Stephen Baxter: Time

Neutral accent. Boston? He looked about forty. She saw no sign of cosmetic enhancement. High cheekbones. Stress muscles around his eyes.

How the hell had he gotten in here?

She reached for the security touchpad under her desk. “I didn’t notice you come in.”

He smiled. He seemed calm, rational, businesslike. She lifted her finger off the button.

He stretched out his hand and she shook it; his palm was dry and soft, as if even his perspiration was under control. But she didn’t enjoy the touch. Like handling a lizard, she thought. She let go of the hand quickly.

She said, “Have we met before?”

“No. But I know of you. Your picture is in the company reports. Not to mention the gossip sites, from time to time. Your complicated personal history with Reid Malenfant.”

He was making her uncomfortable. “Malenfant is kind of high profile,” she conceded.

“You call him Malenfant” He nodded, as if storing away the fact.

“You’re with the corporation, Mr. Taine?”

“Actually it’s Doctor. But please, call me Cornelius.”

“Medical doctor?”

“The other sort.” He waved a hand. “Academic. Mathematics, actually. A long time ago. Yes, in a manner of speaking, I am with Bootstrap. I represent one of your major shareholder groups. That’s what got me past your very conscientious secretary in the outer office.”

“Shareholders? Which group?”

“We work through a number of dummies.” He looked at her desk. “No doubt when you get back to your softscreen you’ll soon be able to determine which, and the extent of our holdings. Ultimately, I work for Eschatology, Inc.”

Oh, shit. Eschatology, as far as she knew, was one of those UFO-hunting nut groups that were attracted to Malenfant’s enterprises like flies.

He watched her, apparently knowing what she was thinking.

“Why are you here, Dr. Taine?”

“Cornelius, please. Naturally we wish to check on how your husband is using our money.”

“Ex-husband. You can do that through the company reports or the press.”

He leaned forward. “But I don’t recall any news releases about this waste-reduction enterprise in the Mojave.”

“You’re talking about the rocket plant. It’s a new project,” she said vaguely. “Speculative.”

He smiled. “Your loyalty is admirable. But you’ve no need to defend Malenfant, Ms. Stoney. I’m not here to criticize or obstruct. Divert, perhaps.”

“Divert what?”

“The trajectory of Reid Malenfant’s covert activities. I’m talking about his true purpose, beneath all the misdirection.”

“True purpose?”

“Come now. You don’t think anyone believes an entreprene with Malenfant’s track record is reconditioning man-rated rocket engines just to burn industrial waste, do you?” He studied her. “Or perhaps you truly don’t know the truth. How remarkable. In that case we both have much to learn.” He smiled easily. “We believe Malenfant’s motives are sound — that’s why we invest in him — although his objectives are too narrow. I saw his speech in Delaware the other night. Impressive stuff: colonizing the Galaxy, immortality for humankind. Of course, he hasn’t thought it through.”

“Would you believe me if I said I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about?”

“Oh, yes.” He eyed her. His eyes were a pale blue, the color of the skies of her California childhood, long gone. “Yes, now that I’ve met you, I believe you. Perhaps we understand your ex-husband better than you do.”

“And what is it you understand about him?”

“That he’s the only man who can save the human race from the coming catastrophe.” He said it without inflection.

She had absolutely no idea how to reply. The moment stretched.

Once more she wondered if this man was dangerous.

On impulse, she decided to cancel the rest of her day and drive out to Malenfant’s desert operation. Maybe, all things considered, it was time to see it for herself. And she invited Cornelius along for the ride.

She called ahead to let Malenfant know she was on the way. But, working on the principle that she should never miss a chance to make Malenfant’s life more difficult, she didn’t warn him about Cornelius Taine.

Out of Vegas she took the 1-15, the main route to L.A. 300 miles away. Out of town she was able to cut in the SmartDrive. The car’s limiter, controlled by the invisible web of satellites far above, switched out as the automatic control took over, and her speed rose smoothly through 150 miles per hour.

As the sun climbed, the air grew hotter. She rolled up her window, felt the air-conditioning cool and moisten the air.

Without warning Cornelius said, as if resuming an interrupted conversation, “Yes, the Delaware speech was interesting. But something of a throwback for Malenfant. He’s usually much more discreet about his true ambitions.”

When Malenfant had first started making money, as a small-scale aerospace consultant, he had spread himself over the media arguing for an expansion of American effort in space: a new generation of heavy launchers, new manned vehicles, a return to the Moon. He talked about the riches waiting in space, escape from Malthusian limits to growth, the ability to save the species from such calamities as an asteroid collision with the Earth, and so forth. The usual space-buff propaganda.

“The image Malenfant built of himself was clear,” Cornelius said. “Here was a man who was rich and was destined to get richer, and who was clearly prepared to throw some of his money at the old dreams of space. But then his businesses started to struggle. Isn’t that true?”

It was true. Investors had grown wary of this talk-show visionary. Space was important for business, but business only cared about the constellations of utilitarian satellites in low Earth orbit, for communications and weather and surveillance. Thus far and no farther.

And Malenfant attracted no support from serious agencies — particularly from NASA. NASA had long grown wary of frightening away its political backers by thinking too big, and was focused on doing sexy science with small, cheap, unmanned probes while sustaining the careers and empires associated with the giant bureaucracy that ran the manned -space program, with its aging shuttle fleet and a half-built and much-delayed space station.

In fact Malenfant himself started to attract unwelcome personal attention. There were barroom psychoanalysts all over the media who found a common pattern in his failure to have kids, his frustrated ambition to fly in space, and his lofty ambitions for the future of humankind. And then there were the kooks — the conspiracy theorists, the UFO nuts, the post-New Age synthe-sists, the dreaming obsessives — none of whom had anything to offer Malenfant but bad PR.

Then along had come the yellow babies in Florida, and even NASA space launches were suspended, and that seemed to be that.

As Cornelius talked, she discreetly booted up the car’s soft-screen and referenced Cornelius Taine.

Thirty-eight years old. Born in Texas, not that you’d know it from the accent. Once a professional mathematician, an academic. Brilliant was the word used in the brief bio she found.

A full professor at Princeton at twenty-seven. Washed out at thirty.

She couldn’t find out why, or what he’d been doing since then. She set off a couple of data miners to answer those questions for her.

After the yellow babies, Malenfant had regrouped.

He disappeared from the TV screens. He continued to fund educational efforts — books, TV shows, movies. Emma, working within the Bootstrap corporation, saw no harm in that, nothing but positive PR, and tax-efficient besides. But in public Malenfant largely withdrew from his propagandizing, and withheld any investment from what he started to call the “pie-in-the-sky stuff.”