‘Don’t touch it,’ he called after them. ‘You’re frightening it.’
‘All right.’ Victor’s voice was faint from behind the vines.
Wilson carried on down the gravel. He didn’t hurry, he was enjoying the day too much. He’d come out of his latest rejuvenation three years ago, and this was a time-out life, intended as a complete sabbatical from all corporate activity. Everybody needed one now and again, especially at the kind of executive level he lived his normal lives.
After the debacle of the Mars mission, Wilson had returned to an Earth that began to change on an almost daily basis as the implications of wormhole technology were realized. In the second half of the twenty-first century, space exploration, of course, was the biggest boom industry there could possibly be. Except, this was no longer the kind of space exploration he knew anything about. What CST actually conducted was planetary surveys, the province of geologists and xenobiologists; they weren’t interested in the void between the stars, there was no striving to bridge the distance. With wormholes, there simply was no distance any more.
A lot of the old NASA teams left to join the burgeoning CST when the agency folded not six months after Kime’s ignoble return. But they all had to start from scratch again, retraining, acquiring different skills. It wasn’t the same; they weren’t special any more, it was just another company job – albeit a spectacular one. The change affected some people more than others. The last Wilson heard of poor old Dylan Lewis, the ex-commander had taken over a bar in Hawaii, and was steadily and relentlessly drinking his way to full liver failure, whilst making an ass of himself with any passing woman who paused to hear his ‘old space hero’ story.
Wilson escaped the whole scene altogether. He was smart enough to see the kind of requirements which the new planets would make upon the old, the desperate need for infrastructure and development. People weren’t going to live in their new promised lands without some basic civil services in place; and as local economies took off, so they’d be wanting upgrades – fast. The manufacturing of both heavy and medium engineering products was the new growth industry. With his super-intensive NASA technological training, and his military background, Wilson had no trouble getting himself a divisional manager slot in a company called KAD Components, which produced a range of parts for larger companies. Three years later he was on the board with a decent share option scheme when they were bought out. By 2103, seven mergers and acquisitions later, he was secure as an executive director on the board of Farndale Engineering, one of the new multiplanet colossi which had prospered and expanded in parallel with phase one space. He now had enough new share options to buy a small nation, and Farndale were just moving into the consortium partnership which would ultimately fund Los Vada. After that it was a simple linear progress as the centuries went by, his own fortunes and influence rising with the company until his own extensive family’s private wealth moved into the realm enjoyed by Earth’s Grand Families.
Twice in the last eighty years he’d been chairman of Farndale. It was a position which took up twenty-five hours in the day, leaving no time for anything other than dealmaking and politicking. His old traits of discipline and ease of command served as excellent foundations for his tenures, enabling him to score several notable victories against rival companies during those heady decades. Shareholders and fellow board members alike were satisfied with his performance; and everyone knew that within a century he’d be rotated into Los Vada’s chief executive chair. But board leadership came with a cost, the constant stress acted like an accelerated ageing mechanism. Both times, he had to seek rejuvenation years earlier than he normally would, due to the strain which running the company placed on his body.
That was one of the reasons he’d decided to take a sabbatical this time around. For once he was going to sit back and enjoy the worlds and wealth he’d created. So far it had been a success. He’d even surprised himself with the enthusiasm he’d shown for the vineyards and general estate management. The current batch of children produced by his huge extended family loved having him around. It was details again, he concentrated on details, using his abilities to solve every problem the family threw up; only the scale was different to before. He had plans to extend and refurbish the chateau. There were lots of places he would like to visit just as a tourist, cities with their unique festivals and carnivals to experience, different landscapes, exotic species. He was also open-minded about marrying again, perhaps this time finding a wife in a way that didn’t seem too much like negotiating a company deal. All these events were out there waiting for him, a swift taxi ride from any CST station. He’d even started drawing up an itinerary, a grand tour that would take over eight years to complete. Not even Bose’s discovery of Dyson Alpha’s envelopment event had distracted him; he had faith that Farndale’s current board was capable of dealing with any problems and opportunities it created. Although the news that a starship was to be constructed had given him a momentary twinge of nostalgia.
