Saturn Page 24

"No human has set foot on Titan," Wilmot pointed out.

  "I know. But the rings! They'll salivate over that. I could run an auction right now and gin up enough cash to pay for your whole crew and then some."

  Gaeta leaned back in his chair, looking contented. Wilmot saw that Berkowitz was as happy as a child with a new toy. The professor felt relieved. I can give Eberly and that Vyborg creature what they want without hurting anyone's feelings. A win—win situation. All to the good.

  Pancho Lane could feel her face tightening into a frown as she watched Manuel Gaeta's message to her.

  "So even if I can't get to Titan, this stunt with the rings oughtta pay you back for the trip with interest."

  Yeah, but what about my sister? Pancho demanded silently.

  Gaeta rambled on about his possible stunts while Pancho sat fuming behind her desk. What about Susie? she wondered. Holly, I mean.

  At last Gaeta said, 'Tour sister's fine, Ms. Lane. She's a very bright young woman. Very intelligent. And very attractive, too. She has lots of friends and she seems very happy here. Not to worry about her."

  But Pancho focused on his "And very attractive, too." Gaeta had something of a reputation. Handsome chunk of beef, Pancho had to admit. I wouldn't throw him out of my bed. Is he making it with my sister?

  Pancho sighed. If he is, there's not much I can do about it. I just hope Susie enjoys it. I hope he doesn't hurt her. If he does, this'll be his last stunt. Ever.

  Professor Wilmot rocked slightly in his desk chair as he dictated his status report to Atlanta.

  "It's interesting to observe the different motivations of these people. Eberly isn't after power so much as adulation, it seems to me. The man wants to be adored by the people. I'm not certain what Vyborg wants; I haven't been able to work up the stamina to get close to the man. Berkowitz is happy to be rid of the responsibilities of heading the Communications Department. He's back to being an active newsman. I understand there's some friction between him and Gaeta's technical crew, but that's perfectly understandable. Quite normal.

  "Gaeta himself is fascinating, in his own way. He actually wants to risk his hide on these stunts he does. He enjoys them. Of course, they bring him money and fame, but I believe he'd do them anyway, merely for the sheer adrenaline rush they give him. In a strange way, he's rather like a scientist, except that scientists enjoy the intellectual thrill of being the first to discover new phenomena, while this stuntman enjoys the visceral excitement of being the first man on the scene."

  SATURN ARRIVAL Minus 205 Days

  Night after night Holly spent in her apartment, alone, calling up programs from Earth on forensic medicine. She recalled with perfect clarity the way Don Diego's crumpled body had looked when she discovered it lying headfirst in the water of the irrigation culvert. She remembered every detail of the medical examination report: no heart attack, no major stroke, nothing unusual except that the heels of his hands seemed slightly abraded, and his lungs were full of water.

  What would roughen the heels of his hands? Holly wondered. The concrete surface of the culvert, she decided. Then she began to search for a reason why his hands were bruised. Eventually she came to the conclusion that he was trying to push his head out of the water, trying hard enough to scrape the skin off the heels of both hands.

  And why, if he was trying so hard to get up, why couldn't he lift his head out of the water? Because something—or someone—was holding his head down. Drowning him. Murdering him.

  Not trusting her memory, good as it was, Holly called up the medical report and studied it for several nights in a row. No sign of violence. Only the abrasions on his hands.

  It wasn't much to go on. But Holly doggedly pursued that one clue. She thought of it as a clue. She was convinced Don Diego had been murdered.

  Why? By whom?

  Closing her eyes, she envisioned once again the scene when she found the old man's body. No signs of a struggle. Nothing disturbing the slope that led down to the concrete except some footprints in the dirt. Boot prints, actually.

  Professor Wilmot also spent his evenings watching video displays, as usual. The business of the habitat faded into oblivion as he sat in his favorite chair, swirling his glass of whisky in his right hand, watching his collection of vids about naked women undergoing torture. Sometimes, when a scene was particularly revolting, he felt a twinge of guilt. But that passed quickly enough. It's all make-believe, he told himself. They wouldn't produce such vids unless there was a market for them. I'm not the only one who enjoys this sort of thing.

