The Trikon Deception Page 28

  “I did not say American scientists. I meant American industry. Most of the pollutants in the oceans are by-products of American manufacturing processes developed in the middle part of the twentieth century. A patented microbe with the ability to neutralize these wastes would be worth millions of dollars to any scientist who can develop it. But it would be worth trillions to these industries because they would be able to continue using those old, cheap manufacturing processes, since they would have the means of cleaning up after them. They could even sell their manufacturing processes—and the cleanup systems—to the rest of the world.”

  Weiss thought a moment, then said, “Kind of like putting catalytic converters on automobiles instead of giving them non-polluting motors.”

  “Exactly!” Ramsanjawi beamed at the reporter. “You grasp the situation very quickly.”

  Weiss thought the details were vague, but he liked the conspiratorial, antiestablishment flavor of Ramsanjawi’s theory. It was like the stories he had unearthed for his old TV tabloid, but on a far more sweeping scale.

  “How are these forces preventing you from doing your work?” he asked.

  “They are not,” said Ramsanjawi. “They are actually trying to promote our work so they can steal it and use it for their own purposes.”

  “How do they steal it?”

  “We are not certain of their methods, but we are certain of the thefts.”

  “By who?” said Weiss.

  “Different people.” Ramsanjawi made a small wave of his hand. “They change from rotation to rotation, posing as scientists or technicians. We think they are close to fitting all the pieces of this microbial puzzle together.”

  “Is that so bad?”

  “That depends on who you think should own the keys to toxic-waste cleanup—some giant corporation or a nonprofit consortium dedicated to the betterment of the world.”

  Weiss considered the alternatives and decided that he did have a strong preference. He flashed on the image of Ramsanjawi and Bianco speaking warmly that morning. Could it be that the Indian, of all the others, was Bianco’s true soul mate, the genuine embodiment of what Bianco called the Trikon spirit?

  “What makes you think these forces are close to developing the microbe?” he said.

  “We think they have sent up a superspy,” said Ramsanjawi. Lowering his voice, “Hugh O’Donnell.”

  “Why did I know you were going to say that?” Weiss asked, grinning.

  “What impelled O’Donnell to attack you today?”

  “I tried to film his lab. He got, as we say, pissed.”

  “When we say pissed, we mean drunk,” said Ramsanjawi. He smiled as if the incident proved his premise that O’Donnell was a spy.

  “Wait a second,” said Weiss. “Everybody in the American lab hates O’Donnell.”

  “An elaborate act. He pretends to work on a separate project, they complain about lack of lab space. All the while, he is gleaning data from us and the Japanese and sending it back to the corporation he works for. His employer may not even be a member of Trikon.”

  Weiss remembered the conversation he overheard through Thora Skillen’s door. The Americans had fallen behind in their research and Bianco was angry. Ramsanjawi might have a point, farfetched as it seemed.

  “Is that the camera you used?” said Ramsanjawi. “May I?”

  Weiss slipped the cord over his head and handed the Minicam to Ramsanjawi. The Indian aimed it around the lab like a tourist in midtown Manhattan.

  “Extremely fine resolution,” he said. “And good magnification.”

  “Only the best from CNN.”

  “What did you see as you filmed?”

  “A computer, smaller than the ones in the main lab modules. It had some sort of genetic structure on the screen. Vials of colored liquids, which probably were microbe soups.”

  “You have learned much in your short time here,” said Ramsanjawi. “Was there anything else? Any sophisticated communications equipment?”

  “That’s all I saw,” said Weiss. Of course, there were the plants. But he wasn’t about to mention them. He had a reporter’s sense that Ramsanjawi was angling for something—information, a favor, maybe a deal. He wanted to keep one trump card up his sleeve. Besides, he had a damned good idea what those plants were. The sixty-four-billion-dollar question was what were they doing on Trikon Station.

  “How would you like to film O’Donnell’s lab?” Ramsanjawi asked.

  “And get killed doing it? No thanks.”