The children emerged from the vine rows to race along the gravel road again. Wilson didn’t try to stop them. They were happy. He would have given a lot to have had a childhood like theirs. His main concern was that they grew up with some sense of dignity and responsibility. An environment like the chateau could give any kid a very messed up sense of his or her own importance. Rich kids were notorious brats at the best of time, a situation not helped by York5, where they were all heirs to the throne. At the same time, he didn’t want to send them away to school.
Above the western mountains, a lone contrail streaked across the open sky. He stood to watch it go, impressed as ever by the speed and the lack of any sonic boom. Everybody here used hypersonics to reach their estates from the CST gateway. But the velocity which the modern planes could reach in the atmosphere was imposing, even to him. To go any faster you’d have to use a semi-ballistic hop, actually skimming above the upper atmosphere. The designs for such craft had been around for a long time, it was just a question of development funding. After all, the demand was very small. Planes were used on standard Commonwealth worlds, but normal commercial passenger jets flew at around Mach three, which was good enough for airlines. It was only the residents of worlds like York5 who were impatient with that speed.
Wilson heard a low whoosh of air behind him as if a phantom had just rushed by. Leaves on the nearest vines fluttered. He frowned, and turned. The sight which greeted him sent a cold shock running down his nerves. A wormhole had opened not twenty feet away, perfectly circular, twelve feet in diameter, its base holding steady a couple of inches above the gravel. A man in an expensive lavender business suit stepped out. He gave Wilson a tenuous, apologetic smile, and then said: ‘Yo dude, how’s it hanging?’
Wilson took three quick steps, bringing him right up to the interloper, and swung a fist. His knuckles connected with a satisfactory crunch, and a burst of pain.
‘Fuck!’ Nigel Sheldon tumbled backwards, landing on his ass in the dry grass. Two CST security personnel stepped smartly out of the wormhole, arms pointing at Wilson. Their suit sleeves rippled slightly. An annoyed Nigel Sheldon waved them back. ‘It’s okay,’ he said, then grimaced, and brought a hand up to his jaw. ‘Damn, that hurt.’
Wilson glowered down. ‘It was supposed to, you little shit.’ The children came running up, stopping in confusion at the tableau.
‘Wilson!’ Victor yelled. ‘That’s . . .’
‘I know who it is,’ Wilson said sharply.
‘Oh this is great,’ Nigel grunted indignantly as he struggled to his feet. ‘Three hundred and thirty goddamn years, and you’re still pissed at me?’
‘Three hundred. Three thousand. Nothing changes what you did.’
Nigel was poking a forefinger into his mouth. ‘Ouch. I think you loosened a tooth.’
‘You hurt my knuckles.’ Wilson shook his hand: the damn thing was, it really did hurt. He hadn’t been in a brawl since his air force academy days; the streetwise how-to had evaporated over the interveni
ng centuries.
‘Are you going to do that again?’ Nigel asked.
‘Are you?’
‘Okay, okay, so this entrance isn’t supremely tactful of me.’ Nigel eyed Wilson’s grazed hand wearily. ‘But I wanted to make an impression.’
‘You did that back at Schiaparelli.’
‘This is important, damn it.’
‘What is?’ Wilson was having to work hard at not being impressed. The fact was, he hadn’t heard of a wormhole being used like this before, not to touch base with an individual – unless you counted the rumours about Ozzie. Gateways were hugely expensive links between worlds with a very long pay-back time, not personal transport machines, even if that person was Nigel Sheldon. Wilson supposed he was using the CST exploratory division gateway back on Augusta to open this tunnel across interstellar space. He didn’t like to think of the cost. ‘I do have an e-butler address code if there’s anything urgent, you know. You could use the unisphere like the rest of the human race.’
