An Evening at the Carnival with Mister Christian

"A lesson first. Jupiter, the planet Jupiter, orbits the sun not quite a half billion miles out, say an average 450 million miles away from the sun. Saturn's orbit is not quite a billion miles, around 900 million miles, give or take. Uranus, by comparison, is a mere 1.7 billion miles away, while Neptune is a cool 2.7 billion miles away. Mars, by way of another comparison, is approximately 140 million miles away, the moon, a couple hundred thousand. Are we clear so far?"

"I suppose?"

"The speed of light is, approximately, 671 million miles per hour, so it takes light from the sun not quite an hour to reach Jupiter, a little over an hour to reach Saturn, and so on. When Hyperion went operational the reactor was designed to SCRAM, or to shutdown, automatically if our ground based signal was somehow lost. This system worked, the reactor shut down automatically, and the plasma beam shut down almost instantaneously, within 3.7 seconds. Are you following me so far?"

"Yes."

"It took a while to locate Hyperion, and to reestablish a radio link again, but when we did we discovered something a little unusual." She turned to the laptop and opened another image, a slide depicting the solar system 'from above' the plane of the ecliptic. "Hyperion came to a rest beyond Neptune's orbit, and it traveled that distance in less than thirty seconds. Of some importance, despite the huge magnitude of both acceleration and deceleration, Hyperion was intact. Completely intact."

"Was anyone onboard?"

The owl looked away, pinched her nose again. "Yes. Five astronauts. Two American, two Israeli, one from France."

"Were they...?"

"Not right away. They had consumables, enough to last 180 days."

"Dear God."

"This was not God's doing, Dr Curry. It was mine."

+++++

"Jerry? Mrs Smithfield and I are going down to Santa Monica, to Abe's house. I think we'll have an early dinner with Abe and Morty, then maybe play some bridge."

"You going to drive," the head of the former President's Secret Service detail asked, "or would you like one of us to take you down?"

"No, Jerry, why don't you drive us? We'll be down there a few hours, but I know you don't want to miss the game, so come on back up here. I'll call, have one of the guys come get us when we're through."

"Yes, Mr President."

The Smithfields seemed a little overdressed for cards, but his head of detail dropped them off at his friend's house just before five that afternoon, and the agent swept the massive house's living room with his eyes, then he walked over to the broad windows looking down on the Riviera Country Club, saw a card table set-up just off the kitchen, outside on the poolside patio. He walked the perimeter of the house, satisfied the place was still secure, then got in his Suburban and drove back up Mulholland.

A gray sedan with Nevada plates drove by the house ten minutes later, and the two men inside smiled as they passed.

+++++

Carol looked at Hope, now thinking about Ted and the ambush. "Smithfield came to the hospital," she said, "and downtown too, to the ceremony. Ellie thinks he had something to do with the shooting. What do you think? Is that possible?"

"Did she, now? Interesting. Funny, but interesting."

"Funny? How so?"

The owl shrugged.

"Wait a minute," Curry said. "The first Hyperion. You said the first...there've been more?"

The owl turned to her laptop and the exterior of the current satellite loomed on the screen once again, two X-37Cs docked to a toroidal platform attached to the main assembly. "This is the fourth, our most ambitious Hyperion yet. Larger, more advanced life support capabilities, better shielding. It will have a crew of twelve, in addition to it's cargo."

"Let me guess. Fertilized eggs. Like in Interstellar."

"Interstellar?"

"The movie?" Curry said sarcastically.

"Really? Oh, I missed that one. But yes, eggs, for humans, livestock, even seed-stocks. The idea first appeared, incidentally, in 1960s science fiction."

"You said this was the fourth...?"

"Yes. The second was a proof of concept flight. To Titan, and then, a return."

"Unmanned?"

"No. A crew of three. All Americans on that one."

"Unharmed."

"From the flight, yes, but we were not fully prepared for the effects of cosmic radiation at these velocities." She shook her head. "We do not expect to hear from the third flight, not until their return. Two astronauts, a husband wife team. This voyage is primarily to test shielding concepts and reproductive impacts."

"Where'd they go? How far?"

"Oh, a candidate exoplanet approximately 26.5 light years away. The ship departed a little over a year ago."

Carol looked up then. "And you removed yourself a year ago. Why?"

