The Far Side (66 page)

“Kit said, ‘I’m as honest as the next person, until you get to seven figures.  Eight?  They offered me a hundred million dollars to bury the technology and get rid of the inventor.’”

Kurt laughed nastily.  “You understand that his uncle was busted as well?  He was planning on killing Art and Kit as soon as he was sure that you wouldn’t be coming back.  He started spreading money around in Washington and Sacramento to make sure that if anyone reinvented fusors, they’d meet with other fatal accidents.  They think he bought two hundred and fifty members of Congress of the United States, the President, Vice President and governor of California for a hundred million dollars.”

He met Kris’ eyes.  “I swear, it wasn’t us, okay?  But four days after Art’s uncle confessed to the FBI, he was shot to death as he was being moved to a new safe house.”

“Kurt, it sounds like you wouldn’t have needed to.  You just described a couple of hundred suspects, any one of which would have had ample reason to do it.”

Kurt nodded.  “Yeah, I left out cabinet members.  Odds are that it was the Attorney General who bought the hit.  Your father is leading the charge to clean this up, from top to bottom.  Alas, he isn’t going to do it the way the Committee of Vigilance cleaned up Deadwood.”

“Pardon?”

“They hanged everyone and apologized for the mistakes afterwards.”

Kris grimaced.  “Getting back to your friend.  Kurt, thanks, I really mean it, thanks.  But -- I only have three months OJT.  I don’t think that amounts to much, not in the great scheme of things.”

“Like I said, treaties agreed to, battles fought and won... Kris, no matter what the liberals think, those are the true measure of international -- and now interstellar -- relations.  Please, for me, at least talk to Tom.  I’m just a passed-over major.  He’s eloquent.”

“I suppose.”

“Good, wait a few and I’ll get him on the phone.”

Kris sighed.  Once upon a time quarantine meant you couldn’t see and talk to anyone.  These days, you could both see and talk to practically anyone on the planet -- and yet never break quarantine.

The call came in to the message center, which was a fancy name for half a dozen sound-proofed cubicles.

The man wasn’t much older than Kurt, but he had two stars on his uniform that Kurt didn’t have.

“Major General Tom Briggs,” he said, introducing himself.

“Kristine Boyle, sir.”

“I am honored to meet you, Miss Boyle.”

“Sir, all I did was get cast away.  I’m not sure that’s worthy of being honored.”

“It’s not,” he agreed.  “It’s what came after that.  Miss Boyle, while the President no longer exercises the influence he once did, the liberal mainstream media do.  Almost nothing has been made public about what happened to you on the other side of the sky.  Kurt Sandusky has told me about some of it, and I have to say, I know Kurt’s not easily impressed.  From his description of what happened to you, I admit to being impressed myself.”

“Sir, to me bravery and courage are doing things you’re not expected to do.  What I did, sir, was to keep myself and my companions alive.  It wasn’t all sweetness and light.”

“Miss Boyle, Kurt said you’ve killed a man an arm’s-length away from you and another not much further away than that.  Others, you killed in battle, where they had firearms and you had crossbows.”

“Did Kurt explain to you that I still have ambivalent feelings about those deaths, even though they seemed justified at the time?  Not to mention, I shot a couple of them as well.”

“Miss Boyle, no civilized person can escape those feelings.  If you should ever escape them, you stop being civilized.”

“Kurt says you want me to talk to some of your teachers and students about what happened and help plan what is needed on the other side of one of those blue doors.”

“That’s what I want.  Miss Boyle, let me be frank.  Undoubtedly you feel that your experience doesn’t justify such a position and that the length of time you served doesn’t meet a rational yardstick of experience.

“Miss Boyle, for about half of the history of Norwich, we were unable to employ combat veterans.  In 1828 our last revolutionary war veteran retired -- we didn’t have but one man from the War of 1812 and he had been a general’s secretary.  In 1894 our last Civil War veteran died -- the next time we hired a combat veteran was 1900.  In 1932 our last World War I veteran retired -- our next combat veteran was hired in mid-1942, and he was a paratrooper who had been severely injured in training.

“Right now I have a staff who can teach our cadets everything they need to know about how to conduct irregular warfare against terrorists.  We have never, ever, employed someone who has not only commanded in battles, but negotiated more than cease fires and treaties with the American Indians -- treaties, I must add, that were all subsequently broken in Washington.

“Miss Boyle, Andrea Schulz’s discovery is one of the most momentous in the history of our planet.  We can go places and do things that we could only dream about before.  You, Miss Boyle, have gone to one of those places.  You’ve made friends, you’ve made enemies, you’ve made treaties... Miss Boyle, this is the stuff of B-adventure novels!

“Above and beyond that, it is going to happen again and again.  There is an entire universe out there!  Norwich, Miss Boyle, is a school where we teach leadership -- not where we practice following.”

“And I don’t have to sign half my life away?”

“No.”

“And my ward?”

“I understand you rescued a survivor of a shipwreck.”

“Kurt Sandusky put a mortar round into an open black powder magazine hatch.  It was a rather spectacular wreck.”

“Somehow, Major Sandusky forgot to mention that part of the story,” the general told her.  “I wonder what else that he forgot?”

“Did he tell you that one of his men was eaten by a flying dinosaur?”

“No, no I can’t say as he did.  Eaten?”

“Killed and eaten,” Kris said harshly.  “It isn’t a picnic out there.  One thing Jake Lawson said that I overheard was that for the first time he understood why the terrorists spend so much time watching the sky -- and he’d never bothered.  Seeing a brother soldier dead like that does concentrate your attention.”

“And you, were you ever attacked by a flying dinosaur?”

“Three times.  Twice someone else killed it for me, once I had to fend for myself.”

“May I ask how you were armed?”

