Jupiter Project jp-1

by Gregory Benford

  Dad stuck his head in. “Supper?”

  I shook my head. Then something nibbling away in the back of my mind made me say, “Dad? Remember the talk we had before I went to Ganymede?”

  “Yes.”

  “You said—or implied—the head of BioTech Division had advance information about the Lab maybe shipping us kids back. BioTech—that’s Yuri’s father, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, that’s Sagdaeff. He has good political connections Earthside. I don’t understand politicians—never learned to smile without meaning it—but I think Sagdaeff wants to parley the rearrangement, if it happens, into a promotion for himself. Maybe he’s fishing for Aarons’ job.”

  “Interesting,” I said thoughtfully. “Do you think there’s really going to be a scaledown, Dad?”

  “I gave up reading tea leaves long ago,” he said. “I shouldn’t have told you this gossip, either. Back to the guitar, son.” He gave me a slap on the back. I realized he was probably trying to distract me from thinking about Yuri. So I started plucking and strumming again, and pretty soon I was immersed in the music.

  Dad came back an hour later, whistling, to remind me that it was time to dress. I put on the only formal clothes I have: a black suit with broad lapels, cut back severely in the style of five years ago. Mom had let out the seams as much as possible but the inevitable had caught up with me; the pants pinched, my stockings showed stretches, and she’d had to piece the shoulders so I wouldn’t lose blood circulation in my arms. It didn’t matter much that the suit was hopelessly out of fashion on Earth—everybody else in the Lab was in the same boat, and anyway I liked the sequins on the cutaway lapels of the jacket.

  Dad and I walked to the central auditorium, me lugging my guitar case. People were already filling the bowl of seats. Jenny was waiting outside. She squeezed my hand and wished me good luck and I made small talk. I didn’t want to tell anybody about the Ganymede trouble and at the same time I couldn’t think of anything else, so I must have sounded like a dodo. After a few minutes of monosyllables from me Jenny gave up and went to find a seat.

  Backstage was a hubbub with people carrying props and sets around, women touching up their makeup and a few trying to learn their lines at the last minute. I found a corner to wait in and sat down.

  I could hear Commander Aarons introducing the program; his deep voice boomed out over the crowd without need of a microphone. Almost everyone in the Can was there. The auditorium is pretty far inward toward the axis, so gravity there is only a small fraction of a g.

  The first act used that fact to advantage: it was a family team I’d watched before, performing ballet feats that would be impossible on Earth. They leaped and whirled and threw each other high in the air. It made you feel light and carefree yourself, just looking at them.

  Mr. and Mrs. Bhadranin went on next. She plays tabula while her husband performs on the sitar, an Indian instrument. It was beautiful. Mr. Bhadranin let me fool around with his sitar once and I came away impressed; compared to it the guitar is a kazoo. Mastering the sitar is impossible—men simply devote their lives to it and try to achieve as much as possible. It’s not an instrument for a dabbler like me.

  A bunch from Maintenance followed. They did an involved skit about how messy the other divisions of the Lab were. The skit ended with everybody being forced to live outside the Can because the interior was crammed with garbage. I suppose it was funny, because people laughed a lot. I wasn’t paying attention; I was going on next.

  The skit ended. I picked up my guitar—I’d tuned it during the bursts of laughter—and stopped at the edge of the curtain for Commander Aarons to introduce me.

  The Commander is a big, stocky man with a grizzled moustache and a lot of smile lines around his mouth. He keeps up his ruddy tan and always looks like he’s in perfect health. That’s why I noticed the difference this time. He was standing off to the side of the stage, talking to one of the Lab officers. The officer was still in uniform, as though he had just left the bridge. The Commander was scowling. His face had turned pale. He asked the officer a question, listened, and then looked across the stage at me.

  He made a gesture for me to stay put. The Commander walked to the center of the stage and held up a hand. The crowd quieted.

  “I am afraid the rest of tonight’s program will not be presented,” he said. There was a questioning hum from the audience.

  “Tonight, while on duty and conducting satellite maintenance. Ishi Moto was killed by a small meteoroid. His death was instantaneous. The chunk of rock that struck him was only the size of a dime, but it was moving very fast.

  “Ishi was a fine boy. I do not think it appropriate that we continue this program. Good evening.”

  Chapter 9

  There isn’t much to say about the rest of that night. At first I could not believe it: as soon as the curtain was drawn I rushed over to Commander Aarons and asked, disbelieving, if I had heard him correctly. Hadn’t it been someone else, somebody with a name that sounded like Ishi?

  Even as I said it I knew I was trying to run away from the truth, cover it up, pretend it wasn’t there. I turned away from the Commander and automatically, mechanically put my guitar back in its case. The air seemed heavy and warm.

  I remember making my way out of the auditorium. I met my parents. I talked to Jenny. She was crying and I suddenly found that I was, too. Jenny and I stood in the middle of the crowd, crying and sobbing and holding each other, almost without knowing what we were doing. It was incredible. Ishi, gone. Forever.

