Powersat

Thornton Ranch, Oklahoma

The Staggerwing was too slow to suit Dan for this trip, and from the way Jane had looked on the phone, he figured that she wanted this meeting between them to be kept as secret as possible. So Dan unlocked his bottom desk drawer and fished out the driver’s license, Social Security card, and credit card for Orville Wilbur, a phony identity he had established years earlier, when credit card companies were hounding him to become their customer. He found it ridiculously easy to establish a false identity. No wonder terrorists can sneak around the country at will, Dan thought. It had started as a lark, but Dan found times when it was convenient to have an alternate persona. Such as now.

That Friday night Dan drove to Corpus Christi. Orville Wilbur registered at a motel near the airport and from the phone in his room purchased an electronic ticket from Southwest Airlines, round trip from Corpus Christi to Oklahoma City on the earliest flight out, with a commuter link to Marietta. When he got there, Orville Wilbur rented an SUV and drove out to the Thornton ranch.

As he drove through the fancy carved wooden gate of the Thornton ranch, well before noon, he saw another van some distance behind him spurting a rooster tail of dust as it followed him along the road that led to the ranch house. Security? Dan wondered. Hope it’s not news media.

Pulling up in front of the low, sprawling house, Dan stepped out into the late morning sunlight. It was hot and dusty, the Sun high in a bright blue sky that had hardly a wisp of a cloud in it. Squinting, Dan saw contrails etching across the blue, people on their way somewhere, six miles above the ground. Then his eye caught the faint, ghostly image of a crescent Moon, just a trace of its lopsided smile visible.

I know, Dan said silently to the Moon. I’m an idiot for coming out here. But what the hell.

His SUV was the only car parked in front of the house. No one seemed to be stirring; the house seemed silent, empty. Dan rapped on the door and waited for someone to answer. Turning, he saw the van that had followed him growling up the gravel driveway. It crunched to a stop in a swirl of gritty dust.

And Jane got out.

She was dressed in jeans with a white blouse tucked into the waist, decorated with a trio of cardinals across its front. Her hair was pinned back, off her neck. Wide leather belt with a silver and turquoise buckle. Well-scuffed cowboy boots.

“You got here before me?” Jane said, surprised.

“I camped overnight,” Dan joked.

She stepped toward him. He wanted to take her in his arms but she walked swiftly past and pulled an electronic key card from her jeans.

“Nobody’s here,” she said as the door clicked open. “I gave the staff the weekend off.” No smile, no warmth, no hint of a suggestion of any kind. Just a statement of fact Jane seemed as cool and businesslike as a stranger. Hell, Dan grumbled to himself, our two vans are parked closer together than her and me.

“Come on in,” she said.

“What’s all the secrecy about?” Dan asked as he stepped into the cool shadows of the entryway.

Heading down the corridor toward the kitchen, Jane said over her shoulder, “I’ve introduced a bill that is clearly intended to help you, Dan. The news people are sniffing around, trying to find a personal link between us.”

“They don’t have to look all that far,” Dan said, following her.

“I’ve made no secret of our past relationship,” she said, flicking on the fluorescent lights set into the kitchen ceiling. “But I can’t afford to be seen with you now.”

“Unless Scanwell’s around,” Dan muttered.

She turned to face him. “That’s right: unless Morgan’s around.”

“Is he your chaperon or your bedmate?”

Jane’s eyes flared angrily, but she quickly regained control of herself. “He’s a candidate for president of the United States, and I’m not going to do anything that might damage his chances.”

Dan grunted. “Spoken like a lawyer.”

“That’s what I am, Dan. A lawyer. You knew that… in the old days.”

There were a million things he wanted to say. Instead, he went to the breakfast bar and perched on one of the stools.

“Are you going to cook lunch for us?”

“I can cook,” she said.

“I can help.”

She seemed to relax a fraction. “All right. Let’s see what’s in the fridge.”

As they pulled eggs and sausages out of the refrigerator, Dan said, “So why’d you ask me up here, Jane?”

“How’s the accident investigation going?” she asked.

“Slow. Too double-damned slow. I’m pushing the FAA honcho to allow us to fly the backup spaceplane—”

“I understand the FBI is involved also.”

“If they are, they’re invisible.”

“They’re good at that,” she said.

Dan waited until the eggs were sizzling in the skillet and two places had been set on the small table in the breakfast nook. Jane was setting down two glasses of orange juice. The aroma of brewing coffee wafted through the kitchen as the coffeemaker gurgled busily.

“So why’d you ask me here?” he asked again.

