By early that evening, Porliche had spoken to over a dozen people from industry, government, and the university. She then spent over two hours with a group of news reporters both from the public and scientific media. She provided them a wealth of information about the entire REAP program, the history of the bunker, and specific information about Mission 23 to planet K-70 EDN 7. She shared the scant information she had learned from documents at the museum in France about insanity, death, and sabotage during the acceleration phase of a few of the ships. Because of the extreme length of travel and the extent of personnel dysfunction, Control and the rest of the world had tempered their hopes for the entire project, especially as decades passed.
Now the enthusiasm about this discovery was extreme because of the construction of the first manned ship that used the Baulian transformation to travel faster than the speed of light. The finding provided a target of immense importance. This craft was counting down for its first mission to a cluster of three stars about five light-years away.
Most of the ship was of extremely density. The high mass was required to both alter space-time and to feed a fission engine that produced prodigious amounts of energy. At one end was a crew area and an array of discs used for travel away from the base station. After traveling to its destination, it would assume an orbit around a star calculated and adjusted so as to create the least disturbance in the solar system visited. The disk-ships, shortened to diships, could then detach and explore the system.
They were of minimal mass, complex semi-holographic structures that were directly linked with an identical equipment and the living, breathing crew located in mock-ups at the base station. What was done at the base was immediately reproduced on the diship. The minimal mass enabled rapid acceleration and deceleration without a great change in momentum. They could achieve extreme velocities quickly. The holograms were fully functional. People and equipment sensed and reacted exactly as if they were aboard. The disadvantage of this technology was that objects of more than a few milligrams of mass could not be retrieved back to base. Everything had to be analyzed in situ or perhaps within the confines of a stationary diship and then returned.
Monican Astrophysics Administration had a small role in mission planning. It provided recommendations for areas of interest for future missions. Bhat worked as a telescope technician, servicing an array of orbiting imagers as well as a dark side lunar-based imaging array totaling twenty telescopes with primary mirrors of five-meter diameter spread over six hundred kilometers. He did not travel, as his role was image and related software management. He seldom left his building while working. He was a technician, not an astronomer.
After appearances on two morning shows and innumerable requests for interviews, Porliche called Bhat. “I don’t like being a celebrity. It’s too disruptive,” she said after greeting. How is your day?”
“Your celebrity-ness has rubbed off on me. I can’t get a thing done.” The truth was he could not accurately repeat the wealth of information his wife had so glibly cited. He felt stupid and, shortly after arriving at work, needed to take a sick day. She didn’t know he was home.
“I’m sorry. I can’t help that.”
“I know. It’s because of you but not your fault. I watched one of your broadcasts. The woman historian, she was the friend you mentioned?”
“Yes.”
“They also showed some guy with white hair and a skintight outfit. Who was he?”
“Palfrey Poincare. He is the one that took credit for our work but, later and probably under extreme pressure, backed off. Bhat, I called because I am shutting off my COM. It’s the only way I’ll get anything done. I have a huge amount of reading to do. I have so many documents I have yet to study. I’ll be in the history department if you need me.”
“When will you be home?”
“After seven. What about you?”
“Uh, probably a little earlier than that.”
Two weeks later, the requests for interviews, pictures, information, and other time consumptions with Porliche had died down. Out of the dean of history’s office walked a short woman in a small light-blue-and-teal tube dress, heels, short, spiked hair, and wraparound sleek visor-like glasses. Porliche was hardly recognizable. She wore a sly little smile as she strode to her cubicle. She had just brought a huge grant to her department with a nice stipend for her. Many interviews had included remuneration, and she had spent some money on herself, which had not hurt when negotiating with the dean, an older, staid man who was highly susceptible to influence by looks. And short skirts. And low necklines. He had difficulty maintaining eye contact. She had worked him hard and was very pleased. Her conversation with Nin the day before had given her the moxie.
She went to her cubicle and opened the millionth file, it seemed. There was so much junk to peruse just to see if it contained anything useful. This article was about the crew of REAP 23. Eight people posed for a photograph. As a group, they looked about the same as people she saw around, especially in airports and on her trip. The men were seated, and behind them the women stood.
She skimmed over the blonde, the Indian, and the ordinary white woman because there was something about the black girl. She magnified the photograph. Short, black hair, athletic looking, and what was in text below required translation. It took only seconds to decipher her name, Savanna De Clercq, a French pilot.