  “What if I told you I could arrange it?”

  “With O’Donnell? Fat chance.”

  “Ascend from the real world, Mr. Weiss, just for a moment. Theoretically, would you like to film O’Donnell’s lab and have someone with scientific expertise interpret the images?”

  “What I would like to do is ask O’Donnell a bunch of questions and have him answer them. But that isn’t going to happen.”

  “Precisely. So answer my question.”

  “Do I look stupid?” said Weiss.

  “What if I told you that I could guarantee you fifteen minutes without danger of being assaulted? Is that enough time?”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “Is it enough time, Mr. Weiss?”

  “I can manage with it.”

  “Would you be willing to cooperate, and bring the tape to me?”

  “I might,” said Weiss. “But why should I?”

  “Because we both want the same information.”

  “How do you know I’m not a spy myself.”

  “I don’t,” said Ramsanjawi, handing the camera back to him. “But I can’t be in two places at the same time, so I have asked you. I assume there are spies. If I discover you to be one, so be it.”

  Weiss took the Minicam from Ramsanjawi and slipped the cord back over his head. He wasn’t sure about the offer. It was too easy, too coincidental with his fight that morning. But where would he be if he hadn’t run down the other coincidences he had encountered in his life? Probably writing a police blotter column for a local rag and playing with himself. Fuck the whales. Big as they were, those plants in O’Donnell’s lab were the key to something bigger. He was going to have another look at them. Somehow. Some way.

  “Why did you show me the parlor trick?” he asked.

  “To establish credibility, Mr. Weiss,” said Ramsanjawi. “Why else?”

  The phone booths in the command module were open twenty-four hours a day. Crewman Stanley was on duty in the module when Weiss got there. He looked askance as the reporter swiftly explained that he had to contact his boss in Atlanta. The Aussie nodded okay, but the suspicious look stayed on his face.

  Weiss closed himself in the booth farther from Stanley, then grumbled under his breath as his fingers refused to hit the right pads on the telephone keyboard. Damned micro-gee, he fumed. Nothing works right here, not even my hands.

  Slowly, very deliberately, he pressed out the number of the network office in Atlanta. Zeke’ll be there, he said to himself. He’s got to be. Where else does he have to go to, without me?

  Sure enough, Tucker was exactly where Weiss hoped: in the editing room helping a production assistant wade through miles of tape.

  “How’s outer space treating you?” Zeke’s voice drawled in the phone.

  “Never mind. Gotta make this fast, Zeke.” Weiss kept his voice low, eyeing Stanley through the booth’s clear plastic door, watching him from across the module. “I’m going to mention two names. I’m only going to say them once. After that, they are Number One and Number Two. I want you to dig out morgue files on both. I’m not looking for mainstream vanilla bullshit. I want the kind of dirt that used to pay our rent. Ready?”

  “Yup.”

  “Number One is Chakra Ramsanjawi. I remember something about a scandal in England several years ago, mid-eighties, maybe. Not sure of the particulars, but it was bad. The European Bureau should have it.

  “Number Two is Kurt Jaeckle. I need something I c
an hit him with to get him off my back. Guy’s a pain in the ass, begging to show off his Mars Project. Like I need Mars.”

  Tucker chuckled. “Only you would call a world-class scientist and media star a pain in the ass.”

  “I’ve seen the slimy undersides of too many world-class media stars in my day.”

  “Why, Aaron, you’re a world-class media star yourself.”

  “Cut the crap, Zeke. This is important.”

  “Okay. Give me twenty-four hours. Hey, Yablon’s pretty steamed he hasn’t heard from you.”

  “Another pain in the ass,” said Weiss. “I’ll call when I’m damn good and ready.”

  “A real world-class attitude,” Zeke Tucker said, laughing.

  It’s now or never, Thora Skillen said to herself as she slipped into the sleep restraint in her compartment.

