Dark as Day

by Charles Sheffield

  “I have little sympathy. You are multi-tasking, and we both know it. Do you have useful information for me?”

  “Of course not.” The Keep had closed, the Seine was open, and Mord’s scowling, long-nosed face appeared on the display. “I’m here simply for the pleasure of your company.”

  “As I am for yours. Sarcasm does not become you. What have you learned?”

  “You go first. What do you have?”

  “Concerning Nadeen Selassie and the boy child whom she had with her?”

  “You got it. We’re not talking Santa Claus here.”

  “I examined orbital geometries, and with a high level of probability their destination when they left the asteroid Heraldic was Mars. The ship that they were on had a planetary landing capability, which is itself significant. However”—Bat held up his hand, restraining any possible interruption from Mord—“Mars could have been no more than a stopping-off point. Mars record-keeping returned to normal surprisingly quickly. We can say with certainty that no one corresponding in physical description to Nadeen Selassie was present on that planet, five years after the Great War.”

  “So they died on Mars, or they got away. Either option, we lost ’em again.”

  “Perhaps not. I took this one step further. Assume that they left Mars at some time during the three-year interval following their departure from Heraldic. What, then, would be their possible destination? We can rule some out, very easily. A return to the Belt, in its devastated condition, would have meant certain death. They could have traveled out to the Jovian system, but their arrival would certainly have been noted. Even if they went to one of the refugee camps on Callisto, their presence and condition would have been remarked. I searched the records, and found no sign of anyone who could have been Nadeen Selassie. Anywhere beyond the Jupiter system, such as one of the Saturn moons, would at the end of the Great War have been unable to permit their survival. All of which seems to leave only one possibility.”

  Mord said in a rasping voice, “Earth. Son of a bitch, they went to Earth. She must have been crazy. The damned planet was a heap of rubble.”

  “Less crazy, perhaps, than desperate. Again, I examined the orbital mechanics. Earth would have been relatively easy compared with any of the other choices that I have mentioned. Also, Earth did not suffer total devastation. The northern hemisphere was destroyed, but the southern one survived.”

  “Except that if they’d landed there, somebody would have made a note of it. Their arrival would be in the records. I’m assuming it wasn’t, or you’d have got to it at once and wouldn’t be stringing me out like this.”

  “No such arrival was recorded. That says to me that the ship must have landed in the northern hemisphere.”

  “In among all the teratomas that the Belt had dropped in? You’ve gotta be kidding. They’d be worse off there than out on the surface of the Moon.”

  “Not so. Survivors were picked up in the northern hemisphere. Not many, and no one who corresponds in age and description to Nadeen Selassie. However, several thousand people were recovered.”

  “That’s a lot.”

  “Not if we restrict our attention to small children, which at this point we can logically do. I queried the data banks for all below the age of ten who were recovered on the surface of Earth’s northern hemisphere anywhere in the appropriate time period.”

  “Bat, I’m impressed. You’ve actually been working. And here’s me thinking all this time you were sitting in there playing with yourself.”

  “I have, as you say, been working. And now it is your turn to do so, because I am unable to proceed farther.”

  “How come?”

  “Recalling what you had told me of abnormalities revealed in the autopsy on Heraldic of the girl child, I sought to obtain medical records of all the children rescued after the Great War in Earth’s northern hemisphere. I have their names, but other records were not available to me by any form of direct-access link. They are protected by irritating considerations of personal privacy. You, however, are able to approach the problem from a variety of angles …”

  “I got you. I can slither in most places. I’ll see what I can do. Now it’s my turn. When I first arrived here you asked me what I had.”

  “And?”

  “I took a different tack. You’ve been babbling on for ages about the Mother Lode of weapons. I decided to go off and take a look for it. I knew there was no hope in the old and established databases, because you and the other Great War buffs have gone through them for years. If I was going to find something, the place to look was in all the new, small databases that are coming online with the Seine’s search machines.”

