Starhawk (11 page)

JAKE LISTENED WHILE
Leon started his car and pulled out of the driveway. Joshua's killer, and
he
was just sitting there. Wonderful. He removed his link, a silver bracelet, and put it on the side table. Cars were not silent, though the noise was artificially created, consisting of a standardized droning so people could hear them coming. He stared at the link as the car descended the mountain road until, finally, he couldn't hear it anymore. What would he tell Patricia if she found out he'd just sat while Carlson drove off? He didn't work for her anymore, so technically she had no claim on him. Except maybe that he behave in a decent manner.

He could happily have strangled the guy, but he couldn't call the police.

He put on the HV, located a talk show, three people debating whether the general public should have unfettered access to plasma weapons. The HV was valuable in that it filled the cabin with noise. But it did no more than that when he had to watch it alone.

After a few minutes, he shut it down, pulled his jacket on, and went outside. The sun was gone, and the temperature was dropping rapidly.

 * * * 

HE MET ALICIA
Conner the following evening at the Roundhouse. She was sitting with two other women when she caught Jake looking at her. She dropped her eyes, but she didn't suck in her cheeks or tighten her lips or show any of the other turnoff reactions. It was come get me if you want me—

Alicia was a brunette, energetic, bright, obviously a woman who enjoyed herself. Jake asked her to dance. She pretended to think about it, smiled, and got up. They floated around the floor, exchanged names and compliments, and found a table where they could sit and talk. “I work down at the bank,” she said.

“An accountant?”

“No. I'm in security. What do
you
do?

“I used to be a pilot.” He didn't want to use the word
retired
.

“What kind of pilot, Jake? A boat?”

“Interstellars,” he said, trying to sound modest. Her eyes went wide. Then skepticism flowed into her smile.

“Come on,” she said. “What do you
really
do?”

He returned the grin. “May I buy you a drink?”

 * * * 

ALICIA WAS JUST
what he needed after the interaction with Leon. She was energetic, funny, and she grew more attractive as the evening wore on. She was about thirty, was a graduate of the University of Georgia, and had been living in the Radford area for about a year. She was a computer geek, charged with overseeing the protection of customer accounts.

And she
loved
talking about outer space. What stars had Jake been to? Had he really seen some of the Great Monuments? Had he
touched
any of them? When he said
yes
, she squealed and wanted to know which one and how it had felt. “I've always wanted to go out to Iapetus,” she said. “I just haven't gotten around to it yet.”

She was full of questions. What was the farthest place he'd ever visited? Had he seen any of the ruins on—where was it?—Quraqua? Then she connected his name to the
Gremlin
incident. Wasn't he the captain involved in the rescue of the schoolkids? “Yes,” he said. “That was me.” It was a tense moment while he waited to see whether she'd dig deeper. But she moved on. What was the most compelling astronomical object he'd seen? (That one was easy: Earth, when you were coming home and got close enough to make out the oceans and continents.)

So they danced and talked their way through the evening.

 * * * 

WHEN IT WAS
over, and she commented that it had been a lovely night but she needed to get home, he made no effort to talk her into going back to the cabin. He liked her too much to chance spoiling things. They had by then visited several of the nightspots. He took her back to the Roundhouse, where she'd left her car. “Alicia,” he said, “I wonder if we could get together and do something like this again?”

“It
has
been nice, hasn't it?” she said.

“Absolutely.” He looked down into those brilliant eyes. “Would it be okay if I called you later? Maybe we could set something up?”

“I can live with that.” She smiled and gave him her code.

They kissed, gently, with carefully contained passion on his side. He escorted her back to her apartment complex. He watched her park and waited until she was at the front door. She waved and went inside. Then Jake returned happily up his mountain road. Sex would have been good, he thought, would have been
outstanding
. He suspected he could not have made it happen, though. But it wasn't what he needed at the moment anyway.

What he needed was a friend.

The guys in the Cockpit would have thought he'd lost his mind.

