasten seat belts for takeoff.”

  As Jake clicked his seat belt, Trueblood said, “I’ll have some breakfast for you once we reach cruising altitude.”

  Jake said, “Wonderful. Thanks.” Trueblood nodded wordlessly and headed toward the rear of the cabin.

  Once they leveled off, Trueblood brought a tray of eggs, juice, and muffins. “Coffee’s on the way,” he said as he handed the tray to Jake.

  “How about you?” Jake asked. “Aren’t you having breakfast?”

  With a shy smile, Trueblood answered, “Already had mine, before we landed.”

  The Native American started to head toward the rear of the cabin again, but Jake stopped him with, “Why don’t you sit here beside me, Billy? Keep me company.”

  “Okay, if that’s what you want.”

  As they winged westward, Jake asked, “How’d you meet Nick?”

  “Oh, he was visiting the orphanage up by Shiprock, and he sort of adopted me.”

  “You’re a Navajo?”

  Shaking his head, “No, sir. Zuni.”

  Once he got Trueblood talking, the whole story came out. Piazza spent a lot of his time—and money—doing good, Billy explained. “Hardly anybody knows about it. He keeps it kind of secret. Billionaire helps little folks. Says if the news media ever got wind of it he’d be buried alive in people asking him for money.”

  “He adopted you, though.”

  “Sort of. I w
as eleven. Mr. Piazza took me into his home and put me to work. He wanted me to get an education and make something of myself, not grow up to be a welfare case. I’ve learned a lot from him. I can even fly this plane, just about!”

  “You have a pilot’s license?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “That’s terrific.”

  “Mr. Piazza’s been like a father to me.” Then, his expression tightening, Trueblood added, “More than a father.”

  For the rest of the flight Trueblood talked about all that Piazza had done for him. But Jake thought he heard a note of dissatisfaction in the young man’s words. Abandoned child becomes ward of charitable billionaire, Jake thought. What’s he got to be dissatisfied about?

  “This space thing you and Mr. Piazza are working on,” Trueblood asked, “are you really going to set up a base on the Moon?”

  “We sure are,” Jake replied. “We’re going to expand the space frontier: the Moon, the asteroids—the whole solar system. It’s full of energy and natural resources that we can develop and use.”

  Strangely, Trueblood frowned at the thought. “Like you whites expanded through our lands.”

  Surprised, Jake put on a smile. “Hey, Billy, there’s no natives out there. We’re not going to war with anybody.”

  “Yeah, I know. But…” He lapsed into silence.

  “But what?” Jake probed.

  His dark face clearly troubled, Trueblood stammered, “Well … there’s so much that needs to be done here on Earth … so many people need help … all the money you’ll be spending on space isn’t going to help the people who need it most.”

  “But it will!” Jake insisted. “We won’t be spending the money on the Moon! We’ll spend it right here on Earth. Developing space will mean more jobs here, Billy: new industries, new opportunities—”

  “For the rich.”

  “For everybody!”

  “Not for my people. Not for the ones who need the help the most.”

  Halfway to Mars

  Nick Piazza was at the Spaceport America airstrip to greet Jake when the swept-wing Cessna landed. Jake came down the ladder and shook hands absently with the billionaire, still troubled that Billy Trueblood couldn’t see the grand vision for the space plan that he himself envisioned.

  If we can’t get Billy with us, Jake was wondering, what about the rest of the country? I don’t want the plan to be seen as a rich-versus-poor confrontation.

  Piazza apparently had no inkling of Trueblood’s doubts. As soon as Jake set foot on the tarmac Piazza grabbed him by the arm and practically dragged him to a waiting baby-blue SUV.

  “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover,” Piazza said, bending his tall, lanky frame to squeeze into the SUV.

  The rest of the day was a whirl of meetings and presentations by the half dozen “geek guys” that Piazza had assigned to making a first pass at designing a Mars training facility for the Moon.

  Piazza introduced the seven-person team. Only one of them was a woman. The conference room they sat in was small and windowless, with a rectangular table facing a floor-to-ceiling wall screen. Piazza sat up front, Jake at the end, directly facing the screen.

  “As you can see,” said the team’s leader, pointing to a schematic drawing of the proposed facility’s layout, “we’ve kept the floor footage to an absolute minimum—”

  Jake studied the proposed layout while Piazza leaned back in his chair, beaming like a proud paterfamilias.

  “—but all the essentials are in place,” the lead engineer continued. Pointing with a handheld laser, he explained, “Space suit testing center—”

  “Pressure suit,” one of the engineers corrected. “You shouldn’t call it a space suit.”

  Glowering at the younger man, the team leader conceded, “All right, pressure suit.” Moving the red spot of his laser pointer, he continued, “And here is the medical exam center, the long-duration testing facility…”

  The presentations droned on until Jake felt he was drowning in technical details. But then he realized, These guys are proud of what they’re doing. They’re designing a facility that’s going to be built on the Moon!

  “… and as for a vacuum chamber to test the suits and other equipment,” the team leader said, with a big grin, “all we have to do is step outside. The vacuum at the Moon’s surface is more than ten times better than the best vacuum chambers we can build on Earth. It’s considerably lower than the vacuum of low Earth orbit.”

