Fugitive From Asteron Page 20
“What do you mean?” asked Frank.
“Our computer records the people who go in and out of this building. Well, Dr. Merrett went through the checkpoint once earlier that day, about nine in the morning, before I started my shift at noon. He came through a second time when he asked me to let Chuck in. Then I saw them leave with the boxes. That’s the strange thing. We don’t have any record of Dr. Merrett checking out the first time. We had our computer serviced, but the technicians found nothing wrong with it. Yet that kind of thing has never happened before or since. Now you’re a computer whiz”—Mike turned to Frank—“so would you know how that could’ve happened?”
“Was there was an interruption in the power supply?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Did the computer crash for a brief time?”
“Not that I know of.”
“That’s strange,” Frank concluded.
“We thought so too.”
Something is missing, I thought, as I walked with Frank back to Space Travel. First came Project Z, then shortly after it began, Dustin’s code was changed. This alteration allowed Dustin to hide a sensor of some kind, a tiny camera camouflaged as a leaf, clump of soil, stone, or other item, and to remove and replace it regularly to spy on Dr. Merrett. That was cause and effect. But did Project Z really come first? The security windows in Dr. Merrett’s office came before Project Z. What prompted them? There I had an effect without a cause. Dr. Merrett was concerned about security two months before his secret project started, when he installed the security windows. And I remembered Kristin saying she hated Asteron for something that happened before Project Z began. Did I need to reach further back? Was there a significant event that occurred earlier?
“Frank, did anything happen at MAS before Dr. Merrett got his security windows in February of the year that Project Z started? Something that would have prompted him to tighten security at that time?”
Frank looked up to the darkening sky, thinking. “Nothing that I can remember.”
That evening, I stood with Kristin on her lawn. Although seeing her was reason enough to draw me there, I also asked to borrow her plane for a task I needed to perform.
“Sure. I keep the door to my plane unlocked. You can just go in and start it, Alex.”
Before I left with the little red craft, I held Kristin in my arms and kissed her. For one enchanting moment the events on top of the mountain with Kristin were more real than Feran and his spies.
“I will bring it back without disturbing you, so you can get a good night’s sleep. Then I will go home and do the same. Okay, honey?”
She raised her eyebrows, surprised by the last word, but not as surprised as I was. Something was happening to me inside. Like a plane worn by combat, I was ready for a refurbished engine, one that could lift me higher than I had ever climbed before.
“Okay,” she said softly, tilting her head back for one last, lingering kiss.
When I returned Kristin’s plane to her lawn, the evening sky shimmered with stars, promising fair weather for the air show tomorrow, I thought, as I walked across the road toward my hidden ship. There I would perform my final—and most dreaded—chore of the day.
“Good evening, Mr. White,” said the message in my spacecraft, the mocking edges of Feran’s voice palpable through the sharp peaks on the screen. “It seems we are closing the distance between us, and we shall soon meet. That much you know. But there is something else you do not know, Mr. White.”
The voice paused. The peaks fell. I waited, too exhausted to guess.
“We know there is a girl.”
I slapped my hands against my face as if to smash the words that stung me. The other voice, the one I thought had been silenced forever, was now back, stronger and more reproachful than before: It is your fault— It is your fault that she—
“Stop it! Stop it!” I ordered, but the voice shouted louder: It is your fault that she died!
“We know you have a girlfriend,” said the outer voice. “Inquiries around Rising Tide place you in a shop buying clothes, with a female on your arm, doting over you.” The voice pattern changed color on the screen as Feran laughed maliciously. “I should have known a female would be your demise—again!” The voice sneered. “Tell me—do you think Feran, the supreme ruler of Asteron, cannot find one little female on Planet Earth and remove her? What method of erasure would entertain you the most? Could it be . . . hanging?”
Feran paused, his final word echoing in the still night.
“Get that cargo to me by midnight, and I will give you the password to navigate my spacecraft. Then you and your cupcake can blast yourselves out of the galaxy. That is my offer: the cargo for the girl. If you refuse, prepare to watch another of your little diversions swinging by her sweet neck.”
My hands covered my ears as two voices—the haunting one inside and the vile one outside—rattled through my mind.
Chapter 17
On a runway near the ocean, eight planes left the ground in quick succession. The powerful engines rumbled like an earthquake through the spectator stands at the airfield. Reckoning Day had arrived, and the Gold Streaks’ air show was its main event.
In the midmorning sky, with me in the lead slot of one group, we formed two graphite diamonds, with a shiny gold streak across each fuselage. I flew inverted, moving hundreds of miles an hour, with the wing tips to each side of me and the nose behind almost touching my plane. Being in the first slot of our four-plane configuration, I felt the combined disturbance of the three other crafts in my air flow, which meant I constantly had to maintain just the right pull on the stick to hold me within the tight bounds of our formation.
