by David Brin
“Are you sure you’re well enough to be up here now?” deSilva asked Kepler. She helped the physician guide him to a chair.
“I’m all right,” he answered. “Besides, there are things that just won’t wait.
“First of all, I’m not at all sure about Millie’s theory that the Ghosts would greet Pil Bubbacub or Kant Fagin with more enthusiasm than they’ve shown to the rest of us. I do know that I’m definitely not taking responsibility for taking them down on a dive! The reason is that if they were killed down there it wouldn’t be at the hands of the Solarians… it would be caused by human beings! There should be another dive right away… without our distinguished extraterrestrial friends, of course… but it should leave immediately to go to the same region, as Millie suggested.”
DeSilva shook her head emphatically. “I don’t agree at all, sir! Either Jeff was killed by the Ghosts, or something went wrong with his ship. And I think it was the latter, much as I hate to admit it… We should check everything out before…”
“Oh, there’s no doubt it was the ship,” Kepler interrupted. “The Ghosts didn’t kill anybody.”
“What is it you say?” LaRoque shouted. “Are you a blind man? How can you deny the obvious facts!”
“Dwayne,” Martine said smoothly. “You’re much too tired to think about this now.” Kepler just waved her away.
“Excuse me, Dr. Kepler,” Jacob said. “You mentioned something about the danger coming from human beings? Commandant deSilva probably thinks you meant an error in propping Jeff’s ship caused his death. Are you talking about something else?”
“I just want to know one thing,” Kepler said slowly. “Did the telemetry show that Jeff’s ship was destroyed by a collapse of his stasis field?
The console operator who had spoken earlier stepped” forward. “Why… yessir. How did you know?”
“I didn’t know,” he smiled. “But I guessed pretty well, once I thought of sabotage.”
“What!?” Martine, deSilva and LaRoque shouted almost at once.
And suddenly Jacob saw it. “You mean during the tour…?” He turned to look at LaRoque. Martine followed his eyes and gasped.
LaRoque stepped back as if he had been struck. “You are an insane man!” he cried. “And you are as well!” He shook a finger at Kepler. “How could I have sabotaged the engines when I was sick all of the time I was in that crazy place?”
“Hey look, LaRoque,” Jacob said. “I didn’t say anything, and I’m sure Dr. Kepler is only speculating.” He ended in a question and raised an eyebrow to Kepler.
Kepler shook his head. “I’m afraid I’m serious. LaRoque spent an hour next to Jeff’s Gravity Generators, with no one else around. We checked the Grav Generator for any damage that might have been caused by anyone fumbling around with their bare hands, and we didn’t find any. It didn’t occur to me until later to check Mr. LaRoque’s camera.
“When I did, I found that one of its little attachments is a small sonic stunner!” From one of the pockets of his tunic he pulled out the small recording device. “This is how the kiss of Judas was delivered!”
LaRoque reddened. “The stunner is a standard self-defense device for journalists. I had even forgotten about it. And it could never have harmed so big a machine!
“And all of that is beside the point! This terra-chauvinist, archlaeo-religious lunatic, who has nearly destroyed all chance of meeting our Patrons as friends, dares to accuse me of a crime for which there is no motive! He murdered that poor monkey, and he wishes to thlrow the blame on someone else!”
“Shut up, LaRoque,” deSilva said evenly. She turned back to Kepler.
“Are you aware of what you’re saying, sir? A Citizen wouldn’t commit murder, simply out of dislike for an individual. Only a Probationary Personality could kill without dire cause. Can you think of any reason Mr. LaRoque might have had to do such a drastic thing?”
“I don’t know,” Kepler shrugged. He peered at LaRoque. “A Citizen who feels justified in killing still feels remorse afterward. Mr. LaRoque doesn’t look like he regrets anything, so either he’s innocent, or a good actor… or he is a Probationer after all!”
“In space!” Martine cried. “That’s impossible, Dwayne. And you know it. Every spaceport is loaded with P-receivers. And every ship is equipped with detectors also! Now you should apologize to Mr. LaRoque!”
Kepler grinned.
