Boundary

  Jensen gave her a glance that was every bit as quick as the one she'd given him, and more openly hostile.

  "She seems awfully young for the post. Meaning no offense, Ms. Fathom," he added, obviously not caring in the least if she was offended or not.

  "Alexander the Great conquered the world by the age of thirty-three," Director Hughes said cheerfully. "So I imagine, at the same age, she can handle this little problem. And there's really no other suitable choice, George. At your insistence, I showed you the dossiers of the other senior agents."

  "And I told you I'd be considerably more comfortable if we went with either Knight or Berkowitz."

  Hughes gave the man a look that was not so much hostile as simply weary. "George, cut it out. This is not a James Bond novel and I am not M. If you want comic book agents, go somewhere else. Try one of the cowboy outfits. Good luck finding an agent who can understand the technical material involved well enough to know an alien weapon system from a bag of popcorn—and better luck still, finding one who won't get you involved in Martian drug dealing to finance the operation. Or have you forgotten that not-so-little scandal?"

  The Security Adviser winced. As well he might. The President, then the serving Vice-President, had almost failed of election due to that mess—and Jensen's predecessor had lost his job.

  Having made his point, Hughes eased up the chill and went back to his usual affability. "Look, George, here's the simple truth, bitter as it may be. My people are civil servants. Strip away their training, skills, and the fact that sometimes their job puts them in dangerous situations, they're not much different from your neighborhood postman. You want Jeffrey Berkowitz? Fine. Reinstitute the draft and conscript him. Failing that—no? you don't want to open that can of worms, either? didn't think so—then I wish you equally good luck getting him to accept this assignment. We're talking about a man who has three children still living in his home. You want Morris Knight? No sweat. Just find an instant cure for his wife's kidney condition and somebody to take care of his two kids. Do you really think you—or me, if I was stupid enough to try—could talk either one of them into leaving their families for a period of several years, at least two of which they won't even be on the planet Earth? And if they refuse, then what are you going to do? Neither of them are under military discipline and we're not at war, anyway. They'll just quit. With their skills and background, I can guarantee you they'll have jobs within a week that pay them twice as much as they're making now."

  Jensen's jaws tightened. After a moment, he turned to face Madeline.

  "And what about you, Ms. Fathom? Are you willing?"

  While the director and the NSA had been having their little contretemps, Madeline had been pondering the same question. Not so much to find the answer—that was pretty much a given—but simply to find out how she felt about it.

  She was . . .

  Excited as all hell. Mars!

  "Yes, sir," she replied stoically. "I'm willing."

  The next ten minutes or so were taken up by a long lecture from the National Security Adviser explaining to Madeline the imperative necessities of national security, the supreme importance of her assignment to the fate of the nation, and the sublime nature of that nation itself.

  Madeline put up with it, easily enough. Early in her career, she'd spent considerable time at public ceremonies and she knew the little tricks for getting through a long blast of hot air with no damage, when she had no security duties to keep her mind occupied. The one she favored most, which she used on this occasion also, was reciting the ingredients to her favorite recipes for bouillabaisse. She was partial to bouillabaisse, so she had eight of them. Enough to get her through most episodes of pointless windbaggery.

  Throughout, of course, she maintained The Expression flawlessly. The one that she'd learned as part of her training and later experience in the field, and, like all agents she knew, considered every bit as essential when dealing with politicians and bureaucrats as body armor was in dealing with desperate armed criminals. The Expression combined Personal Probity of Character and Concern for the Public Welfare in equal proportions, with a generous admixture of Calm Certainty That We Can Do The Job and just that little needed soupcon of Eagerness To Tackle The Assignment.

  When Jensen was finally done, his earlier hostility toward Madeline seemed to be on vacation for a while. A short holiday, at least. She was not surprised. From long experience, she knew that the period immediately after giving a pompous and officious speech was as relaxing and satisfying for bureaucrats of Jensen's type as the aftermath of orgasms was for most people.

  He rose, nodded to her, and left the room. He did not, of course, offer to shake hands.

  "What a prick," she said dispassionately, after he was gone. She made no attempt to keep the director from hearing. She knew full well that his own opinion of Jensen was no higher than hers, even though he'd never said anything explicitly. The entire current administration, for that matter, was held in no high regard by Hughes.

  The director just smiled at her. "Ah, Madeline. Think what a disaster your career would have been if you'd gone into the Foreign Service and tried to become a diplomat."

  "Could have been worse. I could have followed my first inclination and joined the Secret Service. Then spent my whole working life listening to speeches like that. And maybe—fate worse than death— had to take a bullet to let the windbag keep prattling."

