STAR-CROSS'D by CKL # PROLOGUE # Rod took his pills with coffee. He knew he wasn't supposed to. His doctor, his mother, even the label on the bottle said so. Maybe that was why he did it. The coffee burned his tongue. Amazing, he thought, how well insulated the container was. He'd filled it up-- refilled it-- a good two hours ago, when he changed trains in Paris. Hadn't there been a lawsuit, decades ago in America, in which a woman sued a restaurant because their coffee had been too hot? She'd won, too, if he remembered correctly. Only in America. He looked down at the pill bottle in his hand. Only four left. Two doses. He rattled the bottle while thinking about where he could get the prescription filled. The Embassy could do it for him, but then every staffer would know exactly what kind of medication he was on. He should have done it before he left Washington. He'd forgotten. Amazing, he thought, how much government wants to get involved in some aspects of people's lives, and how much it doesn't in others. A raft of legislative proposals to create more foolproof medication delivery systems had blustered through Congress a few years ago, after that six-year-old girl in Tennessee had popped a childproof cap and overdosed on anti-depressants. None of them had passed, of course. One accident does not an epidemic make. Ben would be able to find out about the prescription. Rod pulled his organizer out of his shirt pocket and tapped his fingers on the plastic touch screen, making a note. If nothing else, Ben could call Doc Hamner and get a new bottle of pills delivered by courier. Overnight, diplomatic pouch, Marine guard escort. Ben enjoyed abusing his power. Rod put his organizer and the pills into his valise, sat back, and tried to enjoy his blurry view of the French countryside. Two young women wearing sun dresses and backpacks brushed past him, walking toward the dining car. They smiled at him without pausing, and with no recognition. Rod smiled, too, mostly to himself. It was nice not to be recognized. The train arrived in Marseille just at sunset. Rod stayed in his seat while other passengers debarked, staring out at the clouds painted with multiple and brilliant colors. He rarely had such peaceful moments to himself. Ben was waiting on the platform, exasperated as usual. Somebody was running late somewhere, and it was screwing up the entire schedule that Ben had carefully worked out yesterday. Rod expressed his sympathies while trying to keep up with Ben's fast walking pace. As fit as a triathlete, as round as any of the Three Tenors. The ironies of Mother Nature. They hurried into the car, went over strategy while the driver dodged downtown traffic, hurried into the hotel, and stopped to take a breath outside the meeting room. Rod checked his heart rate and told Ben about the pills. Ben pursed his lips, nodded, said nothing. Rod opened the door and stepped inside. The meeting went much as all the others had. Good evening, Director, welcome to our fair city, can we offer you some refreshment? Yes, thank you, and let's get down to business, I'm a bit short on time. Of course, we understand your concerns about the tariff bill... No, actually, you don't, let me explain in some detail... Unfortunately, my advisors do not agree with your assessment... But you're asking for stricter enforcement without allocating any additional budget... Surely you can rearrange your budget priorities... Minister... Director... Exactly thirty minutes after they had sat down, Ben opened the door, tapped Rod on the shoulder, and whispered something lewd in his ear. Rod bit his tongue to keep from laughing out loud, then stood and thanked the Minister and his staff for their time and promised that they would discuss this further. Everyone shook hands, and then Rod and Ben were hurrying again. In the elevator, Ben explained that he had booked a standard room with two beds, but when the hotel found out that Roderick Mitchell, Jr., was one of the guests, they had insisted on upgrading him to a suite at no extra charge. Rod asked if Ben had seen the room. Suite, Ben corrected, and no, he hadn't seen it yet. The suite was enormous. Rod searched for the bedroom and their luggage while Ben called room service, ordered dinner, and asked if there was any way to turn off the fountain. Rod took two more pills with his dinner and reminded Ben about the prescription. Ben dug his mobile phone out of the luggage to call Doc Hamner while Rod went over his speaking notes. As I hope you all know, the Agency has jurisdiction over... no, strike that, it sounds like law enforcement, police, and how's it going to translate? I thought we'd worked this out already... At eight o'clock, dressed in a new necktie and wearing fresh cologne, Rod followed Ben into the civic auditorium and found a chair to sit in while he was introduced. They mentioned his father, of course. They had to make sure the audience knew how impressive the speaker was. The speech went well. All the slides worked, the sound system was more than loud enough, and Rod didn't feel lightheaded until the last paragraph. Stage lights always made it worse. The first question was from a matronly, bespectacled woman who spoke perfect English. She asked if Rod thought his father had been guilty, and that's why he took his own life. As two security guards escorted the woman out of the auditorium, Ben stepped between Rod and the microphone and asked the audience to restrict their questions to the United Nations Space Agency and relevant legislation. Ben fed him an innocuous question about the state of Japan's unmanned probe fleet, which Rod answered while the crowd's murmuring slowly died down. It was like a dance. Elaborately choreographed, perhaps more than absolutely necessary, but it hadn't failed them yet. Plant a confederate in the audience, preferably a middle-aged soccer mom type at whom nobody could get too angry, and ask the question before anyone else does. Demonstrate, gently but firmly, that it's not okay to ask about him. It's not okay to dwell on the past. Not that Rod could ever forget. He'd found