Ian McDonald - Chaga

His fat friend smiled and nodded sagely.

Gaby McAslan walked back to the SkyNet news van. It was a good angle; the incongruous fusion of Right Stuff and Hippy Chic. The guys in the van much preferred it to the hotels where the rest of the world news were bivouacked. But then, Gaby reckoned they got action every night, in the back of their SkyNet US van. Right now the men were comparing the tape unfavourably with those of previous launches.

‘Night ones are best,’ said the one who called himself Rodrigo. ‘Whole fucking place lights up like a fucking Christmas tree.’

‘Here’s that stuff you asked for,’ said the other, whom Rodrigo called The Man, though he was years younger. ‘What you doing with this anyway?’

‘My job,’ Gaby said, and took the minidisc recorder and pin-head mike. Pin-head Mike would be a better name for The Man than The Man. They were both jerks. Not for the first time since coming to cover the BDO story, Gaby wished she had her Kenya team with her. That could not be; both her men were prisoners of the Chaga; Faraway literally, Tembo in that he had been refused a visa to enter the United States. Potential biohazard threat from exposure to mutagenic substances, the Consulate in Zanzibar had said. You are a black African was the truth. The race and fear barriers were going up already. Gaby had been closer than Tembo to Chaga virons in the last days of Nairobi, but she was the right nationality, the right race, the right colour not to get turned back at the yellow line.

In her room in the Starview Lodge across the lagoon, Gaby wired up and pulled on the ugly uniform she had bribed from the chambermaid at the Kennedy Ramada. She checked herself in the mirror. The recorder was invisible. She had reception call her a taxi to the Ramada. The SkyNet car would have been dangerously obvious. The driver dropped her at the staff entrance.

UNECTA had come in force to Kennedy Space Centre to stage-manage humanity’s close encounter with the Big Dumb Object. They overwhelmed the capacity of NASA’s launch facility. A dozen hotels, motels and travel lodges as far south as Canaveral had been seconded to house the overspill of BDO people and their inevitable entourage of media and society hangers-on. The Kennedy Ramada was the hub of UNECTA Space ’s operations. No press or celebrity sniffers here. The doormen and bell-boys had the scent of a journalist’s soul, and the men in suits they summoned had hard hands. Now that Ellen Prochnow – Chief Executive of UNECTA Space – had taken residence in the Presidential suite, the hard hands had been backed up with big guns. Which was the reason Gaby Mc Asian in her bribed chambermaid’s uniform was hurrying through the kitchens and store areas before someone realized they did not recognize her.

The material had been hard-picked – a hint, a clandestine meeting, a file copied, a database hacked – and painstakingly assembled, but Gaby now had the evidence to put to Ellen Prochnow. UNECTA Space was part-funding Operation Final Frontier with pay-offs from biotech corporations and the armaments manufacturers, seduced by the prospect of developing weapons systems from Chaga biological packages. The humane bomb that destroys the enemy’s ability to wage war without harming humans. Winnable wars. All the letters, faxes, interviews, depositions, codes and passwords were on the disc in her breast pocket. Care to comment, Ms Prochnow?

Gaby nodded to Gloria, her inside woman, in the corridor to the service elevator.

‘She is in, I assure you,’ Gloria whispered.

Her husband has probably already snorted the two thousand dollars up his nose, Gaby thought. Was the makeup a little too heavy around the left eye? Cover. You need cover. She ducked into the laundry room and grabbed a hanger-trolley of clothes ready to be returned to their owners.

‘Next car, please,’ she told the room-valet waiting on the next floor up. All Irish people can do convincing American accents. The illuminated numbers blinked on and off above the door. Gaby amused herself by looking through the clothes on the rail.

She hit the emergency stop button.

Gaby took the hanger down and examined the garment closely. The print on the T-shirt was faded from years of washing, but it was clearly a teenage nun with her habit up, luxuriously masturbating.

Gaby sat in the corner of the elevator for a full minute, staring at the T-shirt while the call button lights flashed. She put the T-shirt back on the rail, went down to ground, pushed the trolley through the lobby to the reception desk and asked for a pen and paper.

‘Give that to Dr M. Shepard, please,’ she said. She left the trolley by the desk and went out the front door, past all the staring political-space-BDO-Chaga people. She had caught a glimpse of a television in the public lounge. A glimpse was enough to identify Ellen Prochnow’s unmistakable First Lady of Space styling, and the words Live Relay in the bottom right corner.

Thanks a lot, Gloria.

Another country, another press conference. So many amphitheatres of seats, so many tables and chairs and carafes of water and nervous scans of the seventh row and the clear of the throat before the ‘Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.’ Getting old, Gaby McAslan. Getting cynical. Getting weary. One last big miracle and wonder and that will do me, all right? Getting lonely, in your seventh seat of the seventh row, with all these faces around you that you know so well, but who never become more than faces.

Has he got that note yet?

No. Don’t think about that. Think about Rodrigo and The Man going to get her that contact with the Pink Underground. That would be a hell of a story to break. The symbs were breeding sub-cultures like clap in a brothel; it was politically inevitable that there would be gay communities springing up in the vast Chagas of Ecuador and southern Venezuela. Not surprising that there should be a secret underground railroad funnelling white norte homosexuals across terminum. No homophobia or persecution there. No fear of the Scourge.

Weeks could pass now without thinking about Jake Aarons.

She thought about Shepard again. It is only two hours since you left him that note. He probably hasn’t got it yet, yet alone meditated on his response. Just what is he doing down here anyway?

Ellen Prochnow was taking this press conference alone. She had never been shy about being seen on the pale blue screen. That was a Chanel suit. Style never goes out of fashion, Coco had said.

God, what if Shepard didn’t show?

Ellen Prochnow did the scan of the seventh row. Hi. It’s me, the one with the red hair, right? You don’t know me yet, but by the time Any Questions is over, we’ll be better acquainted. A whole lot better. Ellen Prochnow did not do the nervous throat-clear. She was a professional.

‘Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.’ The half-smile was very good. ‘Welcome to Kennedy Space Centre for the briefing on Operation Final Frontier Mission 88. Most of you probably know who I am—’ small laughter ‘—but for those who have been on some other planet than this or the Big Dumb Object, I am Ellen Prochnow, Chief Executive of UNECTA Space , and I’ll be introducing you later to the crew and expedition team of Mission 88, the HORUS Arthur C. Clarke.’

How many biotech salarypersons among them, Ellen? Gaby thought. How many weapons analysts?

‘First, the latest on our Big Buddy up there. As of 11:30 GMT September 18, the Big Dumb Object is in a trailing position to Earth at a range of seven hundred and twenty thousand kilometres, slightly under three times the distance between the Earth and the Moon. The Swarm has dropped into a trailing position 15,000 kilometres behind the BDO and we are assuming it has become dormant. Estimated Time To Earth Orbit is two hundred and fifteen hours thirty-eight minutes. Achieved Earth Orbit will be on Thursday September 27 at 10:22 GMT; that’s about twenty past five in the morning EST, or Last Jack Daniels and Then I’ll Get Some Sleep, Florida Journalists’ Time.’