Moonfall (18 page)

BBC WORLDNET
. 9:05
A.M.

Moonbase, Grissom Country. 10:05
A.M.

Charlie listened on his private channel to an enraged Henry Kolladner. It was bad enough that Feinberg was trying to panic the nation. But someone in the administration was telling the media that Henry knew how dangerous the situation was, that he was recklessly playing with the lives of Americans. He’d find the leaker, the president swore, he’d run the bastard out of the administration and see that he never worked in this town again (by which he presumably meant the United States government). Not ever. He would even consider criminal action. Furthermore, he thought he knew who was doing it.

He went on in that vein for a while, but didn’t name anyone. Charlie had a couple of suspects in mind, but he understood the turmoil that must have been generated in a meeting in which they decided to stand aside and risk a general disaster without issuing a warning. He understood why the decision had been taken, and was not inclined to be judgmental because
he wasn’t sure what the correct action should have been.
We’ll know Sunday morning, won’t we?

“Charlie, they won’t just hold this against
me
. I’m sorry to say it, but they’ll remember the
party
in the fall.
You’ll
probably end up paying the bill.”

Considering the president’s unspoken opposition to his candidacy, the remark was disingenuous. But the thought had occurred to Charlie too, although he suspected charges of a coverup wouldn’t matter much. His connection with Moonbase would probably be enough to sink him. Still, he knew he needed to put a cheerful face on the situation. “Maybe not, Henry. If the rocks don’t land on New York, everybody will say you did exactly the right thing. If they
do…
” He stared at the scrambler he’d plugged into the wall unit. “If they do, there probably won’t
be
an election.”

“We’re doing what we can, Charlie. Moving supplies, equipment, getting troops in place. In case…”

“What about the rest of the world?”

“Everybody’s scrambling. There’s even some cooperation out there, believe it or not. North Korea, for God’s sake, has offered to pitch in. But the mechanisms aren’t in place. The major alliances may be able to coordinate mutual assistance efforts; elsewhere it’ll be hit or miss.”

“Well,” said Charlie, “if we get lucky, get a near miss, something that just scares the bejesus out of everybody, maybe some good will come of it.”

“I hope so.” The president was briefly silent. “How are you holding out?”

Charlie hesitated. “Not so well, actually.”

Henry went cold on the other end. “Spell it out, Charlie.”

The vice president told him everything he knew. “They haven’t announced it yet.”

“You’ve got yourself into a box.”

“I know.”

Charlie listened to static on the line. “Okay,” said Henry. “We’ll have an emergency in, uh, the Everglades. Needs the administration’s point man for environment. You get the hell away from there. I’ll send written confirmation and give the directive to the media so everybody knows you’re being ordered out.”

“Nobody’ll believe the Everglades story.”

“Then we’ll think of something else. When you get the directive, you might protest publicly. Demand to stay on at Moonbase. That’d be a nice touch.”

2.

Seattle. 7:27
A.M.
Pacific Daylight Time (10:27
A.M.
EDT).

Matt Randall had no intention of getting caught when the tidal waves roared ashore. He lived on Vachon Island in Puget Sound. He habitually got up at six and ran for an hour before catching the ferry over to the mainland for his job with the Coastal Marine Insurance Company, where he managed the general casualty division. This was the unit that insured the uninsurable: teen drivers with bad records who’d been assigned to CMI under the Special Risk Plan. He felt as if he’d acquired another special risk, a very bad one, after watching the early news reports. The gray-haired man from Harvard was calm and almost dispassionate, and consequently very believable.

Matt made up his mind, skipped the run, and hustled his wife out of bed. She watched the interviews for a few minutes and agreed. They collected the kids, twin girls three years old, loaded up the station wagon, and managed to squeeze onto the ferry. Despite the early hour, there was already a small horde of their neighbors packing and clearing out. Once on the mainland, he threaded his way through downtown Seattle onto 1–90, and headed east. At eight-thirty he called the office
and got a strange voice. His secretary had called in sick.

Traffic was uncharacteristically heavy. It crawled along, mostly eastbound like them. The day was overcast and gloomy, laced with occasional showers. The fifty-mile drive out to Lake Easton State Park took almost three hours. There, just after they’d passed a rest area, the twins announced they needed a bathroom. Matt pulled off at the next exit and swung into a McDonald’s. He bought a round of burgers and fries. It was midmorning, but the place was filled anyhow.

Getting back onto the expressway required a difficult left-hand turn across two lanes of southbound traffic, followed by a quick swing into the right-hand lane. He sat several minutes, watching for a break in the flow, saw one, and cut across the highway. He tucked into the left-hand lane and never saw the Voyager van that simultaneously pulled out to pass, expecting to make a left turn just ahead into a charge station. It hit him in the right rear panel and nudged him into the oncoming traffic. The girls screamed and his wife threw her hands against the dashboard. There was only a flicker of stark terror, and then the sky crumpled into darkness.

Four vehicles, carrying eleven people, were involved in the pileup. Of these, only the driver of the van escaped injury. Matt lost his wife and one of the twins.

For the Washington State Police, it was the beginning of a day filled with carnage.

Skyport Flight Terminal. 11:03
A.M.

George’s dozen flight attendants came by to wish him luck. They stood uncertainly in the passenger lounge, two or three in uniform, most not. Several offered to come if he wanted them along. He thanked them and said he’d see them Sunday when he got back.

Then he boarded the plane and ran through the preflights
with Mary. He and his copilot would be carrying only about a hundred passengers, the last group of evacuees, on the return flight. He was happy that the load would be relatively light, because the spacecraft would be easier to maneuver. If, in fact, the giant spacecraft would be able to maneuver at all.

“Green board,” said Mary.

