DS02 Night of the Dragonstar (6 page)

COLONEL PHINEAS
Kemp drove through the open countryside of Northern California. He had keyed in the coordinates for the home of John T. Neville, and the on-board CPU was controlling his automobile as it negotiated the electronic highways north of San Francisco. He was currently passing through the legislated Agricultural Preserves of Mendocino County, and he enjoyed watching the endless sky above him and the gently rolling hills of lettuce and corn and other vegetables. Sometimes he enjoyed doing the driving himself, if the road represented any kind of a challenge, but on a straight-line highway like El-State 101, driving was just plain boring.

His thoughts drifted back to the Dragonstar and the international affair that had sprung up around the great ship. Sometimes Phineas felt that the whole affair had become a genuine, royal pain
—
exciting, challenging, but a disruption in his life nonetheless. The Dragonstar was an intruder, and it had threatened to disrupt his grand design for success and fame. Thankfully, Phineas had played a great part in working things out, wresting what could have been a career-ruining fiasco from the clich
é
d jaws of defeat.

Now, he thought smugly, this documentary project would put him back on the world’s center stage. He had total and absolute control over the project, and he was feeling very good.

Yes, he thought with a smile, history cannot forget me now.

He had first realized that three days ago, sitting at dinner with Kate Ennis. They had been dining at a posh restaurant in the Adams-Morgan section of Washington, D.C., and Kate had been so damned effusive over his accomplishments, his career, and his future, that he had begun thinking that he truly did have “great man” possibilities. Kate had wanted to discuss his ideas for the documentary, and she had been extremely supportive of those ideas. Phineas himself had not been certain that his ideas would fly-after all, he was not a media person, a director or actor or anything of the sort. Yet he had always thought he could succeed in any of those professions without much of a problem. Nothing like running a moonbase, that was for sure. And certainly not as demanding.

He recalled their conversation with pleasure.

“What do you want the documentary to say about you in particular, Colonel?” Kate had asked over the French onion soup.

“Well,” Kemp said, trying to be as modest as possible, “it’s not really so important that my ego is gratified. No, I would much rather it be made obvious that I am involved in something that is invaluable to the fate of mankind. I would be happy, really, if people were to reflect back on all this and say, ‘Old Phineas Kemp, he certainly did his bit.’”

Kate smiled. She certainly was an attractive woman. In fact her dark hair and striking features reminded him of Becky, not in any singular characteristic, but because they were the same type of woman.

“Well, that was well phrased, Colonel.” Kate laughed politely. “But what I was thinking about was the narration. Do you see yourself in that role?”

Kemp would have loved to have narrated the world-wide broadcast, but he knew his voice was a bit on the reedy side. He was familiar enough with audio-visual presentations to know that they were always more effective when you could employ a rich, attention-getting baritone.

“Actually, no,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve got the voice for it, and I think it would be more effective if I were interviewed just like the other members of the crew. “

Kate Ennis smiled and nodded her agreement at this point, so Phineas decided to push a bit further toward endearing her to him. “Besides,” he said with a quick grin, “don’t you think the words ‘Colonel Phineas Kemp’ would sound good spoken in the rolling tones of a famous dramatic actor?”

* * *

He was interrupted from his thoughts by a warning buzzer on the console of the Oldsmobile. Looking down at the colorful readout displays, he saw that he was fast approaching the off ramp for the road to Neville’s home. Kemp reached out and grasped the steering wheel, resuming control of the vehicle. He eased across the lanes of the freeway and slipped onto the off ramp, following the signs to Westport, a small town on the Pacific coastline.

The town itself looked as if it hadn’t changed in fifty years, and had a quaintness to it that seemed out of place in the modern world. Kemp wondered why a world-famous science fiction writer like Neville would want to live in a place like this. He would have imagined that someone like Neville would want to have his digs in a modern sky-rise condo, or even one of the new oceanic cityplexes that were so popular on the East Coast.

But as Kemp drove through the town, he could see how a writer might like a village like Westport. It was obviously some sort of artists’ colony. There were countless shops and boutiques selling all manner of hand-crafted wares and
objets d’art.
The prices were stupendous, but it was getting difficult to find good artisans’ work anymore. Kemp also noticed a preponderance of young people, especially young women adorned in the latest chic fashions, which was to say, very little at all. Kemp slowed to a very decent cruising speed, ogling the passersby. More than a few of the young women smiled at him. They hadn’t acted like that when
he
was a college student.

Well, this was no time to be dallying, Phineas thought. He checked his map on the dashboard monitor, keying in the exact location of Neville’s house and watching it light up on the screen. Kemp turned off the main boulevard, headed north along a quiet residential street, then left along a narrow road cut into the side of a sheer rock face. The road hugged the side of the cliff, winding and snaking gradually upward, finally opening up on a small plateau topped by a sculptured mound of earth.

Atop this mound was “Neville Base Alpha,” as the estate-fortress of John T. Neville had been named by the well-known author, raconteur, and television personality. He had another home in Manhattan dubbed “Neville Base Beta,” and Phineas assumed that if the eccentric man ever decided to set up a third residence it would be called “Gamma.”

The estate was an architectural dream
—
the confluence of many planes and angles, great panes of passive solar glass, clerestories, heat stacks, and decks. The main building was surrounded by a moat filled with water and protected by an electrified fence. There was a single entrance, overlooked by a small guardhouse and a single oriental fellow in a security uniform which looked suspiciously like the uniform of the “dreaded Hardji of the planet Darskath.” The Hardji were a concoction of Neville’s, having appeared in one of his most famous tetralogies,
The Darskath Interregnum.

