Saturn Run (47 page)

“I believe we could have negotiated—”

Clover jumped in. “You’re wrong. You’re flat wrong. Sun was nuts. She was going to kill all of us.”

Fang-Castro snapped: “I didn’t ask your opinion, Mr. Clover. This will all be subject to an inquiry. In the meantime, Mr. Darlington
goes to jail. We’ve lost access to centuries’ worth of knowledge that would have revolutionized the world as we know it. Mr. Francisco, remove him.”

Sandy gave Crow the toothy grin: “Some days you ride the board, and some days the board rides you. That’s just life, big guy.”

Santeros was all too aware of the light-speed delay. It was not improving her temperament. It would be difficult for anything to put her in a worse mood than the past week. Starting with goddamn Fang-Castro’s taking the Chinese survivors on board the
Nixon
, and hadn’t that worked out well?

Then came the takeover and the runaround she’d gotten from Beijing. This was an act of piracy, clear and simple. Or maybe an act of war. Nobody disputed that. How had Beijing responded? With the diplomatic equivalent of a shrugged shoulder and a mock-sympathetic “Life is hard, isn’t it?”

And in the meantime, the Chinese had started a worldwide scare campaign: they were just trying to keep the Americans from keeping the tech that belonged to all humans. The scare campaign was gaining ground.

And that goddamn general secretary, Hong, was doing his best to piss her off even more. On the phone, just now: he didn’t say it in so many words, but the condensed version was that she—the fuckin’ President of the whole United fuckin’ States—was being blown off!

She said her polite good-byes, wished the general secretary’s family well, added under her breath that she hoped they’d all get tertiary syphilis, and slammed the handset down so hard that it cracked.

The bang made Paula White and Richard Emery, the chairwoman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wince. They glanced at each other. Santeros had a famous temper, but this was off the scale.

Carefully and quietly, White asked, “No improvement, Madam President?”

“Oh no, it’s just great. Can’t you tell from the expression on my face?” She caught herself and took a deep breath, swallowed. “I’m sorry, Paula, I’m taking it out on you and I should be taking it out on that asshole, Hong. He’s got that grandpa face, and he’s a bigger hard-liner than me.
Publicly, he’s all wringing of hands and bemoaning the ‘rogue activities’ of the Chinese pirates. In private he’s throwing a party. Hell, it’s not even that private.”

“Madam President,” said Emery, “we need to up the ante. Put pressure on Beijing as well as prepare for the worst. Paula and I”—he glanced over at his boss, who nodded—“we think you need to start mobilizing. Take our forces up to Tier Three. And if this doesn’t resolve soon, Tier Two.”

Her chief of staff stuck his head in: “Ma’am, you’ve got a highest priority incoming from the
Nixon
. You’re gonna want to look at it.”

“How bad?”

The chief of staff scratched his head. “Honestly . . . I don’t know. It’s . . . I’m just going to spool it over to you.”

“Give it to me in one word. Are we going to war?”

“Uh . . . no, but I’m not sure how much happier you’re gonna be. Let me spool it over.”

Hong’s call came just past midnight in Washington, early afternoon in a sunny, flower-scented Beijing. In Washington, Gladys’s soft, synthesized voice spoke in the Oval Office. “Madam President, General Secretary Hong is on the line. May I put him through?” Santeros waved assent.

She said, “Mr. Secretary, we’re going to need something that’ll make both our populaces . . . and our governmental oppositions . . . happy. I’m getting a lot of push here just to have the Chinese rescuees shot outright, as pirates. No international tribunals, no repatriation. Just a bullet for each one.”

Hong: “And I’m dealing with folks who think they’re the Heroes of the Revolution. You shoot them and my administration won’t stand. The MSS will have me replaced with someone even more intractable within hours.”

Santeros chuckled. “Things don’t move quite so fast here, but if your ‘heroes’ get their way and my opponents can pin that on me, the next sound you hear will be the House drawing up articles of impeachment.”

Representative Cline shook her head vigorously no.

“Oh, face facts, Francie,” Santeros said. “If it looks like I caved in to the Chinese pirates, and you don’t support a motion to impeach, you’ll find yourself ex-Speaker before you could blink twice.”

Hong continued, “So, here’s our proposed joint statement: our two crews had some communications difficulties to begin with. Language barriers, misunderstood orders, which created some confusion and concern, but it was all over nothing. I can toss in something about radical dissidents trying to foment trouble, not in concert with our policies. I’m sure you can come up with something about minor difficulties in the power plant delaying the restart of the engines. The important thing being that everyone is working together now in the spirit of international cooperation to see that both our peoples come home safely.”

