Saturn Page 21

  "Scientists are contentious," Vyborg said. "They're always arguing about something or other."

  "About scientific matters," said Eberly. "But their interests are something else. They voted as a bloc because they all have the same interests and the same point of view."

  "That could be a problem," Kananga said.

  Eberly smiled knowingly. "Not really. There's nothing to worry about."

  Holly followed their ruminations, fascinated, looking from one to another as they surgically dismembered the voting results. She realized that Morgenthau had designed the ballot to include information on the department the voter worked in and the voter's specific occupation. Secret ballots, Holly thought, were secret only as far as the individual voter's name was concerned. Each ballot carried enough information for detailed statistical analyses.

  "We're going to need a counterweight for them," Vyborg said, between bites of his sandwich.

  "For the scientists?" asked Kananga.

  "Yes," Eberly snapped. "It's already taken care of."

  Morgenthau gave Holly her crafty look again. "What about this stuntman that you've been seeing?"

  Holly blinked with surprise. "Manny Gaeta?"

  "Yes," said Morgenthau. "He's had his arguments with the scientists, hasn't he?"

  "He wants to go down to the surface of Titan and they won't allow that until they—"

  "The surface of Titan?" Eberly interrupted. "Why?"

  Holly explained, "He does spectacular stunts and sells the VR rights to the nets."

  "He's extremely popular on Earth," Morgenthau pointed out. "A vid star of the first magnitude."

  "A stuntman," Vyborg sneered.

  Eberly asked, "And he's in conflict with the scientists?"

  "They're afraid he'll contaminate the life-forms on Titan," said Holly. "Dr. Cardenas is trying to help him—"

  "Cardenas?" Vyborg snapped. "The nanotech expert?"

  "Right."

  "How well do you know this stuntman?" Eberly asked her.

  Holly felt a pang surge through her. "We're pretty good friends," she said quickly.

  "I want to meet him," said Eberly. "Make it a social occasion, Holly. I want to have dinner with the two of you. Invite Cardenas also. We'll make it a foursome."

  Holly tried to mask the rush of emotions she felt. Jeeps, she thought, I finally get to go out to dinner with Malcolm but I've got to bring along the guy I've been sleeping with!

  SATURN ARRIVAL Minus 312 Days

  Of the two restaurants in the habitat, Nemo's was by far the more spectacular. Where the Bistro was small and quiet, with most of its tables out on the lawn, Nemo's was plush and ambitious. The restaurant was designed to resemble the interior of a submarine, with curved bare metal walls and large round portholes that looked out on holograms of teeming undersea life. The proprietor, a former Singapore restaurateur whose outspoken atheism had gotten him into trouble, had sunk a fair share of his personal assets into the restaurant. "If I'm going to fly all the way out to Saturn," he told his assembled children, grandchildren, and more distant relatives, "I might as well spend my time doing something I know about." They were not happy to see the head of the family leave Earth—and take so much of their inheritance with him.

  Holly felt distinctly nervous as she followed the robot headwaiter to the table for four that she had reserved. Gaeta had offered to pick her up at her apartment, but she thought it better that they meet at the restaurant. She was the first to arrive, precisely on time at 20:00 hours. The squat little robot stopped and announced, "Your table, Miss." Holly wondered how it decided she was a Miss and not a Ma'am. Did it pick up the data from her ID badge?

  She sat at the chair that allowed her to look across the room at the entryway. The restaurant was not even half filled.

  "Would you care for a drink?" the robot asked. Its synthesized voice was warm and deep. "We have an excellent bar and an extensive wine list."

  Holly knew that that was an exaggeration, at best. "No thanks," she said. The robot trundled away.

  Eberly appeared at the entryway, and Kris Cardenas came in right behind him. She wore an actual dress, a knee-length frock of flowered material, light and summery. Holly suddenly felt shabby in her tunic and tights, despite the sea-green shawl she had knotted around her waist.

