In which John Tracy shows displeasure with his father's control; Jefferson Tracy shows displeasure with John's lack of same; Virgil Tracy calms at least one of them down

"So what have we got?" Scott asked.

Virgil clicked through the schedule. "Mark and his band of merry men are on time, for a change."

"Have they done all the test scenarios?"

"That's what this is," Virgil said, opening up another document. "At least they followed the matrix this time."

"And?"

Virgil looked at Scott. "It's at about eighty per cent."

"Are you serious?"

"See for yourself." Virgil rolled his chair over so Scott could see the screen better.

"This is…incredible." Scott murmured. "This is totally unprecedented."

"We may have to go through with it after all."

Scott smiled, still absorbed in the test results. "What did Brains say?"

"Something in calculus I didn't quite catch."

"Well," Scott said. "I think Dad's going to tell Gracetech that we're go."

The two looked at each other for a minute. Virgil grinned. "This is it! This clears the runway. We could be operational at the end of next year."

"If we get the other twenty percent."

Virgil waved it away. "I can do eighty."

"Yeah, likeDad's going to let that happen." Scott reached for the mouse and scrolled through. "This is amazing. I'm buying Mark a car. Think he'd like a Jaguar?"

"Drives a Ford. And yet we still work with him. I know one thing: John is going to flip," Virgil said. "I cannot wait until Dad tells him."

"I wish he'd hurry up. He's been home for a couple of days and I don't know if I can keep this up much longer."

"I don't think Dad will be able to either. Not with this. John is going to love this."

Virgil and Scott turned their heads as they heard footsteps approaching. The door to the lounge banged open, and John emerged, tight-lipped, followed by their father, who looked a little angry and very frustrated.

John didn't even glance at his brothers as he stormed past them, out the door, and down the stairs. Virgil and Scott watched him go. Then they turned and looked at their father, who dropped into the chair behind his desk with a sigh and turned to his computer screen.

Virgil looked at Scott. "Or not."

"If you have something to say," Jeff said dryly, without taking his eyes from the computer screen, "I suggest you say it."

Scott decided for the direct approach. "What happened?"

Their father leaned back in his chair and surveyed his two oldest sons. "Would you agree that we are working towards a greater goal?"

Scott was surprised, but answered honestly. "Yes."

"Would you agree that when working towards a greater goal, personal concerns become secondary?"

"Yes." Scott wondered where he was going with this.

"Would you agree that security is a primary concern of this operation?"

"Absolutely."

"Good. Now will you go get your little brother and hammer that into his thick skull? He's too fast for me."

Scott grinned. "Really, Father, what happened?"

"I just started to explain the reason I had him brought down from Grissom Base," Jeff said. "And how I thought it was important for family to work together."

Scott was nodding, but Virgil's eyes had widened slightly. "Excuse me, Father. Did you say you had John brought down from Grissom Base?"

Scott was taken aback. "I thought his rotation was up. That's what he told us."

Jeff shook his head. "They would have kept him up there for the next seven years if it was up to them. ISA is the most ill-managed organization ever to own a launching pad. It is ridiculous that somebody of John's ability be sequestered in a foolhardy experiment like that base."

"What did you do?" Scott asked.

"I called Jim Weber and asked him to expedite his release."

Scott let out a low whistle. Virgil rubbed his jaw. "Oh, Father," he murmured. "You shouldn't have done that."

"What was that?"

Virgil looked up. "You shouldn't have done that, Dad."

Jeff looked annoyed. "Virgil, you know as well as I do that what we are doing here is far more important than what John was doing on that moon base."

"Yes, but he doesn't know that," Virgil said impatiently.

Scott jumped in. "He means that you probably should have talked to John while he was on Gus before…" Scott searched for a moment. "Intervening."

"Communications on Gus were not secure," Jeff said. "I understand why he's upset. But once he understands the scope of what we're doing, he'll realize why I had to do it my way."

"And you didn't get a chance to explain before he…" Virgil trailed off, indicating the door.

"No." Jeff said grimly.

"Well, it's been a long time since John's gone on the rampage," Scott said, trying to find some levity.

"I should have expected this." Jeff muttered, more to himself than his sons.

Scott and Virgil glanced at each other. Scott flicked his eyes at the sliding glass door.

"I'm going to go find him," Virgil said. "Make sure he isn't flying back to Sydney or anything." He hurried out the door.

"He's probably just down by the water," Scott said.