The owl laughed at that. "The Russians think Hyperion is was a weapon," she looked out the window carved from the hillside, down to the vineyards across the valley. "In a way, they're correct. If Hyperion succeeds, humanity moves beyond earth and out to the stars, but in one view only those people or races deemed acceptable to colonization will make the journey. A minor war broke out in our Congress as a result, in a senatorial committee anyway. Smithfield was responsible for securing funding for Hyperion, compartmentalizing knowledge within NASA and the ESA to prevent awareness of Hyperion's real purpose from becoming known. He wanted to convene a panel of ethicists and geneticists to develop criteria for selecting potential colonists; the committee threatened impeachment proceedings. He'd kept so much US involvement hidden in black budgets, he knew they had grounds. But that's not really why. He's a good man, Carol. A good man trapped by dark forces operating within governments in both America and the EU. He's also in danger. Whoever tried to take out Ted was trying to get to me, to get back at me. We don't know who is involved yet, but I would assume it's either Russia, or a faction within the US government."

"So, that faction was trying to get at you a year ago?"

"They tried to kill me, yes. Elements within the CIA. That much is known, the confirmation came from Smithfield, before his resignation."

"It's so weird, he worked that accident a few weeks ago, with Smithfield's son...?"

"What?" the owl said, sitting bolt upright in her chair. "What accident?"

+++++

The team had gathered on the fairway below the house; a small drone had just flown by the living room, imagery confirmed Smithfield's presence on the patio. The man's security detail was derelict, but that was no matter now, and speaking in his native Bulgarian he told his team to begin moving slowly up the hillside.

Ten minutes later they crawled into the back yard, slipped quietly through the landscaping around the swimming pool -- then spreading out as they closed on the group playing cards on the patio. When they were ten or so meters away he signaled, and his team lifted their guns...

...and died. The Israeli team took them out in an instant, perhaps ten minutes after Smithfield's Gulfstream lifted off from Burbank, it's flight plan showing a destination of Hamburg, Germany. An hour before entering EU airspace the Gulfstream diverted to Paris.

+++++

Jeanie Curry sat on the back porch with Carol; Katz was inside cooking, doing his best to take care of these two physicians -- but he knew he was failing -- miserably. After they left Hyperion -- that's what everyone called Miss Sherman these days -- he took them down to one of the vineyards and let them roam through the vines for a half hour, taste a few of the better reds, then he took them to a nearby food market...and now he was poaching salmon and roasting eggplant, drizzling olive oil and lemon on his cooling couscous. He fixed plates, carried them to the little dining room then went out to the porch.

"Dinner's ready," he said. "Come on in before the bugs have you for dinner."

The women went inside; they sat and ate in silence, he remained in the kitchen, eating alone, until one of them, the Curry woman perhaps, called for him...

"You're not joining us?" Jeanie asked.

"I didn't want to presume..."

"Geesh, Ben, grab your plate and sit your skinny ass down."

He laughed, came back a moment later and joined them. "We just received word that Smithfield got out just in time."

Carol nodded. "Any word from the hospital?"

"Stable. Critical, but stable."

Curry nodded her head. "Thought I had 'em all. That last fragment was like a sliver from a fingernail clipping, and the bleed just didn't show on anything."

"Pressurization in the aircraft; that'd be my guess." Katz said. "Bad luck."

"Bad surgeon," Curry said, getting down on herself.

"Great eggplant," Carol said, wishing someone, anyone would talk about anything else.

"Ah, you know what?" Katz said. "We had a housekeeper, an old Italian woman when we were growing up. She cooked for us, five nights a week, and every Sunday night she made this eggplant. First thing she taught me to make, too."

"It's tender, yet so crisp. How'd she do it?"

"Slice it first, thin, then steam it with white wine and lemon juice. And only use fresh bread crumbs for your dredge."

"So, she was your first love?"

"In a way, yes. She was the most incredible woman, though very old. Catholic, of course, and actually she was quite wealthy. She just loved taking care of kids, and cooking, of course. I don't know how my parents found her, but she took care of me until she passed. I was a junior in high school by then," he said as he looked over the memory. "There's not a day goes by I don't miss that woman."

"You cook like this for your family?" Jeanie asked.

"No family. I stay with my sister and her kids sometimes, but I'm usually, well, like this -- on a deployment of some sort." He sighed, looked away for a moment. "Her husband was killed in the Gaza a few years ago, but I like helping with them when I can."