  She stood up as the two of them approached. Neither of them realized they were both heading to the same table, at first, but Eberly caught on quickly and gallantly held Cardenas's chair for her as she sat down. As Holly introduced them to one another she found herself hoping that Manny wouldn't come. Maybe he got tied up on something, some test or whatever. She barely paid attention to the conversation between Eberly and Cardenas.

  Then Gaeta appeared, wearing a formfitting mesh shirt and denims. No badge. No decorations of any kind, except for the stud in his earlobe. He didn't need finery. Heads turned as he strode to their table well ahead of the robot headwaiter.

  Except for the fluttering in her stomach, the meal seemed to go easily enough. Gaeta knew Cardenas, of course, and Eberly acted as their host, gracious and charming. Conversation was light, at first: They talked about the recent voting and Gaeta's previous feats of daring.

  "Soaring through the clouds of Venus," Eberly said admiringly, over their appetizers. "That must have taken a great deal of courage."

  Gaeta grinned at him, almost shyly. "You know what they say about stunt people: more guts than brains."

  Eberly laughed. "Still, it must take a good deal of both guts and brains."

  Gaeta dipped his chin in acknowledgment and turned his attention to his shrimp cocktail.

  By the time the entrees were served, the topic had turned to Gaeta's intention to get to the surface of Titan.

  "If Kris here can convince Urbain and his contamination nuts that I won't wipe out their chingado bugs," Gaeta complained.

  Cardenas glanced at him sharply.

  "Pardon my French," he mumbled.

  "I thought it was Spanish," said Holly.

  Eberly skillfully brought the conversation back to Urbain and his scientists. Gaeta grumbled about their worries over contaminating Titan, while Cardenas shook her head as she talked about their fears of runaway nanobugs.

  "I can understand where they're coming from, of course," she said, "but you'd think I'm trying to create Frankenstein's monster, the way they're hemming me in with all kinds of safety regulations."

  "They're overly cautious?" Eberly asked.

  "A bunch of little old ladies," Gaeta said.

  Holly asked, "Manny, have you thought any more about going through the rings?"

  With a shake of his head he replied, "I haven't heard anything from that Nadia. She said she'd look into it."

  "I'll call her," Holly said. "Maybe she forgot."

  By the time dessert was being served, Eberly was suggesting, "Perhaps I can help you with Dr. Urbain. I have direct access to Professor Wilmot; I can make your case for visiting Titan's surface."

  Then he added, turning to Cardenas, "And for easing some of the restrictions on your nanotechnology lab."

  "It's not the restrictions, so much," Cardenas said earnestly. "I can live with them. I understand why they're scared, and I even agree with them, up to a point."

  "Then what is your problem?" Eberly asked.

  "Manpower, pure and simple," said Cardenas. "I'm all alone in the lab. I've tried to recruit assistants, but none of the younger scientific staff will come anywhere near nanotech."

  Glancing at Holly, Eberly asked, "Hasn't the Human Resources Department been able to help?"

  Cardenas looked surprised at the thought. "I've asked Urbain," she said. "What I need is a couple of lab assistants. Youngsters who have basic scientific training. But the scientists run in the opposite direction when I ask them for help."

  "I see," Eberly murmured.

  Smiling, Cardenas said, "Back when I was on Earth, in the Stone Age, the professors ran their labs with grad students. Slave labor, cheap and plen
tiful."

  Eberly steepled his fingers. "We don't have many grad students among us, or even undergraduates, I'm afraid. And everyone has a job slot; that was a requirement for being accepted aboard the habitat."

  "We don't have any unemployed students," Holly said.

  "I figured that out right away," said Cardenas. "But I thought I'd be able to talk a couple of the younger people on Urbain's staff to come over and help me."

  "He won't allow them to," Eberly guessed.

  Cardenas's expression hardened. "He won't let me talk to them anymore. And he's got them frightened of even meeting me socially. I'm being frozen out."

  Eberly turned to Holly and placed a hand on her wrist. "Holly, we've got to do something to correct this."

  She glanced at Gaeta before replying, "If that's what you want, Malcolm."

  He looked back at Cardenas as he answered, "That's what I want."

