by Ben Bova
Trueblood did not reply.
“And Nick Piazza finds himself another playmate,” Jake continued. “Crashing into the spaceport’s control center won’t stop Nick from going ahead with his life. All you’ll be doing is removing a problem that neither one of you knows how to resolve.”
“I know how to resolve it,” Trueblood shouted. “Now get back in your seat and strap in.”
“Did you write Nick a farewell letter? Disappointed lovers are supposed to write farewell letters before they commit suicide. And murder.”
“Shut up and get back in your seat!”
“Why should I? I’ll be just as dead standing up.”
“Just get back in your seat.” Trueblood’s voice was almost beseeching.
Jake looked through the plane’s nearest window. Spaceport America’s scattering of buildings and launchpads was coming into view, off on the horizon. He could see the Astra Super standing on its platform, waiting for tomorrow’s launch. A cluster of technicians was swarming around its base.
Jake shook his head and headed back toward Tami. He sat down, dutifully clicked on his safety belt, then reached out and took her hand in his.
She was trembling, her eyes wide with fear. But dry. She wasn’t shedding any tears.
Jake squeezed her hand. “Together,” he whispered.
Tami had to swallow before she could reply, “Together.”
The Plunge
“We’re circling,” Jake realized.
Outside the plane, the Spaceport America buildings slid by again. The Astra Super rocket stood straight and tall at its launchpad two miles away.
“Circling?” Tami asked.
Jake’s phone blared again. Piazza. “Let me talk to him,” Nick pleaded.
“He doesn’t want to talk to anybody,” Jake said.
“Jesus Christ, he can’t do this! He mustn’t!”
“He’s doing it.”
Tami pointed at the window beside her. “We’re circling again.”
He’s working up the nerve for the final plunge, Jake thought.
Sure enough, the plane started climbing. Then it turned and began a thundering dive toward the Spaceport building, gleaming in the desert sun.
Jake reached for Tami’s hand again and squeezed it hard. She squeezed back, her eyes shut tight, her mouth open in a silent scream.
This is it! Jake knew.
Suddenly the plane angled upward. Jake’s stomach dropped out of his body and he saw the Spaceport building flash by as the Citation climbed into the clean blue sky.
“He didn’t do it!” Jake exulted.
Tami opened her eyes. “He didn’t do it!” she echoed.
Trueblood’s voice came over the cabin intercom, low, subdued. “I couldn’t do it,” he confirmed, almost sobbing. “I couldn’t do it.”
Jake unclicked his seat belt and staggered to the cockpit door. “Thanks, Billy. You did the right thing.”
“Yeah.” Trueblood’s voice sounded shaky.
“You chose life over death,” Jake continued. “It’s a hard choice. But it’s the right one.”
“You don’t know how hard it was.”
“Thank you, Billy. Thanks for our lives. And your own.”
A few heartbeats of silence. Then, “We’re not out of the woods yet. I’ve never landed a Citation before.”
“You can do it.”
“Maybe. You guys strapped in?”
“Tami is. I’m going back to my seat now.”
“Okay. I’m gonna try to put this bird down at the Spaceport strip. No traffic to worry about, like Albuquerque.”
Jake nodded as he got into his seat, fastened the safety belt, and yanked it tight enough across his lap to cut off the circulation in his legs. Despite everything, Tami made a pathetic little smile for him, her eyes teary.
Now she lets the tears out, Jake noted. He reached out to her again and they clasped hands once more.
The Spaceport’s ground controller’s voice came snarling through the intercom speakers. “What the hell d’you think you’re doin’? Buzzin’ the building like it’s a fuckin’ air show? You’re gonna have your license revoked, mister.”
Trueblood merely replied, in a strictly professional tone, “Request landing instructions, please.”
It was a tense five minutes. Jake saw the desert scrubland coming up fast, heard the roar of the landing gear’s hatches opening, watched the ground coming closer, closer, flashing past.
