Oblivion (13 page)

She let the maitre d’ pull out her chair, then sat, and nodded when he asked her if she wanted her usual. He was gone before anyone else had a chance to say a word.

“This is some place,” Killius said.

Maddox smiled. She was a beautiful woman in a non-conventional way. Archer had never seen that before. “I’ve always liked it,” she said.

“They seem to know you here,” Archer said.

Maddox shrugged. “I’ve learned that sometimes having a conversation over a relaxing meal is a lot better than a meeting in a stuffy office, especially in the evening.” She picked up her menu. “The crab cakes are always good here.”

They looked at the menus as yet a third waiter brought Maddox a gin and tonic. A fourth waiter described the specials, and Maddox assured all of them that this would be on the government’s tab.

Archer ordered a filet mignon, medium rare, and felt slightly guilty at the expense. Killius ordered lobster and smiled in obvious anticipation. Maddox ordered the roast duck special.

Then the waiter took their menus and wine list, and disappeared. The conversation around them was a low hum.

Archer decided she’d begin. “You called this a meeting?”

“I called this a conversation,” Maddox said. “But you can call it a meeting.”

“Just us, not the Project?”

Maddox sighed, but she didn’t look irritated. She took a sip of her drink. “I’m coordinating a lot of things right now,” she said. “My biggest concern is that the aliens are an unknown. We can make assumptions about them based on very little evidence. And we only have a short time to gather more evidence. I know that Cross is right. They’re not done with us yet.”

“All we have are the bodies,” Killius said.

Maddox shook her head. “The bodies, the ships, and the historical record. I’ve been thinking about that first presentation of Cross’s. Do you remember?”

Archer did. She’d seen it more than once as Leo was drumming up support for the Project. In it, he had used the historical record—actually the writings of civilizations dead for thousands of years—to show that a “black death from the sky” happened at all. Now they’d seen the black death and knew why it came from the sky.

“Yes, I remember,” Killius said.

“There’s bound to be more information in there, if we just know where to look.” Maddox sipped her drink as a waiter set down some warm bread. She took a piece and slathered it with butter, then set it on her bread plate. “We also have observation. Obviously these aliens have a civilization. We should be able to see it.”

“With the telescopes?” Archer said.

Maddox nodded. “They are the best vision we have into deep space. The planet is moving inside Venus’s orbit and won’t be this close again for four months. We need to get better information about the aliens before then.”

Archer frowned. They had had this discussion once before. Briefly and on the phone, but they had had it. Then Maddox glanced at Killius, and Archer realized what was going on. This meeting wasn’t for her. It was for Killius. Was there a problem at NASA?

“I empathize,” Archer said. “But the scopes can’t help you, not for another three months. They just aren’t powerful enough. The tenth planet doesn’t reflect light, and soon it’ll disappear behind the sun. We have to wait until it’s much closer before we attempt to see anything on its surface. But to be honest, I don’t think we’re going to get much more as it comes toward us this time than last time.”

Maddox sighed and took a bite of the bread. Killius dug in the bread basket until she found a piece of rye. She pulled it out and buttered it lightly.

Yet another waiter appeared with their salad course. As he mixed the Caesar salads and queried them about the amount of pepper, the women watched him. When he left, leaving large plates of greenery before them, they continued.

“What about probes?” Maddox asked.

Killius picked up her salad fork. She stabbed at her plate. “We lack the funds, General.”

“If funds weren’t an issue.”

Killius raised her head. A single lock of hair had fallen alongside her face. She was thinner than she had been when Archer had met her, a long time ago. “Not at all?”

Maddox ate her bread and didn’t touch her salad. In fact, she pushed the salad plate away. “Jesse,” she said softly. “We’ve just suffered through the worst attack ever on the continental United States. Congress is going to roll over and bark whenever we ask it to. Money is not an issue. Most of the defense funds that had gone to conventional ground weapons are useless in this campaign. We can now turn that toward space. Toward NASA, if that’s the place to go. If it’s not, I suppose we can go directly to private industry—there are a number of companies that have been launching their own satellites and a few probes—but I worry about their commitment to our cause.”

“They should be just as involved as the rest of us,” Archer said. She’d talked to some of her nonscientific friends. They were scared.

“Should be. But I have a healthy mistrust of private industry. I prefer to keep things under government control.” Where she or someone like her could oversee the work, Archer thought. The key word in Maddox’s last sentence wasn’t “government.” It was “control.”

“We can do probes,” Killius said.

“What about a defense system?”

Killius frowned. “A planetary defense system? That’s not something we can do alone. I’m sure the other nations would have something to say about it. In the ’80s, when President Reagan suggested the Star Wars system—”

“I know your institutional memory is long,” Maddox said. “So’s mine. And Reagan’s system, in addition to being forty years out-of-date, never got off the ground. And it wasn’t designed to protect us from things arriving from
outer
space. Instead, it was to protect us from things launched
into-
space from other countries. It’s not applicable. If we’re doing a planetary defense system, the other nations will benefit from it.”

“If we present it to them properly,” Archer said, finally understanding one of the reasons she was here. Her work at STScI was largely a matter of international cooperation and coordination. “If we give them a say-so in much of what we do.”

“I’d prefer this to be an American-run project,” Maddox said.

“Forgive me, General,” Archer said, “but you can have a project that’s run formally by the Americans, and you’ll get a lot of protest. Or you can have one run informally by us, with much of the control situated in this country, and you’ll get almost no protest at all.”

“This has happened with your telescopes?”

“Yes,” Archer said. “And I’m speaking from experience in times of peace. We’re not at peace now. There should be even more cooperation.”