his father's body, after all. He'd stood there, alone in the dark with it, for five full minutes before calling for help. He'd memorized the position of every significant object in the room and rehearsed what he'd say to the police before even thinking about picking up the phone. It was instinct. Rod treasured his secrets. He took his last two pills before going to bed. Ben said the refill would arrive in the morning. Rod took some tranquilizers, even though he wasn't supposed to, and fell asleep listening to the burbling of the fountain and Ben's exasperated voice on the phone. # ACT ONE # "You're awake?" Nancy said, getting up from her chair. "Couldn't sleep," Julia replied. "Sit, sit." "Want some coffee?" "Nah." Nancy rolled her chair over to Julia and grabbed a folding chair that was leaning against the wall, unfolding it and reseating herself at the computer. Julia struggled with the levers on the office chair until it made a whooshing noise and she saw the seat rise. "Freak," Nancy said as Julia sat down. The taller woman stood nearly six feet, without heels, almost a foot higher than her cousin. "Midget," Julia said without missing a beat. They were about the same age. Nancy had been a year ahead of Julia in college, at the same university, until Julia entered an accelerated program in civil engineering. For a good two years, Nancy would get an earful every time she spoke to her parents. Julia's doing so well in school. Julia's doing so much more than you are. She's taking four classes each quarter and doing ROTC on the weekends. She's getting straight A's. What are you doing? Running around with a different boy each week! (An exaggeration, but not by much.) Aren't you ashamed of yourself? Finally, Nancy had found that merely uttering the word "orgasm" was a foolproof way to get her parents off the phone immediately. "So what's this?" Julia asked, waving at Nancy's computer screen. They were sitting in a large, white, windowless room. The ceiling, floor, and walls were grids of acoustic tile and lighting panels. Racks of computers stood in what looked like narrow supermarket aisles, with cables running up to miniature catwalks which crisscrossed the top quarter of the room. It was very bright, and the humming and whirring of the computers made a blanket of white noise that dulled all other sounds. Along one wall was a row of identical work desks, including Nancy's, each covered by piles of computer equipment, paper, and wind-up toys. "Video game," Nancy replied. "What's it called?" "Project Phoenix." Nancy tapped the keyboard, changing the display from a mass of numbers to an undulating waveform. "You have to find the aliens before they find you." "Looks pretty boring." Julia sat back in her chair, making it squeak, and pulled her robe tight around her waist. "Is it just me, or is it cold in here?" "Machine rooms are always cold. Hence, coffee." Nancy raised her mug, showing it to Julia, then took a sip. "I thought the sign said 'no food or drink allowed.'" "Rules are made to be broken!" Nancy declared, with a flourish of the hand which wasn't holding the coffee. She leaned forward, studying something on her screen, then shook her head and tapped the keyboard again. The display returned to rows of numbers, marching steadily upwards and off the top of the screen, replaced by new numbers from below. Julia smiled as she watched her cousin work. It was strange, but nice, to see Nancy doing something so mundane. They had discussed it two nights ago at their first dinner together in six years. Julia had said, "I never thought you'd end up working at something as white-collar as this. I mean, you of all people." Nancy had held up a finger in mock warning. "Hey, now. I ain't 'ended up' nowheres yet. I'm still young and vital. Lots of time left on this meter." Julia had laughed and said, "So how did a wild girl like you get stuck in a relatively tame place like this?" Nancy had batted her eyelashes and said, "Oh, the usual. Followed a guy." They had laughed a lot that night. They had drunk a lot that night. Julia thought she might still have a bit of a hangover. She wasn't sure. She didn't really know what a hangover was supposed to feel like. Julia and Nancy hadn't had much contact with each other during most of college. Julia was starting to regret that a little. She had heard plenty about Nancy, of course. If there was one thing her family liked to more than boast about their good children, it was to complain about their bad children. There was always at least one black sheep to shock and horrify the elders. In Julia's generation, there were two. First, there was Michael, Julia's oldest brother, who had dropped out of college to go work on an asteroid mine. And not a Chan Mining Company rock, either-- he wanted to make his own mark, not have his bosses and co-workers coddling him, treating him better because he was part of La Familia. La Familia. Julia didn't remember when that had started-- probably with one of her older brothers, who had dreamed of going to film school and could recite dialogue from _The Godfather_ from memory, but ended up doctors or lawyers because that's what Dad wanted. Probably Eddie or Johnny or Bobby during their period of resenting filial duty. Not that she could blame them. What thirty-year-old man would want everyone to still call him "Little Bobby?" Nancy was the second black sheep to show her true colors, and blacker than Michael by a long shot. She'd gotten pregnant in her first year of college, had an out-of-state abortion, married the would-be father without the blessing of any parents, his or hers, then divorced him after five months because he was cheating on her. For all that everyone was impressed with Julia's work in ROTC and graduate school, Julia was more impressed with Nancy's life. She hadn't stopped taking classes, and though her grades were nothing special to begin with, they hadn't slipped at all during or after her short-lived and unsteady marriage. What really spun Julia was that Nancy was making all her own decisions. There was no academic advisor for her personal life, no