 * * * 

ALICIA'S DIARY

Tonight, I might have struck gold. We'll see.

—November 26, 2195

PRISCILLA AND TAWNY
rode the shuttle down to the Philadelphia spaceport. She got off and gloried in the familiar tug of gravity, in being able to walk without paying attention to every step, in not having to be careful about the way she handled her coffee. One of the other passengers, a large middle-aged woman, read her eyes and smiled agreement. A young couple, probably finishing a honeymoon, were actually jumping up and down, deliriously happy to have their weight back.

She took a taxi to the Thirtieth Street Station, where she boarded a glide train. Twenty-five minutes later, she got off in Princeton. Her mother was waiting in the station and greeted her with a big hug. “It's so good to have you home,” she said. “We were following the news reports, but nobody seemed to be sure what was going on.”

“It's great to be back, Mom.”

Mom had news. Reporters had been calling, asking how she felt about the way Captain Miller had died. “I didn't get into that. Told them I didn't know anything about it. They were also hoping to find you, but I didn't tell them you were coming home.” She smiled.

“Thanks, Mom.”

Her eyes clouded. “I have to say that I wasn't impressed by Loomis's behavior.”

“It was an impossible situation, Mom. We didn't know. You might as well blame me.”

“That's hardly the case, love. But let it go. Did I tell you that Uncle Phil is finally going to get married? To a doctor, no less. Her name's Miriam. You'll like her. And Cousin Ed finally quit his old job with the city. He's working over at Margo's bakery. A chef. I think he's finally satisfied. It's really what he's always wanted to do.”

Ed was, in fact, the best cook in the family. He'd been a history major in school, but it hadn't worked out. He'd tried teaching, had been a naval officer, and had talked about writing a history of the post-Islamic wars. He'd admitted to Priscilla that the era was too complicated and too chaotic for anybody to make sense of. “It might need twelve volumes,” he'd told her. When she'd left, he'd been a clerk at the county unemployment office. “For a while,” said Mom, “we thought he'd just gone around to the other side of the counter.” They both laughed.

They left Tawny in the car and stopped for a snack at the Delmore Pizza. It was almost 3:00
A.M
. for Priscilla, who'd been living on Greenwich time for almost three months. But the aroma of pizza had always been enough to keep her awake. They sat down at a table, and Mom said something about going off her diet, but it was worth it to have her daughter home again.

Her mother, fortunately, had stopped calling her “Prissy.” Priscilla had never liked the name. Mom was the only one who used it, but, although Priscilla never said anything directly, she'd made no effort to hide her feelings. Obviously, the message had finally gotten through.

She was living alone now. Had been since Daddy's sudden death two years earlier. Sitting at the Delmore, trading stories with her mother, talking about Barton's World and the frightened students, she realized that her mom was proud of her.

 * * * 

HER BEDROOM HADN'T
changed much. The framed photo in which she stood between her parents in front of one of the monitors at the Drake Center still commanded attention from the top of her bureau. A photo of the
Galileo
, an early superluminal, hung over the bed, and a picture of her with her old boyfriend Charlie Cartwell at a Wildwood beach stood under a lamp. A calendar featuring a wide-eyed parrot hung near the window. It was still set at September, when she'd left for her final weeks in training.

Like anyone's childhood bedroom, it encapsulated a lot of memories. Jerry the Hamster waving at her from the lamp shade, the upper shelf of her closet where she'd hidden Christmas gifts for her parents, the child's desk in one corner where she'd started her first diary.

On that night, because she was still running on Greenwich time, she awakened long before dawn. She started thinking about breakfast and decided to get up. It seemed like a good day for a bagel topped with strawberry jelly.

She put on the HV and got a shock: The FBI had held a press conference and named the suspected bomber in the
Gremlin
incident. It was
Leon
.