  He laughed softly. "Aren't you glad, now, that I saved you in time?"

  "Pretty much. I've still got a bit of a grudge over Antarctica. I don't mind horrible conditions, and I can accept wasting half a year of my life. Putting the two together was a bit much."

  "Well, look on the bright side. This new assignment will take a lot longer chunk of your life, and the conditions could definitely get worse than even Antarctica. But whatever else it'll be, it won't be a waste of your time."

  "No, it certainly doesn't sound like it. How much authority will I have?"

  "As much as you need."

  She cocked her head skeptically.

  "No, Madeline, I mean it. The reason the National Security Adviser insisted on sitting in on this meeting was because your assignment will be specifically authorized by the President. We're not going to have to work through the usual cut-outs on this one."

  She pursed her lips in a soundless whistle. "I'll be damned. I would have thought hell would freeze over first."

  "Don't overdo it. Whatever else, they are not stupid. They can't afford to play games with this one, and they know it. Even if the knowledge is making them choke a little."

  The director picked up a large envelope on his desk. "This is your confirmation as head of security for the entire project. It's already got the President's signature on it. Jensen was here in case he decided to yank it at the last minute. Which—ha! by the skin of your teeth, you disrespectful hoyden—he didn't. I'll see to it that General Deiderichs gets a copy."

  Madeline nodded. "All right. I assume you want me to start immediately."

  "Magnanimously, I shall pretend I didn't hear that. Your flight to Albuquerque is already booked. Five hours from now, so don't dawdle."

  Chapter 17

  Joe leaned back in his chair and gave vent to a long-drawn sigh of relief. "Not a single malfunction!"

  "You expected some? In our peerless experiments? Why, Fearless Leader, how could you ever have gotten the impression that anything could go wrong?" Lee Grimes' voice drawled from the other side of the Ares control center. His prosthetic leg was propped up on the console in front of him, encased in one of the Western boots Lee preferred. "It's not as though anything's ever gone wrong here."

  Joe laughed. It made him feel twice as good that Lee was not only still here, but able to joke about the accident that had cost him his chance to go to Mars as well as his leg. "Of course not. Still, that far away, it'd be a little hard to tweak the valves if something froze up."

  "Told you to send me along. If I left my leg behind, I'd j
ust about have made the weight limit."

  "Yes, but there was the issue of air, food, water, that kind of thing. Pirate didn't carry any of those, remember?"

  "Hmm. Okay, you could have just sent my leg."

  "It's your head that I'd need to send."

  "Ouch! No, I think I'll keep it where it is. Still, it's nice to watch everything running. Just look at that! Ferris will have a couple ingots made before we have to shut down."

  "And there'll be water in the tanks and fuel to burn before long," Anne put in. "We're on target for Pirate's return launch. Chibi-rover is happily surveying the landscape in Melas Chasma, too. One hundred percent success."

  "Well, we don't know that for sure yet," Joe cautioned. "First, it ain't really over until the return launch and recovery. Second, A.J.'s Faeries have to pull off their miracle."

  He frowned. "Speaking of which, I'm getting a little worried about that, actually. We haven't heard anything from him in four, five days."

  "Oh, stop fretting, Joe." Reynolds was looking over his shoulder at some of the readouts, even though he could have pulled them up just as well on his own personal data center. "You know how A.J. gets. He runs until he drops, wakes up, and then starts running again. I'll bet that if we just take a look out on the Net there's a ton of stuff on the Faeries now."

  "Probably." To satisfy his curiosity, Joe opened a connection and sent out a general search. A few minutes later, Lee caught the deepening frown on Joe's face.

  "Something wrong, Fearless Leader?"

  "I'm not sure," he said slowly. "Anne, Lee, why don't you try pulling up something on A.J.'s progress with NASA."

  A few minutes passed.

  "That's . . . interesting," Anne said finally, with the tone of someone having discovered a nest of wasps just above them at a picnic.

  "A.J. couldn't have dropped the whole ball that badly, could he?" Lee muttered. "I mean, he's an insufferable prick sometimes, but he's earned it, if you know what I mean."

  "We helped him on those designs, guys. One, or even two, of the Faeries might have gone bad, but there's no way all of them did. We know the release went just fine, our own telemetry showed them separating and going their merry way."

  Joe was frowning at the displayed information, or rather lack of information, as though it might suddenly change if he just glared at it enough. "But there's not a single pic here from later than, oh, I guess about six or seven hours after the Faeries were cut loose. And none of them are showing anything particularly close up."

  "'Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,'" Reynolds quoted.

  "Marcellus to Hamlet, Act I, Scene 4." That came from Lee, as he continued a search for more Phobos data.