commanding officer to tell her what to do about the pregnancy, no course catalog to recommend for or against a shotgun wedding. Everything Nancy had done, she'd done by herself and for herself. Sometimes Julia wished she could be more like that. More impulsive, more risk-taking, more fun. Not that she was a wet blanket or anything, but she always, involuntarily, wondered whether her parents and extended family would approve before doing anything even slightly off the beaten path. She didn't want to lose their support, both emotional and financial. She was more than a little afraid. La Familia. "So who's got the high score?" Julia asked. Nancy shrugged. "Berkeley, if you actually believe all those distributed computing statistics. Personally, I think they're fudging a little. I knew the guy who used to administer that program. Not the straighest arrow you ever saw." "Knew him or _knew_ him?" Julia asked, smirking. Nancy batted her eyelashes. "Nice girls never kiss and tell." Julia smiled. She knew Nancy was teasing her, maybe even making fun of her, but she didn't mind. She recognized the spark of envy in Nancy's eyes. It had been obvious from the moment they met at the airport and Nancy made a quick mental assessment of the probable cost of Julia's outfit. Especially the shoes. Julia had been wearing new Stuart Weitzman casuals-- maroon, to go with her Donna Karan silk blouse, which set off her Armani jeans and Sarah Shaw saddle bag. Her straight black hair just touched her shoulders, and she'd redone her makeup in the airplane lavatory before they landed. Heads had turned as she walked into the terminal. Nancy had blended nicely into the crowd. Her hair was short and permed, and her tan made her look like any of the dark-skinned locals, in sharp contrast to Julia's paleness. Nancy had been wearing scuffed work boots, baggy pants, a wrinkled t-shirt, and an oversized leather jacket. If her body hadn't been so curvy, some people might have thought she was a man. Some people probably did anyway. It had only taken a second. Nancy's mouth had twitched, saying, it's ridiculous how you have to dress to placate them, but her eyes had said, I'd like to feel that pretty more often. Julia had thought, you don't know how often I cry myself to sleep over all the things I can't do. "Come on," Nancy said, standing. "I need a refill. I can let this run." They walked out of the machine room and down the hall into the kitchen. Nancy muttered something about savages while she brewed a fresh pot of coffee. Julia rummaged around in the fridge, nearly muttering about savages herself, until she found the nonfat yogurt she'd stashed there when she first arrived. Sixteen people lived at the observatory. Most of them were graduate students, either studying abroad or just visiting for a few months. Central and South America boasted some of the few places on Earth that didn't yet have too much light pollution to make ground-based astronomy impossible. Of course, there was usually a revolution or two going on, but once you made it from the airport to the mountain, you could ignore most of it until you had to get back to the airport to leave. Julia's parents had known that she kept in touch with Nancy, and mostly tolerated it. They had been hesitant to allow Julia to take this trip to a third-world nation, where she would stay in an unsanitary, roach-infested cinder block with poor plumbing and inadequate temperature controls. She might catch something from the filthy natives. She might get food poisoning. Or worse! But, in the end, family was family, and nobody in the Chan family had visited Nancy since she began her globe-trotting. She'd sent postcards from Poland, Russia, Pakistan, the Congo, and half a dozen other places which seemed to have been carefully selected to cause the most worry and consternation in her parents. The worst part of it had been the job descriptions which came with every postcard. Waitressing, driving taxicabs or delivery trucks, sweeping up offices. In La Familia, blue-collar drudgery was only for your formative years, to keep you off the streets and out of trouble. By the time you were thirty, if you weren't making a six-figure salary and handing out business cards with five or six initials after your name, you might as well be a hobo. They were probably hoping that some of Julia's goodness would rub off on Nancy. They probably thought that seeing Julia's nice hair and pretty clothes and hearing all about her wonderful life would tempt Nancy to return to the fold, to stop her aimless wandering and get back on the path of the righteous and obedient child. There was still time. She could still bury her past and have a normal life. Julia didn't want Nancy to have a normal life. Who else would tell her about New Year's celebrations in Moscow, and running with the bulls in Pamplona, and hunting wild boar in the French countryside? Who else would talk so freely about all the men she'd been with? Who else would give Julia hope that someday, somehow, she might be able to live her own life without suffering interference and supervision from her parents at all times? It was impossible to find anything in the kitchen without a thorough search of every cabinet and drawer. After Nancy had located what appeared to be the last two sugar packets for her coffee, and Julia had found a spoon which wasn't totally encrusted with day-old food and sterilized it with scalding hot water and soap, they took their refreshments back to the machine room. Nancy's computer was beeping. Julia thought it was just part of the normal functioning of the equipment, until Nancy looked at the screen and said, "What the hell is that?" She sat down, putting her coffee to one side, and tapped at the keyboard. The beeping stopped. More tapping, and various windows and displays filled with numbers and letters opened and closed on the screen, faster than Julia could follow or understand. She finished her yogurt before Nancy spoke again. "Sorry," she said. "It's not every day we see a new supernova." "Not aliens?" Julia asked, half-joking. "No. Are you disappointed?" Nancy