chapter 12
ONE THING COULD be said about Priscilla Hutchins: She didn’t do anything halfway. She let Matt know that when she came for the fund-raiser, she’d be bringing guests. Eight of them. Could he arrange to seat them up front? They would be, she said, part of the show.
With no idea who was coming, or what she was planning, Matt and the Liberty Club accommodated her. So on the second Wednesday of June she arrived with a small contingent, consisting of six men and two women. Matt recognized two of them, the British actress and singer, Alyx Ballinger; and the gadfly editor, Gregory MacAllister.
Hutch shook his hand, introduced him to everyone—several of the names rang bells—and told him she was looking forward to the evening.
They had a choice of roast beef or chicken dumpling, with broccoli and mashed potatoes. It was a detail that, for whatever reason, he would always remember.
They had drawn a substantial crowd, bigger than they’d had in a long time. When the dinner was finished, the club president went to the lectern. There was some business to take care of, a treasurer’s report and announcements about one thing and another. Then she paused and looked down at Hutch’s table. “As you’re aware,” she said, “we made a late change in our guest speaker for the evening. We have with us tonight the former director of operations for the Academy of Science and Technology, a woman who has been about as far from home as it’s possible to go. Please welcome to the Liberty Club, Priscilla Hutchins.”
Hutchins rose to polite applause, exchanged a brief word and a hand clasp with the president, and took her place at the lectern. She nodded to someone in the audience, thanked the club for inviting her, and paused. “It’s a pleasure to be here tonight,” she said in a clear, casual voice. She had no notes. “Ladies and gentlemen, we all know the interstellar program has gone into eclipse. That hasn’t happened because of a conscious decision by anyone. It’s simply the result of a reallocation of resources. Which is to say, we don’t consider it important anymore. We know, however, that eventually we’ll be going back. The question before us now is whether we will do it, or whether we plan to leave it to our grandkids.”
She looked around the room. Her gaze touched Matt, lingered, and moved on. “Matt Darwin tells me you’re community leaders. Businesspeople, lawyers, planners, teachers, doctors. I see my old friend Ed Palmer over there.” Palmer was the Alexandria chief of police. Darwin was surprised she knew him. “And Jane Coppel.” Jane ran an electronics business in Arlington. She greeted a few other people. Then: “I know, as long as organizations like the Liberty Club exist, the future’s in good hands.”
That brought applause, and from that point she had them.
“You may have noticed I brought some friends. I’d like you to meet them. Kellie, would you stand, please?”
An African-American woman in a striking silver gown rose. “The lander from the Bill Jenkins is on display at the high school. The Jenkins is a famous ship. It led the rescue effort at Lookout when an omega cloud arrived and threatened to engulf the nascent civilization there. Kellie Collier”—she nodded toward the woman in the gown—“was its captain.”
It was as far as she got. The audience rose as one and applauded. She let them go, then collected another round of applause: “An entire civilization lives today because of her courage and ingenuity.”
During those years, everybody’d loved the Goompahs, pretechnological creatures who had gotten their name from their resemblance to popular children’s characters. Most speakers at this point would have asked the audience to hold their applause. But Hutchins was too canny for that. She wanted everybody revved up.
Eventually the noise subsided, and Kellie started to sit down, but Hutch asked her to stay on her feet. “Her partner at Lookout,” said Hutchins, “was Digby Dunn. Digger to his friends. It was Digger who discovered that Goompahs believed in devils, and that the devils looked a lot like us.” The place rocked with laughter, then, as Digger stood, broke into more cheering.
“The gentleman on Digger’s right is Jon Silvestri. Jon has been working on an interstellar drive that, we hope, will give us access to the entire galaxy.”
Silvestri was reluctant to stand. Digger pulled on him, and the crowd laughed and gave him an enthusiastic hand. They were on a roll and would have cheered anyone at that point.
“Eric Samuels,” said Hutchins. “Eric was a major part of the rescue at the Origins Project.” Eric stood, waved, smiled. He was moderately overweight, and he looked not at all heroic. More like somebody who’d want to stay out of harm’s way.
“The gentleman to Eric’s left is Gregory MacAllister. Mac was one of the people who got stranded on Maleiva III a week before it got sucked into a gas giant.” MacAllister, a global celebrity on his own, rose to a fresh wave of enthusiasm. “Mac was there because he’s never stopped being a good reporter. There were moments, though, when I suspect he wished he’d stayed on the Evening Star. I should point out by the way, that the Evening Star was stripped a few years back and set in orbit around Procyon. There is no Evening Star anymore. Nor any ship remotely like it.
“Across from Mac is Randall Nightingale, who was also with us on Maleiva III. I owe Randall a special debt. If it weren’t for him, I would not have survived the experience. Ask him about it, and I’m sure he’ll tell you anybody would have done what he did. All I’m going to say is that he knows how to hold on to his women.”
That brought some wisecracks, and Nightingale waved and grinned. “Somebody that gorgeous,” he said, “only an idiot would let go.”
“Alyx Ballinger,” continued Hutch, “came all the way from London to be with us tonight. She is one of the first people ever to set foot in an alien starship. She’ll be appearing in the fall in Virgin Territory, which, I understand, will have a run on Broadway before opening at home. Am I right, Alyx?”
Alyx flashed the smile that had won the hearts of two generations of guys. “That’s right, Hutch. Opening night is September 17.”
“Finally,” Hutch said, “the first guy to understand what the omega clouds were, and to engage with them: Frank Carson.”
All eight were on their feet now, and the audience was having a good time. People who’d been outside in the lobby and in an adjoining meeting room crowded in to see what was going on. Eventually the place quieted, and Hutch made her pitch for donations. When she’d finished, volunteers moved out among the diners and took pledges while she thanked them for their help, explained how the money was going to be used, and warned them it was a gamble. “But everything worthwhile involves a gamble,” she said. “Careers are a gamble. Marriage is a gamble. Think about that first guy to try a parachute. If we wait for certainty, life would be terribly dull.”
She thanked the audience, invited them to stay for the party to follow, and turned it back to the president.
MATT HAD A hard time getting near her afterward. When finally he got to her side, he thanked her and told her she should have been a politician. “The way you orchestrated that thing in there,” he said, “you’d have gone to the Senate. Easily.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Matt, I didn’t say anything in there I didn’t mean.”
“I know that. That’s not what I was trying to say.”
“Good,” she said. “You probably need a drink.”
“Bringing your friends was a stroke of genius.”
“Thanks. It was Eric’s idea.” She glanced over at Samuels, who was waving his arms as he described the attack at the Origins Project. “He’s a PR guy. He worked for the Academy at the time. Now he helps politicians get elected.”
“Oh.”
She shrugged.
People had clustered around each of the guests, and he found him-self wandering from one group to another. Digger Dunn was entertaining Julie and a few others with a description of unearthing what had appeared to be a television broadcasting station on Quraqua. “We actually had the tapes, but we couldn’t lift anything off them.”
“How old were they?” asked the superintendent of the Arlington school district.
“Thirteen hundred terrestrial years. Give or take. When I think what might have been on them.” He laughed. “An alien sitcom, maybe. Or the late news.”