  Fabio Bianco himself is here. And a reporter from CNN. If I do it now it will get tremendous publicity all over the world. Everybody will see how wrong it is to conduct genetic research, even on a space station.

  She could stop them, she knew. In the darkness of her compartment she squeezed her eyes shut and told herself that she would strike back at them for her sister’s death.

  But her dreams, when she finally fell asleep, were troubled. Her father stared down at her, cold and disapproving. “Melissa would never do that,” her father said, in a tone that was more hurt than anger. “Why must you always be the bad one?”

  Melissa told her, “It’s all right, Thora. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. I love you, Thora dear. It’s all right.”

  And she heard her own voice pleading, “I don’t want to die. Oh God, please don’t make me die.”

  “I reserved the observation blister,” said Lance, “so we can cool down.” Carla Sue removed her hairnet and shook her head. Her hair instantly puffed out like a perfect sphere of yellow cotton candy. She patted the nape of her neck with a towel.

  “Sure,” she said. “Sounds fine.”

  Lance detected uncertainty in her voice, as if she were replaying their last visit to the blister. Be cool, be in command, Freddy had told him. You are the man.

  He didn’t give her a chance to reconsider. He led her to the Mars module, never once looking back lest she interpret the slightest glance as a lack of confidence. She stayed right behind him.

  He opened the blister door with a flourish and invited her to enter before him. She smiled for him as if charmed by his gallantry.

  They floated side by side. Three hundred miles below, a necklace of atolls gleamed in the brilliant blue waters of the Pacific. Lance felt a mad urge to apologize for his behavior their last time together. He wanted to tell her the truth, that he had been surprised and scared but that this time would be different. He checked himself. All the talk in the world don’ mean nada, Freddy had told him. You deliver with action.

  So they talked about their workout and the pleasant sensation of fatigue that followed exercise. Carla Sue wasn’t as forward as the last time. In fact, as Freddy had predicted, she was downright prudish. Her knees were pressed together, her arms folded.

  Thoughts of Becky tried to creep into Lance’s mind. He suppressed them by talking faster and louder.

  “Look how the water is a lighter blue around the islands,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Carla Sue.

  A lock of blond hair brushed against his cheek. He stole a glance at her and suddenly felt a giddy sense of ownership, as if all of this woman—the long legs, the blond hair, the lips shaped like Cupid’s bow and red as a valentine—were his for the taking.

  All the talk in the world don’ mean nada, Freddy’s voice said in his ear.

  He pulled Carla Sue to his body, locked one leg behind her knees, and pressed his lips against hers.

  Just get her started and don’ worry.

  31 AUGUST 1998

  TRIKON STATION

  I feel like Captain Kirk in the old “Star Trek” series I watched as a girl. “Captain’s Log, Star Date August 1998.” But the truth of the matter is that I am troubled, and when I am troubled I write down my thoughts in order to sort them out.

  My relationship with Kurt Jaeckle is not going well. It’s not just that he’s so eternally self-absorbed, even when we make love. The trouble is, he’s so childish! This world-known scientist and teacher turns into a high school boy when we make love. Even when we went to the observatory. I was so thrilled by the invitation, so interested in learning about the sky. But Kurt had other ideas. I feel used.

  I am not a kid. I realize that love is not what is depicted in the movies. I have no illusions. I fully expect that one day he will regard me as a fling. The one on the space station. Doctor What’s-Her-Name.

  But at least the here and now, the lovemaking, should be better. Instead, I feel as though he would rather be playing with a teenager.

  Would it have been this way with Dan?

  —From the diary of Lorraine Renoir

  O’Donnell realized that there was something wrong with Lorraine. Her hair was no longer twisted into a neat French braid. Instead, it was bound by a net that seemed poised to fly off her head with the force of her loosened chestnut tresses. Her lips, usually pressed together in an expression he called grim, were noticeably turned down into a frown. She refused to meet his eyes.

