Blood Will Out by Walter Kirn

Author:Walter Kirn [Kirn, Walter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780871407337
Publisher: Liveright
Published: 2014-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

THE WEEK THAT MANABE testified, a man named Patrick Rayermann was sworn in. Balian called him not to talk about Clark but to humanize the victim, whom he’d grown up with, counted as a close friend, and portrayed as “warm” and “generous” and “excited about the future of humanity.” I was grateful for the change of subject and for the witness’s optimistic tone. Rayermann, a blond, blue-eyed retired army colonel who served in the Space and Missile Defense Command, told the court of his days as an Explorer Scout in a post that John Sohus also belonged to. It was attached to Pasadena’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a branch of Caltech that puts spacecraft into orbit for the U.S. government.

“We discovered early on,” said Rayermann, articulating with military precision and drawing from Clark what appeared for all the world to be a look of respect and admiration, “a mutual interest in the future of science and space exploration and science fiction, most notably Star Trek. And we used to enjoy, in particular, sharing, trying to stump each other on Star Trek trivia. Because we were early Trekkies.”

“In a number of ways,” Rayermann continued fondly, describing his and John’s circle of friends, “we were like the characters currently presented on the TV show The Big Bang Theory. You know, we were having a lot of fun together. But other people might be a little surprised as we described or compared theories about the real Big Bang that started the universe, or how we could get to faster-than-light space travel, or maybe actually talking about a current project at JPL that was working to orbit a new satellite or launch a deep-space probe to really bring some of this to reality.”

These details thawed a cold spot in my memory, calling me back to a weekend of many years ago that I wasn’t eager to revisit. Remembering it in the light of Rayermann’s testimony brought up a host of reflections, theories, and questions, one of which I’d long been living with but had never expected to have cleared up, since no one I knew was qualified to address it. This had changed. When Rayermann finished testifying, I followed him out into the hall and asked. I didn’t explain the question’s origin so as not to prejudice his answer; I posed it as a matter of geopolitics, as an inquiry into the history of espionage.

“Has Communist China, as far as you’re aware, ever engaged in kidnapping or killing American space researchers?”

Rayermann, still in solemn witness mode, took the question seriously. He answered it in the negative, definitively, and assured me that his experience in the army put him in a position to know such things. Then he asked me why I’d asked. I told him it was complicated and that there were a number of topics I wanted to discuss with him, beginning with John’s and his favorite TV show. Had Chichester ever watched it with them? No. Before today, said Rayermann, he’d never even seen the guy.

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