nudged her cousin with an elbow. "Here, look at this." She tapped the keyboard again, and the display became a split screen, with the same black-and-white starfield on both halves. Strings of numbers ran across the top and bottom of each image. The image on the right had a bright, watery splotch in the upper right quadrant. "This is Pluto," Nancy said, pointing to a small white dot near the middle of the left image. "There's a spacelane running right across Pluto's orbit right now, and we get paid by a few corporations and governments to monitor traffic. That's what these little streaks and pinpricks of light are." Her fingers waved across the image. "Now, here on the right, you see that big white starburst? This image was taken two hours after the one on the left, about ten minutes ago. That bright spot wasn't there before." More tapping, and the image on the right expanded to fill the entire screen, then shimmered from black and white into color. The white splotch became yellow in the center, fading to red on its outer edge, with irregular spots of green and blue inside. "This is a spectral analysis," Nancy said. "Different colors indicate different elements burning. We can also analyze the redshift and figure out exactly how far away this object is, which tells us how long ago it actually exploded." Julia tossed her yogurt cup into a trash can and dropped her spoon into a pocket. "So it's a supernova. An exploding star." "Yup. I can even tell you what kind of star-- this isn't boring you, is it?" Julia smiled. "Well, I have been having this problem with insomnia..." Nancy made a fist in front of Julia's face, extending her middle finger skyward. "Just for that, you get a lecture. Okay." Her fingers danced over the keyboard, and numbers appeared all around the colored splotch. "These numbers are the actual spectrometer readings. The colors are just an approximation. The numbers are much more..." She stopped talking. Julia could see Nancy's eyes scanning up and down the screen. "Something wrong?" Nancy turned back to Julia, frowning. "Just strange. This looks like a supernova, but the spectroscopy's weird. A star is basically a giant fusion reactor. By the time it's gotten old enough to think about going nova, it should have a dense core of very heavy elements. And when it goes boom, those elements should get expelled. "But these spec lines are showing much lighter elements. No metals in any significant quantities, even though that should be more of the stellar core. This looks like pretty much all hydrogen and helium. Like a... oh, shit, I know what this is." "You do?" Julia was surprised to find herself genuinely interested. "Yeah." Nancy typed, less enthusiastically now, and the colored blotch got bigger. "Yeah. Easy mistake. Give me a second to confirm this. I just need to pull a Pluto image from another telescope." Nancy opened a window with a long list of country and observatory names and long strings of numbers. She scrolled through the list until she found what she was looking for, then brought it up on the display. It looked exactly like the first black-and-white splotch picture. "Yeah. It's local." She pointed. "There's Pluto, there's that freighter we saw before, here's Altair. Parallax gives it away. The explosion was inside our solar system. Pretty close to Pluto, I think." She tapped a few keys, and the image colored itself. "See that? Hull fragments. Somebody's spaceship blew up. Looks like it's just outside the spacelane." Julia squinted, but couldn't discern anything from the image. "Do you think anybody survived?" "Impossible to tell, but probably not. That's a big explosion. I'd say at least twenty or thirty kilotons, but I'm not an expert. And this happened over five hours ago-- that's how long it takes light to travel from Pluto to Earth." "So if anybody survived the explosion... they've been floating in open space for five hours." Julia shivered. "Unless somebody in the Belt saw them first. Shit! I need to make some phone calls. There's going to be debris in the lanes." Nancy ran over to the far table, picked up the phone, and began dialing. "Sorry, Julie. Gotta work." "No problem," Julia said, standing. "I should get back to sleep anyway. See you at sunrise." Nancy nodded. "Yeah, this is Nancy Chan, reporting a nuclear incident near Pluto at zero-one-one-four hours Zulu..." Julia took one last look at the image on the computer screen, then waved to Nancy and walked out of the machine room. She dropped her spoon back in the kitchen sink before returning to her bedroom and getting under the covers, still in her robe. She knew people died every day. People were dying right now, all over the world. She knew that. But to see the moment of their death like that, to know that it was already past when you saw it, to feel your own absolute powerlessness... Julia could hear Nancy rousing people and herding them around the building. It probably wasn't every day that they had to verify a nuclear explosion, and Julia didn't want to get in the way. She slept fitfully until sunrise. # "Excuse me." Ben held up one finger, avoiding eye contact. He had been in the office for less than two hours, and he was already behind schedule. He had penciled in thirty minutes for phone calls, but this supernova thing-- or maybe it wasn't a supernova, none of the eggheads could agree-- was screwing everything up. "Yes," he said into the phone, "yes, I'm still here, do you-- "No, he's not expecting my call-- "Okay, I can't really do that-- hello? Hello?" "Excuse me," the thin man on the other side of the desk said. Ben pulled the phone headset off and scratched his ear. "Yes, sir, I know you're still waiting, and I'm sorry, but the Director is still busy, and I still have no idea when he'll be available. Are you sure you can't just leave your-- whatever it is you have, with me?" The thin man drew himself up, as if offended by the suggestion that a mere lackey could handle such a profound missive. Ben had a fleeting urge to smack him and say, look, you malnourished doofus, I have three degress, two of them postgraduate and one