Death Wave (43 page)

Rachel knelt beside Nick's body. “He's dead!” she sobbed.

“No,” said Cree, his eyes on Castiglione. “Just unconscious. He'll come around in a few minutes.” To Jordan he asked, “What do you want to do with these two?”

Anger surging through him, Jordan snarled, “I'd like to toss them into the ocean, with anvils tied to their ankles.”

“Jordan,” Aditi said calmly.

“Call the constable's station,” Jordan said through gritted teeth, “and tell them we've been attacked by a pair of would-be burglars.”

*   *   *

They didn't get to the dinner the innkeeper's cook had prepared for them until hours later. Once the police showed up at the cottage, they were all taken to the station house, where Castiglione loudly claimed diplomatic immunity.

“For armed burglary?” the police sergeant practically spat at him. “Don't be daft.”

Castiglione and Walt were locked into a cell. Nick—though still slightly woozy from the nerve jangler—broadcast a blow-by-blow description of the incident via the Otero network, and Cree asked his headquarters in Chicago for a beefed-up security team.

It was nearly midnight when the six of them finally got to the inn, where the cook happily reheated the entire meal he had painstakingly prepared. The innkeeper joined them at the table and listened to their story with grave concern.

“Nothing like this has happened here in living memory,” he marveled.

Jordan said, “I'm sorry we weren't able to get here on time.”

“Better late than never,” said the cook as he deposited a steaming tray of mince pie on their table.

From outside the inn came voices singing, “Silent night, holy night…”

“The church choir,” said the innkeeper, “starting the midnight service.”

Jordan looked around the table at Cree, and Nick, Rachel, Dee Dee, and Aditi. “God bless us, every one,” he breathed.

*   *   *

By the time Jordan and Aditi got back to the cottage, they were both tired and filled with Christmas dinner. And wine.

As he turned out the bedroom lights and slipped into bed next to her, Jordan asked, “Is what you told Castiglione really true? Are you sending everything you see and hear back to Adri on New Earth?”

In the darkness he could hear the amusement in her voice. “Almost everything.”

“Ah. That's better,” Jordan said as he reached for her.

 

ELECTION DAY

“Congratulations,” said Anita Halleck. Her smile looked forced.

Jordan and Aditi were in Boston, where they were watching the election returns on the Otero Network from the comfort of the hotel suite that Carlos Otero had personally selected for them.

With less than half the votes counted, Halleck had called from her home in Barcelona. She sat alone in what appeared to be a comfortable study, dressed in a stylish ball gown and draped with sparkling jewelry. The room was decked with flowers. Yet she seemed far from pleased.

“Isn't this a bit premature?” Jordan asked her image. “The voting isn't completed yet.”

“Oh, you've won,” Halleck said, her voice flat and cold. “I should have insisted that you and your wife attend the party here at my home.”

“A party?” Aditi asked.

“It's due to start in a few minutes. Champagne for the winners, beer for the losers.”

Jordan asked, “And which will you be drinking?”

“Champagne,” Halleck replied. “I always drink champagne.”

“You always win.”

The beginnings of a real smile touched the corners of her lips. “Yes. One way or the other.”

With a glance at Aditi, Jordan said, “Douglas Stavenger called earlier. He told me that Selene has offered to build one of the starships we're going to be needing.”

The tentative smile vanished. “Yes. He called me, too. A very generous offer.”

“Too generous to refuse.”

Her lips curving again, Halleck said, “I didn't refuse it. Not at all. In fact, I got him to increase his offer. Selene will refurbish the ship you went to New Earth in.”

“For the follow-up mission!” Aditi exclaimed.

“Yes. You can return to your homeworld, if you wish.”

“I do!” But then she turned to Jordan. “But that will have to wait, won't it?”

Patting her knee, he answered, “I'm afraid so.”

“Too bad,” said Halleck. “I had hoped to get rid of you for a while.”

“Not so quickly.”

Halleck sighed. “Ah well. One of the principles of politics is to recognize a bandwagon and get on it before it turns into a steamroller that flattens you. That's called leadership.”

