Chaga

makeup a little too heavy around the left eye? Cover. You need cover. She ducked into the laundry room and grabbed a hanger-trolley of clothes ready to be returned to their owners.

‘Next car, please,’ she told the room-valet waiting on the next floor up. All Irish people can do convincing American accents. The illuminated numbers blinked on and off above the door. Gaby amused herself by looking through the clothes on the rail.

She hit the emergency stop button.

Gaby took the hanger down and examined the garment closely. The print on the T-shirt was faded from years of washing, but it was clearly a teenage nun with her habit up, luxuriously masturbating.

Gaby sat in the corner of the elevator for a full minute, staring at the T-shirt while the call button lights flashed. She put the T-shirt back on the rail, went down to ground, pushed the trolley through the lobby to the reception desk and asked for a pen and paper.

‘Give that to Dr M. Shepard, please,’ she said. She left the trolley by the desk and went out the front door, past all the staring political-space-BDO-Chaga people. She had caught a glimpse of a television in the public lounge. A glimpse was enough to identify Ellen Prochnow’s unmistakable First Lady of Space styling, and the words Live Relay in the bottom right corner.

Thanks a lot, Gloria.

63

Another country, another press conference. So many amphitheatres of seats, so many tables and chairs and carafes of water and nervous scans of the seventh row and the clear of the throat before the ‘Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.’ Getting old, Gaby McAslan. Getting cynical. Getting weary. One last big miracle and wonder and that will do me, all right? Getting lonely, in your seventh seat of the seventh row, with all these faces around you that you know so well, but who never become more than faces.

Has he got that note yet?

No. Don’t think about that. Think about Rodrigo and The Man going to get her that contact with the Pink Underground. That would be a hell of a story to break. The symbs were breeding sub-cultures like clap in a brothel; it was politically inevitable that there would be gay communities springing up in the vast Chagas of Ecuador and southern Venezuela. Not surprising that there should be a secret underground railroad funnelling white norte homosexuals across terminum. No homophobia or persecution there. No fear of the Scourge.

Weeks could pass now without thinking about Jake Aarons.

She thought about Shepard again. It is only two hours since you left him that note. He probably hasn’t got it yet, yet alone meditated on his response. Just what is he doing down here anyway?

Ellen Prochnow was taking this press conference alone. She had never been shy about being seen on the pale blue screen. That was a Chanel suit. Style never goes out of fashion, Coco had said.

God, what if Shepard didn’t show?

Ellen Prochnow did the scan of the seventh row. Hi. It’s me, the one with the red hair, right? You don’t know me yet, but by the time Any Questions is over, we’ll be better acquainted. A whole lot better. Ellen Prochnow did not do the nervous throat-clear. She was a professional.

‘Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.’ The half-smile was very good. ‘Welcome to Kennedy Space Centre for the briefing on Operation Final Frontier Mission 88. Most of you probably know who I am—’ small laughter ‘— but for those who have been on some other planet than this or the Big Dumb Object, I am Ellen Prochnow, Chief Executive of UNECTASpace, and I’ll be introducing you later to the crew and expedition team of Mission 88, the HORUS Arthur C. Clarke.’

How many biotech salarypersons among them, Ellen? Gaby thought. How many weapons analysts?

‘First, the latest on our Big Buddy up there. As of 11:30 GMT September 18, the Big Dumb Object is in a trailing position to Earth at a range of seven hundred and twenty thousand kilometres, slightly under three times the distance between the Earth and the Moon. The Swarm has dropped into a trailing position 15,000 kilometres behind the BDO and we are assuming it has become dormant. Estimated Time To Earth Orbit is two hundred and fifteen hours thirty-eight minutes. Achieved Earth Orbit will be on Thursday September 27 at 10:22 GMT; that’s about twenty past five in the morning EST, or Last Jack Daniels and Then I’ll Get Some Sleep, Florida Journalists’ Time.’

Don’t smile at your own jokes, Ellen.

She rattled through the reports on the state of the Big Dumb Object. What little Gaia could photograph through the five slit windows that ran the length of the cylinder indicated that the ring mountain baffles had solidified into partition bulkheads five kilometres thick, though gravitometric analysis seemed to indicate the presence of large spaces up to three kilometres in diameter inside the walls. Gaia was being re-tasked for low-level passes over the window slits to attempt to map the interior prior to human exploration. Yes, alien intelligences were a possibility. Even the Chaga-makers themselves. So was Harvey the six-foot invisible white rabbit. Any more questions?

Not yet, Gaby thought. Wait until the Great White Major Toms are smiling for the cameras before you pull out your j’accuse.

‘You can pick up the latest releases from Gaia and the Hubble and Chandrasekahr telescopes at reception on the way out,’ Ellen Prochnow said.

‘I’d like now to introduce you the crew and mission team of the space plane Arthur C. Clarke. This will be Mission 88 of Operation Final Frontier, HORUS launch thirty-four from Kennedy Space Centre. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Commander Phillippa Gregory, orbiter pilot Damon Ruscoe, Flight Engineer McAuley Trudin of the Arthur C. Clarke, and her mission team.’

People applauded. Gaby expected them to come on in a high-kicking chorus line, but it was just another load of smiling, waving bald-headed astronauts in white coveralls with UNECTASpace’s crescents-and-Earth logo on breast and back. The shaved heads were something to do with preventing hairs drifting around Unity, Gaby had heard. The station was already well over capacity, and Final Frontier people were being shipped up faster than the space engineers could bolt new sections on and fill them with air. Gaby liked the idea of the success or failure of First Contact hanging from a stray, free-floating pube. The hairlessness suited the blacks much better than the whites, who all looked grim and refugee-like. So which is the weapons expert? Gaby thought, leaning on her folded arms and watching the mission team shuffle out from the wing and form a semicircle behind Ellen Prochnow. You, big black man with the happy expression? You, little white woman with the look of naked terror on your face? You, Captain Lantern-jaw Marine-face with the much-too-nice-eyes that give it all away?

You?

You.

‘You,’ Gaby breathed at the twelfth coverall from the end. ‘You cannot do this to me, not here, not now.’

64

There was a launch that night. It was only an SSTO freighter -they barely gave the things mission numbers, they were that lacking in glamour – but it made a lot of noise and sent up a mighty impressive pillar of flame across the lagoon. The space-junkies and rocket-fetishists who had not gone across the causeway to Trailer Park were crowding around the Starview Lodges telescopes on the upper level to ooh and ah. Gaby had the terrace bar to herself. The other journalists derided her for her choice of the hippy, dippy, New-Agey Starview Lodge over less eclectic expense account hotels down the coast and across the lagoon. Gaby stayed here because Gaby liked the vibes and the clientele. It reminded her of Africa. It reminded her of the Watchhouse. Its keel had been laid the same year that Unity’s had been welded together in low orbit, and it had grown in symbiosis with the renascent