His father sighed, and rubbed his eyes. "I didn't think he would react like that. I thought he would jump at the chance to come back down."

Considering that John had volunteered for an extended rotation, Scott wondered how his father had arrived at that conclusion. But this probably wasn't the best time to bring that up.

"You know John," he said. "He needs to look at something from a few thousand angles before he makes up his mind."

Jeff raised an eyebrow. "He certainly made his mind up about joining that program quickly enough."

"No, Father, he really didn't." Scott said. "But Virgil will find him. He'll get him to calm down."

"Well, maybe you're right at that." Jeff didn't sound convinced. "Still, I would have liked to have done this differently. I don't like having to exclude John and the younger boys from this. I don't like you and your brother having to keep secrets from them. It's not the way I like to operate. I told myself that it would all work out, but maybe…" Jeff stopped, and shook his head. "Well, what's done is done." He looked at his watch. "I have a conference call."

Scott knew a dismissal when he heard one. "Call me if you need me."

"Has Mark gotten back to you yet?"

"Eighty per cent."

"Eighty per cent?" His father repeated, startled. "Really?"

Scott nodded.

"Brains has it?"

"Yes."

"All right." Jeff nodded absently, back to staring at his computer screen, his mind already moving to the next item on his agenda. Scott turned around and walked outside.

Virgil was coming up the stairs, panting a little. "I'm going to start running again," he said.

"Good. Find John?"

Virgil stopped near the top step and took a couple of deep breaths. "No."

Scott waited for more, but Virgil just shrugged. "I can't find him."

"Don't you think you should go and look for him? He could be…"

"He could be what? Swimming for the mainland? He's either somewhere down on the beach or he's sulking in the roundhouse. He'll come out when he's calmed down."

Scott moved over to stare at the pool. "That might be a while."

Virgil stood next to him, and kept his voice low. "Can you blame him?"

Scott glanced up at the house, but the sliding glass doors were closed. "I can't believe it. Virg, did you have any idea?"

Virgil shook his head. "Of course not. Scott, John's never going to let this go. My god, do you remember when Father tried to get him to drop that soccer team at Greene because it wasn't a school team?"

Scott frowned. "I think I remember hearing about it, but I was in North Dakota at that point."

"You should have tried actually hearing it. Father came down for a visit and just mentioned it in passing to John, just saying basically, don't overextend yourself. John launched into this tirade about being able to make his own decisions and being in charge of his own life and all that. And of course, you can't yell at Father. It was fifteen rounds in the middle of the quad. I remember wishing the ground would swallow me up."

"And that was a soccer team. This is his career. He worked hard to get into that program," Scott said.

"He's never going to come around."

Scott sighed. "I know. But Virgil, he's got to. We need him. Now he's not going to want to because Dad is going to make him feel like he has to, and…" He put his hand to his forehead and rubbed the spot between his eyes. "This really got screwed up."

"Dad is pretty good at making you feel obligated."

Scott looked at him in surprise. "Do you feel like you have to do this?"

"Sure, a little," Virgil admitted. Then he laughed. "But then I saw the designs for Rescue Two." He looked at Scott. "Truthfully? Of course I felt obligated, but no more obligated than I normally do to Father. I knew I was going to wind up working for the company one way or another. But this made me want to. I never dreamed it would be something like this."

Scott nodded. "Who would?"

"Dad."

"Brains."

"Dad's brain."

"I wish we could tell Gordon about this," Scott said.

"I wish a lot of things." Virgil said. "I guess we should try to find him before Gordon does. And also – I don't want him to think we're on Father's side on this."

"Okay." Scott took a breath. "I want you to talk to him instead of me."

"Why me?" Virgil said. "You're the one he wants to be when he grows up. If that ever happens."

"It would be better, at this point, coming from you. And don't say that."

They heard a sound, and looked up to see their father standing on the balcony.

"Did you talk to your brother?"

"Not yet." Virgil said, shading his eyes from the sun with his hand.

"Tell him to come and talk to me when you find him. I have to go back to Washington tomorrow. Scott, do you feel comfortable going to Luton to meet with Mark, or do you want Brains to go?"

"I'll go," Scott said. "When?"

"Tomorrow."

