Two from the Heart(51)

Bron’s presence adds a new level of intensity to the hum. A foreman spots him from the platform and waves him up to survey his latest five-hundred-million-dollar baby.

“Come on aboard! She’s just about ready to fly!”

Bron ascends a metal ladder step by step, being careful not to let his white booties slip off the treads.

The satellite is nearly twenty feet long and fifteen across—about half the size of a city bus. Hardened titanium encases miles of delicate wiring and integrated circuitry. Curved surfaces gleam with shiny gold Mylar blanketing. Dark solar panels are folded close to the sides like bat wings.

Bron leans into a hatch on the central module as his foreman waves a Maglite beam around the interior.

“Reaction control?” asks Bron.

“Perfect.”

“What about the RF multiplexer?”

The foreman winces slightly. “The whole repeater needs some tweaks.”

“How long?”

“Forty-eight hours, tops.”

Problems or not, the language feels good to Bron. Cool. Precise. Real.

In fact, for the whole week he’s been back, he’s been wallowing happily in data streams and digital readouts. He wakes to a hundred business emails a day and taps himself to sleep on his laptop.

He tries not to think about her. And mostly, it’s working.

As Bron descends the ladder, he moves past a stout woman on an aluminum scaffold, her eyes focused on a long, curved panel in front of her. Slowly, meticulously, she peels a stencil backing to reveal the final numeral in the satellite’s official designation: BRON-14

She looks over as he passes.

“Good to have you back, Mr. Bron.”

At the bottom of the ladder, another worker holds out an iPad. Bron ticks a configuration approval with his index finger. As he walks off, the hum behind him returns to something like normal.

Whoosh!



Bron passes through the airlock that separates the construction bay from the main office complex. He unzips his disposable outfit and sits on a stainless-steel bench bolted to a spotless tile floor—so white it’s practically blinding.

His mind is humming pleasantly with the tasks ahead of him this afternoon—a meeting with Atlas V engineers, conference calls with bidders for antenna components, and an update with the Space Surveillance Network—to make sure that BRON-14 won’t accidentally bump into any of the four thousand other satellites already circling the globe.

Even if he wanted to think about her, he doesn’t have time. He’s made sure of it.

As he tugs off one of his cotton booties, his loafer comes with it. Along with the tiniest trickle of desert sand.

Damn it!

He throws the shoe against the wall, where it makes the only black mark in a very, very clean room.





Chapter 41


EVERYTHING MUST go.

The back of the cargo plane looks like a giant open mouth. Daisy’s minions are rolling mainframes and consoles out of the hangar and up the ramp. The plane crew is fastening everything tight with thick yellow straps. Lots of sweating. Not much talking.

I’m sitting outside on top of the beer cooler. Karl promised to ship it to my home address, and I want to be sure it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle. I need to salvage at least one good thing out of this disaster.

Daisy is supervising the load-out. She’s standing with her hands on her hips like General Patton. She knows the location and destination of every cable. I bet the entire inventory is in her head.

She walks over and tucks her Ray-Bans into her hair like a headband.

“Squeeze over,” she says, and sits down next to me. She sits there quietly for a while, watching the operation proceed. Then she says, “It’s not your fault.”

Like hell.

“Sure it is. I’m the writer. I create the world. I control the characters. And I couldn’t make it work. Endings are always the hardest part—but I never even got a chance to figure it out.”

Daisy is staring out across the runway—actually just a long stretch of sand that happens to be flatter than the rest of the sand around it.

“You worked hard,” she says, “and you made him better. You made him a better character than he ever was. Trust me. I know.”

A row of minions walks by with monitors and flat screens. Daisy gets up to supervise the loading. She turns back to me.

“You gave him what he needed,” she says. “Let him write his own ending.”

I can’t believe I’m thinking this, but I’m really going to miss Daisy DeForest. She can definitely be a pain in the ass—but as it turns out, she’s not a half bad muse.





Chapter 42


GONZALO, YOU do the honors.”

In the middle of the classroom, Mr. Vern steadies his star pupil by the belt as he reaches for the very top of the rocket. With his fingers stretched, Gonzalo places a hollow balsa wood nose cone right on the tip.

The rocket is fantastic: slender and smooth, painted in red and gray school colors, with four thick black rubber fins at the bottom. Long connecting wires extend from the base to a crude junction box—and from there to the back of the ancient Dell computer, which sits precariously on a nearby desk.

It may be the first suborbital vehicle in history constructed from a muffler pipe and mud flaps—but it’s got a functioning altimeter and radio control. And to the kids in the room, it’s just about the coolest thing they’ve ever seen.