Farmer One Read online

  "Got it. Anything else?"

  "Yeah. Assume the worst and start considering a response. If this is what we think it is, I'm putting you in charge of our counterstrategy."

  Lockwood nods. His boss is showing unusual initiative — even trace amounts of leadership. His uncharacteristic boldness can only mean that he — and, by extension, his entire staff — has absolutely nothing left to lose. Beating the Chinese to Mars was the only reason the federal government even bothered to resurrect the long-defunct NASA. Its sole mission, as so passionately put forth by the President himself at the beginning of his third term, is to ensure that the first footprints mankind makes on an alien planet are made by an American who traveled there in an American-built spacecraft and who is wearing American-made boots. The first broadcast from its surface will not be in filthy and blasphemous Mandarin or Cantonese or whatever gibberish those people speak over there these days, but will be an American prayer dedicating all that we are and all that we do and all that we have to the service and praise of the divine and benevolent Almighty. And now the dreams of the entire nation and probably the entire future of NASA rest on the knobby shoulders of one aerospace engineer who, in graduate school, used to steal liquid oxygen from the propulsion lab to make frozen tequila shots with a Chinese student whose family happens to have ties to The People's National Space Administration in Beijing, and who is sometimes authorized by the Chinese Paramount Leader himself to exchange the odd snippet of intelligence with certain key American engineers. Lockwood's connections have served him well throughout his career, however in this particular case, he has an unsettling premonition that all he will walk away with today is confirmation of exactly what nobody at NASA, nobody in the current administration, and indeed almost nobody in the entire United States wants to hear: that the Chinese are already on their way to Mars while the best minds at NASA are locked out of their offices and smoking cigarettes in the parking lot around an acrid and dwindling bonfire fueled by victories of an era long past.

  Chapter 3

  Baybrook Mall

  Dillard's Parking Lot

  Friendswood, Texas

  Just before 6 a.m.

  It has been well over a decade since anyone has actually shopped in the Baybrook Mall. When it became clear that Americans needed a place to sleep more than they needed premium scented candles, padded satin bras, diamond-chip heart necklaces, or custom-built teddy bears, roughly half of the malls in the country were converted into tenements. Most ethnic groups enjoy the relative luxuries of food courts converted into communal kitchens and perforated hoses mounted high up on bathroom walls forming showers of sorts, but not the Chinese. Those who can not pass themselves off as Japanese, Korean, or some other form of Pacific Asian have had to carve their new lives out of hectares of once-safe, once-convenient, and once-well-lit mall parking, or if they are really lucky, the occasional multi-tiered garage. When weather permits, they grow rice in nearby drainage ditches and the round patches of carbon-scored land inside freeway cloverleaves where passing diesel engines radiate free ambient energy[6].

  Lockwood took several buses to make sure he wasn't followed, and is now stepping off in front of the settlement known as Dillardsville. The tents that form the squalor around him are paradoxically cheerful in their assortment of natural colors: slate blue, autumn orange, maple-leaf red, bark brown, and fern green. The space between tents is already starting to fill with lowered straw conical hats and bustling chickens darting and pecking at the patches of grass which have pushed their way up through the asphalt. The smells around him are alternately mouth-watering and gut-wrenching: sweet rolls, then fish entrails; pork broth, then pigeon shit; hot tea, then the blood and steaming bowels of whatever will constitute the bulk of the day's protein. Lockwood knows exactly where he needs to go, but as one final precaution, he carves out an elaborately circuitous route; without his contacts, he knows he is a great deal less valuable to NASA, and therefore much more likely to catch some of the blame those above him are endlessly looking to place.

  He stops at an empty stall and takes a stool on the end, scooting it as far beneath the blue tarp above him as the weathered plywood counter will allow. Eventually his presence is noticed by a small Chinese girl with uncharacteristically wavy hair who emerges from the shadows wearing an expression of very thinly veiled impatience.

  "What?"

  "Can you make zha liang?" Lockwood asks.

  The girl is dressed like a Shaolin Monk and is so small she looks like she subsists on meditation alone, yet she speaks with the thickest Texas drawl Lockwood can ever recall hearing. "You want that with or without sesame?"

