Stephen Baxter - Time

“You don’t have to tell me.”

Emma smiled, feeling tired. “It’s in the gossip columns. He had an affair. I found them together. Well, the marriage was finished. I’ll tell you the strangest thing. I’ve never seen him so unhappy as at that moment.”

In fact it had seemed to her that Malenfant was working to finish it, digging at its foundations: that he had taken a lover only to drive away Emma.

Her e-therapists had said he was reacting to the thwarting of his true ambition. Now that he knew he would never achieve his dreams, Malenfant was playing with the toys of youth one more time before the coffin lid started to creak down over him.

Or maybe, some of the e-therapists argued, it was just some hideous andropause thing.

“The only advantage of e-therapists,” Maura murmured, “is that their horseshit is cheaper than humans’.”

“Well, whatever, it hurt.”

“And it still does. Right?”

Emma shrugged. “Someday I’ll understand.”

“And then you’ll walk out the door?”

“That’s my plan. So. You think we’re going to get through

today?”

“I think so,” Maura said briskly, turning to business. “The danger man is Harris Rutter, from Illinois. One of the Gingrich generation. You know, once they arrive here people never leave, in office or not. You have strata of power, going back decades. Rutter has a lot of power. He’s on a number of appropriations subcommittees, sluiceways for federal money. But Rutter’s power is all negative. He likes to filibuster, raise delaying amendments, stall appointments — all means to frustrate the will of the majority, until he gets his own way, whatever that is. But I think I managed to blindside him this time.” “How?”

“Federal pork. Or at least, the promise of a slice, if Malenfant gets his way.”

“That’s looking a long way ahead, isn’t it?”

“You have to stay ahead of the power curve in this town, Emma,” Maura murmured, and she closed her eyes with a sigh, as her massager went back to work. “Did you know they didn’t let women in this gym until 1985?”

The hearing, here in the Rayburn building, took place in a cramped, old-fashioned conference room cooled by a single inadequate air conditioner. There were two rows of conference tables down the middle of the room, with nameplates for the representatives on one side, and for the testifiers on the other. It was a place of judgment, of confrontation.

Malenfant was here. He looked crisp, calm, confident, composed, his bald pate gleaming like a piece of a weapons system.

Emma looked into his eyes. He looked as innocent and sincere as if he’d just been minted.

Malenfant took the stand, and Emma and Maura took seats side-by-side at the back of the room. Two representatives took the lead: Harris Rutter, the former lawyer, and Mary Howell of Pennsylvania, once a chemical engineer. Both of them were Republicans.

The purpose of the hearing was for Malenfant to justify, once more, why he shouldn’t be shut down. Rutter questioned Malenfant hard about the dubious legality of his operations, particularly his first launch.

Malenfant’s answers were smooth. He allowed himself to sound irritated at the maze of conflicting legislation Bootstrap had had to tiptoe through, and he launched into a rehearsed speech about his manned space program to come: how he had four astronaut candidates already in training, chosen to be representative of the U.S. demographic mix. “It wasn’t hard to find volunteers, sir, even though we emphasized the dangers to them — not of the space mission, but of being grounded without making the flight.” A little sympathetic laughter.

“In this country we have a huge reservoir of expertise in launching space missions, reserves of people laid off by the space and defense industries, people champing at the bit to be let to work again. In my view it’s a crime to waste such a skilled resource.” Then he went on to how the mission was being assembled mainly from components supplied, not by the usual aerospace cartels, but by smaller — sometimes struggling — companies right across the United States. Malenfant was able to outline a glowing future in which the benefits of the new, expansive space program would flow back from the Mojave in terms of profits and jobs to districts right across the country, not least to Illinois and Pennsylvania, home states of his inquisitors.

Emma whispered to Maura, “Laying it on thick, isn’t he?”

Maura leaned closer. “You have to see the big picture, Emma.

Most big pork-barrel projects gain broad support in their early stages, when there are a lot of representatives who can still hope for a slice of the ultimate pie. If Malenfant can promise to bring wealth to as many districts as possible, all for a modest or even zero government outlay, then he’s convincing people at least to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

Malenfant seemed to have survived Rutter’s grilling. But now — to Emma’s surprise — into the attack came Howell, the engineer from Pennsylvania. She was a tough, stockily built woman of about fifty, her defiantly gray hair tied back in a bun. She looked sharp, vigorous, and spoiling for a fight.

“Colonel Malenfant. Bootstrap is about more than engineering, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Howell held up a copy of the Washington Post, with a splash headline about the Feynman radio at Fermilab, an animated picture beneath of Cornelius Taine repeating some Carter-catastrophe sound bite. She quoted, “ ‘Exclusive statements from an Eschatology spokesperson … Fermilab managers furious at the misuse of their facilities.’ “

“That news release was nothing to do with me.”

“Come, Colonel Malenfant. I’ve absolutely no doubt that news management like this goes on only with your tacit approval. So the question is why you feel this kind of message from-the-future mumbo jumbo helps your cause. Now, you have a background in engineering, don’t you, Colonel? As I do.” She eyed him. “I daresay we’re about the same age. So we’ve both witnessed the same changes in our society.”

“Changes?”

“The distrust of technology. The loss of faith in scientists, engineers — in fact, a kind of rejection of the scientific method itself, and of the scientific explanation of the world. Do you agree that we’ve seen a flight to the irrational?”

“Yes. Yes, I agree with that. But I don’t necessarily agree with

your implication, that the irrational is all bad.”

“Oh, you don’t.”

“There are many mysteries science has not dealt with, perhaps never will. What is consciousness? Why does anything exist, rather than nothing? Why am I alive here and now, and not a century ago, or a thousand years from now? We all have to confront such questions in the quiet of our souls, every minute of our lives. And if the irrational is the only place to look for answers, well, that’s where we look.”

Representative Howell rubbed her temples. “But, Colonel Malenfant, you must agree that it is our brains, our science, that have made the world around us. It is science that has given the planet the capacity to carry many billions of people. ‘It is only the intelligent management of the future that can get us through the next decades, assure us of a long-term future.’ I know you agree with that, because it’s a direct quote, from your own company report last year. Now. Let’s not hear any more bullshit philosophizing.”

Maura leaned over to Emma. “Representatives get to edit the Congressional Record. Witnesses don’t, unfortunately.”

“Do you really believe it is responsible to try to gain public support for your highly dubious activities by whipping up hys teria over nonsense about the end of the world and messages from the future?”