The man did not seem to notice her. Gabrielle watched in silence as the man leaned forward and inserted his ID card into the slit. Another set of elevator doors slid open, and the man stepped on.
Screw it, Gabrielle thought, making up her mind. Now or never.
As the elevator slid closed, Gabrielle spun from the fountain and ran over, sticking her hand out and catching the door. The doors bounced back open, and she stepped in, her face bright with excitement. "You ever seen it like this?" she gushed to the startled bald man. "My God. It's crazy!"
The man gave her an odd look.
"The guys at SETI must be going nuts!" Gabrielle said. "Their horn carts traced drift fields under two hundred milliJanskys for twenty years, and the physical proof was buried in the ice here on earth the whole time!"
The man looked surprised. "Well... yes, it's quite... " He glanced at her neck, apparently troubled not to see an ID. "I'm sorry, do you-"
"Fourth floor please. Came in such a hurry I barely remembered to put on my underwear!" She laughed, stealing a quick look at the guy's ID: JAMES THEISEN, Finance Administration.
"Do you work here?" The man looked uncomfortable. "Miss...?"
Gabrielle let her mouth fall slack. "Jim! I'm hurt! Nothing like making a woman feel unmemorable!"
The man went pale for a moment, looking uneasy, and running an embarrassed hand across his head. "I'm sorry. All this excitement, you know. I admit, you do look very familiar. What program are you working on?"
Shit. Gabrielle flashed a confident smile. "EOS."
The man pointed to the illuminated fourth floor button. "Obviously. I mean specifically, which project?"
Gabrielle felt her pulse quicken. She could only think of one. "PODS."
The man looked surprised. "Really? I thought I'd met everyone on Dr. Harper's team."
She gave an embarrassed nod. "Chris keeps me hidden away. I'm the idiot programmer who screwed up voxel index on the anomaly software."
Now it was the bald man whose jaw dropped. "That was you?"
Gabrielle frowned. "I haven't slept in weeks."
"But Dr. Harper took all the heat for that!"
"I know. Chris is that kind of guy. At least he got it straightened out. What an announcement tonight, though, isn't it? This meteorite. I'm just in shock!"
The elevator stopped on the fourth floor. Gabrielle jumped out. "Great seeing you, Jim. Give my best to the boys in budgeting!"
"Sure," the man stammered as the doors slid shut. "Nice seeing you again."
Chapter 84-87
84
Zach Herney, like most presidents before him, survived on four or five hours of sleep a night. Over the last few weeks, however, he had survived on far less. As the excitement of the evening's events slowly began to ebb, Herney felt the late hour settling in his limbs.
He and some of his upper level staff were in the Roosevelt Room enjoying celebratory champagne and watching the endless loop of press conference replays, Tolland documentary excerpts, and pundit recaps on network television. On-screen at the moment, an exuberant network correspondent stood in front of the White House gripping her microphone.
"Beyond the mind-numbing repercussions for mankind as a species," she announced, "this NASA discovery has some harsh political repercussions here in Washington. The unearthing of these meteoric fossils could not have come at a better time for the embattled President." Her voice grew somber. "Nor at a worse time for Senator Sexton." The broadcast cut to a replay of the now infamous CNN debate from earlier in the day.
"After thirty-five years," Sexton declared, "I think it's pretty obvious we're not going to find extraterrestrial life!"
"And if you're wrong?" Marjorie Tench replied.
Sexton rolled his eyes. "Oh, for heavens sake, Ms. Tench, if I'm wrong I'll eat my hat."
Everyone in the Roosevelt Room laughed. Tench's cornering of the senator could have played as cruel and heavy-handed in retrospect, and yet viewers didn't seem to notice; the haughty tone of the senator's response was so smug that Sexton appeared to be getting exactly what he deserved.
The President looked around the room for Tench. He had not seen her since before his press conference, and she was not here now. Odd, he thought. This is her celebration as much as it is mine.
The news report on television was wrapping up, outlining yet again the White House's quantum political leap forward and Senator Sexton's disastrous slide.
What a difference a day makes, the President thought. In politics, your world can change in an instant.
By dawn he would realize just how true those words could be.