  "With, please."

  She disappears unceremoniously back into the shadows, and Lockwood can hear multiple woks being made ready. He picks at a splinter in the plywood surface in front of him, and when that fails to hold his attention, he turns on his stool to have a look around. There's a row of recently deceased fish — walleye, if Lockwood is not mistaken — laid out over ice in the booth behind him, their gaping mouths full of needles and their spinous dorsal fins erect. Behind the ice troughs, motionless live specimens await their turns in stacks of murky tanks. Lockwood wonders if Farmer would accept a fish, and decides he will pick one up on the way out.

  The thump of a heavy plate brings Lockwood back around. The rice noodle rolls are steaming in the chilly morning air, and there is a ceramic cup of chopsticks and a bottle of soy sauce where there wasn't before. The girl is holding an earthen kettle.

  "Tea?"

  "Please."

  She fills a mug while Lockwood plucks himself some chopsticks, secures a section of roll, and wraps his mouth around the warm fried dough. It occurs to him that if he were at home, he would probably be eating cold hard bread spread with some form of government subsidized synthetic substance. His warm home-cooked breakfast, along with the pretty little girl in front of him, are suddenly making him feel worlds better about his morning.

  The girl lingers as Lockwood eats. Between bites, he decides to risk some conversation.

  "So," Lockwood says.

  "So," the girl tosses back.

  "Is it what we think it is?"

  "That depends," the girl says. "What do you think it is?"

  "I'll tell you what we think it's not. We're pretty sure it isn't a lunar mission."

  "Go on."

  "We're thinking it's big, manned, and on a trajectory to intersect with Mars in just over six months."

  "Is that what the numbers are telling you?"

  "More or less."

  "Well, numbers don't usually lie, do they?"

  "No, they tend not to. Satellite images are a different story, though."

  "How's that?"

  "It seems strange that something big enough to make a trip to Mars never showed up on a single satellite image of all known Chinese launch sites."

  "Maybe the spacecraft was assembled and launched from orbit."

  "Maybe, but as far as we can tell, there's nothing missing from up there."

  "Maybe it was something small enough not to be noticed."

  "We're talking about a propulsion system bigger than a Saturn VII. Even NASA would notice that."

  "When you put it that way, it does sound mysterious, doesn't it?"

  "Any theories?"

  "About why your spy satellites are woefully inadequate and embarrassingly ineffective? I don't know. A combination of substandard engineering and cheap American technology?"

  "Probably," Lockwood says. He fills his mouth with another piece of roll, but continues talking despite the considerable obstruction. "Even though I'm the one who designed them. I'm going to consider this conversation confirmation of a Chinese mission to Mars. Any objections?"

  "Who am I to disagree with a highly respected NASA engineer? I'm just a waitress in a mall parking lot."

  "Any other news this morning?"

  "Not that I can think of."

  "In that case," Lockwood says, adding a sip of jasmine
to his already overburdened mouth, "your country thanks you."

  "This isn't my country," the girl tells him. "I'd be on the next freighter out of the Gulf if I could."

  "Wouldn't we all," Lockwood says. This is far more food than he's accustomed to this early, and he's already stuffed. He puts down his chopsticks and gets down off his stool. "Your zha liang is the best in Texas. Put this on my tab, will you?"

  "Not so fast," the girl says. "What've you got for me?"

  Lockwood glances furtively to either side of him before leaning in close. The girl lifts herself up on her tippy-toes and leans forward right into Lockwood's kiss. When they separate, she is smiling.

  "I guess that covers it."

  "I gotta get back," Lockwood says. "I'll come see you again as soon as I can."

  The girl gives Lockwood a dainty wave and her most adorable smile. "Give Farmer my love."

  "I will," Lockwood says. He starts to turn, but stops. "Oh, by the way, we have plasma propulsion."

  "No shit," says the cute little Chinese Texan.

  Chapter 4

  Johnson Space Center

  Conference Room Armstrong

  Houston, Texas

  7:51 a.m.

  The pitchers of coffee are empty and the ashtrays are full. The air is thick with smoke which swirls under cones of light as Lockwood pushes through the door.

