Arthur Clarke - Firstborn

“All right. But we’ll have to look at the wider implications.

What to tell the people, or not. How to prepare for the incoming anomaly, whatever it is.”

“We’ll need more data before we can do that.”

“And what do we tell those we report to?”

Paxton said, “As far as the politics go it’s essential we make sure our mandate and capability aren’t diluted by politico bull. And, Chair, if you’re agreeable, for the briefing I’ll incorporate material gathered by the Committee.”

She felt the hairs on her neck prickle a warning; after most of a lifetime at the upper levels of large organizations she knew when a trap was being set. “You mean your Committee of Patriots.”

He smiled, sharklike. “You should come visit us sometime, Madam Chair. We work out of the old Navy Special Projects Office in DC; a lot of us are old navy fliers of one stripe or another. Our mission, grant you it’s self-appointed, is to monitor the responses of our governments and super-government agencies to the alien inter-vention that led to the sunstorm, and the ongoing emergency since.

Once again your predecessor didn’t want to know about this. I believe he thought dabbling with the wacko fringe would damage his fine career. But now we really do have something out there, Madam Chair, a genuine anomaly. Now’s the time to listen to us, if you’re ever going to.”

Again it was hard to gainsay that. “I feel you’re drawing me into an argument, Bob. Okay, subject to my veto.”

“Thank you. There’s one specific.”

“Go on.”

“One beef the Committee has always had has been with the almost willful way the authorities have never followed up the hints of the alien. Developing our own weaponry and armor is one thing, but to ignore the enemy’s capability is criminal. However we do know of someone who might be our way in to that whole murky business.”

“Who?”

“A woman called Bisesa Dutt. Ex British Army. Long story.

She’s the reason why I came to London today; she has a base here.

But she’s not around, or her daughter. Since arriving here I got word she may have booked herself into a Hibernaculum in the States, under an assumed name. Of course she may have moved on from there by now.” He eyed Bella. “With your permission I’ll track her down.”

She took a breath. “I have the authority for that?”

“If you want it.” He left it hanging.

“All right. Find her. Send me your file on her. But stay legal, Admiral. And be nice.”

He grinned. “All part of the service.”

Paxton was happy, she saw suddenly. He had been waiting for this moment, waiting out the whole of his anticlimactic life since his heroic days on Mars during the sunstorm. Waiting for the sky to fall again.

Bella suppressed a shudder. As for herself, she only hoped she could avoid creating any more James Duflots.

Myra got Bisesa out of the Hibernaculum and took her to Florida.

They flew in a fat-bodied, stub-winged plane. It was driven by a kind of air-breathing rocket called a scramjet. Bisesa still felt frail, but she used to ride helicopters in the army, and she studied this new generation of craft — new to a sleeper like her, anyhow — with curiosity. A jaunt across the continent, from Arizona to Florida, was nothing; this sturdy vessel really came into its own on very long-haul flights when it had the chance to leap up out of the atmosphere altogether, like a metallic salmon.

But the security was ferocious. They even had to submit to searches and scans in flight. This paranoia was a legacy not just of the sunstorm but of incidents when planes and spaceplanes had been used as missiles, including the destruction of Rome a couple of years before the storm.

Security was in fact an issue from the beginning. Bisesa had come out of her Hibernaculum pod without the latest ident tattoos.

There was an office of the FBI maintained on site at the Hibernaculum to process patients like her, refugees from slightly more innocent days — and to make sure no fugitives from justice had tried to flee through time. But Myra had come to Bisesa’s room with a boxy piece of equipment that stamped a tattoo onto Bisesa’s face, and she gave her an injection she described as “gene therapy.” Then they had slipped out of the Hibernaculum through a goods entrance without going anywhere near that FBI office.

Since then they had passed every check.

Bisesa felt faintly disturbed. Whoever Myra had hooked up with evidently had significant resources. But she trusted Myra implicitly, even though this was a strange new Myra, suddenly aged and embittered, a new person with whom she was, tentatively, building a new relationship. Really, she had no choice.

They deplaned at Orlando and spent a night at a cheap tourist hotel downtown.

Bisesa was faintly surprised that people still shuttled around the world to destinations like this. Myra said it was mostly nostalgic.

The latest virtual reality systems, by interfacing directly with the central nervous system, were capable even of simulating the sensation of motion, acceleration. You could ride a roller coaster around the moons of Jupiter, if you wanted. What theme park could com-pete with that? When the last of the pre-sunstorm generations gave up chasing their childhood dreams and died off, it seemed likely that most people would rarely venture far from the safety of their bunkerlike homes.

They ate room service food and drank minibar wine, and slept badly.

The next morning, a driverless car was waiting outside the hotel for them. It was of an odd, chunky design that Bisesa didn’t recognize.

Cocooned, they were driven off at what felt like a terrific speed to Bisesa, with the traffic a hairsbreadth close. She wasn’t sorry when the windows silvered over, and she and Myra sat in a hum-ming near-silence, with only the faintest of surges to tell them that they were speeding out of the city.

When they drew to a halt the doors slid back, allowing bright sunlight to flood into the car, and Bisesa heard the cries of gulls, and smelled the unmistakable tang of salt.

“Come on.” Myra clambered out of the car, and helped her mother follow stiffly.

It was March, but even so the heat hammered down on Bisesa.

They were on a stretch of tarmac — not a road or a parking lot, it looked more like a runway, stretching off into the distance, lined with blockhouses. On the horizon she saw gantries, some of them orange with rust, so remote they were misted with distance. To the north — it had to be that way, judging from the wind blowing off the sea — she saw something glimmering, a kind of line scratched onto the sky, tilted a little away from the vertical. Hard to see, elu-sive, perhaps it was some kind of contrail.

There couldn’t be any doubt where she was. “Cape Canaveral, right?”

Myra grinned. “Where else? Remember you brought me here on a tourist trip when I was six?”

“I expect it’s changed a bit since then. This is turning into quite a ride, Myra.”

“Then welcome back to Canaveral.” A young man approached them; a smart suitcase trundled after him. Ident-tattooed, he was sweating inside a padded orange jumpsuit plastered with NASA logos.

“What are you, a tourist guide?”

“Hi, Alexei,” Myra said. “Don’t mind my mother. After nineteen years she got out of bed on the wrong side.”

He stuck out his hand. “Alexei Carel. Good to meet you, Ms.

Dutt. I suppose I am your guide for the day — sort of.”

Twenty-five or twenty-six, he was a good-looking boy, Bisesa thought, with an open face under a scalp that was shaven close, though black hair sprouted thickly, like a five o’clock shadow. He looked oddly uncomfortable, though, as if he wasn’t used to being outdoors. Bisesa felt like an ambassador from the past, and wanted to make a good impression on this sunstorm boomer. She gripped his warm hand. “Call me Bisesa.”