Pillar to the Sky Page 28

  “It is my mind that is starting to scare me, Franklin,” Gary said, his voice barely a whisper.

  “I haven’t noticed one iota of difference, Gary,” Franklin said, leaning forward, staring him straight in the eyes. “And that, my friend, is the God’s honest truth, so help me.”

  “But I have. Little things: not remembering a name, or where the hell I put my ID badge. Stuff like that.”

  “Oh, come on, we all deal with that, even me,”

  Gary shook his head.

  “No, it’s starting to worm its way in and I can feel it. I lie awake at night, Eva snuggled up close by my side, and I make believe I am asleep, because ever since we found out about this, my wife has this thing about not falling asleep until I do, fearful that I might need something and not tell her.”

  Franklin smiled sadly, nodding. His wife was gone fifteen years now, and to cover over his grief, he had thrown himself into the start of this project. It had become such a routine that his life was indeed a monastic one. Just the way Gary spoke of Eva asleep by his side hit him deeply, and he lowered his head for a moment, remembering …

  “In the last few months I’ll lie there quietly, breathing softly so as not to disturb her, but wide-awake, playing mind games with myself. Dr. Bock, God bless him, told me that the best weapon in this stage of the fight is mental exercise.”

  Gary smiled.

  “He is a remarkably gifted man, Bock. Joked that if ever there was a career ahead for mental exercise, it was mine, and to keep at it. So I’ll lay awake and play mental games. From simple formulas clear up to trying to re-create in my mind the pages of calculations Eva and I handed old Erich the end of our first summer together working for him.”

  He looked past Franklin to the tower, bathed in the morning sunlight. Without a spinner in operation there was very little activity out on the deck, many of the work crew taking advantage of the hiatus to grab a day off, back on a beach at Aranuka or hop the shuttle back to Tarawa for a change of scenery. For some reason, perhaps because of its once storied and bitter legacy of long ago, there was now a club there that put on swing dances, playing music from the 1940s. Gary felt that drifting music just might somehow float along the coral rock and sands to where his lost uncle and his marine comrades, whose remains had never been found, still rested in hallowed memory, and that their spirits just might smile. It had become a favorite haunt for Victoria and Jason, and Gary and Eva, on their rare days off together.

  “I can no longer work some of those formulas in my head, Franklin,” Gary said, his voice flat, not looking for pity, just making a simple statement of fact. “Time was I could snap them off in a heartbeat; give me a diameter of wire, its molecular structure, OK, maybe a pocket calculator for a few of the tougher calculations, and I could tell you what you wanted. Now?”

  He shrugged.

  “What level chess do you play to unwind?” he asked.

  “On the computer? Level six was all I could ever beat more than half the time”—Franklin smiled—“unless I cheated a bit and took back a few moves to play over.”

  “I could play a game in less than ten minutes at level eight,” Gary said. “Give me an hour and I could break even at level nine.”

  “And now?”

  “Nowhere near it, and don’t ask me what level,” Gary replied. His voice, as with those who fought Parkinson’s, had taken on a strained, trembling tone, his right hand shaking slightly. Of late he had taken to hooking his thumb through a belt loop to hide the trembling.

  “Franklin, we’ve been at it for how long? Seven years, isn’t it?”

  Franklin nodded.

  “Have I ever asked you for anything?”

  Franklin smiled and just sighed.

  “I am asking for this. While there is still time. Let me see it. Let me ride that throne, as some now call it, to the heavens. It won’t be a joyride. I’ll talk every damn foot of the way up and your public relations people can pull out the best sound bytes. You can play the angle, make it public at last that I have Parkinson’s, and in space I can again be free of a body that has to struggle just to walk across a room.”

  He chuckled.

  “Hell, you’ll market that alone into another few billion for the development of medical facilities once the ribbon pillar is in place. Get Bock down here to help sell that idea while I’m on my ride to the heavens.”

  “You really are conning me with that argument,” Franklin said.

