Runaway World

Guilt

     Andrew spent the next two hours talking to Susan, telling her everything that had happened. He had a pretty good idea that the New London authorities were listening in on the conversation but he didn't care. As Cheval had said, it would all come out at the inquest. What he needed was to bare his soul to his wife and gain her acceptance and understanding. Cheval had said that Kartoshka's death wasn't his fault. If Susan said the same thing, maybe he could start believing it.

     Susan's face on the monitor screen was full of concern and he could see her cursing the distance between them. She needed to take his hand and squeeze it, and then give him a warm hug. She couldn't do that, though, and so she was forced to try to have the same effect with words only.

     "The Sergeant's right," she said, leaning forward to stare straight into the camera of the terminal in her New London apartment. There was no sign of the children in the room with her. Andrew had asked her to send them out of the room. He would talk to then later, after having taken some time to decide how much to tell them. Right now, he just wanted to unburden himself without having to choose his words carefully for young ears.

     "It was an accident," Susan continued. "That policeman was the one breaking the law. He put your lives in danger. Setting off a bomb inside a rover...There's no telling what other damage it might have done. The environmental controls are all in the cockpit. If the life support had started  go wrong, you'd have had no way to fix it."

     "There's an auxiliary control panel in the service area," began Andrew.

     "You need special knowledge to use that thing, as you very well know. The environmental controls in the cockpit are user friendly, any layman can use them. Kartoshka put your lives in danger. You were acting in self defence."

     "Me and Cheval could have taken him down between us if I hadn't been carrying that gun. He'd still be alive."

     "You said Cheval was barely conscious. If he'd fainted again, what chance would you have had against a strong, physically fit policeman trained in overpowering criminals with his bare hands?"

     "You're right," said Andrew. "Maybe I'd have lost, but Kartoshka would still be alive and another rover would have been sent to pick us up. There's nowhere Fox can take the dysprosium where we can't get it back later."

     "That you know of," replied Susan. "Would he have started all this if he didn't have a destination in mind? I think that, if you weren't able to continue the pursuit, the dysprosium would be gone, forever, along with any chance of returning to the inner solar system."

     "Maybe..." Andrew began, but he stopped himself. He'd been about to say that maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing, but then he remembered that the authorities were very probably listening to everything he said and he wanted them on his side for the inquest. From now on, or at least until after the inquest was over, he intended to be the world's most enthusiastic advocate for The Return.

     "Maybe they'd have found some more dysprosium somewhere," he said therefore. "Maybe I killed a man just so that The Return wouldn't be delayed for a few months. Is that worth a man's life?"

     "The Police brought the guns onto the rover," Susan reminded him. "They brought the explosives onto the rover. They brought a remainer aboard the rover. They should have vetted their people better. Someone screwed up and it wasn't you. I think some nameless bureaucrat in Personnel is going to be the one raked over the coals when the inquest is over. If it turns out that it was Cheval who picked his team, then he's got a lot more reason to be worried than you have."

     "Cheval's not worried," said Andrew. "He's not trying to pass the blame to me, the way he might if he thought he was to blame. He's been saying the same things you have."