That was simply not possible. He was a friend. She'd shared meals with him and knew he would never deliberately injure anyone. But she remembered the evening on which there'd been the altercation in Skydeck. Still, it could not have been him. The interstellar pilots and techs had a sacred bond of sorts, a commitment to one another that everything was secondary to the safety of their passengers and each other. The notion that one of them would deliberately put a bomb on a ship was counter to everything she'd come to believe.

She shook her head.
Can't trust anybody.
But she just couldn't buy it.

 * * * 

SHE CHECKED HER
link, hoping to see a message from, maybe, Interstellar Transport attempting to buy her away from Kosmik. But there was nothing. She got up and looked out the window at the McClellands' house across the street, clothed in darkness. A three-quarter Moon was framed just over its roof.

Even now it was hard to believe she'd walked on its surface.

 * * * 

SHE GOT A
call from Wally Brinkman that afternoon. She and Wally had run an on-again off-again romance over the past year. Wally had been shocked that past summer when she'd announced her intention to leave Princeton.
“Princeton?”
he'd said. “Priscilla, you're going to be leaving
Earth
. You really sure you want to do that?”

Wally had gone into investment banking. He was a good guy, but he thought life was exclusively about money. That was what his education had been for. He'd told her that she could do much better at home. “There's no money in piloting,” he said. “For one thing, even if you had some resources to start with, you're too far away from everything to be able to keep up with what's going on. So you have to trust somebody else to manage your investments.” He'd shaken his head. “It's just a shortsighted way to do things.”

“So, Wally,” she said, when his face blinked onto the screen, “how is it going?”

“Just fine,” he said.
Just fine
was a kind of mantra with Wally, who didn't believe in putting his emotions on display. “I see you're a hero now. Well done.” Big smile.

“Well,” she said, “it was really Jake Loomis and Captain Miller who were the heroes. All I did was mind the ship.”

Wally had black curly hair that was never quite trimmed properly. He liked to portray himself as a guy who didn't worry about details, who played for the big score. She was saddened that he always seemed fearful of being himself. “Modesty,” he said, “is one of the signs of true greatness.” His smile suggested he was kidding, but not really.

“No,” she said. “I was never in danger. It was the two captains who took their chances. And a teacher.”

“Yeah, I heard about all that. Heard about Loomis.” His tone hardened.

“What did you hear?”

“That he stood by and let the other guy go down to the chamber where they didn't have any oxygen.”

“Wally, that's not exactly what happened.”

“Okay. I'm just repeating what I'm hearing.”

“Who's saying
that
?”

“I saw it on the talk shows.” A chill touched her heart. “Are you saying that's not the way it happened?”

“It's not. It isn't that simple, Wally.”

“Okay. I've never trusted the media anyhow. Listen, the reason I called, I wanted you to know I was really glad to hear that you'd got through all that and were coming home for a while. How long are you going to be here?”

“I'm not sure. Probably just a few days.”

“When you go back, will you be stationed somewhere?”

She smiled. “I assume I'll be
somewhere
, yes.”

“But not anywhere near Princeton?”

“Probably not.”

“Well, I'm sorry to hear it.” He appeared uncertain. “I was wondering if I could take you to dinner tomorrow evening? Maybe we could go to Talbott's?”

She heard cars pulling up outside. “Sure, Wally. I'd enjoy that. What time?”

“Pick you up at seven?”

“See you then.”

 * * * 

THE HOUSE AI
was George. George was her grandfather on her mother's side, but no one had ever claimed he'd been the reason for the name. She'd met an old boyfriend of Mom's once with the name. “Reporters, Priscilla,” George said.

“Okay.” Two cars had parked in the driveway. They carried emblems from Worldwide News and CBC. Central Jersey News was pulling alongside the curb as she opened the door. “I've got it,” she said. Several reporters were hurrying up the walkway. “Hello,” she said.

They all began speaking at once. The first to get through to her was a tall, African-American woman. “Hi, Priscilla,” she said. “I'd like your take on what happened to Captain Miller. Did they cut the cards to see who'd go into the cargo bay? Or what? How did they make the decision?”

