Arkwright (16 page)

The Gulfstream G8 was an old aircraft on the verge of retirement. Its fuselage creaked whenever it hit an air pocket, and the tiltjets had made a rattling sound when it took off from San Juan. At least the Caribbean looked warm. Matt figured that, if something went wrong and the plane had to ditch, he and the other passengers wouldn't freeze to death in the sun-dappled water that lay below. Provided that they survived the crash, of course.

Matt looked away from the window to steal another glance at the young woman sitting across the aisle. She'd said nothing to him over the past couple of hours, and he couldn't decide whether whatever she was studying on her slate was really that fascinating or if she was merely being standoffish. The aircraft jounced again, causing her to briefly raise her eyes from the screen. She caught Matt looking at her, favored him with a polite smile, and then returned her attention to the slate.

She was beautiful. Dark-brown skin and fathomless black eyes hinted at an Indian heritage. Her build was athletically slender, her face solemn, yet her mouth touched with subtle laugh lines. And there were no rings on her fingers.

“Rough flight,” he said.

She looked up again. “Excuse me?”

“Rough flight, I said.” Searching for something to add, Matt settled on the obvious. “You'd think the foundation could afford a better plane. This one looks like it came from the junkyard.” He picked at the frayed upholstery of his left armrest.

“They're trying to save money. This is probably the cheapest charter they could find.”

Her gaze went back to her slate, her right hand pushing away a lock of mahogany hair that had fallen across her face. She was plainly uninterested in making conversation with a fellow passenger—or at least the young guy about her own age seated beside her. But Matt had learned how to be persistent when pursuing attractive women. Sometimes, the direct approach was the best.

He stuck out his hand. “Matt Skinner.”

She eyed his hand for a second before deciding to take it. “Chandraleska Sanyal.”

“Chandalre…” He fumbled over the syllables.

“I'll settle for Chandi.”

“Okay. So what are you doing with the … y'know? The project.”

“Payload specialist,
Nathan 4
. I'm with the checkout team.” She nodded toward the handful of other men and women sitting around them. Most were in their late twenties or early thirties, although two or three were middle-aged or older. “Same as everyone else—except you, I suppose.”

“Oh yeah … checkout team.” Matt had no idea what she meant by that other than it had something to do with the rocket carrying
Galactique
's components into orbit. Leaning across the armrest, he peered at her slate. Vertical columns of numbers, a bar graph with multicolored lines rising from left to right, a pop-up menu bar. They could just as well have been Egyptian hieroglyphics. “Fascinating.”

Chandi wasn't fooled for a second. “I didn't know tourists still visit Ile Sombre. Or are you the new kitchen help?”

It was an insult, of course, but at least she was talking to him. “Oh, no,” he said. “I'm coming down to visit my parents. They work on the project. Ben and Jill Skinner … maybe you know them?”

Matt had the satisfaction of watching Chandi's eyes widen in surprise. “Dr. Skinner's your father?” she asked, and he nodded. “That means you're with the Arkwright family.”

“Why, yes. That's my middle name—Matthew Arkwright Skinner.” He said this with deliberate casualness, as if it was the most unremarkable thing he could have mentioned. “Nathan Arkwright was my great-great-grandfather. He started the Arkwright Foundation about seventy years ago, when—”

“I know the foundation's history. I've even read a few of his novels.” Chandi nodded toward the other passengers. “It's a good bet everyone has. Which book was your favorite?”

The soft chime of a bell saved Matt from having to admit that he'd never read any of Nathan Arkwright's science fiction novels. The seat belt lights flashed on, and the pilot's voice came through the speakers. “We'll be coming in for landing, folks, so if you'll return to your seats and stow your belongings, we'll have you on the ground in just a few minutes.”

The other passengers began collapsing their slates. Matt felt his ears pop. Chandi saved her work and slipped her slate into her travel bag. “If you look out the window, you might see the launch site.”

