Russian Spring (27 page)

Lourade curled his lip contemptuously. “Labrenne was a fool for believing he could wait the Russians out, they have had asses carved out of stone since Gromyko and Vyshinsky,” he said.

“And this is what you told the politicians in Strasbourg?”

Lourade nodded. “What I told them is that what we needed was a new bargaining chip
right now
, and fortunately enough we had one, just waiting to be funded. . . .”

“The Grand Tour Navette. . . .”

Emile Lourade grinned. “The
GTN
is something the Russians will really want, something they can be forced to fund heavily as a joint venture. What is more, as part of a joint program, the project will finally make economic sense, as it never really has for us. . . .”

“What?” Jerry exclaimed. “But you always agreed that—”

“That it was a visionary program that was man’s next step out into the solar system,” Lourade said coldly. “But for
ESA
, it would be Spaceville all over again, and worse! Why do you think we’ve never been able to get it funded? Because the politicians are all imbeciles?”

“The thought had crossed my mind from time to time. . . ,” Jerry said dryly.

Lourade sighed. “You really always
have
been naive, haven’t you, Jerry?” he said. “What would we
do
with Grand Tour Navettes? We already have the Concordskis and the Icarus and the automated freighters, which is to say we have a complete logistical system in place for Spaceville—”

“Are you crazy, Emile?” Jerry snapped. “With the
GTN
, we could have our own Moonbase, colonize Mars, go to the Belt, and Jupiter, and Titan—”

“And how are we supposed to
pay
for all that after we’ve sunk most of our budget for years into the
GTN
itself?” Emile Lourade demanded. “What return could we show on the enormous costs?”

“I never thought of that . . . ,” Jerry muttered.

“Well they certainly have in Strasbourg all these years!” Lourade said harshly. “Labrenne was never against the
GTN
as a program. How could anyone who cared about the future in space enough to
work in the Agency fail to fall in love with it? But neither Labrenne nor anyone else who understood the real world dared to present it as a budget item because everyone
knew
the politicians would never buy it.”

“Until you, Emile. Until now.”

Emile Lourade leaned back in his chair, clasped his hands behind his head, and gave a smile of self-satisfaction. “Not even me until the negotiations with the Russians reached this impasse,” he said. “Then I realized that the merger of the Common Europe and Soviet space programs would change everything. The
GTN
fits into
their
program perfectly.
They
already have a scientific base on the Moon that they want to turn into a real colony.
They
have already gone to Mars and have plans to establish a permanent base. And dreams of going to Jupiter. And a preliminary feasibility study for bringing back ice with shaped nuclear charges from the Jovian moons to terraform Mars. For
them
, the numbers come out. The Grand Tour Navette can give them the solar system.”

“
This
is what you told them in Strasbourg?” Jerry exclaimed, his head reeling.

“Of course,” Lourade said. “Next week, a supplementary appropriation will be passed by the Common European Parliament, and the Grand Tour Navette will become an officially funded design study, and since, thanks to you, the results of such a study already exist, our negotiators will present them to the Russians as our dowry, as it were. And if they want the marriage to go through, as they surely will, they will have to agree to fund at least 40 percent of the joint space program, or the
GTN
will stay on the drawing boards. That will be our final offer, they will know it, and they will have to take it.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jerry moaned. This was the dream of his lifetime about to be funded into hardware; why this sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach?

Emile leaned forward and peered at him in puzzlement. “What’s the matter, Jerry?” he said. “This is what we’ve been dreaming of for years!”

“Well yeah, but . . . but . . .” Grand Tour Navettes of his design opening up the solar system, going to Mars and Jupiter and Saturn, a city on the Moon, a colony on Mars, all he had ever dreamed of and worked and hoped for . . . but . . . but . . .

“You’re going to give it all to
them?
” he cried.

“
Them?
” Emile said ingenuously.

“The fucking Russians!” Jerry exclaimed.

Emile Lourade peered at him narrowly. “Don’t you even read the papers, Jerry?” he said. “
Them
is
us
, or soon will be! We’re not going
to take our petty old national chauvinisms out into the solar system, we’re going to build the future out there together as
Europeans!
”

“We . . . ?”
Jerry said slowly.
“As Europeans?”

