New Frontiers Page 13

  “Why the hell would the army drop parachute soldiers here? What do they think—”

  “They’re not ours,” Martinson said. “That’s for sure.”

  The director’s eyes went wide. “What do you mean? Whose are they?”

  Shaking his head, Martinson said, “I don’t know. But they’re not ours, I’m certain of that.”

  “They have to be ours! Who else would—” She stopped, her mind drawing the picture at last.

  Without another word, the director grabbed the phone that linked with Washington and began yelling into it. Martinson licked his lips, made his decision, and headed for the door.

  “Where’re you going?” the director yelled at him.

  “To stop them,” he yelled back, over his shoulder.

  Heart pounding, Martinson raced down the corridor that led to the control center. Wishing he had exercised more and eaten leaner cuisine, he pictured himself expiring of a heart attack before he could get the job done.

  More likely you’ll be gunned down by some soldier, he told himself.

  He reached the control room at last, bursting through the door, startling the already nervous kids working the telescope.

  “We’re being invaded,” he told them.

  “Invaded?”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “Parachute troops are landing outside. They’ll be coming in here in a couple of minutes.”

  “Parachute troops?”

  “But why?”

  “Who?”

  The youngsters at the consoles looked as scared as Martinson felt. He spotted an empty chair, a little typist’s seat off in a corner of the windowless room, and went to it. Wheeling it up to the main console, Martinson explained:

  “I don’t know who sent them, but they’re not our own troops. Whoever they are, they want to grab the telescope and send out their own version of The Question. We’ve got to stop them.”

  “Stop armed troops?”

  “How?”

  “By sending out The Question ourselves. If we get off The Question before they march in here, then it doesn’t matter what they want, they’ll be too late.”

  “Has Washington sent The Question?”

  “No,” Martinson admitted.

  “The United Nations?”

  He shook his head as he sat at the main console and scanned the dials. “Are we fully powered up?”

  “Up and ready,” said the technician seated beside him.

  “How do I—”

  “We rigged a voice circuit,” the technician said. “Here.”

  He picked up a headset and handed it to Martinson, who slipped it over his sweaty hair and clapped the one earphone to his ear. Adjusting the pin-sized microphone in front of his lips, he asked, “How do I transmit?”

  The technician pointed to a square black button on the console.

  “But you don’t have The Question yet,” said an agonized voice from behind him.

  Martinson did not reply. He leaned a thumb on the black button.

  The door behind him banged open. A heavily accented voice cried, “You are now our prisoners! You will do as I say!”

  Martinson did not turn around. Staring at the black button of the transmitter, he spoke softly into his microphone, four swift whispered words that were amplified by the most powerful radio transmitter on the planet and sent with the speed of light toward the departing alien spacecraft.

  Four words. The Question. It was a plea, an entreaty, a prayer from the depths of Martinson’s soul, a supplication that was the only question he could think of that made any sense, that gave the human race any hope for the future:

  “How do we decide?”

  INTRODUCTION TO

  “‘WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS’”

  All that we see or seem

  Is but a dream within a dream.

  —EDGAR ALLAN POE

  “‘We’ll Always Have Paris’” is a piece of fiction about a piece of fiction.

  Casablanca is one of the most popular films of all time: romantic, suspenseful, filled with fascinating characters and memorable lines.

  I’ve seen the movie dozens of times, and I always wondered what happened to Rick and Ilsa and Captain Renault after that unforgettable final scene at the airport.

  “‘We’ll Always Have Paris’” is my stab at answering my own question. The frontier explored in this story is a frontier of the mind, the inner questioning that a good story leaves with you: What happened afterward?

  Here is a possible answer.

  “WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS”

  HE HAD CHANGED from the old days, but of course going through the war had changed us all.

  We French had just liberated Paris from the Nazis, with a bit of help (I must admit) from General Patton’s troops. The tumultuous outpouring of relief and gratitude that night was the wildest celebration any of us had ever witnessed.

  I hadn’t seen Rick during that frantically joyful night, but I knew exactly where to find him. La Belle Aurore had hardly changed. I recognized it from his vivid, pained description: the low ceiling, the checkered tablecloths—frayed now after four years of German occupation. The model of the Eiffel Tower on the bar had been taken away, but the spinet piano still stood in the middle of the floor.

  There he was, sitting on the cushioned bench by the window, drinking champagne again. Somewhere he had found a blue pinstripe double-breasted suit. He looked good in it; trim and debonair. I was still in uniform and felt distinctly shabby.

  In the old days Rick had always seemed older, more knowing than he really was. Now the years of war had made an honest face for him: world-weary, totally aware of human folly, wise with the experience that comes from sorrow.

  “Well, well,” he said, grinning at me. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

  “I knew I’d find you here,” I said as I strode across the bare wooden floor toward him. Limped, actually; I still had a bit of shrapnel in my left leg.

  As I pulled up a chair and sat in it, Rick called to the proprietor, behind the bar, for another bottle.

  “You look like hell,” he said.

  “It was an eventful night. Liberation. Grateful Parisians. Adoring women.”

  With a nod, Rick muttered, “Any guy in uniform who didn’t get laid last night must be a real loser.”

