Holding Up The Sky - Thuban
(Eight)
01, January, 2065
Even though it was still dark, McQueen was not the first one up. He could hear Frank and Ewan down in the kitchen. "Coffee before going out to the barn, I guess." He was a bit embarrassed for no good reason, but he was unused to anyone beating him to the punch in the morning. He was used to having a few minutes to himself whether it be at Loxley or the Clinic. Someone was always awake and about on the 'Toga.' He made his way to the kitchen.
Morning greetings were passed between the three men. The exchanges were brief. They had all stayed up way later than usual the night before, but the farm was - in a sense - not unlike the Marine Corps. There was always something to do first thing in the morning.
"Going for a hike, Colonel?" Ewan asked good-naturedly.
"If it's all right. I thought I'd look things over on foot," he responded, gesturing to his new boots - boondockers. "Thought I'd start to break them in."
"As long as you don't care what you step in," Frank joked mildly.
"Not a problem. Whatever it is - I've stepped in worse," McQueen joked back easily.
Frank gestured toward the milking parlor. "Gotta go. Breakfast in about two hours." He and Ewan left the house. A few seconds later McQueen could hear the father and son harmonizing as they crossed the yard. It was not a song he recognized. He finished his coffee and hit the road. He only had two hours to reconnoiter.
******************
During his recon McQueen found three separate places around the farm where symbols and characters had been carved on the lintels of doorways. Some had been crossed out and some repeated. They were InVitro symbols. Like the dispossessed from centuries past: gypsies, runaway slaves, hobos - freed or escaped InVitros had established a system of symbols, which they used to mark property. McQueen knew what the symbols were but he did not know what most of them meant. He had never attempted to live out amongst civilians – natural- borns. He hadn't learned any but one or two of the most common symbols. Those that signified if it was safe to enter a restaurant or store. He could only interpret one symbol - one that appeared in all three places. It was a circle divided into quarters by a cross. 'Here live kind and generous people." He took a moment to memorize the other carvings. Hawkes would know what they meant.
One hundred and fifteen minutes later McQueen entered the milking parlor for the first time. It was gleaming and as clean as possible. But the one thing that hadn't ever really occurred to McQueen was the fact that real animals were really cared for here. The place had the distinct smell of milk, of course. Fresh milk. He had never thought about the smell of the liquid before - unless of course it was spoiled or ripe, but this was the scent of absolutely fresh milk, rich with cream. There was also the earthy smell of the animals and the smell of the grain they munched while being milked. It was warm and damp. The cattle were all washed off prior to milking - a process some seemed to enjoy more than others. The floor was almost continuously being sprayed down by one of the two men. There was the rhythmic hum and swish of the milking machines and McQueen could see the heavy white liquid moving through glass pipes to what he assumed was a holding tank of some kind in the next room.
"Here," Frank said, smiling as he handed McQueen the hose. He gestured to the InVitro's boondockers. McQueen sprayed off his boots and then moved off to a place that looked to be out of the way. He leaned against the wall watching the activity. It was smooth, economical and obviously well drilled by both men.
"Did you have a good walk?" Frank asked.
"I need to speak with both of you," McQueen called over the hum, cutting right to the heart of the matter. "Is there somewhere we can talk without the kids?"
"We can have breakfast over at the cottage I suppose," mused Frank.
"Good. I want to discuss something that may be very important," McQueen offered. He braced himself before making his next statement. He knew that it was something that neither man wanted to hear. "I want to go over a few things. I want to give you some ideas of what to do.... What to do if things do not go well. "
The Celina men both stopped what they were doing. McQueen's tone of voice left no doubt as to what he had meant. He had produced the maps - had walked the property - to get ideas of how to best protect the family in the event that Earth defenses fell - what to do if they were invaded.
"What do you know that we don't?" Frank whispered.
"Nothing. Nothing solid," McQueen spoke hastily. "Well, I can see I'm screwing this up," he thought and then spoke. "I don't know anything more. The situation seems to be at a stalemate, but I ... I didn't want to leave here ... to leave here without.... "
"I had thought we could go up to the Adirondacs," Frank said.
"I don't advise that. The Chigs work with the AIs. Going into the mountains didn't help during the AI Wars. It is too much the cultural icon. It was one of the first places the AIs targeted. Terrorism - attack the supposed strongholds - bring them down first. No, I actually think that the farm could be a pretty good place. The barn and silos are good landmarks - great for dead reckoning - flying without instruments. "
"Well, wouldn't the enemy want to bomb us then?" Ewan asked.
"If they are good landmarks for us - they'd be good for them as well," McQueen said.
"You want to give us ideas. To give us options," Frank said softly.
"Yes, Sir," McQueen answered. "I think Kylen should be involved as well."