“You're not going to oppose sending rescue missions to the worlds threatened by the death wave?” Jordan asked.

“It doesn't seem like a practical course to take. You've become something of a Messiah to the voters.”

“Hardly that.”

“Close enough. You've created a bandwagon. As the leader of the World Council I have to climb onto it and guide it to success.”

Aditi said, “You have the FTL communications technology.”

“True enough. That should help us to weld the communities scattered through the solar system into a unified political system.”

“With you at its head,” Jordan said.

“With the World Council directing it. Don't forget, you'll be a member of that Council.” She hesitated a heartbeat, then said, “I won't oppose your crusade to save the alien worlds.”

“That's … very gracious of you,” said Jordan.

“But in return, I need something from you.”

“Something? What?”

“Your promise that you will be in favor of my reelection to the Council chair, when we reconvene next week.”

“I have no interest in becoming chairman,” said Jordan.

Her eyes locked on his, Halleck said icily, “That's not a promise.”

Jordan felt his brows rise. “I mean it. You can keep your chair. I won't oppose you—as long as you don't oppose the starship program.”

Halleck's smile turned genuine. “Ah. Now you're speaking like a politician.”

“Quid pro quo,” said Jordan.

“One hand washes the other.”

And Jordan realized that he had taken on a whole galaxy of responsibilities.

Almost wearily, Halleck pushed herself to her feet. She looked resplendent, imposing—yet discontent, far from joyful.

“Well,” she said, “I have guests waiting for me downstairs. And champagne.”

“Wait,” Jordan called. “What's happened to Castiglione? Apparently the British government turned him over the World Council's justice department.”

“Rudy?” Halleck's expression saddened. “He's been sent to the penal colony in orbit around Saturn. We won't see him for a long time.”

“Penal colony?” asked Aditi.

Jordan explained, “The habitat orbiting Saturn began as a place to send political misfits, troublemakers. But its people created their own stable government. They've been an independent nation now for more than two hundred years, much like Selene.”

“Rudy won't be on bread and water, don't worry,” Halleck said. “He should do quite well for himself out there.”

“And the other one?” Jordan asked. “Walt something-or-other.”

“Walter Edgerton,” Halleck replied. “He's been an agent of our security organization for some years. He was released into our custody.”

“And?”

“And given an early retirement. I understand he's writing a book. His autobiography. Perhaps your friend Motrenko will publish it digitally.”

“Nick is working for the Otero Network now,” said Aditi.

“Is he? How nice,” Halleck said coolly. Then, “You really must excuse me. I have to play the hostess now.”

And her image winked off.

Aditi stared at the darkened viewer for a moment, then turned to Jordan. “What a strange woman,” she said.

“‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,'” he quoted.

Brightening, Aditi said, “But she's agreed to the rescue missions. Let's call Adri and give him the good news.”

“By all means,” said Jordan. But he was thinking, I'll have to work with Halleck, and watch my back every step of the way. Strange bedfellows, indeed.

Then he remembered an old Hungarian proverb: With a Hungarian for a friend, who needs an enemy?

 

EPILOGUE: SIX YEARS LATER

Mitchell Thornberry looked downright wistful as they watched the starship lift off.

There was no bellowing of rocket engines to disturb the scrubby desert landscape. No thunder of raw power. The lenticular-shaped craft, gleaming silver in the desert morning, rose slowly, almost silently, propelled by the same technology from New Earth that produced the almost ubiquitous energy shields.

The tremendous crowd that arced across the desert for miles around fell silent, awed at the majesty of the takeoff of this first mission to rescue an alien civilization from the death wave.

“Ah, if I were a younger man,” Thornberry muttered, his eyes following the spacecraft's majestically slow trajectory into the sky.

He was standing high above the desert floor, on the VIP visitor's deck of the White Sands spaceport, beside Jordan, Aditi, the governor of New Mexico, and a small crowd of industrial magnates and politicians. Anita Halleck was conspicuously absent.