Lourade shrugged. “As the human race, then,” he said rather offhandedly. “Mon Dieu, Jerry,
you
were the one who believed enough in this dream in the first place to leave America to work for it here! Surely after all you’ve gone through, you’re not going to tell me you don’t want to be a part of it now that it’s about to really happen because it means sharing our dream with the Russians! It wouldn’t be happening without the Russians. You’re
married
to a Russian! All of a sudden you’re going to tell me you’ve turned into a Yankee chauvinist?”

“No . . . ,” Jerry muttered sadly. “Of course not, I’m your man, Emile.”

No, it was not anything he felt against the Russians that made him feel like crying in his hour of triumph. He was going to build his Grand Tour Navettes, and they were going to go to the Moon and Mars, and the moons of Jupiter, and the grand adventure would truly begin.

That soaring vision filled his mouth with the taste of Hershey’s chocolate syrup over Häagen-Dazs chocolate ice cream, and the memory of chocolate on chocolate brought another vision to his mind’s eye, the grainy video image of the onrushing lunar landscape.

And he could hear the glorious words of long ago through the years and across the vacuum and over the static: “The Eagle has landed.”

And he knew it was not himself he was crying inside for.

For the first time since he had left its shores in the service of the very vision which now was to be fulfilled, Jerry Reed found himself weeping inside for what had once been America.

“Are you okay, Jerry?” Emile Lourade said in a much softer tone, and for a moment the Director of
ESA
was the young Emile again, peering at his mentor with friendly concern. “You
do
want in?”

“Of course I do, Emile,” Jerry said quickly. And in ways, he thought, that a European like you can never quite know.

“Good,” Emile said, “it just wouldn’t be right without you.” And he was the Director again, thumbing on his intercom and speaking crisply. “You can send in Patrice Corneau now.”

Jerry rose to greet Corneau as he entered the office, and allowed Patrice to kiss him on both cheeks, French-style, a casual European gesture that he had gotten over being embarrassed by, at least when it came from someone who was more than a mere acquaintance, as Patrice Corneau certainly was.

Corneau was another of Jerry’s original Space Cadets, whose first
job with the Agency had been under Jerry in the testing atelier, and he had worked under Jerry in the prototype équipe too, before climbing on the fast track. He had been a tall, gangling, sloppily dressed young engineer type in those days, with a mop of unruly black hair and a holder full of pens in his shirt pocket. Now he was assistant project manager on Spaceville, his hair was expensively coifed and streaked with gray, and he wore an elegantly tailored lime-green suit.

“You will be working with us on the Grand Tour Navette, of course, Jerry?” Patrice said as they seated themselves.

“
Us?
” Jerry said. “You’re moving over from Spaceville, Patrice? But I thought you were in line for the project manager’s job over there. . . .” He was quite touched that Corneau was apparently willing to give up such a career opportunity to work under him on the Grand Tour Navette.

Corneau gave Lourade a surprised look. The Director gave him a furtive and uncomfortable-looking glance back.

“You haven’t told him, Emile?” Patrice said.

“Told me what?”

“I’ve appointed Patrice project manager on the
GTN
, Jerry,” Emile Lourade said evenly.

The words hit Jerry like a sock in the gut. For a long moment he just sat there frozen, staring silently and woodenly into the Director’s eyes. Emile Lourade stared just as fixedly back, with no readable emotion on his face.

Time seemed to lapse into slow motion as Jerry’s mind wrestled with his emotions. Lourade, to his credit, just sat there giving him time, and that, more than anything else, finally allowed Jerry to assess the reality with cold clarity and pull himself together before he finally spoke.

“Well, I can’t honestly tell you I’m not a little disappointed, Emile,” he finally said, and then managed a wan little smile. “But I suppose you’re right. I’m a designer and hands-on engineer, I’m no administrator, never have been, and I guess I never will be. . . .”

