Saucer (26 page)

Hedrick pursed his lips while he considered what to say. “Perhaps your government should consider selling something of great value, something more capital intensive than the saucer.”

“More capital intensive? The saucer’s technology will soak up capital like a sponge. It will require new raw materials, new manufacturing techniques, new insights in chemistry, physics, mathematics, new factories, new everything. Believe me, Mr. Hedrick, we Russians know all about investing for tomorrow. We did that for seventy years.”

Hedrick nodded. He half turned so that he and Krasnoyarsk were both facing the saucer. “still,” the Australian said, “I can think of something that would require more capital than the development of the technology in the saucer.”

With a cigar between his teeth, Krasnoyarsk placed both hands on the smooth, dark, curved surface of the saucer and caressed it sensuously. “What?” he asked,

“Siberia,” said Hedrick and took another tiny sip of cognac.

Charley Pine took a drag on her cigar and scrutinized Hedrick with new respect. The bastard thinks big.

The Russian test pilot whispered in her ear, “So, we sleep together, yes?”

Charley Pine almost gagged on cigar smoke. She exhaled explosively and coughed. When that subsided, she whispered to Ivan the Russian Romeo, “If only we could, but I have a social disease. It’s a pesky little bug, and with medical help so iffy in Russia…”

• • •

When the Cantrells returned to the Higginbotham Building in Dallas for their second appointment, Mrs. Higginbotham had with her a gentleman about her age with white hair and ruddy skin, a lawyer named Rufus Howell.

After she introduced Howell, Mrs. Higginbotham said as she settled into her chair, “Tell me, Arthur, what is your interest in this matter?”

Egg looked a bit embarrassed. This was only the second time that he had worn a suit in five years. Yesterday was the first.

“Rip has spent every summer at my place in Missouri since his father died ten years ago. I got him interested in engineering. He’s like a son to me, a son I never had.”

“And you brought your brother into this?”

“That’s correct. I wanted legal advice.”

“I will be blunt with you, gentlemen. How much money is the saucer worth?”

Egg took a deep breath as he thought about that question. “In the short run it’s worth whatever a seller could induce a buyer to pay. In the long run, I think it will be the catalyst for much of the technological progress of our species in the twenty-first century. What is it worth? It’s priceless. It’s the Wright Brothers’ first airplane, Bell’s telephone, and Edison’s lightbulb, all in one object.”

Mrs. Higginbotham’s face glowed. “Have you seen the saucer?”

Egg nodded. “And flown in it. The experience of a lifetime, I’m telling you.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially and leaned forward in his chair. “I was in the saucer when we flew over Coors Field in Denver.”

Mrs. Higginbotham laughed. Even the lawyer grinned.

“How extraordinary,” she said after a bit. “We are imprisoned in this place and time, and yet…” She fell silent.

After a discreet interval, Egg said, “I might as well tell you the rest of it, Mrs. Higginbotham, since you are in the oil business. The saucer is hydrogen-powered. It cracks water into hydrogen and oxygen and burns the hydrogen.”

“I wondered about that.”

“The saucer may point the way to the use of hydrogen as a regular motor fuel. It would be cleaner than gasoline and much cheaper, although motors to burn it in might be more expensive.” Egg made a gesture of irritation. “All that is speculation about what might be, someday. Predicting the future without the use of a crystal ball is a risky business. Right now the saucer is just an artifact.”

“Yesterday afternoon,” Mrs. Higginbotham said, “I made a few telephone calls. I wanted to know some more about you gentlemen.”

“A wise precaution,” Olie Cantrell said.

She fluttered a hand. “You, sir, are very highly spoken of by the senior partner of the law firm we regularly use in Chicago.”

It was Olie’s turn to look a bit embarrassed.

Mrs. Higginbotham steamed right on. “You, Arthur, are a well-known consulting engineer. I called my chief engineer, and he not only knows of you, he knows you. He said you have worked with Wellstar on several occasions.”

“That is correct,” Egg told her, nodding.

“He said you have some patents?”

“Twenty-seven. Mostly in the field of manufacturing processes.”