"Okay." Scott said simply. John had only been back for a few days, and the trip to England could easily mean being gone for a week. He had been looking forward to having some time with his brothers, since he and Virgil were rarely on the island at the same time, but this would shut down that plan. He knew the end goal would pay off, in all ways. But he wished that his father would sometimes consider things other than speed and efficiency when planning his path from point A to point B. Not that he liked his reaction, but he could see why John was pissed.

"Good." Jeff went back inside.

"Luton, huh," Virgil said.

"The armpit of England." Scott sighed. "I better go pull the files while it's still quiet around here. Tell John not to jump off whatever roof he's on."

"Hmm," Virgil said.

John lay stretched on his back on the roof of the roundhouse. It had taken him a few minutes to figure out how to get up, but he knew that there was no way you could build a structure like this and not have a way to get on top of it. Although, that being said, he still couldn't fathom why his father had built the thing in the first place. He could see the twin small figures of his brothers standing by the pool. He knew they wouldn't be able to see him up here, and he really wanted to find a secluded place to sit for a while. He didn't know the island very well, and was dimly afraid that his perception of solitude might be the same as some sort of tropical water moccasin's. The roof of the roundhouse was not too hot to sit on, and offered a spectacular view of the island. John wondered if there was a word that meant "like an island, but much smaller." It was the land equivalent of a puddle, he decided. A tiny green speck in a sea of blue. Highly anonymous. Ridiculously inconvenient. He supposed he could understand why his father liked it. There was a similar tranquility to the part of Kansas where he spent his summers, and the battered white house that leaned on the edge of the sea of wheat was an island of sorts.

He took a deep breath. Living on Grissom had its own specific drawbacks, and one of them was lack of space. Ambiorix Concepcion, who John replaced when he first arrived at Grissom, had given him a piece of advice: compartmentalize. "You need to build walls, or everyone will be inside your head." John had originally thought that something was getting lost in the translation, but it was true. There were usually only around forty people on the base at one time. As with air and water, there was a limited pool of personal information, so that was recycled as well. There were few secrets on the base, and a mood could spread like a virus. After a few months, John began to feel uncomfortably transparent. He started dragging up his old study techniques from Harvard; delving into whatever he was doing at the expense of his surroundings. Occasionally it occurred to him that he was structuring his brain into a small, internal copy of the base, all tiny rooms with heavy, airlocked doors. If it was an effective technique, it wasn't an entirely comfortable thought.

He used it now, trying to calm himself down. His brain was spinning in turmoil, and that was the absolute wrong state if you wanted to discuss something with his father. You needed to be calm, have your facts in hand – on occasion, literally (Virgil had, at sixteen, requested a week-long Swiss ski vacation by himself using a Flash presentation.) – and keep emotion to a minimum. Essentially, you had to argue on his turf. Blind rage was not a good place to start from. He concentrated on the feeling of the sun on his face, arms, and legs. He thought of the view of the roundhouse from the plane, and then the view of earth from Grissom. He had the sinking feeling his sense of perspective hadn't yet caught up to his view.

He heard a sound, and sat up. The trapdoor was lifting, and he watched as Virgil's head emerged. "Ah," Virgil said when he saw John. He flung the door open and climbed out. "Thought I might…wow. How come I've never been up here before?"

John watched him, not saying anything. Virgil slowly turned around, surveying. "You get a sense…boy, we really are in the middle of nowhere, aren't we?"

"I was thinking the same thing myself. What are you doing up here?"

"Well, looking for you, obviously," Virgil said, still scanning his surroundings. "This is really something."

"You could see me from the pool?"

"What? No. I just figured there was a good chance you'd be here."

John was surprised. "You did? Why?"

Virgil glanced at him, amused. "Well, there was this thing we did a few years ago…I forget the name of it…oh, right: childhood."

John frowned. "I need a new hiding place."

"You're twenty-three years old. You're too old for hiding places."

"I'll be twenty-four in three months and you're never too old for hiding places."

"I don't have any hiding places."

"What do you call the piano?"

"A piano. And touché." Virgil shoved his hands in his pockets. "So…"

"I don't want to talk about it. Really. So you can go away."

Virgil sighed exaggeratedly. "Oh, grasshopper, if only it were that simple." He sat down next to his brother. "Father is going to Washington tomorrow morning, and he wants to talk to you again before he goes."

"But…" John took a breath. "Fine."

"And Scott is going to Luton on Friday and will be gone for a few days."

John looked annoyed. "What the hell is Luton?"

"A sad little city a little north of London."

"What's he doing there?"

"Working. There's a project he's doing for Father."

