Washington D.C. a couple of years later
Derry Jenkins, commander USN, jogged next to Paul through the pre-dawn gloom. They both liked a morning run and the department of defense worked an early shift. Most worker bees, and here even a commander was just another worker, were at their desks by seven thirty.
They did this most days they were both in town, trading off topics, Paul technical and Derry international affairs, today Derry had chosen the latest sensation, a relatively tiny island nation called Palalo Sadong.
“...So Sunatra is a pretty peaceful and prosperous little country made up of two big islands East and West Sunatra, and a string of smaller islands and coral atolls. Four years ago this nut job calling himself Admiral General M, otherwise known as Commander Joseph Mindow, stages a coup and after some years of very nasty fighting he settles for East Sunatra. Which he claims is really called Palalo Sadong in the local language. Which is bullshit by the way, it’s an invented name, means beautiful sea mountain. Anyway the Chinese, who we think were his sponsor from the beginning, get the UN to accept the facts on the ground and to provide a lot of NGO support. For a couple of years things are pretty quiet. Now the two major sub-populations have ganged up to wipe out - or drive out - the two smaller populations and when it’s all over they’ll turn on each other! Why-in-the-HELL can’t people just treat each other like human beings and work things out!?”
They accelerated up a hill and neither had the extra breath for a while. The two men were very similar in basic size and build, both were also bachelors and going bald early and burr cut the remainder. The fact that Derry was ‘black as the ace of spades’ and Paul was as WASP as they came didn’t affect their friendship, formed years before when they both worked for Crazy Pork, the group that Paul still worked for.
Since then Derry had done a stint at sea as first officer on a destroyer, now he was back doing DC desk penance for all that fun. They’d drifted back into their old habit of jogging when they got the chance, and having dinner at one or another of DC’s great restaurants every once in a while.
Today Paul was in Washington to chat with his boss at the Crazy Pork offices. Washington was going through one of its anti-pork campaigns and Crazy Pork was on its last legs. Paul was the last contract employee left and he knew he might not be back in DC for a while. He’d miss these morning runs with Derry more than the job.
Of course the Navy was always mixing things up. Derry was romancing his new love, the still unnamed guided missile cruiser CG-103, which he would be taking command of for launch and outfitting. Currently he was at the program office, in six months he’d be at the shipyard in Maine.
Paul tried to push off the regrets, “I thought the mess in Sunatra had blown over. They have a shiny new treaty and constitution that solves their ethnic problem, right?”
Derry snorted, “Sure they do! When has that mattered to these piss pot dictators? My read is that the Admiral General has a long plan, which includes a little ethnic cleansing. He’s using the old wave Filipino settlers and the big Chinese community against the indigenous tribes in the mountains and the émigré Indian community. Redistributing land and wealth and giving the young hotheads an outlet.”
“Why are you so riled up about it Derry?” Paul felt bad about it but Derry seemed a little more upset than simple humanitarianism would explain.
“It looks like a precursor Paul. We never really recovered from 9/11; the Great Recession and the so called War on Terror; and demographics and economics are not on our side. China and India are the up and coming powers. We still spend a lot of money on our military but you know most of it goes to keeping things tamped in Afghanistan and Iraq and the other ‘Stans. Most of our ships, planes and combat vehicles are obsolescent at best and we can’t afford to keep them in the field and upgrade at the same time.”
This was familiar ground; in fact Derry had just reiterated something Paul had pointed out to him years ago. But Derry had started out with another point, “A precursor to what Derry?”
Derry grinned a bit grimly, “The Chinese have been on an upslope for a half century, and I think they, and others, are thinking about flexing their muscles. Just like the great powers used to play the great game, and try out their new toys in border colonies. Like Germany tried out the weapons they took into World War Two in the Spanish Civil War.”
Paul whistled, “Our friends and economic partners the Chinese as the Nazis, Chairman Chien as Hitler? You think the Chinese are playing power politics with Sunatra?”