Mrs. Higginbotham looked at each of them in turn, then said, “If young Rip became the owner of the saucer, somehow achieved a legal position that allowed him to license the technology, what would be the benefit to Wellstar?”

Egg and Olie looked at each other. “We have given this a good bit of thought, Mrs. Higginbotham,” Olie said. “We suggest you retain a forty-nine-percent interest in any propulsion technology derived from or based upon technology in the saucer.”

Mrs. Higginbotham turned to her attorney. “Mr. Howell, please prepare a bill of sale with those provisos.” She turned back toward Egg. “What is Rip’s full name?”

“Stepford Sidney Cantrell.”

“No wonder they call him Rip.”

“Stepford was his father’s name.”

“And Sidney?”

“His mother was raised in Sidney, Nebraska.”

“I see. Well, Mr. Howell, sell the saucer to Stepford Sidney Cantrell for the sum of one dollar cash in hand paid, with Wellstar retaining a forty-nine-percent interest in any hydrogen propulsion technology derived from or suggested by the saucer. Is that language acceptable to you gentlemen?”

“You may leave out the word ‘hydrogen,’ Mrs. Higginbotham,” Olie said. “There is an antigravity system in the saucer that is going to make helicopters obsolete. I would think the word ‘propulsion’ also includes that system. I believe it would also include the nuclear reactor that is the power source for both the antigravity system and the water separator.”

The lawyer and Mrs. Higginbotham stared open-mouthed.

“Sorry,” said Mrs. Higginbotham, who recovered first. “Antigravity? That sounds so weird, so—”

“The modern computer would astound Edison,” Olie remarked.

“It’s real, believe me,” Egg said. “I’ve seen it, touched it, flown in it. The saucer is as real as this desk.” He rapped his knuckles several times on Mrs. Higginbotham’s varnished mahogany.

“Go write it, Rufus,” Mrs. Higginbotham said to the lawyer, who nodded and went out the door.

“I’m an old woman, gentlemen, but my, this sounds exciting! I do hope it works out for Rip, and for all of us.”

“We hope so too,” Egg said fervently. He got out his wallet, removed a dollar bill, and laid it on the table.

“But what if he can’t get the saucer away from Roger Hedrick?”

“That would not be an insurmountable obstacle,” Egg said after a glance at Olie. “I wish I could say more at this time, but I cannot.”

Mrs. Higginbotham nodded. “Since we’re sharing confidences, I might as well warn you. I’ve known Roger Hedrick for fifteen years. He is not an honorable man.”

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

Charley heard diesel engines several times during the night. The third time she went to the window to look. She saw three trucks near the horse barn, at least a dozen men. The men all seemed to be carrying weapons. As she watched, the men got into the trucks, which then drove slowly away.

She pulled a chair over to the window and sat there with the blanket from the bed wrapped around her. Her back was sore when she moved, she had a headache from the wine and cognac, and she could still taste that cigar even though she had brushed her teeth, and tongue, three times.

Of course Roger Hedrick has armed security around, probably as many men and weapons as he could muster. He would be a fool not to, and a fool he wasn’t.

She wondered about Rip, wondered where he was, what he was doing, if he was getting over the loss of the saucer. Unable to stand the silence any longer, she turned on the television. Professor Soldi appeared, talking about the saucer, how it should be in a museum for scientists to study and learn from. Well, Soldi and Hedrick were on opposite sides of a great divide.

“The saucer is a product of a great civilization,” Soldi said, “and as such embodies not just the technical knowledge of the civilization, but the social organization as well. If we can learn the processes used to manufacture the systems in the saucer, we can learn many things about how the people who made it organized their lives, their society, their civilization. Just as the pyramids and hieroglyphics have taught us about ancient Egypt, the saucer will instruct us about the people who made it.”

A moment later, in response to a question from the interviewer, Soldi said, “People seem to think the benefits of the saucer will be things. Nothing could be further from the truth. Look how the telephone has revolutionized life on this planet during the past seventy-five years. Because of the telephone, we live much differently from the contemporaries of Alexander Graham Bell.”

“But can you, or anyone, predict the changes?” asked the interviewer.

“Of course not,” Soldi responded. “Change is the one constant in human affairs. Change is unpredictable, unwanted, unplanned for, evolutionary, revolutionary, resisted, welcomed—and absolutely inevitable.”