Then the plane hit the ground with a brutal thump, waddled back into the air, finally banged down again hard enough to send a flash of pain shooting up Jake’s spine.
But they were on the ground, rolling along the runway, engines roaring in reverse to kill their speed. Through the closed cockpit door Jake heard Trueblood give off a heartfelt yowl of victory. Or maybe anguish.
Aftermath
The doctor scribbled on his prescription pad. “Take two of these as necessary,” he said, tearing off the prescription and holding it out across his desk to Jake.
Tami sat at Jake’s side. Her examination had shown everything was all right.
“It’s just a slight sprain,” the doctor said, sounding bored. “Tension. It’ll go away in a couple of days.”
Jake got to his feet shakily and took the prescription in one hand. “Thank you, doctor,” he said.
Nick Piazza appeared at the doorway. Looking at Jake and Tami, he asked, “You’re both okay?”
“Nothing but shattered constitutions,” Jake said. Gripping Tami’s hand as she stood up, he added, “I never want to go through anything like that again.”
Piazza nodded.
“Where’s Billy?” asked Tami.
Pointing along the corridor outside the physician’s office, Piazza said, “Down there.”
“How is he?”
“He seems okay. Quiet. I think it’s just starting to hit him, what he tried to do,” Piazza said, leading them to the door. He pushed it open and the three of them stepped into the smallish room. Jake closed the door firmly behind them.
Before anyone could say anything, Piazza looked at Trueblood and said mournfully, “This is all my fault.”
Trueblood got up from the chair he’d been sitting in and said, “It sure is.”
Billy stood facing Piazza, but didn’t move an inch toward him. Jake saw that Nick towered over the younger man, as he did with almost everybody.
With a pitiful little shrug, Piazza admitted, “I treated you like shit, Billy. What can I do to make up for it?”
“Make sure they don’t lift my license,” Trueblood said.
“Yeah, sure. But there’s got to be more.”
Nodding, Trueblood said, “I guess we should both get some counseling.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Piazza said. “NASA runs the astronaut training center. How’d you like to become an astronaut?”
“A gay astronaut?” Trueblood almost laughed. “I don’t think so.”
“There’s got to be something!”
“I’ll think about it. I’ll let you know.”
“But where will you go? What will you do?”
Trueblood stared down at his shoes for a moment, then brought his eyes up to stare into Piazza’s. “I’m going back to the reservation. Talk to the medicine men there. See what they have to say.”
“Anything, Billy. I’ll do anything.”
“To keep this all a secret? Yeah, I know.”
“To help you find your way!”
With a curt nod, Trueblood said, “That’s what the medicine men are for. They help a man find his way.” Then he added, “Sometimes.”
The four of them agreed that what had happened between Trueblood and Piazza would remain their business, no one else’s. Tami promised that she wouldn’t tell a soul. “This is between the two of you,” she said, then added, “But don’t go buzzing into buildings again, Billy. Not ever!”
He actually managed a smile. Raising his right hand in a three-fingered Boy Scout salute,
he swore, “Not ever.”
Piazza instructed his personal driver to ferry Tami and Jake to the DoubleTree hotel in Albuquerque.
“What about you?” Jake asked Piazza as they approached the black sedan.
“I’ve got to talk with my people here, make sure this story doesn’t get spread to the media. A lot of fences to mend. Jerome will take you to the DoubleTree and then come back here for me.”
As he followed Tami into the car, Jake realized that Jerome’s name in Spanish was Geronimo.
* * *
Jake found it hard to sleep. He kept seeing the Spaceport buildings flashing past, hearing the roar of the Citation’s engines as they dove toward the ground. Time and again he sat up in bed, soaked in cold sweat.
Next to him, Tami’s sleep was troubled too; she tossed and moaned but she didn’t wake up. It’s going to take a lot more than a few pills to get us over this, Jake told himself.
As dawn began to ease the darkness outside their hotel window, Jake finally gave up all pretense of sleeping and went to the bathroom. By the time he came out Tami was standing at the window looking out at the slowly brightening sky.