“Not politically correct am I?” Derry’s mouth twisted ironically. “The Chinese support the Admiral General, did long before they sponsored that sad sack treaty and constitution in the UN. He has an effective, if small, military, with a lot of bang-bang toys for its size, most of them from China’s Noricum. He’s built up a huge intelligence service that has its fingers everywhere in the Pacific.”
They were silent as they passed a couple of female runners, while the two of them were bachelors it was more because of shyness and lack of opportunity rather than anything planned and they both enjoyed looking, even if neither of them could think of a single decent pickup line to save their life.
Paul decided to provoke his friend, “How bad can it be? We’d squash him in a day if he gets too big for his britches.”
Derry almost rose to the bait, “Damned civilian....” then he laughed, “good one Geek boy. I just wish that I thought it’s not what most of the public and politicians think these days.” He grimaced, “He should have been tromped early and hard. Instead we’re playing war games about what we might have to do to rein this asshole in, deployments to Sunatra, the whole nine yards.”
“So, you think the world’s getting a little tipsy again? We’ve hardly had too much peace, by some counts we’ve been at war for twenty five years” Paul asked,
Derry snorted, “We’ve been fighting large scale terrorism and theological thugocracy not a war, and no one remembers what a real war is supposed to be like!”
“You think things might get hairy if we go after this jerk in the sunny South Pacific?”
“Who knows what it might start. Who knows if our politicians will have the balls to make a move, either way we may be screwed. If we do give the finger to the Chinese, what happens if this asshole Admiral General stopped us cold the first day, sank a major warship in a stand up fight? It’s possible the USA would back down, and we’d look like a second rate power.”
Derry scrubbed his head, “I’m probably full of shit, everyone else thinks I’m paranoid.”
“Yeah, but sometimes the bastards really are out to get you.” Paul said quietly.
-o-
Later that day Paul stood in the window of the suites hotel that he stayed in during his trips to DC. Tomorrow he was on his way home to Indiana; he could have taken a flight this afternoon but had been too tired to bother. He wouldn’t be back any time soon, as he’d half expected he’d been called in for a polite last discussion and to hand in his security tags. His SecNet permissions had been canceled and the NavApps on his tablet were now dead icons.
Arms crossed, shoulder propped against the painted concrete wall he stared out the window; it was a modernists view, between two glass and brick low rise towers were more distant hotels, office buildings and some blots of green arched with darkening blue. In its way the view was therapeutic, pulling him out of himself for the long view.
No one, least of all Paul, would have predicted that things would work out this way. He’d blasted through the normally rocky adolescent and teenage years with a rooster tail of academic and sports excellence and really hit his stride in college, six years to a triple masters, electrical and mechanical engineering with technical management. He’d started a company before leaving college and been able to pay his parents and friends back their initial investment after only two years.
The power technology boom had been a wild ride; Paul had made - and lost most of - a fo
rtune during those years. His little company, BladePower, had attracted a lot of interest in a half decade when, stimulated by a couple of breakthroughs in power semiconductor technology, everyone had come to believe that distributed power, fuel cells, micro turbines, wind turbines, photovoltaic and smart power electronics were going to be the saviors of the world - and they probably would be - in another thirty years or so.
When that timing discontinuity had finally sunk in the bubble had burst. BladePower’s backing had drained away almost overnight and in the end he’d been lucky to sell the core IP and the product name to an old guard industrial controls company. They had kept about half of the staff, though not the old management team, especially its twenty-seven year old president.
Paul didn’t really regret the loss of all those millions, he had never really believed in the fantasy stock valuations. He had believed in his dreams and treated his people like family; most of his money had gone to support those men and women as the company spun in.
In the end that had saved what little he had been able to keep, BladePower had survived long enough and had enough of a reputation and sales base to be of some value. The sale of the company had left him with a small nest egg.
Paul could have scraped by without working, but most weeks he put in sixty hours or more because he couldn’t imagine not working, not because he had to. That pot of money allowed him to pick and choose his gigs, a wonderful stress reliever…or it had been.
