Orbit

Chapter 46

Suddenly Geoff Shear sees what he’s walked into is an ambush.

He should have been clued in, he thinks, by the others already assembled in the Oval Office, and their tight-lipped response when he was shown the place of honor on the couch. The FBI Director, the Attorney General, and the White House Chief of Staff would not normally be expected to evaluate NASA’s emergency scrub of a shuttle launch.

Nothing sinister had been reported by any of his sources in the last few days, but the fact that Dorothy Sheehan had evaporated has been scratching at him like a strange vibration in an airborne engine, vaguely threatening, though nothing has happened yet.

But now the President has entered with a tight-jawed expression and little more than a glance at him, and Geoff feels his blood running cold.

The President stands behind his desk, not even sitting, a bad sign.

“Geoff, you recall what you personally promised me when I took office and chose to keep you on as head of the agency?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“I told you above all else, I demand two things. Honesty in communicating any disagreements or distasteful information, and complete lockstep obedience when I’ve made a decision.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’ve violated both. Jim? Hand him the evidence.”

The FBI Director leans over and wordlessly plops a manila folder in Shear’s lap.

“Evidence?” Geoff feels his stomach flip-flopping.

“Yes, Geoff. From the woman you sent to sabotage the rescue mission I ordered by keeping it on the ground. I’m aware you’d never imperil the crew or the vehicle on purpose, but I consider you’ve done just that. She, and you, put at risk more than just my orders, and when you’ve had a look at that folder, you’ll understand why I have a decision to make right now. One, to prosecute you to the fullest extent of federal law in what will be a slam-dunk case, and put your ass in a federal prison; or two, have you resign immediately and preserve the illusion that we know what the hell we’re doing in this office when I and my predecessors appoint someone to high position on the presumption that they’re honest.”

“Mr. President…”

“Don’t even think about oiling your way out of this, Geoff. You’re busted. And you’re going to twist in the wind for the next forty-eight hours while I decide what to do.”

The others are already on their feet, following the President from the room as a secretary appears, quietly motioning a stunned Geoff Shear to an alternate exit.

Jerrod Dawson smiles at the symmetry of the curve in his fishing line as it describes a lazy arc through the evening air.

He wonders what it would have been like to be here ten years ago. It does seem odd at age twenty to be learning how to fly-fish at the behest of one’s father, but he’s enjoying it—and he’s getting better at it all the time. Now, instead of creating a safety hazard with every cast, he can lay the line down quietly on the surface of the crystal water, the small fly plopping in almost effortlessly, as if no filament was attached to it.

The afternoon has yielded nothing more edible than a granola bar, but he knows the resident trout of Roaring River are still down there, tantalizing them both by their refusal to follow yesterday’s catch into the frying pan.

He lets the hand-tied fly drift past the pool he’s been aiming for, and once he’s sure that nothing below the surface is interested in it, he looks away, back at the campsite. Dad is waving at him to come in, presumably to help cook the three rainbows they pulled from the lake last evening.

He pulls in the line, cranking his father’s old reel carefully to avoid snarling it. He starts walking toward the bank in the awkward hip waders, stepping carefully on the slippery rocks, feeling like a kid again—like the kid he should have been. Or maybe he’s living someone else’s dream of being on a camping trip with a loving father. Not that his father didn’t love him in years past, but he can’t recall much time with him during his early years.

Kip is kneeling over the campfire, smoke beginning to rise into the pristine blue-black of a perfect Colorado twilight. From the distance of a hundred yards, the man could be as young as Jerrod, his hair flopping down into his eyes, a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt outlining a fit body, his jacket hanging on an adjacent tree. Jerrod thinks he’s never seen his father as happy and content. But then again, before the last few months, he’s never really seen his father at all.

He pulls himself free of the water and shucks the waders before shouldering the creel and walking back.

There is a history here in this beautiful place he knew nothing about, a history his dad has been relating story by story. Lawn Lake and Rocky Mountain National Park. A history of Kip’s father and grandfather having camped here, almost in the same spot not far from the base of a sheer cliff that drops almost vertically from the summit of Mummy Mountain three thousand feet above. A history of dealing with an inquisitive bear in this very clearing, yelling it away from their tents late one night. The decades in between have been muddied by so much, even before he was born, including the loss of the grandfather he never knew. Seeing the mist in his dad’s eyes last night as he described that first camping trip with his dad was yet another small addition to the emerging mosaic of the man.

The thought embarrasses Jerrod now, and he tucks it into a mental corner lest his father somehow sense the depth of his shame.

He remembers that sudden flight from Houston to Roswell by private jet and the run to the military hospital at Holloman Air Force Base, but mostly he recalls the utter shock of having his father rush through a door to hug him and apologize. How could that happen, he’d wondered. The man wearing his father’s face seemed totally changed, offering his love, and no defense against the anger Jerrod had displayed for so long, and no longer felt.

The last orange streaks of slow-yielding sunlight flaring over the ridge line of the mountains to the west are gradually giving way to a stunning canopy of stars in a moonless sky, and Kip wonders if he ever really noticed such subtle gradations of color before his space flight. He glances at Jerrod, finishing the meal they cooked together, reveling in the easy way they’re now communicating.

There will be a few chores before bear-proofing the campsite and stoking up the fire, and he’s looking forward to lighting up post-coffee cigars, a habit Jerrod hasn’t yet quite embraced.

Jerrod is quiet as he puts down his plate and studies his father’s face.

“Dad, what we talked about last night? The truth is, at first, when I got to Houston, I was too scared to read everything you wrote. But about day three, I read everything. Even the embarrassing stuff.”

“The things about you, you mean?”

“Naw. That… I think I needed to see that, Dad, to have any idea how much you were hurting. You know, to understand how much I was nursing a blind anger.”