  “That from one of the best cons of all when it comes to raising money for mad schemes. I take that as a compliment.”

  Franklin could not help but chuckle softly, his deep baritone voice filling the room. And then Gary pressed on.

  “And what we are preparing for up there? The positioning of the ribbon canisters, tests stapling them together, prepping for deployment of the real tower while we finish beefing up the construction tower … Is there anyone on this planet, other than my wife, who understands the dynamics better than me?”

  He paused.

  “At least for a few more months, maybe a year at most, I’ll understand it,” he whispered, “and then it shall be a gradual slipping into the night. My friend, let me do this before my mind goes into the night, and I shall be content then.”

  Gary fell silent, not moving, Franklin’s tears streaming down his face as he gazed at his friend. At last he nodded in agreement.

  15

  He had not slept a wink. Part of the reason was a rushing thrill, mind racing, for the moment at least focused as to what this day would bring. And then there was Eva, who wanted to soak up every moment possible with him. Several times during the night they would talk, remember, laugh, go to the window to stare at the floodlit tower, sip tea, since coffee no longer agreed with him, then return to bed, and a few times there were tears.

  There was no need for the alarm that beeped at 3:30 and then softly played a piece by Gary’s favorite composer, Constance Demby. He had discovered her work while in graduate school. Her album Novus Magnificat: Through the Stargate—which combined the spiritual, even Gregorian chants, with what some called “space music”—was a stunning synthesis, and spoke to him of the mystical beauty of reaching for the heavens. He had made sure all her works were loaded on his iPad; the music would most certainly fit the experience to come. Back at their home in Seattle he still had the original CDs and even a rare vinyl recording, the cover jacket signed by her when they had met at a public conference on the tower years back, and Gary had asked her to one day take a trip up, an offer which she enthusiastically embraced.

  Eva helped him dress; he was embarrassed that he could barely tie his own shoelaces now. Though hungry, he had been advised to avoid eating breakfast in case of vertigo; the food packed for him would be rather bland, with no fiber—tasteless stuff—and loaded in as well were the array of medications he had come to live with, enough to carry him through six months if need be.

  In the kitchen Gary found that sometime during the night Eva had taped together some soda straws with a little handmade card placed beside them. “Remember that day with Erich and the straws? Have a grand time, my love, and kiss the stars for me.”

  There was a tap on the door, and Eva opened it. It was Victoria, with Jason standing politely to one side out in the corridor. Gary was filled with emotion at the sight of her. Like any parent, he found it hard to see the lovely young lady she had grown into: in his mind she was still the skinny, slightly gawky, acned sixteen-year-old who was so filled with promise and so obviously loved her father. Then his heart took him to imagining his four-year-old who would smother him with “smoochies,” then insist that they give flying lessons to her collection of “my little ponies.” Too swiftly, all too swiftly that had passed, and yet with each day there were still new adventures, and he felt such pride in what she was and what she was becoming.

  She tried to say something but then just broke into tears and threw her arms around him.

  He laughed softly. “Hey, you two, I’ll b
e back safe and sound in four months at most. Come on, now, if anything, you two should be cussing at me out of jealousy that I get to go up first!”

  Victoria nodded as she leaned against his shoulder.

  “Promise, Daddy?”

  “Sweetie, remember what I always used to tell you: Don’t be afraid of anything unless you see me afraid. We designed this thing and I get to ride it at last. Afraid? Hell! It’s going to be darn near the best time of my life!”

  He paused and looked at the two women.

  “Except for the day your mother finally admitted after a year of coaxing that she was in love with me.” He smiled at Eva. “Come on, you knew it the first time you laid eyes on me!”

  Eva exchanged a glance that spoke of a lifetime of love and smiled back. “Oh, but of course,” she said in Ukrainian.

  Then he looked to his daughter.

  “And the other best day was the first time I held you.”

  That got both of them crying and he extended his arms to embrace them.

