After six weeks of decontamination, the crew of the Nixon, and their Chinese guests, were released from biocontainment. The Americans were picked up, a few at a time, by Virgin-SpaceX shuttles, and returned to Earth.
John Clover was among the first to hit dirt: and feel the oppressive pull of Earth’s gravity. He’d lost weight in his time in space and had worked out religiously. Still, gravity was a trial. On the other hand, he’d get used to it in a couple of months, and he’d have better than a half-million dollars, his share of the Hump Pool. Made him laugh to think about it.
In New Orleans, he stepped from the government autolimo and checked out his house. It was different. The steps were freshly painted. For that matter, so was the whole fuckin’ house.
Crow had told him that the government would maintain it, but this…
“Aw, crap.” He palmed the front-door lock and the door opened. The hinges didn’t squeak. Crap-crap, he thought, if they’ve messed with my stuff…
Someone had straightened up the living room. Straightened up? They’d done a thorough cleaning, practically a remake. All his carefully tabbed and dog-eared papers and magazines, half-read books, the stacks of old journals by his chairs, all the stuff that had taken up eighty percent of the floor, it was all gone.
Assholes. It’ll take years to undo what some brain-dead “organizer” had done to his filing system, he thought. Hell, it’d probably take him years just to find where they’d put all his stuff, assuming they hadn’t thrown it out in some misguided fit of do-goodedness.
He needed a joint, he decided, hoping they hadn’t thrown out his stash. He stepped on the loose floorboard to the left of the entryway to the living room. The floorboard flipped up and he reached for the rusty tackle box below it. He grunted as he pulled it up. Heavy. Inside there were fresh, wrapped kilo bricks. He peered at the label. They were from the government research farm in Kentucky.
An envelope was taped to one of the bricks, with a letter and a card inside. The letter said he was an authorized owner of the dope under federal law; the card identified him as a federal research subject, exempting him from Louisiana’s antiquated prohibitions.
Both were signed by the surgeon general.
The card said:
See what the nanny state can do for you? Welcome home, John. I’ll call you. I need some jambalaya.—C.
Well, I will be blown, Clover thought, as he rolled a joint. He stepped outside to light it up: a calico cat sat on the neighbor’s fence, a thin, feral feline. The cat narrowed his eyes and meowed, just once. Food?
“Back in a minute,” Clover said to the cat. He’d always had a weakness for calicoes. He meowed once, and went back inside to look for the cat crunchies.
Good dope, even the possibility of a new cat.
Wonder if everybody gets this kind of welcome?
No. They didn’t.
Fiorella said good-bye to Sandy at the back of the shuttle. “This whole criminal thing is bullshit,” she said. “I’ll do everything I can. I think I can probably do a lot. Santeros owes me. We’ve already got a petition going, almost everybody in the crew signed it.”
“Thank you. For everything,” Sandy said. “You gonna give me a kiss good-bye?”
“If I do, are you gonna try to squeeze my ass?”
“Maybe. Okay, maybe not.”
She gave him a peck on the cheek and said, “Everything will work out.”
“I know it will. I’ll be seeing you around.”
The FBI was waiting at the bottom of the stairs.
Whatever else had been said and done, Santeros still needed a scapegoat.
Sandy was arrested, placed in solitary confinement in Los Angeles, and the next day was flown to Washington, where he’d stand trial in federal court. Santeros had nixed a court-martial for the simple reason that nobody had actually taken the time to reactivate Sandy’s commission in the army.
He had excellent attorneys. His father visited him every day and made it very clear that Santeros was going to get a half billion (or so) of adverse political advertising shoved down her throat at the next election cycle.
The trial itself was quite short, since the charges were designed to be undeniable. Sandy didn’t bother to deny them, and pled nolo contendere. Most of the trial involved the pre-sentencing hearing, in which two dozen Nixon crew members defended Sandy’s actions as necessary, sane, and probably the salvation of the ship; and former military colleagues represented him as an unsung hero.
Fiorella wasn’t allowed to cover the case, because of the obvious conflict of interest, but she’d been interviewed on the top-rated CBSNN show Sweet Emotion and, in her Ultra-Star way, had dampened half the hankies in America.
The prosecutor, a civil servant but determined opponent of everything Santeros stood for, asked that Sandy be given forty years, as a way to embarrass her. The judge, a Santeros appointee, had been listening to the witnesses, too, and had a friendly conversation with an old college buddy currently working at the Justice Department; he cut the sentence as short as he possibly could.
Sandy got five years, in Leavenworth.
On the first day of winter, he was taken out of the Washington federal courthouse in handcuffs and leg chains. Onlookers and former cell mates thought he looked unreasonably cheerful for a man facing hard time at Leavenworth.
He was to be transported to National Airport, and from there, flown to Kansas City, for further transfer on to Leavenworth.
The first vehicle was an eight-person van, divided into four cells, cages within a cage. Seating was minimal, but not brutaclass="underline" a city-bus-style plastic seat, with minor alterations to allow the leg chain to be passed through a steel loop welded into the floor. There was enough room that he could stand and stretch.
He was allowed a slate with one book on it for entertainment, no Internet connection. On this day, he was the only passenger. The trip to National would take a half hour, since the federal marshals driving the van were not allowed to exceed the speed limit.
They were moving at precisely eight o’clock in the morning, the time chosen to avoid reporters. The first stop took place four minutes later, outside the old Smithsonian building. The van pulled to the side of the street, and one of the marshals in the front got out, came around to the back, and popped the door. Crow was standing on the curb, and climbed into the cell next to Sandy’s.
“I was wondering when you’d show up. I thought it’d be at National,” Sandy said. Gave him the toothy grin.
“Man, with that smirk, you gotta be even dumber than you look,” Crow said. “You’re on your way to Leavenworth. You know what that means? You’re gonna miss the best part of your life.”
“I’m thinking not,” Sandy said.
“Daddy can’t buy you outa this one, pal. Not gonna happen. And all your shipmates who think you saved their lives? Santeros dropped their petition in the wastebasket. She didn’t even bother to read it.”
Sandy looked down at his slate and flipped a page. Crow couldn’t quite see what he was reading. “Yeah, well. There’s always France. I think they’ll be willing to help out.” Sandy held up the slate: French for Americans.
“You gotta be kidding me.”
“Not at all. I need the refresher—it wasn’t my best subject at Harvard. I’ve always been an admirer of French civilization,” Sandy said. “The philosophy, the painting, the women, the food. The cheese, the mushrooms, the snails. You know. So I thought they’d really be the logical ones to lead the world into the next Renaissance.”