“Well,” she said, “maybe the kite’ll work.”
IN THE MORNING she sent off messages to Collingdale, to Vadim at Broadside, and to Digger. Collingdale had informed her of his intention to continue his journey on the Hawksbill. She wished him luck and told him she knew he would do what he could. She instructed Vadim to give priority to whatever requests might come in from the other two. If Digger could see any way to get the Goompahs to high ground, he was to proceed and damn the consequences.
WHEN SHE GOT to the Academy in the morning, there was a message from Broadside, informing her that Jack’s body would be coming back on the Winckelmann. The Academy had a formatted letter to be sent out on such occasions to next of kin, but it seemed cold, so she settled in to write her own.
She left word with Asquith’s secretary that she wanted to see the commissioner when he came in. When he hadn’t appeared by ten, she called him on his link. He discouraged that sort of behavior. Emergencies only, he insisted. He didn’t like to feel tied to the Academy, enjoyed telling others that he ran a shop in which it didn’t matter whether his subordinates could talk to him or not. It was the mark of a good manager that decisions were made and action taken even when he couldn’t be reached.
On the other hand, if he got blindsided by somebody on Capitol Hill, he’d complain for days about his staff not keeping him informed.
“Yes?” he demanded irritably.
“I don’t know whether you’ve heard yet or not. The al-Jahani blew its engines. It’s adrift.”
There was a long pause, and she heard him sigh. “Any casualties?”
“No.”
“Well, thank God for that, at least. Whose fault is it?”
“I don’t know. Probably mine.”
“How’d it happen?”
“It just went. We took a chance, and it didn’t work out.”
“Okay. Look, relax. We’ll get through this.”
AN HOUR LATER Eric was at her door. “We’ve got serious problems,” he said. “How am I supposed to explain this?”
Eric Samuels was an imposing man, tall, well dressed, with an articulated voice that one instinctively trusted. Until it became clear that he lived in a world of images and mirrors. Perception is everything, he was fond of saying. In a glorious sally a few weeks earlier he’d told a group of particle physicists that the underlying lesson to be learned from quantum theory was that reality and image were identical. “If we don’t see it,” he’d said, “it’s not there.”
“Explain what?” she asked.
“The al-Jahani. What the hell else would I be talking about?” He looked frantic.
“Sit, Eric,” she said.
He stayed on his feet. “What do I tell them?”
“You have a press conference today?”
“I do now.” Eric was good with the media when things were going well. And that was usually the case at the Academy. Most problems and setbacks could be buried because the general public simply wasn’t that interested in the work the Academy did. A recent study by UNN had shown that 50 percent of Americans had no idea whether Alpha Centauri was a planet, a star, a constellation, or a country in west Asia.
But the public loved the Goompahs.
She broke out the decanter and offered him a glass. Eric was a straight arrow whom she had never known to touch alcohol on the job. But this would be an exception. Yes. Please. “The commissioner insisted we issue a statement,” he said. “Get out ahead of the curve. Make ourselves available.”
“What are you going to tell them?”
“That one-half of the rescue mission broke down. What else can I say?”
“You’re not going to put it like that, I hope?”
“No. Of course not.” He looked puzzled. How else could one put it?
“Just attribute it to insufficient resources to meet an emergency of this magnitude.”
“Of course.”
“It’s true,” she said. “We did the best we could with what we had.”
“You think they’ll buy that?”
“It’s true, Eric.”
“That doesn’t always guarantee that we can get by with something.” He tried his drink and made a face. “Anyhow, if we go that route, it might offend the Senate committee, or maybe even the Council. See, that’s the problem. It sounds as if we’re trying to blame somebody.”
“And you’d rather blame—”
“—A technician. Somebody who can always get another job with somebody else.” He smiled weakly. “Not you, Hutch. I’d never think of blaming you.”
“Good.” She’d been wondering about that all day, whether in the end, needing to point a finger at somebody, Asquith wouldn’t find it expedient to target her. Admitting to the media he should have kept an eye on things himself. Hutchins tried to get it right, but I should have stayed on top of it. Not really her fault though. Bad luck. She wondered what Sylvia was doing these days.
“Just tell the truth,” she said. “It’ll come out in the end anyway.” She had to bite down on that line, knowing the truth that came out would depend on the way the media perceived what Eric had to say, and what they wanted to stress. Generally, they were inclined to go after people in high places. Which meant that they would probably bite the Senate committee and the commissioner.
She was becoming cynical. A few years back, she’d have considered her present job more than she could possibly have hoped for. But here she was, the director of operations, eminently successful in her career by any reasonable measure. And she wondered why she was doing it.
The job had turned out to be not what she’d expected. She’d thought it would be operational, with some politics mixed in. Truth was, all her critical functions were political. The rest of it could have been handled by anybody who could count. She’d discovered a talent for politics, and didn’t mind jollying people along provided she didn’t have to compromise herself. Asquith didn’t altogether approve of her. He thought she was something of a crank. But she was good at her job, and she thought he’d be reluctant to let her go. Although not so reluctant he’d be willing to face fire from the Hill.
“I hate days like this,” Eric said.
She nodded. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not the end of the world.” At least not for us.
EARLY THAT AFTERNOON she got a call from Charlie, who’d been serving as director pro tem of the astrophysics lab. “I’ve been debating whether to bother you with this, Hutch,” he said. She came to full alert. “Can you stop by the lab either today or tomorrow?”
It didn’t sound like a breakthrough. “I’ll be over in an hour or so, Charlie.”
It was more like three hours, and by then a rainstorm had moved in and turned into a downpour. In dry weather she’d have gone outside, strolled past the pool, and tossed some popcorn to the ducks. But she descended instead to the tunnel that connected the Academy’s complex of buildings.
The walls were concrete, painted a hideous ocher, the long monotony broken only by pictures of the Academy’s ships and stations, and some astronomical shots, galaxies and nebulas and planetary rings. Somebody had added one of the omegas. It was dark and menacing, sections of it illuminated by interior power surges. Long tendrils of cloud reached forward, threatening the observer, and an escorting asteroid was front and center.
She wondered what the Goompahs would think when they saw it up close.
There were three other known races who had ventured into interstellar space: the unknown architects of the chindi, who were apparently a race bent on preserving everything of value, who had found their own unique way to defeat time. The Monument-Makers, who had obviously gone to a lot of trouble for the civilizations at Quraqua and Nok. And, finally, the Hawks, who had performed a rescue when Deepsix went into a long-term ice age several thousand years ago.