Matt turned to look. For a moment, he saw nothing, and then the plane banked to the right, and Ile Sombre came into view. He caught a glimpse of a
ciudad flotante
, one of the floating towns common in the coastal regions of the Southern Hemisphere; this one was Ste. Genevieve, a collection of prefabs, huts, and shacks built atop pontoon barges above the flooded remains of the island's former capitol. Then the aircraft moved away from the coast, and he saw, rising from the inland rainforest, something that looked like a giant yellow crayon nestled within a gantry tower: a cargo rocket perched atop its mobile launch platform.

“
Nathan 2
.” Chandi leaned across the aisle to gaze over his shoulder. “Scheduled for liftoff the day after tomorrow—if all goes well, that is.”

Glancing back at her, Matt couldn't help but see down the front of her blouse. It was a pleasant sight. “That's … um, the microwave beam thing, isn't it?”

Chandi noticed the direction he was looking and quickly sat up straight again. “No. The beamer went up six weeks ago on
Nathan 1
. It's being assembled in Lagrange orbit and should be ready for operation in about four months.
Nathan 2
is carrying the service module.”

“Oh, okay. Right.”

A bump beneath their feet as the landing gear came down, followed a few seconds later by the trembling shudder of the engine nacelles swiveling upward to descent position. About a thousand feet below, a paved airstrip came into view. Chandi gave her seat belt a perfunctory hitch to make sure it was tight. “Mind if I ask a personal question?”

Matt smiled. “I can give you the answer. Yes, I'd love to have dinner with you tonight.”

She didn't return the smile. “What I was going to ask was, why are you here?”

“Come again?”

“I mean, it's pretty obvious that you don't know anything about
Galactique
. This is no vacation spot. The island lost its beaches years ago, and there's no one at the hotel except the launch team. So trying to use your family name to pick up girls isn't going to get you anywhere.”

Matt's face became warm. “I didn't … I wasn't—”

“Sure you weren't.” Chandi's expression was knowing. “So what brings you here?”

He suddenly found himself wishing the plane would crash, if only because death might save him the embarrassment of this moment. Chandi was watching him, though, waiting for an answer, so he gave her the only one he had that was honest.

“My grandmother thought it was a good idea,” he said.

 

2

Matt's grandmother was Kate Morressy Skinner, the Arkwright Foundation's executive director, and as Matt stood in the customs line of what was laughably called the Ile Sombre International Airport, he once again reflected that it had been a mistake to call her asking for money.

He'd always gotten along well with Grandma, but he should have known that her wealth was an illusion. The foundation had been established by a bestowment left by her grandfather; it was worth billions of dollars, but all of it was tied up in investment capital associated to its principal goal: building and launching the first starship from Earth. Grandma had been made its director when she was about Matt's age, and although she received a generous salary, she was hardly rich. So she shouldn't have been expected to give her grandson a “loan” they both knew would probably never be repaid.

Matt watched the customs inspector open the backpack he'd brought with him from the States and begin to carefully sort through his belongings. The airport terminal was a large single room in a cinder block building; customs was a row of folding tables behind which the inspectors stood. The place was humid, with the ceiling fans doing nothing but blowing hot air around. It was springtime in this part of the world, but it felt like midsummer anywhere else. Through the open door leading to the airstrip came the roar of another battered Air Carib jet taking off. Except for the passengers who'd disembarked from Matt's flight, everyone in the building was black; he'd later learn that the native inhabitants were descended from African slaves who'd escaped from French and Spanish plantations elsewhere in the Caribbean and made their way to this remote island just south of Dominica, which the Europeans avoided because it had once been a pirate stronghold.

Grandma had done enough for him already by lining up his most recent job as an orderly at the Philadelphia hospital where Grandpa had worked as a doctor before he passed away. But that job lasted only about as long as all the others before it: part-time actor, recording studio publicist, store clerk, a couple of positions as assistant associate whatever. He'd keep them until he got bored and his boss noticed his lack of commitment, and then the inevitable chain of events would follow. The carpet. The warning. The second warning. The final warning. The unapologetic apology, the dismissal form, the severance check. And then the move to another city, another apartment, and another job found on another employment website.