"I know I asked, but do you miss America?" Carol asked.

"Sometimes, but after the Rams left LA? Who cared after that?"

"Yup, you're an American," Jeanie said. "Get rid of the NFL and NASCAR, and what would we have left?"

"Oh, that's the thing with TV these days. We have the NFL channel over here, but football, er, soccer is more popular. Most of the guys I work with don't know anything about it...all you see, they say, are the uniforms. Very dull. They are, of course, all morons."

Carol looked up then. "The fourth trip. Who's going?"

He looked away, shrugged. "I don't know."

"And that's a lie," she said. "Don't do that to me again, Ben."

"The list was decided long ago."

"But Ted was on it, wasn't he?"

Ben shook his head. "Too old. His piloting skills were considered, but no."

"Zygotes," Jeanie said. "Fertilized ovum. Can you imagine what those might go for?"

"What do you mean?" Carol asked.

"Hell, think about it? Want to raise money? Sell space on one of these Arks; you're offering a shot not only at immortality, but immortality on another world. Or worlds. If the human biological imperative is simply reduced to procreation, about spreading your genes, spreading your seed throughout the stars has got to be the ultimate power trip."

"Interesting," Ben said, "but what if you ended up with planets loaded to the max with a bunch of hyper-competitive egoists. You'd be seeding a doomed series of societies, wouldn't you?"

"Sounds like Smithfield was thinking along those same lines, maybe the owl was too."

"The owl?" Ben shrugged. "What owl?"

"That woman in there, what'd you call her? Hopie? She looks like an owl."

Carol and Ben laughed at that one.

"You know?" Carol said, "Maybe she kind of does right now, but ten days ago? No. She was just about dead."

"Really?" Jeanie said, and Carol told her the tale she knew most about, about the trip from the mental facility to Vancouver.

"You mean, you were on that boat?" Ben asked. "You helped her get to Canada?"

"I did."

"And you'd met Ted just a few days before..."

"He was the instructor in my dive class, we first met like three weeks earlier, but yeah, really just a few days together."

"Interesting. Hit you hard, I take it."

"What?"

"Oh, you fell for him pretty fast," Curry observed. "So, I guess, then all this happened."

"Yeah," Carol said, looking around the little house, "this...happened..."

Ben cleared his throat and started clearing dishes, then he cleaned the kitchen while the physicians went back out on the patio. They saw more jets roaring north just then, several of them...

"It's hot out here," Carol said. "And the sun's down but it's still hot."

"So, did you like sailing?"

"Yeah, ever since I was a kid. Parents took me out all the time; summers anyway."

"I always wanted to learn. Sounds fun to me."

"About the zygotes and ovums, and selling places on an Ark...were you serious?"

Curry shrugged. "Just seems like human nature to me. Everyone has an angle. Everyone's in it for a buck."

"But don't you think that's what got us where we are now?"

"I'm not a philosopher. Wow, look at all the jets up there..."

"I think Hopie's a philosopher. I know Ted is. I wonder what they'd think of all that? Selling places, I mean."

"Looking at that owl? I'd say she already has thought of that."

Carol laughed. "An owl. I like that."

"Something about that woman's eyes. Almost inhumanly smart."

"That's what Ted told me once. She views the world like a chessboard. She was..."

Something instinctive hit, and both women ducked -- just as three fighters roared by -- just overhead, not a hundred feet above the treetops. "Fuck!" Curry screamed, watching as they disappeared, through the trees, their afterburners searing the night, the concussive shock-wave almost knocking them out of their chairs.

Ben ran out onto the porch, listened, then he dove for their chairs, pulled them to the ground and covered their bodies with his own...

The night sky lit up, then the ground lurched. Carol felt it then, a wave -- like her skin was on fire, and then she had a hard time breathing. "It's so hot...!" she screamed over the roaring wave...

Ben sat up, his back smoking now, the hair on the top of his head singed away, then he looked at the hill above the village and ran from the patio.

Curry sat up, shook her head, and Carol saw blood coming out of her left ear. Jeanie said something, but Carol didn't hear a thing and shook her head. Carol rolled over and tried to stand up, but her legs weren't working, and she consciously tried to think why.

"Shock," she said, and she heard her own voice inside her head, but it was muffled, and now there was a warbling, high-pitched tone drilling a hole between her ears. She took a deep breath and pulled herself up, then helped Jeanie stand, and she turned for the house -- but all she saw was fire.

