“Still smarting over last year’s put-down at the Korean reception?”
She saw his teeth flash in the gloom. “Me? Worried by some half-assed ignorant wog who treated me like a teaboy? No more than you were, by your Indonesian visit and the words of the honorable Mr. Sutan concerning the place of women.” He waited, watching her face change in the gloom, and at last added, “That was four years ago. Elephants and Sarah Mander. But I’m telling you, this could be payback time.”
She was silent for half a minute, staring toward the city. New fires had broken out to the north, pillars of orange topped by dense black smoke that was blowing toward them. Finally she shook her head. “And I’m telling you, the President is more powerful than he’s ever been. Are you proposing to take on Saul Steinmetz?”
“Not today, thank you. I don’t much like him, but he’s a tough son of a bitch. We don’t do this without Saul Steinmetz, Sarah. We do it with him, with presidential consent and cooperation.”
“You mean we try to talk him into it?”
“I mean exactly that. We pitch the idea of a Pax Americana — naturally, for the good of the rest of the world.”
“But this country would have total domination. Nick, he’ll never go along with it.”
“Are you sure? Look at it from the point of view of Saul Steinmetz. You made it all the way to the presidency. Where can you go next? Nowhere but down, writing your memoirs and opening libraries and sinking into senility — unless someone can point out some new goal, something to make you unique even among Presidents.”
“Suppose he did bite on it. What’s to stop him forgetting who suggested the idea in the first place?”
“It could happen. That’s our risk. It would be our job to find friends and recruits in the White House, just as an insurance policy. We should be able to do that.”
“And our reward, if we succeed?”
“Pretty much what we ask for. It’s not Steinmetz’s habit to be stingy with his friends. I’m sure we could find positions of power and influence — abroad or at home. It’s a new world out there, Sarah. We could probably do anything that we really want to.”
“Anything?”
He did not answer, but followed her as she walked forward to the north boundary of the monument. Together they stared toward the restless, crippled city.
“I think so,” she said at last. Her eyes reflected the smoky, ruddy glow of the distant fires. “You’re right, it’s a whole new world out there. If not this, then what? So. Who’s going to make the call to the White House, you or me?”
11
So near and yet so far. Celine stared at the mottled globe of Earth, hanging in front of her and seemingly close enough to reach out and touch.
The old Greeks had a word for it, just as they had a word for most things. It was hubris, an arrogance that defies the gods and invites disaster. According to Reza Armani, expedition mystic, in its journey to Mars the Schiaparelli had moved into the abode of the gods, the space between the planets; now its crew was to pay the penalty.
The added irony was that they had all discussed this possibility. Over and over, on the way to Mars and on the surface itself, they had agreed that the fatal Gotcha! had to be the one you never expected; otherwise, you built contingency plans to deal with it. A thousand things might go wrong on the way to Mars, landing on Mars, exploring Mars, rising from the surface of Mars, and returning from Mars. You had to prepare for all of them and make the tough decisions ahead of time. Only when you were finally in Earth orbit, in the hands of a reentry system and personnel honed to perfection by ten thousand tries, could you at last relax and feel safe.
Celine couldn’t blame the others. She had gone along with the argument. Who could imagine that the reentry system, that whole gorgeous and intricate assembly of people and techniques and hardware and software, might vanish in one flash of free electrons and electric field surge? The Schiaparelli itself had never, even in its designers’ wildest imaginings, been seen as a ship able to endure reentry through Earth’s thick atmosphere. It would disintegrate fifty miles up.
“We have to make a decision pretty soon.” Zoe Nash was seated next to Celine, studying her own displays. “It’s a onetime choice. I think it will be an easy one, but we have to be sure. Ludwig?”
“No change.” He was wearing an earphone and working a miniaturized control pad. To Celine, he looked more like a willowy blond elf than ever. The prospect of disaster was driving them all to their extremes. Zoe was more impatient and demanding. Wilmer was remote and thoughtful. Reza was increasingly strange, oscillating between the manic clown and the aloof mystic. Celine was not sure, but earlier in the day she thought Reza had been weeping. A bad sign, in a group whose time of real stress still lay ahead.
So what had Celine become? Indecisive, probably, to the point where she could see impossible problems in doing anything at all.
“I’m picking up only a few dozen signal sources from Earth,” Ludwig said. “Normally I would expect hundreds of thousands. All the signals are weak, and so far as I can tell with our onboard equipment they are low frequency and omnidirectional. I’d say they’re amateur radio signals. If we wait—”
“What about signals from space sources?” Zoe cut him off in midsentence. The Schiaparelli’s largest’ scopes were trained on the big international space stations, ISS-1 and ISS-2, and their images were showing on her displays.
“The high orbits are broadcasting as usual — I’m receiving regular signals from all the automated geosynchronous birds. My question is whether anyone down below is picking them up.”
“Still nothing from the manned stations?”
“Not a peep. No output from the polar orbiters, either.”
“We have to assume the worst.” Zoe swiveled in her seat. “Anything in low orbit had its electronics wiped out by the EMP. Alta, give me a second opinion.”
Alta was watching in glum silence. She had been studying the same images as Zoe. She took her time before she answered, while Zoe sat and fidgeted impatiently.
“The hatches are invisible on both stations,” Alta said at last. She sounded to Celine like a robot, without hope or feelings. “Even at highest magnification, I can’t tell if they are open or closed. I see no sign of interior lights, but of course they might be turned off to conserve power. I don’t think the high data rate antennae are working. They seem to be pointing in random directions. I see two small single-stage orbiters in docking position at ISS-2, and none at ISS-1. That’s unusual. Maybe there were orbiters at ISS-1, there surely should be. But if they were secured electronically and not mechanically, after the gamma pulse they would have been released. They could be floating quite close to the station; a general sky scan to find them would take quite a time.”
“Time we don’t have.” Zoe turned back to face the screens. “Assuming that the life-support systems failed two weeks ago and no one is presently alive on either station, the general condition of all systems must be deteriorating. We have to pick one and get over to it as fast as we can. I say we head for ISS-2. Any discussion?”
A thirty-second silence followed. Celine found that in itself depressing. The crew of the Schiaparelli had been picked because they were bright, innovative, and opinionated. When no one could think of a second option that was a very bad sign.