  “And did you find it?” Bat’s voice betrayed a rare excitement.

  “No such luck. That would be too much to hope for. But I did discover some very odd bits and pieces. For instance, I found Nadeen Selassie in at least a dozen places. Most of them were just personnel lists involving Belt weapons programs. There were two odd exceptions. The first was in a list of something called planetary weapons. I’ll leave you the list, so you can make your own decision as to what it represents, but it looks as though the words ‘planetary weapons’ were used to distinguish them from free space weapons. It’s still a funny designation, because most weapons can be used anywhere, either down on the planetary surface, or out in space.”

  “Unless a weapon is designed to attack something you don’t find out in space—plants, maybe, or animals. The universal disassemblers down on Mars were like that.”

  “Could be. Except that the disassemblers were on a different Belt list, of weapons designed for use against personnel and equipment. But there was something stranger still on another list. According to this one, Nadeen Selassie had a new weapon fully finished and tested before the end of the Great War. It was classified as a weapon of planetary destruction. You’d think it would be just the kind of thing that the Belt leaders would have used on Earth or Mars, or even one of the populated moons of Jupiter. So here’s my question: why didn’t they use it? If it really was a weapon that could completely destroy a planet, that would have been enough to end the war at once, with the Belt the winner the first time it was used.”

  “Perhaps a full-scale version was never produced. You say only that it was tested.”

  “No. Apparently a production version was ready for use, complete with a delivery system.”

  Bat closed his eyes and sat in silence for a long time, so long that Mord finally said, “Hey, are you going to sleep on me?”

  “By no means.” Bat opened his eyes. “I am as lacking for an explanation as you are. A weapon, capable of destruction on a planetary scale, finished, tested, and ready for use. And yet, not used. It might be tempting to argue that the Belt leaders refrained from employing so terrible a weapon for humanitarian reasons, but everything we know of the Great War tells us that no such charitable motive can be ascribed to the leaders of the Belt war effort. They would have killed every human on the inner planets and all through the Jovian system, if it allowed them to win the war.”

  “So you agree with me. We got us a mystery.”

  “A mystery, indeed, and one that would be of high abstract interest, were it not for my suspicion—my conviction, even—that this weapon was not destroyed. It left the belt with Nadeen Selassie, traveled with her to the asteroid Heraldic, and is now—where?”

  “You got me. I’ll let you wrap your head around that one while I see if I can crack the data on Earth’s medical records. Anything else? Otherwise, I’m out of here.”

  “I will only repeat my earlier warning. Take care. The whole computing and communication profile of the System has changed since the Seine came into operation. I can detect a substantial difference, without being able to define or quantify it.”

  “Same here, but more so. I used to move around freely, now it’s look before you leap. I never relocate or access a new data file without checking everything beforehand. Look for me back here in a week or less.
If I’m not, you’ll know that something got me. Trouble is, you won’t know what.”

  Mord’s squint-eyed image vanished from the display, leaving Bat oddly worried. Mord was only a program; far more sophisticated than most programs, true, but still no more than a few million lines of logic and code.

  On the other hand, could you say much more than that about human consciousness? The loss of Mord would be mourned, as much as the loss of any human. And the blank display, doorway to the Seine, suddenly seemed dark and ominous.

  19

  TIME WITH THE OGRE …

  The witch of Agnesi was inspected, fueled, and ready to go. Jack Beston, arriving minutes before their scheduled departure, said only one thing to Milly.

  “Travel time with Ganymede surface gravity as ship’s acceleration would take too long, so I’ve set us for one-gee Earth. Okay?”

  At Milly’s startled nod—what choice did she have?—he vanished into his own suite of rooms and closed the door. His disappearance suited her fine. It was not his absence that worried her, so much as his possible presence. As for the acceleration, one Earth gravity was six times what she had grown up with on Ganymede and far more than she had ever experienced before. She would probably feel like she was made of lead, but if it meant getting there quicker she could take it. She went across to the pilot interface. “How long will we take to reach the Odin Station at Jovian L-5?”

