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Authors: Michael P. Kube-McDowell

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Enigma (5 page)

BOOK: Enigma
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“Yes—and left to right from there, the
Aristarchus, Kepler
,
Herschel
, and
Huygens
,” Alvarez said proudly. “We’re turning them out at ten-year intervals—the last of the astronomers series.
Copernicus, Hubble
, and
Galileo
are already on station.”

“Am I misjudging, or is
Tycho
smaller than
Dove?

“Just slightly. But you’ll find it actually has more interior volume. No weapons on this class, of course, which helps. And the K-series drive is half the size of that monster in
Dove
, so there’s an additional deck for both Operations and Survey. We’ve learned some lessons in the last two centuries.”

“Haven’t we all,” Neale said, her voice heavy with irony.

Alvarez crossed his arms over his chest and tucked his hands under his armpits. “I understand only four of you off the
Dove
are going back out?” She nodded. “Kislak, Tamm, Rogen, and I. Tamm gets
Tycho
and Kislak as his exec, I get
Descartes
and Rogen.”

“I guess I’m a little surprised there are even that many—”

“I’ll be surprised if there aren’t more by the time we leave,” she said shortly. “Let’s not drag this out, okay? I’ve got work to do back at Unity. Let me have a quick tour of the section my crew will occupy.”

“Of course.”

The construction manager brought the jitney in from above and berthed it at a work station inside the bay occupied by
Tycho
’s apparently finished hull. They went aboard via a flex tunnel attached to the aftmost crew portal, near the spherical bulge of one of the four lifepods. There seemed to be little activity aboard, on which Neale remarked.

“We’re pretty much down to punch lists and failproofing,” Alvarez said as they moved downship on the three-sided climb-way ladder. “I’ve got a test team on the bridge and two mop-up crews working in the drive compartment, but you wanted to see your area. Step off here, please.”

The climbway ended at the gig bay pressure hatch. On the other side was more of the same: corridors, bulkheads, and doorways. “I’m afraid you’ll find you have a little less elbow room here than the ship’s main quarters, but it should be adequate. You’ve got thirteen double cabins and four singles, your own edrec library, and a small exercise area.”

“And all this will be pulled once we reach Advance Base Cygnus, I understand.”

“Yes. It’s modular—three big sections sized to squeak through the bay’s space door. The Cygnus folk should be able to break it down and have it out of here and added to their own base in three working days. And because it’s intended for reuse, I think you’ll find it’s not as crude as you were afraid it would be.”

“Where’s the ship’s gig and the rest of the gear that’d usually be in here?”

“It’ll go piggyback in a pod amidships on the main hull, along with the new equipment for
Descartes
. You won’t be able to get at it until you reach Cygnus Base, but you won’t have need of it, either.”

Neale poked her head inside one of the double cabins and gave it a cursory inspection.

“I’ll have to admit I was a little dubious when they told me how they were going to ferry my crew out to Advance Base Cygnus, but this should be satisfactory,” she said, rejoining Alvarez.

“Hitching twenty-five lights in a gig bay doesn’t sound very attractive,” he agreed. “Could be worse—they could have put
you
in the pod.” He shook his head abruptly. “Slitters. They’ve got the gain up again. Excuse me a moment, Commander.”

Alvarez pressed a finger into the hollow behind his left ear and cocked his head slightly as if listening. “Understood,” he said as though to himself, and lowered his hand back to his side. “That was Unity, Commander. Your first call is starting to arrive.”

She nodded. “I’ve seen enough. Let’s go back.” She knitted her brows and added, “Is everybody wearing those implant relays now?”

“Oh, yes,” he effused. “They’re awfully damn convenient. Not much to the operation—I’ll bet the medtechs could take care of you before
Tycho
heads out.”

Neale shuddered. “No, thanks. Being hardwired into the net doesn’t come under my definition of duty.”

Rocking back in her chair, Neale studied the solemn-faced young awk as he made his way to the empty chair opposite her. “Commander,” he acknowledged with a bob of his head as he sat down.

“God, does everyone here do that?” she exclaimed in annoyance. “Don’t presume. I’m not your Commander. My name is Neale. Use it.”

