Jack McDevitt - Promises To Keep

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Asimov's Science Fiction - Jack McDevitt by Promises to Keep

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Jack McDevitt: Promises to Keep

illo for Jack Faust

What is the spirit that moves

us to explore the unknown? Is

it strong enough to keep us

interested in the space

program, especially when

what we see through the TV

camera may not be as

dramatic as what we can see

at the movies? "Promises to

Keep," set in the same

universe as "Melville on

Iapetus" (November 1983),

takes a thoughtful look at

these questions.

I received a Christmas card last

week from Ed Iseminger. The

illustration was a rendering of the

celebrated Christmas Eve telecast

from Callisto: a lander stands

serenely on a rubble-strewn plain,

spilling warm yellow light through its

windows. Needle-point peaks rise

behind it, and the rim of a crater

curves across the foreground. An

enormous belted crescent

dominates the sky.

In one window, someone has hung

a wreath.

It is a moment preserved, a tableau

literally created by Cathie Perth

extracted from her prop bag. Somewhere here, locked away among

insurance papers and the deed to the house, is the tape of the

original telecast, but I’ve never played it. In fact, I’ve seen it only

once, on the night of the transmission. But I know the words,

Cathie’s words, read by Victor Landolfi in his rich baritone, blending

the timeless values of the season with the spectral snows of another

world. They appear in schoolbooks now, and on marble.

Inside the card, in large, block, defiant letters, Iseminger had printed

"SEPTEMBER!" It is a word with which he hopes to conquer a world.

Sometimes, at night, when the snow sparkles under the hard cold

stars (the way it did on Callisto), I think about him, and his quest.

And I am very afraid.

I can almost see Cathie’s footprints on the frozen surface. It was a

good time, and I wish there were a way to step into the picture, to

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"Promises to

Keep" by Jack

McDevitt,

by Jack

McDevitt, used

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Asimov's Science Fiction - Jack McDevitt by Promises to Keep

toast the holidays once more with Victor Landolfi, to hold onto Cathie

Perth (and not let go!), and somehow to save us all. It was the end

of innocence, a final meeting place for old friends.

We made the Christmas tape over a period of about five days.

Cathie took literally hours of visuals, but Callisto is a place of rock

and ice and deadening sameness: there is little to soften the effect

of cosmic- indifference. Which is why all those shots of towering

peaks and tumbled boulders were taken at long range, and in half-

light. Things not quite seen, she said, are always charming.

Her biggest problem had been persuading Landolfi to do the voice-

over. Victor was tall, lean, ascetic. He was equipped with laser eyes

and a huge black mustache. His world was built solely of subatomic

particles, and driven by electromagnetic Those who did not share his

passions excited his contempt; which meant that he understood the

utility of Cathie’s public relations function at the same time that he

deplored its necessity. To participate was to compromise one’s

integrity. His sense of delicacy, however, prevented his expressing

that view to Cathie: he begged off rather on the ’press of time,

winked apologetically, and straightened his mustache. "Sawyer will

read it for you," he said, waving me impatiently into the conversation.

Cathie sneered, and stared irritably out a window (it was the one

with the wreath) at Jupiter, heavy in the fragile sky. We knew, by

then, that it had a definable surface, that the big planet was a world

sea of liquid hydrogen, wrapped around a rocky core. "It must be

frustrating," she said, "to know you’ll never see it." Her tone was

casual, almost frivolous, but Landolfi was not easily baited.

"Do you really think," he asked, with the patience of the superior

being (Landolfi had no illusions about his capabilities), "that these

little pieces of theater will make any difference? Yes, Catherine, of

course it’s frustrating. Especially when one realizes that we have the

technology to put vehicles down there...."

"And scoop out some hydrogen," Cathie added.

He shrugged. "It may happen someday."

"Victor, it never will if we don’t sell the Program. This is the last shot.

These ships are old, and nobody’s going to build any new ones.

Unless things change radically at home."

Landolfi closed his eyes. I knew what he was thinking: Cathie Perth

was an outsider, an ex-television journalist who had probably slept

her way on board. She played bridge, knew the film library by heart,

read John Donne (for style, she said), and showed no interest

by permission of

the author

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Asimov's Science Fiction - Jack McDevitt by Promises to Keep

whatever in the scientific accomplishments of the mission. We’d

made far-reaching discoveries in the fields of plate tectonics,

planetary climatology, and a dozen other disciplines. We’d narrowed

the creation date down inside a range of a few million years. And we

finally understood how it had happened! But Cathie’s televised

reports had de-emphasized the implications, and virtually ignored

the mechanics of such things. Instead, while a global audience

watched, Marjorie Aubuchon peered inspirationally out of a cargo

lock at Ganymede (much in the fashion that Cortez must have

looked at the Pacific on that first bright morning), her shoulder flag

patch resplendent in the sunlight. And while the camera moved in for

a close-up (her features were illuminated by a lamp Cathie had

placed for the occasion in her helmet), Herman Selma solemnly

intoned Cathie’s comments on breaking the umbilical.

