We questioned the rest of the crew. They told us the woman performed unscheduled maneuvers at one point in the journey, claiming they were some sort of drill. When we questioned the captain about this so-called drill, his evasiveness suggested he was concealing some pertinent information. Regrettably, he was a foreign national and his ship had foreign registry, so we had no legitimate way to lever further data from him.
You’re determined to hate us, aren’t you, Jenny? To be honest, we tried to get him drunk. It didn’t work. That was the limit of our unorthodox coercion methods.
After due deliberation, we decided to send a frigate to investigate, under the command of Captain John Harrison. Your father. He volunteered for the mission. I was in charge of ground communication on Mars.
We’d gone on wild-goose chases before; sailors were forever seeing strange-shaped asteroids and reporting alien invasion fleets. We expected this to be another false alarm. However, as per standing orders, the operation was conducted under the tightest secrecy.
Our informant had given us detailed information on the bogey’s course; if it was there, we’d find it. To our surprise, we did.
I won’t tell you what it looked like. Suffice it to say, it was larger than Mars-Wheel and Venus-Wheel combined. It was virtually invisible on all spectral bands; if the informant hadn’t told us exactly where to look, we wouldn’t have found it. In comparison, the vessel your father commanded glowed like a beacon. The bogey must have perceived the frigate clearly, but took no hostile action.
After tracking the bogey for several hours, your father attempted communication using everything from radio to signal flashers. There was no response of any kind.
We consulted with higher authority. The very highest. Everyone was inclined to leave the bogey alone…or more accurately, to turn responsibility over to the scientific arm and let them investigate to their hearts’ content. But we had that report saying the bogey had fired on a freighter; and trajectory calculations showed the thing was heading into the main shipping lanes on a near-collision course with Earth.
Do you understand how it was, Jenny? It was heading for Earth and no one knew why. We didn’t know if it was an invasion army, or a bomb, or just some harmless piece of junk. We didn’t know.
A decision was made to destroy it. I didn’t make it, your father didn’t make it, but we agreed one hundred percent.
You say that as if we were all vicious killers. You knew your father; you know he wasn’t like that. He was the man on the spot, that’s all. He had to carry out the mission.
Do you think no one considered the alternatives? Yes, the bogey might have been peaceful. Yes, it might have blessed humanity in unimaginable ways. Yes, it might simply have drifted past in total indifference. Believe me, our superiors didn’t make the decision casually.
But they had no choice. The bogey would pass through the space lanes. It would be seen. It would be a destabilizing influence. There would be panic, hysteria, people killed in riots…and that’s if the bogey just flew by without taking action.. Maybe it would turn out to be hostile after all. We had to face that possibility. What would humanity think of the fleet if we let such a thing reach Earth without opposition?
I want you to understand this, Jenny. Your father would want you to understand. No one could take that chance. We had to do the hard thing. The hard thing is not killing or dying, it’s making the choice. Making the choice that is cruel and necessary and irrevocable.
The worst part is knowing you’ll never find out if you were right.
The bogey drank up laser fire like water—your father drained his weapon batteries without burning a square inch of the thing’s skin. Contrary to insinuations from the press, our forces are respecting the Selene treaty and your father had no nuclear weapons aboard. Therefore, after consultation with our superior officers and in full agreement with their decision, your father commanded his men to evacuate the vessel in life-pods, and then, alone at the helm, rammed the bogey at maximum velocity.
We don’t know if the bogey was destroyed. Perhaps it was only diverted from its course. Other ships searched the area, but space is large. They found less than a third of the remains from your father’s ship. They found nothing at all of the bogey.
To me, Jenny, your father died a hero. Not because he was willing to die—there are millions of fools who think dying somehow justifies their cause. Believe me, that’s bullshit: your father knew dying doesn’t prove anything. But he died anyway, eyes open, full of doubt but doing the job.
They told you your father died in some kind of accident. I thought you should know the truth. Too many things happen by accident in the world. It’s time people realized some things happen by human choice.
VARIATION E: DAEMON
(BRILLANTE)
(SPARKLING, LIVELY)
CONTACT: NOVEMBER 2038
Sit down and quit whining.
I don’t care if you were going riding. I’ve decided it’s time to pontificate.
Honestly, Maria, didn’t they teach you anything in that private school I sent you to? Pontificate. Look it up. Show a little initiative, for God’s sake.
That’s what I want to talk about: initiative. There are two types of people in the world—the ones who are alive and the ones who aren’t. The quick and the dead. The open and the closed.
Here. Catch.
Know what that is?
A false fingernail? Did you say a false fingernail? Hell, that false fingernail is the Petrozowski Whole Spectrum Collector Cell. That’s what pays for your wardrobe, your boyfriends, and your goddamned horse.
Sometimes, Maria, I don’t think you’re really my daughter. Sometimes I think your mother, God rest her soul, had a fling with some pretty playboy while I was busy at the office. I know, she wasn’t that kind of a woman. I’m just trying to dodge the blame.
Now here…take a look at this.
No, it’s not the same thing. That, my dear, is a scale from the hide of my personal daemon.
Daemon, not demon! My guardian spirit. My source of inspiration.
No, your old man isn’t cracking up. Although people might think so, if they knew what I’m about to do.
I’m going to give you total control over Petrozowski Energy. Have fun with it.
Stop whining. Stop right now.
The business world is losing its novelty for me. I foresee that in the not-too-distant future, I’ll be bored to the edge of madness. So I’m taking a one-man yacht into space and I’m going to find the daemon again.
I’ve thought about this a long time. I could go through the motions of running the company till the day I die, or I could say to hell with the rat race and pursue another dream.
I hate the jaded way I feel some days, Maria. I want to be excited about something again. I want to feel the tingle of magic.
You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?
Thirty-five years ago, daughter dear, I was a lowly navy tech baby-sitting the solar energy cells of a frigate named the Coherent. It was a stupid job. I’d enlisted because I wanted to get off Earth. “Out of the cradle and into the rest of the universe,” that’s what the recruiters told me. I should have realized the purpose of the fleet wasn’t to widen our horizons but to bring the cosmos down to our own size.
One afternoon I was standing my watch when I felt the jolt of our guns firing and saw our battery levels dropping. Fifteen minutes later, the charge in the batteries red-lined dead bottom. An hour later, we were ordered to abandon ship. That was it. No one felt it necessary to explain what was going on. Need to know and all that.
I ejected in the nearest escape pod and found myself shooting toward the biggest damned hulk I’d ever seen. I couldn’t tell you what it was. I’ve thought about it most of my life.