"The house is on fire," she heard her own voice say, and she pulled Curry away, away from the house and out into the little yard. Ben came running around the side of the house and he grabbed them, led them to one of the Rovers and stuffed them in the back seat. He started the engine and raced away from the village.

The air smelled like kerosene, and everywhere Carol looked trees and houses were on fire; when she looked into the night sky she saw a steady stream of fighters racing north and east, lines of blue-white flame tearing the night apart. She held on as he took a corner too fast, then they were in a tunnel...no, a shelter of some sort...and she saw dozens of women and children had already gathered there. Some people were badly burned...

Yet she saw no men.

Ben helped them out of the Rover then backed out slowly, leaving them to wonder just what the hell had happened.

"Whatever that was, it hit the hill above the village," Jeanie said.

Carol struggled to understand, to think what that meant. "The owl. Hopie. She was under there, inside that mountain."

A nurse was beside them a moment later, cleaning their skin and putting burn dressings on their scalps and shoulders, then Carol was aware she was laying on a cot, someone was putting a blanket over her as waves of chills shuddered through her body, and she recalled thinking how good it would be to sleep in peace -- while the world outside burned.

+++++

The Owl...Hyperion...a very tired, very weak woman sat in the Bell 212 -- looking down at Tarum and her hill, all of it on fire. The fuel-air bomb in the Russian Kh-55SM had been detected over Syrian airspace, and had initially been thought to be targeted on IS positions near Palmyra. Three IL-76 Mainstays had suddenly appeared over the Mediterranean and flooded all radar bands with powerful jamming, but a German-crewed NATO EC-135 AWACs bird burned through the jamming and spotted the Russian cruise missile as it crossed into Lebanese airspace. Warnings went out, fighters scrambled, then the Russians called the Israeli PM, declaring one of their missiles, targeting IS positions in Syria, had malfunctioned and was headed for the Golan. They were trying to abort the missile 'even now', they reported -- right up until it detonated.

"Thank God," a Russian foreign ministry spokesman would say later that morning on CNN, "it appears to have detonated near an unpopulated area."

The Owl looked at the Israeli PM sitting by her side, looked at the expression of pure anger in his eyes, and she put her hand on his. "Patience," she said. "Two more days. Three at the most."

He nodded his head as the helicopter turned and skimmed low, just over rocks and trees on it's way south, deep into the Negev.

+++++

The Israeli brigadier general looked over the latest Flash Traffic, read through it again to be sure he understood the directive, then walked back to President Smithfield and handed him the paper. He watched the old man rub his eyes, then read through the message.

"She's okay?" he asked.

"Of course. She anticipated when they tried for you they'd go for her as well. Once they re-tasked that second recon bird yesterday, once her brother disappeared, she knew they'd make this kind of move."

"What about the facility in the Negev?"

"Untouched. Two cruise missiles downed more than a hundred miles short."

"Hyperion?"

"An ASAT satellite is altering orbit for intercept. The Japanese will launch an interceptor within the hour to take that one out, we'll follow through with an ASAT of our own in ninety minutes."

"So, we're at war. With Russia."

The general shrugged. "Who's at war with whom? No one knows what's playing out up there. There will be no change in status."

"I wonder what she's going to do?"

Again, the general shrugged. "We'll be in Paris within the hour. Le Bourget, I believe."

"Very well. When will we make Tel Aviv?"

"It's just a few hours more. We'll top off our tanks and leave as soon as he's on board. Mrs Smithfield? Do you need anything?"

The woman shook her head, looked out the window.

Attractive woman, the general thought. Too bad. But she was a spy, the insider who'd betrayed the president's son, and ultimately, the president himself -- and the project. She would be dead before the day was done, and he looked at her silk clad legs and ample cleavage -- and he sighed again.

"Such a waste," he said as he turned and went back to the cockpit.

+++++

She felt an alcohol swab on her arm and she tried to open her eyes, but all she felt was a wall of impenetrable darkness, then a pinch and sudden flowing warmth.

"Who...?"

"Dr Curry? Can you hear me?"

"Ben? Colonel Katz? Is that you?"

She felt his hand take hers. "Yes. Listen, you've got a few glass fragments, in your left eye. From the patio door, I think. We're almost to the hospital, and we've got the best ophthalmic surgeon in the whole world standing by."