Clarke County, Space Read online

  He sat down on the bench next to me. One of the bar robots—a concession to modern times, albeit not as charming as a waitress—rolled out onto the deck. McCoy ordered a Coke and I asked for a Dos Equis. The hell with my doctor’s admonition to stay away from alcohol; if you can’t drink beer in retirement, then what good are your so-called golden years? After McCoy had slipped in his credit card with instructions to run a tab, the robot disappeared back through the sliding door. He gazed at the stumpy little machine as it exited. “If it still existed I would have asked you to meet me at Diamondback Jack’s.”

  I shook my head. “Jack’s hasn’t been around for twenty years. It burned down in …”

  Then I stopped. Diamondback Jack’s had been a beer joint on Route 3 on Merritt Island, a dive for pro spacers which only the locals had known about. How could someone this young know Jack’s? It was hardly the kind of place where someone would put up a historical marker. “How do you know about Diamondback Jack’s?” I asked.

  McCoy shrugged nonchalantly. “I’m something of a history buff. When I visit a place I like to snoop around. Find out some local history, that sort of thing.” He waved his hand towards the distant launch pads up the coast. “I guess we’ll have to settle for this.”

  “No loss,” I replied. “If we sit here long enough we’ll probably see a launch. The weather’s good, and Uchu-Hiko usually sends up a cargo vessel on Wednesdays. It beats looking at pictures of dead men in a broken-down bar.”

  McCoy laughed, absently fondling his Panama hat in his hands. “I’m surprised. One would think, as long as you’ve been here, writing about space, you would be too jaded to watch rocket launches.”

  I was about to reply, when the robot rolled back out onto the deck, its tray loaded with our drinks. McCoy picked up his Coke and raised it to me. “To your health.”

  “Such as it is,” I grumbled, tapping my bottle against his glass. Time to end the small talk. “When you called me you said you knew something which might interest me. Mr. McCoy, I hope you’re not a writer and this isn’t a ploy for an interview. I stopped giving ‘last of the breed’ interviews years ago.”

  He shook his head. “Nothing of the kind. Please, call me Simon.”

  “Okay then, Simon, what’s on your mind?”

  “I understand you’re writing a new book,” he said casually. “About the Clarke County incident a couple years ago. The Church of Elvis, Icarus Five, the evacuation and all that.”

  I was taking a sip when he said this. His words made me choke and sputter; beer sprayed over the knees of my trousers. “Goddammit!” I snarled.

  “Oh! Terribly sorry.” Instantly apologetic, he pulled a handkerchief out of his coat pocket and hurriedly began sopping at my pants.” I didn’t mean to get that kind of …”

  I knocked his hand away. “Who told you about my book?” I demanded.

  It was a serious matter. If McCoy had said I was fooling around with someone else’s wife, it was something I could have denied. If he had simply inquired about my new book, I would have told him that I was cranking out another SF potboiler. Neither inquiry would have upset me. But there were only a few people, supposedly, who knew that I was doing an investigative work about the events of 2049 in Clarke county. My editor and my agent knew better than to blab, and my wife was always sworn to secrecy. As for my sources … well, journalistic sources always have their own interests at heart, and the sources for this story were already treading on thin ice by aiding me in the first place. Nobody should have told a complete stranger what I was researching.

  Unfortunately, McCoy had already caught me by surprise. There was no use in pleading the First and Fifth Amendments now. To his credit, he didn’t look smug. “Never mind how I know,” he said. “There’s things you should know about the incident. That’s why I called you.”

  I almost laughed. It sounded like the same shtick every working reporter experiences: the mysterious source who suddenly calls on the phone, claiming to know in whose closet the skeletons reside. Sometimes it’s disgruntled employees or nosy neighbors with an axe to grind. There’s rarely anything they know which can be verified. On occasion it’s a wacko, like the woman who bugged me constantly when I worked the city beat on a paper in Massachusetts, with her claim that the mayor and the entire city council were involved in a prostitution ring. You learn to hang up when they start babbling about conspiracies, or at least before they start outlining their plans to run for President.