Killius was studying her salad, working her way methodically through all the lettuce and pushing the croutons aside. She looked like a woman who knew she was being doubleteamed. Archer wanted to take her aside and assure her that it hadn’t been set up beforehand, that she hadn’t agreed to the meal to badger Killius into a position she didn’t want to be in.

The very first waiter, the one who had brought Archer her drink, appeared and whisked away their salad plates. He cleaned the crumbs off the tablecloth with a little brush and then put large platters down before leaving as silently as he had arrived.

“So,” Maddox said. “A defense system. We have ideas, and we’ve already talked to a few of your people. What we really need from NASA isn’t a design for the defense system, but your cooperation in using manned shuttles to set it up.”

“Oh,” Killius said. “We don’t become a long arm of the Defense Department, then.”

Archer stiffened, wondering if Maddox would take offense. But she wasn’t even looking at Killius. She was looking at the headwaiter, who was carrying a tray of food on three fingertips. He bowed and placed the tray on its little cart. On top were dishes covered with silver warmers.

“The filet,” he said with just a hint of a British accent. Archer wondered why it was that all headwaiters spoke with that same accent, that same precision. Was it taught to them in headwaiter school?

“Mine,” she said.

He waved it in front of her, before setting it down and removing the cover with a flourish. Then he repeated the procedure with the lobster and the duck.

“Do your meals look satisfactory?”

“As good as usual, Claude,” Maddox said. Her tone clearly held dismissal. The headwaiter nodded, grabbed his tray, and left.

“The long arm of the Defense Department?” Maddox said softly. Archer winced. She had hoped Maddox hadn’t heard that. “You sound as if that’s a problem, Jesse. NASA and Defense have always worked together closely.”

“And been separate agencies.”

“This is not the time to worry about who’s in charge of what,” Maddox said. “The lines are probably going to blur mightily before this thing is over.”

Killius stared at her lobster as if she suddenly didn’t know how to eat it.

“They’ve already blurred,” Archer said. “Even between countries.”

The cooperation they had all seen on the Tenth Planet Project wouldn’t have been possible a year before.

“Jesse,” Maddox said. “What’s bothering you?”

Killius pushed her plate away. She hadn’t touched the lobster. “Change bothers me,” she said, her head down. Then she raised it. “It’s not you, General. It’s the new ways of thinking. I’m a better bureaucrat than scientist, I guess, but I’m both, ultimately, and both operate by strict rules. Suddenly I find myself in a world in which the old rules no longer apply, not to science, and not to bureaucracy.”

“The old rules do apply,” Maddox said. “But it’s the old wartime rules, not peacetime rules. None of us worked during the Cold War—in fact, we were all children when it ended—but that’s the model NASA has to look to now. An enemy so great that we might not be able to destroy it, but we have to put our best effort into it. That attitude got us into outer space in the first place.”

“We’re not trying to go to space, General,” Killius said. “No.” Maddox spoke softly. “We’re trying to save Earth.” Archer let out a small breath. Her hands were trembling. Killius looked at both of them for a moment. She was pale beneath her makeup. “Probes, and manned shuttle missions.”

“Yes,” Maddox said. “That’s all we’re asking.”

“That’s a lot,” Killius said. “We’re stretched now.”

“I’m trying to change that,” Maddox started, but Killius raised a hand to stop her.

“If you can guarantee the money,” Killius said, “I can guarantee results.”

Maddox met Killius’s gaze for a moment. Archer found herself holding her breath. The two women were staring at each other as if they could read each other’s minds.

“I can guarantee the money,” Maddox said.

“Then you’ll have your probes. I’ll make sure we’ll know everything humanly possible about those aliens by the time they make their return trip around the sun. And you can have all the shuttles you can pay to get into orbit.”

“Good,” Maddox said. “I can’t ask for more.”

She picked up her fork and poked at her duck. Archer cut another piece of steak. It was one of the best steaks she had eaten for a long time. After a moment, Killius pulled her plate closer and began to pick apart the lobster.

Maddox took a bite of duck and then smiled. “The meeting’s over,” she said. “Let’s have a real conversation, about men, and vid stars, and whether or not we should have dessert.”

Archer looked at her.

Killius seemed startled.

Maddox raised her eyebrows. “We don’t get chances like this very often,” she said, “and I suspect our chances will be fewer and fewer over the next couple of months.”

She took a bite of duck, chewed for a moment, and then cut another piece. It was as if she couldn’t get enough.

She said, “Eat well, ladies. We have to enjoy the good things in life while we still have them.”

The words didn’t encourage Archer to eat more. Instead, they nearly stole her appetite.
While we still have them.
Even Maddox thought that ultimately they’d lose.

Archer shuddered.

She had a hunch Maddox was right.

April 29, 2018
22:07 Universal Time

168 Days Until Second Harvest

General Gail Banks felt the shuttle shudder as it attached itself to the docking bay outside one of the units of the International Space Station. Sloppy work, that. A shuttle should never shudder when it docked, especially in space, where so many things could go wrong.

She waited for the all clear, then unhooked all her seat belts locking her into the passenger chair. She had purposely stayed out of the cockpit—she’d learned through bitter experience that she couldn’t be hands-off when faced with a less competent pilot than she was, and most pilots never came up to her exacting standards. When she had been in charge of the shuttle program, pilot testing had been rigorous. So rigorous, in fact, that some idiot had complained to the media, which then sicced the congressional doofuses on the case. Congressmen who had Air Force bases in their home states, and tons of pilots who someday dreamed of flying to the moon as their constituents, suddenly demanded an investigation.