Arkwright (13 page)

“Space travel,” Kate said.

“No, not just space travel—space
colonization
. And not just in the local neighborhood, either. He was far more ambitious than simply putting people on the Moon again or sending them to Mars. He wanted to provide seed money for a serious effort at interstellar exploration.”

“It's actually a continuation of something he's been doing for quite some time,” Maggie said. “When he retired from writing, he turned to quietly tracking and observing space development on several different fronts, in particular small start-up companies and private research groups. When he saw someone doing something that was particularly promising, he'd send them a check with the stipulation that the donation was to be kept anonymous, with no one knowing except the company president or research team leader.”

“Only Maggie knew about this,” George added. “Nat didn't let either Harry or me know. But over the last twenty years or so, he's been quietly underwriting a lot of nongovernmental space efforts, particularly those concerned with interstellar exploration.”

Kate stared at him, not quite believing what she'd just heard. “Interstellar … you mean, as in building starships?”

“Yes, exactly.” George was utterly calm, as if it were the most logical thing in the world. “You're a science writer, so I'm sure you're aware of the recent discoveries of extrasolar planets. So far, what's been found are largely hot jupes, superjovians, or smaller planets that aren't in habitable zones, but everyone working in this area believes it's only a matter of time before we find Earth-mass planets whose orbits are just the right distance from their primaries and that those stars will be close enough to Earth to make traveling to them a possibility.”

“That's what the Arkwright Foundation is all about.” Maggie picked up the thread of the conversation. “Its purpose is to underwrite and support an ongoing program of research and development aimed at building the first starship within the next one hundred years, if not sooner. This office is just the first step. Once we're settled in, we're going to start making contact with individuals, private companies, and organizations that share our same goals and enlist their help, with everything being coordinated from here.”

“We'll be doing this quietly,” Harry added. “It won't be made public, and there won't be government involvement, either. We don't want this to become another NASA project that gets scuttled because Congress can't get off its dead ass and give it decent funding. So we're going at it alone.”

“Well, good luck with that.” Kate didn't mean to come across as skeptical, but she couldn't help it. “Look, Grandpapa was rich, but I doubt you'll get very far depending on his royalties.”

“We know that,” Maggie said. “That's why I've been working on a long-range program that will funnel the assets and future earnings of Nat's estate into various investments, including some of the technologies we'll need to draw upon. We figure that, with careful management, we'll be able to provide the foundation with a permanent financial base that will grow with time, from millions to billions, if we play it right.”

“And how long do you think it'll take? To build a starship, I mean.”

“Oh, decades, at least,” Harry said. “Even generations.” He gestured to Maggie and George. “We'll be long gone by then, of course, which is why we'll be leaving the foundation to you and Jim once we're not in the picture anymore.”

Kate looked at Jim Skinner, who'd taken a seat at the other end of the table. He smiled and nodded; apparently, he'd already agreed to work with the foundation. No wonder Harry was so keen on having her meet him; their brief encounter in Philadelphia hadn't been an accident.

Despite her misgivings, Kate found herself becoming less skeptical. It sounded goofy at first, but the more she thought about it, the more this plan made sense. Everything Maggie, George, and Harry told her made sense.

No. Not everything. “I still don't get it,” she said. “I mean, why come to me? I hardly knew my grandfather, and I'm not all that interested in interstellar travel. You could easily find someone else to sit on the board of directors. I don't have anything to contribute.”

“Actually, you do,” George said. “In fact, other than your mother, you have something quite unique, something we'd like to have very much. Your—”

He abruptly stopped, his face turning red as if he'd been about to say something embarrassing. Harry laughed out loud. “Oh, c'mon. I can't believe you're such a prude!”

“We'd like to have your eggs,” Maggie said. “Just as we'd like to have Jim donate some of his sperm.”

“
What?
”

“We're working from an assumption that the ship we build won't have a living crew.” George was obviously more comfortable discussing engineering than human reproduction. “As I told Nat, that's been the sticking point of every proposal for interstellar travel—keeping the crew alive and sane for the long time it'll take a ship to reach its destination. So we're asking a different question entirely … why send people at all?”

He reached forward to tap a command into his laptop's keyboard. The plasma-screen TV on the wall behind him lit, showing a diagram of a female oocyte being fertilized by a male sperm and gradually developing through the zygote and blastocyst phases into an embryo. “We believe we can develop the means by which this process could take place in an artificial uterus,” he continued, “one that would be aboard the starship and regulated by the onboard AI. Of course, there would be more than just one. The ship would carry enough egg and sperm specimens, each from an individual donor, to establish a colony at its destination.”

“But who would raise the children once they're born? You can't seriously intend to send a bunch of infants down to an uninhabited planet, can you?”

“Of course not. That's one more thing that needs to be worked out.” George shook his head. “I'm not going to pretend to have all the answers. But that's the purpose of the foundation—to take the long view and make our plans over the course of years. No crash program like Apollo, but instead a gradual research-and-development effort with a long-term objective.”

“All right, I understand. But you still haven't explained why you want Jim and me to be donors.”

“Isn't it obvious?” Maggie nodded toward Harry and George. “We'd be donors ourselves were it not for the fact that we're long past reproductive age. But Jim carries Harry's genes, while you—”

“Carry both yours and my grandfather's.”

“Exactly,” George said. “I never married or had children, but many years ago, I donated a sperm specimen for a research project involving cryonic preservation of genetic material. I checked on its status and found that it still exists and can be made available to me.”

“So the Legion of Tomorrow will make the trip, if only indirectly.” Harry grinned. “Just as well. I've never been crazy about long-distance travel.”