"Well, we will just get her up then," Frank said, placing a hand on McQueen's shoulder to convey his trust.
One of the cows gave an irritated bellow. She was out of grain. The noise brought all three men out of their thoughts. The Celinas finished up the milking with McQueen watching and then the three walked over to the cottage.
******************
Kylen nursed her coffee in the relative quiet of the kitchen. She had had way too much of McQueen's champagne the night before and was now feeling every sip. The teenagers were still in bed. Her father and Ewan should have been in from the morning milking, but they weren't eating breakfast, as was the habit. Colonel McQueen was nowhere to be found, which meant that he had undoubtedly gone for a morning walk in the snow, maybe even a run. He was getting around better every day. "He'll be gone soon too. They aren't going to let him go too much longer," she thought.
The phone rang. Kylen groaned as she rose to answer it.
"Get your act together, Celina. The day is wasting. Bring the maps over here to Ewan's," McQueen ordered over the wire and then abruptly hung up.
"Aye, aye, Sir. And good morning to you too, Sir." She muttered and called into question McQueen's dubious parentage with a nonstop string of sarcasm as she gathered the requested items, put on her coat and made her way through the cold air of the morning to Ewan's cottage, muttering to herself the whole time.
Ewan caught site of her as she entered his yard. "Whoa, I'd say a hangover of about five on the Richter scale." He laughed ironically. "Better you than me, Colonel."
"Get her some coffee and some aspirin," McQueen said softly almost solicitously. Frank was again left to wonder about the dichotomies of the man's behavior.
McQueen thanked Kylen as he took her coat. He then spread the maps on Ewan's table. Kylen bolted the aspirin that Ewan handed her and sipped her coffee. The men had thrown together a breakfast. Omelets of some kind. The smell was making Kylen's stomach roll.
"OK, I give. Why are we all here? Why didn't we just do this over at the house?" she asked.
"Because I didn't want to have this discussion in front of the younger ones. We can fill in Connor and Christian later," Frank said. "Colonel McQueen approached your brother and me this morning with some potentially important proposals."
Kylen was instantly awake and attentive. McQueen was well pleased with the change in her demeanor. He needed her clear headed. He knew that she habitually planned escape routes. When it came to the safety of the farm and her family, Kylen undoubtedly had thought of a few things herself by now.
"Can you take me out to see Connor's project?" I walked around the outside of it, but I'd like to see the inside," McQueen asked.
Ewan opened a drawer in his desk and removed a ring of keycards. "Lets go." The four went to Ewan's truck - a model that had always been called a pickup. McQueen easily hoisted himself into the open back end of the vehicle and held out his hand to Kylen.
"The fresh air will do you good," he told her.
"It's cold. Are you doing this to punish me?" she asked.
"Consequences of your own actions, Sailor," he teased. "The champagne was good, wasn't it? I think I chose well Consider your options carefully. Back here with me, bouncing along with the wind in you face, or up front crammed into the overheated cab with your father, brother and the smell of eggs and bacon."
Her stomach rolled again. Kylen held up her hand to silence him. McQueen grabbed it and helped her clamber onboard. He banged on the roof of the cab - the universal signal to move out.
In a few minutes they were at "The Dream." It had been Connor's doctoral project in construction engineering. On the south side there was a semicircular wall of polymeric panels dug into the side of the rolling hill, a wall about ten meters at the base and about four meters at the highest point. The footprints of McQueen's visit earlier in the morning were visible in the snow. They crisscrossed the area. He had given the place a good going over. The combination of materials and their angle was what had caused the skewed images on the scan. Ewan quickly plowed the snow away from the front of the wall, and unlocked a small door in one of the panels. He entered the structure and in moments the panels folded back on one another revealing a wall of glass. The rest of the group followed Ewan into the structure. Frank spoke.
"Connor's project was the use of excavating instrumentation he had designed in conjunction with the structural aspects of the building. The two things happen simultaneously. We all called it Dozer's Daydream. When they were building it I called it the nightmare," Frank chuckled, but he was clearly proud of the achievement. "It actually went in incredibly fast. Plumbing and wiring took the longest, but with a four-man crew the whole thing was up and ready to go in three days. Connor always makes it sound so easy, but I find that I never can quite describe it.
"How much ground is overhead? McQueen asked.
"I think that it's about ten feet at the highest part of the structure. I don't remember all the specs. But I remember that it had to be at least ten feet." Ewan said.
That explained to McQueen why the building hadn't shown up clearly on the shallow scans. A subsonic would find it - would find anything, but even then there was a possibility it could be mistaken for a natural phenomenon - if you weren't familiar with local geology. The smudge on the scans had been a small heat signature from the panels warmed by the sun.
"Power?" McQueen asked.
