And there was more. Equipment in low Earth orbit would also be affected. That included the space stations — stations on which the Mars expedition had been depending for its safe return to Earth.
Celine thought again of her parents and her brother. They were probably not in situations critically dependent on electronic technology. They were all right.
But she was not. The chances of survival of the first Mars expedition had suddenly dropped by many orders of magnitude.
Sure, they should be able to fire retro-rockets to match speed with Earth. Sure, they ought to be able to park the Schiaparelli in Earth orbit. But the most difficult part of the journey home, the final reentry, would still lie ahead. And for that reentry, they needed resources that no longer existed.
5
As Grace Mackay was leaving Saul’s office, Auden Travis popped back in the doorway. “You have no other meetings on your calendar this evening, Mr. President—”
“And plenty to do. I’ll eat right here, if you could pass the word.”
“Yes, sir. But I was about to add, you have two people still waiting to see you, Dr. Singer and Ms. Silvers. Also, we have more working lines. South Carolina is patched in—”
“Good.”
“ — and Mrs. Steinmetz is on the line. It’s not one of her better days, sir. She is referring to you as Ben.”
“Bring Dr. Singer in, and tell him to take the other headset. Then put Mrs. Steinmetz on the line. I want Dr. Singer to hear her. I’ll see Ms. Silvers last, and she can eat with me. Order for two.”
“Very good, sir.”
Was that a faint look of distaste on Auden Travis’s handsome face as he left? Better that, Saul decided, than the knowing smirk that a heterosexual aide might offer.
He sighed — Why me, God? — and picked up the old-fashioned headset as Dr. Forrest Singer entered, nodded, and moved to the other working telephone.
“Hello, Mother.” Saul waited. When there was no reply, he went on, “How are you feeling?”
“They’re not feeding me right.” The voice on the other end of the line came through faint and scratchy, with odd breaks between the words. “And they have different people giving me my bath and cleaning my rooms.”
“I’ll talk to them, Mother. I’ll make sure it gets fixed. We have trouble lots of places, because of the supernova.”
“Oh? Well, you know that’s nothing to do with me. I can’t do anything about that. What are you doing, Ben? Are you meeting any nice girls?”
“This is Saul, Mother. I’m very busy. Too busy to think much about meeting girls.”
“Why haven’t you been calling me? I don’t think you’ve called for a long time. I don’t know when you last called me.”
“I’m sorry, Mother. They’ve had a lot of trouble with the telephones. I’ll try to call more often.”
“You ought to take a break, you work too hard. Make them fix the food better here. They’ll listen to you, they don’t seem to listen to me at all.”
“I’ll tell them, Mother.”
“And make sure you take a break from work sometimes. Go down to the temple, have a social life.”
“I’ll try, Mother. It’s hard to get out at the moment, there’s so much going on here.”
“How’s Tricia?”
“I guess she’s fine. But I haven’t seen her for ages.”
“You need to meet some nice girls.”
“I know. I’ll keep looking, Mother.”
“Girls like Tricia. Don’t you be going with any of those dirty Washington women. You don’t need those, the world is full of nice respectable girls.”
Saul made the translation. For respectable, read Jewish. For Jewish, read Tricia Goldsmith — who was not in fact Jewish.
“I’d like to meet a nice girl, Mother. But right now I have to make sure you get better food, and have your rooms cleaned the way you like them. So I’m going to get off the phone this minute, and tell them to give you special attention.”
“Not special attention, just the way it’s supposed to be. I’m sure we’re paying enough. We need to get our money’s worth.”
“I know. I’ll take care of it, right now. And I’ll call you tomorrow. I love you, Mother.”
“I love you, too, Saul. You’re a good son. I’m proud of you.”
“Good-bye, Mother.”
As Saul removed the headset he found he was gripping it so hard that the knuckles on his left hand were white. He glanced over at Forrest Singer. The doctor shrugged.
“I see no signs of further deterioration. She started out confusing you with your father, but by the end of the conversation she knew who you were and she got your name right.”
“Before all the troubles started, I had a report dropped off on my desk about a new treatment at the Institute for Probatory Therapies. Telomod therapy? It sounded promising. I was wondering if it might help Mrs. Steinmetz.”
“I recommend against that, very strongly.” Forrest Singer, it always seemed to Saul, spoke as though the two of them were equals. Saul possibly held the slightly inferior position in the doctor’s eyes. Saul was the President of the United States, true; but Forrest Singer was an M.D.
“First,” Singer went on, “the treatment you refer to is in the earliest stages of testing. It is quite likely to cause unpredictable and possibly catastrophic side effects. And even if telomod therapy were able to improve your mother’s health or longevity, it could do little or nothing for her mental state. Is there any value to turning back the physical clock, if we cannot do the same for the mental one? Hannah Steinmetz’s mind will remain as it is today, that of a ninety-two-year-old lady with moderate dementia. Telomod therapy might recondition the glial cells of the brain, but too many neurons are already dead for restoration of mental functions.”
Forrest Singer sounded very sure of himself. Unlike Saul, he didn’t have to deal with the choice of guilts that went with doing something, or of doing nothing.
Which was the greater sin? To allow your mother to sink steadily to incontinence and total mindlessness; or to arrest the progress of her condition, and subject her to years of miserable dependence on others, illuminated by an occasional faint flash of memory and the knowledge of what she once was.
“I am always happy to advise you concerning your mother,” Singer went on. Saul knew that was not true, but it was the socially acceptable lie. “However, Mr. President, my principal reason for coming here as your personal physician is to discuss your own health.”
“I feel fine.” Another socially acceptable lie.
“You are, for a man of fifty-six with your lifestyle and the unusual stresses of your job, in good condition. Early symptoms of osteoarthritis are still present, and I have sent to the White House kitchen a menu with somewhat different supplements designed to reverse that. I do not think you will notice any changes in the food. As usual, I am recommending a decreased consumption of alcohol.”
Singer smiled, though with little evidence of humor. “But as usual, I doubt that my recommendation will have any effect on your behavior. Principally, however, I am here to discuss with you the series of tests we have been conducting for the past few months. They were interrupted just over a week ago, when the equipment failed. However, I had already drawn my main conclusions. First, in sexual terms you are physiologically normal, unremarkable in any way.”
“You might find another way to put that.”
Saul smiled as he spoke, but Singer still looked puzzled. At forty-eight he was somber and literal-minded, and Saul’s guess was that he had been equally somber and literal-minded at twenty-one. He was also thoughtful, meticulous, and the best diagnostician Saul had ever met. Saul had long since accepted the fact that his own body was now public property. For two years, everything from his bowel movements to a spot on the end of his nose was grist for the media. But they wouldn’t get the information from Forrest Singer. The man would freeze-dry them if they touched on anything that he considered protected by the doctor-patient relationship.