He turned to face Patrice Corneau. “Pas problem, Patrice,” he said. “Who cares if I was once your boss? I’ll be happy to work under you as chief project engineer, I mean that sincerely.” And he held out his hand.

And as Patrice Corneau took it somewhat hesitantly, Jerry found, to his own surprise, that he did mean what he said. After all, he would not really enjoy hassling budgets and dealing with subcontractors. Designing the spacecraft and supervising the construction of the hardware was where the true joy of it all lay for him.

In a way, Jerry thought, I should be feeling sorry for
Patrice
. He gets to deal with all the crap, and I get to have all the fun.

“I’m afraid not, Jerry,” Emile Lourade said sadly.

“What?”

“I’m afraid I can’t make you chief project engineer either,” the Director of the European Space Agency said, staring down at his desktop, not meeting Jerry’s eyes. “You’ve got to understand my position. . . .”

“
I’ve
got to understand
your
motherfucking position!” Jerry shouted.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand either, Emile,” Patrice said. “If you think I’ll have any trouble working with Jerry, you’re quite wrong, I
want
him as my chief engineer, he’s the only logical choice.”

“You can’t have him,” Emile Lourade said.

“Why on earth not?”

“Two reasons, Patrice. First and foremost because Jerry would not be at all acceptable to the Russians in such a high position in the project. Not an
American
, renegade or not, and certainly not someone whose . . . political unreliability was demonstrated when he betrayed the American sat-sled technology to us. . . .”

“Son of a bitch!” Jerry shouted.

“C’est la merde, Emile,” Patrice Corneau said.

Emile Lourade shrugged. “La merde peut-être,” he said, “but that is the politics of the situation, and I am forced to deal with them. And with one thing more—the Soviets in any case will want a Russian in the job.”

Corneau pursed his lips, frowned, nodded. “Of course,” he said.

Jerry found himself on his feet shouting, madder than he had ever been in his life. “Where the fuck would this project be without me? Where would
you
be without me, Emile? If you hadn’t had
my
project to sell out to the fucking Russians, you wouldn’t be sitting in that chair now in the first place! You make me want to puke! You were my friend, Emile! When did you turn into such a piece of shit?”

Patrice Corneau seemed quite aghast at this outburst, shrinking back in his chair with his eyebrows raised and his eyes bugging out. But the Director of
ESA
just sat there quietly and took it, waiting till Jerry was finished before he spoke. And when he did, it was in a quiet voice, leached of all anger or recrimination.

“You had a dream, Jerry,” he said. “It was a worthy dream, and you gave it to me, and to Patrice, and to many others like us. You had to leave your own country to do this, and unjustly enough, endure indignities and discrimination, and a certain amount of contempt here precisely for having done the right thing. That is the price
you
had to pay. . . .”

Emile Lourade shrugged. “This is the price
I
have to pay to make that dream a reality at long last,” he said. “I have to betray an old
friend to whom I do indeed owe much, I have to endure your hatred, and I have to endure my own disgust. In order to make the Grand Tour Navette a reality, I must commit a great injustice against an old friend whom I deeply admire. I ask you to forgive me, Jerry, knowing I have no right to do so, but knowing also that in terms of what we both believe in, I am doing the right thing. The only possible thing. And you know it too, do you not?”

Jerry collapsed back into his chair, totally deenergized. Even his rage was gone. For of course, Emile was right. If the Soviets would not swallow Jerry Reed as chief project engineer, then even if Emile had tried to appoint him, all it could have done was killed the project.

“Yeah, Emile, I know,” he said tiredly. “In your position I’d do the same disgusting thing.”

“Ah, but this is quite intolerable!” Patrice Corneau declared. “We need Jerry on the project. I must have him working with me and the devil take the Russians!”

“I quite agree,” said Emile Lourade.

“
You do?
” said Jerry.

“I have a proposal to make to you, Jerry, the proposal I intended to make all along,” Lourade said, “knowing that you would surely have refused before . . . before the unfortunate circumstances were made bitterly clear. . . .”

“Which is . . . ?”

“I could appoint you to the position of ‘maneuvering system design consultant’ on the project. . . .”