Phineas had read that series of novels when he was a young lad in Canada, and he had assumed since then that he had seen the last of the dreaded Hardji
—
until he pulled up to the guardhouse.

“Colonel Phineas Kemp, IASA. I’m here to see Mr. Neville,” he said casually to the guard, who peered down at him through the black glass of his helmet visor while training what looked to be some sort of disintegrator weapon at his face.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Neville is expecting you. But first I must see some identification.”

Phineas smiled as he reached for his billfold in his breast pocket.

“Easy,” said the Hardji. “Now bring it out reeeeeal slow.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Phineas said, handing over his IASA ID plate, “it’s just my fucking wallet.”

Ignoring the comment, the guard studied his ID, then nodded as he handed it back. “All right, sir. Mr. Neville will be waiting for you on the lower deck. Just follow the drive around to the left and pull up in the space marked Earth Visitors.”

“Right-o,” Phineas said. “Earth Visitors it is.”

Accelerating and cutting hard on the wheel, Phineas moved quickly away from the guardhouse, crossed over the drawbridge and moat, and followed the perimeter of Neville’s house until he found the parking lot adjacent to the lower deck.

As he rolled to a stop, he saw the sliding glass doors open on the lower deck and an odd-looking figure appear. After all these years, he was finally meeting the author who had thrilled and inspired him as a boy. Despite his case-hardened exterior, Phineas felt a surge of emotion race through him, and he would have sworn his heartbeat jumped just a tad.

Stepping from the car, he watched Neville approach. The writer was a tall man with broad shoulders and a moon face. He had a large, loose-limbed frame, and his clothes hung upon him as if they were still dangling in a closet. Neville had long hair that frizzed out in all directions, and his eyes had a bulging, hyperthyroid aspect. He walked with an arm-swinging, rollicking gait that suggested that he had suffered a stroke or two, but there was a free-spirited energy radiating from him like sunlight.

“Colonel Kemp, welcome to Neville Base Alpha!” The writer extended a large, bony hand and shook Kemp’s. There was surprising strength in his grip.

“Sir, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Please, call me Phineas.” He looked carefully at the old man. In one moment Neville looked every bit of his ninety-plus years, and in the next he appeared decades younger. There was a mercurial aspect to him
—
he seemed to be forever changing.

“Glad to, Phineas. Why don’t we come inside?”

Neville led the way into a room filled with memorabilia from long ago-framed paintings of book covers, original magazine illustrations, plaques, photographs, and other pieces of the past. Phineas felt like he was walking through a wing of a museum. He spotted a painting of a familiar cover
—
a book he had read in the eighth grade called
The Scaling of
the Xedrin.
He had never forgotten the wonderful intricacies of the plot or the ingenious aliens Neville had dreamed up for that one.

“You know, I remember reading this one when I was twelve years old,” Phineas said, pointing to the painting.

“Ah yes, the golden age,” Neville cried.

“What’s that?”

Neville chuckled. “The golden age of science fiction.”

“Oh, you mean back in the nineteen forties?” asked Kemp.

“No, dear fellow. The golden age of science fiction is
twelve.
That’s the time when most of us discover it, and that’s when it’s best for us, right?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Nothing to suppose. Look at all the adolescent male fantasies we used to write about. All those spaceships that looked like our dongs? Do you think that was an accident? Fuck, no!”

Neville wheeled erratically and began walking down a long hall, motioning Phineas to follow. They entered a large room decked out with the latest communications and media gear
—
laser decks, computer consoles, telecom centers, monitors, hologrammers. It looked like the bridge of a movie spaceship from the eighties. At the opposite end of the room was a desk where a middle-aged woman dressed in nurse’s white was sitting studying a computer monitor.

“This is the nerve center of the whole operation,” Neville said. “I call it the bridge. Pretty nifty, eh?”

“Impressive, yes.” Phineas was getting a kick out of the old guy, and smiled easily.

“And that old bag over there in the white clothes is my nurse, Ms. Jane Wilkins. Say hello to the colonel, Nurse Jane.”

The woman stood up and smiled wanly. “You’ll have to forgive Dr. Neville, Colonel. He’s just had his nap, and he’s always a bit high-strung when he first gets up.”

“High-strung? Listen, Colonel, Ms. Wilkins thinks I reached this ripe old age by playing by the rules, see? She doesn’t realize that I smoked a couple of packs a day for sixty years. That I could hold more Jackie D. than any writer since Dick R. Gordon.”

Phineas laughed politely and searched for a place to sit down, selecting a couch in front of what was obviously Neville’s command chair and desk console.

“Ah ... Dr. Neville, I think I’d
—”

“Listen, Phineas, don’t bother with the ‘Doctor’ business. I only make Nurse Wilkins do that when I’m feeling feisty.” Neville laughed at his small joke, reached down behind the desk, and produced a two-liter bottle of Jack Daniels. When he noticed Kemp watching him with an expression of genuine surprise, he smiled and paused before putting it to his lips. “Hah! Don’t worry about this. It’s not really Jackie D. I just keep my vitamin gruel in the old bottles. Kinda makes me think of the good old days when I could keep a fifth of that shit next to my chair leg and type out a whole book in one sitting. Sometimes I’d sit there for twenty-four, maybe forty-eight hours straight, just to meet a deadline. And ole Jack would always see me through. Some people said they were my best works
—
the ones I wrote when I was blind drunk. Funny how literature is, isn’t it?”