  His daily meetings with Lorraine had diminished from a half hour to barely ten minutes. Their tenor had shaded from openly adversarial to politely civil, if not genuinely friendly. They would chat until Lorraine apparently satisfied herself that the whites of his eyes weren’t bloodshot, his pupils weren’t dilated, his speech wasn’t slurred, and his limbs were not twitching uncontrollably. So he was surprised when she immediately ordered him to roll up his sleeve.

  O’Donnell watched silently as Lorraine readied a syringe. Her breath sounded thick, as if she were congested. Still refusing to meet his eyes, she tied a rubber tube around his biceps and told him to pump his hand until his already prominent veins threatened to burst out of his skin. As with the last blood test, O’Donnell concentrated on the small Monet print fastened to the wall. He felt the coolness of the alcohol as she swabbed his inner elbow. He expected the thin prick of the needle. Instead, he felt as if his arm were being gouged by claws.

  “Easy, Doc!”

  Lorraine’s hands trembled. The needle scraped across his skin, leaving a darkened line of blood behind. O’Donnell grabbed the syringe with his free hand and lifted the needle out of his arm. Lorraine wrenched the syringe away and, with the same motion, stuffed it into a waste receptacle.

  “You okay, Doc?”

  “Fine,” she said. She didn’t look at him and furiously prepared a second syringe.

  O’Donnell thought he heard her sniffle. He pulled the tube from his right arm and tightened it around his left. This time he watched her. As she moved to stick him, he gently placed his hand on hers and guided the needle into his vein.

  “Do you want to tell me what this is all about?” he said when she finished drawing his blood.

  “It was time for a test.”

  “I’m talking about the butcher job on my right arm.”

  She was labeling the syringe. O’Donnell placed his hand on her chin and turned her head so that she faced him. Her brown eyes were wet.

  “You want to talk to me for a change?” he said.

  She hesitated, but only for a moment.

  “Have you ever thought you loved someone and tried to make that person notice you?”

  “All the time,” said O’Donnell.

  “Did they?”

  “Sometimes, sometimes not. I never gave it much effort. I’m pretty lazy when it comes to that.”

  “Well, did it ever happen that after you gave up on the one person and started seeing someone else, you realized that the first person had noticed you all along. Only now, because you are with the second person, and because you may have done things that are not in the best interests of the first person, you realize t
hat you can never go back.”

  O’Donnell knew the first person was Dan and the second person was Jaeckle, but he refrained from embarrassing her.

  “I’ve been taught to think in absolutes,” he said. “Black and white, yes and no. One drink or one snort and I’ll be hell-bent for death and destruction. But when it comes to affairs of the heart, even I know that there are no absolutes. One day’s great idea is another day’s dumb mistake.”

  He grinned at her. “Some people say we react to the chemicals in our brains. Some believe in true love. Whatever, the situation can be as unpredictable as hell. You make decisions based on constantly changing conditions. It’s worse than trying to predict the weather. But when you find yourself in a condition like the one you’re in, there’s only one reliable barometer.” He patted her stomach. “How does this feel?”

  “Like I have a fist in it,” said Lorraine.

  “You don’t like the decision you made.”

  “I know that,” said Lorraine. “What can I do about it?”

  “Right now, nothing,” he said. “You can’t force these decisions. It’s like trying to seed clouds. You can’t seed them if they don’t exist. You have to wait for the right time.”

  “When is that?”

  “Hard to say,” said O’Donnell. “But I do know one thing. The time always comes. They always come back.”

  Lance’s innards trembled as he performed his daily inspection in the logistics module. The entire station seemed to be seething with a sexuality he had never noticed. The slender pipes looping across the ceiling were entwined arms and legs; their bright sheen was not from polished aluminum but from a fine glaze of sweat. The rounded bottoms of two oxygen cylinders lashed together were perfectly shaped breasts. Another pair were firm buttocks. The whole station was reeking with sex. It was everyplace, even in the very air. He tried to get his mind off last night with Carla Sue, tried to concentrate on his duties. But he could think of nothing else. His erection pressed against his flight pants.