"How much do you want?" Ewan asked in return, opening a panel and throwing a few more switches. The entire interior of the building was illuminated.
"Independent?"
"Not right now, but that's no problem."
"Right answer," McQueen said and began to walk around the space. He estimated that it was - give or take - about six hundred square meters. The place went further back into the hill than he had originally thought. It opened up - became larger as you moved away from the front. He noticed that here and there along the floor and the walls there were pipes. Plumbing had been roughed in. There were some skylights covered with snow.
"Water?" McQueen asked.
"Connor dug an independent well. There is a holding tank for.... What is it Dad? A thousand gallons?"
Frank nodded in the affirmative. McQueen grinned. This place was the Holy Grail and the family apparently had never considered it.
"Purpose?" the Colonel asked Ewan.
"Dwelling." Ewan said, unconsciously falling into McQueen's speech pattern. "Or storage. Connor's original idea was a bachelor pad, then he got married and it was going to be the honeymoon house, but by the time he built it Karin was born and he wanted to give her a room with a view. One of us will take it over someday."
"I thought I might retire over here," said Frank.
McQueen spent another ten minutes looking the place over. He gestured Frank to his side. "This is impressive. I can tell you this: There are Brass in the Seabees and Army Corps of Engineers who would mess their pants to get a hold of Connor." McQueen could tell that his admission upset Frank - scared him. "Of Course, no man really likes to think of his children going off to war. No sane man." "Look, if Connor's number comes up in the draft tell him to stay out of the Navy - much as I'd like to have him around to take care of business - but the Seabees are front line - worse even than the Army Corps of Engineers which isn't a picnic."
"What about space construction?" Frank whispered urgently. The two men were on the same page: How to keep another Celina sibling safe.
McQueen paused for a moment. He looked over at Kylen who was talking to Connor's twin, Ewan, who had a farm deferment. She was standing over by the glass wall. It registered to McQueen that she had probably had her fill of living underground, but some things couldn't be helped. McQueen then became aware that for the first time he was trying to keep an extraordinary talent - Connor - out of the military. It was a strange and conflicting emotion. Then he considered Frank's question.
"No. No, too obvious a target." He looked straight into Frank's face. It seemed clear that the older man didn't quite get the picture. "I'd do it," he confessed. "Knock out your enemies ability to build and service space vehicles? I'd do it in a heartbeat. Tell Connor to stay in the civil sector - to volunteer if he has to."
Frank was forced to look away. It wasn't in horror over McQueen's admission. Not at all. It was, in fact, the realization that to protect his children he would do exactly what McQueen had suggested. He finally looked back at the Marine. " I understand, Ty," he said using the younger man's given name for the first time. This was, in Frank's estimation, a first name conversation. "This is a dreadful thing. "I just want to keep as many of them safe for as long as I can," Frank Celina confessed.
"I know. That's why we are out here freezing our butts off. Look, Mr. Celina - Frank, in a war the first casualty is the truth and the second thing that fails are 'best laid plans.' A plan may fail, but if you have a plan - you have knowingly or unknowingly already formulated a backup. If you don't have a plan - you are doomed to failure. You have had to see that in Kylen. You have had to see her always reading things - weighing her options - outlining plans and options. She survived."
"Then lets go get warm and make some plans," Frank said.
McQueen crossed the space and turned off the power signaling it was time to go.
***********************
The four spent the rest of the morning at Ewan's discussing how best to turn The Dream into the family shelter. What to finish inside of the structure. When and how to tell the younger children. What to store there. Ways in which the blurred heat signature could be better camouflaged. After the initial horror of the whole idea had been passed the Celinas all bent to the task. McQueen enjoyed working with "problem solvers" and with Frank, leading by example - here was a family full of them it seemed.
McQueen had a flash - what seemed to him to be a good and workable idea. He opened his mouth, began to speak and then halted abruptly. "I don't know if they are ready for this - if they can handle this," he thought.
"What?" the three Celinas asked together. Their unison of thought and speech momentarily stunned the Marine.
"It was just an idea," he said softly, filling in the silence while the others waited.
"Put it on the table, Ty," Frank insisted.
"It's sort of.... Unpleasant," McQueen admitted.
"None of this is pleasant," Frank responded gently, encouraging the man to continue.
"Well, every year you must have ... a certain number ... of losses ... among the livestock, I mean," McQueen said quietly.
"A few," Frank replied.
"We need to keep the carcasses and start to bury them ... There," Kylen said, stabbing the map with emphasis. She was pointing to The Dream. McQueen exhaled. Kylen was on the same page and more importantly agreed with him.
