Spin by Robert Charles Wilson

suggested rude health and hayseed sensuality. Her face was as alive as an unplucked berry. She shaded her eyes in the sunlight and grinned—at me in particular, I wanted to believe. My god, that smile. Somehow both genuine and mischievous.
    I began to feel lost.
    Jason’s phone trilled. He pulled it out of his pocket and checked the caller ID.
    “Gotta take this one,” he whispered.
    “Don’t leave me alone here, Jase.”
    “I’ll be in the kitchen. Right back.”
    He ducked away just as Simon lofted his big duffel bag onto the wooden planking of the porch and said, “You must be Tyler Dupree!”
    He stuck out his hand. I took it. He had a firm grip and a honeyed Southern accent, vowels like polished driftwood, consonants polite as calling cards. He made my name sound positively Cajun, though the family had never been south of Millinocket. Diane bounded up after him, yelled, “Tyler!” and grabbed me in a ferocious embrace. Suddenly her hair was in my face and all I could register was the sunny, salty smell of her.
    We backed off to a comfortable arm’s length. “Tyler, Tyler,” she exclaimed, as if I had turned into something remarkable. “You’re looking good after all these years.”
    “Eight,” I said stupidly. “Eight years.”
    “Wow, is it really?”
    I helped drag their luggage inside, showed them to the parlor off the porch, and hurried away to retrieve Jason, who was in the kitchen interacting with his cell. His back was turned when I came in.
    “No,” he said. His voice was tense. “No… not even the State Department?”
    I stopped in my tracks. The State Department. Oh my.
    “I can be back in a couple of hours if—oh. I see. Okay. No, it’s all right. But keep me informed. Right. Thanks.”
    He pocketed the phone and caught sight of me.
    “Talking to E.D.?” I asked.
    “His assistant, actually.”
    “Everything okay?”
    “Come on, Ty, you want me to let you in on
all
the secrets?” He attempted a smile, not too successfully. “I wish you hadn’t overheard that.”
    “All I heard was you offering to go back to D.C. and leave me here with Simon and Diane.”
    “Well… I may have to. The Chinese are balking.”
    “What’s that mean,
balking
!”
    “They refuse to entirely abandon their planned launch. They want to keep that option open.”
    The nuclear attack on the Spin artifacts, he meant. “I assume somebody’s trying to talk them out of it?”
    “The diplomacy is ongoing. It’s just not exactly
succeeding
. Negotiations seem to be deadlocked.”
    “So—well,
shit
, Jase! What’s it mean if they
do
launch?”
    “It means two high-yield fusion weapons would be detonated in close proximity to unknown devices associated with the Spin. As for the consequences… well, that’s an interesting question. But it hasn’t happened yet. Probably won’t.”
    “You’re talking about doomsday, or maybe the end of the Spin…”
    “Keep your voice down. We have guests, remember? And you’re overreacting. What the Chinese have in mind is rash and probably futile, but even if they go ahead with it it’s not likely to be suicidal. Whatever the Hypotheticals are, they must know how to defend themselves without destroying us in the process. And the polar artifacts aren’t necessarily the devices that enable the Spin. They could be passive observational platforms, communications devices, even decoys.”
    “If the Chinese do launch,” I said, “how much warning do we get?”
    “Depends what you mean by ‘we.’ The general public probably won’t hear anything until it’s over.”
    This was when I first began to understand that Jason wasn’t just his father’s apprentice, that he had already begun to forge his own connections in high places. Later I would learn a great deal more about the Perihelion Foundation and the work Jason did for it. For now it was still part of Jason’s shadow life. Even when we were children Jase had had a shadow life: away from the Big House