  I laughed, but then pointed out, “You’re not in uniform.”

  “Very perceptive.”

  “It’s my old police training.”

  “I’m expecting someone,” he said.

  “A lady?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You can’t imagine that she’ll be here to—”

  “She’ll be here,” Rick snapped.

  Henri put another bottle of champagne on the table, and a fresh glass for me. Rick opened it with a loud pop of the cork and poured for us both.

  “I would have thought the Germans had looted all the good wine,” I said between sips.

  “They left in a hurry,” Rick said, without taking his eyes from the doorway.

  He was expecting a ghost, I thought. She’d been haunting him all these years, and now he expected her to come through that doorway and smile at him and take up life with him just where they’d left it the day the Germans marched into Paris.

  Four years. We had both intended to join De Gaulle’s forces when we’d left Casablanca, but once the Americans got into the war Rick disappeared like a puff of smoke. I ran into him again by sheer chance in London, shortly before D-day. He was in the uniform of the U.S. Army, a major in their intelligence service, no less.

  “I’ll buy you a drink in La Belle Aurore,” he told me when we’d parted, after a long night of brandy and reminiscences at the Savoy bar. Two weeks later I was back on the soil of France at last, with the Free French army. Now, in August, we were both in Paris once again.

  Through the open windows behind him I could hear music from the street; not martial brass bands, but the whining, wheezing melodies of a
concertina. Paris was becoming Paris again.

  Abruptly, Rick got to his feet, an expression on his face that I’d never seen before. He looked … surprised, almost.

  I turned in my chair and swiftly rose to greet her as she walked slowly toward us, smiling warmly, wearing the same blue dress that Rick had described to me so often.

  “You’re here,” she said, looking past me, her smile, her eyes, only for him.

  He shrugged almost like a Frenchman. “Where else would I be?”

  He came around the table, past me. She kissed him swiftly, lightly on the lips. It was affectionate, but not passionate.

  Rick helped her slip onto the bench behind the table and then slid in beside her. I would have expected him to smile at her, but his expression was utterly serious. She said hello to me at last, as Henri brought another glass to the table.

  “Well,” I said as I sat down, “this is like old times, eh?”

  Rick nodded. Ilsa murmured, “Old times.”

  I saw that there was a plain gold band on her finger. I’m certain that Rick noticed it, too.

  “Perhaps I should be on my way,” I said. “You two must have a lot to talk about.”

  “Oh no, don’t leave,” she said, actually reaching across the table toward me. “I…” She glanced at Rick. “I can’t stay very long, myself.”

  I looked at Rick.

  “It’s all right, Louie,” he said.

  He filled her glass and we all raised them and clinked. “Here’s … to Paris,” Rick toasted.

  “To Paris,” Ilsa repeated. I mumbled it, too.

  Now that I had the chance to study her face, I saw that the war years had changed her, as well. She was still beautiful, with the kind of natural loveliness that other women would kill to possess. Yet where she had been fresh and innocent in the old days, now she looked wearier, warier, more determined.

  “I saw Sam last year,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  “In New York. He was playing in a nightclub.”

  Rick nodded. “Good for Sam. He got home.”

  Then silence stretched between them until it became embarrassing. These two had so much to say to each other, yet neither of them was speaking. I knew I should go, but they both seemed to want me to remain.

  Unable to think of anything else to say, I asked, “How on Earth did you ever get into Paris?”

  Ilsa smiled a little. “I’ve been working with the International Red Cross … in London.”

  “And Victor?” Rick asked. There. It was out in the open now.

  “He’s been in Paris for the past month.”

  “Still working with the Resistance.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes.” She took another sip of champagne, then said, “We have a child, you know.”

  Rick’s face twitched into an expression halfway between a smile and a grimace.

  “She’ll be three in December.”

  “A Christmas baby,” Rick said. “Lucky kid.”

  Ilsa picked up her glass, but put it down again without drinking from it. “Victor and I … we thought, well, after the war is over, we’d go back to Prague.”

  “Sure,” said Rick.

  “There’ll be so much to do,” Ilsa went on, almost whispering, almost pleading. “His work won’t be finished when the war ends. In a way, it will just be beginning.”

  “Yes,” I said, “that’s understandable.”

  Rick stared into his glass and said nothing.

  “What will you do when the war’s over?” she asked him.

  Rick looked up at her. “I never make plans that far ahead.”

  Ilsa nodded. “Oh, yes. I see.”

  “Well,” I said, “I’m thinking about going into politics, myself.”

  With a wry grin, Rick said, “You’d be good at it, Louie. Perfect.”

  She took another brief sip of champagne, then said, “I’ll have to go now.”

  He answered, “Yeah, I figured.”

  “He’s my husband, Rick.”

  “Right. And a great man. We all know that.”

  Ilsa closed her eyes for a moment. “I wanted to see you, Richard,” she said, her tone suddenly different, urgent, the words coming out all in a rush. “I wanted to see that you were all right. That you’d made it through the war all right.”

  “I’m fine,” he said, his voice flat and cold and final. He got up from the bench and helped her come out from behind the table.