“That could fly, if your guys will go along. We’ll have to shut everybody up when they get back, but I can do that on my end.”

“And I can assure you that I can do it on mine. But I have to give the MSS a bone. They don’t believe that all the memory is gone. They point out that you have three major computers, not one.”

“You should know, you sabotaged one of them.”

“I’m trying to be . . . cooperative here, and find a way to save both our asses.”

“But primarily your own.”

“Of course, and I’m sure that you have the same relative priority.”

“Yes. I do.”

“So. Since you say the memory store and the QSUs are all gone . . . here is our proposal.”

Santeros had to struggle with the various interest groups involved—and talk to the top scientific experts—but in the end, acceded to the Chinese proposal.

One last task: put the screws to Fiorella. Santeros needed just the right news to be broadcast. . . .

—

Greenberg was sucking down a bulb of coffee when she took the call from the bridge. The
Nixon
floated in space, fourteen million kilometers from Saturn and 1.3 billion kilometers from Earth.

“Dr. Greenberg, this is Commander Fang-Castro. You have permission to bring the engines back online, full power at your convenience. Helm has sent the navigation coordinates to your station. Let’s go home.”

Saturday, November 24, 2068—a hundred and fifty thousand kilometers from Earth. The
Nixon
was home.

That’s how it felt to the crew, anyway. They were in Earth orbit. It was a large, elliptical orbit, never coming closer than fifty thousand kilometers to the earth and extending out beyond the moon. But it was an orbit; they were captured in Earth’s gravitational field.

The
Nixon
would spiral in, reversing the course they had taken when they departed nearly a year and a half ago. Thanksgiving, two days earlier, had been a sober affair. Although Earth was tantalizingly close, less than a million kilometers away and rushing toward them, they still had too much velocity for orbital capture.

But nothing went wrong.

The least thankful person had been Fang-Castro. She had not taken the decisions of the two governments very well.

“I cannot believe you’re asking this of me,” she said. “You seriously expect me to scuttle my own ship?” She’d received outrageous demands in her time, but this was beyond all imagining.

Santeros was the model of calm. “Admiral, I am not asking anything of you. I’m
telling
you. This is what is going to happen. The
Nixon
will be abandoned, disposed of. The new Chinese Martian transport will retrieve you and your crew. They will bring you back to low Earth orbit. This has been decided. Debate is not being reopened.”

“Then I’d ask you to relieve me of command. You can have somebody else take over for the rest of the mission.”

The faintest of smiles played across Santeros’s lips. “That wouldn’t discomfit me in the least, but that’s not how this is going to play out. There are issues of international politics that are far more important than you, and as far as that goes, all of your crew members put together. I want neither the distraction nor the questions that might be raised by
a last-minute change of command. I need a good face on this. You’re going to serve.”

“Why should I?”

Santeros shrugged. “Because you’re an officer in the navy. You guys always do what you’re told first and resign later. If you want to resign later, be my guest.”

Fang-Castro’s shoulders slumped. Her hands gripped the arms of her chair. The knuckles were pale. She spoke softly. “You give me no choice. I’ve noticed that tendency in your administration. Anything else?” She didn’t say, “ma’am.”

“Thank you, Admiral. Look at it this way, Naomi: you have a certain . . . mmm . . . grip on my balls. That’s a good thing, from your side. From my side, I’m used to it. There are more hands in my pants than you can believe. But, you know, play your part, and good things will happen for you. Play your part, and Crow will take care of the details.”

—

The Chinese were unwilling to risk even the slightest chance that the
Nixon
could somehow unload the information on the alien technology. Since they didn’t know how much memory the alien downloads would use, they were unwilling to let even the smallest objects leave the
Nixon
: a memory file could be made to look like almost anything, so they would not allow
anything
to leave the
Nixon
.

How to do that? The
Nixon
was diseased.

That was the report, a day after they achieved high orbit, when they’d already had visitors. Now the visitors were stuck, too.

Major Barnes came down with something that looked like a virus . . . but not quite like a virus. He’d been cleared through the quarantine months earlier, after breathing the atmosphere in the alien primary, and even now, didn’t seem especially ill. Sore throat, pink blotchy spots over his back, legs, and arms.

Then Cui came down with it.

Fang-Castro made the announcement.