“A new day,” she said, turning toward Jake.
He folded her into his arms. “The nightmare’s over. Time to get back to work.”
They grabbed a quick breakfast down in the hotel’s lobby, then drove out to the Spaceport. It felt eerie: almost every one of the Astra employees knew that the building had been buzzed by the boss’s Citation, although only a few knew who was flying the plane and what his original intention was. Piazza had called the whole team together and told a half-truthful story about Billy’s “escapade.” He never mentioned attempted suicide or the reasons for it.
At last Jake and Tami went out into the chilly early morning to watch the launch. The sun was just over the horizon, already starting to warm the desert. Waiting out in the grandstand as the countdown ticked away, Jake felt his pulse quickening, as it always did at a launch. I wonder how many of these things I’ll have to watch before they become humdrum? he asked himself.
And the answer came to him. It’ll never happen. Every launch is a drama, a contest between human willpower and the forces of nature.
The thought calmed him. Standing there in the open grandstand with a few dozen other onlookers, Jake felt not calm, far from calm, but ready to face whatever came, willing and even anxious to see this latest step in the settlement of the new frontier.
Turning toward Tami, he slid an arm around her waist and pulled her close. Inanely, he said, “We’re on our way.”
She smiled up at him. “I just wish they wouldn’t schedule these launches at the crack of dawn.”
Jake laughed. Tami’s sense of humor had returned.
The countdown proceeded smoothly. As the loudspeakers counted, “… THREE … TWO … ONE—” Jake suddenly wished he was in the spaceship perched up on the rocket’s nose. He wanted to be going into space himself. He remembered an old line that somebody had written long ago:
“When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”
Smoke billowed, the rocket engines lit off, their hot flame burning through the steam, and the Astra Super began to climb into the bright morning sky.
“There they go!” somebody hollered.
The meager crowd cheered, and the rocket rose smoothly across the heavens. The sound from the launchpad finally reached the spectators, wave after wave of thunder rattling every nerve in the body.
“ASTRA SUPER IS ON ITS WAY TO THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION,” the launch announcer said. Jake let go of a sigh of relief. And he saw that Tami did, too.
California
Pat Lovett had chosen the Stanford Court hotel as Tomlinson’s local campaign headquarters.
“It’s pricey but it’s impressive,” he had justified the choice to anyone who questioned it.
Kevin O’Donnell, who had remained in DC for the California balloting, smirked, “Pat knows how to spend the boss’s money.”
The Stanford Court’s ballroom was packed with people. Jake actually staggered backward a step or two when he opened a side door and got hit with the noise. It seemed that half the city was jammed in there, everyone talking, yammering, bellowing at the same time. A band was blaring somewhere in the confusion, but it was impossible to tell what it was supposed to be playing. Red, white, and blue bunting festooned the ballroom, thousands of red, white, and blue balloons were hovering up along the ceiling, campaign workers and call girls and well-wishers and news media people were gesticulating, hollering into each other’s ears, laughing and shouting with earnest abandon.
Huge television screens had been set up in the ballroom’s corners, each of them flicking from one newscast to another. Each of them showed the same thing: the race between Tomlinson and Sebastian was too close to call. The two men were running literally neck and neck.
Jake forced himself into the waving, weaving, hollering crowd, standing on tiptoes to catch a glimpse of Senator Tomlinson. He was up on the makeshift platform that the hotel’s people had erected—and decorated in red, white, and blue—with Amy standing at his side as they nodded and smiled and shook hands with a weaving parade of men and women. Tomlinson was clutching Amy as if he was afraid that she’d disappear if he let go of her.
Tami had gone to Fresno, partly to be interviewed as “a knowledgeable insider” about the Tomlinson campaign, partly to renew her acquaintance with the people who expected her to join their news staff in a few weeks. Then she was to meet Jake at her parents’ home in the suburbs.
Alone, feeling disgruntled and afraid for his marriage, Jake wormed his way past several jam-packed bars, heading for Tomlinson.
