question well enough to ask it.
“Okay, I tell you how we goin’ to get the information. The Peacemaker electronics bein’ done on the cheap—off-the-shelf. That’s fine; there’s good stuff out there. But what it means is, someplace there’s a contract for all the software. You get that for me. Once I see all the software laid out, I know what’s goin’ on.” He pulled down his tray-table. “You want to keep your computer geek happy, remember, Commander.” He started to put on the earphones, then held them away for a moment. “You get me the list of software, I get you a video of Zoot Suit.”
Right. One more detail to take care of.
Washington.
At home in his rental apartment after Mikey went to bed, Alan had started “flying” a simulator on his PC. It was like a parody of the idea of going to flight school. It was a mockery of his desire to get out of his job. His old squadron friend Rafehausen had asked him to visit him at the War College at Newport, where he’d give him a real flying lesson, he said, and Alan had so far refused because he had had some dumb idea that by staying home he was being loyal to Rose. Or something.
One night, he crashed a Cessna three times in a row on the virtual ramp of his virtual aircraft carrier, and then he telephoned Rafe and said When should he come up? They made a date for it, and he told Rafe that he’d just learned that his board had deep-selected him for 0–4 for next year. It wasn’t like telling Rose, but she was on the road somewhere.
Off Hampton Roads.
The USNS ship Grace Orbis rolled in heavy swells and took enough water over the bows to splash against the bridge windows as if it had come from a monstrous bucket. Below, Rose and Valdez made their way along a narrow corridor whose steel bulkheads were studded with rivets, their path partly blocked by “knee-knockers,” those unmovable metal uprights—fire-hose connections, corners of lockers, sills of watertight doors—that put bruises on the shins of everybody before a voyage is over. The ship’s roll swayed Rose against a bulkhead and then out again, and she giggled. Ahead of her, Valdez was walking with his feet wide apart and his hands out at each side to keep himself off the bulkheads. He looked to her like a mechanical toy. She giggled again.
“Well,” she shouted over the storm, “you wanted a change!”
“Hey, man, this is too much like being a sailor!” he bellowed.
They were doing a quick familiarization cruise. She was air Navy; now she had to learn more about what the despised line officers did. The Grace Orbis was a much smaller ship than Philadelphia, the one that would launch Peacemaker, but Philadelphia was at Newport News being refitted for the launch. She figured that if she could stay upright aboard Grace Orbis, Philadelphia would be a cakewalk.
A ladder led up to a watertight hatch and the deck. To Valdez’s disgust, she wanted to see the storm close up. She gave him a shove. “Move it!”
Valdez started up. The bow rose and he swayed back and she thought he was going to come down on top of her; she put a hand in the middle of his back and pushed. The bow started down and he swayed to vertical again, and she started up after him. He was at the hatch, reaching for the big white handle, and she was halfway up the ladder when the ship made a more abrupt move to starboard, the bow going down and the deck swinging far over to her right. She started to make some sound to show she wasn’t scared, the sort of sound you might make on a roller-coaster, and then she felt Valdez sway back and down and into her, and her feet were going out from under her, sliding, and briefly she was airborne and then slamming against the metal rail. She slid down, banging her shins on the ladder, feeling a sharp, horrible pain in her gut and then hitting hard on the bottom step and bouncing once more to the steel deck below. Valdez was beside her in two jumps.
She thought I’ve hurt myself, and then almost at the same time, Don’t show it, don’t show it! and she was clutching his arm, feeling the bow come up, taking her with it, swaying; she clutched his arm and said, “I’m all right—I’m all right—” She clawed herself halfway upright. The pain flashed down her abdomen and into her thighs and she thought she would fall again, and she held on to his arm with both hands, staring into his brown eyes so she wouldn’t pass out. “I’m really all right—!”
“Oh, Jesus,” he was moaning, “oh, help us, Jesus—!”
“Get me up straight—I’ve got to stand up straight—I’m all right, I’m all right—!”
August
East Africa.
O’Neill sits beside Lake Victoria. He is waiting for her—the female agent who responded to his sign.
O’Neill is at peace, perhaps for the first time. He has found he likes Africa. He understands now what Craik meant about its size, about its smell, the look of it. He has no feeling of coming home; to the contrary, it is the most alien place he has ever been. Yet it brings him peace.
She will wear green, and if something is wrong she will also wear a red scarf. This is not the sort of tradecraft they taught him at the Ranch, but Ranch tradecraft is not designed for Africa in the 1990s; it is designed for Europe in the 1970s. He smiles to himself. The wonder of it is that any of what they taught him actually does work here. The cops-and-robbers of counter-surveillance, for example. Most of the psychology of recruitment. It is like being a Boy Scout and finding that what the Boy Scout Manual says about building a fire really does make flame, even if nobody in his right mind would ever make it that way.
Perhaps, when he goes back, he will teach about Africa at the Ranch.
He sees a green dress coming toward him. It is still far away, but he can see the swing of her, her size, and he can see that she does not wear a red scarf.
O’Neill rises and goes to meet his future.
Which is Alan Craik’s future.
Near Newport, Rhode Island.
“You’re over-controlling.” Rafe’s voice was calm, devoid of criticism, an LSO voice.
Alan eased up on the stick, flexed his hand, and tried to keep the little gauge that measured rate of climb centered on zero through the turn. The single-engine plane wobbled slightly, very like a horse that knows it has a novice at the reins.
“See the runway?” The question seemed superfluous—the ancient runway of Quonsett Reserve Naval Air Station almost seemed to fill the viewscreen. “Center up. Ease up on the stick. The plane will fly just fine without you.”
Rafe spoke to the tower one more time, but Alan’s entire concentration was on the airplane and the runway. The runway, which had seemed miles long a moment before, now seemed to flow beneath him at the speed of light.
“Throttle down.” Rafe seemed to be running a checklist. Alan looked at his flaps and saw they were at full. His momentary glance broke his concentration on the stick, and the plane wobbled. He corrected automatically and was delighted to find that he had recentered. The plane dropped lightly; the altimeter ran slowly down toward zero, and the plane touched, less than a third of the way down the runway. Alan wanted to shriek with joy, but Rafe smiled
