Uranus Read online

  Raven smiled demurely at him. By the time they had finished their lunches they were chatting like old friends.

  They got up from their chairs, O’Donnell towering over her.

  “I … uh,” he stammered, “I thought … well, maybe we could have dinner together sometime.”

  Keeping her smile fixed in place, Raven replied, “That would be nice.”

  O’Donnell nodded happily and mumbled, “I’ll call you.”

  “Fine,” said Raven. Then she watched the big man lumber away, as if fleeing some ogre.

  He’ll be easy to keep on a leash, she told herself as she watched his retreating back. Like a big puppy. Just don’t let him get too close.

  * * *

  When she got back to her apartment, Raven’s wall screen showed a notification to appear at Cathy Fremont’s office at 0900 hours the next morning.

  She sank down onto the sofa in her living room, staring at the message on the screen, biting her lip in consternation. What have I done wrong? she asked herself, alarmed. She wondered, Maybe I shouldn’t have agreed to have dinner with Quincy. Maybe …

  With a shake of her head, she decided it was pointless to try to guess why she’d been summoned. Just go to Fremont’s office and face the music, she told herself.

  But her dreams that night were of old Naples, dark and filled with danger.

  The next morning, Raven marched herself to Fremont’s office, rehearsing in her mind what she would reply to any accusation her orientation leader would level at her. I didn’t do it. I didn’t know it was against the rules. I won’t do it again.

  But she didn’t know what “it” was.

  Cathy Fremont rose from her desk chair as Raven stepped into her office.

  “Good morning,” Fremont said cheerfully.

  Raven muttered a “good morning” and slipped into the chair before Fremont’s desk.

  Hiking a thumb toward the viewscreen on her office wall, Fremont smiled and said, “You’ve done very well with your studies. Your grades are among the highest we’ve ever seen.”

  Taken aback, Raven replied merely, “They are?”

  “Yes, they are,” Fremont answered happily. “There’s a first-rate mind inside your skull, Raven.”

  Raven blinked with surprise.

  Fremont stared at Raven for a long, unsettling moment. Here it comes, Raven thought. She softens me up with good news, and now comes the sledgehammer.

  But Fremont’s smile widened slightly as she leaned back in her desk chair and said, “I think you might be able to help us with a situation that’s about to arise. That is, if you want to.”

  “Help you?”

  “You’ve probably never heard of Tómas Gomez, have you?”

  Raven shook her head.

  “I thought not. He’s an astronomer, from Chile, in South America.”

  “An astronomer,” Raven echoed.

  “He’s coming here to Haven because he wants to study Uranus. We need someone to show him around, get him settled, familiarize him with our habitat.”

  Suddenly it clicked in Raven’s mind. I haven’t done anything wrong! She doesn’t want to punish me. She’s asking me to help her!

  “You want me to be his guide?”

  “Yes. Only for his first few days. Help him get his feet on the ground, so to speak. Help him get his equipment set up.”

  Raven said, “I don’t know anything about astronomy.”

  “That’s no problem. What we need is someone to make Gomez feel comfortable here in Haven. Get him settled in. I believe he plans to stay here for at least a year, perhaps longer.”

  “I can do that,” Raven said.

  Before she could think about how she might make the man comfortable, Fremont’s smile evaporated.

  Raising a warning finger, Fremont said, “We know about your life back in Naples, Raven. That’s all behind you now. We are not asking you to treat Gomez as a sexual customer. In fact, I think he would be shocked and horrified if you even hinted at such behavior.”

  “Of course,” Raven said softly. But she was thinking, We’ll see.

  TÓMAS GOMEZ

  Two days later, Raven met Tómas Gomez at the reception area just outside Haven’s main docking port.

  The place was busy, as usual. Raven saw troops of newbies being led by officers like Quincy O’Donnell, gaggles of young men and women goggling at the broad expanse of the arrival center and the busy chatter of the newcomers and their hardworking guides.