“The CDC has a man on the way up. The blood samples taken by Doctors Manfred and Mo suggest a virus, but it doesn’t look like anything they’ve seen before. We’re afraid it could have come from the alien environment, so the CDC’s guy will be visiting us in a full environmental suit. Dr. Mo suggests that we really don’t have much to be worried about, the bug seems easy enough to kill in vitro.”

Ship-wide groans.

Sandy had been confined for a week after his performance on the bridge, but the confinement was obviously pointless—where was he going to run to?—and he hadn’t yet been convicted of anything, though he surely would be. And he wasn’t dangerous . . . and nine-tenths of the people on the ship thought he’d probably saved their lives.

So they let him out.

Fang-Castro told him, “Too many people in Washington know about this to let it go. You’re going to spend time in jail.”

“Not too much,” he said, with his grin.

“If I were you, I’d brace myself,” Fang-Castro said. “Among other things, Santeros is looking for a scapegoat.”

Now, in Earth orbit, Sandy set up for an interview with Fiorella, announcing the onset of the plague.

“I probably wouldn’t refer to it as the plague,” Fiorella said.

“They want you to,” Sandy said.

“Maybe. But I’m a journalist, not a lapdog,” she said. “Really.” She sounded slightly guilty. She’d had an extremely pragmatic talk with Santeros.

“I just take the pictures,” Sandy said. “Really.”

Clover cruised by. “One-point-two million in the Hump Pool. Not a single person has bet on tonight. Or last night or tomorrow night. So, I was thinking we ought to pull the trigger, but . . . you know, even though the whole concept of the Hump Pool is despicable, taking the money smacks of fraud. I’m getting mildly cold feet.”

Sandy said, “If we pull the trigger, you could fund your own archaeological expedition. To anywhere.”

Clover said, “My feet got warmer. Keep talking.”

“I don’t really need the money, but I
want
it,” Fiorella said. “It’s me that the Hump Pool is about. The assumption that I could never resist Mr. Money and Big White Teeth. I will not mind sticking it to them and turning a profit on twisting the knife.”

Sandy brought out the teeth: “Dinner and a movie? Tonight at my place?”

“I’ll be there at seven o’clock,” Fiorella said. She threw her head back, released a well-simulated sexual groan, then straightened and said, “And I’m just warming up.”

Clover rubbed his hands together. “I was hoping you’d talk me out of my spasm of righteousness. The Hump Pool was wrong. I’m defending the reputation of women everywhere by taking the cash.”

“Absolutely,” Fiorella said.

An hour later, she was live from the bridge:

“While the crew, including myself, and the former crewmen of the
Celestial Odyssey
, will have to spend some time in a Level Four biocontainment facility, now being fabbed in the new Chinese
Divine Wanderer
, there’s not much doubt the viral visitor can be eradicated from our bodies. There remains the question of what will happen to the
Nixon
. Eradicating every last organic particle from this ship would be a vast task, not made easier by the fact that we’d have to do it in space. Preliminary tests have shown that this particle may not be killed by exposure to a vacuum. . . .”

She went on for a while, but the thrust was clear: a solution would have to be found for eliminating the contamination of the
Nixon
. The world could not risk the introduction of a new alien organism . . . or any other organisms that hadn’t yet been found.

Later that evening, after another performance, she said hoarsely, “Damn, my voice is shot.”

“Yeah, well, I’m pretty sore from bouncing that cot up and down. I’m thinking the real thing is a lot less work.”

“Probably, and neither of us will likely get an Oscar for our performance . . .”

“Your moans were pretty convincing . . .”

“. . . but you can’t fault the pay scale.”

“Amen, sister.”

Clover was taking high fives in the Commons. He had a spaghetti pot under his arm, stuffed with currency.

—

Fang-Castro glanced around her bare quarters.

Saturday, December 1, 2068. She’d remember this date, the day she gave up the command of the
Nixon
.

The Chinese had been prompt and efficient. They could, in fact, have launched and arrived a day earlier than projected. It was the personnel on the
Nixon
who’d held to the original schedule, transmitting every last bit of their work to Earth . . . in native English and math . . . through a Chinese relay.

Not a lot of trust there. Not a lot of trust, anywhere.

Three Americans and two Chinese had died in her ship, though Admiral Zhang was probably dead by the time he arrived. There were four bodies in cold storage, and one was still sailing, in a broken egg, toward the outer planets. The thought of Becca Johansson, on her lonely voyage, still made Fang-Castro tight in the throat.