Thackery nodded, taken aback. “Neale.”

She glanced at the flat data-display slate lying on her lap. “So, Thackery, you want to be famous.”

“Excuse me?”

“You watched
Dove
’s homecoming and you’d like to go out and become a conquering hero just like its crew.”

Thackery’s face wound up into a look of puzzlement. “Is that in my file? I never—”

“Oh, come now, it’s all right to admit it. I’m one of them, after all. I know what it’s like.”

“Sir—”

“You’re presuming again.”

Thackery blinked. “I’d guess I’m more likely to end up forgotten here than famous. More of us will go out than will ever come back.”

“Quite true,” Neale said, a hard edge to her voice. “Do you know why? Because coming back is a lot harder than leaving. Ask my shipmates from
Dove
, trying to adjust at Benamira. We would never have brought the Pathfinders back if we hadn’t promised the crews they’d see Earth again. And we might not have kept that promise if those ships hadn’t needed major refits to be useful during Phase II, refits that the advance bases aren’t yet equipped to handle. But this is the last time that’ll be true. From now on, the advance bases will be the staging points.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?” she asked skeptically. “Turn your chair to face the far wall and place your hands over the silver band at the end of each armrest. I’m going to show you some pictures and find out what you think of them.”

The room lights dimmed, and the first image appeared on the floor-to-ceiling flatscreen: weathered rust-colored spires casting long shadows on the jagged rivercourse.

“Grand Canyon. Northern section, I think,” Thackery said.

“This isn’t a geography test,” she said with annoyance. “The monitors will tell me what I want to know.” Glowing numbers on Neale’s slate told of Thackery’s galvanic skin response and heart rate.

Five seconds later, the Grand Canyon was replaced by a view of the Lagoon Nebula, and both of Thackery’s readings jumped. They remained high for the next photo, three bare-breasted women walking along a sun-drenched Mediterranean beach, then nosedived when a nude, well-muscled man appeared in their place.

The images came one after another:

—a snowfield in the Himalayas.

—the hilly streets and Victorian homes of San Francisco.

—two men kissing.

—the Virgo galaxies.

—a young couple holding their toddler on the back of a carousel horse.

—the capital city of the Jouma colony.

—Jupiter.

Neale studied Thackery as each new image appeared, while the slate recorded the data from the biosensors. Despite her rebuke, Thackery silently mouthed the identity of many of the images as they appeared, and smiled to himself at the sight of Philadelphia’s Fairmont Park. And he jerked reflexively when the portrait which had once accompanied Andra Thackery’s newsnet columns appeared.

Then the lights went up, and Thackery shot Neale a questioning look. “What kind of test was that?”

“I find it useful to know something about the strength of a prospective surveyor’s attachments,” she said idly. “As well as the direction of their sexual proclivities.”

“Do I get to know how I did?”

A faint smile appeared on her lips. “No.” She touched an icon on “her slate and the display changed. “You have an odd background, Thackery. Six years in the GS track, and two at Georgetown—they don’t let too many get away. Then three at Tsiolkovsky.”

“I’ve worked hard to develop my tech skills.”

“Don’t apologize. I like people with odd backgrounds. The candidates I’ve seen so far could have come out of a cookie cutter. Study linguistics?”

“Eight years. That’s a core subject.”

“Anything practical in it?”

“I can tell what era you grew up in by the way you refuse to use token honorifics, or to let me call you Commander when I’m not under your command. Most people probably just think you’re rude.”

She laughed. “You like that kind of reading between the lines,
Mister
Thackery?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve some skill in sociodynamics, according to this Gordon Stowell.”

“He would know.” Neale laid the slate aside. “Thackery, you probably recognize that Survey is making this up as it goes along. We’re improvising the rules those that come after will treat as revealed truth. But right now, a Commander enjoys a lot of autonomy in structuring her crew. A ship’s a small place when you’ve been out for three, five, ten years. It gets smaller with every craze. I need to feel good about the people I take aboard.”

“I understand.”

“I doubt you’d have even made first call for Tamm. You’re just not very experienced. On face qualifications only, there’s no way to justify making you even a sysawk.”