That was her style: brooding alien vistas reduced to human terms. In

one of her best-known sequences, there had been no narration

whatever: two space-suited figures, obviously male and female,

stood together in the shadow of the monumental Cadmus Ice

Fracture on Europa, beneath three moons.

"Cathie," Landolfi said, with his eyes still shut, "I don’t wish to be

offensive: but do you really care? For the Program, that is? When

we get home, you will write a book, you will be famous, you will be at

the top of your profession. Are you really concerned with where the

Program will be in twenty years?"

It was a fair question: Cathie’d made no secret of her hopes for a

Pulitzer. And she stood to get it, no matter what happened after this

mission. Moreover, although she’d tried to conceal her opinions,

we’d been together a long time by then, almost three years, and we

could hardly misunderstand the dark view she took of people who

voluntarily imprisoned themselves for substantial portions of their

lives to go ’rock-collecting.’

"No," she said. "I’m not, because there won’t be a Program in twenty

years." She looked around at each of us, weighing the effect of her

words. Iseminger, a blond giant with a reddish beard, allowed a

smile of lazy tolerance to soften his granite features. "We’re in the

same class as the pyramids," she continued, in a tone that was

unemotional and irritatingly condescending. "We’re a hell of an

expensive operation, and for what? Do you think the taxpayers give

a good goddam about the weather on Jupiter? There’s nothing out

here but gas and boulders. Playthings for eggheads!"

I sat and thought about it while she smiled sweetly, and Victor

smoldered. I had not heard the solar system ever before described

in quite those terms; I’d heard people call it vast, awesome,

magnificent, serene, stuff like that. But never boring.

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Asimov's Science Fiction - Jack McDevitt by Promises to Keep

In the end, Landolfi read his lines. He did it, he said, to end the

distraction.

Cathie was clearly pleased with the result. She spent three days

editing the tapes, commenting frequently (and with good-natured

malice) on the resonance and tonal qualities of the voice-over. She

finished on the morning of the 24th (ship time, of course), and

transmitted the report to Greenswallow for relay to Houston. "It’ll

make the evening newscasts," she said with satisfaction.

It was our third Christmas out. Except for a couple of experiments--in-

progress, we were finished on Callisto and, in fact, in the Jovian

system. Everybody was feeling good about that, and we passed an

uneventful afternoon, playing bridge and talking about what we’d do

when we got back. (Cathie had described a deserted beach near

Tillamook, Oregon where she’d grown up. "It would be nice to walk

on it again, under a blue sky," she said. Landolfi had startled

everyone at that point: he looked up from the computer console at

which he’d been working, and his eyes grew very distant. "I think,"

he said, "when the time comes, I would like very much to walk with

you.... ")

For the most part, Victor kept busy that afternoon with his hobby: he

was designing a fusion engine that would be capable, he thought, of

carrying ships to Jupiter within a few weeks, and, possibly, would

eventually open the stars to direct exploration. But I watched him: he

turned away periodically from the display screen, to glance at

Cathie. Yes (I thought), she would indeed be lovely against the rocks

and the spume, her black hair free in the wind.

Just before dinner, we watched the transmission of Cathie’s tape. It

was very strong, and when it was finished we sat silently looking at

one another. By then, Herman Selma and Esther Crowley had joined

us. (Although two landers were down, Cathie had been careful to

give the impression in her report that there had only been one.

When Basked why, she said, "In a place like this, one lander is the

Spirit of Man. Two landers is just two landers.") We toasted Victor,

and we toasted Cathie.

Almost everyone, it turned out, had brought down a bottle for the

occasion. We sang and laughed, and somebody turned up the

music. We’d long since discovered the effect of low-gravity dancing

in cramped quarters, and I guess we made the most of it.

Marj Aubuchon, overhead in the linkup, called to wish us season’s

greetings, and called again later to tell us that the telecast, according

to Houston, had been "well-received." That was government talk, of

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Asimov's Science Fiction - Jack McDevitt by Promises to Keep

course, and it meant only that no one in authority could find anything

to object to. Actually, somebody high up had considerable

confidence in her: in order to promote the illusion of spontaneity, the

tapes were being broadcast directly to the commercial networks.

Cathie, who by then had had a little too much to drink, gloated

openly. "It’s the best we’ve done," she said. "Nobody’ll ever do it

better."

We shared that sentiment. Landolfi raised his glass, winked at

Cathie, and drained it.

We had to cut the evening short, because a lander’s life-support

system isn’t designed to handle six people. (For that matter, neither

was an Athena’s.) But before we broke it up, Cathie surprised us all

by proposing a final toast: "To Frank Steinitz," she said quietly. "And

his crew."

Steinitz: there was a name, as they say, to conjure with. He had led

the first deep-space mission, five Athenas to Saturn, fifteen years

before. It had been the first attempt to capture the public imagination

for a dying program: an investigation of a peculiar object filmed by a

Voyager on Iapetus. But nothing much had come of it, and the

mission had taken almost seven years. Steinitz and his people had

begun as heroes, but in the end they’d become symbols of futility.

The press had portrayed them mercilessly as personifications of

outworn virtues. Someone had compared them to the Japanese

soldiers found as late as the 1970s on Pacific islands, still defending

a world long since vanished.