  After a few moments I recovered a bit. Zak was there; I hadn’t seen him before. He took Jenny away and I left with my parents. Suddenly I wanted to get away from that place and away from people.

  We said nothing during the walk home. The terrible thing was that there was nothing to do. I guess there never is. Our society has no required ritual for friends and relatives of someone who has died. Instead, they sit and stare at each other and feel awkward, useless. They have no way to take the edge off their grief. I thought about that for a while until I realized that I was using the idea as a way to avoid thinking about Ishi, because that was too painful. And, of course, that thought made me feel even more rotten.

  When we got home I went to my room. There didn’t seem to be anything to say to my parents, or to anybody, Ishi’s job had been one of the dangerous ones, sure, but the computed chances of a man ever being hit were infinitesimal. His death was a fantastic piece of bad luck. Space suits provide some protection against low-velocity meteoroids, but there isn’t much that can be done about a pebble traveling faster than a rifle bullet.

  The Lab does what it can. We’ve searched out the dust clouds and small swarms of gravel orbiting Jupiter. When a shuttle goes out, the trajectory is programmed to keep the craft moving in the same direction as the matter around it, so that most of the tiny debris isn’t zipping by the shuttle. The best insurance is a fast trip, so the pilot spends as little time possible outside the Can.

  All these things are fine, but they can’t add up to absolute safety. We don’t know enough about the junk circling Jupiter and we never will—radar won’t pick up small chips of rock.

  So I laid in bed and thought about these things. And remembered Ishi. And wondered how many times in my life I would say good-bye to a friend, suspecting nothing, and then never see him again. It took me a long time to get to sleep.

  The next morning our family went to extend condolences to Ishi’s family. We sat on the floor and conversed, almost whispering. Most of our talk was of inconsequential things: flower arranging, the comings and goings of people we both knew, the subtlety of watercolor prints. We spoke only briefly of Ishi.

  We attended the service for Ishi together. His body was returned to the life cycle of the Can by breaking it down and distributing the elements to the chemical vats. Preserving the body and things of that sort are barbaric.

  We followed the Moto family to their home and spoke for a long while. We were served green tea. W
e smiled, nodded. We went home.

  I found the experience strangely satisfying. The Moto family maintained its serenity; it even buoyed up the friends who came to call. I promised myself that I would not let the Moto family slip out of contact; I could learn much from them.

  I moped around the apartment for half an hour and then went to class. I was having trouble with calculus and needed a session with the teaching machines. Our machines are better than the run-of-the-mill ones used in classrooms Earthside—they’re linked to the Lab computer, which can do two dozen different jobs at once and still fool you into thinking it’s as smart as a human being, even though the computer is only using a fraction of its capacity.

  If you can justify the expense, you can get a big slice of the computer’s capability assigned to you. Then “David”—that’s what the computer techs call it (or rather, him)—sounds like a genius. You can discuss quantum mechanics, economic theory, stellar exploration, or theology with David and he will give solid, well-researched answers as fast as you can read them. (I tried theology; he said God was one of man’s better ideas.) He’s a gift from heaven when you’re doing a term paper. On the other hand, David has a weak personality and never makes a joke. Machines do have their limitations. But one of these days some engineer will give David a sense of humor and overnight he’ll become a television personality. Until then, though, I find him a bit dull.

  I spent two hours with David, wading knee-deep through calculus exercises. David pounds away at a point until you feel as though you’ve been sandbagged. Then, just when you’re sure you are a mental defective, you understand—usually because David has finally found the way to present an idea so that it fits your particular bias.

  David isn’t just a storage bank for a lot of information. He is a psychologist, a judge, and a coach; just like a human teacher, only many times faster.

  This time he gave me a real workout. I left the booth feeling groggy. Zak was outside, looking the other way down a corridor.

  “Directing traffic?” I said.

  “No, just wondering why Yuri beat it.”

  “He was out here?”

  “Until a second ago, yes. I was going to ask him something and he ducked away.”

  “That was just when I came out?”

  “I guess so. What’s up?”

  “Let’s go have some coffee. I’ll bring you up to date.”

  After I had told him Zak whistled and rocked back in his chair. “A clever boy, that Yuri. No mouth breather, he. Who would have suspected he was such a snake?”

  “You. Me.”

  “We were prejudiced from the start. The question of the hour is, now that you are in the soup, how do we get you out?”

  “My father will talk to the Commander.”

  “And our good Commander, with contradicting testimony and all the evidence on one side—”

  “Will believe Yuri’s story.”

  “True. The man has his limitations.”

  “I’m going to forget the whole thing.” I shrugged. “Yuri has me boxed in.”

  “The Bohles I know doesn’t give up.”

  “The Bohles you know is no fool, either. Commander Aarons can’t do anything, officially, without evidence. His hands are tied. There’s no use in my whining to him about it.”

  “A point, a definite point.”

  Then I told Zak what Dad had said about Yuri’s father. I expected him to react immediately; instead, he sat and pondered, eyes narrowed, for a long moment.

  “You realize the implications, of course?” he said.

  “Such as—?”

