Cauldron

EPILOGUE

Hutch contacted Rudy’s family as soon as the Preston had arrived back in the solar system. That was an excruciating ordeal. As painful as anything she’d done in her life.

Frank was a big media splash for several days. Then the president of Patagonia made some negative comments about the president of the NAU, there was talk of imposing economic sanctions in both directions, and the story about the talking cloud moved to the back pages. Within a week it was gone.

Antonio’s book, At the Core, revived it for a while, and there was talk of another mission. Some wanted to communicate with the creature, some to nuke it. Others claimed it was a conspiracy and that the omegas came from somewhere else, from a source so terrible that the government was keeping it secret. Still others claimed that hell was located at the center of the galaxy, and we all knew who was really imprisoned in the cloud. When Hutch was asked during an interview what she thought should be done, she urged that the matter be left alone. “Maybe until we’re smarter,” she said. In the end, public indifference might have carried the day, but Alyx Ballinger turned the encounter into the musical Starstruck. Hutch, Antonio, and Jon attended opening night in London. Hutch enjoyed it immensely, but always claimed it was because of the music, and had nothing to do with the fact that the Hutchins character was played by the inordinately lovely Kyra Phillips. The musical went to VR, interstellar tourism picked up, politicians got interested, and within three years, a second Academy began operating out of temporary quarters in Crystal City. A larger complex is currently under construction near the old NASA site on the Cape.

The Prometheus Foundation had lost Rudy, but with the appearance of Starstruck, it gained support, and eventually became a bridge to the new Academy.

Most people were inclined to give credit for the resurgence to Ballinger, but Hutch thought it would have happened anyway, in time. It was inevitable, she told friends. Even without the Locarno Drive, she believed, the human race would have gone back to the stars. The retreat from the original effort had been an aberration, much like the long hiatus after the first flights to the Moon. We seem to do things in fits and starts, she told an audience at ceremonies opening the Crystal City complex in 2258. “But eventually, we get serious. It just takes time.”

Meanwhile, a few independent missions, using the Locarno, went out. Two were lost, never heard from again. When nobody talked of scuttling the program, Hutch understood there’d be no turning back this time.

Jon received a half dozen major awards, including the 2257 Americus. In his acceptance remarks, and to no one’s surprise, he gave the bulk of the credit for the Locarno to Henry.

He was also the recipient of the first Rudy Golombeck Award, given by the Prometheus Foundation to recognize achievement in promoting the interstellar renaissance. Matt Darwin made the presentation.

In the VR version of Starstruck, Jon was portrayed as brilliant. He was also elderly, forgetful, and often incoherent. His role in rescuing Hutch and Antonio was transferred to Matt. A producer explained that you could only have one hero in these things, and the starship pilot was the natural choice. People don’t identify with physicists, he insisted.

Matt helped Myra Castle attain the state senate. Four years later she went to Washington, where she became a central figure in a major corruption scandal.

Matt went back to real estate for a year. When Starstruck appeared, he became an instant celebrity. He was played by Jason Cole, who specialized in action heroes. In that version, the mission had brought along a few nukes, and they took the monster out. Matt commented that a few nukes wouldn’t have mattered much, but nobody really seemed to care. When the Academy came back, he applied for reinstatement and, at the time of publication, is en route to the Dumbbell Nebula with a contact mission. (There’s evidence some planets in the region are being manipulated.)

The Sigma Hotel Book was retrieved from Jim’s memory banks and made available to the general public. To everyone’s surprise, it climbed the best seller list and stayed there for months. People who know about such things claim it’s a book everyone buys but no one reads. It’s also shown up in university classes around the world as a demonstration that sentient creatures have more in common than anyone would have believed a century ago.

MacElroy High School named its gym for Rudy, and made Matt an honorary school board member. When he’s in town, he still gets invited to speak to the classes. And, on his visits to the school, he invariably stops to admire the AKV Spartan lander, which, as a historical object, has been moved indoors out of the weather.

Jon continues to work in the more arcane branches of physics, trying to develop a system that would allow transportation into other universes. “Provided,” he likes to say, “there are other universes.” The common wisdom is that they are abundant, but Jon would argue that cosmological insight is never common.

He also serves, with Hutch, on the board of the Prometheus Foundation.

And the medium through which the Locarno Drive moves is, of course, known as Silvestri space.

Phyl had been disconnected and carried from the Preston by Hutch. She indicated no interest in returning to superluminals. She is now the house AI at the Wescott, Alabama, Animal Shelter.

Shortly after her return, Hutch sold the house in Woodbridge and moved to Arlington. Several teaching offers came in. Major publishers pressed for a book. And local political operatives invited her to run for office.

She passed on all of it.

“Why, Mom?” asked Charlie, referring to a career in politics. Charlie remained interested in art, but after the flight to the Mordecai Zone, he’d taken to talking a lot about piloting an interstellar himself. Hutch approved, of course. It would make a great family tradition.

“Not my style,” she said.

She enjoyed doing speaking engagements. She was good at bonding with an audience, at winning them over, at persuading them the human race had places to go. A destiny that would take it well beyond Baltimore. (Or wherever she happened to be speaking. The line was always good for a laugh.) Her old friend Gregory MacAllister, after watching her, commented she was a natural flack.

“Two hundred fifty years ago,” she told Charlie, as she’d told countless groups around the country, “Stephen Hawking warned us that if we want to survive, we have to get off-world. Establish ourselves elsewhere. We haven’t really done that yet.” The Orion Arm had given them numerous examples of what happens to societies that don’t spread out.

“So it’s survival,” said Charlie.

They were on the front porch in Arlington. It was a dark night, cloud-ridden, threatening rain. “It’s more than that,” she told him. “In the long run, Charlie, yes, we need it to save ourselves. Not physically, maybe. But it’s one of the ways we find out who we are. Whether we’re worth saving. If we’re just going to sit home and watch the world go by…”

She let the thought drift away.

Charlie pushed back in his rocker. “I’m glad things turned out the way they did.” At the time, he was near graduation, and flight school was a possibility. His nervousness showed. But she knew he’d be okay. She remembered her own unsettled feelings when she’d left home so many years ago.

“Me, too,” she said. She looked at him, and thought of Rudy and Jon, and Dr. Science, and Matt out somewhere in the deeps, and she knew they would be okay.