  There was another polite tap on the open door of their small apartment on the platform. It was one of the crew members from Mission Control: Gretchen, who had gained such fame for guiding the descent system for the first wire and was now heading up the division overseeing the pod he was about to ride in. Franklin, with his genius, was seeking out so many people Victoria and Gretchen’s age to form his team, and through them reaching out to the world with a new youthful vision of the future of space exploration. It was no longer a realm of straightlaced males with pencil-thin neckties and pocket protectors. One of the best of the spinner operators sported a tattoo of the Pillar on his forearm. Gretchen had at least abandoned her purple hair dye for today as she stood smiling but obviously moved by what she was seeing.

  “Dr. Morgan. Time to get you suited up; you have a flight to catch.”

  Wife and daughter flanking him, they took the elevator down to the ground level and into the Mission Control room, which to his surprise was packed. As they entered the room, all were on their feet, applauding. He was never one for speeches or any form of public speaking and now felt a bit embarrassed, glad he was not suffering any tremors as he braced his shoulders back and walked through the room, not using crutches, but with Eva and Victoria on either side to support him if need be. This inner team knew his condition, that if he stopped and tried to shake everyone’s hand it might be difficult, and more than a few had tears in their eyes, not of fear but of joy, as he carefully walked past them. Now, in a small ready room, he was delighted to see Dr. Bock, bleary-eyed from what must have been a grueling flight from the States.

  “Damn it, Gary, I think I just set a record for the farthest a doctor ever traveled for a house call,” Bock said.

  Gary gladly took his hand, but Bock was instantly all business, grasping his hand for a second but then squeezing it, asking if Gary could feel the pressure, then seconds later listening to his heart and rattling off questions, with Gary lying in response to more than a few.

  “I know if I said I was grounding you, you’d all tell me to go to hell,” Bock said, and then there was a genuine smile. “Godspeed, Gary Morgan, my prayers go with you.”

  Gone were the days of heavy pressure suits; he would be in shirtsleeves throughout. For one thing, staying locked up in a suit for nearly four days would be decidedly unpleasant, and secondly, a cold, pragmatic decision was that if the pod was “spaced,” there was precious little that could be done to get him safely out. The now hundreds of passengers going up each month aboard the various commercial suborbital flights did so in jump suits similar to what Dr. Bock and a couple of Mission Control personnel helped him get into, and he was delighted to see his name embroidered over the left pocket, the logo of Pillar Inc., a Gothic tower rising to the heavens with the disk of the sun creasing the top, the curvature of a blue-green earth at the bottom, a diamond like stitching representing the tower bisecting the middle of the patch. Bock did insist that a blood pressure cuff, a heart monitor, and an oxygenation meter be hooked up, and made noises that if anything started to go offline, they would abort the ascent and bring him back down—to which he replied that he would pull the wires off and use a manual override if they tried, whispering it so that Eva and Victoria, standing out in the corridor, did not hear the exchange.

  Bock looked at him with his compassionate, but piercing, intelligent gaze.

  “I think you’re crazy,” he whispered back, “and I’m tempted even now to put a stop to this.”

  “And if you do, I’m firing you as my physician,” Gary replied, “and it really would put our friendship in serious jeopardy.”

  Bock continued to look him straight in the eyes and then grinned slightly.

  “You crazy bastard, I envy you.”

  “You’ll get your ride up soon enough, Doc. Hell, you’ll get a publication in the Journal of the American Medicine Association about the effects of microgravity on Parkinson’s; might open up a whole new field of medicine, my going up.”

  Bock, falling out of the role as Gary’s physician, could only nod and, grasping his shoulder, squeezed it tight.

  “Don’t do anything stupid. You got a wife, a daughter, and I suspect someday grandkids to come back to and plenty of good years left, my friend.”

  Gary simply smiled.

  “Nothing stupid. So, all of you, stop acting so glum,” and now he spoke loudly enough for his family to hear: “I’m getting the ride of a lifetime—of my dreams—today!”