“Professor, several of our guests have pointed out that the change that you envision will not be change caused by man, nature, or even God. They argue that this will be change stimulated by an alien agency.”

“I find that reasoning ludicrous,” responded the professor. “We are responsible for the human condition. Life is a constant struggle to better our chances for survival. That is a law, like birth and death.”

Soldi seemed to search for words. “We are trapped like flies in amber,” he said, “imprisoned in our time and place. The saucer will let us see what was and what will be.”

Charley Pine watched for a while longer and finally clicked the television off. That crowd Hedrick invited here couldn’t care less about the human condition.

Hedrick had not mistreated her, other than to allow a little pounding by friend Rigby. And he hadn’t killed her. She had thought that he might after she flew the last flight for him, but he hadn’t. Now she wondered if Hedrick was going to ask her to chauffeur home the saucer’s happy new owners.

If he sent her to Beijing, Tokyo, Moscow, or Munich in the saucer, or merely let her walk out to the highway and thumb a ride into Sydney, there wasn’t much she could do to hurt him. Oh, she could be a minor irritation, a flea on the elephant’s ass, but that wasn’t going to embarrass Mr. Roger Hedrick very much. He would probably be too busy to notice.

Of course, if she had this figured wrong, tomorrow night she was going to be very dead. Rigby would love to do her, that’s a fact. The bastard would probably strangle her just so he could watch her face.

Hedrick sure seemed to be enjoying himself last night, hawking the saucer like it was a used Chevy. He was going to make a huge, heaping pile of money, then live happily ever after.

Or would he? Charley Pine mused on that question.

He would have cash or securities for the saucer, but whoever got the saucer would have the future in his hand. The saucer was a collection of seeds, many of which would probably grow and bear fruit. All manner of wondrous things would come from the saucer for whoever had it.

Ultimately the benefits from the saucer’s technology would trickle down to everyone on the planet. Everyone would make money from it, have their lives improved, see new opportunities for their children.

Everyone except Roger Hedrick, that is. True, he would have money, lots of it. He was already worth forty to fifty billion dollars, and his fortune wasn’t in cash. He owned things, like ships and factories, newspapers and television stations, computer companies and… oil companies. He owned a lot of oil, she recalled, tens of billions of dollars’ worth.

Of course the cash he got for the saucer would have to be invested. Even Roger Hedrick couldn’t keep all that money in his mattress; he was going to have to find someplace to put it to work.

He certainly wouldn’t buy more oil. The investments in oil he already had would slowly decrease in value. Perhaps he could get out of oil before the price dropped precipitously. That must be his plan.

She gingerly put her feet up on the chair and hugged her legs. This stretched her back and gave her temporary relief. She arranged the blanket around her to keep warm.

Of course, if Hedrick were a real swine he would destroy the saucer after he was paid for it. Blow it to smithereens while it was on its way to wherever. Then he would have the purchase price, none of his existing investments around the world would be threatened by saucer technology, he would never have to defend his title in court, and no one could prove a thing. And if Charley Pine were flying the saucer, she would be neatly and tidily disposed of.

If Hedrick were a real swine…

She wondered if Roger Hedrick had thought that far ahead.

• • •

When the president finished lunch with the leaders of Congress, he went back to the Oval Office and turned on the television. Like half the people in America, he too was trying to keep up with the saucer story via television. In addition, he was trying to take the pulse of the voting public. He had four televisions arranged side by side so he could monitor the video on four networks at once and surf the audio channels.

Like Charley Pine in Australia, he also watched Professor Soldi. Being momentarily alone, he gave the archaeologist the finger.

The old fool didn’t seem to realize how many applecarts he was threatening to upset with his visions of change, but the president certainly did. Successful politicians were those who knew which levers to pull, which buttons to push in today’s world. Of course they paid lip service to change and spent their professional lives guiding it, but it was incremental change designed to benefit those people who had or would support them, usually people who were already at the top of the food chain. The president instinctively understood that the change Soldi envisioned was revolutionary, the kind that beheaded kings, executed czars, toppled republics. Soldi was the prophet of a new paradigm, and the president feared him.