John Sandford: Saturn Run

He was to be transported to National Airport, and from there, flown to Kansas City, for further transfer on to Leavenworth.

The first vehicle was an eight-person van, divided into four cells, cages within a cage. Seating was minimal, but not brutal: a city-bus-style plastic seat, with minor alterations to allow the leg chain to be passed through a steel loop welded into the floor. There was enough room that he could stand and stretch.

He was allowed a slate with one book on it for entertainment, no Internet connection. On this day, he was the only passenger. The trip to National would take a half hour, since the federal marshals driving the van were not allowed to exceed the speed limit.

They were moving at precisely eight o’clock in the morning, the time chosen to avoid reporters. The first stop took place four minutes later, outside the old Smithsonian building. The van pulled to the side of the street, and one of the marshals in the front got out, came around to the back, and popped the door. Crow was standing on the curb, and climbed into the cell next to Sandy’s.

“I was wondering when you’d show up. I thought it’d be at National,” Sandy said. Gave him the toothy grin.

“Man, with that smirk, you gotta be even dumber than you look,” Crow said. “You’re on your way to Leavenworth. You know what that means? You’re gonna miss the best part of your life.”

“I’m thinking not,” Sandy said.

“Daddy can’t buy you outa this one, pal. Not gonna happen. And all your shipmates who think you saved their lives? Santeros dropped their petition in the wastebasket. She didn’t even bother to read it.”

Sandy looked down at his slate and flipped a page. Crow couldn’t quite see what he was reading. “Yeah, well. There’s always France. I think they’ll be willing to help out.” Sandy held up the slate: French for Americans .

“You gotta be kidding me.”

“Not at all. I need the refresher—it wasn’t my best subject at Harvard. I’ve always been an admirer of French civilization,” Sandy said. “The philosophy, the painting, the women, the food. The cheese, the mushrooms, the snails. You know. So I thought they’d really be the logical ones to lead the world into the next Renaissance.”

After a moment, Crow said, “You backed up the database, didn’t you? How’d you get it off the ship?”

“I’m gonna give it to the French. They’d ask me nicer.”

“The French? You motherfucker,” Crow said.

Sandy said, “You want to get out now? This is going to be a tiresome ride and I’ve got some serious reading to do.”

A long silence. Crow didn’t move. Then, “What do you want?”

“A pardon from the President,” Sandy said. “I’ll let her cover her ass. You know, ‘We let the trial go on, because we wanted to make a point about discipline. But there are extenuating circumstances, he’s very young and a little dumb, had a good service record’… blah blah blah.”

“We can talk about that,” Crow said.

“And I want an apology. I thought about requiring her resignation, because, you know, she’s quite the serious asshole. But… I guess anyone else would be just as bad.”

“No way she would quit,” Crow said. “Or apologize.”

“You could be wrong about that. If word got out about the stakes involved—the whole future of American technological leadership—I believe the House and Senate might be willing to listen. They don’t like her much, anyway. I think she might resign rather than face impeachment.”

“Word wouldn’t get out,” Crow said. “You’ll be amazed at how secure our prison system can be, when it wants to be. When was the last time you heard a political statement from Ramon Roarty?” Roarty had conceived and planned the Houston Flash; he was now serving a life sentence at Leavenworth.

“I believe the French ambassador might be asking for permission to visit me in Leavenworth,” Sandy said. “To check on rumors of inhumane treatment of prisoners.”

“A request that would be denied.”

“Amidst vast embarrassment. To say nothing of rather pointed inquiries from the Chinese.” Sandy looked thoughtfully through the bars of his cage at the low ceiling of the van. “Maybe I should spread the wealth around. Let the French have the science stuff… they’re no good with tech anyway… and give the alien technology stuff… to who? The Brazilians? They’re really good with machinery.”

For the first time in their entire acquaintance, Sandy saw a hint of surprise in Crow’s eyes. “Now you are fucking with me. It’s not the database? You’ve got a QSU?”

Sandy picked up the slate. “Hmmm, I need to work on my French for ‘fuck.’ That’ll be important,” he muttered. He read something on the slate. “And it’s a little complicated. It’d be embarrassing to use the wrong version of the word. The French are so… intricate… in their sexual ways, don’t you think?”

Another long silence, then, “I can get you the pardon.”

“And the apology…”

“We’ll work out something,” Crow said.

“I have to insist on the apology,” Sandy said. “A really abject one. Handwritten by herself. Signed. I’ll promise to hold it privately until she’s out of office. When she’s out, though, I’m gonna use my grandpa’s money to buy a mansion at Zuma Beach and I’ll put the apology on the wall of the entrance hall. Gonna be so cool. But the pardon has to be public. Like right now.”

“We’ll work it out,” Crow said again. “So. What did you do?”

“I won’t give you the precise details until I’m walking around free,” Sandy said.

“Just tell me. Or I’m getting out and the van can go on to Leavenworth. It’s not the day camp you seem to imagine it is.”

Sandy said, “You remember when I was fabbing the burn box and I had to do those measurements of the QSUs? Well, while Joe was busy building the circuits, I printed up a couple copies of the QSUs. I had my Red photos with perfect color-matching, and the precise scales, and when I finished… I mean, they were perfect. Then, when I was fitting the QSUs into the burn box, I switched a couple of them.”

“Why’d you do that?”

“Because everybody was so worried about what would happen if the Chinese took the ship. It was an obvious possibility, so… why not? If everything worked out, I’d just retrieve them and turn them over to you.”

“How’d you get them off the ship?”

“In my hand-camera case. Took the camera out, put the QSUs inside, sealed it up… and when we evacuated the Chinese from the Odyssey , took a minute to stick it on the far side of the ship with its Post-it pads. I was worried about the battery—that the lack of warmth would kill it. But then I remembered about the radiators. They put enough heat on parts of the hull that the hull actually was warmish, and that’s all I needed. With just a little warmth seeping into the camera case, the battery would last for five years. When we got back…”

“You used your remote to unstick it. The camera case is in orbit.”

“Yup. Saw it pop off the hull myself. It’ll take you about a hundred years to find it, with all the other shit that’s still floating around up there. What I’ll keep to myself, until I get the apology, is exactly what time I let that puppy go. Got it right down to the tenth of a second. With that information, you could find it in an hour.”

“Why’d you wait so long to tell me? Why this whole charade?”

“I think we needed it,” Sandy said. “I think we needed the whole trial, all the theatrics, all the bullshit about doing research on the readers, all the sincerity , to convince the Chinese that we really didn’t have anything, other than the raw science from the I/O. And that’s mostly theory—that’s gonna get out no matter what we do. Probably printed in Nature & Science . In fact, when I thought about it, publishing the science, even the little bit that we have, would set off a lot of research commotion, which would cover up the fact that we have all of it. For a while, anyway.”