  Lunch was brought into the conference room while one engineer after another made their presentations. The lone woman in the group was a medical specialist; she explained the medical section of the facility.

  Jake sneaked a glance at his wristwatch as the final presentation was winding up. Nearly four o’clock, Pacific time. Seven p.m. in Washington. Figuring five hours for the flight back to DC—

  Piazza got to his feet, reminding Jake of a carpenter’s ruler unfolding. “That’s about it, Jake,” he said, beaming happily. “What do you think?”

  “Very impressive,” said Jake.

  “Think it’ll impress Vermeer and his Mars gang?”

  Jake made a smile. “Hell yes.”

  “We’re halfway to Mars already!” Piazza crowed.

  The engineers around the table grinned and nodded at their boss’s approval.

  * * *

  Most of the flight back to Washington Jake spent discussing—arguing, politely—with Billy Trueblood the issue of space development versus welfare operations.

  “It’s the same old story,” Trueblood complained. “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.”

  Getting exasperated with the kid’s stubbornness, Jake snapped, “Then get yourself rich.”

  “How? How’s a Native American going to do it? You think they’d take me at Harvard? Or MIT?”

  “Of course they would! With Nicholas Piazza recommending you, they’d be glad to—”

  “I don’t want to ride on Mr. Piazza’s coattails,” Trueblood objected. “I want to make it on my own.”

  Jake saw anger in the Zuni’s dark eyes. And something else. Something very much like fear.

  Softening his voice, Jake said, “Billy, you’ve done well in school, haven’t you?”

  An almost sullen nod.

  “You’re getting yourself a pilot’s license. Nick didn’t do that for you, you did it for yourself.”

  “I guess I did.”

  “You could get yourself into a first-rate college. MIT would be happy to take you.”

  “Yeah,” Trueblood answered sullenly. “Big-time university accepts a Native American. They’ll sell the story to all the news blogs.”

  In the end, all Jake could do was shake his head. Until he hit on, “Come on to Washington. You can work on Senator Tomlinson’s staff. You can help me with the space plan.”

  Trueblood stared at Jake. “Don’t you understand? I don’t want to be window dressing! I don’t want to be your token redskin! I want to be me, I want to do things that nobody else can do!”

  Feeling defeated, Jake said, “Well, good luck, Billy. If you ever need help, just let me know.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  By the time Jake got back to his condo he felt totally drained, his head stuffed with technical details by Piazza’s engineers, his mind stymied by Billy Trueblood’s adolescent angst.

  Tami was waiting up for him. One look at Jake’s weary face, though, and she said, “Pretty pooped, huh?”

  Jake nodded. Then he remembered that his wife was going to California, whether he went with her or not.

  The end of a perfect day, Jake thought.

  The First Debate

  “How do I look?” Senator Tomlinson asked.

  He was standing in a corner of the overcrowded dressing room, in front of a full-length mirror leaning against the concrete wall, dressed in a perfectly fitted light gray suit, a hairdresser and makeup woman fussing on either side of him.

  “Like a movie star,” said A
my, standing behind the senator on tiptoes to look at her husband’s mirror image.

  “Like the next president of the United States,” Pat Lovett prompted.

  They were in Chicago for the first Republican Party debate. Jake could see why it was called the city of the big shoulders. He sat wedged into a corner of the little room, which was jammed with campaign workers and several hangers-on, including at least two brazenly dressed women who looked like call girls to Jake.

  The room seemed to vibrate with expectation. A big crowd was clumping into the auditorium outside, together with the cream of the nation’s news media. In the other dressing rooms along the concrete passageway were Senators Sebastian and Morgan, plus Tennessee’s Governor Hackman and the upstart dentist from Minnesota, Yeardley Norton.

  A guy with an earphone clamped across his thickly curled blond hair popped his head through the dressing room’s door and yelled, “Two minutes!”

  Senator Tomlinson turned from the mirror, smiling brightly, and said, “It’s showtime!”

  Cool, Jake thought. Very cool. I just hope he remembers everything we’ve been drilling into him and doesn’t freeze on camera.

  Tami wasn’t in the dressing room, but out in the special rows of seats reserved for the news media. For the past two weeks she and Jake had been behaving like shipwrecked survivors living on a desert island, hoping for rescue, staring disaster in the face.

  The marriage is already breaking up, Jake thought. There’s a wall between us now. We’re just going through the motions. Yet despite his morose thoughts, he grinned inwardly at the memory of their lovemaking. The motions we’re going through are pretty damned good. Hotter than ever, as if each time might be our last. Shipwrecked castaways, he told himself.

  Pat Lovett opened the door to the corridor and crooked a finger at the senator. “Time to face the voters,” he said to Tomlinson. The senator nodded, put on his brightest smile, and went through the open doorway with his campaign manager. The crowded room emptied quickly.

  * * *

  Jake hurried to his seat between Lovett and O’Donnell as the five candidates strode onto the stage to thunderous applause from the standing-room-only audience. The auditorium felt hot, airless. Jake could sense his heart thumping beneath his ribs. How can Frank look so relaxed and smiling up there? he wondered. A lot of politics is show business.