"Dad, the Chigs hate dead things. They seem to be frightened by them. I know for sure that they do almost anything to avoid graves and dead things. On Tellus, I hid in a burial cave for several days. A shallow scan would show the bones. It's a great idea." She reached out without looking and patted McQueen on his arm.
It had come out of her mouth before she could stop herself. She hadn't even realized that she had said it. Living in the burial chamber was something she had never told her family before. Ewan and Frank looked shocked and openly uncomfortable, but Kylen was on a roll and hadn't looked up from the map.
"We could plant an orchard in the area. It will cut down on solar efficiency, but if we kept the trees on the south side it could help the heat signature from the panels. I'll have to compute the shadow lines," she said.
Frank stepped away from the table and sat heavily in a chair. "I had no idea," he muttered. Kylen seemed to wake up and realize exactly what she had said.
Kylen moved to sit on the floor in front of her father, looking up into his stricken face. "Dad, I'm OK. It worked. It kept me safe. Colonel McQueen is right. This can be another line of defense. He isn't suggesting that we slaughter the animals, Dad, just were they should be buried."
Ewan whispered from his place at the table: "Allston's birds."
Kylen and McQueen looked at him questioningly.
Ewan gestured around him. "Obviously, Colonel, we grew up on a farm - grew up with life and death all around us. We have all always known that things die. I don't think that any of us ever had to be told about death any more than we had to be told that animals give birth. When we had pets that died - well, that was hard, but also a necessary learning process. Things you love will one day die. But ... well ... after Tellus, Allston seemed.... Well, he had a real hard time with it, Kylen. We didn't know how hard until that summer. I noticed it first. There was an area in the yard - a little circle where the grass was higher. I didn't think too much about it at first, but after a couple of days I went over and took a look. There was a dead robin on the lawn. Birds die. We all know this and occasionally you find one on the lawn. Allston had mowed around it. He couldn't bring himself to get a shovel and bury it."
"Ohhhhh," Kylen groaned. "Dad, what did you do?"
Disaster had touched Frank's carefully crafted family - his life's work. The strain of the two opposing stories was evident on his face. One of his children had survived by living among the dead and another had survived by rejecting death altogether. Both concepts seemed unnatural and off center.
"We worked it through as you did," he said. "And we will work this through as well. No, you are right the idea has merit. If we explain it well, Allston will get it."
McQueen spoke softly. "This life and death thing ... Allston seems to love it here - to love the cattle. Well, they provide food and a way of life that he loves. By doing this thing those beautiful strong animals I saw this morning could continue to serve a purpose. Not only for you, but because you are protected the rest of the herd stands a better chance."
Frank looked up into Colonel McQueen's face. "You are terrifically patient with us. You are a good ... a good and a generous man, T.C. McQueen," he said calmly.
**********************
The group returned to their work. At noon they broke for lunch. The cover story for the younger kids was that they had spent the morning showing McQueen the farm, which was close to the truth. McQueen took a moment to check his e-mail - looking for orders - his new assignment. He hadn't received a new billet - evidently no one in the Marine Corps had decided what to do with him yet - but there were orders.
Marine Barracks
Eighth and I
Washington, DC. 01 Jan 2065
Electronic Orders
To Colonel Tyrus C. McQueen, 821-36-97440, USMC
1. You are ordered to report to Marine Corps Barracks Eighth and I, Washington D.C. Report 0700, 08Jan 2065. Quarters reserved at BOQ, Henderson Hall, Arlington, VA.
2. You will proceed by government and/or civilian transportation via USMC Barracks Loxley, Alabama, with Priority AAAAA authorized by TWX H.Q. USMC dated 01 Jan. 2065, Subject "Movement of McQueen, Col. T.C." to final destination.
3. Prescribed uniform of the day 08 Jan 2065: Dress "A" uniform preferred (sword and medals). Due to exigencies of war Dress "B" acceptable.
4. Prescribed uniform evening 09 Jan 2065: Evening dress preferred. Due to exigencies of war Dress "A" or "B" acceptable.
By Direction:
Becca A. Green
Lieutenant General, USMC
McQueen handed the orders to Kylen in disgust.
"But you were just down at Loxley. You have to go back there?" she asked.
"I've been ordered to report to DC. with all my party clothes. I've got to go to Loxley to get them out of storage. At least the general - or someone on her staff - has that much together," he spoke with sarcasm.
"Who is General Green?"
"She is Deputy Chief of Staff, Aviation."
"Your boss?"
"My boss', boss' boss," McQueen said.
Kylen noted that his voice was tinged with admiration. "She must really be something else - to evoke that tone of voice," she thought and the asked: "What is this about?"
"Who knows? The Brass has its own ideas. The Corps will tell me when it wants me to know," he said with resignation.
"But Colonel, you are the 'Brass' now," she said, mildly amused.
End chapter eight