Maggie steepled her fingers together. “If it makes any difference, I'm thinking that we might be able to offer you a permanent position here. The foundation will need an executive director once it's up and running, someone who can shepherd things along. It'll be a full-time job, of course, unless you're too busy scratching out a living as a freelance writer.”

“It's a tempting offer,” Kate said.

“How 'bout it, kiddo?” Harry asked. “Ready to sign up with the Legion of Tomorrow?”

Kate didn't reply at once. Instead, she gazed around the table, looking at Maggie, Harry, and George. Four friends had grown old together yet continued to share the idea that the future could be made better by feats of the imagination. It was a notion born in a less cynical time, and perhaps it was a little wide eyed and maybe even naïve, but nonetheless they continued to believe in it.

One of their number was now gone, but in his memory, the others had dedicated themselves to fostering the legacy he'd left behind. The ideals they'd believed in all these years would survive, carried into the future by their grandchildren, and their children after that, and so on through generations to come.

She'd been invited to join them, to dedicate her life to its cause. Kate knew that she couldn't refuse. She finally understood what their slogan meant.

“Forward the Legion,” she said.

 

INTERLUDE

Affair with a Dreamer

“
I believe it should be the goal of the United States to build and launch the first starship and to do so within this century.
”

Senator Clark Wessen stood at a speaker's podium, his hands folded together on its glass surface as he addressed the debate moderator and, behind her, the audience of the University of New Hampshire campus auditorium. On either side of him, the five other candidates from his party who desired to be the next president of the United States watched in stoical silence as their rival from Indiana continued to speak.

“
A project of this magnitude would take decades, and yes, it would cost a considerable amount of money. However, it would pay itself back with the development of new technologies in several different areas while providing long-term goals … um, an objective … for many major … um, industries … companies, that is.
” The senator stumbled over his own words; speaking without a prompter was obviously something to which he wasn't accustomed. “
And in the end, it will—
”

“
Five seconds, Senator,
” the moderator said.

“—provide not just our country but the human race as a whole with a new frontier, a new world it can—
”

“
Time's up, Senator.
”

“
—explore and colonize in years to come. Thank you.
”

A smattering of applause from the audience, like dismal raindrops falling on a barn roof. Wessen offered a quick, nervous smile in return. The other candidates were careful to keep their expressions neutral. All except Robert Jacques Bolivar. The Georgia governor had a gleam in his eye as he turned to regard the older man standing beside him.

“Pause,” Marty said.

The 3-D image on the holoscreen froze on the two-shot image of Wessen and Bolivar; they looked like a pair of dolls on display in a recessed shelf on Marty's office wall. Alphonse Martino, whom everyone at
The Dirty Truth
called Marty, leaned back in his chair and looked over at the young staff writer sitting on the other side of his desk.

“You caught that part, didn't you?” he asked.

“Nope. Didn't watch the debate.” Jill Muller sipped the latte she'd brought in with her; it was lukewarm already, and she didn't want to have to go back down to the lobby to buy another. She caught the annoyed expression on Marty's face and shrugged. “Politics isn't my beat, you know that. And how many debates do they have during primary season, anyway?”

“Too many,” Marty admitted. “They're like kindergarten beauty pageants, although not nearly as mature.” He pointed to the holo. “But I thought this would've caught your attention—what he said, I mean, about wanting to build a starship.”

“Sure. I read our site, y'know.” Jill took another sip, reluctantly decided that she was just going to have to let her coffee go cold, and placed it on the corner of the managing editor's desk. “Bolivar pounced all over it, and so did … um, what's his name, the bald guy, the Hawaii congressman?”

“Gosling.”

“Yeah, Gosling. But Bolivar got him worse. Chided him for wanting to spend money on building a starship when the National Coastal Barrier Initiative is over budget and behind schedule, made him sound like a complete airhead.” Jill grinned. “What did
The Daily News
call him? Senator Stardust?”

“Senator Stardust, yes. And I just got this from the op-ed desk.” He picked up a slate, ran his finger down its screen, and then turned it around and held it up for Jill to see. Displayed was a cartoon by one of the
Truth
's staff cartoonists: a caricature of Senator Wessen, bent intently over the handlebars of the tricycle he was riding, 1940s-style space helmet on his head and toy ray gun held aloft. In the foreground, a happy-looking man wearing a
WESSEN IN
'36 button proclaimed, “
And here he comes, folks … the next president of the United States!
”

“Cute.” Jill couldn't help but smile, though. “I imagine his campaign is going to be just thrilled to see that.”

“They're going to see worse.” Marty put the slate down. “Wessen's little remark was one of the high points of last night's debate, and if he isn't in enough trouble after a fourth-place showing in Iowa, this is going to hurt his chances of landing anywhere near the top three in New Hampshire. And forget about taking it away from Bolivar. The primary's in two weeks, and the latest straw poll puts the governor ahead of Gosling by five percentage points and Wessen by eight.”

“Okay, Wessen said something stupid last night. Why ask me about it?” Jill absently flipped her long blond hair back over her shoulders. “I'm on science desk. You got six people covering the campaign already who know more about this stuff than I do.”

“Yes, I do, and one of them turned up something I'd like to have you check out.” Marty leaned forward, clasping his hands together atop his desk. “Would you like to know why Clark Wessen would say something like that during a presidential campaign?”

“He's trying to sound like President Kennedy?”

“You know your history. I like that.” A smirk. “Nice to see you're interested in something else up there other than nerd stuff.”

Jill tried not to bristle. She'd come to realize that, for Marty, “nerd stuff” was any subject where he wasn't likely to find a scandal of one form or another, which was the only thing he was interested in reporting, really. But she said nothing as he shook his head. “We thought that too. However, the guys covering the Wessen campaign have been doing a little digging and just last week discovered a couple of things that weren't very interesting until last night.”