Being a technological gypsy had been different, fun and glamorous for a while, but the lack of any constants in his life was taking its toll. Most of his friends from BladePower days were off doing their own things these days, he talked with several of them regularly but they rarely had time to meet. With no wife or girlfriend, and his parents happily retired in Arizona, he had no social life to speak of.
With a string of successful projects behind him he had a reputation that was attracting new work all the time, but Paul knew that he was burning out and turning inwards, getting more and more solitary, at times bad tempered and arbitrary. Recently he’d turned one contract down cold for no particularly good reason he could think of now. A few days before he’d chewed out a teammate on one of his other projects for a minor, if stupid, mistake. To many bosses his increasing reputation for finicky nit picking wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. To Paul it was a symptom of deep discontent.
He knew part of it was that he really wanted to find someone to share his life with, but he was damned if he knew how. He’d fallen so low as to try a computerized dating service, which had been close to an unmitigated disaster. He still felt rotten about some of those dates, some of the girls, women, had been very nice, but he simply found it impossible to relate to them.
At times it seemed like he was seeing his life slip out of his hands without leaving an impact. So many people had made it by this age. Here he was, ex-millionaire, ex-CEO, quietly making a living on a few minor technical projects, far from living the wide life he’d dreamed of in his college days. But then he’d found out that his dream would cost others dearly. He could have made a lot more money off BladePower if he’d been willing to ditch his people. He wondered a little bitterly if he’d make the same decision now…he hoped so.
He turned back into the room, and his personal office space. These days people were using panel computers with voice and handwriting recognition more and more. Paul still used a laptop, though with a high end pocketbook so he could take his work with him most places, and he used a scroll screen to expand his workspace. Right now the pocketbook was propped next to the laptop, acting as its main storage system, and his big scroll screen was unrolled on its stand on the coffee table, acting as an auxiliary screen so he could keep his focus work directly in front of him but still be able to mouse over to one of the other applications without having to close and open windows.
Sitting down again he continued to work on a design project he was doing for a wind turbine company out west. He wasn’t deeply involved with the work; the scroll screen had a couple of entertainment feeds, news and a home improvement program, the audio channel was playing a selection of old Dave Mathews tracks. His eyes wandered frequently as he thought and at times he had a hard time keeping on task.
He watched a recap of the last couple of years in the ‘Stans’ bordering Afghanistan; the “war” there was burning itself out in poverty and disease. The UN and NGO’s were doing what they could but, as usual, it was the US that was sending in troops and equipment to keep a lid on the fanatics, bandits and mercenaries. It was like some vast conspiracy knew exactly how to suck the money out of the treasury through the department of defense, sucking till the procurement and development budgets were dry.
Time passed, Paul’s mind spun down various fruitless avenues, he got more and more depressed as he considered the future. A fleeting impulse to go and get drunk recoiled from the thought of flying with a hangover; he’d done it before and regretted it for days. He smiled tightly at himself, always practical, ever boring, that was Paul Richards.
The phone tone sounded, Paul hesitated, debating not answering, but years of conditioning were too strong, he sat down on the couch and tapped the answer button on the computer, a window opened in the corner of the screen and he found himself looking into Cooper Paaly’s blue eyes. Tired blue eyes set in a face that had aged more than the two years since they had last met.
“Hey Paul, it’s been a long time.” Cooper’s voice had aged as well.
The anger Paul had felt for an instant evaporated, “Coop, what the hell happened to you?”
The laugh was almost the old Cooper, “I’ve been burning the candle at both ends for too long as they say, Paul.”
Paul could see that, but, “Where the hell did you get to Cooper? You still owe me a final report and an equipment disposition document. For Christ’s sake, I still have to explain why I have not been able to close your damned contract out every quarter at the review board. Some of that equipment has US Government stickers on it, I’d have let you keep it if you’d have damned well asked, and we might have been able to get you some new funding if you would have damned well finished the contract up the right way.”