“My friend Andie showed them how to make crossbows with old sword blades.  I had one of those.  Nine-mil pistols were useless.”

There was a moment of silence, and then the man went on.  “Miss Boyle, I can’t say that there is nothing I wouldn’t do to get you here, but I will say that there’s not much I wouldn’t do.  Please come and visit.”

“So long as you understand that I’m ambivalent about the whole them-or-us thing.”

“As I said, Miss Boyle, that’s what civilized people feel when they have the luxury of time to think about things.  I’ve been in your shoes, Miss Boyle, and I’m willing to bet that when you had to, you didn’t even think.”

“No, I didn’t.  Oddly, that bothers me.”

“As it should.  On the other hand, there’s a reason why you and I are talking about that, instead of the other guy talking with his buddies about how easy it was to kill you.”

He looked at her via the connection.  “Miss Boyle, please.  Come to Vermont, be my guest.  All expenses paid.  Bring your dependent.  Bring a marching band -- I don’t care.  Please come and see our program and talk to us.”

Kris made a final decision.  “Yes, sir.  I’ll do that.  I still have a couple of more days of quarantine to run.  You realize that there is a slight, but I think trivial, risk that I’m carrying a plague that could wipe out the human race?”

“Miss Boyle, I’ll tell you a secret, one not even known to Major Sandusky.  Once upon a time, a long time ago, your mother and my wife were interns together.  Your mother has been filling in Marjorie, my wife, with every nitty-gritty detail of the biology that she’s learned.  You understand that my wife, like your mother, has been a frustrated xeno-biologist all these years and is finally in heaven.  It’s why every time I show the least bit of reluctance to push ahead with the fusor project here, she gives me a swift kick in the pants.”

“That’s news to me,” Kris admitted.  In fact, for three weeks, Kris and her mother had interacted only to the extent of her mother’s daily demand that Kris roll up her sleeve for more blood work.  Kris was heartily sick of having blood drawn every single day -- no matter who did it.

“I’ll talk to Kurt and he’ll arrange things.  I understand that, regrettably, there are still security issues.”

“We get a dozen death threats a day,” she told the general.  “All threatening us with death if we leave quarantine.  Most of them come with a hodge-podge of nutty comments.  My favorites are the ones accusing us of faking everything, but they are going to kill us anyway to keep mankind safe.”

“Yes.  I’m not going to tell anyone that you’re coming.  Miss Boyle, you understand that for the most part, you’re unknown?”

“That’s what I’ve been told.  There were only a few early leaks about who we were, and those the administration promptly squashed.”

“Yes.  Your name is bandied about on a few nutroot websites, but the mainstream media think you and Andie are publicity hounds and refuse to cover anything of what you and Andie have done.”

Kris laughed for the first time in weeks.  “A publicity hound who has never made a video appearance, given no interviews and is held incommunicado?”

“Like I said... you have to consider the source.”

“I will come, as soon as it can be arranged.”

“I don’t suppose you could arrange a visit from Miss Schulz?”

“A visit?  Sure.  You can’t begin to match the offer the Arvalans made her, though.”

“I could try.”

“She’s the dean of science for the entire continent.  She has scholars and the learned fawning over her, even now, here, where they can only talk to her over the radio.  She gives daily lessons on math, science, weapons... it’s impressive.”

“You’re right, I can’t match that.  I will see you in a few days, Miss Boyle.”

Kris moved the microphone to one side and turned to leave the room.  Kurt was there.

“Well?” he asked.

“You get your wish,” she told him.

* * *

A week, Kris thought.  What a difference a week makes.  She’d spent a day with her father as he went over the politics.  Her father had been arrested, as had almost everyone else who’d stayed on Earth, but unlike Kris and a lot of the others who had gone off-world, they hadn’t insisted he be quarantined.

There was a reason for that, she learned.  The President was terrified that if he incarcerated Oliver Boyle again, the next person incarcerated would be himself.

Her father had been cheerful.  “They figure it’s fourteen months to the off-year elections.  Let the voters kick them out if they want, or so the theory goes.  That simply means we’ve started expediting the criminal cases.  Last week we filed felony complaints against thirty-two Democrats and twenty-four Republicans members of the House, and two each in the Senate -- none of the last four are up for reelection and thought they could surely sneak it past us.

“Now they are trying to fight having to resign in the professional misconduct subcommittee, but when they introduced that motion, we started asking for ‘no bail’ requests.  None of those have worked, but they are being booked, which is bad enough for them.  All it will take is one who decides to move to Brazil and there will be a lot of bail bonds revoked.”

“I have no idea what you are doing,” she told her father.

“A soft coup.  A coup within the rules, without a great deal of violence -- certainly nothing like what you had to face, Kris.”

“Are you comfortable with me going off to Vermont?”

“I tell myself it will be for a few days.  I looked -- they had a frost there yesterday and the leaves will be changing color.  I’ve seen the fall colors in New England, Kris -- it is one of the most spectacularly beautiful things you’ll ever see.  Then it starts to snow -- if you move to Vermont you will freeze your ass off.”

“You think that cave was warm?”

“No, but it wasn’t freezing.”

There was that, of course.

“Security?” she asked.

“We released to the media that you had a seizure right after you returned, and that your condition was still under scrutiny.”

“I didn’t have a seizure and I’m not under scrutiny.”

“You fainted -- that’s close enough to a seizure for government work.  You are subject to weekly medical tests for the next eleven months, then monthly for the indefinite future.  That sounds like scrutiny to me.”

“Gosh, thanks.”

“You’re welcome.  I might add that only a half dozen people away from the quarantine site know about Diyala.  None of them are going to talk.”

“Thanks,” she told him, meaning it this time.

A little later her mother appeared for her morning rounds.  “We need a blood sample, Kris,” she was told.