Emprise (11 page)

King William paused and looked out of the turbocopter’s window at the black expanse of the Channel, unrelieved by the running lights of even a single freighter. The blackness seemed symbolic of the pall that had enveloped the earth, and gave him his answer: The knowledge of what must happen if we fail.

“Whose bread I eat, his song I sing.”

—Anonymous

Number 214 Bar End was a typical Birmingham home from the middle of the last century: red brick crumbling and discolored from years of coal pollution, a postage-stamp-size yard in back and none at all in front. Aikens parked his Austin a few houses further down the block and waited. He watched out the side mirror as Evan Franklin, a round-bellied man with a rolling gait, clambered off the horse taxi, came up Bar End, and disappeared into 214.

Aikens waited five minutes, then climbed out of his car and walked back to the stoop. He pressed the door bell. When there was no apparent effect, he knocked briskly instead.

“Yes?” The woman who answered the door opened it only a crack, and Aikens could see but half her face.

“My name is Dr. Aikens, Special Staff Assistant to the King,” Aikens said with as much endearing politeness as he could muster. “Are you Allie Franklin?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Could I come in, Mrs. Franklin?”

“What for?” she asked.

“I’d like to talk to your husband.”

“He ain’t home.”

“Oh? I was sure that I saw him just come in.”

Allie wrinkled up her nose unhappily. “Mebbe I didn’t hear him come in.” To Aikens’s displeasure, she closed the door again and locked it with a loud click.

Aikens leaned his ear close to the door to try to hear what was said inside. All he could discern for certain was a difference in their tones: hers shrill and hounding, his basso and angry.

With the sound of the lock as forewarning, the door was jerked open a foot.

“You got reason to be bothering my wife?” demanded the man.

“Evan Franklin?”

“Aye.”

“Do you remember me?”

The man peered at Aikens with eyes narrowed to slits. A twinge of emotion crossed his face, then was gone. “No,” he said flatly.

“We met at the Rotterdam Conference in ’88. You presented a paper on the transformations of intermediate bosons,” Aikens said.

The man’s eyes betrayed his sudden fear. “No. No, you’re talking to the wrong man. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. A boson, is that some kind of sailor?”

“It’s a field particle for the weak force—as I’m sure you remember.”

“I don’t remember any such thing. Look, me, I’m just old Ev Franklin, the cook—you ask about me down at the Herald Tavern, and they’ll tell you I get it to them fast and hot and nobody’s ever died of eating my food, which is enough for them.”

“Look, man, you’re not in any trouble. There’s no need to lie to me, and I don’t care who or what you are now,” Aikens said, annoyed. “What matters to me is that you used to be Ev Hamblin, a particle physicist at CERN—and we need you. There are problems to solve that matter. We need your talents.”

“My only talent is with a skillet. You want me to whip up supper? That I can do,” said Franklin. “But the rest of what you’re saying is just getting me mad.”

“You don’t understand, Ev—if anybody had cared about your past, they could have found you easily by now. It only took Crown Security a month, and all I gave them was your name on a list.”

At the mention of Crown Security the man’s face went rigid. “I can’t help ya,” he said in a whisper. “I just can’t. Sorry.” He slammed the door and threw the bolt.

Aikens sighed, stood a moment on the stoop, then walked back to the Austin.
This is going to be harder than I thought
, he told himself as he fired up the car’s propane engine.

An hour later he returned with an army lorry and two Crown officers. But it was too late. Inside the house was the disarray that comes with hasty packing, and Ev and Allie Franklin were gone.

Six weeks after Geneva, Aikens was called to Buckingham to report to William on the results of his talent search. There was little good news to bring him. From his original list of forty-seven names, he had managed to locate and recruit seven: two physicists, one mathematician, one computer specialist, and three assorted engineers. The remaining forty either could not be located or, as with Hamblin/Franklin, had fled before they could be contacted.

Anofi was having little better success, and the early word from Schmidt in Germany was not encouraging. Clearly, there was still a viable grapevine linking their target group, and the word was out that a roundup was underway.