“Then, what was embarrassing?”

“The girl stuff about your dates in high school. Eeyyouu!” He laughs, holding his nose. “That was way more stuff than we needed to know! And the names! Good grief! Talk about the ultimate kiss and tell!”

Kip is shaking his head and laughing ruefully. “I never thought anyone in your lifetime would see those names.”

“I hope you apologized to those poor women.”

“I’ve apologized to everyone.” Kip leans forward and puts a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Including that Russian crew that was coming up to get me. I didn’t know I nearly hit them blasting out of orbit. They went on the rest of their mission to the space station, but I think they had to shovel out their cockpit, so to speak.”

“I heard.”

“But, son, as for the other things I was saying to you and about you, I guess I would have never said it at all—never admitted it to myself—if I hadn’t thought I was dying.”

“I’m glad you did,” Jerrod replies, intent on changing the subject. “By the way, I heard first-love Linda even forgave you in public.”

“Yeah. On Oprah. Embarrassing is the right word. I never would have mentioned her name… but we’ve talked and she’s okay with it.”

“One other thing I’ve been meaning to say to you, Dad. I mean, I think you know it, but I need to just say it.”

“Go ahead.”

“I want you to be happy. You should be dating. And I don’t care if the divorce from Sharon is final or not.”

“It will be, in a month.”

“Well, I just wanted you to know. Dad, I’ve buried Mom. At last.”

Kip studies his son’s eyes and Jerrod can see he’s stunned that another taboo subject has been softly opened. Kip’s hesitation is lengthy and Jerrod wonders how his father will respond. But there’s no squaring of his father’s shoulders, no edge-of-the-seat prelecture stance. What would have once been a small incendiary bomb—an invitation to be enraged by what he’d always considered his father’s infidelity to his mother’s memory by even dating Sharon—is now defused.

“So… should I accept one of those marriage proposals I’m getting daily from desperate women all over the globe?”

Jerrod laughs. “Yeah, at random, Dad. That would be real smart. Man, I can’t believe those women.”

“It’s embarrassing, son. I can’t even read them, some are so lurid. And the pictures they send…”

“Who’s answering them for you?”

“Diana Ross, I think. Or a secretary.”

“By the way, she likes you a lot.”

“Who?”

“You know who. And I think she’s cool, too. I like the way she treated me in the first weeks after you got back.”

Kip nods. He’s thinking about the awkward visit from Diana a few hours after his landing, when he wasn’t even sure he’d come back to the same planet. The trip from obscure contest winner to perhaps the most famous living human on Earth scared the hell out of him, and it had been calming to hear her voice down the corridor and see her swing in the door and look so relieved, actually hugging him and hanging on. Kip marked it off to raw emotion and the intensity of the moment, but in the months since, she’s become the scheduler for the media demands for his time, and their phone calls and meetings have grown constant.

The call of a nightbird snags their attention. The windsong through the pine needles rises as Jerrod looks at him quizzically.

“You were suffocating with Sharon, weren’t you, Dad?”

“I was suffocating myself, son. Denying what I felt. Following my father’s script. Life with her the way I was living it was like losing the last oxygen in orbit. At least up there I knew what was happening. In Tucson it was a slower death.”

“You going to write that book? Have they finalized the contract?”

“I have to. No, wrong answer. I want to. That and the fact that I need the money, now that I’ve quit selling pharmaceuticals.”

“So, what are you planning after that?”

“The same thing I want you to do, son. Something I didn’t know how to do. I’m planning to appreciate every minute of this life.”

For some reason he can’t explain, Kip closes his cell phone and finds a phone booth instead. Maybe it’s too many old movies featuring the grand old railway station, or maybe just a need to touch something corporeal, something connected by actual wires. Never mind the fact that his voice in digits is probably bouncing through satellites to reach her phone in California.

“So, what are you up to?”

Diana’s laugh is like music, especially when she’s feigning stress.

“Drowning, I am, in the process of setting up the next Internet contest.”

“How many this time?”

“Four winners.”

“And let me guess, this time ASA is guaranteeing at least four days of stark terror for each one while the world watches?”

“Well… I did take one of your ideas.”

“Which is?”

“They get their own laptop while on orbit and can type directly into their own Web site during the flight. Of course, we just can’t guarantee a two-billion-strong audience like you got…”

“Lucky me.”

“Is the disguise working, by the way?”

“You mean the baseball cap and mirrored dark glasses you FedExed? No. I tried them in Denver two days ago. Four people came over immediately to say they really liked my new look.”

There is a moment of silence.

“You said in your text message you had something serious and professional to ask me?” Diana says.

“I do. But first I want to know when I’m going to see you again.”

“I could e-mail you a picture.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I get a lot of offers, too, Mr. Dawson, thanks to everything you wrote about me.”

She pauses. “How about this evening?”

“Diana, I’m in New York.”

“I know. So am I.”

“Really? Where?”

“Turn around.”

The grin on her face as Kip realizes she’s standing right behind him is infectious, and he pulls her to him for a hug that becomes a tentative kiss.

“How did you…”

“I followed you from the publisher’s office. You know, jumped in a taxi and had fun saying, ‘Follow that cab!’”

“This is great.”

“But…” she says, holding him back. “I need to know what that important professional question is you were so hot for me to answer.”

“It’s a serious one.”

“Okay.”

“I mean, considering all I went through up there.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And because I’ve been your poster boy ever since.”

“You’ve done very well for us, Kip, especially considering the various ways we tried to kill you.”

“I’m glad you appreciate the danger I was in.”

“I do. We do. So, what’s the question?”

He glances skyward, then back to her, eye to eye.

“So, when can I go up again?”