Looking around at the raucous crowd, Jake recalled a line from Faustus: “Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.”
Why does Frank put up with all this? he asked himself. Looking at the candidate and his wife, Jake saw that Tomlinson was beaming that gigawatt smile of his at the people swarming up to shake his hand, to press the flesh so that they could go back home and tell anyone who’d listen to them that they’d actually met Senator B. Franklin Tomlinson and shook the man’s hand.
The noise was overwhelming Jake, making his head throb. But he was getting closer to the senator, actually forcing his way up the steps to the top of the rickety stage, a few feet away from the glad-handing politician.
Tomlinson’s smile broadened even wider as he spotted Jake approaching. “Jake!” he yelled, dropping the hand he’d been shaking. “Come on up. What’s the latest?”
Glancing at the nearest TV screen, Jake hollered, “Still too close to call.”
Then Jake realized, it was well past midnight and the race was still too close to call. That’s good! Tomlinson was running even with Sebastian. He might even win the California primary!
But then he remembered that the outlying districts would be the last to show their results. The districts where the farmers, the winegrowers, the small-town residents voted. Sebastian country, he knew.
“It’s been a good fight,” he yelled into Tomlinson’s ear.
“Hasn’t it?” the senator replied, absently reaching for the next hand to shake.
Wearing a chic royal-blue cocktail dress, Amy was smiling fixedly as she shook hands, too. She looks wilted, Jake thought. This sure takes a lot out of you.
But the senator didn’t seem tired at all. He was pumping away, smiling brightly, apparently as overjoyed as he could be to meet each and every voter who approached him.
This is meat and potatoes for Frank, Jake saw. He loves this. The attention. The adulation. I’m so happy that you could come here and meet me. Together we can accomplish great things. That’s the message that Frank was sending out almost telepathically to the voters.
Jake shook his head in admiration. Frank’s got the touch. He loves this. He’s not going through this for his father. He’
s doing it for himself. He wants to be president of the United States.
Suddenly Pat Lovett appeared at the senator’s side, pointing excitedly at the nearest TV screen.
All the screens flicked to the same picture. The crowd’s babble hushed. A serious-faced commentator, glancing at the TV monitor on his desk before looking back into the camera, announced:
“The latest polling returns, which include all but three percent of the state’s districts, show that Senator Franklin Tomlinson has won the California primary by a margin of fifty-two percent of the vote, against forty-five percent for—”
The rest of the newsman’s words were drowned in a mammoth roar of exhilaration. The ballroom exploded with jubilation.
Fresno
Jake skipped the victory party. He checked out of the Stanford Court and drove his rented Mercedes down toward Fresno. It was nearly two a.m. but he didn’t feel the least bit drowsy. Too wired.
Frank’s won the California primary! he kept repeating to himself. He’s actually got a real chance to get the party’s nomination this summer.
Clicking on the car’s radio as he raced eastward on Interstate 205, Jake listened to Senator Sebastian’s concession speech: short, dignified, ending with a pledge to “carry this fight right into the convention, if we have to.”
“You won’t be the only one, pal,” Jake said aloud to the senator from the solitude of the rented car.
He made the turn at the intersection of Interstate 99 and headed south toward Fresno. Won’t be there until damned near dawn, he realized. So what? Tami’s there, visiting her folks. That’s where I want to be, too.
The car’s GPS guided him to the Umetzu residence with softly spoken instructions. Jake made one wrong turn, and the woman’s “Recalculating” sounded mildly reproving to him.
At last he glided to a stop next to the three-story clapboard house. A street lamp on the curb about twenty yards away brightened the area enough for Jake to read the house’s number, and his faithful GPS guide announced, “You have arrived at your destination.”
The place looked quiet, closed up for the night. Not a light showing. Suddenly the long night caught up with Jake: he felt dead tired. Yawning as he shut down the car’s engine, he cranked his seat back, closed his eyes, and fell asleep almost instantly.