  She hesitated just a fraction of a second, clinging to his arm for a heartbeat. Then she said, “Good-bye, Rick.”

  “Good-bye, Ilsa.”

  I thought there would be tears in her eyes, but they were dry and unwavering. “I’ll never see you again, will I?”

  “It doesn’t look that way.”

  “It’s … sad.”

  He shook his head. “We’ll always have Paris. Most poor chumps don’t even get that much.”

  She barely nodded at me, then walked swiftly to the door and was gone.

  Rick blew out a gust of air and sat down again.

  “Well, that’s over.” He drained his glass and filled it again.

  I’m not a sentimentalist, but my heart went out to him. There was nothing I could say, nothing I could do.

  He smiled at me. “Hey, Louie, why the long face?”

  I sighed. “I’ve seen you two leave each other twice now. The first time you left her. This time, though, she definitely left you. And for good.”

  “That’s right.” He was still smiling.

  “I should think—”

  “It’s over, Louie. It was finished a long time ago.”

  “Really?”

  “That night at the airport I knew it. She was too much of a kid to understand it herself.”

  “I know something about women, my friend. She was in love with you.”

  “Was,” Rick emphasized. “But what she wanted, I couldn’t give her.”

  “And what was that?”

  Rick’s smile turned just slightly bitter. “What she’s got with Victor. The whole nine yards. Marriage. Kids. A respectable home after the war. I could see it then, that night at the airport. That’s why I gave her the kiss-off. She’s a life sentence. That’s not for me.”

  I had thought that I was invulnerable when it came to romance. But Rick’s admission stunned me.

  “Then you really did want to get her out of your life?”

  He nodded slowly. “That night at the airport. I figured she had Victor and they’d make a life for themselves after this crazy war was over. And that’s what they’ll do.”

  “But … why did you come here? She expected to find you here. You both knew…”

  “I told you. I came here to meet a lady.”

  “Not Ilsa?”

  “Not Ilsa.”

  “Then who?”

  He glanced at his watch. “Figuring that she’s always at least ten minutes late, she ought to be coming in right about now.”

  I turned in my seat and looked toward the door. She came striding through, tall, glamorous, stylishly dressed. I immediately recognized her, although she’d been little more than a lovesick child when I’d known her in Casablanca.

  Rick got to his feet again and went to her. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him the way a Frenchwoman should.

  Leading her to the table, Rick poured a glass of champagne for her. As they touched glasses, he smiled and said, “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

  Yvonne positively glowed.

  INTRODUCTION TO

  “WATERBOT”

  Sometimes you have to run like hell to stay ahead of the parade.

  As I write this introduction, the news media are ballyhooing the announcement that famed movie director James Cameron has helped to form a new company called Planetary Resources, which, apparently, will look into the possibilities of mining asteroids.

  “Waterbot” is a story set on the frontier of the Asteroid Belt. There are millions upon millions of chunks of
rock, metal, and ice drifting in that region, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. An interplanetary bonanza that contains more mineral wealth than the entire planet Earth can provide.

  But “Waterbot” is about another frontier, as well: the frontier of human-machine interactions. Can a human being form an emotional relationship with an intelligent computer?

  Or maybe even beat it at chess?

  WATERBOT

  “WAKE UP, DUMBBUTT. Jerky’s ventin’ off.”

  I’d been asleep in my bunk. I blinked awake, kind of groggy, but even on the little screen set into the bulkhead at the foot of the bunk I could see the smirk on Donahoo’s ugly face. He always called JRK49N “Jerky” and seemed to enjoy it when something went wrong with the vessel—which was all too often.

  I sat up in the bunk and called up the diagnostics display. Rats! Donahoo was right. A steady spray of steam was spurting out of the main water tank. The attitude jets were puffing away, trying to compensate for the thrust.

  “You didn’t even get an alarm, didja?” Donahoo said. “Jerky’s so old and feeble your safety systems are breakin’ down. You’ll be lucky if you make it back to base.”

  He said it like he enjoyed it. I thought that if he weren’t so much bigger than me I’d enjoy socking him square in his nasty mouth. But I had to admit he was right; Forty-niner was ready for the scrap heap.

  “I’ll take care of it,” I muttered to Donahoo’s image, glad that it’d take more than five minutes for my words to reach him back at Vesta—and the same amount of time for his next wiseass crack to get to me. He was snug and comfortable back at the corporation’s base at Vesta while I was more than ninety million kilometers away, dragging through the Belt on JRK49N.

  I wasn’t supposed to be out here. With my brand-new diploma in my eager little hand I’d signed up for a logistical engineer’s job, a cushy safe posting at Vesta, the second-biggest asteroid in the Belt. But once I got there Donahoo jiggered the assignment list and got me stuck on this pile of junk for a six months’ tour of boredom and aggravation.

  It’s awful lonely out in the Belt. Flatlanders back Earthside picture the Asteroid Belt as swarming with rocks so thick a ship’s in danger of getting smashed. Reality is the Belt’s mostly empty space, dark and cold and bleak. A man runs more risk of going nutty out there all by himself than getting hit by a ’roid big enough to do any damage.