Episode Eight: Not In Our Stars, But In Ourselves
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Not In Our Stars, But In Ourselves
Cape Canaveral, August 12, 1958
Standing a hundred yards from the heart of the space program, L.G. Walker puffed a cigar alight and looked around at his world.
He could see the gantries for Thursday’s Shepard I launch beyond the oaks surrounding the parking lot. He inhaled deeply, reflecting how far he’d come from his roots, to be part of something as big as the first official moon landing.
“Mr. Walker!” Wiping sweat from his jowls, Harcourt Daniels rushed up toward him. “Mr. Walker, about my oxygen generator?”
“I told you, Mr. Daniels, the TSC will make sure every device on the rocket is ready for action. I will personally check the installation before Thursday’s launch, my word on it.”
There was no real need for Walker to check the generator, but keeping someone as influential as Daniels happy was a smart career move. After a few more minutes of reassurance, Daniels strutted away and Walker sauntered toward the Technology and Science Commission’s ten-story Cape Canaveral office building, checking out his image approvingly in the reflecting glass wall.
Gray flannel suit, dark blue tie, Hathaway shirt, blue waistcoat. Felt hat with a black band. Blond hair well cut, Brylcreamed into place. Handkerchief neatly jutting from his pocket. The best Cuban cigar he could afford, end clipped, never bitten off. Businesslike expression on his face. An image that said success. Professional. Gentleman. Nothing that said hillbilly, redneck, poor white.
“Elegy Walker, how the hell can you stand outdoors talking in this god-damned heat?” The tall, crisp form of Lt. Valentina Eisenstein strode past him, her salt and pepper hair plastered to her scalp. “Why did Khruschev base the space program where human beings are not meant to live?”
“I’ve told you, lieutenant, my name is not Elegy—”
“Then stop looking like you’re going to a goddamn funeral, boy.”
“When you stop complaining about the ‘goddamned heat.’” He caught up and opened the door for her; the air-conditioning puffed cold air outward. “You should have thought of that before you volunteered.”
“Where else should a Soviet patriot be?” She breathed with relief as the door closed behind them, then stepped up to the Identiscan, nodding to one of the guards as he prepared a brain-wave check. “The Martians, the Vodyanoi, the Growing Men—how many more spacemen will invade the motherland if we do not take the fight to the stars?” The guard glanced at the readout and waved her through. “Thank you, Anthony. Later, Elegy.”
One of the guards snickered at the nickname; Walker ignored him as the IdentiScan confirmed his EEG was human. The finance department had protested the cost, until an alien brain-creature had been found taking over some of the staff’s children.
“Walker!” Major Steve Smith beckoned Walker across the smooth-tiled floor to his office. After 18 months, Walker was able to smile politely despite Smith’s scar and missing ear, legacies of the Venusian robot attack in ‘56. The major dropped his voice as he glanced down the corridor after Eisenstein. “Does seeing that Commie bitch walk around here like she owned the place piss you off like it does me? And now we have the second-in-command Red, Brezhnev himself, attending the launch Thursday. Why the hell did Eisenhower ever agree to a joint space program?”
Because they had the rocket technology, and they offered it to us. “I’ve no idea, sir. Are we still on for 9:30?”
“Absolutely. I want to know every last device that the TSC has authorized for the Gagarin base.” The officer gave a low growl. “And can you explain the point of all these damn experiments? We’re going to the moon to set up a military base and make sure that civilian expedition really wiped out those alien catwomen. That doesn’t call for a lot of scientific claptrap.”
Walker made polite murmurs that sounded like agreement and headed to his own small office. Smith wasn’t anyone he wanted to offend, though any fool knew that Gagarin would be far more than a military camp. At first, sure, but once we’re sure there’s no threat, families are going up, a lunar city will be built ... Everyone had scoffed when the Russians put that in their five year plan, but it looked like it would happen.
Squeezing between the file cabinets and the edge of his desk, Walker set his cigar in the ashtray, took a seat and flipped open his leather-covered appointment book. Serving as liaison between the Technology and Science Commission and the military meant he had to put up with men like Smith, but the connections he was making would be a big help when he picked his next job. The lunar landing was a giant leap for mankind, but it was going to be a big step up in his career, too.
