The Prometheus Project Part 32

And that craft of yours is real enough." He reached a decision. "All right, I'll give you your chance. You say you can show me whatever it is you want to show me in the life craft? I recall seeing something in it that had a kind of . . . screen. Sort of like these television sets I've read about in magazines."

"Yeah, something like that." Television, I recalled, had been invented in 1929, but hadn't amounted to anything until after World War II, when regularly scheduled broadcasts had begun. Of course, that flat screen was just for the elementary stuff. Commander Bryant was going to find holographically projected 3-D images in the middle of the air a lot less familiar. "And yes," I continued, "we can do it in the life craft, on its own power supplies." For now, the computer could run on its own emergency reserve of stored power. Later, local sources could be adapted; it no doubt had instructions for doing just that, starting with the kind of electrical generation that could be rigged up in early nineteenth century England. "By the way, could I trouble you for something to wear so I'll be a little less conspicuous?"

"I think that would be wise. One of my officers is a tall guy like you; I'll borrow a set of khakis."

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it. And afterwards, you can show me all the miracles you've got stored up in that craft."

The words were scornful; the tone tried to be . . . and didn't quite succeed.

"No miracles, Skipper. Just a lot of new data . . . and a warning that I'm here to deliver."

* * * Ashford nosed her way into Hampton Roads, past Sewell's Point in Norfolk and then up the Elizabeth River to the destroyer piers at what was, with typical swabby eccentricity, called the Norfolk Naval Shipyard even though it was in Portsmouth.

What awaited us was the typical scene that greeted a returning warship: families lined up to greet husbands and fathers, after which the unmarried sailors would disembark and set about doing that which unmarried sailors do in places like Hampton Roads.

I had persuaded Commander Bryant that it would be a mistake to call for a ma.s.sive security cordon that would only set the rumor mill grinding away. Let our arrival be as normal as possible; n.o.body would notice the tarpaulin-covered object aft. Later, at night, it could be off-loaded and turned over to the people who were eagerly awaiting it in response to the radio message he'd sent ahead, in a code that was hardly ever used.

"They're waiting for you, too," said Commander Bryant, grim-faced. Actually, that was the only kind of face he'd worn lately. "After I turn you over to them, they're going to fly you to Washington, by direct order of President Truman. He's agreed to meet with you as you requested."

"I thought he might," I replied absently. We stood on the bridge, watching the joyful scene on the pier.

As per tradition, the captain would be the last to disembark.

At last the time came when we could leave the ship, amid the traditions that accompanied the captain's departure. We descended the gangway and stepped onto the pier. . . .

"Daddy! Daddy!"

I swung toward the source of the cry, just in time to see a smiling woman in 1940s dress lower a camera of the same vintage. But I barely noticed her. My universe had narrowed to the five-year-old girl who

broke away from the woman with the camera and ran, light brown braids flying in the sea breeze, to embrace Commander Bryant's legs and gaze up into what was, for her, the handsomest face in the world.

"Chloe!" Commander Bryant lifted her up into a hug, then set her down. He turned to me with a

sheepish grin. "Uh . . . my daughter," he explained unnecessarily.

In the back of my mind, I'd known this moment was coming. But I'd kept the knowledge there, back among all the clutter of things we hope will go away if we don't think about them. But it hadn't gone

away, as such things generally don't, and now the moment was here, bringing with it the recollection of one of the more unwelcome conclusions I'd reached in that time of dark, silent thought in the bunk.

Renata Novak's work would outlive her. The poisonous seed she had planted with her faked evidence

would sprout, and flourish . . . and I would have to let it. If the truth about Novak came out, it would result in further inquiries, which might well lead the investigators to the secret of time travel, which must never be revealed. So the time would come when I must stand helplessly by and let the name of Chloe Bryant take its place alongside those of Benedict Arnold and Judas Iscariot.

All this ran through my mind in less time than it took the little girl to raise her huge blue eyes-huger than I remembered, in that small child's face-and look timidly up at the strange man with the hideous

scar. Then she smiled.

Somehow, I managed to smile back.

I know I did, because-not least among all the gifts she had given me-she had told me that I would,

never dreaming who was sitting in her audience in that auditorium in Alaska. "I've never forgotten that smile he gave me-nor have I ever been able to interpret it, except that I could have sworn it held a deep sadness. For a second, I thought he was actually going to cry. But I also sensed a great love."

For a moment, the fate of the universe was forgotten, and all I wanted to do was fall to my knees and sweep that lovely little girl into an embrace, and cry: "It's me, Chloe! Don't you know me, in a way that defeats time itself? No, of course you don't. But please forgive me for what I must do. I hope you can, because I will never be able to forgive myself."

