Arkwright (12 page)

Kate and Maggie settled into brand-new office chairs across from where George had been sitting. Barbara returned with a tea mug for Maggie and then left, shutting the door on her way out. George remained standing, hands clasped behind his back.

“Well, now,” he began. “I think it's safe to assume that Maggie has filled you in about … um, parts of your family history of which you were formerly unaware, yes?”

“She did.” From the corner of her eye, Kate could see Maggie watching her. “I'm still trying to absorb this, but yes, I know.”

“Good.” He paused. “I'm sorry we made you find out in this manner, by having you read Nat's biography and then speak to Harry and Maggie in turn. Had we told you everything after your grandfather's funeral, though, there's a chance you wouldn't have believed us.”

“Three crazy old people,” Maggie said. “That's probably what you would have thought of us.”

Kate started to object and then realized that she was probably right. If a woman she'd only just met had told her that she was really her grandmother, she would have chalked it up as senile dementia. Harry's tales of what happened on Tinian and the
Apollo 17
launch would have been no more than an old man's recollections, and her grandfather's memoirs … interesting, but inconsequential. “I understand,” she said.

“Good, very good. Now let me tell you about the last time I saw Nat, when I visited him earlier this year.”

 

15

Summer had come late to the Berkshires, but it had come, anyway. From the sundeck of Nathan's house, George watched an eagle as it rode the thermals above the nearby mountainside, searching the forests below for prey. There were new leaves on the trees and dragonflies in the air, and the meadows were green again.

A lovely day. Despite the warmth of the afternoon, though, Mr. Sterling had wrapped a light shawl around Nathan's thin shoulders before leaving them on the deck to talk. Nat sat huddled in his rocking chair, his shoulders bowed slightly forward, and George reflected that his friend had become disturbingly frail since the last time he'd seen him. That had been quite a few years ago, but even so, there wasn't any way to get around it. Nat Arkwright wasn't much longer for this world.

“Have you read about that asteroid?” Nat asked. “The one that was in the papers lately?”

The abrupt change of topic caught George off guard. Only a moment earlier, they'd been chatting about the kinds of raptors that nested in the Berkshires; Nathan couldn't quite make out the eagle, but George could, and that was what prompted the conversation. Now, all of a sudden, Nat wanted to talk about something else. He'd always had a tendency to do that, though, and George was one of the few people who could keep up with him.

“Which asteroid?” he asked.

“The one that may hit Earth in about twenty-five years.”

George liked to think of his mind as a mental card file; he quickly flipped through it until he located the correct card. “Ah. That would be 99942 Apophis, a near-Earth asteroid that was discovered, um, fairly recently.” At the last second, he decided not to inform Nat that Apophis had actually been discovered nearly eighteen months earlier, with the newspapers reporting its possible trajectory about six months later. No point in reminding his old friend that his memory was giving out along with the rest of his body. “I wouldn't worry about it too much.”

Nat peered at him. “Why not? For God's sake, you know what something like that could do if it hit us.”

“
If
it hit us. As I recall, it's been calculated that Apophis will probably miss Earth when it swings back by in 2029.” He smiled. “In any case, I shouldn't worry about it too much. I doubt either of us will be around by then.”

In the old days, Nat would have appreciated the macabre humor of what he'd just said. He might have even laughed. Now he simply cast George a sullen glare. “I'm concerned with human history after I'm gone, you know. I don't believe the universe will cease to exist the moment I die.”

“Of course it won't.” George shifted uncomfortably in his chair. This conversation was taking a more serious tone than he expected or liked. “But there's not much you can do about that, is there?”

“There isn't? Or perhaps there is.”

For the first time since George had arrived at Nathan's house this morning, after his assistant had driven him up from Princeton, a smile appeared on Nat's pale and lined face. A few weeks earlier, George had received an unexpected phone call from him, an invitation to spend a couple of days at his place in western Massachusetts. George hadn't seen Nat in a long time, and a little weekend getaway to the Berkshires sounded like fun.

