The surf fishing was ruined. Thanks to Bernard, I could not get my mind back to it. I packed up, crossed the parking lot, and began to open the door of my Corvette when a pang of anger flared up. Maybe I should have taken a swing at him for the ‘demeaning eccentricity’ remark. You can screw with me a bit and get away with it, but do not screw with my car. Any Vette owner will tell you the same thing. I paused and wondered just how many of his slanted comments were delayed time bombs waiting to aggravate me.
It is a pristine, black, 1995 Corvette coupe, rebuilt to perfection from the ground up. As required, it’s adapted to run biosynthetic fuel, which is okay with me, and the fact that bio-syn gives you 2 percent more horsepower has nothing to do with that. Really.
PAV ‘driving’ is rated for morons. When their popularity began to soar, it didn’t take many low-level horrific air crashes in the city to make computer control mandatory except in emergencies. That took the would-be fighter jocks and drunken-party people out of the equation real fast. These days, you get caught running in manual and you’ll be grounded for a very long time.
On the road, the Corvette’s punch was consoling. I hit the com button on my dash and got an erratic, blurry image of people, bottles, and blue sky until RJ finally got control of his wrist. He looked distracted and amused. “Ah, Kemosabi. Did you catch anything? If not, Cocoa Village appears well-stocked at the moment.”
“I caught something, alright. What you doing?”
“We were innocently strolling along the cobblestone, minding our own business when some sort of unjustified celebration broke out. We seem to have become a part of that. There be ale here.”
“Want to go flying?”
He stopped all motion and stared down at his communicator. “Don’t tease me about such things. I’ve warned you about that.”
“It’ll be a really ugly vacation.”
“Where?”
“You’ll need to stop by. But do not bring any catch with you.”
“I understand. Expect me to make my way there at P10.”
“Funny you should say that.”
“What?”
“See you at my place.”
Back in my piece of hex-plex, I moped around in a daze mumbling to myself about suddenly being attached to a project without having made anyone grovel. I plugged Bernard Porre’s memory stick into my PC and scrolled through the data on the Griffin. To my surprise, it seemed impressive. Perhaps I was placating myself by being overly optimistic. I closed it out for later, pulled off my fishing apparel, and headed for the shower. Within the embrace of steam, I complained out loud in hopes of restoring some illusion of independence but it only came out sounding like whining. Groping around from behind the shower curtain produced no towels. Naked and dripping, I marched down the hall to the kitchen to get my beach bag. A desperate cry rang out. “Oh lord, my eyes, my eyes! I’m blind!” RJ was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee from a paper cup. “Where is my seppuku sword when I need it? I can’t live with what I’ve just seen.”
I hustled my way back down the hallway to my bedroom, found something to dry with and pulled on jeans and a Jets T-shirt. Back in the kitchen, he shoved a capped cup of coffee at me. It was rich and dark and still hot.
“Cocoa Village was hopping, eh?”
“Yes, it was. Many voluptuous women in search of many things.” RJ stroked his short red-brown beard and stared at the wall in recollection. His hair was a bit askew, as always. It gave him that could-be-crazy look that dogged Einstein, the same cranial aurora associated with people so absent in thought they forget where they are or what they were doing. They can drift off on you in mid-sentence, or in some cases even walk away in that same lost thought. Most of them have RJ’s unkempt eyebrows. Too many lines in the face from too frequent and prolonged episodes of perplexed concentration. Dark eyes a little too piercing when they’re genuinely focused on you can sometimes make you fear an awakening within that you’re not ready to accept. Having known RJ since high school, I would trust him with my life. “How was the beach?” he asked, as he resurfaced and took a sip.
“Beautiful, up to a point.”
“Mr. Porre was less than flattering, I take it.”
“How’d you know?”
“They called because your com system was blocking them.”
“Well, that didn’t work.”
“Some of his staff like to call him by his directory listing; Porre, Bernard.”
“It’s not just me then.”
“No, it’s pretty much a universal standard. Must’ve been a pretty big deal for him to show up like that.”
“The little bastard made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
“I can tell your brain is compiling like a quantum processor. That’s why you’re wandering around the house naked. What’s the scoop?”
“It’s pretty ugly. You may not want it.”
“Are you at the top of the heap?”
“I am on this one.”
“Well then, I’m down. Now tell me how bad it is.”
“Crew of eight. No grav. Have I lost you yet?”
“Hmm, that’ll be a long first three days. Nope. Still aboard. Go on.”
“Untested prototype vehicle. Unexplored deep space. Straight down from the ecliptic.”
“Wow! Who the hell dreamed up this one?”
“Well put. That’s classified.”
“What’s the objective?”
“Retrieve unspecified artifact. Gather intelligence.”
“So we’re taking an untested ship, to an unknown area of space, to pick up an unknown object?”
“Exactly what I said when they told me.”
“What’s my classification?”
“We’ll sell you off as a systems engineer. Hell, you’ve done so much procedure assurance on that stuff you know more than most of them anyway.”
“You sure you really want me on this one?”
“It’s a truck load of unknowns. Your brain seems to be at its best with unknowns. Your relentless analytical saved our asses on the last trip. You’re a walking think-tank. You see stuff that other people miss. Paradigms are like candy to you. My only fear is if anything happens to you I’ll be mentally screwed forever.”
“In that case, I shall be careful, Kemosabi. Who else will be entombed with us?”
“It’s just you and me so far. The agency gets to pick two. The rest are up to me.”
“Is Nira on your list?”
“Get out of jail free card on that one. She’s the lead on the Electra data investigation. There’s no way they’ll let her go.”
“You forget how persuasive she can be, or should I say how impossible to refuse. She got to you pretty good, didn’t she?”
“She’s still got me. That’s why she shouldn’t go.”
“How about Perk Murphy?”
“I’m glad to say he’s still not back on flight status from the Electra mission. He’s okay but after that severe an injury, they get worried you might freeze up in an emergency. It’s really pissing him off as I understand it, but he’s in Honolulu recuperating with that blonde he met on Cocoa Beach.”
“Ah, that one.”
“I think this kind of trip might be too much on him too soon. Too small a spacecraft.”
RJ leaned back in his seat and clasped his hands behind his head. “Well, if it’s an eight-seater, I guess that rules my books out. I’ll have to actually use that blasted reader. But, at least I can still cram an awful lot of crossword puzzle printouts in my case, along with my folding chess set. There’s also my magnetic poker set. You have to take care of the important things first, you understand.”
“You might consider heading back to the Village to pick up one of those voluptuous women in search of many things. It may be a long trip.”
“You are correct, oh great mentor of man’s primeval desires. I certainly would not want my last memory of someone naked to be you.”
RJ left me to the wilderness of the decision-making
I had suddenly inherited. It would have been a depressing executive state of mind except for one thought that kept overtaking all the others.
There was a new flight simulator being set up at Genesis. An accurate flight simulator is one step away from real flying. And, because you can do dangerous things in it without dying, it actually offers some possibilities the real thing does not. Flight Sims are complex machines. They take a variety of engineers and technicians to operate them. I wondered how far along the Griffin’s was. I changed into gray flight coveralls, grabbed my keys and headed for the Cape.
Chapter 3