“Apologize? At the very least I know LaRoque lied about being ‘dizzy’ in the gravity loop. I sent a maser-gram to Earth. I wanted a dossier on him from his paper. They were only too happy to oblige.
“It seems that Mr. LaRoque is a trained astronaut! He was separated from the Service for ‘medical reasons’ — a phrase that’s often used when a person’s P-test scores rise to probation levels and he’s forced to give up a sensitive job!
“That may not prove anything, but it does mean that LaRoque has had too much experience in spaceships to have been ‘scared to death’ in Jeffrey’s gravity loop. I only wish I realized this conflict in time to warn Jeff.”
LaRoque protested and Martine objected, but Jacob could see the tide of opinion in the room turn against them. DeSilva eyed LaRoque with a cold feral gleam that startled Jacob somewhat.
“Wait a minute,” he held up a hand. “Why don’t we check if there are any Probationers without transmitters here on Mercury. I suggest we all have our retina patterns sent back to Earth for verification. If Mr. LaRoque isn’t listed as a Probationer, it will be up to Dr. Kepler to show why a Citizen might have thought he had reason to murder.”
“All right, then, for Kukulkan’s sake, let us do it now!” LaRoque said. “But only on the condition that I not be singled out!” For the first time Kepler began to look unsure.
For Kepler’s benefit, deSilva ordered the entire base reduced to Mercurian gravity. The Control Center answered that the conversion would take about five minutes. She went on the intercom and announced the identity test to the crew and visitors, then left to supervise the preparations.
Those in the Telemetry Room began to drift out, on their way to the elevators. LaRoque kept close to Kepler and Martine, as if to demonstrate his eagerness to disprove the charges against him, his chin raised in an expression of high martyrdom.
The three of them, plus Jacob and two crewmen, were waiting for an elevator car when the gravity change happened. It was an ironic place for it to occur for it felt as if the floor had suddenly started to drop.
They were all used to changes in gravity — many places in Hermes Base were kept off Earth Gee. But usually the transition was through a stasis-controlled doorway, itself no more pleasant than this but, from familiarity, less disconcerting. Jacob swallowed hard and one of the crewmen staggered slightly. In a sudden violent motion LaRoque dove for the camera in Kepler’s hand. Marline gasped and Kepler grunted in surprise. The crewman who grabbed after the journalist got a fist in the face as LaRoque twisted like an acrobat and began to run backward down the hall, bringing up his recaptured camera. Jacob and the other crewman gave chase, instinctively.
There was a flash and a shooting pain in Jacob’s shoulder. Something in his mind spoke as he dove to avoid another stunner bolt. It said, “Okay, this is my job. I’m taking over now.”
He was standing in a hallway, waiting. It had been exciting, but now it was sheer hell. The passageway dimmed for a moment. He gasped and reached to steady himself on the rough wall as his vision cleared.
He was alone in a service corridor with a pain in his shoulder and the remnants of a deep, almost smug sense of satisfaction dissipating like a fading dream. He looked carefully around himself, then sighed.
“So you took over and thought you could handle it without me, didn’t you?” he grunted. The shoulder tingled as if it was just now coming awake.
How his other half had got loose Jacob had no idea, nor why it had tried to handle things without the main persona’s help. But it must have run into trouble to have given up now.
Is that all? Full memory of the last ten minutes flooded back. He laughed. His amoral Self had been confronted by an insurmountable barrier.
Pierre LaRoque was in a room at the end of the hallway. Amid the chaos that followed his seizure of the camera-stunner only Jacob had been able to stay on a man’s trail, and he’d selfishly kept the stalk to himself.
He had played LaRoque like a trout, letting him think he’d eluded all pursuit. Once he even diverted a posse of base crewmen when they were getting too close. Now LaRoque was putting on a spacesuit in a tool closet twenty meters from an outer airlock. He’d been in there five minutes and it would take at least another ten for him to finish. That was the insurmountable barrier. Mr. Hyde couldn’t wait. He was only a collection of drives, not a person, and Jacob had all of the patience. He’d planned it that way.
Jacob snorted his disgust but not without a twinge. Not too long ago that drive had been a daily part of him. He could understand the pain that waiting caused the small artificial personality that demanded instant gratification.
