«I think I’ll know you. Didn’t you imply in my office yesterday that you were going to vote several times?»
«Quiet,» I said. «Don’t you know that voting more than once is against the law?»
I’d picked the Big Dipper for its name; I’d been past it but had never gone in. It turned out to be a nice quiet spot, though. I took a booth and a few minutes later Shearer came in.
He looked both excited and worried. He said, «I guess your suggestion about the state police, with reporters watching, is the best bet. I’d thought of it too. But I’ll wait until tomorrow, Saturday, late in the day; that’ll break it in the Saturday evening newscasts and the Sunday papers, and give it the best coverage. It’ll be a shoo-in, a boat race.»
«How will you account for the delay? The postmark shows you got it today.»
«Easy. I still don’t know whether it’s the McCoy or not. How do I know if that’s really Layton’s handwriting or if someone is trying to hoax me out on a limb?»
I frowned. «You don’t really think there’s a possibility I’m pulling something like that on you, do you?»
«Hell, no. But if it had really come to me cold, as I’m going to have to tell it, I’d have been plenty suspicious. Anyway it’s going to take me until tomorrow afternoon to make sure and some photographs will be taken in the process; that’s how come I’ll have them on hand for the reporters. Okay, what’s the one thing you want besides this drink?»
«It can wait till after the election. Ellen Gallagher will be busy until then. But I want you to tell her who really got you that ledger and fix an appointment with her for me. Think she’ll talk to me?»
«Talk to you? Man, she ought to sleep with you. Okay, what else?»
«Nothing you can promise me. I’ll have a favor to ask the Gallagher. That’s why I want her to know I’ve got one coming.»
He sipped his drink and looked at me. «You can’t ride that rocket, you know, even if Ellen would want you to. Top age for pilots—»
I held up a hand to stop him. «Do you think I’m crazy? I know better than you do what the top age for spacemen is. Thirty, and I’m fifty-seven. No, I can’t ride it. But I can help push it and that’s all I want.»
He nodded. «I know Ellen well enough to say she’ll get you the best job on the project you’re qualified for. If it goes through, of course; I wouldn’t give it over one chance out of ten myself.»
«What chance would you have given Ellen Gallagher to be elected, up to the time you got that ledger?»
«About the same. But getting a bill through Congress is something else again. You can’t burgle the office of every congressman who’s going to vote against it.»
I grinned at him. I said, «I can try.»
The election was a shoo-in, a boat race. The story had broken at just the right time and both viddy and the papers had made the most of it. Layton’s party had made a desperate last-minute effort; Layton himself had appeared on the viddy claiming innocence but announcing his withdrawal from the race until he could clear himself of the charges against him, in favor of someone else whose name nobody bothered to listen to. The last-minute substitute carried six precincts in Sacramento and Ellen Gallagher carried everything else.
At eight o’clock that evening Bess, Rory and I watched the opposition concede defeat. We left the viddy on, turned low, because we all wanted to see Ellen Gallagher and hear what she had to say. It had been announced that she was leaving Los Angeles to fly to San Francisco by stratojet and would be interviewed on its landing at Angel Island at eight thirty-seven.
Bess got the bottle of champagne from the refrigerator; we’d held off opening it until the election had been formally conceded.
We poured drinks around and toasted victory.
We drank and talked. At thirty-five minutes after eight I saw the viddy screen switch to an interviewer at the jet-port so I went over and turned up the sound «… very thick fog,» he was saying. «Visibility is just about zero out there on the field so we’ll wait until Senator Gallagher is inside here to interview her. You wouldn’t be able to see the jet land anyway; it will have to come in on instruments. But it’s coming down now, exactly on time. I can hear it.»
I said, «My God, Rory, those jets are lousy on instrument landings. What if—»
And we heard the crash.
I started to rush out to go there but Rory pulled me back. He said, «We’ll get the news here quicker.»
It came in gradually, a piece at a time. The plane had cracked up badly, many of the passengers had been killed outright and none of them had escaped injury. The copilot had survived and was conscious when they pulled him out. He said that both the radar and the radio had gone out simultaneously when they were only yards off the ground, too late to pull up again.
One at a time they got the others out. Richard Shearer, Mrs. Gallagher’s campaign manager, dead. Dr. Emmett Bradly of Caltech, dead.
«God damned stratojet,» Rory said.
The Gallagher was alive. Unconscious and badly injured, but alive. She was being rushed to the Angel Island emergency hospital and further reports on her condition would be given as soon as possible.
Wailing of ambulance sirens in the fog. Damn San Francisco, damn fogs, damn stratojets, damn everything.
We sat and waited. The champagne was warm and flat. Rory poured it out in the sink and got us cold beer instead. I didn’t touch mine.
It was after eleven before there was further word on Senator Gallagher. She was alive and expected to live, but very seriously injured. Two operations had been performed. She would be hospitalized for months. But eventual recovery was reasonably certain.
I wondered if Richard Shearer had told her yet the real story of how he’d got that ledger. He must have. She’d certainly have asked him about it and he’d have had no reason to stall on telling her—except that he might not have been alone with her and he couldn’t have told her in front of others.
Yes, it could all too easily have happened. She’d had a party of seven with her, five others besides Shearer, who had flown down to join her only that afternoon in Los Angeles, and Bradly. It was all too possible she hadn’t been alone with Shearer.
Finally I drank the glass of beer Rory had poured for me. It was as warm by then as the champagne had been, and flatter.
The next morning I started working at Treasure Island under Rory.
1998
Working on rockets. Working on rockets that were going out, but not far enough out. Only a few hundred miles out, these rockets, and then back to Earth again. The rockets for New York and Paris and Moscow and Tokyo and Brisbane and Johannesburg and Janeiro. Not even for the moon or Mars, these rockets out of San Francisco. Those rockets, the real rockets, take off from bases in New Mexico and Arizona. The government runs them, and the government has silly ideas about rocket mechs. The government thinks rockets mechs should not be over fifty. The government thinks rocket mechs should have both legs made of flesh and bone. Oh, I’ve worked on the inter-planetaries despite that latter ruling, times when friends of mine have been in a position to get me special dispensation on the leg. But not since I’d passed the fifty mark seven years ago; that’s one rule that’s really enforced at the government bases. A few times since I passed fifty I’ve worked short periods at the interplanetary bases, but not as a rocket mech, not working on the rockets but just to be near them, to see them, to touch one occasionally and to watch take-offs and landings. But never for long periods; there’s no future, no pathway to the stars, in working in a commissary or being a feather merchant. It’s better actually to work on rockets, even if they’re only the terrestrial ones that take off from Earth to come down again.