  Dinner ended and the four of them went outside into the twilight atmosphere. Holly's heart was thumping. What happens now?

  Eberly said, "Holly, why don't we go up to your office and see what we can do to help Dr. Cardenas?"

  She nodded. "If I knew what skills you need, Kris, I could pull up a list of possible candidates for you."

  Cardenas said, "I'll shoot the requirements to you as soon as I get home."

  Gaeta said, "I'll walk you home, Kris. It's on my way."

  Holly stood frozen to the spot as Gaeta and Cardenas said goodbye and started along the path that led to her quarters. Eberly had to touch her shoulder to break the spell.

  "We have work to do, Holly," he told her.

  But she kept staring at Cardenas and Gaeta, walking side by side down the dimly lit path. Cardenas turned and looked over her shoulder at Holly, as if to say, Don't worry, nothing's going to happen. At least, Holly hoped that's what she was signifying.

  She's my friend, Holly told herself. She knows Manny and I have made out together. She wouldn't do anything with him. It was his idea to walk her home. She won't let him do anything.

  Still, Eberly had to tell her again, "Holly, come on. We have work to do."

  THE SECOND RALLY

  Eberly prided himself on never making the same mistake twice. The first public speech he'd given, to announce the naming contests, had been good enough, as far as it went, but a miserable failure in the eyes of Morgenthau and Vyborg. The crowd at the cafeteria had been sparse, and despite their rousing response to his oratory they made it clear that they considered the whole affair as nothing better than a learning experience, at best.

  He intended to profit from that.

  With Phase One of the naming campaign finished, and categories for each type of feature in the habitat settled by the first round of voting, Eberly carefully prepared for his second public appearance.

  It's impossible to please everyone, he realized, but it is possible to split people up into small, distinct groups and then find out what each group desires and promise it to them. Divide and conquer: a concept as old as civilization, probably older. Eberly learned how to use it. He was pleased, almost surprised, at how easy it was to use the natural antipathy between the stuntman and Urbain's scientific staff.

  For weeks he had Vyborg build up the stuntman's presence in the habitat with vids and news releases that showed how heroic, how exciting Gaeta was: the conqueror of Mt. Olympus on Mars, the man who trekked across Mare Imbrium on the Moon. Vyborg cleverly played up the scientific information that Gaeta had harvested during each of his feats. Now he wanted to be the first human being to set foot on the murky, forbidding surface of Titan. Will the scientists allow him to do it? Humans will land on Titan someday, sooner or later. Why not allow this intrepid hero to take the risks he is so willing to endure? At Eberly's insistence, no mention was made of Dr. Cardenas and her effort to create nanobugs to attack the contamination problem. "There will be no publicity about nanotechnology," he decided.

  Kananga's people helped to divide the general populace. It was pathetically simple to set individuals against one another. Eberly himself hit on the idea of using vids from Earthside sporting events to create organized fan clubs, clannish factions who placed bets on "their" teams and watched each game in boozy uproarious exuberance. When Wilmot and his administrators tried to control the distribution of alcoholic drinks, even beer, the fans spontaneously began meeting in private apartments. A lively commerce in home brew began, and it wasn't unusual for fights to break out when one fan club clashed with another.

  Morgenthau saw to it that Eberly was apprised of each group's special interests. The machinists complained that their salary level was kept artificially lower than that of the lab technicians. One group of farmers wanted to expand their acreage and plant tropical fruits that Wilmot's administrators had disallowed because they would require more water and an extensive hothouse to create a warmer, wetter environment than the rest of the habitat. A bitter rivalry was simmering between the fans of two soccer teams that were heading for the World Cup back on Earth. The brawls between them were getting so serious that even Kananga suggested they be toned down.

  Through all this, Holly's work was an invaluable asset to Eberly. She ran the Human Resources Department and faithfully brought to Eberly the statistics he needed to determine all the inner group dynamics. She was earnest, honest, and had no idea that the fractures within the habitat's social structure were being eagerly fomented by Eberly's clique.