  He had run through the collection he'd brought aboard the habitat, seen each of them twice and his favorites more than that. For weeks he fretted about ordering more from Earth. They made new ones all the time, he knew. Fresh faces. New young bodies.

  There was a certain danger in calling a supplier on Earth and ordering more vids. Even if he routed his order through a middleman at Selene, sooner or later it would be traced to the habitat. But there are ten thousand people here, he told himself. How would they know it's me, and not some clerk or farm worker? Besides, I'd wager there are others aboard who have similar tastes and make similar orders.

  After weeks of arguing with himself, and watching the same old vids, he sent an order to Earth by the habitat's tight-beam laser communications link. It was all in code, of course. No one will know, Wilmot reassured himself. After all, who would be tapping the comm links? It's not as if I'm using my personal phone line. Someone would have to tap every outgoing and incoming message to find my one brief little order. Who would be fanatic enough to do that?

  SATURN ARRIVAL Minus 87 Days

  "It's remarkable, really," Wilmot was saying to his computer. "They have drafted a constitution and are preparing for elections. By the time we establish ourselves in orbit about Saturn, they'll be ready to transfer power to their new government."

  The computer was automatically encrypting his words for transmission to Earth, to the headquarters of the New Morality in Atlanta, the covert financial backers of the Saturn mission. Wilmot was the only person in the habitat who knew where the funding for this experiment had come from, and he intended to keep the secret entirely to himself. His reports back to Atlanta were private, coded, and sent toward Earth by the automated laser system, not by the habitat's regular communications links.

  "The man Eberly has formed something of a clique around himself," Wilmot continued, "which is more or less what I had expected. The scientists have formed a countervailing political force, led by Dr. Urbain. Frankly, Urbain seems more interested in personal flattery than politics, but he seems to be the acknowledged leader among the technical types.

  "Even the engineers have organized a political bloc, of sorts. Their leader seems to be a Russian exile named Timoshenko, although he insists that he has no interest in politics. Yet he's allowed the engineers to bruit his name about as a candidate for the chief administrator's position. Frankly I doubt that he has one chance in a million.

  "There have been a few scuffles here and there, but by and large the political campaigning has been remarkably free of the usual hooliganism, which is little short of extraordinary when one considers that the bulk of our population is made up of dissidents and free-thinkers who got themselves into trouble on Earth. I believe the reason is that most of the population doesn't care a fig about this political campaigning. Most of the people here have absolutely no interest in their own government. In fact, they try rather hard to avoid any commitments of any sort."

  Wilmot leaned back in his comfortable swivel chair and re-read his words from the image displayed above his desk. Satisfied with his report so far, he continued:

  "In three weeks we will have the general elections that will bring our new constitution into power and elect the individuals who will form the new government. Eberly is the odds-on favorite. I shall have to install him as the new chief administrator and gracefully retire to the ceremonial role of president. I suspect that Eberly will name Urbain to some important-soun
ding but innocuous position: probably deputy administrator or some such. I have no idea of how he'll handle the engineer, Timoshenko.

  "Some of the people around Eberly frankly give me the willies. He's surrounded himself with nonentities who believe themselves to be quite important, such as this Vyborg person who's now running the Communications office. I know that the Morgenthau woman is a high official in the Holy Disciples. Why she volunteered for this mission is beyond me. And this Kananga fellow! He's positively frightening."

  Wilmot talked on, bluntly giving his opinions on each of the major players in the habitat's coming elections. He would have been much less free with his judgments if he had known that every word he spoke was being picked up by molecular-film microphones and recorded for Eberly's perusal.

  Late in the afternoon the cafeteria was quiet, nearly empty; most of the lunchtime crowd had left, and the dinner rush hadn't started yet. Manuel Gaeta sat with three others at a table near the holowindow that showed a view of a pristine lake in the Rockies, a picture from distant Earth taken long before the greenhouse warming had driven millions from their flooded cities to makeshift refugee camps in such regions.