John looked out over the Pacific for a minute. "He's turning into Father."

Virgil nodded gently. "He works hard. They both do. They've got a lot to do."

"I know," John said. "I'm used to it."

Virgil smiled lightly. "You're not really in a position to talk, considering that you've been on the moon for a year."

"I said I didn't care," John said testily.

"No, you said you were used to it. But okay."

Neither said anything for a while. John stared out over the ocean and eventually closed his eyes.

"Are you falling asleep?" Virgil asked.

John shook his head. "No." He kept his eyes closed. "It's just a little overwhelming."

"What?"

"This." He waved his hand, taking in the sun bouncing silver spears off the turquoise ocean, the glossy dark green leaves of the trees below them, the rustling sound as the wind stirred their branches, the harsh cries of the birds in the foliage. "I've been living in beige for a year. It feels like I broke through the screen and suddenly I'm in the movie. It's all too real to be real." He opened his eyes. "I still can't get over the sky."

Virgil glanced up. "It's Hopperish today." He looked back at his brother. "Do you want to go back?"

"No." John said. "Wait. Back where?"

"To Gus. To the base."

"Oh." John took a breath. "I don't know. Maybe. I…I don't know. See…" He stopped. "I wanted to talk this over with Dad, and now everything is all screwed up."

Virgil waited. John shook his head. "Forget it."

"Suit yourself."

John slid his eyes to him. "Do you know about this? About what Dad did?"

Virgil deliberated for a minute. John was always fiercely protective of his own privacy. But on the other hand, Virgil was a bad liar, even when the root of it was sympathetic. "Father let it slip."

John's shoulders dropped. "Oh." He rubbed his face with his hands for a moment. "So you can see how things are a bit more complicated." He seemed to be trying to keep something in check.

"Sure," Virgil said. John looked at him sharply, but Virgil kept his expression carefully neutral, and waited.

"You know, the whole reason I even joined ISA in the first place was so I wouldn't have to deal with stuff like this." John jumped up. "I mean, I figured I was doing the smart thing, because on the one hand, I'm a freaking astronaut, which should make him happy, but on the other hand, I'm not in NASA so he can't…so he wouldn't…" he stopped, frustrated. "He's not supposed to be involved in this."

"Did you really join that program to make Father happy?" Virgil asked.

"What? No." John looked irritated. "I mean, no more than Scott did by joining the Air Force."

"Scott joined the Air Force because commercial airlines won't let you do victory rolls. It had nothing to do with Father."

"Right." John said. "If Scott wants to believe that, I'm okay with it." He saw Virgil opening his mouth to protest, and ran him over. "Look, I'm not saying that Scott or any of us were forced in to anything. But don't sit there and tell me there wasn't a lot pressure within this family to follow some pretty specific paths."

"No, I don't think…"

"You're really going to sit there and tell me with a straight face there was no pressure, Yuri?"

Virgil laughed. "Okay, okay. Calm down."

John laughed, more at himself than anything. "Yeah, okay. And I know what you mean – Father didn't say anything when Gordon told him he was joining WASP. Maybe there's pressure, and maybe it's just in our blood – but it's a pretty useless question. I don't have any regrets about what I do for a living, if that's what you mean."

"I've always wondered that," Virgil said. "No offense. But I always thought you were going to go into astronomy."

John sat back down. "Well, everyone thought you were going to Julliard."

"Nobody thought I was going to Julliard," Virgil said. "Including Julliard."

"Okay, but you could gone more in that direction. Art and whatnot."

Virgil smiled. "Don't say it like it's a virus. Yeah, I could have. I thought about it. I would have had to have thrown everything into it. And at the end of the day, all you've got is music, or a painting. It's all for itself, in a way." He paused, eyes unfocused, and then shook his head. "Anyway," he said briskly. "It didn't seem like enough."

"Yeah.. I love astronomy, for pretty much the same reasons as I did when I was eight and looked through a telescope for the first time – there's just this whole 'that's really cool' factor that's never left me. But the bulk of the job would be teaching, and I'd rather eat nails than teach. I can do all that when I'm older, if I want to, but for now…it doesn't seem like enough of an accomplishment."

"Okay, but now you've got the accomplishment. So you don't really have to go back," Virgil said.