We looped and rolled in close proximity and executed formation changes at high speeds. After performing in our group of four, we linked with our other teammates to create a series of geometric patterns in the sky, each one looking like a single speeding figure painted with eight bold strokes on a blue canvas. For our final maneuver, eight glossy fuselages, clustered like sticks of dynamite, stretched vertically into the sky. Then the cluster burst apart as if the dynamite were exploding.
After an intermission, I aligned my plane with Kristin’s on a wide runway for our two-plane demonstration. “Happy birthday, Alex,” she whispered over my radio. To the sound of the show’s music transmitted into our cockpits, Kristin and I lifted off simultaneously, which felt as if we were rising for a dance. We did a figure-eight in broad loops that filled the sky. Then we rolled, stopping sharply every ninety degrees. Flying upright alongside Kristin and low to the ground, past the smear of color that was the spectators, I flipped my plane upside down in a clean, split-second motion. From my headset I heard the crowd applauding. Their cheers intensified my own excitement, and I think Kristin would have said I was smiling.
With our noses to the vertical and our planes stacked together, we climbed, moving as one shiny needle threading through a cottony puff of thin white clouds. Maneuvering in such close proximity required of Kristin and me an almost hypnotic awareness of each other that was somehow part of our intimacy. We passed the stands in tight mirror formations—belly to belly, then canopy to canopy. We looped, rolled, and turned gracefully through the air to music made for dancing. For our finale, we separated, then flew toward each other in what seemed to be a high-speed collision course in full view of the gasping spectators, until we broke at the end, narrowly missing each other.
Was it the dizzying physical motion or the excitement it produced that made me feel light-headed? I wondered, as I had for years. Each time my plane brushed against the clouds, the thrill it gave me intensified. It was like being with an enchanting woman who grew more exciting with every new encounter. I felt the power of the plane and the control I had over it, and then the moment became joyful. It was my home run.
I thought of the two things that thrilled me—power and control. They were the very same things that Feran also craved. How could the things that made me triumphant be the same th
ings that made him depraved? I knew that I did not belong with Feran. I belonged with the Earthlings in their world. My power and control were a personal matter between me and my plane, but Feran’s power and control involved breaking people’s spines. Feran and I were opposites. And in some way Asteron and Earth were opposites too. What was the meaning behind these two different powers in the universe? I wondered.
When Kristin and I landed, the wheels of our planes hit the broad runway at the same instant. Through my headset, I heard her cheer our performance. But my mood suddenly cooled, because being on the ground was fraught with danger for me. I quickly slipped away from the other fliers and avoided the crowds that packed the stands, clustered around the food tents, and walked along the field to view the many aircraft being exhibited as part of the show. People were everywhere, and Feran’s spies could be among them. I walked past the procession of planes on display and over to an empty hangar just beyond the activities where I could observe the ceremonies unnoticed, concealed in the shade of the structure. I watched the events taking place on a flower-laden makeshift stage that held a band. As I stood in the distance, the chief of police stepped up to a podium, greeted the people, and introduced the mayor, who thanked the Gold Streaks for their performance and made several other remarks. Then a senator named Robert Goodwin ascended the steps to the stage with a sprightly gait. As he took the podium, his white hair and trim, energetic body formed a pleasing blend of wisdom and youth.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Today we pay tribute to our beloved Planet Earth, which we call the Home of the Individuals, and we salute the independent life that is our way. People of every human species from around the galaxy flock here above all other places. They choose to live on Earth, although our nations give them nothing by way of food, clothing, shelter, or other provisions. They come here because the one thing we do offer is that which makes human progress and happiness possible: freedom. I’d like to take a moment to explain the meaning of the celebration we call Reckoning Day, for those of you who are new to our planet and also for those of us born here, so we may rekindle our appreciation of our homeland.
For many centuries Earth was beset by the clash of two irreconcilable forces, two opposite approaches to life. This conflict was given many names over the ages in the numerous countries of Earth. Ultimately, it became known as the Great Clash Between the Meddlers and the Individuals.
These two antagonists disagreed over how a society should function and what role the state should play in a person’s life. The Meddlers said that the state must direct people’s lives for their own good, but the Individuals said that people’s lives were theirs to live as they choose. The Meddlers thought the state should control and redistribute people’s property to serve what they said was a greater good, but the Individuals thought that people’s property was as sacred as their lives and must not be tampered with or taken away by anyone.
For many centuries, in one form or another, it was almost always the Meddlers who were in charge of Earth’s various countries. They sought to use their power to manage the lives of their citizens. “We will provide for everyone’s welfare” was the way they put it. Although they told the people what they allegedly would give them, the Meddlers never mentioned what they had to take away. If the people needed jobs, housing, food, or countless other things, the Meddlers sought to provide them. How did they do this? By making laws to control the people who produced them, and by taking away from the citizens the money they had earned and were going to spend the way each saw fit, so that the Meddlers could spend that money the way they saw fit. The result was that people were no longer captains of their own lives. The people worked at jobs that were regulated by the Meddlers, for wages that were approved by them, to earn money that was taxed by them, to support causes chosen by them. The schools were run by the Meddlers, medical care was arranged by them, and pensions were given out by them. Even when people died, they were still not free of the Meddlers, because their property would again be taxed by them before it ever reached their heirs.