He ran his finger down the list of appointments: first Smith, then Baranski’s update on the meteor-shield tests, then lunch with a local reporter. In the afternoon, collating Future Technologies’ reports on the television cameras for the Gagarin base, then meeting with Senator Thomas Dorman’s representative on the risks of alien infiltration at Canaveral. Sure, I’m only one of a dozen staffers who’ll be there, but it’s a potentially invaluable contact—
“Hey, Elegy.” Sam Peabody knocked on the door with one liver-spotted, bony fist, swinging it open at the same time. “Got an errand I need you to run for me.”
“I don’t run your errands, Sam.”
“Piper needs it run.” Walker suppressed a sigh; as American head of Canaveral security, Piper was someone else Walker didn’t want to offend. “We were gonna send Todd, he’s out with food poisoning. Told him that potato salad smelled off. Everyone else has assignments—”
“So do I.”
“But it’s a TSC matter, so you’re gonna do it,” Peabody said. “You know Deb Sykes? TSC file clerk?”
“I don’t—wait, is she a young colored girl? Missing one arm from the giant leech attack?”
“Ever since which, she’s had a drinking problem.” Peabody put a cigarette between his lips and struck a match on Walker’s desk nameplate. “Nothing we couldn’t live with, but she hasn’t been in for three days. Hasn’t answered her phone.” He dropped a sheet of notebook paper on Walker’s desk with an address on it. “With Brezhnev and Dorman coming Thursday, we can’t afford anything that looks like a gap in security. Head out there this morning and see if she’s home.”
“I can’t go until evening.” I am not missing a meeting with Dorman’s representative to check up on a drunken colored tramp!
Peabody bitched about that, but conceded the point eventually. As a result, Walker was able to complete his appointments for the day, and even made a couple of comments to Dorman’s representative that seemed to impress the man. He celebrated with steak at one of Cocoa Beach’s better restaurants before finally heading out to Sykes’ place.
As the miles of highway unrolled, he reflected that he’d never have agreed if he’d realized Sykes’ address was in some pesthole of a backwater Florida town. Backwaters reminded him too much of home.
Driving into town, seeing the railroad dividing the white and colored neighborhoods, it felt even more familiar. As he drove across the tracks and began looking for Sykes’ street, he saw the dark skins along the streets and felt his insides churn. He’d learned to work with Negroes in the Army. He’d learned a few of them were worthy of respect. But he still didn’t like being around them, particularly not with the sun setting. But it was too late to back out, so he parked in Sykes’ small drive, locked the car and began pounding on her door, ignoring the looks from the neighbors.
No response. He considered breaking in—it was allowed under the TSC’s employment agreements—but instead, he climbed over the fence into the narrow back yard and checked the kitchen door.
Unlocked. He stepped inside, smelled rot, then saw the flies buzzing contentedly around a hamburger patty sitting out on the counter. Then he heard snoring; he stepped into the living room, found Sykes sprawled out on the moth-eaten couch, an almost-empty bottle of Johnnie Walker on its side next to her. Walker gave out a little laugh. Jesus. what a stupid waste of my time. I’ll call Peabody—
Behind him, he heard a hiss like an angry copperhead. As he started to turn, he breathed in the scent of honeysuckle. For a second, things seemed to blur—And then he heard a yell and someone flung him to the ground, rolled him over and began handcuffing him.
Walker protested as the man hauled him to his feet, realized there was another man in the room, a police deputy, yelling at him, and pointing at Sykes with his gun.
Only then did Walker register the blood-drenched couch, the knife thrust deep into Sykes’ chest—and the bloodstains on his own fingers.
9:30 a.m., Aug. 12
“I—I’m sorry ma’am.” A deputy who barely looked old enough to shave backed into the cellblock. Walker raised himself off the metal bunk and moth-eaten sheet as Lt. Eisenstein followed, puffing on a curved pipe with silver filigree around the bowl. The kid’s eyes seemed fixed on the pipe. “I can’t leave you alone with Walker, he’s a killer! It wouldn’t be safe to let you talk to him alone!”
“But I am also a killer, young man.” She had him backed against the rusting bars of the empty cell opposite Walker’s. “As a sniper during the Great Patriotic War. I shot and killed 17 filthy Germans. Once, a stinking bastard Hun tried to rape me; I strangled him with my mother’s scarf. If you wish to be afraid, be afraid for Mr. Walker—not me.”
“But, but—” He gulped, his Adam’s apple bobbing visibly. “Couldn’t you wait until the sheriff—he’ll be mad, ma’am—”
“Lieutenant.”