Cooper Paaly laughed, “Paul, one of the things I find remarkable about you is your infinite capacity for dealing with the government crap you yourself hate. I’m sorry but I couldn’t deal with it any longer, it was over Paul, I had to continue my work without interruptions and the stuff was mine by right, you just said so. I’d put all my heart and soul and mind into that stuff as well as most of my life. Far more than the paltry money the contract provided. Hell, you and your friends at IBM put in more time and effort than the damned government paid for. And I cannot thank you or them enough.” There was real warmth at the end but a bottomless well of exhaustion as well.
For all his anger at Cooper Paul suddenly realized he still liked him, and was worried about him. As irritating as the old man, scoundrel - and maybe worse - was, he was a unique and wonderful individual, “Cooper you need to take a vacation, you’ve been going at it too hard.” But bubbling beneath the surface was another question, one he couldn’t stop from asking, “Cooper, have you been working on your project,” his voice caught, “did you get it working?”
Cooper’s face lit up, “Paul, mostly I’ve been working on that serendipitous discovery, but we do now have incontrovertible evidence of fusion, lots of helium and heat.” Paaly grimaced, “It’s one of the reasons I called Paul, oddly enough, for what we’re doing now it’s an annoyance we need to get rid of.”
Paul wanted to scream and stamp around, what the hell kind of wild goose chase was Cooper off on now? One of the things that had made Paaly’s escapades supportable was his focus, unlike most PhDs who went wandering down whatever vagrant avenue of investigation piqued their fancy. Until this, whatever this was.
“Paul, don’t give me the sad brown eyed look, I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong. I
haven’t gone off on a wild goose chase; I think we can get more Paul. I’m so close - Paul I got the effect to work on a laboratory scale, in that ten Stack you saw - but when I tried to scale it up it didn’t work and I need it to Paul, I need it to.” The big blue eyes pleaded, but for what?
“Cooper I think you should have stayed the course, man we might be on the road for Stockholm by now if you had, I swear we were close, and if what you say is true we must have been damned close.” Paul shook his head in frustration.
“Damn it Paul that Stockholm thing is crap, we can have the stars! I thought that was what you wanted.” There was an irritated rasping snap to the suddenly aged voice.
“It is Cooper, it was, and if what you say is true we have the stars, but that damned prize would be nice as well, it would fix you for life, and validate my dreams, damn it.”
Cooper laughed, “Then come and validate your dreams Paul, I need your help, you were the only person who seemed to have a good grasp of the theory and the practical implementation and how to solve the problems. I need that Paul, I need it now.” He stopped and looked away, “I need it soon, Paul. I’m dying, got an incurable leukemia that will kill me sometime in the next couple of years and I want to know that this worked. That I gave mankind the stars.”
“Oh Jesus, Cooper!” Paul gasped, suddenly choked by tears, knives of grief cutting him, though he was talking to his friend.
They stared at each other for several silent moments as Paul struggled with his mixed up emotions. Cooper seemed to know that he’d said enough, he simply looked out of the screen at Paul. All Paul’s ennui and frustration percolated through his mind, the memory of the excitement of the early days of Coopertek, of BladePower, tore at the dross of his present life, it was no real contest. Caution and reservations nibbled at the edges but his soul was already lost. Paul sighed, “Where are you Cooper? I’ve got a couple of ongoing jobs but I can work on them on the road and juggle end dates.”
Cooper looked almost sheepish, “I’m out west Paul! Look, I found a patron who was willing to let me work and give me the resources. He can arrange a NetJet for tonight; Paul if you’re here tomorrow we can get started, I don’t know how much time I have.”
That irritated Paul; he could suddenly see being manipulated by this for all it was worth - and he’d probably let Cooper get away with it! “Who’s your patron Cooper? I’d have thought he could find a crackerjack team of engineers for you, I’m nothing special.”
