“Caroline Caldwell? Caroline Caldwell was your first choice for this?”
Fry affected to be surprised at the question. “I said she was the preferred candidate overall, Doctor. I didn’t say she was my choice. In fact, I would much rather have someone in post whom I could rely on to see, and serve, the bigger picture. Science and politics are not two worlds; they’re two hemispheres.”
Fournier, who had never seen himself as a politician but now at least had an inkling of the job description, agreed. Two hemispheres, yes. Very aptly put. Very insightful.
Caroline Caldwell in the Rosalind Franklin, and him left behind in Beacon polishing other people’s test tubes, other people’s reputations? No no no. This was the future, if there was to be one. The forge on which the future would be made. He knew very well that he was a competent researcher rather than a great one, but still. He couldn’t choose irrelevance when greatness was on the table. Surely nobody could.
With the stakes clearly established, he continued to agree with every proposition the brigadier put to him.
Fry suggested that he might need to form a judgement on the robustness of his staff. Their morale. The clarity of their motives. He said he was good for that.
She demonstrated the operation of the radio, emphasising that its existence must remain a secret. He promised her that he would be the soul of discretion.
She indicated that the Muster might wish to give him additional orders in the course of the mission, depending on how certain events in Beacon itself fell out, or failed to fall out. He said that he would not object to that.
When he left her office, he was brimming with self-disgust, his stomach sloshing and griping with it. He wanted to be sick.
But by the time he got back to the lab, he was already feeling much calmer. Compromise wasn’t a swearword and expediency wasn’t a sin, especially not when it came to the big turning points in your life. The world was going to be saved. Rosie was the surgical instrument and humanity was the patient. Who in their right mind would choose to lie down on the slab when they could be the one holding the scalpel?
Now, seven months on, he feels that the scalpel is at his throat. The mission was already a shambles, even before the death of Private Lutes. In despair of finding anything of value, wearied to death with this confinement and cowed by two strained, awful weeks of inexplicable radio silence, he jumped at the chance to turn the car around and head for home.
Brigadier Fry’s last words to him: “You may be tempted at some point to renege on our agreement, Dr. Fournier. With everyone calling you commander, it would be easy to fall into the trap of actually trying to command. But that’s really not what you’re there for. As far as your scientific expertise goes, I won’t presume to advise or direct you.
“But everything else is mine.”
24
McQueen sits up in the turret while the sun sets and the stars come out.
In his mind, he identifies and names the constellations he can see. The Dragon. The Little Bear. Cepheus. Mostly he learned them for their use in orienteering, but he is struck too by the beauty and profligacy of their display. The daytime burns with a single fire, and a lot of the time it burns fitfully. The night is a million suns exploding all at once, igniting the whole sky. With no man-made lights to dim them, they have reclaimed the glory, the pre-eminence they had back in the dawn age when humans lived in caves. Even through the distorting curve of the turret glass, they make McQueen feel as though he is about to fall off the tilted world into the immensity beyond.
No hungries in that infinite light-show. No junkers. No lies or bullshit. The world ended more than a decade ago, but the news hasn’t made it out there yet and it won’t make any difference when it does. Perfect truth is black and white and it doesn’t know our names.
McQueen is wrestling with his pride and with his definition of himself. He isn’t enjoying it, but he doesn’t shrink from it either. It’s absolutely necessary to know who you are, as the basis for knowing anything else.
Cutting loose with the flamethrower felt necessary and obvious at the time, as though it was just the part of the equation that comes after the equals sign. He didn’t think about wind speed or their own displacement as they moved. He just thought about the response that needed to be made to that dead man on the ground, hacked to the bone like meat on a slab.
In other words, he lost control. Carlisle called the play, and he called it right. You don’t do a broad sweep with a flamethrower from a moving vehicle unless you want to fry yourself and everyone who’s riding with you.
There are only two ways you can go from that realisation. You can make up stupid stories about how you were actually right all along because X and Y and Z and all the rest of it. Or you can admit you screwed up and try to be better.
McQueen climbs down from the turret. His limbs are heavy and he feels tired to death. It seems appropriate that emotions should have recoil in the same way guns do, because after all they’re just as dangerous. But that doesn’t make it any more pleasant to endure.
To get to the cockpit, he has to walk through the crew quarters. There is a mixed bag of soldiers and whitecoats in there and they all look up when he comes.
Foss is the first to react. She stands up quickly and rips off a salute. As a signal it’s pretty unambiguous. Phillips is right behind her, Sixsmith a little slower but inside of a couple of seconds the three of them are standing there, defying regulations and telling him he’s still ranking officer here.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me!” Dr. Khan exclaims, appalled.
McQueen enjoys that part, at least. But he needs to nip this little revolution in the bud.
He returns Foss’s salute, crisply and punctiliously. “A little confused, aren’t we, Lieutenant?” he says. “Never mind. It will sink in eventually.”
He walks on, leaving silence in his wake.
The cockpit door is open. He goes in and closes it behind him. Carlisle sets his book aside and nods towards the shotgun seat. McQueen stays on his feet, even though he has to stoop a little because of the low ceiling.
“Permission to speak, sir,” he says.
The colonel shrugs mildly. “Of course,” he says.
McQueen doesn’t beat about the bush. There is no point. “You were right about the flamethrower,” he says. “I used it without authorisation and without due care, as you pointed out. In doing so, I risked the safety of the crew and the vehicle. I deserve a reprimand for that, and I accept it. But I’d like you to restore my access to the turret guns. We’re in a bad place and with junkers in the mix it could easily get worse. You may need me, and I can’t do much if I’m not allowed to touch the silverware.”
Carlisle is silent for a moment or two. McQueen waits for the verdict, wanting this to be over.