Michael Kube-McDowell - The Quiet Pools

“What do you mean?”

“You’re not like them. You’ve lived a life of the mind. You have more respect for the power of thought than most of us do for the power of God. I’m not sure that you can credit a motive that you can’t understand. I don’t know if you can see it in them if you can’t see it in yourself.”

Tidwell’s gaze narrowed into a rebuke. “I’m familiar with the dangers of egocentrism.”

“A story?”

“If you wish.”

Keith folded his arms and leaned against the doorjamb. “I suppose you know that this used to be the headquarters for NASA’s astronaut corps. For obvious reasons, we were interested in their astronaut selection procedures, and so we acquired their records. We found in looking at them that every time NASA announced openings, they got hundreds of applications from people who had to know that they had no chance to be picked, who didn’t begin to meet even the minimum requirements.”

“Dreamers and optimists,” said Tidwell. “This is not surprising.”

“Maybe not,” Keith said. “One of our genetic historians got ambitious and traced the descendants of twenty of those dreamers. Every one of them has at least one blood relative in our selection bank.”

“Chance. Each must have dozens of relatives. And millions held selection options.”

“She traced two control groups from the same era as well. The correlation there was less than five in twenty.”

“Which does not rule out chance. Nor the influence of the family environment.”

“Skeptics can always fall back on chance,” Keith said.

“Is there something wrong with being a skeptic, with insisting on evidence and causality?”

Keith sighed. “No. Dr. Tidwell, I’m not here to convince you of anything. You asked us to make these arrangements, and we did. I’ll be available if you have any problems or needs.”

“You are frustrated with me.”

He shrugged. “Not my place to be.”

“But you are. Why?”

“Because it’s so clear to me, and you have so much trouble seeing it.”

“Exactly what is clear?”

There were voices in the street, and Keith glanced over his shoulder in their direction. “That they don’t really know why they’re going,” he said quietly. “They only know that they want to.”

“What persuades you of that, Mr. Keith?”

Keith turned back and showed a faint smile. “Because I want to go, too, Dr. Tidwell. And I don’t really know why, either.”

When Keith was gone, Tidwell granted himself license to explore the house. The salutary effect of the house’s enfeebled air-conditioning vanished the moment he started upstairs. The air there was stagnant and hothouse stuffy. Unless the nights were markedly cooler, sleeping would be a challenge.

He found the empty bedroom and, in it, his trunk of clothing, delivered ahead by the Selection office. Leaving for later the task of unpacking it, Tidwell extended his license to entering the other, already occupied bedrooms—two up, one down.

Tidwell did not see it as a violation of privacy. Most of the pioneers’ personal belongings—250 kilograms each—would be shipped directly from their homes up to Memphis through Prainha or Kasigau. He reasoned that what his housemates chose to bring with them while camping out in Houston might reveal something of their personality, and so was germane to his purpose there.

Still, he was careful not to disturb anything that might betray his trespass, contenting himself with what he could see. He peeked in a closet, but not in a suitcase; at the objects arrayed on a wobbly-legged dresser, but not in its drawers.

He took note of several travel and geography volumes in a file of chipdisks—perhaps someone trying to plan how to spend their last days on Earth? He startled at finding candles and Wiccan icons in the single ground-floor bedroom—surely more appropriate to a Homeworlder than a pioneer?

All data were preliminary, all conclusions provisional. He would not judge them until he had met them.

The back windows of the house looked out on turgid Cow Bayou and the tall double fence running along its far bank. The fences marked the south boundary of the center; when he stepped out onto the small patio deck, he could see the south gate tower and bridge half a kilometer upstream.

He also saw something that surprised him. Scattered along the outer fence, all the way from the tower to where the bayou emptied into Clear Creek, were dozens of people standing in ones and twos and threes, almost like statues. The phrase “outside looking in” popped into Tidwell’s head.

Starheads , Tidwell thought. Those must be starheads . Some of the groups closest to Tidwell noticed him and began shouting something unintelligible across the water. He raised a hand in acknowledgment and salute. Perhaps I should talk to some of them as well, go and stand with them for a day —

They were still shouting, but try as he might he could not make out the words, any more than he could make out their faces. He waved one more time and turned to enter the house. As he did, he caught a reflection of sound off the metallic siding, a shrieking high-pitched voice.

“Bastard,” was what he thought he heard, “bastard pig bastard—”

His head whipped around and he stared, unbelieving. The three figures nearest to him, almost directly across the bayou, were contorted by the body language of hostility, jumping, fists raised. Others were hurrying along the fence to join them. Someone somewhere was beating on the fence itself, a metallic rattle like clashing swords.

From the direction of the gate tower came the muffled roar of a gasoline motor; moments later, tearing his gaze away from the enraged, now fifteen or twenty strong, Tidwell caught sight of a small boat racing bow-high toward the commotion. When he realized that the boat carried the Allied Transcon logo and the grim-looking men aboard it wore Security armor, Tidwell, still bewildered, fled back into the house.

Shaken, Tidwell watched from behind the heavy drapes shrouding the window of the onetime dining room as the Security boat slowly circled and the gathering slowly dispersed. Tidwell wished for some sort of binoculars; it almost seemed as though those beyond the fence were celebrating as they scattered, finding some sort of victory in the episode.

Fifteen minutes later, all was as it had been before Tidwell pulled back the sticky sliding door and stepped outside. The boat stopped circling and returned upstream. The watchers—not starheads, certainly, though Tidwell was at a loss for what to call them—took up their stations along the fence.

And Tidwell retreated to his room, where he hastily recorded an account of the episode and then began to unpack his luggage. From time to time, he would peek out through the drapes to see if the watchers were still there. They always were, and Tidwell found himself grateful when the first of his housemates returned and he was no longer alone.

Tidwell met them all that night. The travel books belonged to Evans, a tall, barrel-chested judge-arbitrator from Chicago. Genial as he was large, Evans plied Tidwell with questions as he swept through the house, scooping up what passed for a meal and changing into fresh clothing before vanishing out the front door a half hour later.

By contrast, Colas, the young Canadian environmental engineer, had as little personality as his room had revealed. His angular face had deep worry lines worked into it, and when he excused himself to go upstairs and study, mumbling something about having to work out calibrations for six systems, Tidwell made no attempt to deflect him.

Last to return was the most interesting of the three, the bodywork counselor, Malena Graham. Her airchair was as much of a surprise as the altar in her room had been. Her spirit seemed as light as her limbs were leaden.