Down below them someone in the teeming crowd yelled, “Go!” More voices cheered the rising starship until the air rang with the chant. “Go! Go! Go!”

As if in answer to their plea, the starship arced across the clear morning sky, accelerating now, faster and faster until it was a barely discernible streak of coruscating color against the cloudless blue.

“Go!” Thornberry joined the chorus. “Go!”

“You want to go star-roving?” Jordan asked him, his expression cheerless. “So do I.”

Thornberry replied, “Aye, I do, and that's the truth of it.” With a shake of his head, “But I can't. Too many responsibilities. I'm pinned to Earth.”

“I am, too,” said Jordan. Glancing at the VIPs standing all around them, he added in a lower voice, “I hate to think what Halleck would do if I went traipsing off to one of the threatened worlds.”

“‘Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty,'” Thornberry quoted, sadly.

“At least Paul's on his way,” said Aditi.

“Yes,” Jordan replied wanly. “On his way to the stars.”

Paul Longyear had leaped at the opportunity to be named chief biologist on the first rescue mission. Jordan had never seen the Native American smile so brightly as earlier that morning, when he boarded the minivan that took him and the rest of the expedition's biology team to the starship waiting out on the baking desert.

The dwindling dot of the starship finally became too small for the naked eye to see. The launch director's amplified voice boomed across the launch complex, “The launch of Star Mission One is complete. All aspects of the launch are well within design parameters. Godspeed,
Prometheus
.”

The huge crowd below them started to slowly, almost grudgingly, disperse to the parking lots neatly spread across the desert floor. The notables on the observation deck began to head indoors to the air-conditioned visitors' center and the cocktail reception that awaited them.

Thornberry heaved a melancholic sigh. “Ah well, the news conference will be starting soon. I suppose we should go in and let ourselves be admired.”

*   *   *

Hamilton Cree was surprised to see such a crowd at the Rio Grande Gorge. Cars were parked along the shoulders of the road on both sides of the bridge as far as the eye could see. Vendors had set up tables beneath the bright morning sunlight, offering all sorts of handmade jewelry and trinkets, including replicas of the starship carved from local New Mexico stones.

“It's like a holiday,” said his wife. “A regular festival.”

Cree nodded, impressed. “They've come to see the launch.” And he clutched his five-year-old son's hand a little tighter.

“Do you think we'll see much from here?” his wife asked. “White Sands is a couple hundred miles from here, isn't it?”

Cree nodded at her. His superiors at the agency had given him his choice of Unicorn offices with his latest promotion. To his own surprise, he had picked Albuquerque. And even stranger, he had driven his tiny family to this spot, where he'd first seen Jordan Kell half a dozen years ago.

“We ought to get a good look at it.” And he led his wife and child up past the picnic tables and the makeshift lot jammed with cars parked haphazardly, every which way.

“Where's the starship?” Hamilton Junior asked, squinting into the bright morning sky.

Cree glanced at his wristwatch. “Oughtta be coming up over the horizon right about—
look!
”

A streak of silver climbed above the horizon, carving an arch against the cloudless sky that quickly morphed into a thin line that shifted to red, yellow, and finally deepest blue.

“A rainbow!” Cree's wife shouted.

Cree dropped to one knee beside his son. “Look at it, Junior! That's the starship! It's going to another star!”

His eyes fixed on the man-made rainbow as it sped across the sky, Junior nodded solemnly. “I want to go to the stars, too.”

Cree smiled and told his son, “You will, Junior. Someday you will.”

Dee Dee tousled her boy's hair. “When you grow up, honey,” she said. “When you grow up.”

*   *   *

Jordan felt tired, and somehow disappointed. The day had been long and emotionally draining, with a crowded news conference following the starship's launch, then speeches by the assembled politicians—including Jordan, as the representative of the World Council—and finally a long, liquor-soaked luncheon hosted by the governor of New Mexico during which the politicians congratulated themselves on opening a new era of starflight for the human race. And finally a one-on-one interview with the Otero Network's Nick Motrenko.