  The pilot included a high Level Four Fax, embodied as a dignified man with a smooth face and a touch of gray at the temples. He frowned as though thinking about Milly’s question, although the answer could have been provided by the computer in microseconds. “Assuming that I receive no requests for change of acceleration, the scheduled travel time including mid-point turnover is eight-point-six days. Perihelion distance will be three hundred and eighty-nine million kilometers.”

  “But that will take us inside the Belt.”

  “Quite true. We will travel closer to the Sun than many of the asteroids. However, with our onboard matter detection systems there is absolutely no danger of collision. Can I help you with anything else?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “Then I hope that you enjoy the flight. If there is anything that I can do to make it more pleasant, don’t hesitate to ask. And now, please take a seat. The drive is scheduled to go on in thirty seconds, but cannot do so unless all passengers are suitably positioned.”

  Milly went to sit down and strap herself into one of the cabin’s swing chairs. She had been surprised by the pilot’s answer, but she should not have been. The acceleration due to Sol at Jupiter’s distance was only a couple of hundredths of centimeters per second per second. Given a drive capable of accelerations of a Ganymede gravity or more, orbits around the Outer System were practically point-and-shoot. The passage from Jovian L-4 to Jovian L-5 would take The Witch of Agnesi arrowing across between Sol and Jupiter, on a near straight-line trajectory. At turnover point the ship would be almost exactly equidistant from the planet and the Sun.

  She lay back in the padded seat. A few seconds more, and the ship was moving. The force that Milly felt was surprisingly gentle. If this was all she had to take there would be no problem at all. From the port on her left she saw the Argus Station, apparently rotating around an axis that directly faced Milly. She realized that the Argus Station was not actually moving. The ship was turning into position. And suddenly, while that thought was still in her head, a powerful force seized her and thrust her hard against the supporting chair.

  So this was one Earth gravity. She felt as though she could hardly breathe. Her breasts, always in her opinion too large, became more than a cosmetic problem. They were heavy weights pressing against her ribs. And she was supposed to endure this for—how long?—more than eight days, the pilot had said.

  Milly closed her eyes. Eight minutes would be too much. She lay in misery for an indefinite period, until she heard another sound in the cabin. She opened her eyes.

  Jack Beston was standing in front of her. He didn’t seem to be suffering any strain at all.

  “Here.” He was holding out a vapor syringe. “One Earth gravity for a week or so won’t do you any physical harm, but there’s no point in feeling uncomfortable. Just remember not to try to move too fast for the first few hours.”

  Milly didn’t have enough breath to speak. She took the syringe. If this was part of some deep Ogre-ish plan to render her unconscious so that Jack could have his way with her, then she was his and good luck to him. In her present condition, being unconscious was better than being awake.

  “Not there.” Beston gripped the syringe and re-directed it to a place on Milly’s neck. She, uncoordinated and with her hand weighing a ton, had somehow pointed the syringe at a part of the chair support behind her head.

  “You want it to act as quickly as possible,” he went on. “So an artery is best—and anywhere in the body works a lot better than a shot into the seat cover.”

  It was a joke of sorts, and Milly wanted to smile. She made the effort, and felt the skin of her face move and stretch in odd directions. What it looked like was anyone’s guess. She allowed him to direct the placing of the syringe nozzle and pressed the plunger when he said, “Now, push.” She felt the spray cold against the side of her neck.

  He waited a few seconds, peering down at her. “How do you feel now?”

  “Just the same.” But she didn’t. For one thing, she had spoken, an act which had seemed impossible only a minute ago. Her breasts felt like breasts again, not like lead weights on her rib cage. She released the straps that held her in the seat and began to stand up.