If a person decided to run a business, the Meddlers would have rules on who to hire, where to build a plant, what permissions to get from which agencies in order to operate, and, of course, how much of the profits, if there were any, would be taken in taxes.
As you can imagine, the Meddlers needed lots of money to feed their many bureaucracies and agencies, so they helped themselves to repeated dips into citizens’ wallets.
The Individuals were dismayed that the people could not decide things for themselves and choose their own actions. The Individuals said that this was all wrong. It was not the state’s job to provide for the people, which meant to seize the citizens’ wealth, intrude in their lives, and funnel their money to the rulers’ favored groups and causes. The Individuals said that the state was their servant—not their master—and that its only job was to keep the peace, which meant to protect the citizens from criminals from within and without. But this was a very important job, because it defended each person’s life, liberty, and property, and made a civilized society possible.
I looked out at the crowd. The movement in the field had ceased. The thousands of people there had become silent, and they seemed solemn as they listened attentively.
If you study history, you’ll be amazed at the extent of the meddling that occurred. There was no aspect of life that was untouched by the state. It issued hundreds of thousands of pages of laws to control all the goods and services the people used. Then, as the Meddlers got even bolder, they issued laws to control how people could express their opinions and participate in political activities. You can imagine what that led to. And this happened in the countries that were considered to be the freest. I won’t mention the open savagery reached in countries that even more fully smothered the individual’s life.
Now, I’m a businessman. I serve as a senator just as a juror serves in a court case: for a limited time and purpose. My job in the senate is part time. Because the state we have today can’t make any laws that interfere with commerce, I don’t have a whole lot of committees to meet with or legislation to pass. No big shots or special groups take me out to lunch, invite me to parties, give me expensive gifts, or try to slip me money under the table, because I can wield no power over their lives. Who am I to tell any of you how to live? It’s not my place to tell you what schools to send your kids to, what compensation to accept for your work, or how to spend your money. That’s all your business, just as it’s not your place to tell me what products to make in my plant, or how much to charge for them. You should not have to bail me out with your taxpayers’ money if I fail, or be able to rob me of my profits if I succeed. And if any of us has problems or misfortunes, we seek private help that’s given to us voluntarily. We don’t think it’s right to pick our neighbors’ pockets to help us out, or to elect a representative to do that for us. That’s the way things now run here on Earth.
But back then there were many wars between the two opposing forces because they could not coexist. Then a hundred years ago, there was one final struggle, called the Great Clash. This conflict had the highest stakes of all, because the winner was to claim the Earth and the loser was to be banished forever. It was the Individuals who prevailed in the Great Clash and thereby won the Earth. At that fateful time a century ago, which history calls the Reckoning, they banished the Meddlers. And the people of Earth took sides.
Many went with the Meddlers. Some were misguided, but others had different motives. Those with an appetite for wielding power over people knew where their bread was buttered. And those who dreamed of obtaining, in one way or another, a guarantee against life’s risks—a way to avoid the responsibility of governing their own lives, a way to be taken care of, a way to further their own lives by controlling their fellow citizens—those people went with the Meddlers. However, those believing that people are the masters of their own lives stayed with the Individuals. Those believing it was their right—and glory—to run their own affairs, to
deal with one another as free people not forced or compelled, and to keep what they had earned, remained with the Individuals.
Today the outcome of this great battle is obvious for everyone to see. Earth is thriving with the greatest level of production, advancement, and prosperity ever known. The Meddlers and their followers had their chance. They took with them the plants, animals, food, equipment, and supplies they needed to start life over on a newly discovered planet, a place that was the jewel of the galaxy, a fertile land with a mild climate and superb conditions for human life. But they purged our names and customs from their history. They tried to hide from their later generations any knowledge of the kind of society we offered. And they vilified us and blamed us for the problems they caused themselves. They did not heed our advice that in order to survive and thrive, people must be left free. The Meddlers have turned their jewel of a planet into a wound on the face of the galaxy, and we denounce them for their evil ways. Perhaps the most startling difference of all between the two clashing worlds is that the banished achieved only misery, but the people of the Earth achieved happiness. The great lesson we learned from the Reckoning is: If your destination is happiness, freedom is the fuel to take you there.
So, ladies and gentlemen, that is the story of Planet Earth. We celebrate the Reckoning because it is the birthday of Earth as a planet that truly supports human life.
He paused, smiling, as the audience applauded.
Let us now continue our program with a song we play each year in tribute to our ancestors, whom we have to thank for our way of life today. They had the courage to defend our freedom. They had the daring to fight for our liberty. And they had the prowess to banish the Meddlers forever to the planet of Asteron!