  Of the four people talking intently together over the remains of their lunches, Gaeta was the only one who looked anywhere near happy.

  "We can do it," Gaeta said firmly.

  "It would be awfully dangerous, Manny," said Kris Cardenas.

  Nadia Wunderly nodded her agreement. "It'd be like trying to walk past a firing squad that uses machine guns."

  Gaeta shrugged carelessly. "All I gotta do is go in-between the bullets." He turned to von Helmholtz. "What do you think, Fritz?"

  Von Helmholtz cast a cold eye at him. "Isn't it enough to do what we came here to do?"

  Gaeta said, "We'll do the Titan gig if we can get the scientists to allow it. But while we're out here, why not do a spin through the rings?"

  "Because you could get killed," von Helmholtz snapped.

  Spreading his hands as if he'd proven his point, Gaeta countered, "That's why people watch, Fritz. They're waiting to see if I get killed."

  "What is worse, you'll ruin the suit."

  Gaeta laughed.

  "There's a really strong chance that you would be killed," Wunderly said.

  "Not if you can pick out the right spot in the rings for me to traverse. A spot without so many big chunks."

  With a sigh, Wunderly explained, "I'd have to study the rings close-up for months, Manny. Years, maybe."

  "We've still got a few weeks before we go into orbit around Saturn. Won't that be enough?"

  "I'd need all the computer time we've got on board to make any reasonable computations," she said. "Plus I'd need time on the big 'scopes and Urbain won't let me near them."

  Von Helmholtz looked surprised. "He won't allow you to use the telescopes in the astronomy pod?"

  Wunderly shook her head. "Urbain won't let me have any time on the big 'scopes. They're all being used full-time on Titan."

  "All of them?"

  "All of them," said Wunderly.

  "Maybe we can talk him into letting you use one," Gaeta suggested.

  "He won't. I've asked, more than once. Besides, I'd need a ton of computer time."

  "Maybe somebody else should ask him," said Gaeta.

  "Who?" Cardenas asked.

  "Wilmot. Or if not him, maybe Eberly can swing it."

  Again she shook her head. "Urbain won't listen to Eberly. He won't even talk to him. They're running against each other in the elections, remember?"

  Eberly, meanwhile, was sitting tensely in the living room of his apartment, which had become the command center for his election campaign. A bank of computers lined the wall where the sofa had once been, each machine humming with continuous recording of the conversations in every public space in the habitat and quite a few private apartments and offices, including Wilmot's and Urbain's.

  "I don't like this constitution," Morgenthau was saying. "I never did, and the closer we get to putting it into action, the less I like it."

  Eberly studied her fleshy face as she sat in the upholstered chair on the opposite side of the oval coffee table. Her usual smile was gone; she was deadly serious.

  "Why didn't you voice your objections when we were drafting it?" he asked sharply.

  "I thought Vyborg and Jaansen were thrashing everything out satisfactorily, and then you made it clear that you wanted an end to their arguing."

  With growing impatience, Eberly said, "I've explained it to all of you time and again. As long as the emergency-powers clause is in the constitution all the rest of it doesn't matter."

  "I still don't like it," Morgenthau insisted.

  Eberly thought he knew what the problem was. Morgenthau was no fighter; she was an agent planted on the habitat ostensibly to help him, but actually to keep watch on him and report back to the Holy Disciples. Someone high up in the hierarchy must have finally reviewed the new constitution and told her that it didn't suit the stern moral standards of the Disciples. She would never oppose me like this, Eberly said to himself. Not unless she's under pressure from her superiors back on Earth.

  "It's too late to change it now," he said, trying to keep his voice calm, even. "The people vote on it in three weeks."

  Morgenthau said, "You could withdraw it. Say it needs further work."