  Jack Beston put his hand on her shoulder. “Not yet. Sit here and rest for a couple of hours, let your body get used to things. Then I’ll take you to the exercise room.”

  She had noticed the elaborate facility on her first quick tour of the ship, and dismissed it as the foible of a man with more money than sense. “Are you going to exercise?”

  “Both of us are. Very gently, and very carefully for the first day or two. Muscle build-up under higher gravity comes amazingly fast, but it’s very easy to develop a sprain or tear tissue.”

  He retreated into his own quarters, leaving Milly to wonder what manner of man she was dealing with. Was he interested in her personally, as Hannah Krauss insisted? If so, he showed no signs of it. Was he an Ogre, as everyone insisted? Then he was an Ogre on its best behavior.

  * * *

  Milly had to wait two days before she could answer those questions. The Witch of Agnesi flew steadily on, its acceleration never changing. Milly’s body gradually adapted to the unprecedented acceleration field. She moved slowly and carefully, and reminded herself that humans had evolved in a force field like this. Jack Beston remained for most of the time in his own quarters, and Milly kept to hers. They met twice a day to eat, to exercise—gently, at his insistence—and to talk about nothing. He was fidgety and restless, but uncommunicative.

  Milly was not bored. She was too worried for boredom. She was busy obsessively analyzing and re-analyzing her own work, wondering if she had made some blunder that the others at the Argus Station had failed to catch, wondering if she would go down in history as a major discoverer or as one more footnote testifying to an alien signal that wasn’t. If she did take a break it was to wander over to the ports and stare out. When they reached turnover, the Sun, the ship, and Jupiter would lie almost exactly in a straight line. Already she could see the Sun’s intense glare out of one port, and Jupiter’s full face out of the one opposite. Ganymede, where her relatives lived and where until recently she had made her home, was never visible. The solar system felt very empty. She felt very alone.

  Late on the afternoon of the third day, Jack Beston appeared and asked her if she would have dinner with him in his private quarters. She couldn’t think of any reason to say no, so she agreed, but when the time came and she knocked on the door leading to his cabin, she felt highly uncomfortable. As she entered the sitting room she had to
remind herself that so far as he was concerned she had never been here before.

  She wandered around, offering compliments on the well-designed furniture and expensive decor. At last he said, “You know, back on Argus Station I have a reputation for being paranoid about security. I’m not, really, about anything but the project itself. Zetter’s the security freak, not me. But when I bought this ship it came with a monitoring system already installed for the private quarters.”

  Did that mean he knew she had been snooping around? It must. She stared at him. His face had a brooding expression, but he didn’t sound upset at her—certainly not as upset as Milly felt. “I’m sorry. When I came aboard, I wondered—I’ve never been on a ship anything like this before, so I just—”

  “Don’t apologize. Do you know what I look for in a person who applies to work on the Argus Project? Insatiable curiosity, about everything in the universe.” He waved her to a seat by the low table and dropped to sit cross-legged on the cushions opposite. He smiled a grim smile. “Of course, when certain other people display that type of curiosity, I don’t like it at all. I don’t mean you, Milly. Have you scanned the news outlets recently?”

  “No. Not since we left Argus Station.”

  “Well, I have. We sent word that we had a possible signal from the stars to just two places: Odin Station, and the Ganymede Office of Records. The signal that went to Ganymede was enciphered and should have been locked away. But somebody leaked it, and somebody cracked it. There’s a blurt about us on the Paradigm Outlet. Most of it is made-up nonsense, as you’d expect, but it says we have a message from aliens. Your name is mentioned. It’s going to be a pain in the ass until all this dies down. A hundred media chasers will be after you.”

  “What do I tell them?” In her whole life, Milly had never met a single individual from any outlet.

  “You refer them to me.” Jack Beston’s green eyes took on a gleam of anticipation. “I’ll give them more than they bargained for. I’ll offer them information—if they’ll tell me where the Ganymede leak came from.”