“Well, that’s good,” Ann said, “but I’m still confused. Why is Scion Aviation International doing surveillance on Brad McLanahan? Isn’t that a job for the FBI? If he’s a target of a foreign direct-action team, he should be under full FBI counterespionage protection.”
“It’s because of one of the members of Scion,” the president said. He looked directly into the vice president’s eyes and said, “Patrick McLanahan.”
Ann’s only visible reaction was simply a few blinks. “That’s impossible, Ken,” she said in a toneless voice. “You got some bad information. Patrick died over China. You know that as well as I.”
“No, he didn’t,” the president said. “Martindale found and revived him, but he was in bad shape. In order to keep him alive, they placed him in a Cybernetic Infantry Device, one of those big manned robots.” Ann’s face was beginning to transform into a mask of stunned disbelief. “He’s still alive, Ann. But he can’t live outside the robot. Unless they can heal him, he’ll be in there for the rest of his life.”
Ann’s eyes widened and her mouth formed an astonished O. “I . . . I can’t believe it,” she breathed. “And he can operate the robot? He can move around, communicate, everything?”
“He has some incredible abilities,” Phoenix said. “He operates sensors and all the robot’s capabilities, and can communicate with anyone in the world—I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s listening in on us right now. Patrick McLanahan and the robot is a one-man Army platoon—maybe an entire Army battalion and Air Force division combined.” Phoenix sighed and looked away. “But he can never leave the f*cking machine. It’s as if he’s trapped in the Twilight Zone.”
“Amazing. Just amazing,” Ann said. “And Martindale has got him doing operations with Scion?”
“Skating on the very edge of the law, I’m sure, like he always did,” Phoenix said.
“Ken, why did you tell me this?” Ann asked. “I might never have found out.”
“I know you and Patrick are friends,” the president said. “But the main reason is that I feel bad that I didn’t let you in on it from the beginning. You’re my closest political adviser and my closest friend, except for my wife, Alexa. The whole stuff with Brad McLanahan reminded me of the mistake I made when I didn’t trust you with my decision to keep Patrick alive and not tell anyone. I wanted to correct that mistake.”
“Well, thank you for that, Ken,” Ann said. She shook her head, still in a state of disbelief. “What a thing to keep bottled up. No one else knows except Brad? Not even his family?”
“Just Brad and a few of Martindale’s guys,” Phoenix said.
“Glad you got that off your chest, aren’t you, sir?”
“You bet I am,” the president said. “Now, let’s get back to the other, unreal world: politics and elections. I want to really push the space initiative hard in the closing days of the campaign. I want to talk with teenagers in space, make lots of visits to, and give speeches in front of, hypersonic spaceplanes and rocket boosters, and help throw the switch on electricity fired from space. We may be down in the polls right now, Ann, but we’re going to pull this out—I can feel it!”
SEVEN
He is not worthy of the honeycomb. That shuns the hives because the bees have stings.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
REINHOLD AEROSPACE ENGINEERING BUILDING
CAL POLY
THE NEXT DAY
“This is our mission control room, otherwise known as one of our electronics labs,” Brad McLanahan said. He was standing before a group of foreign journalists, bloggers, photographers, and their translators, giving for the umpteenth time a tour of the Starfire project at Cal Poly. With him were Jodie Cavendish, Kim Jung-bae, Casey Huggins, and Lane Eagan. The room was stuffed with a dozen laptop computers, control and communications gear, and network interface boxes with hundreds of feet of CAT5 cables snaking away into walls and under the climate-controlled floor. “It’s not as large or as nice as NASA mission control, but the functions are very similar: we monitor the major components of Starfire such as the microwave generator, nantenna and rectenna steering, power control, and beam control, among many others. Although the astronauts on board Armstrong Space Station have ultimate control, we can issue some commands from here—namely, we can pull the plug if something goes wrong.”