  "About god-blessed time," Sarek says. He is at the end of the table, but not at the head.

  "Hi, boss," Lockwood says breezily. "Where's the Director?"

  "She's on the phone," Sarek says. "With the President. What did you find out?"

  Lockwood takes an empty chair beside Prabs. He lays a long paper-wrapped package out on the table. Noone leans forward and makes a face as he sniffs.

  "Is that a fish?"

  "It's a walleye," Lockwood says.

  "It smells like a dead whore."

  "Like you've smelled a dead whore before," Lockwood says.

  Sarek is grimacing. "Sweet Jesus on a stick. Why would you bring that thing in here?"

  "It's for Farmer," Lockwood says.

  "Who the hell is Farmer?"

  Prabs is leaning forward to stub out a cigarette. He doesn't appear remotely offended by the aroma of walleye. "It is his cat."

  "She's a fox," Lockwood says.

  "I ought to come over there and slap you with that god-blessed thing," Sarek says. "The Director will be back any minute and it smells like a goddamn Chinese ghetto in here."

  "If you slap me with a fish," Lockwood tells his boss, "I'll report you to HR."

  "HR got laid off last week," Noone says. "The entire department. They took turns calling each other into their offices. Isn't that right, Crabs?"

  "It is true," Prabs says as he lights up again. "Mr. Noone says we are now free to sexually harass anyone we wish."

  "Enough!" Sarek says. "Do you have anything to share with us other than the stench of a dead fish?"

  "It's confirmed," Lockwood says. He helps himself to the pack of smokes in front of Prabs. "It's a manned mission to Mars."

  Sarek shakes his head. "This is one holy Mongolian clusterfuck, gentlemen. Do you have any idea what this means?"

  Before anyone has a chance to put forth his hypothesis, they hear a combination being punched into the keypad outside the room. Sarek gets to his feet so fast that his chair hits the wall behind him.

  "Don't anybody say anything to the Director," he says. "I'll tell her we still need more data."

  As the door opens, everyone must adjust his expectations when they see that, rather than the Director, it is the girl known throughout NASA as The Digital Bitch. She leans into the room and wrinkles her nose as she sniffs noisily at the air.

  "Why does it smell like someone in here needs to douche?"

  The Digital Bitch is the screen name of one Stacey McMorrow who is, without a doubt, one of NASA's best electrical engineers. She is a big curvy girl with a wide gap between her front teeth, and a wonderful smile she usually tries to hide. She is also the only girl Lockwood knows who can get away with talking about farting.

  Noone points across the table. "Brother Fuckwood here brought a fish to work."

  "It smells like a dead whore."

  "See?" Noone says, relishing in what he clearly interprets as vindication. "That's exactly what I said!"

  Sarek has found his chair again and drops back into it with an exasperated sign. "What is it, Stacey?"

  "I know why the satellites never picked anything up."

  "Why?"

  "Viruses."

  Sarek looks doubtful. "That's very unlikely. All of our firmware is repeatedly scanned right up to the moment of launch. You know that."

  "The viruses aren't in the firmware," The Digital Bitch says. "Or in the software. They're embedded in the hardware itself."

  Sarek's expression goes from skepticism to something closer to horror. "Which components?"

  "Most of them. Maybe all of them. It's some very sophisticated shit. We're a long ways from understanding it, but it looks like the whole constellation of Guardians might be compromised."

  "The whole goddamn constellation? Where the hell did the components come from?"

  "Various factories in Shenzhen, I assume."

  "Shenzhen? As in Shenzhen, China?"

  "No, as in Shenzhen, Texas. Of course China."

  "Are you telling me that the United States built an entire constellation of satellites to spy on China using Chinese components?"

  "Duh. How else would we build them? We don't make any of this shit anymore. Even if we did, it would be way too expensive for NASA to afford."

  Lockwood raises a tentative hand. "We bought them through fake companies, at least. It's not like the purchase orders said they were for American spy satellites."

  "What companies?"

  "I don't know. A lot of them. One was a consumer electronics company. One was producer of voyeuristic porn. I don't remember the rest."