Cooper shook his head, “Paul you have a feel for things that most people don’t, I’ll agree you’re not the greatest mathematician in the world, I always check your calculations, but I swear that at times you have a better feel for what is going on than I do, and you’re definitely a great organizer.”
Paul wasn’t quite sure what to think of that little speech but he supposed he’d been strongly complimented, in a way.
Cooper was nodding his head, “Anyway, I see you’re in DC, you still stay at that soulless Suites Hotel there?”
Paul gritted his teeth, “Yes Cooper.”
“I’ll have Richard’s people pick you up there, probably in an hour or so, he has an office somewhere in DC and I’m sure he can get the flight arranged that quick. Anyway, thanks and I’ll see you tomorrow.” The screen blanked.
For a half hour Paul stewed in his DC hotel room as his reservations fed his native caution. Then he found that the number Cooper had called from was blocked so he couldn’t call the old physicist back to ask some more questions. That provoked a swearing fit that shocked Paul into a calmer state of mind and made him realize that the last few years of gradually more and more technically focused work with little real interaction had made him timid, eroded his confidence in his decisions, at least outside of the technical realm. Once he would have never thought about second-guessing himself, at least not until he had enough information to make a more informed decision.
Paul looked around and suddenly he was no longer worrying about the decision. He was still a little angry with himself for letting the old reprobate manipulate him quite so easily and he had reservations, but he needed to go. Packing was no problem; long practice had made him a very light traveler. He was packed and downstairs waiting before the supposed hour was up, he didn’t check out, still half expecting the whole fantasy to evaporate.
The fantasy continued when a limo glided up to the hotel’s front entrance almost exactly on the hour and a tall, broad and very well dressed man got out. Sitting in the hotel waiting area Paul debated the oddly iconic figure’s history, Marines? Secret Service perhaps? The charcoal gray suit and white shirt with red tie seemed like a form of modern armor as the man strode though the sliding glass airlock. Shadowed dark eyes flicked over Paul and fixed on him as the suit came through the front entrance, “Mr. Richards?”
Paul nodded, the icon continued, “I’m from Aristide Industries Mr. Richards, I was asked to pay your bill here and escort you to a NetJet flight that will take you to one of our facilities.” The voice was perfect, cool, collected, precise, faintly southern, a little clipped. The man had the agent bit down to perfection.
Paul admired it while shrugging, “I can pay my own bill, it’s on the US Government anyway and they’ll get upset if something strange happens.”
The dark eyes surveyed Paul and the large square head bobbed, “If you say so Mr. Richards, are you ready?”
“I need to check out, didn’t want to leave myself without a room for the night if Paaly suddenly had a PhD attack before arranging all this.” This faint jape got absolutely no response. Paul smiled anyway and went and checked out.
Other than the driver the limo ride was ordinary enough, though being delivered out onto the apron was new. He had flown NetJets before; he provided his FlySafe ID to the concierge and climbed aboard.
The pilot was a slim middle aged blonde with a nice smile. “Welcome aboard Mr. Richards, I’m Sarah Chaffey, the pilot, I work for NetJets.” The grin was almost elfin, “We have a contract with Aristide industries to carry people around as needed, and I guess you’re needed.”
“So it would appear, can you tell me where I’m needed, I wasn’t told.” He tried to make it sound normal and she didn’t act surprised.
“Primus Junction, Utah, back of the behind of never, been there a couple of times for Aristide. They’re building a big canal to carry water out of the mountains to some valley everyone thinks will be some kind of new millennium city and bread basket,” she shrugged, stepping aside and waving him up the stairs, “Looks like interesting work while it lasts. You ready to go?”
Paul lifted his two bags, “This is it, I hope they have a Wal-Mart in Primus Junction.”
“No, but it’s only about four hours to Salt Lake City by car, they have all the mod cons there,” she chuckled, as she came up the stairs after him.
He spent most of the flight asleep after half an hour with his pocketbook rearranging his life for the next few weeks.