The moment pa.s.sed. I walked away, not looking back. I knew I would never see that little girl, or the young woman she would become, again. I would take great pains to make certain that I would not. I also knew I would not seek out a certain brat of a ten-year-old boy, even though I knew exactly where he was living in this year of grace 1946. But I wouldn't forget about him, because in 1963 I would make certain he was taken into the Project, as he must be. Afterwards, when he glimpsed me outside a Quonset hut, I wondered if I would glimpse him as well. I rather hoped not. But then I remembered there had been a very brief moment of eye contact. So I was to be denied even that.

I put it out of my mind as I walked on toward the Secret Service men who awaited me at the foot of the pier.

o

EPILOGUE.

"So that's it," the President finished. He was bone-tired, and hoa.r.s.e from talking. "Now you know what your predecessors have known. And, like them, you know why it must never be revealed."

There was a moment of dead silence in the Oval Office.

"No," said President-Elect Harvey Langston.

The President's head jerked up from its incipient slump. "What did you say?""No!" Langston stood up. There was a wild look in his eyes, and his voice began to hold the shrillness from which his handlers were always careful to rein him in. "I've heard enough! This is all . . . it's unconst.i.tutional! It's a violation of the public's right to know! The multinational corporations must be behind it! Or the Jewish bankers! Or the Trilateral Commission! Or the Illuminati! Or . . . the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy!"

"For G.o.d's sake!" the President exploded. "Can't you, for once in your life, stop thinking in slogans?"

"I'm going to expose it all!" Langston showed no sign of having heard. "I'm going to blow this wide open! I'll tell the world! Yes, I'll use my inauguration speech to do it!" He turned and strode to the door,

then paused. "Don't try to stop me!" he declared theatrically. The President didn't move. Visibly miffed at the anticlimax, Langston stomped out, slamming the door behind him.

The President sat in silence, head lowered, for a few moments. Then the faint click of an opening side

door reminded him that he hadn't been entirely truthful when he'd told Langston they had been alone.

A tall, gaunt man entered. As always, the President felt a chill slide up and down his spine as he looked at the messenger from the stars.

How old was Mr. Inconnu? The President had often wondered. By all accounts, he had seemed in his

early thirties when he had arrived on Earth in 1946. If so, that would make him at least a hundred now.

In some ways-the deep lines in his face, the whiteness of his thick hair-he looked it. But his mental and physical health seemed unimpaired. His explanation-that the colony of human exiles he'd escaped from, somewhere in the remote reaches of the galaxy, had had access to the life-extending biotechnology of their alien masters-must be true.

"You heard," the President said. It was a statement, not a question.

"Yes, Mr. President."

"He means well." For some perverse reason, the President felt driven to defend the man he despised.

"He's genuinely sincere in his beliefs. He just can't grasp the distinction between the slogans he grew up on and reality. He thinks they are reality, and not just noises for morons to chant as a subst.i.tute for thought."

"That's precisely the problem. Mr. President. Our worst nightmare has always been the election of an ideologue to the presidency, but the political realities have always spared us that. Now, after this freakish election, it's finally happened, and it's even worse than we've feared; he's a stupid ideologue."

The President swung his chair around toward the French windows and started into the darkness. "You know, I really believe in . . . this." He gave a gesture that encompa.s.sed the room, the White House, the city beyond it, and the Const.i.tution of which they were the visible manifestation. "All right, all right; I

know there are a thousand politicians who say that and don't mean it any more than they mean anything else. But by G.o.d, I mean it! And that man-" (he waved in the direction of the door through which Langston had departed) "-is the President-Elect of the United States, under the const.i.tutional system we claim to live by. Do we only live by it when it suits us?"

Mr. Inconnu said nothing.

The President's head dropped.

"All right," he said, just above the threshold of audibility. "Go ahead. Do what has to be done."

"Yes, Mr. President. Everything will be taken care of. I'll see to it that you never have to know the

details."

"No!" The President's head came up, and more than two centuries of history settled around him like an invisible mantle of authority. "To h.e.l.l with that. I want to know everything."

Their eyes met, in a shared realization of the need for a form of penance.

"Very well, Mr. President. I understand. You'll receive a full report." Mr. Inconnu's voice held nothing

but deep respect. He turned to go. Then he paused, and spoke with a strange kind of hesitant impulsiveness. "Oh, by the way, Mr. President . . . a while back, when you were speculating aloud about the traitor's motivations . . . you were wrong."

"What?" The President blinked, startled. This was the first time Mr. Inconnu had ever revealed any special knowledge of that matter, four decades or so earlier. He had simply let Section Two's report stand. "Are you saying you know something beyond what the investigation turned up after Chloe Bryant's disappearance?"

Mr. Inconnu's features clenched as though in pain, twisting the scar that disfigured his left cheek. (He had never had it removed, as the Project's medical techniques were quite capable of doing. The President had often wondered why.) Then, before the President had time to feel alarmed, his face cleared.