‘We both know I’m not on your e-butler acceptance list, and I needed to talk to you urgently.’
‘Why? What the hell is all this about?’
‘I need a favour.’
Wilson started laughing.
‘Yeah, all right,’ Nigel said sourly. ‘Very funny. Now try this on for size. We’re building a starship to go to Dyson Alpha.’
‘I heard. There’s been nothing else in the unisphere news for over a month.’
‘But you didn’t join the dots too good, did you? We can build a ship, but the kind of experienced astronauts we need to crew it, and especially captain it, are kind of in short supply in this era.’
Wilson abruptly stopped laughing. ‘Son of a bitch.’
‘Oh. Do I have your attention now?’
‘Why me?’ Wilson was surprised by how weak his voice had become.
‘There’s no one else left, Captain Kime. You’re the last space cadet left in the galaxy. We need you.’
‘This is bullshit. You’ve got tens of thousands of people in your exploratory division.’
‘We do indeed. Good kids; great, even. Not one of which has ever been out of contact with the unisphere in their first, second, or even sixth life. You, on the other hand, you know what it’s like to be shut up in a metal bubble for months on end, you can handle the isolation, the stress; you can keep command of people under those circumstances. It’s a lot different to issuing orders down the corporate chain, and having some middle management jerk leap to it. Experience is always valuable, you know that. No false modesty, Wilson, we both know how successful you’ve been. I mean, look where we’re standing right now. There aren’t many of us even today who can recreate a five-thousand-square-mile chunk of a France that never really existed outside romantic literature. You’ve got that, what did you call it, the right stuff?’
‘Old phrase,’ Wilson muttered as the really ancient memories began their inevitable replay. He always swore he’d dump them into deep secure storage at every rejuvenation, clear them out of his brain along with all the other irrelevant clutter so there would be space for the new life. Each time, he never did. A weakness for nostalgia. He’d so nearly been a contender for true greatness rather than the corporate chieftain he’d actually become. Even today a lot of people knew who Neil Armstrong was. But Dylan Lewis? Not a chance.
‘Well dust off your copy, man, because it’s about to become fashionable again.’
Wilson stared at the edge of the open wormhole, the dark shimmer of nothingness which very few people actually got to see first hand. ‘Is this a serious offer?’ he asked quietly.
‘Absolutely. It’s your gig if you want it. I hope you do. I mean that sincerely. The more I think about Dyson Alpha, how strange it is, the more I want someone I can really trust in charge out there.’
‘Grandpa?’ Emily gazed up in newfound awe at her ancestor. ‘Are you going to fly the starship, Grandpa? Really?’
‘Looks like it, poppet.’ Wilson patted the girl’s head. He hadn’t even needed to think about it, the response had been automatic. ‘Give me a few days,’ he told Nigel. ‘I’ve got to sort things out here.’
‘Sure thing, man.’ Nigel smiled broadly, and stuck his hand out. ‘Welcome aboard.’
Wilson considered it, but not shaking would just be churlish. ‘Just so we’re completely clear on this, you’re not thinking of joining the crew yourself, are you?’
‘No. We’re clear on that.’
*
Anshun was on the very edge of phase two space, two hundred and seventeen light-years from Earth, and almost directly between the old world and the Dyson Pair. That location had been quite a factor in CST siting its new phase three exploration division there. Boongate, sixty light-years away, already had a second gateway leading to Far Away, and its government had been hopeful that CST would follow that up with the exploration station. It was not to be. Far Away was a dead end. Anshun would help extend the human frontier towards the Dyson Pair.
Not that much expansion had been notable in the eight years since the division had been established at the CST planetary station; a mere two planets had been opened up. But Anshun now possessed a quiet confidence about the years to come. It was going to be the junction for this entire new sector of space. Over the next century its economy and population would rise until it matched any of the successful phase one worlds. Its future was secure.