  "Withdraw it?" Despite his self-discipline, Eberly nearly shouted the words. "That would mean we'd have to postpone the election."

  Morgenthau said nothing.

  How can I get her back on my side? Eberly asked himself. How can I make her see that she'd be better off following my orders than the stupid commands from Earth?

  "Listen to me," he said, leaning forward in his chair, bending his head closer to hers. "In three weeks the people will vote. They'll accept this constitution for the very same reasons that you distrust it: Because it promises individual freedom and a liberal, relaxed government."

  "Without any rules for population control. Without any moral standards."

  "Those will come later, after the constitution is adopted and we are in power."

  Morgenthau looked totally unconvinced.

  "As I've explained more than once," Eberly said, straining to hold on to his swooping temper, "once I'm in power I'll declare a state of emergency and suspend all those liberal laws that bother you."

  "How can you declare a state of emergency if everyone is satisfied with the constitution?"

  "We'll need a crisis of some sort. I'll think of something."

  Morgenthau's face looked as hard as steel. "You were taken out of prison and placed in this habitat to form a proper, god-fearing government. You are not living up to your end of the agreement."

  "That's not true!" he protested. Inwardly, a panicky voice whined, They can't send me back to prison. They can't!

  "All we need to do is generate a crisis," he said aloud. "Then Kananga and his security teams can clamp down."

  "It won't be that simple," Morgenthau said. "The more power you give Kananga the more he will seize control of everything. I don't trust him."

  "Neither do I," Eberly admitted, silently adding, I don't trust anyone.

  "And then there's this Cardenas woman, working with nanomachines. They're the devil's spawn and yet you allow her to go right ahead and do her evil in our midst."

  "Only until I'm in power," Eberly said.

  "She's got to go. Get rid of her."

  As Eberly nodded somberly, the solution to his problems suddenly struck him with the blinding force of a revelation. Yes! he said to himself. That will solve everything!

  He made a warm smile for the still-scowling Morgenthau and, leaning forward, patted her chubby knee. "Don't worry about it. I'll take care of everything."

  Her frown faded somewhat, replaced by curiosity.

  "Trust me," Eberly said, smiling still more broadly.

  LABORATORY LAVOISIER

  Kris Cardenas wondered why Urbain had asked her to meet with him.
Not in his office, not even in the astronomy pod, where the big telescopes were housed. Here in the science building, in his main laboratory, which had been named for the eighteenth-century French founder of modern chemistry, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier.

  Cardenas's own lab (named after the American physicist Richard P. Feynman) was in a separate building, up at the top of the ridge on which Athens was built, as far away from the other labs as possible. As she made her way down the bricked path that curved past the low, white-walled apartment buildings and shops of the village, Cardenas felt the old resentment against unreasoning fear of nanotechnology still simmering deep within her.

  Keep it under control, she warned herself. Keep everything in perspective. Remember that Lavoisier was beheaded during the French Revolution. Idiots and bastards have always been in our midst.

  So she put on a sunny smile as she entered the lab complex and saw Edouard Urbain standing in the doorway to his laboratory, waiting for her. He looked nervous. No, Cardenas decided, not nervous. Excited. Expectant. Almost like a little boy standing in front of the Christmas tree, eager to tear into the brightly wrapped packages.

  "Dr. Cardenas!" Urbain greeted her. "How good of you to come."

  "It was good of you to invite me," she replied.

  He ushered her into the lab. Cardenas was slightly taller than Urbain, her sandy blond hair and bright blue eyes a sharp contrast to his dark, slicked-back hair and eyes of mahogany brown.

  The lab was two stories tall, its bare metal ceiling the underside of the building's roof. A tall screen stood just inside the doorway, cutting off the main area of the lab from view. The place felt to Cardenas like an airplane hangar or an empty warehouse. With a slight gesture, Urbain led Cardenas along the screen toward its end.

  "I wanted you to see this," he said, his voice brimming with anticipation. She thought his moustache would start quivering any moment. "I am very proud of what we have accomplished."