Porliche’s jaw fell, and the photograph began to blur. It could not have been, she thought. She blinked and stared. It was the woman in the cenote. It had to be. Through the aqueous haze, she could have sworn the woman’s lips moved. “Merci,” sounded deep in Porliche’s head, one of few French words that had stayed.
“No, no,” Porliche said. “Thank you. You have changed everything. Me as well,” she added.
She marked and copied the image to be on the front cover of her book. The emotion of the moment, a discovery inconsequential except personally to her, took a few hours to subside.
“I have good news,” she called out that evening when she walked in.
“What would that be, Porliche?” Bhat’s bored voice came from the bedroom.
“I have a raise. More than double what any other doctoral candidate makes.”
He came to the front room. “That’s astronomical, as we say.”
“What’s up in MAA?”
“The maiden mission of Baul One returned. Something went wrong. Half the crew is screwed up somehow.” His tone was flat, factual.
“How bad?”
“We’re just starting to get transmissions. Don’t know.”
“Is the mission to K-70 still on?”
“So far,” Bhat said. “Did they talk to you about going?”
“I’m a historian, not a space traveler. I told them I have no interest. Besides, I wouldn’t fit into a suit. Did you get your refractometer fixed?” She gave him a hug and a peck. He responded with apathy.
“Yeah. One more thing.”
“What?”
He squirmed away. “The orbiting radio telescope array has been focused on K-70 for over a week. Still, not a single sign of transmission.” Again, he spoke with detachment.
“That’s bad.” Porliche referred to the news but also felt her words reflected her feelings about their interactions of late.
“It looks like no one survived. Otherwise, we’d pick something up.”
“That breaks my heart,” she said with sadness.
“It’ll mess up your dissertation.”
“That’s not my concern. It’s those people.” She thought of Savanna. She didn’t know what role she had played on the mission. But they were connected.
“It was ten thousand years ago. Don’t tell me you’re sad about that.”
She was put off by his callous attitude on top of her deeply emotional day. She changed the subject to avoid an unpleasant exchange. “I was invited to present at a conference in Ceylon next month. I’ll be gone for a few days.”
He became quiet. “I don’t like it when you’re gone. You spend time with these guys wearing little besides a smile.”
“I’m all yours, Bhat, dear. Don’t you trust me?”
“I don’t trust them.”
She felt a twinge of anger. “No, it means you don’t trust me. This is my job, Bhat. At least for now. Important, influential people invite me to present at international conferences, and this is the first time I’ve accepted.”
“I don’t want you to go.”
“I’m going. And I’m happy and honored to go. If you loved me, you’d feel the same.”
With that, she left the house, walking through the urban streets to the suburbs and into the jungle. She was headed to a water cave where she found peace at times during her adolescence, a cenote by their ancient language. No one was there, as it was late with night approaching. She climbed down the rocks and under an overhang. On a flat rock, she slipped out of her clothing and waded into the dark water, slightly cool. She swam deep soon in complete darkness. She bumped into rocks on the far end and tapped the bottom in a few places with her feet before she returned to where she entered and settled into a place where she sat on a ledge with her head and shoulders above the water.
Deep in thought in the darkness, she thought the cave lightened slightly. Across from her was a woman about her age, thin and black with short hair. The woman seemed a bit taller than she and was athletic looking. She wore a uniform from a forgotten era that she shed. Porliche knew she was dreaming as she watched the woman slip into the water and paddle around before she got out. The ripples moved Porliche ever so slightly, making her wonder if it was a dream. The woman toweled off as Porliche watched. She stopped and turned around, holding her towel at her chin from where it hung to her upper thighs, looking for something or someone. The apparition’s eyes fell on the shimmering smooth water where Porliche sat quietly imagining.
Porliche felt she looked not at her but through her. She felt at that moment a change in the core of her being. The images spoke one word in the language of the chamber: “Merci.” The black woman smiled, turned, and got dressed. The name on her uniform seemed to shine, the curious letters she had come to recognize. Savanna. She climbed the steep steps out and seemed to keep climbing into the sky.
Porliche shook her head to clear the trance. Tears streamed down her cheeks and plopped into the water. She exhaled loudly, shivered, and climbed out. The dream was the emotional completion of the months of work and, though unreal, felt to her as if it had actually happened.