  “I doubt there’s anything you know that’s new to me,” I said. “But thanks for the beer.”

  To my surprise, McCoy didn’t get annoyed. He sighed and gazed out at the ocean. “I was afraid it was going to be like this. You’re supposed to have an arrogant streak.”

  “Who’s being arrogant?” I said. “I’m being realistic.”

  He looked back at me. “I suppose you think I’m another nut case.”

  “Oh, no. Not at all.”

  “The fact of the matter is,” he continued, “you know little more now about the incident than what you could have gleaned from news accounts of the time. Your book will be nothing more than a rehash of the standard story. No new facts. Not only that, but you’ll be dead wrong on most of it.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “And you know better, of course.”

  “Yes, I know better.”

  “And what’s the source of your information?” I was willing to play along for a while. He had bought me a beer; it would have been rude to leave right away.

  “I was in Clarke County at the time.”

  I nodded and shrugged. “So were about eight thousand other people. Most of them didn’t know what was going on even when the colony was being evacuated. It’s like saying you were in San Francisco when the quake hit. That doesn’t make you a seismologist.”

  “That’s true. Being there doesn’t give me any special insights. Yet there’s more than that.”

  I smiled politely. “I’m all ears.”

  He paused, looking down at the beach. There was a pretty little girl in a swimsuit on the edge of the surf, feeding scraps of bread to a cawing gang of sea gulls circling around her. She looked fascinated and frightened at the same time. “I hope she doesn’t get pecked by one of those filthy birds,” he commented. “If I told you how I know …”

  McCoy hesitated again. “You’ve probably heard this line before, but … well, if I told you right away, you’d probably think I was crazy. So I don’t want to tell you, at least not now.”

  I reluctantly took my eyes away from the child. At my age, it’s difficult not to envy youth. “You’re getting warm. You sound a little more reasonable than most insane people I’ve talked to, though. So give me one good reason why I shouldn’t just get up and leave.”

  “Does getting the story straight for your book count?”

  “Everyone uses that excuse. Especially the ones who are crazy. Try again.”

  He smiled. “All right, try this. You’re a storyteller, when it comes right down to it. You like hearing a good tale, and you like telling one even better.”

  I had to grin. He had me there. “So far, so good. Keep going.”

  “So here’s the deal,” McCoy continued. “I’m going to tell you a long and rather detailed story, and all you have to do is listen. You can take notes and ask questions, and when I’m done, you can decide whether it makes sense for you to incorporate my story into your book.”

  McCoy hesitated again, then added, “If you’ll hear me out until the end, I’ll tell you how I know these things, although I doubt you’ll believe me. So all I want from you is an afternoon of your time.”

  “When you’re my age,” I said, “an afternoon is a great thing to ask for.”

  “It’ll be worth it.”

  I thought it over. I had already written off this afternoon. I hadn’t been planning to return home before dark, and who knew? Perhaps McCoy was on the level, and even if he was a crank, maybe this would be fun. Indeed, in my news-room years, I had
sometimes amused myself by listening to crank calls from the UFO abductees and conspiracy mavens. “I suppose, of course, that you want to be mentioned in my book as a source.”

  McCoy didn’t bite. He shook his head. “Not at all. In fact, I insist that I not be mentioned. My aim isn’t cheap fame. I only want to make sure you get the story straight.”

  He paused, then added, “For the sake of future generations.”

  “Future generations,” I repeated. “That sounds rather grandiose, don’t you think?”

  McCoy didn’t reply. “Okay,” I said. “If you’ll buy me another beer, I’ll listen. Tell me a story.”

  “Well, then …” Simon McCoy leaned back against the bench and stretched out his legs, balancing his coke on his stomach. “Once upon a time there was a very frightened young woman named Macy …”

  1

  Departure

  (Wednesday: 11:15 P.M.)