  She recognized Tómas Gomez from the photos she’d seen in his file. He was walking slowly among the crowd, his head pivoting as if he were searching for someone to meet him.

  He was just about Raven’s own height, stocky, his hair dark and straight, his face the light brown of uncured tobacco leaf. Ordinary face, broad cheeks, his eyes just slightly slanted, not oriental but mestizo. Native American heritage, Raven realized, using some of the history lessons she had recently absorbed.

  “Señor Gomez?” she asked as he stepped across the lines painted across the reception area’s floor.

  He stopped and stared at her. Raven had spent most of her evenings studying a computer course in dressmaking, and had altered her baggy, saggy uniforms into tighter, sleeker outfits.

  “I am Tómas Gomez,” he replied, in English.

  Switching to English herself, Raven extended her hand as she said, “Hello. I am Raven Marchesi. I’ll be your guide for your first few days here in Haven.”

  Gomez’s face lit up with a broad smile. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Ms. Marchesi.”

  “Raven,” she said.

  “Raven,” he repeated, still smiling.

  * * *

  Raven led Gomez down into Haven’s living area, and through the intersecting passageways to the compartment that had been assigned as his living quarters. It was much like her own: living room, kitchen, bedroom, bath.

  “This will be your home while you’re living here,” she said cheerfully.

  His eyes flicked to the travel bags sitting by the door to the bedroom. “My equipment?” he asked. “Where is my equipment?”

  Raven tugged the phone from her hip pocket as she asked, “Do you have an identification number for it?”

  Gomez nodded and spelled out a nine-digit string of alphanumerics.

  Raven’s phone showed that the equipment was being taken to one of the habitat’s docking ports.

  “I must go see it,” he said.

  With a smile that she hoped showed self-assurance, Raven said, “We can see it from here.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course.”

  It took three tries, but at last Raven got the living room’s wall screen to show six bulky crates being unloaded in a docking area by a team of robots and their human overseer.

  Gomez slowly sank onto the sofa and stared at the screen as if it showed his whole life being delivered.

  “That’s your equipment?” she asked softly.

  Gomez nodded, his eyes glued to the screen.

  Raven sat down beside him, fully an arm’s length away. “What’s in the packages?” she asked.

  Without taking his eyes from the screen, Gomez replied, “Spectrographs, sampling equipment, a boring machine, computer systems to operate them all.”

  Little by little, Raven got Gomez to explain what the equipment was supposed to do.

  “Vessels that go into Uranus’s ocean are cut off from contact with us, here in space,” he told her. “The ocean absorbs ordinary electronic transmissions. Even laser beams are distorted beyond comprehensibility.”

  Raven nodded in what she hoped were the right places. Dimly, she understood that ships sent into the planet-wide ocean down on the planet were on their own, any signals they sent out were cut off by the seawater.

  “Then how do you control them?” she asked.

  Gomez shook his head, still without looking at her. “We can’t control them. They are preprogrammed. All we can do is hope that the programming works.”


  “You mean you don’t know if it works or not?”

  At last his head turned toward her. “No. Not yet.”

  Raven stared at him.

  “Something happened to Uranus,” Gomez said, his voice stronger than before. “Something knocked the whole planet sidewise and sterilized its ocean. I hope to learn what that something was.”

  She saw an intensity burning in his coal-black eyes, a fury.

  “By sending a submarine into the ocean,” she said.

  “To the bottom of that ocean,” Gomez corrected, his face set in rigid determination. “I’m going to dredge up samples from the seabed and bring them back here for analysis. I’m going to find out what happened to the planet billions of years ago.”

  Raven simply stared at him. She couldn’t think of anything to say.

  And suddenly Gomez’s iron-hard expression melted into an embarrassed smile. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “I tend to get carried away with my own importance.”

  “No,” Raven countered. “I think it’s exciting … wonderful. What happened to this planet? It’s a marvelous mystery.”