"I don't have to do anything," John said. "And I see what you're saying, but – it would be strange to have spent so much time there and never see it again. I wish you could see it. That all of you could see it. It's not like any place you've ever seen, and the pictures don't really do it justice. It's so…" he stopped. "Everything is this dull gray blue color. And you stare out the window day after day, and keep expecting that eventually, you'll see something, some bit of red or yellow -- anything. But it never comes. It's as if color itself got starved off the surface. The minute you look at it, you know that this is not where you belong –you can almost feel it on a cellular level. Like our cells remember something we've forgotten. And you get the sense that, you know, we can be there or not, but it won't make a difference. We can scratch around and build whatever we want, but we'll never really disturb it. It's been battered by things way bigger than you or me, and it's colder and harder than all of them. But despite that – or maybe because of it – it's beautiful. It's amazingly beautiful."

"You sound like you miss it," Virgil said, surprised.

"I don't," John said quickly. "But I'll never forget it, if I don't go back. It's sort of humbling. I know Dad's been in space and we've been in manned low-orbit satellites for however many years, but until you actually stand on the surface of something and look down at the Earth…it's vertigo writ large. Really large."

"I'll take your word for it. You couldn't pay me to see it first hand."

John looked at him in surprise. "Really?"

"Really. You make it sound very interesting, Johnny, and I like the pictures you brought, but hell would freeze over before I go walking on the moon."

"Well, not as if I'm in a position to offer you a ride, but why?"

Virgil shook his head. "I don't know. I don't know if I could even say. It feels wrong to me."

"Really?" This was interesting.

"Yeah."

"Care to elaborate?"

Virgil took a breath. "I like it on this planet. I evolved here. It feels like home. It's a visceral thing, like you said."

"Hm." John said. "Well. I guess that makes a certain amount of sense." He looked sidelong at Virgil. "Pussy."

Virgil laughed. "I was waiting for that. Also, I don't know about international collaborative technology. Your vidphone was horrible."

"Don't get me started. We had to use that one, though."

"Yeah. That's my point. Something that's built by sixteen governments which barely get along at the best of times doesn't make me confident."

John looked at him, smiling slightly. "You really think that France is going to send bad equipment because Germany screwed them on farm subsidies or something?"

Virgil rolled his eyes. "No. I just think that I'd rather you be in a place where one crack in a window doesn't mean instant death."

John grinned at him. "Aw, Virgil."

"Oh, for crying…"

"I'm touched."

"Shut up."

Rather surprisingly, John did. He got up and walked to the edge of the roof and looked down. "Do you think that's why, then?"

Virgil leaned forward. "I didn't catch that, Johnny."

John turned around. "I said, do you think that's why? Do you think that's why Dad pulled me off the station?"

Virgil shook his head.

"Do you know why he did?"

Virgil nodded.

"Why?" Underneath the anger, Virgil could hear the echo of his brother as a boy.

"You need to talk to Father about it," Virgil said. He thought that John was going to start shouting, but he only looked defeated.

"I thought you would say that," he said. "I know what it is. He wants me to come and work at the company." Virgil thought he looked very tired. "Right?"

"Something like that."

"Don't worry, I'm not going to report you," John said dryly. "I know he doesn't brook any dissention in the ranks and now that you're an employee – by the way, did he ask you, or just lasso you from your old job?"

Virgil paused a moment before answering. "He asked."

"Yeah, I thought he might. Well, you were set from the start – you at least have the right educational background. Honestly, when I was at school, there was a part of me that figured I should major in comparative literature, or psychology – some field where nobody's ever heard of him, and the name doesn't mean anything. I mean, not seriously, but…" He looked at Virgil plaintively. "And this is enough for you? The whole time I was training, I was working harder than anyone, because I never wanted to hear anyone ever say that I was the zero son of the great man who had to get through the program or Grissom doesn't get its doors or something…"

"Whoa, whoa." Virgil jumped up. "Hang on a sec. Father would never -- "

"How would you know? It's not like you had to interview for your job. And anyway, do you think the higher-ups at ISA care? Hell, Virgil, for all I know, I was accepted into the program because of who Dad is."

Virgil was surprised by this. "Do you really think so?"

John smiled ruefully. "We'll never know. I don't have such great clearance. But nobody I actually worked with – you know, the actual staff on the base – seemed to make any connection. That is, until a week ago." He smiled again, pained. "You'd think since he built most of the damn thing, it would meet with his approval."

"You have to talk to Father. You're way off base on this."

John turned away and shrugged. "Whatever you say."