  Ren looked startled. "I didn't take you for a scholar of Shakespeare, Lee."

  "I'm not, really. But I did do some acting, years ago, and Marcellus was one of the roles I played." He shook his head. "Definitely rotten in the state of NASA, anyway. They've been giving out exactly diddly-squat since a few hours after the Faeries flew. No announcements, some vague talk about analyzing data, a few pics dribbled out that could have been taken a little earlier or later than the last official ones. But there's nothing giving us a real grip on what's happening."

  "That makes no sense," Joe protested. "Even if somehow it all went wrong, there's no reason for them to clam up like this. They'd just try to slant it to make it look like we screwed it up."

  He told his phone to dial A.J.

  The phone screen lit with A.J.'s grinning face. "Hey, Joe, how's it going?"

  "Fine, A.J., but we—"

  "Ha, fooled ya! I'm not here or I'm too busy with my many fans to talk to you right now, but if you'll leave a message I'll—"

  There was an audible click as a somewhat nettled Joe cut the connection. "I hate it when he sets his 'away' mode to that annoying little message. Fine, I'll ping him direct."

  A few moments later he sat back, scratching his head. "He's not on-line."

  Anne, Lee, and Reynolds all stared at him. "That's crazy talk, man. A.J. is off-line about as often as the Pope is Protestant. Okay, he's sometimes blocked or not answering, especially when he's sleeping, but off-line?"

  "I'm not finding him."

  Anne ran her own check along with Lee. "Looks like you're right. In fact . . . looks like he hasn't been on-line at all since about four in the morning the day after the Faeries flew."

  Joe stood up. "That does it. This is all too weird. I'm going over to NASA to find out what's happening. What the hell, it's less than a two-hour drive."

  "Well, okay, Fearless Leader," Lee said, after a moment. "But keep in touch. Or this might start to sound like those summer horror movies, you know?"

  "Don't worry." Joe headed for the door. "I won't go into the basement, that's all."

  "This way, sir," the guard said to Joe, opening the door to a stairway leading down.

  Joe was a bit puzzled already. When he'd seen extra security at the entrance, he'd feared the worst. But instead they'd simply checked his ID and waved him through. And when he'd started to ask where to find A.J., they hadn't even waited for him to finish but had just said: "We'll escort you there, sir."

  Come to think of it, he hadn't even gotten to A.J.'s name. Near as he could remember, he'd said: "Can you tell me how to find—"

  He followed the guard down the stairway, through a well-lit hall, and finally through a set of double doors which opened into a large conference room.

  "Joe! Glad you could make it!" A.J. said cheerfully. He was sitting on the other side of a long conference table in the middle of the room.

  "Um, so am I. What is it that I've just made?"

  His friend didn't answer immediately. Instead, he turned to the black man in a colonel's uniform sitting at one end of the table. "Pay up."

  The colonel—he looked familiar to Joe, but Joe couldn't quite place him—gave a resigned smile, pulled out his wallet, and tossed a twenty to A.J. "It's a bet I'm glad to lose."

  "I told you he'd be here," A.J. said. "I told them you'd be here," he repeated unnecessarily to Joe. "I knew you'd get here pretty quick, too."

  "How the hell did you know I'd be coming? I didn't even know myself until a little while ago!"

  "Because," A.J. said in his lecture-room tone, "you attempted to call me, but hung up without leaving a message. Several talk requests tried to ping me. Two people from Ares tried to access my NASA contact info within the same time period. I knew you guys had finally woken up to the fact that something funny was going on. And knowing you, I was pretty sure you wouldn't sit around waiting to see what happened."

  "Very well, Mr. Baker, you have had your—admittedly deserved—moment of triumph," said a new voice from behind Joe. "Would you please sit back down? And Dr. Buckley, please take a seat as well."

  Joe turned and saw that the speaker was a tall man with brown hair, just starting to gray slightly, also wearing a uniform. He came through the same door Joe had entered from, and moved toward the opposite end of the long conference table from the colonel. Behind him came a number of other people, who filed quickly into the room and took their own seats. One of them was Jackie Secord.

  "All right, sir," he said, squinting slightly at the man's uniform. He was suddenly glad he'd said "sir," as he recognized the general's stars. Three of them, no less. "Will someone tell me what's going on?"

  "Don't worry, Dr. Buckley. You are not the only one in this room who needs a briefing, although you are, admittedly, the only one who has no information at all. Everything will be made clear in a few minutes. I believe some introductions are in order. I am Lieutenant General Martin Deiderichs. I have been put in command of this operation, at least for the time being."