George nodded. He began to ease out of the bay.

He felt
good
. For years he’d done nothing but fly back and forth from New York to London, and Kansas City to Miami, and then he’d made the big jump from Washington to LEO. Yesterday he’d flown out to the Lagrange One point. Now he was going the rest of the way to the Moon, and he was on a rescue mission. “Okay, Mary,” he said, “let’s do it.”

Moonbase, Grissom Country. 11:04
A.M.

“We need to think about what kind of spin we’ll put on it.”

Rick nodded. “This whole thing’s a nightmare. Next time we’ll know not to make pledges off the top of our head, won’t we?”

Charlie squelched his irritation. The man, after all, was right.

Rick was sitting disconsolately, his hands thrust into his pockets, his jaw propped on one fist. “Who’s getting left?” he asked abruptly.

“Evelyn. Jack Chandler. Other than that, I don’t know. Some of their senior people, I think.”

“
Hampton’s
staying behind?”

“That’s what she says.”

“Gutsy woman. She’s not in the chain of command out here. Doesn’t have to do that.” Rick looked as if he were about to say something more and thought better of it. Instead he took out a notebook and flipped it open. “We’re scheduled out at one-twenty. Our plane leaves orbit around midnight tonight.”

“Okay.”

Rick shook his head. He’d tried to get them on the flight that was leaving orbit at one, but the White House orders hadn’t come through yet and it was already too late to get to it. “We’ll get through this, Charlie,” he said.

The vice president stared at him a long time. “Some of us will,” he said.

Moonbase, Chaplain’s Office. 11:27
A.M.

Mark Pinnacle was the product of a well-to-do, old-line Northumberland family. His recent ancestors, most of whom he knew by name and likeness, had been scholars, soldiers, and statesmen for the British Empire. When things went downhill for the landed aristocracy, the Pinnacles moved into trade and eventually into software development. George Pinnacle, Mark’s grandfather, had secured fame and fortune with a wide range of games and practical applications for the home.

Mark was only the second Pinnacle in modern times to don the cloth. That he did so was less a tribute to his faith than it was irritation with his father Avery, who attended church each Sunday and liberally supported it with donations, while explaining to his children that there wasn’t a word of truth anywhere in Christian dogma. The sole value of the Church, he contended, was to entertain the rabble and make them keep their socks up.

When in a fit of exasperation Mark charged his father with hypocrisy, the old man had laughed.
Without Christianity, or some similar system
, he said,
civilization would be impossible. It teaches us, for example, to lie
.

To lie, Father?

Imagine, my boy, what life would be like if we all blurted out what we really thought on every occasion
. And then he’d grown serious.
Think of the alternative: Suppose there were not a mechanism in place to scare the savages into behaving
.

Every child who’s worth a damn eventually issues a statement of independence. Mark’s consisted of applying for entry to divinity school. He’d intended to limit himself to a year or so while his father squirmed. But in the end, impressed by the faith of his teachers, he’d stayed. And if the personified God who walked through Galilee seemed always somewhat remote to him, he never allowed any but his closest associates to glimpse his doubts.

When an uncle asked whether he was interested in becoming the first chaplain at Moonbase, he accepted immediately. He would be nondenominational, the uncle explained. No proselytizing. All faiths to be considered equal.
We know better, of course
, the uncle winked.
But we won’t let on, shall we?

It was a natural situation for Mark. He had taken to it with enthusiasm, and had now been at Moonbase two years, ministering to its collection of workers, technicians, and researchers. There were few among the lunies who could be described as devout, but they too needed someone to talk to on occasion, someone to take care of the ceremonies that mark life’s various passages.

He performed the first lunar wedding, and poured water for the first lunar baptism. He presided over the first formal Hannukah celebration, and read the rites at the burial of the Moslem Isbn ben Mihal, who died when a faulty p-suit burst. No one seemed to mind that prayers were led by a man who might not formally have subscribed to the doctrine from which they sprang. It seemed to Mark that, on the Moon, the sharp definitions between the various faiths tended to blur.

Fortunately, there weren’t many funerals. In fact, one of the joys of being Moonbase chaplain was that he blessed children and unions far more often than he had to console the bereaved. He discovered something else as well At home, the majority of his parishioners went through the motions of their faith, but seldom thought about it in any meaningful way. It
was merely something that was there, rather like the weather or the dial tone. But the people who came to Luna tended to have strong negative views about chapels and yet were inclined to gaze into the infinite and admit their doubts. These, Mark believed, were the ones especially worth saving.

Now that the comet had come, he wondered what purpose it was intended to serve. He shared the general dismay, the concern that went beyond whether this or that individual would get off in time. For the chapkin, as for many at Moonbase, something significant was drawing to a close. End of an era. And it was a painful time for him particularly, who subscribed to the notion that nothing happened by chance. How often had he listened to people argue that it is after all a Darwinian universe, cold and neutral? An
engine
that doesn’t know we exist, cranking out stars, squirrels, and astronomers with equally insensate industry.

It was, they said, only our frustration at seeing this truth, at haying it written large across our skies, that drove the invention of religion. Yet it seemed we had drawn
someone’s
attention. The nucleus half-hidden in the ruddy glow of streamer and mist looked like nothing so much as a devil’s eye.

Moonbase, Communications Center. 11:46
A.M.

The young woman who’d attracted Rick’s attention on his first-day tour of the public relations suite was Andrea Bellwether, a communications technician. She was British, a native of Portsmouth, where she’d grown up in sight of Nelson’s
Victory
. She was the daughter of Frank Bellwether, commander of the
Ranger
on its fateful first voyage. Andrea had been six when her father tried to bring down the crippled vessel and had skimmed off the atmosphere and ricocheted in the general direction of Canopus.