By now, they all knew her personal history. She felt herself shiver, slightly. "Not since I was a child have I ever been able to forget that the universe produces Washington LaFayettes just as surely and just as inexorably as it produces butterflies and buttercups. So it's my job—my life, if you will—to keep an eye out for them."
Silence, for a minute or so. Then A.J. said: "Now, I see. Jesus, you are one smart cookie."
"Thanks. Like I said, I had to meddle in policy issues I normally wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole. But I didn't see where my responsibilities—even my oath, when you got right down to it— gave me any choice." She took a deep breath, letting it out almost like a long, protracted sigh. "They would have fiddled and faddled and done their best to keep a lid on it. Put the brakes, as soon as they could, on the space program of our country because they wanted the money for something else—and put them on, even harder, on any other country's. Now, they can't. With every American citizen—the whole world—knowing of the tremendous advances we could get from studying the Bemmie base on Phobos and here in Melas Chasma . . ."
"And Rich and Jane say there are plenty of indications there may be other installations on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn," Helen added.
Madeline nodded, still looking up. "They can't keep a lid on it, now. If nothing else, even if it turns out we can't decipher any of the Bemmie secrets, we'll have several interplanetary ships built that'll last for decades and an ongoing and self-sustaining presence on Mars. The genie will be out of the bottle. It'll be a mess, I know. But at least it'll be a dynamic mess, that gets us out into space and starts providing us with protection before anything happens."
She shrugged, the gesture being as difficult as it always was in the tight-fitting suits. "I'll still keep any military secrets restricted. But that's never more than a short-term business, anyway. The main thing is that the human race will now come boiling out into space. Where we won't be sitting ducks, any longer. Hopefully, my country will remain in the lead, but if it stops being so at some point . . . Well, in the end, I figure that the national security of the United States doesn't mean much if it isn't part of the security of the whole human race. So piss on it. These things all tend to even out in the wash, give it long enough."
Finally, she lowered her head. She could never stare at that starblaze, for too long. As glorious as it undoubtedly was, eventually she started seeing LaFayette's face in the constellations of a maniac galaxy.
"I'd like to go to our bubble now, Joe. I love it, in there."
"Sure, sweetheart." He took her by the hand and started leading her away. "Me, I'm just happy to still be here. My notion of 'security' is a lot more tightly-defined than yours, I'm afraid. After all that's happened—two crashes, exploding lab, collapsing tunnel—Joe Buckley is mainly just wondering why he's still alive."
"Oh, look!" exclaimed A.J. "Is that a meteor I see streaking toward us?"
The chorus responded. "SHUT UP, A.J.!"
Rich Skibow emerged from the rover. "Hey, A.J.—can you make up another of those rings? Jane said 'yes'!"
AFTERWORD
For various timing and printing reasons, four diagrams were left out of the printed version of Boundary: maps showing the journey of Thoat across Mars to finally reach Bemmie's home base and the illustration of NIKE. These pictures can be accessed online at my LiveJournal gallery: http://pics.livejournal.com/seawasp/gallery/00004pq8.
I can also be contacted through my LiveJournal itself
(http://www.livejournal.com/users/seawasp/),
|where I will also often talk about my current and future projects and anything else that interests me. You can also find both myself and Eric Flint on Baen's Bar
(http:bar.baen.com);
my conference is Paradigms Lost, while his is Mutter of Demons. Come visit; we love to talk with readers. Thanks very much for reading Boundary!
Ryk E. Spoor October, 2005
IMAGES
THE END
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Boundary
Table of Contents
PART I: FOSSILS
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
PART II: QUARRLES
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
PART III: FAERIES
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
PART IV: BLUEPRINTS
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 27
PART V: NIKE
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
PART VI: PHOBOS
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
PART VII: MARS
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
AFTERWORD
IMAGES
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eBook Info
Title:Boundary
Type:Novel
Identifier:1-4165-0932-1
Identifier:978-1-4165-0932-5
Identifier:10.1125/Baen.1416509321
Publisher:Baen Books
Creator:Eric Flint
Creator:Ryk Spoor
Contributor:Kurt Millar
Subject:Science Fiction
Rights:2006 by Eric Flint & Ryk Spoor
Date:2006-03-01
Language:US English (en-us)
meta:
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