“I realize that,” Thackery said, his face showing disappointment. “I appreciate your—”

“I’m not finished. All that notwithstanding, you seem like a right type. How would you feel about becoming a member of
Descartes
’s contact team?”

Thackery gaped.

“Every surveyor needs at least two specialities. I see you serving as linguist on hits and resource geologist on misses,” she went on. “I’m guessing that with your background, eventually you might have something to contribute to the overall direction of contact strategy as well. Does that mesh with what you saw yourself doing?”

“Nothing could please me more,” Thackery said quietly.

She smiled faintly. “That’s what your attachment test suggested. All right. I’ll initiate the transfer proceedings right away. Go straight from here to the Survey Medical offices for your pre-assignment screening. It’s pretty damn thorough, so don’t make any other plans for today.”

“Could what they find keep me here?”

“Yes,” she said bluntly. “Your general flight physical didn’t take into account your genetic endowment. We have to.” She paused and marshaled her thoughts. “If you clear, I’ll okay a pass downwell and a five-day leave so that you can get your affairs straightened out. Report back on the eighth for orientation. If Tamm can get his people settled, we’ll be outbound within sixty days. That’s all. You can go.” She waited until he had stood and taken a step toward the door, then added, “Oh, one more thing. This Andra—chances are she’ll be dead before we come out of our first craze. That all right with you?”

Thackery started, then drew a deep breath. “To be honest, we could hardly be more separated than we are now.”

“Dead is a very special kind of separated. So is taking a berth on a Survey ship. You’re going to get hit with both, and it’ll be worse if you leave with the relationship still screwed up. While you’re downwell, get it taken care of. Whatever kind of problem you’re having, resolve it.”

“I’ve done about everything I can to make peace,” Thackery said, gesturing helplessly. “We have a kind of a precarious understanding. One of the rules is we don’t see each other very often. One of the other rules is that when we do, we don’t talk about what I’m doing.”

“You’re going to have to talk about it. Don’t just drift away. Kiss her good-bye or tell her to go to hell. But one way or another, leave it here. Don’t bring it along. Clear?”

“Yes—Commander?” he said tentatively.

“Ah, you’re learning. Tell them to send the next one in.”

By mutual consent, they had not seen each other in four years. The last time had been during the long leave between his reassignment from the transfer freighter
Ripon Falls
to the
Babbage
. They had gone to a sculling race on the upper Schulkyll, then had dinner downtown. Since then,
Babbage
and inertia had kept them apart, save for their infrequent, often impersonal letters.

So he had not been there when she received the Council’s Commendation of Merit for Journalism, or when she was retired by the Net the next year at age fifty-eight. He was not there when her hip was broken in a street accident, or when she gave up her colonial row home in New Market for a place in a 28-story glass-faced microcommunity overlooking Fairmont Park.

He sat outside that structure’s entrance in his rented car and thought for a long time before he made any move to go inside. Neither the building nor the neighborhood carried any feelings of home. Pity. He would have welcomed a rush of sentiment to thaw the ice inside him.

She let him in wordlessly. The apartment might have been a hostel for all the individuality it displayed.

“Hello, Andra,” he said. “How’ve you been?”

She eyed his jumpsuit coldly, then closed the door behind him. It was the first time he had worn Service garb in her presence, a deliberate breach of the rules. “Do you want a real answer or a polite one?”

“We could at least start out polite.”

“Then I’m fine.” She settled in a chair in the far corner and rested folded hands on crossed legs. “So what brings you down?”

Thackery sat on one end of the overstuffed russet-colored couch before answering. “I’ve come here to have a conversation we’ve both been avoiding for a long time.”

“Is wearing that uniform here part of your strategy for making peace?”

“It’s not a uniform—”

“Excuse me, ‘standard issue shipboard garb, male’—”

“This is part of what I am.”

“In case you’d forgotten, I’m not on good terms with that part of you.”

“That’s not where our problem comes from,” he said, shaking his head.

“No? You and I both worked hard to give you an opportunity to be someone special, and you threw it over without as much as a word of warning. You didn’t ask my advice, my opinion, or my permission. I suppose you’d like me to forget that.”

BOOK: Enigma
2.02Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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