“Look,” she said. “It wasn't anything like that. Nobody knew Captain Miller was going to take his life. We were still trying to figure out what to do.”

“So he just
did
it?” said a guy who looked too young to be out of high school. “He didn't warn anybody what he was going to do? He just killed himself?”

“I can tell you that we had just gotten the news that we wouldn't have enough air, and we were trying to figure out what we would do. Why don't you ask me why
I
stood by and let it happen?” Priscilla knew it was a mistake before the words were out of her mouth.

“Why
did
you?” asked another of the reporters. A large male this time.

“Let me try again,” she said. “I didn't know what he intended to do. Nobody did.”

“Can you tell us where Jake Loomis is now?”

“I have no idea.”

“You must have known someone was going to have to fall on his sword. Was it a choice between either Loomis or Miller?”

“Hey,” said a female reporter off to one side. “Give her a break. What the hell are you people doing?”

Priscilla handled the other questions about as well as could be expected. She gave credit to Jake and Shahlah, and said that the girls had been exemplary. “They were in a scary situation when we got there, but they kept cool. Couldn't have been better.” She stood out there in front of the house, not dressed for November weather, not feeling the cold though, not even aware it was cold because all she could think of was how she was coming across and what a terrible politician she'd have made. “As for Captain Miller,” she said finally, “we owe him everything.”

More cars arrived and finally her mother realized what was going on and came out and called a halt. It was the perfect finish: Here's the intrepid interstellar captain, or captain-to-be, facing suspicion of cowardice, and she needs her mother to bail her out.

 * * * 

THEY RAN THE
clip a few minutes later. Priscilla's mother was furious. “What's wrong with these people?” she demanded. “Didn't they ever hear of chivalry? Anyhow, it's the captain's responsibility.”

“Mom, I
was
technically the captain.”

“Loomis was your senior officer.”

Priscilla had to swallow her frustration. “Let it go, Mom, all right?”

Her mother sighed, sat back in her chair, and crossed her arms. “I'm sorry. I certainly didn't want to offend you.”

“It's okay. I'm just a little bit rattled right now.”

“There's no need for you to be, love. You're a hero. Despite what those nitwits say.”

 * * * 

HER FAMILY THREW
a welcome-home party for her that evening. It was supposed to be a surprise, but Mom warned her in advance when Priscilla started talking about going to see a couple of her girlfriends. “Uncle Phil set it up,” she said. “Everybody's so anxious to see you.”

They all showed up, uncles and aunts and cousins, some of whom she hadn't seen in years. Mark Hutchins had been six years old at their last meeting, a curly-haired kid chasing a puppy around. Now he was taller than she was, and he'd become a heartbreaker. Uncle Phil looked very much like her father. And his prospective bride, Miriam, was everything Mom had said. Her aunt Chris Parroff, who had filled Priscilla's early years with the world's finest chocolate cakes, provided another one.

Her relatives had come from all over New Jersey and Pennsylvania. They had seen what Aunt Chris called Priscilla's news conference. Everybody took offense. Cousin Gregory said he would write a letter. “I was glad that one woman spoke up,” said Miriam with a note of satisfaction in her voice. “Somebody needed to put those ding-dongs in their place.”

“I wish
I'd
been there,” said Uncle Phil. “Those guys will do anything to come up with a story. They don't give a damn about what really happened.”

Mark delivered a snort. “Well, whatever. I was glad somebody there defended Priscilla.”

“Priscilla didn't need defending,” Mom said, visibly annoyed. “She did fine.”

Priscilla was relieved when the subject, finally, got dropped.

 * * * 

THERE WERE A
few surprises during the course of the evening. Old friends stopped by. Girls with whom she'd hung out during her high-school and college years. Guys she'd dated. Even Harmon Baxter, who'd walked away from her for a blond cheerleader. Harmon was careful about approaching her. But she had no hard feelings. Wouldn't have given him the satisfaction of being annoyed. He didn't bring up the cheerleader, and, of course, neither did she.