They’d also lost one cat on the trip: Mr. Snuffles had died of a heart attack three weeks out. John Clover had been devastated, but had said, “He never would have made it back on Earth, anyway. The gravity would kill him the first day. Better this way.”

The living Americans—and the former crew members of the
Celestial Odyssey
, as well—would be going through meticulous body scans before they’d even be allowed in the Chinese facility, and then they’d be confined to the Level 4 biocontainment area until the docs were absolutely, one hundred percent sure that they’d eliminated the last of the . . .

Measles.

A mild, attenuated, fast-developing form of measles genetically designed to produce the raw material for a measles vaccine, should that ever be needed; and though it was attenuated, it nevertheless produced
the blotching pink rash of regular measles. The only place where the regular disease occasionally popped up was the wilds of Marin County, California. If a few hundred parents hadn’t resisted, it would have been eradicated there decades earlier. This outbreak had been brought up by the first visitor to the
Nixon
, a cheerful, politically reliable doc from the CDC.

With both the Chinese and American propaganda machines denying that there was any real danger from the “alien” virus, at the same time they used various ignorance-bathed celebrities to spread fear and misinformation through the Internet, most of the world had become convinced that the
Nixon
was a death machine.

A long-forgotten film from a century earlier,
The Andromeda Strain
, resurfaced on the Internet. Medical personnel—so they claimed to be—called and texted late-night talk shows, citing research that had shown how microorganisms could survive under the most extraordinary conditions. They reminded listeners how diseases on Earth had jumped between species, given the right set of chance mutations. Organisms that might normally infect an alien host might, and they emphasized the word “might,” be able to make the jump to human beings.

Probably not. But maybe.

Santeros said it most plainly, in a talk on public television:

“Humans have encountered aliens. No one knows, for certain, what the
Nixon
might have brought back with it in the way of pathogens—germs. We are confident that we can eliminate any pathogens in the human body itself, but with the
Nixon
, that’s a much different situation.

“We have consulted with the Chinese, European, Brazilian, African Union, and Indian governments. As much as it breaks my heart, the decision has been taken to destroy the
Nixon
in a way that will remove any doubt that rogue pathogens have been destroyed with it. . . .

“The only things to be brought back from the ship are eight alien machines, which will also be thoroughly decontaminated, and from which we hope and expect to derive much information about their computer technologies. As an act of goodwill between the U.S. and its many
foreign allies, the machines will be distributed among the major states represented on the UN’s Security Council. We hope, however, to develop a mutual research program.”

But what to do with the
Nixon
?

De-orbiting the ship was unthinkable. It was far too large to entirely burn up; something might survive and contaminate the world. Crash it into the moon? It’d have to be monitored as a hazardous waste site indefinitely.

The only smart place to send the ship was to the ultimate incinerator. The sun. The
Divine Wanderer
, the
Celestial Odyssey
’s successor, could do the job; a ship that was designed to carry over a thousand tonnes of cargo wouldn’t have any problem pushing around the four-hundred-and-fifty-tonne
Nixon
. A little extra water reaction mass from some strap-on tanks, some newly fabricated attachment mounts, and the Martian transport became the world’s biggest and fastest tugboat.

The operation took a week.

On its second, and final, trip to the
Nixon
, the
Divine Wanderer
brought along service eggs, graphene cable, and sensor-laden tie-downs, and a full complement of riggers and jockeys. They’d only be pushing the poor
Nixon
at a few percent of a gee, but that was still several times more acceleration than the ship had been subject to before. A little extra rigging, just to make sure nothing broke loose. It was cheap insurance.

At six o’clock in the morning, Beijing time, President Santeros and General Secretary Hong jointly issued the orders to proceed.

The
Divine Wanderer
, grappled to the
Nixon
’s cold, dead VASIMR engines, began to push. Its nuclear thermal rockets thrummed at a comfortable one-third power for the next day, as the
Divine Wanderer
pushed the
Nixon
away from the earth and against its orbital motion about the sun. When it was done, twenty-seven kilometers per second of fresh delta-vee canceled out all but a few kilometers per second of residual orbital velocity about the sun.

The
Nixon
’s new course was confirmed. The
Divine Wanderer
released its grapples, turned tail, and headed back to Earth. The
Nixon
continued on, in a tight elliptical track with a perihelion of less than half a million kilometers. It would never complete a full orbit; the sun’s radius was seven hundred thousand kilometers.