Minutes passed. He watched the door silently. Even in his full awareness he began to get impatient. It took a serious effort of will to keep his hand off the door latch.
The latch started to turn. Jacob stepped back with his hands at his sides.
The glassy bubble of a spacesuit helmet poked through the opening as the door swung outward. LaRoque looked to the left and then to the right. His teeth made a hissing shape when he saw Jacob. The door swung wide and the man came forward with a bar of plastic bracing material in his hand.
Jacob held up a hand. “Stop, LaRoque! I want to talk to you. You can’t get away anyway.”
“I don’t want to hurt you, Demwa. Run!” LaRoque’s voice twanged nervously from a speaker on his chest He flexed the plastic cudgel menacingly.
Jacob shook his head. “Sorry. I jimmied the airlock down the hall before waiting here. You’ll find it a long walk in a spacesuit to the next one.”
LaRoque’s face twisted. “Why?! I did nothing! Particularly to you!”
“We’ll see about that. Meanwhile, let’s talk. There isn’t much time.”
“I’ll talk!” LaRoque screamed. “I’ll talk with this!” He came forward with the bar, swinging.
Jacob dropped into a deflection stance and tried to raise both hands to seize LaRoque’s wrist. But he’d forgotten about the numb left shoulder. His left hand just fluttered weakly, halfway to its assigned position. The right shot out to block and got a piece of the bar coming around instead. Desperately, he fell forward and tucked his head in as the club whistled inches above.
The roll, at least, was perfect. The lesser gravity helped as he came up and around effortlessly in a crouch. But his right hand was numb now, as he automatically shut off the pain from an ugly bruise. In his suit LaRoque swiveled more lightly than Jacob expected. What was it that Kepler said about LaRoque having been an astronaut? No time. Here he comes again.
The bar came down in a vicious overhead cut. LaRoque held it in a two-handed kendo grip; easy to block if only Jacob had his hands. Jacob dove under the cut and buried his. head in LaRoque’s midriff. He kept driving forward until together they slammed into the corridor wall. LaRoque said “Oof!” and dropped the bar.
Jacob kicked it away and jumped back.
“Stop this, LaRoque!” He gulped for breath. “I just want to talk to you… Nobody has enough evidence to convict you of anything, so why run? There’s no place to run to anyway!”
LaRoque shook his head sadly. “I’m sorry, Demwa.” The affected accent was completely gone. He lunged forward, arms outstretched.
Jacob hopped backward until the distance was right, counting-slowly. At the count of five his eyelids fell and locked into slits. For an instant Jacob Demwa was whole. He dropped back and traced a geodesic in his mind from the toe of his shoe to his opponent’s chin. The toe followed the arc In a snap that seemed to expand to minutes. The impact felt feather soft.
LaRoque rose into the air. In his plentitude, Jacob Demwa watched the space-suited figure fly backward in slow motion. He empathized, and it was he, it seemed, who went horizontal in midair and then drifted down in shame and hurt until the hard floor slammed into his back through the utility pack.
— Then the trance ended and he was loosening LaRoque’s helmet… pulling it off and helping him to sit up against the wall. LaRoque was crying softly.
Jacob noticed a package attached to LaRoque’s waist. He cut the attachment and started to unwrap it, pushing LaRoque’s hands aside when he resisted. •
“So,” Jacob pursed his lips. “You didn’t try to use the stunner on me because the camera was too valuable. Why, I wonder? I might find out if we play this thing back.
“Come on, LaRoque,” he rose and pulled the man to his feet. “We’re going to stop where there’s a readout machine. That is unless you have something to say first?”
LaRoque shook his head. He followed meekly with Jacob’s hand on his arm.
At the main corridor, as Jacob was about to turn to the photo lab, a posse led by Dwayne Kepler found them. Even in the reduced gravity the scientist leaned heavily on the arm of a med-aid.
“Aha! You caught him! Wonderful! This proves everything I said! The man was fleeing a righteous punishment! He’s a murderer!”
“We’ll see about that,” Jacob said. “The only thing this adventure proves is that he got scared. Even a Citizen can be violent when he panics. The thing I’d like to know is where he thought he was going. There’s nothing out there but blasted rock! Maybe you should have some men go out and search the area around the base to be sure.” Kepler laughed.