Nat had been moody the moment George showed up, though, and it wasn't until this moment that he showed any sign of his old self. There was a familiar twinkle in Nat's eye, a certain slyness that meant he'd been playing with an intriguing idea that had come to him lately, some notion that he wanted to bounce off “the Legion's genius-in-residence” (as he liked to call George). In the past, this sort of thing usually occurred when Nat had a brainstorm for a new Galaxy Patrol novel. Yet it had been nearly twenty years since Nathan Arkwright had published his last novel, and George doubted that he was about to produce a new one, even as the final act of a life that was coming to a close.

“What's on your mind, Nat?” George sat back in his chair and cupped his hands together. “Why did you ask me to come here?”

Nat was quiet a moment. Gazing up, he appeared to finally notice the eagle roaming the sky above his home. “Have you read Martin Rees's
Our Final Hour
?” he said at last.

“Yes. Fascinating book.”

“What do you think of his prognosis? That the human race has only a 50 percent chance of surviving the twenty-first century and that if we don't or can't change our ways, we're doomed to extinction by our own hand?”

George pursed his lips. “I think Sir Martin's being a tad pessimistic in his odds, but—” He paused, weighing his words. “I'm afraid he may be right. Even if an asteroid doesn't clobber us, global climate change could very well do us in. Or nuclear war. Or a plague we ourselves created and transmitted. Any of a number of different things.”

“And does this bother you?”

“Of course it does.” A wry smile. “That's one of the reasons why I've continued my line of research all these years. We can't afford to have all our eggs stuck in one basket, can we?”

“No, we can't.” Nat slowly nodded. “All of us have been working toward the same objective all along, haven't we? The Legion, I mean. Harry and I wrote stories about the human race leaving Earth and going out into space, Maggie made sure that they got published, and you've been trying to accomplish the same thing in real life.”

“We've come a long way since Caravan Hall, but don't give me too much credit. I haven't been all that successful.” George looked away toward the nearby mountains. “I thought we had a good idea with Project Orion when I worked on it at General Atomics, but we lost the funding for that. Same thing happened in the '70s when I was involved with developing the NERVA engine at NASA. We could have been on Mars by 1990 if we'd built nuclear rockets. Each time we came close, though, either Congress or the White House would pull the plug for one reason or another.”

“That's my understanding of it, yes.” A breeze drifted across the meadows. Nathan pulled his shawl a little closer, as if feeling a chill. “The problem isn't technological or even willingness; it's always money.”

“That's right. We know what it takes to go into space. We know what it takes to colonize another planet. We could even start building starships within this century, if we put our minds to it.”

“Starships?” Nat raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Sure. The British Interplanetary Society came up with its Daedalus design as far back as the '70s. Lately, other people have revisited their work and come up with a second-generation design called Icarus. But it doesn't need to be nuclear fusion. There's also been quite a bit of work done on beam propulsion, either laser or microwave. It would be very big and very expensive, but so far, there's been no showstoppers … well, almost none.”

“What's the problem?”

“People.” George stretched out his legs. “We don't know how to keep people alive in space for the length of time it would take a vessel to travel to another star system. Even if we could accelerate a ship to half light speed, which is remotely feasible with a beamed-power system, it would take the ship almost five years just to reach Alpha Centauri. Anything farther away than that could take decades, even centuries.”

“Generation ships.”

“Great idea for science fiction stories, but it falls apart when we try to figure out how to make it work in real life. The biggest hurdle is building a reliable, foolproof, closed-loop environmental system that can sustain itself almost indefinitely. Look what happened to Biosphere II. It had its own greenhouse effect within months, and they finally had to pull the residents out of there. You might be able to make something like that work on the Moon or Mars, because you can fix the problems with assistance from Earth, but once a ship leaves the solar system, it's on its own.” George shrugged. “Besides, when you think about it, even in science fiction, most generation ships end in disaster, don't they?”