from Harvard, so don't look down your nose at me like I'm some girl Friday. I don't work here because I have to. I work here because I want to. "I'll wait," the thin man said, and sat back down. Ben took several deep breaths while counting to ten, then picked up his organizer. He paused before turning it on and glanced around the office. It wasn't much. A small lobby with one couch, a couple of rented plants, and a stack of magazines and newspapers on a coffee table. One door led into Rod's office, and the other led down a short corridor to a bathroom, a conference room, and two large storage closets. The doors faced each other on opposite walls. The reception desk where Ben was sitting took up another wall, facing the elevator. No windows, just sun lamps in the ceiling. Hanging above the desk was the most expensive thing in the whole office: an oversized metal reproduction of the United Nations Space Agency emblem. The custodial staff had strict instructions to polish it every night, and they had had to reinforce the wall just to support its weight. The emblem was all that kept the space from being the dentist's office it had once been. Despite the somewhat impressive name, UNSA officially consisted of only two people: Roderick Mitchell, Junior, Director and Chief of Technology, and Benjamin Vesonder, Assistant Director and Chief of Operations. Every summer, if they could scrape together the budget for office space and equipment, they hired one or two interns-- two was all they could handle-- and sometimes there would be a contractor or consultant for certain projects. But most of the time, it was just Rod and Ben, and Rod left his office door open. The thin man was a little strange. He had arrived about fifteen minutes before eight o'clock, about half an hour after Rod and Ben had gotten in. Ben had repeatedly asked Rod if they could leave their business hours off the telephone greeting, thus thwarting potential visitors, but Rod insisted that UNSA Headquarters had to be open every weekday, Monday through Friday, from eight AM until five PM, excluding federal holidays. Rod was even more of an idealist than Ben, who also filled the role of Treasurer for UNSA, and knew for a fact that Rod's salary was a good deal lower than Ben's. Of course, Rod didn't need the money. His family had money. Old money. He couldn't have spent it all if he'd run for President while simultaneously starting a rock band and taking every illegal narcotic available for as long as he lived-- which, granted, wouldn't have been long under those circumstances, but with modern medical technology, it could have been at least fifty or sixty years. Ben started smiling, almost chuckling, but he knew even that much wasn't true. Not with Rod's condition. His brain wouldn't last a month under that kind of strain, even with the pills. Then again, the doctors had expected him to die before he was twenty-five, so what the hell did anybody know? The light above the elevator glowed, and a bell sounded. Ben and the thin man both looked as the metal doors parted. Inside the elevator was a well-groomed man in a slightly rumpled suit, surrounded by a small mob of screaming children and an elderly woman. "Okay, who wants to ride the elevator again?" the man said. The kids screamed even louder. The woman in the corner plugged her ears, but smiled. "Regular," the man said, "or express?" "Express!" the kids yelled. "Okay, here we go!" The doors closed, and it was quiet again. The thin man turned to look at Ben with a puzzled expression. Ben sighed and stood up. "It appears that the Director is still rather busy with his earlier appointment. Would you like to continue waiting?" The thin man's puzzlement was fading, and his haughty indignance was returning. "Those... children had an appointment?" "P.S. 108, Mrs. Mackey's third grade class. The Director is very involved with our education outreach program." It was hard for Ben to keep a straight face, but the expression on the thin man's face was worth it. "I'll wait," the thin man said. Ben's phone rang. He sat down, put his headset back on, and answered it. "Good morning, United Nations Space Agency." There was a lot of noise. He turned the volume down. "Ben? You need to get a new phone. This third grader has a cooler phone than you do! It's got a holographic display!" It was Rod. "How may I direct your call, ma'am?" Ben said. "Is the beanpole still there?" "Yes, ma'am, that's correct," Ben said, and bit his tongue. The thin man was reading a newspaper. His eyes flitted back and forth like insects in a jar. It was somewhat disturbing and yet amusing. "Jesus, can't you get rid of him? The kids want to see the robot, and I don't want to traumatize them." The robot was in the conference room. It was a novelty: a display projector with tank treads and appendages resembling arms and head. You could use a wireless remote control to make it transform from a projector to a robot, move it around, change it back into a projector, and aim and focus the lens. Made in Japan, of course. "I understand, ma'am, but the Director is unavailable right now." "Don't you have a degree in people skills? What the hell do I pay you for, anyway?" Ben's phone lit up with another call. "I'd say call back around ten o'clock, ma'am. Thank you. Good-bye." "Ack! Ben! These kids! They're eating me alive!" Rod would make a good father someday. Ben hung up and answered the incoming call. "Good morning, United Nations Space Agency." "Is this Director Mitchell?" a female voice asked. For a split second, Ben was tempted to impersonate Rod, but with their luck, the day he did that would be the day the President of the United States called. "I'm sorry, Director Mitchell is in a meeting right now. May I take a message?" "I have Senator Mitchell on the line for Director Mitchell." Ben winced. Rod would be glad he missed this call. Ben was going to regret taking it. "Director Mitchell won't be available for a while." Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the thin man giving him a dirty look. "Please ask her if she'd like to speak to Assistant Director Vesonder instead." "Hold, please." Ben checked the clock on the phone. Just past eight forty-five. He hadn't expected the peace and quiet to last this long. Rod didn't carry a phone with him. That's what he paid Ben for. And this was why. "Where the hell is he, Ben?" "Good morning, Senator," Ben replied. At least she wasn't upset. "I know he was in the office at seven. He's always there at seven. He just got back; he can't have meetings already. What is he doing?" "Education outreach, Senator." "He's in the damn elevator again, isn't he? Christ, he's the Director of the United Nations Space Agency, and he can't find anything better to do than fool around with schoolchildren all morning? You find him, Ben, and you get him in the office, right now!" Ben kept pushing at the volume control, but it wouldn't go any lower. "I'll see what I can do, Senator." "Has he even seen the news today? Have you? Is Doctor Philby there yet?" "Who?" "Doctor Philby. Tall, thin, round glasses, carrying a diplomatic pouch from-- Christ, what are you two doing up there? You're public servants, for crying out loud!" Ben carefully pulled his headset off, took the phone handset off the hook, and switched the call over. Then he stood up, holding one hand over the mouthpiece, and said, "Doctor Philby?" The thin man looked over disdainfully. "Yes?" Ben held up the phone. "Senator Mitchell would like to speak to you." As soon as Philby took the handset, Ben rushed down the hall and locked himself in the bathroom. He hoped the good doctor couldn't hear him laughing. # Julia woke to the sounds of rapid footsteps and shouting outside her room. She glanced at the clock on her nightstand: eight forty-five in the morning. She shut off the alarm, which would have gone off in fifteen more minutes, and shuffled into the bathroom. She was still wearing the robe she'd put on earlier. She hadn't even thought about changing after leaving Nancy in the machine room. She had been thinking about the person or persons who had been killed when that spaceship had exploded near Pluto. The explosion had happened over twelve hours ago now. Julia wondered if there was a chance the explosion hadn't been an accident. That's what she had assumed when looking at Nancy's telescope images, but now, after thinking about it for a while, she wondered. Space was big. That was one of the first things every high school physics student learned. The sheer enormity of things, the scale so far removed from everyday human experience-- there was a reason they called it "astronomical." It seemed highly unlikely that the ship would have accidentally hit something. Spaceship hulls were reinforced against small meteor impacts, and a single rock wouldn't have been enough to puncture the additional shielding around the reactor itself. There wouldn't have been any clouds of debris or other groups of objects inside a spacelane. But it also seemed unlikely that if someone wanted to kill you, they'd do it by blowing up your ship in deep space. Sure, rig it to look like an accident, but it was much easier to get to a ship while it was in dock, being serviced or loaded or unloaded. To do it in space, you'd need to do all the math to chart an intercept course, then fire a missile and guide it to the target. She'd taken a ROTC course in orbital mechanics-- she knew how hard that was. From the sound of it, nobody knew yet. Or maybe they did. Julia pulled her hair back and tied it in a ponytail. She hung up the robe, took off her pajamas, and threw on a t-shirt she'd bought in an airport souvenir shop and a pair of old, torn jeans. She didn't think dressing up at the observatory was likely to win her any friends. Stalkers, maybe, but no friends. She walked out of her room and dodged several people on her way to Nancy's office. One man was carrying a large sheaf of papers. Another man was still wearing his pajamas. A woman rolled a cart full of equipment past Julia, and she had to flatter herself against one wall of the narrow corridor. Nancy's office was even more cluttered than her desk in the machine room. In there, she probably felt some community spirit to keep the common space reasonably neat, at least by engineer's standards. Her office was her own space, for the duration of her stay, and she could decorate it any way she liked. There was a sign on the door, in English and Spanish, warning the cleaning crew not to discard anything in the office. She kept the trash and recycling bins just outside the door. Julia picked up a couple of soda cans and dropped them into the recycling bin as she approached. Nancy was on the phone. "Yeah, Barry, I know it's a big favor," she was saying. She waved Julia inside. "I'll owe you, big time. Come on, aren't you a little curious? You've heard the news. You know how big this could be." Muffled noises came from the phone headset. Nancy rolled her eyes at Julia and made a rolling motion with her hand. Barry must have been making excuses. Nancy rarely hesitated, and she had little patience for those who did. "Barry. Barry. Stop talking. Stop talking and just do it. Something just exploded near Pluto. Something big and nuclear and we don't know what it was." Nancy sighed. "Barry, you know you want to do this, and I'm giving you a reason. I'm giving this to you on a silver platter. What do you want, a contract?" More murmuring from the phone. Nancy mimed banging her head against an imaginary wall. "Okay, send it over and I'll look at it. Just do it fast, okay? Everybody's moving on this. I'll talk to you later. Bye." She hung up the phone. "Hey, Julie, I'll be with you in just one second." "No problem." Julia moved some piles of paper and sat down in the chair facing Nancy, who had already started typing on her computer. Julia could see a reflection of the screen in Nancy's eyeglasses. There was a multitude of windows, and they were moving and appearing and disappearing and scrolling at incredible speeds. Julia wondered how fast Nancy could read. "So you still don't know whose ship that was? The one that exploded near Pluto?" Julia asked. Nancy shook her head. "No. It's turning