She took up the spatula and shoveled eggs and sausage onto a serving platter. Dan waited until she set the platter on the table, then he took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. Those cool and limpid green eyes. He always recalled the line from the old song when he looked into her eyes: A pool in which my heart lies.

“Jane,” he said, holding her, “for god’s sake—”

She brushed his hands away. “I asked you here to talk politics, Dan. Nothing else.”

“Nothing else?”

“Politics. That’s all.”

“All right,” he said, with a theatrical sigh. It was pretty much what he had expected of her. He pulled out a chair for her. “So talk.”

“You’re making a deal with Tricontinental Oil.”

“Against my gut instincts,” he said, sitting down opposite her.

“Don’t do it, Dan.”

“And what should I do? Make a deal with Yamagata?”

“Give me a chance to get this bill through the Senate. We want you to raise the money you need from American sources.”

“Tricontinental is American.”

“Garrison is an American—”

“A Texan,” Dan pointed out, managing to grin.

“—But Tricontinental is a multinational corporation. You know that. It’s as much Arabian and Venezuelan and even Dutch as it is American.”

“What of it?”

“Garrison isn’t interested in energy independence. He’s going to fight Morgan every inch of the way.”

Dan nodded.

Ignoring the food cooling on the platter, Jane said earnestly, “Dan, the reason for my bill is to get American funding for you. It’s part of Morgan’s energy independence program.”

“I don’t give a hoot in Herzegovina about Scanwell’s energy independence program! I’m trying to save my company!”

“And we’re trying to help you!”

“But I need help now,” Dan insisted. “Not after the Senate finishes tinkering with your bill. Not after Morgan Scanwell becomes president, if he ever does. Now!”

“You could put your operation in low key for a year, couldn’t you? Lay off some of your staff? Mothball your equipment.”

“Jane, I’ve got a two-mile-wide satellite hanging up there in orbit, doing nothing but soaking up money and getting dinged by orbital debris. I can’t just let it hang there for a year.”

“Why not? It’ll still be there a year from now, won’t it?”

“Yeah, and Yamagata will own it. Or Tricontinental.”

“Not if you don’t make a deal with them.”

“And what am I supposed to do for a year? Sit around with my thumbs up my butt? Besides, the election’s more than a year off.”

“Fourteen months.”

“I can’t lay off my staff and expect them to come back fourteen months later. They’ll find other jobs.”

“Please, Dan. Be reasonable.”

“Reasonable? You want me to put my whole operation in suspended animation for more than a year in the hope that your dark-horse candidate will get himself elected?”

“Yes. That’s what’s best for all of us:”

Dan took a deep breath. Then he counted to ten. At last he said quietly, “It might be best for Scanwell. And you. But not for me or the people who’re working for me.”

“Dan, the country needs Morgan Scanwell in the White House. You don’t know him, he’s a great man, a wonderful man.”

“Yeah, yeah. Okay, I like him, too. He’s a very likeable guy. What of it?”

“If you only knew the pressures he’s under, the battles he’s fighting. The oil interests are dead-set against him. Even in his own state he’s fighting an uphill battle.”

“And you’re sleeping with him, aren’t you?”

Her chin went up. “That’s got nothing to do with it.”

“The hell it doesn’t.”

“Please, Dan. Wait. Let us get Morgan into the White House and then you’ll be able to do everything you want to do. He’s a great man, he really is.”

“I don’t care about him! You’re the only one I’m interested in.”

She didn’t seem surprised. Or angered. Or even distressed. “No, Dan,” she said, very softly. “That was finished a long time ago.”

“I’ll drop the whole double-damned project. I’ll sell it off to the highest bidder. I don’t care about it anymore.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“The hell I don’t.”

“Dan, that project is your life, your work.”

“And what’s it got me?” he answered bleakly. “Three people killed and the project’s going down the toilet. What good is any of it? I don’t want to bury any more of my friends. I want out. I want you. Nothing else matters. You forget Scanwell and—”

“Don’t!” Jane snapped. “We’re talking about the future of America, Dan. The future of the world! Can’t you understand that? Can’t you see? The future of the whole world is at stake!”

“Your world, Jane. Not mine. I don’t give a damn about any of it if you’re not part of the deal.”

She looked at him, her cool green eyes steady, clear, dry. “I’m working to save America from being bound hand and foot to the oil interests. I thought you were, too. It seems I was mistaken”

“No,” he said, low, defeated. “I’m working for that, too. It’s just… I love you, Jane. Nothing else makes any sense to me if we can’t be together.”

For long moments Jane said nothing. Then, with a slow shake of her head, she replied, “We can’t be together, Dan. That’s over and done with:”

Dan realized that she was very, very sad. And so was he.