  She had anticipated that the main passenger terminal would be crowded, and she was correct. The long Memorial Day weekend was approaching, and despite the late hour people were scurrying along the concourses and walkways of the vast airport, on their way to catch flights to all the usual vacation spots: Bermuda, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Sydney, St. Thomas, New York, Ho Chi Minh City. A group of little Japanese kids crowded against a railing, staring at a replica of The Spirit of St. Louis suspended from the ceiling, while beneath the antique airplane the holographic ghost of Charles Lindbergh, dressed in flying leathers and jodhpurs, delivered a prerecorded lecture on his flight.

  Today, thanks to suborbital travel, you can fly to Paris in less than an hour, the young pilot commented as a baggage autocart rolled heedlessly through his body, but in 1927 my solo flight took almost thirty-four hours and was considered the most dangerous flight yet.… Yeah, Chuck, Macy thought as she turned away. Tell me about dangerous flights.

  At least the vast numbers of men, women, and children swarming around would make it hard for her to be spotted, if indeed she was being followed. Even if one of Tony’s goons found her here, a quiet abduction would be difficult. If someone grabbed her, Macy could scream rape, draw attention to herself, perhaps spook whoever it was into retreating. Above all else, Tony always wanted family business to be done quietly.

  She hurried down the concourse towards Gate 27, passing through the security smartgate, which automatically scanned her face, verified her identity and the presence of the passenger tag on her ticket, and probed her body and the contents of her nylon shoulder bag, Macy’s single piece of luggage. She glanced at a status screen as she walked by: 11:17 P.M. Tony was supposed to have picked her up at the compound at ten o’clock when he came back from “business.” Even if he was his usual tardy self, she had little doubt that her absence from the Salvatore mansion was already known.

  At this minute they would be searching for her. Macy had done her best to cover her trail, prepurchasing her ticket on the Amex card bearing her Mary Boston pseudonym, and bribing the cab driver who had picked her up in Ladue to forget her face. Yet she knew that Tony would quickly run through all the possibilities; undoubtedly, someone would already be on the way to Lambert Field, to see if Tony’s woman was trying to catch a plane. Maybe that someone was getting out of a car even now, out on the sidewalk in front of the terminal, striding in through the automatic doors she herself had passed only fifteen minutes ago.…

  Cut it out, she told herself. Don’t panic now. Just get on the shuttle down to Texas and you’re home-free. You’ll be out of St. Louis. Then in another couple of hours you’ll be on Matagorda Island, and an hour after that, you’ll be off the planet.…

  She harbored no illusions that putting 200,000 miles of outer space between her and St. Louis would be enough to keep her from Tony Salvatore and his goon squad. It would stall him, but not stop him. Yet all she needed was time and a little distance. Then she could get revenge, erase Tony from her life once and for all. The contents of her shoulder bag would see to that, once she delivered it into the right hands. So she hoped.

  She found Gate 27, the United Airlines flight to Dallas-Fort Worth. The waiting area was crowded, but while there were still a few seats vacant, she did not sit down. She had to keep her face hidden a few minutes longer. Instead, Macy turned her back to the concourse and faced the wall, fixing her eyes on an ad screen.

  By coincidence, it was displaying an animated holo of Clarke County. It rotated gracefully in space, the gentle silver-gray orb of the Moon gliding past in the background as the TexSpace logo shimmered into existence in front of the colony. Macy stared at it, and smiled for the first time since she had climbed over the wall surrounding Tony’s mansion. Three days and she would be there.

  The screen went blank, and in the moment before a chorus line of Las Vegas showgirls began goose-stepping across the screen, she glimpsed in the black panel a reflection of the scene behind her. About twenty feet away, standing next to the gate entrance, was a man in a suit, perfectly ordinary—except for the fact that he was watching her. Not with the eyes of a casual stranger sizing up a beautiful woman who happened to be by herself, but with the gaze of a person who was discreetly keeping track of her movements.

  A chill electric wave coursed from the nape of her neck to the bottom of her spine. Macy slowly turned away from the screen, forcing herself to stare out the windows overlooking the apron where the airliner nuzzled against the passenger walkway. In the reflection of the window she could see herself, and further away, the man in the suit was still watching.