into a race now. Every observatory wants to the one that supplies the image that'll crack the case, but no single observatory can figure it out on their own. We just don't have enough information on our own. Nobody does. "We're trying to get better images right now, enhancing the images we do have, calling everyone we know in the whole damn Solar System to get as many pictures as we can. Most of them aren't even radiometric. We probably won't learn anything interesting from visual spectrum images, but we can't let them go on the off chance that they'll be useful to someone else. "That's why I was just on the phone with that asshole Barry Coleman. It kills me that I'm going to owe him a favor, but he's got friends at every news outlet in the Belt. News photographers are probably converging on Pluto already. They'll only stay for a couple of hours, but they'll be closer than any telescope. Maybe they'll see detail we can't. Hell, maybe they'll pick up some debris that can be analyzed." Julia asked, "So what happens if you crack the case? You become famous?" "Yeah, for about fifteen minutes." Nancy spun in her chair, feeding some paper into her printer. "The important thing isn't whether or not we actually figure it out ourselves. The important thing is that we demonstrate to people that we have the best connections. Investors, universities, corporations with interests in space. They don't want to deal with the astronomy community. They wouldn't know where to start." "But they deal with you." "They deal with the Chilean government, who gives us our funding and lets ugly Americans stay and spend their money in country. We do good and President Santiago gets to take credit for having the foresight to nurture such a great space program. Maybe Belters don't hang up on him so much after that. "It's all politics." Nancy slid shut the printer tray. The printer whirred and started printing. "It's a damn waste of my time, but we can't survive without them. And hey, people like me. It's one thing I can do to help this place." She didn't notice Julia smiling. When she had first decided to visit Nancy, Julia had expected to find her cousin doing some crazy, nontraditional job. She had expected to be a little frightened and confused by whatever insanity Nancy had decided to attach herself to. Julia hadn't expected Nancy to be sitting at a desk or a computer all day, playing power broker on the phone. Julia had expected Nancy to be rustling cattle or smuggling weapons or selling drugs to preschoolers. Something like that. Something that La Familia could really and righteously disapprove of. Maybe Julia had been hoping for some reassurance, that she was actually on the right path, being obedient and limited as she was. Nancy's job, from what Julia had seen, wasn't much different than the jobs that many of Julia's friends, siblings, and cousins had. Lawyers, stockbrokers, investment analysts, bankers-- they all seemed to spend lots of time on the phone, at a desk, or schmoozing with clients. Nancy probably didn't do so much schmoozing, though she'd had to attend one lecture and a cocktail party fundraiser the day before Julia had arrived. Maybe Nancy wasn't making as much money as Julia, but she wasn't destitute, either. So the only thing that her parents could actually object to, the only thing that Nancy had done that was so horrible, was to follow a different path than the one laid out for her. She was a little sideways on the spectrum of life, but, all things considered, ranked no higher or lower than anyone else. She wasn't a social outcast. She wasn't a criminal. She was just disobedient. Julia shivered. It was a cold thought. "I'm going to have to cancel on today," Nancy was saying. They had scheduled a hiking trip into the Andes. "You can probably still find a guide--" "I want to help," Julia said. "How can I help?" Nancy stopped shuffling papers and smiled. "Coffee, two sugars, lots of cream." Julia rolled her eyes. "Serves me right for asking." As she stood up, Nancy grabbed the papers out of the printer and handed them to Julia. "While you're up, see if you can find a phone. Call the number at the top of that page and read them that report." Julia looked over the printouts. "Okay, but can't you just e-mail these or something?" Nancy shook her head. "A construction crew cut some cables down the mountain today. That's why so many people are running around-- we're trying to set up wireless links." "But the phones are still working?" "Benefits of working in a former developing nation. Phone lines were laid decades before they built infrastructure for data networking." Julia nodded. "Kind of ironic, if you think about it." "Don't I know it." Nancy picked up the phone and began dialing. "We've got half a dozen phone lines, but they're not the best wiring in the world. Our modems won't do more than a hundred kilobits, which isn't enough for images at the resolution we need..." Julia pretended to yawn. Nancy narrowed her eyes. "Hey, where's my damn coffee?" Julia stuck her tongue out and left the office. She dodged two people carrying a large spool of cable into a stairwell. Probably going up to the roof, she thought. Were they setting up a microwave dish? Bouncing signals off some satellite? She would have loved to see that, but she already had a job to do. The coffee pot was empty. Julia made up a dirty limerick about savages as she rummaged through the kitchen cabinets. She found several old paperback romance novels, a bundle of ballpoint pens, and some cat-five cable, which she left out on the counter in case anybody needed it. Finally, she found the coffee filters, and then it was on to the refrigerator to find the coffee itself. When she began making her telephone call, at 9:15 AM local time, it was fifteen minutes after eight o'clock in Washington, D.C. # Rod shook Doctor Philby's hand, hustling him into the elevator as quickly as he could without seeming like he was in a hurry, and stood watching until the doors had closed and the chime signaled that the car was moving down to the lobby. Then Rod ran into his office, fumbled the