The Steinitz group bore permanent reminders of their folly:

prolonged weightlessness had loosened ligaments and tendons, and

weakened muscles. Several had developed heart problems, and all

suffered from assorted neuroses. As one syndicated columnist had

observed, they walked like a bunch of retired big-league catchers.

"That’s a good way to end the evening," said Selma, beaming

benevolently.

Landolfi looked puzzled. "Cathie," he rumbled, "you’ve questioned

Steinitz’s good sense any number of times. And ours, by the way.

Isn’t it a little hypocritical to drink to him?"

"I’m not impressed by his intelligence," she said, ignoring the

obvious Parallel. "But he and his people went all the way out to

Saturn in those damned things--" she waved in the general direction

of the three Athenas orbiting overhead in linkup "--hanging onto

baling wire and wing struts. I have to admire that."

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Asimov's Science Fiction - Jack McDevitt by Promises to Keep

"Hell," I said, feeling the effects a little myself, "we’ve got the same

ships he had."

"Yes, you do," said Cathie pointedly.

I had trouble sleeping that night. For a long time, I lay listening to

Landolfi’s soft snore, and the electronic fidgeting of the operations

computer. Cathie was bundled inside a gray blanket, barely visible in

her padded chair.

She was right, of course. I knew that rubber boots would never again

cross that white landscape, which had waited a billion years for us.

The peaks glowed in the reflection of the giant planet fragile

crystalline beauty, on a world of terrifying stillness. Except for an

occasional incoming rock, nothing more would ever happen here.

Callisto’s entire history was encapsuled within twelve days.

Pity there hadn’t been something to those early notions about

Venusian rain forests and canals on Mars. The Program might have

had easier going had Burroughs or Bradbury been right. My God:

how many grim surprises had disrupted fictional voyages to Mars?

But the truth had been far worse than anything Wells or the others

had ever committed to paper: the red planet was so dull that we

hadn’t even gone there.

Instead, we’d lumbered out to the giants. In ships that drained our

lives and our health.

We could have done better; our ships could have been better. The

computer beside which Landolfi slept contained his design for the

fusion engine. And at JPL, an Army team had demonstrated that

artificial gravity was possible: a real gravity field, not the pathetic

fraction created on the Athenas by spinning the inner hull. There

were other possibilities as well: infrared ranging could be adapted to

replace our elderly scanning system; new alloys were under

development. But it would cost billions to build a second-generation

vehicle. And unless there were an incentive unless Cathie Perth

carried off a miracle, it would not happen.

Immediately overhead, a bright new star glittered, moving visibly

(though slowly) from west to east. That was the linkup, three ships

connected nose to nose by umbilicals and a magnetic docking

system. Like the Saturn mission, we were a multiple vehicle

operation. We were more flexible that way, and we had a safety

factor: two ships would be adequate to get the nine-man mission

home. Conditions might become a little stuffy, but we’d make it.

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Asimov's Science Fiction - Jack McDevitt by Promises to Keep

I watched it drift through the icy starfield.

Cathie had pulled the plug on the Christmas lights. But it struck me

that Callisto would only have one Christmas, so I put them back on.

Victor was on board Tolstoi when we lost it. No one ever really knew

precisely what happened. We’d begun our long fall toward Jupiter,

gaining the acceleration which we’d need on the flight home. Cathie,

Herman Selma (the mission commander), and I were riding

Greenswallow. The ships had separated, and would not rejoin until

we’d rounded Jupiter, and settled into our course for home. (The

Athenas are really individually-powered modular units which travel,

except when maneuvering as a single vessel. They’re connected

bow-to-bow by electromagnets. Coils of segmented tubing, called

’umbilicals’ even though the term does not accurately describe their

function, provide ready access among the forward areas-of the

ships. As many as six Athenas can be linked in this fashion,

although only five have ever been built. The resulting structure

would resemble a wheel.)

Between Callisto and Ganymede, we hit something: a drifting cloud

of fine particles, a belt of granular material stretched so thin it never

appeared on the LGD, before or after. Cathie later called it a cosmic

sandbar; Iseminger thought it an unformed moon. It didn’t matter:

whatever it was, the mission plowed into it at almost 50,000

kilometers per hour. Alarms clattered, and red lamps blinked on.

In those first moments, I thought the ship was going to come apart.

Herman was thrown across a bank of consoles and through an open

hatch. I couldn’t see Cathie, but a quick burst of profanity came from

her direction. Things were being ripped off the hull. Deep within her

walls, Greenswallow sighed. The lights dipped, came back, and

went out. Emergency lamps cut in, and something big glanced off

the side of the ship. More alarms howled, and I waited for the clamor

of the throaty klaxon which would warn of a holing, and which

consequently would be the last sound I could expect to hear in this

life.

The sudden deceleration snapped my head back on the pads. (The

collision had occurred at the worst possible time: Greenswallow was

caught in the middle of an attitude alignment. We were flying

backwards.)

The exterior monitors were blank: that meant the cameras were

gone.

Cathie’s voice: "Rob, you okay?"

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