Had Aikens been free to issue an open call explaining who was needed and why, he was confident there would have been a better response. But the real purpose of Geneva was still a secret within the British government and was being kept from the public. Aikens was forbidden to brief his recruits on the project until they had signed the contract he offered, complete with the Official Secrets Act clause. All he could do at this point was offer them a chance to take up their former profession again. With all that had happened and the amount of time that had passed, that was not enough for most.

Rashuri was there, too, having brought the draft of the Pangaean Consortium compact as promised for King William’s signature. He shook his head unhappily as Aikens gave his report.

“How can this be? How can so many have disappeared so quickly?” said Rashuri. “Explain your failure to me.”

“Those who aren’t dead are afraid,” Aikens said. “They’ve a right to be. When the average chap asks why things are the way they are, they remember the fission blanket and that it was us gave it to the world. They lump us all together and blame us for the hard times and forget what it was like to be afraid then. I think sometimes they would rather have the bomb back if it meant they could still have their own car and watch the telly at two A.M.

“Some of us have taken new names or gone abroad looking for a more hospitable climate—started new lives in fields where they are accepted, even respected. I can’t say as I blame them for their reticence. But it leaves us in a tough spot. It’s like trying to pull off the Manhattan Project in the eighteenth century.”

Rashuri, pacing deliberately, nodded. “And the group you have recruited—of what caliber are they?”

“Middling. If you are still serious about sending out a spaceship to intercept them—”

“I am.”

“—we need people who can do seminal work in a half-dozen fields. It won’t be enough to have people versed in yesterday’s science. We need the Goddards and the Tsiolkovskys, the synthesists, the pioneers. But what we have are aging technicians and teachers, past their creative prime.”

Rashuri stopped his pacing and waggled a finger at Aikens. “Then they’ll teach, and we’ll make what we can’t find. The best young minds stimulated by the best old minds, and the curriculum shaped by the challenge of the Senders.”

“We can recruit from every nation that joins the Consortium,” William interjected. “If they will build the buildings and stock the labs, we’ll open a Science Institute in their own country, staffed by Consortium employees.”

“There isn’t enough time,” Aikens protested. “We’ve skipped a whole generation.”

“We have to hope that you are wrong, Professor Aikens,” said Rashuri. “We have no other choice.” When Aikens left, Rashuri and William settled in facing chairs.

“Have you read it?”

“More than once. Are you sure it gives you the autonomy you’ll need?”

“I am. Can you sign it?”

“At the probable cost of my ability to help you further.”

“But it will be binding.”

“It will as long as I’m king of England.”

“Then long live the King,” Rashuri said with a smile, raising his cup in salute.

Two days later, a stranger came calling at the East End mansion where Rashuri had taken up residence for the duration of his stay in England. Since Rashuri’s visit was confidential, the security provided him was low-profile, and the stranger was able to reach the front hall before he was challenged.

The stranger, an elderly, round-shouldered man whose heavy cotton shirt was faded and patched at the elbows, asked for Rashuri by name. Whisked to the main dining hall, which was being used as an office by the security team, the stranger was searched and quizzed on how he knew Rashuri was there. The stranger declined politely to answer.

“If Mr. Rashuri can’t see me, that’s all right. He doesn’t have to. I’ll just continue on,” he told them time and again. The security chief just as persistently insisted the stranger stay where he sat.

It took Rashuri himself, stopping by the office to confirm his next day’s schedule, to break the impasse. At Rashuri’s entrance, the stranger slowly came to his feet. Holding his hat in his hands, he met Rashuri’s gaze with eyes that were bright and alert despite the deep worry lines which surrounded them.

“Mr. Rashuri, could I speak with you for a moment?”

“What’s your name?”

“Driscoll. Ben Driscoll.”

Rashuri gestured toward the door. “Out,” he said to the puzzled guards.

When they were gone, he offered the stranger a chair at the dining table and slid into one himself.

“Benjamin Driscoll, brightest man never to win a Nobel Prize?”

“Someone at
Time Magazine
thought so.”

“You would have gotten one if they were still being presented. There can only be one grand unified field theory—and you were its author.”

The man nodded. “But now I’m just Ben Driscoll, farmer and astrologer. I’m a bit surprised to be known by you as anything else.”