headset onto his left ear, and stabbed at one of the dozen or more the blinking lights on the telephone base station. "United Nations Space Agency, Director Mitchell speaking!" Ben had been taking calls non-stop for the last ten minutes. Rod had been stuck in the conference room with Doctor Philby, who had turned out to be a Very Important Professor sent by the Department of Energy and one of his mother's subcommittees to deliver Crucial Information about China's latest plans to build a space elevator-- or "spacelift," as the media had dubbed the theoretical technology. Because they'd had so much success with their last half dozen spacelift programs, and the decade that it would take them to build half a prototype was time that the other spacefaring nations of Earth couldn't waste. Rod had nodded very politely, smiled when appropriate, and frowned in what he hoped was a suitably disturbed manner when Philby emphasized the gravity of the situation. He probably hadn't even realized what a bad pun he'd been making, using the word "gravity" metaphorically in a discussion about spacelift engineering. The information was nothing new. More to the point, it was nothing urgent, and certainly nothing the United Nations would care about for several years-- if China even managed to follow through this time. Meeting with Philby had been a total waste of Rod's time. Even though UNSA was an almost entirely inconsequential entity, and it could be argued that none of Rod's time as Director was really very important at all, Rod had very strong opinions on what he should be doing with his time. Ben was putting as many people on hold as he could, only stopping to talk to someone if they seemed important or pleasant. Most of them would hang up after a few minutes on hold, or follow the voice prompts to leave a message which he'd check later. After years of running interference for Rod, Ben knew how to handle a flood. Rod was not handling his calls with quite as much finesse. He spoke to every caller, without passing judgment initially, only putting them on hold if the conversation seemed to be going nowhere or going on too long. It wasn't often that people actually called UNSA, and Rod wanted to take every opportunity to show them a good face. After ten minutes of that, Rod walked to the door of his office. Ben was just hanging up on a call. "You know what's going on?" Rod asked. Ben nodded. "Big nuclear explosion out near Pluto, right in the middle of a spacelane." "No kidding." "Nobody's told you?" Rod shrugged. "All I'm getting is observatories from all over the place wanting to give me scope coordinates and mass spec readings. I don't even know if I'm writing down the right numbers anymore." "It'll calm down soon," Ben said. "I can handle it if you want to go hermit for a while." "I'm fine. But don't these people have e-mail?" "Hey, I just work here." Rod shook his head and walked back into his office. He tapped at the wireless headset on his ear, picking up another call. "United Nations Space Agency, Director Mitchell speaking." He heard a faint hissing noise. "Hello?" "I'm sorry," said a female voice. "I must have dialed the wrong number. Can you give me the UNSA switchboard, please?" Rod chuckled. "Miss, I am the switchboard. How may I help you?" "Uh..." The woman rustled some papers. "I was asked to call this number and read this report to you." "You're not an astronomer, are you?" Rod was smiling. He was enjoying this, talking to somebody who wasn't all business. And Ben had wanted him to stop answering the phones. "No, sir, I'm not," the woman said, sounding a bit relieved to admit it. "I'm visiting my cousin and staying at this observatory, and-- oh, sorry. Are you ready for me to read this?" Rod sat down at his desk, pen hovering over a pad of paper, and said, "No. No, I'm not. What's your name, miss?" "My name?" She sounded confused. "My name's Julia, sir." Again with the "sir." "Julia, you're not in the military by any chance, are you?" "ROTC, actually," Julia said. "I'm a civilian. You don't have to call me 'sir.' I'm probably not much older than you, either. My name's Rod." "Hi." She was getting more relaxed. He almost heard a smile in her voice that time. "So you're visiting your cousin." "Yeah. She's... interesting. I had expected her to be getting into more trouble than she seems to be." "Why's that?" "Well, she's always been the black sheep of her family. Her parents-- my aunt and uncle-- were always telling me these stories about how she was a horrible person and disobedient and all that. They were exaggerating, of course." "No." A laugh. "I mean, she's working at an observatory in Chile. It's not a law firm, but she's not selling narcotics to preschoolers or anything. She's just-- different." "So you two are pretty close?" "You know, I didn't think so. She just sounded like such a different person than I am. But we're getting along really well. This is the first time I've seen her in years." "It's never who you expect," Rod said. "What was that?" "The next person you meet. It's never who you expect. Something my father used to say." "Oh." Awkward silence. Rod looked down and saw that he had been scribbling on the notepad. "So, you're visiting your cousin at the observatory." "Yup." "Are you interested in astronomy?" "Not really. It is a nice view, though. I've never seen this many stars in the night sky before. Not on Earth, anyway." "You've been off-planet? Of course, for ROTC training." "Yeah, but I'd actually been to the Belt before then. Some of my extended family are asteroid miners. We went there a few times during summer vacation." "Lucky girl," Rod said. "Your last name wouldn't happen to be Chan, would it?" She laughed, but it was strained. Rod made a face. Lame joke. Trying a little too hard. Was he really that lonely? "Anyway," Julia said, "should I read you this report? They would have e-mailed it, but a construction crew cut some cables this morning." "Sure, go ahead." She read off the scope coordinates and mass spec numbers. Rod tapped the numbers into his computer and tried to imagine what Julia looked like.