  “And I’m a marvelous egotist to think that I can solve it.”

  “Somebody will, sooner or later,” Raven said. “Why not you?”

  “That’s the big question, isn’t it?”

  Before Raven could think of a reply, Gomez’s phone buzzed.

  “Answer, please,” he called out.

  The scene of the docking port vanished and Evan Waxman’s handsome face appeared on the screen.

  “Dr. Gomez,” said Waxman. “Welcome to Haven.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Waxman.”

  “I wonder if you could drop in at my office tomorrow morning?”

  “Of course,” said Gomez. “What time would be convenient for you?”

  “Oh, nine, nine thirty.”

  “I’ll be there at nine,” Gomez said.

  “Fine. See you then.”

  And Raven’s pulse quickened. I’ll go with you, she said silently to Gomez. I’m going to meet Evan Waxman!

  MEETING

  Raven was up at six. She showered, then dressed carefully, noting that the dull and shapeless uniform that was standard dress for newcomers now looked trimmer, more form-fitting. Not sexy, perhaps, but at least it hinted that there was a desirable woman beneath the gray fabric.

  She called Gomez and arranged to meet him at his apartment at 0730 hours. Then she led him to the closest cafeteria for breakfast. Once they finished eating, she used her phone’s scanner to guide them and led Gomez to Waxman’s office. Gomez rapped on its door at precisely 0858 hours.

  The door slid open and they stepped into an anteroom, where a female assistant—lean, almost gaunt, with hollow cheeks and pale blue eyes, her light brown hair cut in short, wild spikes—rose silently from her desk to greet them with a cold stare.

  Gesturing to the door beside her, she smiled slightly and said, “Go right in, Dr. Gomez. Mr. Waxman is expecting you.”

  Raven followed the astronomer into Waxman’s private office.

  It was considerably smaller than she had expected. Waxman was standing behind a trim little curved desk, smiling at Gomez. He didn’t seem surprised or upset that Raven was with him. In fact, his smile widened at the sight of her.

  “Dr. Gomez,” said Waxman, coming around the desk, arms extended in greeting. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”

  Then he turned slightly toward Raven. “And you must be Ms. Marchesi.”

  Raven smiled back at him, but said nothing.

  “Sit down, make yourselves comfortable.” Waxman pointed to the plushly upholstered chairs in front of his desk.

  As Raven sat down, she glanced around the office. No bookshelves, no furniture at all except for a hip-tall cabinet lining the wall to the right of Waxman’s desk. The walls were crowded with images, though: photographs of streets, houses, park squares in a city that was built on hills by a big lake of some sort.

  “Salt Lake City,” Waxman explained, noting Raven’s interest. “I was born there. So was Reverend Umber.”

  “You were childhood friends?” Raven asked.

  Waxman smiled thinly. “Not exactly. As a matter of fact, we met in the city jail.”

  “Jail?” Gomez blurted.

  “It’s a long story,” Waxman said, waving one hand as if to shoo it away. “Today I’d like to learn about what you intend to accomplish here, Dr. Gomez, and how we may help you to succeed.”

  For the next hour and then some, Gomez expounded on the unsolved mysteries of Uranus’s lopsided configuration and its seemingly barren worldwide ocean.

  Waxman nodded here and there, frowned with puzzlement, clasped his hands together on his desk. Raven tried to follow Gomez’s narration, but the words seemed to flow over her like a tidal wave. Soon she felt that she was drowning. But she made herself nod, too, whenever Waxman did.

  At last the astronomer wound down. “I know this is a lot to aim for, but I have only this one chance to study the planet. The Astronomical Association back on Earth decided to fund this one expedition. Period. Either I find what has made Uranus so unique or I return home empty-handed.”

  Straightening in his high-backed desk chair, Waxman gave the astronomer a piercing gaze. “We will, of course, assist you in every way we can. Manpower, computer time, communications back to Earth—whatever you want, simply ask me.”