  As he settled into the pod and waited for the techs to seal it shut, he looked around. It actually seemed a bit more spacious once inside. The unit could rotate on its axis which was already clamped to the tower. It was at this moment in the horizontal position; strapped beneath it was the rocket pack, and beneath that the first stage of a jet engine. The couch he was resting on was really quite comfortable, and as he settled back he could feel the high-tech foam shifting to fit the contours of his body. To his right, there were several portholes and two more overhead that would offer splendid views; to his left, sealed storage bins containing food, water, his medications. A checklist of what was stored and where was attached to the bulkhead at eye level. He had gone through a briefing on the toilet facilities when taken to the pod the afternoon before for a rundown on how it all worked. A bit embarrassing, and he hoped that the designers knew what they were doing. Strange but how “that was done” in space seemed to be a question everyone wanted to ask. Once into low gravity, there was enough room that he could actually move about a bit, at least turn.

  Settled in, Gary’s four-point harness secured, the tech crew stepped back. He had made Eva and Victoria promise no emotional scenes, just a quick kiss, a few words, then they would step back as well, since it was going out on the news feeds and if anything he was fearful that the emotion might trigger tremors or affect his voice.

  Victoria finally managed to grin as she leaned into the open hatchway to kiss him.

  “Proud of you, Daddy, and frankly jealous. Now, come back to me.”

  “You’ll get your chance up there soon enough, sweetheart.”

  Eva then leaned in and simply whispered in Ukrainian, “Be safe, my love, and God be with you. We are soul mates and I will love you forever.”

  And then one more person stepped forward. It was Franklin. He was, of course, on camera and knew it—he had an instinct for that—but there was no acting now.

  “Like Bock told you, don’t do anything stupid while you’re up there. And by the way, you forgot this.”

  He pulled out of his pocket two sets of astronaut’s wings. The first one, the back engraved with “678” on it, was from his flight long ago on the Brit’s suborbital plane. Franklin pinned it to his collar and then pinned on a second, with the numeral “1” etched in gold.

  “For this flight,” Franklin said, holding it up for a moment so the news feeds could focus in on it, “for the first man to ride the Pillar to the Sky,” and then he pinned it next to the first. He grasped Ga
ry’s hand and then said something that caught him off guard.

  “See you at sundown, Gary.”

  It was from an old favorite movie they both loved, starring Spencer Tracy, about adventure on the colonial frontier of so long ago. It was Franklin who sealed the hatch, Gary settling back into the couch, breathing deeply, a bit nervous now and trying not to hyperventilate. His legs were trembling and he was tempted to pull the monitoring wires off right now, but he knew Bock would pitch a fit and perhaps even stop the ascent until he was rewired. Clipping on his headset, he listened in as Mission Control ran through the checklist; it was all so automated now in contrast to the long-ago days of the Shuttle and Apollo. The monitor screen above his head was within arm’s reach, a touch screen showing the rundown of the checklist.

  “Ascent Pod Morgan, Tower Control. You are number one on the runway and cleared for takeoff.”

  Gary smiled at that, the compliment of naming it after him and his family, but making it sound to the public like the standard chatter of an airplane departure. They had even changed the name from Mission Control, which sounded very space flight and rockets, to Tower Control, as if they were indeed almost an airport.

  “Tower Control, Ascent Pod. Ready when you are.”

  There was no countdown—again, the stuff of another technology. Franklin knew that a fair part of the world might be looking in on this moment or check the podcast later, and in his perpetual sell job to keep this project alive, he wanted it to look routine.

  He felt the vibration as the jet pack beneath him fired up, idled, a check run by Tower Control flashing across the screen, and then throttled up. It had the thrust of an engine for an F-22. Slow at first, a glimpse out the window of a crowd on the roof of the observatory and the Mission Control—now Tower Control—building looking up, waving. He raised a hand to wave back; chances were Franklin had a telephoto camera aimed at the window. He could feel the vertical acceleration picking up, feeling like a helicopter rising at first but then more like being in the Brit’s suborbital ship, pressing him down into the couch, the screen above registering ascent at 1.5 g’s.