“How can you be a lieutenant, you’re a—” Eisenstein exhaled smoke into his face. The kid muttered something and retreated. “I’m going to have to file a report.”
“Well, that certainly puts me in my place.” She knocked the pipe out on the bars, then faced Walker. “Well, Elegy, now you have a reason to look somber.”
“They wouldn’t let me have a lawyer.” He walked to the bars, fighting the impulse to run, kneel down, clutch at her and beg for help. “I’m supposed to get a phone call, I—”
“You won’t find one locally, Elegy,” she said. “Nobody in this part of the world would want to be known for defending a—I think the young man called you a nigger-lover?”
“It’s a lie!” He slammed his fists against the bars, unable to stop himself. “I never laid a hand on Sykes! Not for sex, not for murder.”
“You were found holding the knife.”
“Someone drugged me, I swear to you. They put my hand on the knife before—”
“And the letter? The one found in your pocket in which she asks you to give her baby a name?”
“I didn’t!” Walker gasped. Dear god, if that reaches the papers—if my folks ever heard that I— “I’ve been framed, dammit!”
The kid came running at the sound of him shouting; Eisenstein gestured him away with the stem of her pipe. “Framed you, boy? How? And why? You think you’re that important?”
“I don’t know!” He stared at her as if he could force belief into her through his gaze alone. “I’ve been trying to think since I woke up, but I can’t! All I can think about—”
“Is what happens to your reputation if this affair is taken as fact,” Eisenstein said. “Being accused of miscegenation horrifies you even more than the murder charge, correct?” She ignored his stuttering protest. “You will have to sharpen your mind if you hope to clear your name.”
“Clear my—you believe me?”
“Even if Sykes was white, you would never want to display a woman on your arm with so little breeding, so little ‘class.’ It would not suit you. And a colored woman?” She shook her head. “You can work with them, and I know you respect Cosmonaut Donaldson, but I cannot imagine you sleeping with one.”
“Two unequal beasts can’t be yoked together.” The old phrase came out of his mouth without even thinking. “It’s in the Bible.”
“I told this to Piper. He pointed at the evidence, and offered another Bible reference—forbidden fruit. Opiate of the masses indeed.” She began stuffing her pipe; he remembered hearing around the office that it was her one souvenir of her father, who’d died at Stalingrad. “You are a proud man, Elegy Walker. You would never do anything to bring shame on yourself—and for you, this is shameful beyond measure.”
“Never do anything you wouldn’t want printed on the front page of the New York Times. Heard that in a movie, it’s exactly how I feel.” She believed him. There was a chance.
“Then tell me, why would someone go to such lengths to put you in here? Why not just shoot you?”
“Because if they kill me, Piper starts looking for a murderer. This way, no-one’s looking for anyone.”
“Exactly.” She said it with a crisp, approving nod. “So, who hates you enough? Or who gains by putting you out of the way?”
“I’m not hated by anyone around here. Not loved, either, but not hated,” Walker said as Eisenstein puffed her pipe alight again. “I tried to make sense of it, but nobody at Canaveral gains by having me locked up. It’s the nature of a bureaucracy, there’s always someone you can recruit to fill in. Just like Peabody sent me to fill in for—” He paused. “Todd. He was supposed to go check on Sykes, maybe he was the one the trap was set for.”
“Todd? He is even more insignificant than you are.”
“Then maybe Peabody was lying about that. Maybe it was me all along. But—why would he do that?”
“You did assume responsibility for the final check on Daniels’ project,” she said softly.
“Purely to make him happy. There’s no way I’m going to spot something wrong that the previous half-dozen checks missed. And like I said, someone’ll make the check for me; jailing me won’t make a damn bit of difference.” The words sounded surprisingly bitter in his mouth.
Eisenstein muttered something about October, which Walker figured he’d misheard, then she went on: “I told you, boy, the space program is vital to Russia’s survival. I will not let it be stopped. If you think of anything, call me; I will make sure you are allowed your one call.” She gave him her number in the apartment building where all the Russian officers stayed. “My office number, you already know.”
“And if I don’t think of anything?”
“I will begin turning over rocks and see what squirms out.” She strode out, leaving a trail of thick smoke in her wake.
(continued on page 2)
Applied Science 8: Not In Our
Stars, But In Ourselves
by Fraser Sherman 1 2