Wilson Kime grinned privately at the peculiar sensation of dèjá vu as the passenger express from Los Vada slipped smoothly into the CST planetary station in Treloar, Anshun’s capital. The outside air here was hot and muggy from the nearby coast, just like Houston used to be. He could remember arriving at the NASA Space Centre for his first day of training, the sun prickling his exposed skin with its heat. The uniform government-issue buildings of that campus had looked surprisingly shabby in the bright light, especially given what happened inside them. Somehow he’d expected the structures to be a little less industrial, a little more grandiose.
That, too, was the same here on Anshun. Two members of CST’s exploration division were waiting for him on the platform. They showed him to a small station car, which drove through the vast empty area contained inside the perimeter fence which was destined to become the junction yard, where dozens of gateways and hundreds of busy tracks would route transport out to the new stars at some unspecified date. Right now, the landscape around him was almost ironically post-industrial. Long strips of enzyme-bonded concrete were laid out on the ground, slowly-buckling roads for a mini city that never existed. The soil between them supported dispirited clumps of local grass and spindly weeds, cut up with curving tyre ruts of baked clay that would form puddles after every downpour. Abandoned heavy-duty vehicles were scattered about, metal sections moulting flakes of rust, composite bodywork bleached to a bland off-white, window glass smashed in, car-sized tyres flat and calcified. Big fornrush birds glided above the area in wide spirals as their black wings captured the thermals. They were sleek scavengers, hunting down smaller rodents; though their catch was poor out here.
It made the brand-new dual carriageway which he was driving along seem strangely out of place, ahead of its time. A twin rail track ran parallel with it, also newly laid, linking the station’s marshalling yard with the starship project complex ahead. He saw a single DFL25 shunting engine rolling slowly in the opposite direction to him, pushing eight empty flatbed carriages ahead of it, the only sign of movement within five miles.
It took ten minutes driving across the unused wilderness to reach the starship project. A long row of windowless pearl-white buildings materialized out of the powerful heat shimmer, protected by a six-metre-high fence. Guardbots trundled along the foot of it on an eternal patrol, smooth conical bodies concealing the weapons and sensors they were equipped with. There were three human guards on the gates. Wilson was scanned twice before they let him through, saluting smartly as he passed.
This whole complex reeked of money. He was familiar e
nough with fast-track projects to see an extraordinary amount of cash had been spent in a short period of time. Inside the fence, long strips of newly laid turf of local whitegrass was neat and trimmed. Car parking spaces had names on the asphalt in fresh paint. The buildings were made from the new low-friction surface panelling which the construction industry was currently obsessed with, giving them a perpetually clean appearance. There were high doors set into most walls, all of them closed, with silvery rail lines running underneath the bottom edge. A row of pylons was visible at the back of the complex, stretching off towards the city’s largest industrial precinct, supporting slim red superconductor cables. The project was using up a lot of power.
Three stumpy, circular glass towers made up the heart of the complex, joined together at the base by soaring sheets of glass that looked like a solidified pavilion roof. The entrance lobby they formed was a huge atrium, with crystal pillars containing exotic big-leafed plants. A lot of people were hurrying across the stone floor, all of them with intent expressions. Work here was a serious thing.
Daniel Alster stood beside the long reception counter. He greeted Wilson warmly, introducing himself. ‘Mr Sheldon apologizes for not being here to welcome you personally, he’s in a meeting which is overrunning quite badly.’
Wilson gave the lobby a thoughtful look, cementing his impression of unlimited budgets. Farndale had mounted big projects often enough, but that was different; their offices were built in cities, factories in industrial estates. They belonged. It must be the complex’s relative isolation which gave it such a sense of importance and urgency. ‘You mean Sheldon is managing the starship project himself?’ he asked.
‘Not the day-to-day details, no. But it is certainly high up on his schedule. He was quite relieved when you agreed to accept the captaincy.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. I understand you’ll be taking over a number of administration procedures.’