“Maybe a late-night comic,” said Julie.
“Listen.” Digger became suddenly serious. “We’d have loved to know whether their sense of humor matches ours. Whether they even had a sense of humor.”
“Is there any reason,” Matt asked, “to think they might not?”
“The Noks don’t have one,” he said. “Other than laughing at creatures in distress.” He grinned. “You’d love the Noks.”
“It probably explains,” said a communications technician, “why they’re always fighting with each other.”
Alyx Ballinger was talking about Glitter and Gold, which she’d produced. Somebody changed the subject by asking her how it had felt to go on board the chindi. “Spooky,” she said. “But good spooky. I loved every minute of it.”
Adrian Sax, the teenage son of a restaurant entrepreneur, asked what was the most alien thing she’d seen.
“The Retreat,” she replied.
“I’ve been there,” said Adrian. “It didn’t seem all that alien to me. Oversize rooms, maybe. The proportions are a little strange. But otherwise—”
She nodded. “Well, yes. You’re right. But it’s overlooking the Potomac now. It used to be on a crag on one of the moons circling the Twins. Two big gas giants orbiting each other. In close. You’ve seen them, right? Three systems of rings. A gazillion moons. You go out and sit in that living room there, and you’d feel differently.
“Remote doesn’t quite do it, you know what I mean? They were a hundred light-years from anywhere. People walk around talking about what it means to be alien, and they start describing the physical appearance of the Monument-Makers or how the Goompahs stayed in one part of their world and never spread out. You know what alien means to me? Living in a place like the Retreat and not going crazy.”
Somebody asked Randall Nightingale about the sea lights on Maleiva III. “According to what I read,” he said, “you guys were doing mathematical stuff with something out in the ocean that kept blinking back. Was it a boat?”
“I don’t think so,” Nightingale said. “It was night, but we still could see pretty well. Neither of us saw anything that looked like a boat.” He was referring to MacAllister, who’d been with him that evening.
“So what were you looking at? A squid that could count?”
Nightingale sighed. He was discouraged, not by the question, Matt thought, but by not having an answer. Matt wondered whether people asked him all the time about the lights in the sea.
“We’re not ever going to know,” he said. “Something more valuable than we’d been aware of was lost when Maleiva III went down.”
Matt talked with Frank Carson about that first encounter with the omega clouds. “Hutch figured out it was trying to destroy the lander,” Carson said. “That it didn’t have anything to do with us personally.”
“So what did you do?”
“We landed, got out of it, and ran for the woods.” His face shone as he thought about it. “She’s also the one who put things together about the omegas,” he said. “She’s always more or less given me credit for it, but she was the one who discovered the math patterns.” He hadn’t been young at the time, and a half century had passed. His hair was white now, and he’d gained a little weight, and added some lines around his eyes. But he seemed to grow younger as he thought about those earlier years. “It was a good time to be alive,” he said.
WHEN THE EVENING finally ended, and the guests had gone, and the first tallies came in, the Liberty Club was pleased to discover they’d exceeded their objective by a considerable amount. Matt was now in a position to trade a laboratory for the Jenkins lander.
“What’s wrong, Matt?” asked one of the volunteers. “We couldn’t have done much better.”
“Just tired,” he said. Just a real estate agent.
MACALLISTER’S DIARY
Hutch is as persuasive as ever. Pity she can’t see reason. The last thing we need is starships. The problems are along the coastlines and in the agricultural areas. Until we get the greenhouse situation under control, this other stuff is a waste of resources. I was embarrassed being there tonight. Still, there was no way I could say no when she asked me to come. And she knew that. Sometimes I think the woman has no morals.
—Wednesday, June 9
chapter 13
MATT BROUGHT IN technicians to inspect the MacElroy High School lander and get it ready for flight. They spent several days working on it, seated an AI and a new antigrav unit, replaced the attitude thrusters, installed a pair of what Jon called Locarno scramblers on the hull, and upgraded life support. When they’d finished, Myra arranged a brief Saturday ceremony. It rained, and they had to move the proceedings indoors. A lot of kids came anyhow. Some media arrived, and that was what Myra cared about. She took advantage of the occasion to comment formally on the proposed state sales tax, which she opposed. She hoped to ride that opposition to the senate. When she’d finished, she summoned Matt to the lectern and formally handed over the keycard. “Bring it back to us, Matt,” she said. And everyone laughed and applauded.
The vehicle was scheduled to be delivered to Vosco Labs to be fitted with the Locarno Drive unit. Vosco was in North Carolina, and would have provided a pilot, but Matt couldn’t resist delivering it himself. In preparation for the event, he’d renewed his license. He strode out under stormy skies with Jon Silvestri trailing behind. “Got to get my luggage,” Silvestri said, peeling off and heading for the parking lot. The attendees came out and gathered under a canopy.
Matt unlocked the vehicle and opened the hatch. He turned, waved to the spectators, and climbed inside. It was like coming home. He slid into the pilot’s seat, pushed it back a notch, and started the engine. He did it manually rather than instructing the AI to take care of it. He ran through the checklist. Fuel. Antigravs. Thrusters. Navigation. Everything seemed in order.
Silvestri came back, carrying a bag, and got in. Matt closed her up and locked down the harnesses. “All set?”
“You sure you can fly this thing, Matt?”
He answered by easing her off the ground. The people under the canopy waved, and he cut in the engine and swung around in a long arc toward the south. He didn’t have to do that. The lander could have turned on a dime. But he did it anyhow.
HE FELT FIFTEEN years younger as they soared over southern Virginia. “You okay?” Silvestri asked.
“Sure. Why?”
“You look funny.”
“Second childhood, Jon.”
THEY DELIVERED IT and returned home the next morning. Hutch asked how the test was to be conducted.
“Same as last time,” said Jon. “We’ll send it out and have it tell us when it gets there.”
“Okay,” Hutch said. “But if it works—”
“Yes?” said Jon.
“If it works, you’ll need a way to retrieve it. The school’s going to want it back, right? How are you going to handle that?”
“We’ll bring it back the same way it went out,” he said. “That’s why we have the Locarno.”
They were at Cleary’s, in the back, with Matt. A piano tinkled show tunes from the previous decade. “Can I make a suggestion?” she said.
“Sure.”
“When it comes back, it’ll be too far out to return to Union on its own. Unless you’re willing to wait a few years. Somebody will have to go get it.”
“There’ll be plenty of volunteers,” said Matt.
“I know. But I suggest you invite Rudy to do it. He’ll have the Preston available. And I think he’d like to be part of this.”
“Hutch, I thought he wanted to keep his distance from us.”
“Not really. He was just acting out of frustration. He doesn’t want to see the Foundation go under. It’s because he’s a believer, Matt.”
“Okay, I’ll ask him.”
“Good. He’ll be grateful for the opportunity.”
VOSCO, WORKING UNDER Silvestri’s direction, needed three weeks to complete the job. Silvestri looked irritated when he called Matt to say they were ready to go. “The techs are all retros,” he added. “They swear by the great god Hazeltine. They kept telling me I’d kill myself.”