“Then hibernation—”

“A bit more feasible, but you're still talking about keeping people alive for long periods of time, even if they're in an artificially induced coma. Low-temperature freezing can damage brain tissue, and warm-sleep methods are conjectural at best.” George shook his head. “Space is a very dangerous environment, completely unforgiving. I love reading science fiction and always have, but guys like you and Harry often underestimate how hard is to live out there.”

Nathan was quiet for a few moments. “Do you think interstellar travel is impossible?” he asked at last. “Tell the truth.”

“No, just very, very difficult. It may be something that living beings will never be able to do. Unmanned probes, yes, but nothing with a crew aboard.” He thought about it for a moment and then added, “Of course, there is an alternative.”

“An alternative? Do you think it would work?”

“Yes, it might. It involves—”

Nathan lifted a hand that had become gaunt and spotted. “Explain it to me in a moment. Let me tell you why I've asked you here.”

George was curious about that very thing. It had been quite a while since Nat had invited him or anyone else from the Legion for a weekend stay. Even Maggie did most of her business with him by phone or email. And although George still liked to attend science fiction conventions on occasion—quietly, as a fan who was seldom recognized—it had been many years since the last time Nathan Arkwright had made a public appearance. Something had gone out of him when Judith died; he'd continued writing for another ten years and then gave it up and contented himself with living off the royalties and residuals being generated by the Galaxy Patrol franchise.

Nat let his hand fall to the armrest of his chair. “Here's an inescapable fact of my own,” he said quietly. “I'm dying.”

George wasn't surprised. His eyes hadn't missed anything over the past few hours he spent with his old friend, and he was too good a scientist not to accept the evidence of his observations. Yet when he started to ask the obvious question, Nat shook his head. “Don't ask me about the details,” he said, his voice taking on a phlegmy rasp. “That's the only part of it that depresses me. The rest I can take, but—”

“I understand. How much longer do you think you've got?”

“A few months. The doctors don't think I'll make it to the end of the year. 'Til then, I'm going to just get weaker and weaker.” A strained smile. “I guess that pretty much kills the book I was writing. Not that anyone would want to read my autobiography, anyway.”

George let out his breath. “I'm sorry, Nat. I … I really don't know what to say.” He'd never been able to handle death well, and Nathan was one of his oldest friends. “If there's anything I can do—”

“Yes, yes, in fact, there is.” Nathan looked straight at him. “I'm like you. I want the human race to go to the stars. I think I've worked out a way how. That's going to be my legacy, and you and Maggie and Harry can help me.”

George stared at him. “How?”

“First things first.” Another smile, a little stronger now. “I've just had my lawyer revise my will. Here's what I'm doing…”

 

16

George was interrupted by a polite knock at the door. Barbara came in, and first Kate thought she'd come to offer coffee again. Instead, she stepped aside to let two people into the room: Harry Skinner and his grandson Jim.

Kate was apparently the only person in the room surprised to see them. Maggie merely smiled, and George glanced at his watch. “Very good. Right on time, and the timing's perfect. I was just about to tell Kate about Nat's final bequest.” He turned to her again. “Your grandfather—”

“Wait a minute.” She looked at Harry and Jim. “I saw you just a few days ago. Did you know you were going to be here?”

Harry was riding a three-wheel scooter today. He leaned forward in the saddle seat to lay his arms across the handlebars. “'Fraid so. We didn't know exactly when Maggie was going to bring you here, so we had to play that part by ear.” He cocked a thumb at Jim. “I'm lucky that he was able to take a day off and borrow a van from the hospital. Otherwise, I would've had to take the train up, and it's getting hard for me to travel.”

“Okay, I get that, but why?”

George cleared his throat. “If you'll let me continue…” Kate nodded and he went on, “Your grandfather decided to amend his will to establish the Arkwright Foundation. Until then, he was going to leave his estate mainly to charity, with a token amount going to you and your mother. But in his last few months, he came up with a different idea—using his fortune to underwrite that which had fascinated him his entire life.”