  "Christ on a bike, Lockwood! How could you be so stupid?"

  "You signed off on the purchase orders, boss man. Remember?"

  "Anyway, it doesn't matter where the components came from," Sarek says dismissively. "What matters is that someone obviously tipped the Chinese off."

  "Maybe," Lockwood says. "Or maybe they embed viruses in everything they sell these days, just to be sure."

  "We'll worry about the satellites later," Sarek says. "The more immediate issue here is that the Chinese are on their way to Mars and we aren't. The Director is going to be back here any minute, and she's going to want to hear what our options are. So, let's hear them."

  "Two words," Noone says. "Black. Diamond."

  "How is an SBSS[7] going to save our collective asses?" Sarek wants to know. "Are you suggesting we eliminate all two billion Chinese citizens?"

  "Nope. Just two or three. We rotate one of the satellites so that it's pointing away from Earth, and after a little upgrade to the targeting algorithms, bam! The Chinese are no longer on their way to Mars. At least not in one piece."

  "The ship's way too small," The Digital Bitch says from the doorway, "but we could probably manage to hit Mars and destroy it before the Chinese get there. Either way, they don't land."

  "This is all very enlightening," Sarek says, "but does anyone have an idea that doesn't involve destroying a planet or starting both World Wars III and IV?"

  "I do," Lockwood says. "EMPP."

  Noone throws up his hands. "How is an electromagnetic pulse any better than a laser?"

  Prabs has been far more focused on smoking than on the problem at hand, but he is suddenly excited. "Not an electromagnetic pulse," he says with enlarged bloodshot eyes. "Exhaust-Modulated Plasma Propulsion."

  "Exactly," Lockwood says. "It's going to take the Chinese six months to get to Mars at their current speed. With plasma propulsion, we can get a man to Mars in ninety days which means if we can launch in eighty-nine days or less, we can still get there first."

  Sa
rek sits up straight for a moment, then deflates. "There's no way we can launch a manned mission using the plasma platform in that amount of time."

  "We don't have to. We already have a prototype in orbit. All we have to do is get a Zeus command module up there that's been modified to dock with it."

  "You want to use a completely untested experimental prototype to send a man to Mars?"

  "Sure, why not? The Chinese will have no idea what's going on until they turn on CNN and see an American happily jouncing across the surface. It's perfect."

  "I hate to be the one to bring this up," Noone says, "but how do you plan on bringing that happy jouncing American back home? Or are we talking about a one-way ticket?"

  "I haven't figured that part out yet," Lockwood says. "But I'm pretty sure we can at least get someone there."

  "How sure?" Sarek wants to know. "Give me a number."

  Sarek's challenge prompts all the engineers in the room to draw their slide rules and pencils, and apply themselves feverishly to the calculation. The Digital Bitch is using a spiral notepad against the door jamb, and Lockwood is scrawling across butcher paper. Prabs is the first to slam his pencil down.

  "I calculate an eighty-four percent chance of successfully landing," he announces.

  "I'm getting sixteen percent," Noone says.

  "I'll split the difference," Lockwood says. "Fifty percent, give or take."

  "Stacey?" Sarek says.

  "I'm seeing a ninety-eight point three percent chance," she says, "of at least one person dying, and all of us losing our jobs."

  "Good enough," Sarek says. He thumps the table and stands. "I want a full mission plan in my hands first thing tomorrow morning. If you can figure out how to bring our man home, we're going to Mars."

  Chapter 5

  South Shore Harbor Country Club

  Twelfth Hole

  League City, Texas

  11:11 a.m.

  Golf, as it turns out, only gets better in the cold. Balls sit up nice and high on the frozen rough and can be hit as cleanly as if they had been teed; miscalculated shots which would have otherwise ended up at the bottom of a water hazard are instead propelled off of thick opaque layers of ice and onward toward frosty white greens; and bunkers go from Zen garden sand traps where balls embed themselves with the infuriating thud that makes you want to hurl your club end-over-end into the trees, to concrete kiddy pools that spit dimpled projectiles back out at nearly the same velocity with which they entered.