  She began to turn in his direction, and a fat man with a bawling kid in tow lurched into her. He stopped and excused himself before pushing past, and the kid trampled across the toes of her boots. When they were gone and she dared to look back again, the man in the suit had disappeared.

  Macy Westmoreland would have panicked at that moment—absolutely flipped, lost her cool, bolted for the ladies’ room or the nearest security guard or even, God forbid, to a phone to call Tony to say that she was sorry, she was coming home now, please don’t have anyone kill her, or whatever opportunity came first—when the gate agent picked up her mike and announced that United Airlines Flight 724 nonstop from St. Louis to Dallas-Fort Worth was ready for boarding. Even before the agent had done the bit about carry-on bags and persons needing assistance, Macy was pushing her way towards the ramp.

  FBI Special Agent Milo Suzuki watched as the woman shoved and squirmed her way to the front of the mob of passengers, almost falling over an old man in a wheelchair as she thrust her ticket into the hand of the ticket agent. He could hear the protests of the other passengers and caught the sour look on the agent’s face. There was a brief exchange between the agent and the woman, then the agent reluctantly ran her optical scanner over the ticket and allowed the woman to be the first person aboard the aircraft.

  Suzuki shook his head. “And away she goes,” he whispered to himself. When it came to shaking off a tail, the woman was an utter amateur.

  He walked away from the gate to the nearest phone booth, in an alcove just off the concourse. Shutting himself inside and picking up the receiver, he pulled out his datapad and, after connecting the interface to the phone, dialed the number to the St. Louis field office’s computer. Once he was logged in, he typed on the pad’s miniature keyboard: WESTMORELAND, MACY—CROSS-REF SALVATORE.

  Within a few moments, the computer downloaded the file into Suzuki’s datapad. A head-and-shoulders photo of the woman who had just boarded the airliner appeared on the screen. There was more information, of course, but this was all that Suzuki needed to confirm that it was, indeed, Tony Salvatore’s mistress who had boarded a jet to Texas.

  He opened a window on the screen and dialed into United Airlines’ passenger reservations computer. At first, the AI system would not permit him access to the passenger list, until Suzuki typed in his federal authorization code—in effect, showing the computer his badge. Once in, he typed in Macy’s name again. No record of Macy Westmoreland was entered in the U
nited Airlines passenger manifest. Suzuki pursed his lips, then studied Westmoreland’s dossier again. Bingo: she had a couple of aliases, chief among them “Mary Boston.”

  REQ. ITIN. 5/29/49: BOSTON, MARY, he typed. This name the computer recognized; it immediately printed out Mary Boston’s travel itinerary, gathered from the flight reservations she had made through the airline. Milo studied the schedule, tracing it with his forefinger, frowned and then smiled.

  How interesting. Macy Westmoreland had used her “Mary Boston” Amex card to purchase bookings all the way to Clarke County. United 724 would get her to Dallas-Fort Worth, where she would catch the special TexSpace commuter helicopter to the Matagorda Island Spaceport. From there, she was scheduled to catch the TexSpace SSTO Lone Star Clipper to Clarke County, traveling in First Class. In fact, she already had a room reserved at the LaGrange Hotel in the colony.

  “So why are you running away from Tony, babe?” Milo Suzuki muttered to himself. He saved the information he had gathered within the datapad’s memory bubble, then logged off and disconnected the pad from the phone. Well, it didn’t matter to him. He had followed Macy from the Salvatore compound, where he had seen her climb over the wall from his stakeout point up the street, and now he knew where she was going. All he had to do was contact the Dallas field office and have her picked up when United 724 landed there. There had to be some usefulness in the fact that Tony Salvatore’s bimbo was apparently going AWOL.

  He had just tucked the datapad into his pocket and had pulled his phonecard out of his wallet, when the door to the phone booth suddenly slid open and a man shoved himself into the booth. Milo Suzuki had just enough time to clumsily bring up his hands and open his mouth before the squat barrel of an oversized pistol was pressed into his sternum.