  Gomez dipped his chin in acknowledgement. “Thank you so much, Mr. Waxman, I—”

  “Evan; please call me Evan.”

  “Evan,” Gomez said. “And I am Tómas.”

  Waxman smiled pleasantly as he turned his head toward Raven. “And you, Ms. Marchesi? May I call you Raven?”

  Raven smiled back brightly. “Certainly … Evan.”

  * * *

  Without an official acknowledgement, without anyone telling her or even asking her, Raven became Gomez’s de facto assistant. She oversaw the unloading of his equipment in the docking area, and when his submersible arrived, several days after he had, she watched the crew that Waxman had assigned carefully installing the instruments into the spherical-shaped submarine.

  She dined with Gomez almost every night, but except for that first meeting, she heard nothing from Evan Waxman. He didn’t notice me, Raven told herself disconsolately. I sat there across the desk from him and smiled my best but he paid me no notice.

  How can I attract his attention? she asked herself.

  And got no answer.

  * * *

  Her work with Gomez, though, absorbed more and more of her time. While the astronomer busied himself in checking the submersible’s instrumentation and plotting its course through the Uranian ocean, Raven took on all the “household” details of his existence.

  Not once in all those days—and evenings—did Gomez give the slightest indication that he was sexually attracted to her. He might as well be my brother, she complained to herself. Or a priest.

  It was at that moment that it struck her. He is a priest, of sorts, she realized. He’s married to his profession. His god is the universe, and he’s dedicated himself to uncovering its secrets. He has no time for romance or even sex.

  Could I break through his shell? she wondered. And if I did, would it make Evan Waxman notice me?

  BODY AND SOUL

  To her surprise, Raven was summoned, not to Waxman’s office, but to the presence of the Reverend Kyle Umber.

  She was preparing dinner for herself and Gomez one evening when she received an instruction on the wall screen of her living room to appear at the minister’s office the next morning. At precisely the specified time—1100 hours—Raven stood before the double doors that fronted Umber’s suite of offices. The doors slid open silently.

  She stepped just inside the doorway. No one was there. This outer office space was filled with eight consoles, each displaying circular data screens blinking faster than the human eye could follow. No sounds. Raven could hear no hum or buzz. No noise at all. Th
e screens flashed and flickered madly with no person in the room to monitor them.

  Before she could think of anything to say or even blink her eyes, a flatly emotionless robotic voice said from a speaker in the ceiling:

  “Welcome, Ms. Marchesi. Please proceed along the middle aisle to the door on the far wall.”

  Feeling a little uncertain, Raven walked past the busily flashing computer consoles toward the door, which slid open as she approached it.

  She stepped through, into a garden.

  It had a high, dome-like ceiling, barely visible through the branches of the trees and shrubs that lined the walkway curving through the foliage. Flowers bloomed everywhere and the air was scented with their fragrance.

  “That’s right,” a human voice spoke out of nowhere, “just walk along the path.”

  The seamless golden path curved left, then right, then ended at a magnificent broad desk of teak and inlaid precious metals. Behind the desk stood the Reverend Kyle Umber, smiling beneficently.

  “Welcome, Ms. Marchesi,” Umber said, spreading his arms in salutation. He was dressed in a spotless white suit that seemed almost to glow. Raven half expected a halo to be hovering above his thick shoulder-length reddish-brown hair.

  She realized that Umber’s desk was subtly raised above floor level. Even though she was standing, she had to look slightly up at him. She approached the desk and saw that there was a single stiff-looking chair placed in front of it.

  “Please sit,” said Umber, gesturing to the chair. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  The chair didn’t look comfortable, but Raven sat slowly down on it. To her surprise, the chair seemed to shift, almost to flow, until it conformed to her body shape.

  Umber sank into his own high-backed black plush chair. Leaning forward and resting his forearms on the desktop, he asked solicitously, “May I address you as Raven?”

  Raven nodded wordlessly.

  “Good. And you may call me Reverend Umber.”