When the hospital fired him, Matt called his grandmother in Boston and asked if she could front him a few hundred bucks. Just so he could make ends meet until he found work again. She'd sent him a plane ticket to Ile Sombre instead, telling him that his parents had a job for him down there. Which was why a customs inspector was now asking him to empty his pockets.

Matt pulled everything from his jeans and denim jacket and put it on the table. Cell, wallet, key ring holding keys that no longer belonged to anything he could unlock except a storage locker in Philadelphia, a lighter, and a pack of Denver Highs. The inspector, a tall black man with a purple-dyed 'fro, picked up the smokes and glared at him.

“This is not allowed, sir,” he said, his deep voice inflected with a Caribbean accent.

“I thought marijuana was legal here. It is where I come from.”

“You're not in America. Do you have any more, sir?”

“No. That's my only pack.”

The inspector turned to another uniformed man standing behind the table and said something in French Creole. The other islander gazed at the pack and shook his head. “We will let you go, sir,” the inspector said to Matt as he dropped the pack in a nearby waste can, “but you'll have to pay a fine. One hundred dollars, American.”

“I only have sixty.”

“That will do.”

Matt removed the last money he had in the world from his wallet and gave it to the inspector, who carefully counted the bills before tucking them in his shirt pocket. “Thank you, sir.” He handed Matt's passport back to him. “You may go now. Have a pleasant visit.”

Third-world graft. The inspector probably would have shaken him down for something else if he hadn't found the smokes. Matt zipped up his pack, slung it across his shoulder, and headed for the exit door. At least he wouldn't spend his first night on Ile Sombre in jail.

Chandraleska Sanyal had already gone through customs. She was standing outside with the other new arrivals, waiting to board a dilapidated solar van parked at the curb. Matt caught her eye, and she gave him a brief smile. Apparently, he hadn't turned her off entirely. He was about to go over and make an excuse to spend more time with her by seeing if he could hitch a ride on the bus when a woman's voice called his name.

He looked around, and there was his mother walking toward him. “Hello, sweetheart,” she said as she wrapped her arms around him. “Have a good flight?”

Jill Skinner was in her early fifties, but the gene therapy she and her husband had undergone a few years ago had erased at least a decade from her apparent age. She now looked more like she could have been Matt's older sister rather than his mother. “Okay, I guess,” he said, returning the hug. He decided not to tell her about the customs hassle. “Where's Dad? He's not coming?”

“He's busy at the space center.
Nathan 2
goes up in a couple of days, or haven't you heard?” She glanced at his pack. “Is that all you brought with you?”

“Didn't think I'd need anything else.” No sense in letting her know that it contained nearly everything he had left. The stuff in the storage locker would probably be auctioned once he failed to pay the rent. “Where are you parked?”

“This way.” She turned to lead him across the airport's pitted car park. “I'm afraid I'll have to drop you off at the hotel. I'm needed at work too, although I'm hoping I can get you to start helping me after
Nathan 2
gets off.”

Matt's mother was the Arkwright Foundation's press liaison at the Ile Sombre launch site; his father was mission director. Matt had grown up with the foundation, but he'd never shared his parents' commitment to it. This was the first time in many years Mom had even intimated that she'd like to have him join her and Dad.

“Yeah, well, I was sort of thinking I'd just like to take it easy for a while.” He didn't look at her as they crossed the car park. “Kinda catch my breath, decide what my life's goals should be.”

His mother didn't answer that, or at least not at once. Instead, she pulled a key remote from her shorts pocket and thumbed it. A short distance away, a Volksun beeped to remind her where she'd parked it; its engine was already humming by the time she opened its hatchback and let her son throw his pack in.

“Twenty-eight is a little late to be making up your mind what you want to do, isn't it?” she said as she got in behind the wheel. “First there was journalism school—”