Reginald recovered from the Christophe comment and slammed a hand on the desk. "Exactly! Exactly why you were not supposed to know until..."
"Until you were done with me."
He had the decency not to lie. "And what's so wrong about that? Hm? What the hell is it you've got against scratching the back that's scratched yours for so long?" He stood and strode to his window and thumbed the tint screen. Martian evening light streamed it's red glow into the room. "Look out there. Look at that. A dead rock, they said for years and years and years. No life can ever make it. No human could ever possibly survive. And then a group of forward thinkers said damn what they say and worked their asses off to build this tribute to the human spirit.
"And then I was born and I was raised and I saw my grandfather's blood and sweat and tears in every corner and you know what it made me do? It made me long to add my own. To take what he created and go the next step, the step he couldn't possibly have lived to see. Beyond. Utopia, the great gateway to more." He whirled around and looked at me.
"We're on the brink. We're standing right on the edge of everything he wanted, everything millions upon millions of thinkers and dreamers craved for untold generations. And right when we have the living, breathing, mostly normal truth, proof of procreation viability, the final piece of the promise puzzle, you blast out and say screw it all!" He kicked a chair and made me jump. "Damn it Jake!" He broke his promise. He was full on yelling by then. After a string of curses, most of which I'd never heard before, he sagged. It looked like all the fight drained out of him and he slumped back to his chair.
That was, perhaps, the most awful I'd ever felt about something I did. I still wasn't sorry I did it. I'd do it in a heartbeat without even having to think, even knowing the fallout. But I was sorry that Reginald thought it was...personal. That somehow it was a huge intentional insult or slight or, worse, sabotage. I made Reginald crumple. I made him look defeated. And I never meant any of that, not at all.
He took a bottle of pills out of his desk and popped one of them in his mouth. After he swallowed it down with water, he wiped his mouth and sat back. He looked old. He looked tired. "Well," he said after a few uncomfortably silent minutes. "Time to decide where we go from here."
Guilt was gnawing at my stomach. "Is the program really on the line?"
"Every second of every damned day." He picked up a little trinket off his desk and rolled it back and forth in his hands. It was a little model of the new line of Condors, the ones that were being sent to concentrate on the corners of his own galaxy instead of wormholes. He rolled it back and forth, staring at me with that look he gets when he's really trying to come up with some answer. In those moments he looked just as much like a scientist as Mother. "I suppose it would serve you right to keep thinking the program is now doomed from your little stunt. I should let you dangle on the hook for weeks. One week for every gray hair you gave me. That would be fair."
I felt hopeful.
He put the little model down and leaned forward. "The IOC has voted. The last rounds of schmoozing seemed to have done it. That, and a few credits to fund the right projects Earthside pretty much secured it. And the chemical formula for synthetically producing the brilliant new Qitanium ore didn't hurt much, either."
There was a twinkling in Reginald's eyes, and a slight smile curling his lips. I forgot Reginald's yelling, his harsh words, and just got swept up in his obvious excitement. "Do you mean..."
"This morning I got the communique. They have granted StarTech permission to embark on a long term study of off world procreation."
I felt a rush of disappointment. "Just a study?"
But Reginald laughed. "Just? Just! God, Jake. It never ceases to amaze me how little you understand of how things really work around here. Yes, a study. But there's no 'just' about it. This is exactly all we hoped for." He smacked his hand on his desk in excitement and jumped up, looking fresh and young again. It was very easy to understand how he could lead others. I felt myself get swept up in the wave of excitement. "It's everything we hoped for. Not as much as we dreamed of, of course. No way that could happen. But it's more than we expected, so we came out ahead."
He put his hands behind his back and walked around while he explained. "It's the steps we talked about months ago, Jake. Baby steps. Only this time, we took a huge, giant leap. They have proof of one. Now, they have approved five hundred births. Five hundred kids like you!" He was behind me and paused to thump my shoulder. "Five hundred! Five hundred families. Can you imagine? The cost will be enormous. And there are so many hoops for all participants that it took up five files on my holo. Five. Completely full with every imaginable, and some unimaginable, rule and regulation governing every little thing. But it's a start."
"So...I didn't screw it all up."
Reginald plopped back in his chair and poured himself a drink from his fancy whiskey bottle. He gave a little laugh as he took a sip. "Ironically it was that very act that pushed it over the edge. Don't look smug, Jake. I wasn't kidding. It easily could have gone the other way and screwed us all." He pointed his finger at me. "I'm legitimately angry about that. I plan on being that way for a long time." He swigged the drink and put the empty cup down. "And what the hell I'm going to do with you now, I'm sure I don't know." He linked his hands behind his head and sat back, rocking gently in his big poofy chair.
"But it worked out," I said in my own defense.
"By sheer dumb luck." Fair point. "I can understand why you did it. You shouldn't have," he reiterated quickly. "The company aside, we are people, Jake, ones who have been given the daunting task of taking over for your parents. They put you in our hands. I've never been a parent myself, and if the hell I went through waiting to know if you would live through that little stunt may have just convinced me I never want the job. But I guess the IOC saw that as proof that you're a normal kid after all."
A quick stab of panic shot through me. "They know why I...about..."
He shook his head firmly. "No. They know that you got overwhelmed by the new life, the people, the parties, the press and the pressures and..." he waved a hand. "I'm very, very convincing."
I didn't know if that was actually better or not. "So they think I just ran away."
"Yep." He grinned, not feeling the least bit bad about making me seem like some scared little kid who couldn't hack it. "And you best thank me for that. Better a coward than a kid in mourning."
I frowned. "Mourning for what?"
"The death of the woman you love."
He had the wrong impression. It was the second time he'd said something like that. I should have taken the time to set him straight on my relationship with Ashnahta. "Which is exactly why I came back. To avoid that."
"You don't understand what I'm saying, Jake. If they found out why you came back, that could have been the cause of her death."
My heart gave a hard lurch in my chest and then seemed to stop beating all together. "What do you mean?" I barely managed to ask.
"Aw hell," he said with a sigh. "I thought we got all that clear? Look, Jake. We've been trying our best to hammer it home to you. I thought you got it when you were so careful in the interviews. You danced away from the talk of other cultures brilliantly. You said enough to make them wonder, and yet just enough to tell them you were calm and relaxed about it. I thought, 'Brilliant! He's got it!' But you don't, do you? Not really." He sat forward again and gave me a look of almost sympathy. "They aren't ready for her, Jake. They aren't ready to even know she exists with untold galaxies as buffer zones, let alone right next door. And if they ever even caught a whiff of the fact that a hostile race abducted Earth's best beloved scientists..."
His words swam in my head, guilt and panic mixing. I latched on to that last point. "They weren't abducted!"