“I don’t think he was going anywhere. Probationers never do know where they’re going. They act on basic instinct. He simply wanted to get out of an enclosed place, like any hunted animal.”
LaRoque’s face remained blank. But Jacob felt his arm tense when a surface search was mentioned, then relax when Kepler shrugged the idea aside.
“Then you’re giving up the idea of an adult-murder,” Jacob said to Kepler as they turned toward the elevators. Kepler walked slowly.
“On what motive? Poor Jeff never harmed a fly! A decent, god-fearing chimpanzee! Besides, there hasn’t been a murder by a Citizen in the System for ten years! They’re about as common as gold meteors!”
Jacob had his doubts about that. The statistics were more a comment on police methods than anything else. But he remained silent.
By the elevators Kepler spoke briefly into a wall communicator. Several more men arrived almost immediately and took LaRoque from Jacob.
“Did you find the camera, by the way?” Kepler asked.
Jacob dissembled briefly. For a moment he considered hiding it and then pretending to discover it later.
“Ma camera a votre oncle!” LaRoque cried. He thrust out a hand and reached for Jacob’s back pocket. The crewmen pulled him back. Another came forward and held out his hand. Jacob reluctantly handed over the camera.
“What did he say?” Kepler asked. “What language was that?”
Jacob shrugged. An elevator came and more people spilled out, including Martine and deSilva.
“It was just a curse,” he said. “I don’t think he approves of your ancestry.”
Kepler laughed out loud.
13. UNDER THE SUN
To Jacob the Communications Dome seemed like a bubble stuck in tar. All around the hemisphere of glass and stasis, the surface of Mercury gave off a dull, lambent shine. The liquid quality of the reflected sunlight enhanced the feeling of being inside a crystal ball that was trapped in mire, unable to escape into the cleanliness of space.
In the near distance, the rocks themselves looked strange. Unusual minerals formed in that heat and under constant bombardment of particles from the solar wind. The eye puzzled without quite knowing why, a
t powders and odd crystal shapes. And there were-puddles as well. One shied away from thinking about those.
And something else near the horizon demanded attention.
The Sun. It was very dim, cut down by the powerful screens. But the whitish yellow ball seemed like a golden dandelion near enough to touch, an incandescent coin. Dark sunspots ran in clusters, fanning north-and south-eastward, away from the equator. The surface had a fineness of texture that just escaped focus.
Looking directly at the Sun brought a strange detachment in Jacob. Dimmed, but not red tuned, its light bathed those inside the dome in an energizing glow. Streamers of sunshine seemed to caress Jacob’s forehead.
It was as if he had, like some ancient lizard seeking more than warmth, exposed every part of his self to the Lord of Space and, under those fires, felt a pulling force, a need to go.
He felt an uneasy certainty. Something lived in that furnace. Something terribly old, and terribly aloof.
Beneath the dome, men and machines stood on a fused plate of iron silicate. Jacob craned his head back to look at the huge pylon that filled the center of the chamber and protruded from the top of the stasis shield, into the hot Mercurial sunshine.
At its tip were the masers and lasers which kept Hermes Base in touch with Earth, and, via a net of synchronous satellites, orbiting 15 million kilometers above the surface, followed the Sunships down into the Maelstrom of Helios.
The maser beam was busy now. One retinal pattern after another flew at lightspeed to the computers at home. It was tempting to imagine riding that beam back to Earth, to blue skies and waters.
The Retinal Reader was a. small machine attached to the laser optics of the Library-designed computer system. The reader was essentially a large eyepiece against which a human user could press cheek and forehead. The optical input did the rest.
Although the E.T.’s were exempted from the search for Probationers (there was no way they could qualify, and there certainly weren’t any retinal codes on file for the few thousand galactics in (’the solar system) Culla insisted on being included. As Jeffrey’s friend he claimed a right to participate, however symbolically, in the investigation of the chimpanzee scientist’s death. Culla had trouble fitting his huge oculars one at a time into the pieces. He was very still for a long time. Finally, at a musical tone, the alien walked away from the machine.