“I have your name on a list,” said Rashuri. “If I am remembering my briefing correctly, you were one of the few brave enough to publicly take on the anti-science reactionaries in America.”

“When I was younger, I thought it needed doing. I couldn’t keep still while lies became truth by repetition. I thought I could make a difference. I should have known better,” he admitted. “When people want to believe, they require very little in the way of logic and nothing in the way of facts. When they don’t want to believe, no amount of proof will persuade them to.”

“We were of the opinion that you didn’t survive the purge.”

Driscoll unbuttoned the top two buttons and exposed a fist-sized wrinkled scar just below his shoulder. “So was the man whose bullet did this,” he said with a relaxed smile. “Luckily for me, he had seen too many theatrical deaths on TV. Real humans die a bit harder.”

“How long have you been in England?”

“Nearly fifteen years. I got out of the States as soon as I could.”

“How did you manage it?”

“A twenty-eight-foot boat and favorable winds.” Rashuri stared a moment, then hooted with delight. “I believe you did. And I won’t ask a man who can manage that how he managed to know where to find me. But I will ask you why you’re here.”

Driscoll folded his hands on the table top in front of him. “Word is you’ll be needing teachers for a science school. I’d like to be one of them.”

Rashuri shook his head. “How could you possibly know that? We only made that decision two days ago.”

Driscoll shrugged. “I’m an astrologer, remember?” he said facetiously. “It is true, then?”

“It is. Do you also know why we’re doing it?”

“No.”

“Good. I was beginning to wonder if there was anything I could tell you.”

“The reason doesn’t matter. My offer doesn’t hinge on it.”

“Nevertheless, the reason is important. We need to build a starship.”

Driscoll laughed: a snort, then a broad-grinned, head-thrown-back rolling peal. “What a damn-fool idea.”

“Under some circumstances I’d agree with you. But not under our circumstances.” With an economy of detail that underlined his respect for Driscoll’s native intelligence, Rashuri told him of the Senders and their message. Driscoll steepled his fingers and touched them to his lips as he listened, rocking slightly back and forth in his chair. When Rashuri finished, there was a glistening at the lined corners of Driscoll’s eyes, and his face was half-hidden by his folded hands.

“No, no, no,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut. “It’s too late. I’m too old.” The protests were offered softly, in a voice touched with sadness.

“You see why I need you. Not as a teacher, though everyone will have to help with that. I need you to run my scientific division. I can handle human problems myself. I need someone to handle the problems that nature will throw at us.”

Driscoll was shaking his head. “Damn you.”

“Why?”

“Damn you for asking. And damn me for being the kind of fool that can’t walk out of here and live with myself.” He looked up, blinking back the wetness in his eyes, unwilling to acknowledge it by wiping it away.

“When I was making my way east,” Driscoll continued in an unsteady voice, “I would see trains, miles long, sitting in the middle of fields, just stopped where they had run out of fuel during some last hopeless effort to bring food to the cities. Some had been torched. Nearly all had been looted. Most had become long shantytowns full of refugees. But none of them were moving or had any promise of ever moving again.

“Those trains haunt me. If I could do anything to get them moving again—”

“You can.”

Driscoll nodded, his lips a thin line. “Is the Sender ship still accelerating?”

“At last report.”

“This Aikens you mentioned—he has the details?”

“Yes.”

“I want to talk to him.”

“You will. Benjamin—I will have my hands full with other responsibilities. I want to be able to leave this in your hands with full confidence, to be able to tell you what the Consortium needs and know that if it can be done it will be. You’ll have full authority to make decisions in your area, and you’ll be accountable directly to me for those decisions. And I want you to take personal charge of the starship design and construction.”

Driscoll took in a deep breath, then sighed and laughed without humor. “Are you asking? Don’t you see? It’s not a question. I have to.”

“I’ll have a contract drawn up immediately.”

Driscoll straightened up in his chair and seemed again the man he had been an hour ago when Rashuri first saw him. “I don’t need a damned contract,” he said, plucking his hat off the table. “I need a computer, a couple of systems engineers, and a desk, in that order. For starters. Tell me where I can find them, or where I can find a man who can find them, and you can send me my contract in the mail.”