  "We need to do something to bring people together again," she told Eberly, time and again. "We need some way of unifying everybody."

  Meanwhile, Wilmot watched the growing disharmony with a mixture of fascination and dread. The carefully knit society that had been created for this habitat was unraveling, coming apart at the seams. People were splitting up into tribes, no less. Clans, even. As an anthropologist he was enthralled by their behavior. As the leader of the expedition, however, he feared that the growing chaos would lead to mayhem, perhaps even murder. Yet he resisted the urge to interfere or clamp down with new regulations and enforcements. Let the experiment continue, he told himself. Let them play out their little games. The end result will be more important than any individual's life; in the final analysis it could be more important than the success or failure of this mission.

  Ultimately, Holly urged Eberly, "You've got to do something, Malcolm! You're the only one who has the vision to bring everybody together again."

  He allowed Morgenthau to back Holly's increasingly insistent pleading with similar suggestions of her own. At last he told them to organize a rally.

  "I'll speak to them," he said. "I'll do my best."

  Holly worked sixteen and eighteen hours a day to organize a rally that would bring out everyone in the habitat. She set it up in the open park along the lake outside Village A. She saw to it that the cafeterias and restaurants closed down at 18:00 hours that afternoon; no one was going to have dinner out until after Eberly's speech was finished.

  At Morgenthau's suggestion, Holly organized parades. The sports fans' clubs easily agreed to march to the park, each of them carrying makeshift banners of their club's colors. The musicians among the populace formed impromptu bands and even agreed to play one at a time, rather than competing in cacophony. The farmers put together a march of sorts, not that they walked in any discernable order. So did the other workers, each organized by their specialty.

  Still, when the music played and the people marched, only a few thousand showed up. Most of the population stayed home. Holly consoled herself with the thought that they all would watch the rally on video. At least, she hoped so.

  Even so, some three thousand people formed a considerable crowd. Eberly looked delighted as they assembled raggedly in front of the band shell where he sat on the stage, watching and smiling at them.

  Morgenthau looked pleased, too. Holly heard her say into Eberly's ear, "This is a big-enough minority to give us the power we need, Malcolm. The ones who've stayed home will be swept up in the tide, when the time comes."


  The atmosphere was like an old-fashioned summertime picnic. Music played. People marched, then stood shoulder to shoulder, facing the little band shell and stage that stood at one end of the park.

  Manuel Gaeta was the first speaker. Morgenthau introduced him and the crowd roared and whistled as he slowly, shyly, climbed the steps of the stage.

  He motioned for quiet, grinning out at a sea of expectant faces. "I'm no public speaker," he began. "I've done a lot of scary things in my life, but I think this is scarier than any of them."

  People laughed.

  "I don't have all that much to say. I hope to be able to get down to the surface of Titan, and when I do, I'd like to dedicate the mission to you folks, the people of this habitat."

  They roared their delight. Holly, sitting beside Eberly at one side of the stage, looked around the crowd, searching for the faces of scientists that she knew. She spotted only a few of them. Neither Dr. Urbain nor Professor Wilmot was in the crowd.

  "My real job today," Gaeta went on, "is to introduce the main speaker. I think you all know him. Malcolm Eberly is director of the Human Resources Department, and the one man among the habitat's top staff who's tried to help me. I think he can help all of us."

  With that, Gaeta turned and gestured toward Eberly, who slowly, deliberately got up from his chair and walked to the podium. The crowd's applause was perfunctory.

  "Thank you, Manny," Eberly said, gripping the sides of the podium with both hands. Looking out into the crowd, he went on, "And thank you, each and every one of you, for coming to this rally this evening."

  He took a breath, then lowered his head, almost as if in prayer. The crowd went silent, waiting, watching.

  "We have before us a task of awesome magnitude," Eberly said. "We must face new and unknown dangers as we sail farther into unexplored space than any human beings have gone before."

  Holly was struck by the pitch of his voice. He was a different man on the platform, she saw: His eyes blazed, his voice was deeper, stronger, more certain than she had ever heard before.