“You’re the first to know, outside of our group.”
“I see.” Larry took a few seconds to absorb that also. Then he lifted the globe, held it aloft before him, and studied it as though it held some great secret for all of humanity. Then he gently lowered it onto its holder again. He nodded in understanding.
“The only thing to do was take it straight to you,” Jennifer confirmed. “We certainly don’t have the resources to figure it out and develop it ourselves. With your budget though, you could do it in secret with pocket change and leave no one the wiser. As for the scientific arguments, well—they can wait until after the country is saved, if anyone still cares.”
It was at that point that Larry starting allowing himself to feel it. The excitement. “My God, Jennifer, do you realize—have you any idea what you’ve done?” He fingered the globe again. “This is, is…” He shook his head. Maybe if he pinched himself—no, if it were a dream, he didn’t want to know. Not yet, anyway. He couldn’t bear it if he woke up now.
“We didn’t do anything,” she was correcting him. “All we did was believe our data.”
“Still—”
She pushed the globe toward him. “It’s real,” she said, her voice almost laughter. Almost but not quite mocking laughter. “Realer than anything you’ve imagined in a long time, I’m sure. Don’t you remember?” she answered his inquiring look. “The arguments we used to have, about where the payoff would be?”
Larry gazed at her, awaiting the answer to the question from her lips. When it didn’t come, he reached into his own memories and pulled it from there. Yes, he remembered it very clearly now. The long-winded evenings over phó, until their bowls were tepid and the hour late. The arguments over every political and social issue of the day, until it was obvious they’d never agree on anything, ever. Then the long walks, hand-in-hand, back to their apartment, where they would, well, make up…
In retrospect, they had not been together long, barely even a month now that he recalled. It felt now like the briefest of moments in his life, a breeze that had swept through before he even could discover where it had come from or gone. Strange that it should have left such a deep mark on his soul. Maybe it had been her wild ideas: lunar colonies and asteroid mines and arrays of solar-powered satellites high up in Earth orbit; and a vision of humanity gradually but relentlessly emerging into the Universe as if out of a chrysalis.
Seductive ideas. Dreams that he too once held, not too long before meeting her in fact, but which maturity had shaken him from. Ideas that were technically feasible, yes; insidiously so. As though possible were all that mattered—the delusion she’d never been able to see through. What Jennifer had never been able to accept was the simple, political reality that space couldn’t pay off in time to prevent the disasters the county was headed toward. A hard-headed set of ground-based policies and programs were what was needed, not pie-in-the-sky gambling. The colonies and other goodies would have to wait.
“You remember.” Her voice wasn’t taunting him, only the words. “Frankly, I’m surprised it took you so long, Larry. You’ve been hanging around academia and Washington too long.”
I’ve been hanging around practical, realistic people who are working on sensible solutions to our problems, he insisted, not very persuasively, to himself. But he wasn’t going to let himself be bullied into pointless debates; she could gloat all she wanted to on her own time. He had to make policy decisions now. “You’ve done the right thing, Jennifer, coming to me. And believe me, I’ll make sure the credit goes where it’s due.” When the time is right for it, that is.
This time her voice was taunting him. Grinning underneath the controlled face. “You still don’t understand. I told you, we’d prefer to keep our faces off the Web. Oh, maybe someday the full story can be told, but that’s not important. What is important now is getting back into space, this time in a meaningful way.”
Usually we listen to people with half an ear, gleaning their words superficially while we focus on our own thoughts. Then they say something which grabs us…
“I see. And how do you propose to do that? This”—the globe joined their view—“doesn’t change anything. Not right away. As for the political climate… another generation, Jennifer. At least a decade.” He shook his head. “You’ve got to be realistic this time.”
She nodded, then sighed. “I know. People don’t believe in space anymore. But then, the fact is they never really did, not the way it needed to be believed. That’s just a myth some of the older ones among us hold on to; anyone can tell, looking back—” She put out a hand. “But even they know that those days are over, even if they never actually were in the first place. Now the challenge is, how to get us out there now, despite what we’ve been brainwashed into thinking.”
“That’s a challenge to usurp democracy,” Larry warned her. He seemed to remember making the same statement before, years ago. “In case you’ve forgotten some basic things about this country. Things I hope you don’t think should be changed.”
“What if what the people want isn’t… no, let’s not have that argument again.” She glanced about again, this time with greater care. “Let’s look at the facts. Support for space has been declining; our leaders have been telling us that the money should be spent down here, on people’s ‘needs.’ And as the economy has deteriorated this trend has only grown stronger.”
Larry let her talk. Once she told him what she and her group were up to, it would be a lot easier to take control of the situation and make sure it served the country’s interests. “That’s the real reason we can’t go public with this. The effect would be like what putting a man on the Moon did in the 1960s. Back then the wisdom was that patriotic and romantic fervor would carry us into space permanently. But once we’d achieved our goals people lost interest.
“Things wouldn’t be any different this time. After the initial excitement—which might be enough for a manned mission to Mars—people will lose interest as quickly as they did once Armstrong’s foot hit lunar soil. And then where would we be? We still wouldn’t have any permanent infrastructure in space; nothing we could build on and make pay its own way. No colonies, or solar satellites, or asteroid mines.
“The point is, those are the things we need if we’re going to make space really pay off. Infrastructure. Not glory missions which build nothing but a warm feeling inside. And certainly not the ‘let’s get our act together down here first’ approach which assumes we’ll go as soon as we can afford it.” She gave him a sour look. “That will never happen. In your heart of hearts, Larry, even you know that.”
Larry twisted his mouth but knew better than to take the bait. “All right, Jennifer. Enough lecture. What are you driving at? How are you going to develop this infrastructure when, as you yourself admit, people aren’t really interested, never have been, and—let’s face it—never will be? Where are you going to get the billions you’ll need just to begin?”
“And where, you’d like to know, does this fit in?” she drove, motioning at the globe again. He nodded: yes, dammit. I would. “Patience, Larry; I’m getting to that. What I’m driving at requires a little imagination on your part. Unfortunately, imagination is a facility you probably haven’t had much opportunity to use these last twenty years. But before you get your hackles up, let me say I have faith in your ability to make the leap. I think I know you enough to say that.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence. Now if you’ll please get on...”