  “Yuri’s father heard a cutback is coming. He guessed—or learned—that only one or two of us kids would stay. Then he told Yuri—”

  “—who put two and two together—”

  “—and got the square root of sixteen, after double-checking it with the computer. He figured you were prime competition, Matt. So he set out to be conspicuous—good at chess, a winner in squash, a hard worker for Atmospheric Studies, helping with the Walker on Ganymede.”

  “And he got me so frapping mad I took a risk on Ganymede. Then he took credit for it, and threw mud all over me in Commander Aarons’ eyes. Damn!”

  “Neat. Very, very neat. The hell of it is, you’ve got no comeback.”

  “I suppose not.” I sighed. “I’d rather not think about it anyway, not right now. This little scramble is pretty small stuff compared to Ishi.”

  Zak’s face clouded over. “Yeah.” He hunched over the rec room table. Neither of us said anything. Zak spilled some of his coffee and instead of sponging it up he stared down at it, distracted. He poked a finger into the brown stain and began tracing a watery design on the smooth, shiny surface. I felt like hell.

  “Look, I think I’ll go put in some time in Monitoring,” I said, getting up. “My watch comes up in an hour and I might as well try being early once, just as an experiment. Take—”

  “Matt Bohles?” A secretary from down the hall stuck his head in the door.

  “Yes?”

  “There is a call for you. You can take it on the student recreation center telephone.”

  “Oh, okay.” I hoisted aboard my notes, waved to Zak and jogged down the hall. The corridor curved up, giving the familiar illusion that I was running uphill. In a sense I was, because trotting in this direction I was moving counter to the Can’s rotation, which is harder than going the opposite way. For short distances the effect is unnoticeable; only when you’re going nearly halfway around the rim of the Can does it pay to stop and think about the fastest way to travel. But today I had other things to think about.

  I found the rec center phone and picked it up.

  “Matt?” my father’s voice said.

  “What’s up? I was headed toward Monitoring—”

  “Never mind that. I have been speaking to Commander Aarons. He wishes to talk to you. In his office.”

  When I got there Jenny was seated quietly on a couch. That surprised me more than anything else; what could she be doing here?

  Dad was sitting in a chair, holding a sheaf of papers. The Commander looked up when I came in, said hello and motioned me to a popout seat.

  “Your father brought to my attention a somewhat different version of the events on Ganymede,” Commander Aarons said, leaning forward and resting his folded hands on his desk top. “I do not mind saying that I am in something of a quandary. I must take a judicial position, since there exists conflicting testimony. At the same time there is no way to determine the truth; there were no other witnesses.”

  He stopped and grimaced. The movement tilted his moustache at an angle and gave him a red nose. “Therefore, young Mister Bohles, I shall drop the matter. No action will be taken. Both your and Yuri Sagdaeff’s stories are now known to me; I may or may not consider them in future evaluations of your performance.”

  The Commander stopped and let out a breath. “And that is that.” He reached out and flipped off a switch set into the top of his desk. “That’s the official recording for ship’s log. As far as regulations go the matter is now dead.” He looked at me and smiled. “But that is not the reason I had your father call you.”

  “Sir?”

  “I was wondering if you would be interested in changing jobs. You would work with Miss Fleming, here.”

  “Huh? Outside?”

  “Operating a shuttle,” my father said, “and making satellite repairs. The job Ishi had.”

  Now I understood why Jenny was here. “Who recommended me?”

  The Commander tapped a fingernail on the display screen mounted flat into his desk top. I could see some typed entries in what looked like a personnel form. “Your record,” he said. “You know electronics. You have maneuvered one-man shuttlecraft into parking stations.”

  “And you have good no-g reflexes,” Dad said.

  “I see.” I still didn’t like the idea of getting a job because Jenny put my name in. “But why so soon? Ishi’s job wasn’t all that urgent. W
hy do you need a replacement right away?”

  “The storms,” Jenny said.

  I looked over at her. It was the first sound she had made since I came in the room.

  “Correct,” my father said. “They are coming more often now and they are more intense. The entire upper atmosphere of Jupiter, particularly near the poles, seems to be in turmoil. The satellites keep track of this; if they fail we’re left with nothing.”

  “One is broadcasting intermittently right now,” Jenny said.

  “And we must have one person on duty to repair them at all times,” Commander Aarons said.

  I thought for a moment. Sure, it was dangerous. So was breathing, if you did it long enough. And Ishi hadn’t been afraid.

  “Sounds reasonable to me,” I said. I’ll be glad to switch over from Monitoring, if you need me.”

  “Ah. Good.” Commander Aarons stood up. “Best of luck.” He shook my hand. It gave me a warm friendly feeling.

  When we were out of the office and Dad had gone back to Monitoring I turned to Jenny and said, “Was this your idea?”

  “Mine? Don’t be silly. Commander Aarons called me in just a few minutes before you. He wanted to know if I would mind working with you.”

  “Okay. Sorry. I guess I’m just a little edgy today. The last twenty-four hours hasn’t done me a whole lot of good.”

  Jenny looked sad. “I know what you mean.”

  We walked down to the student rec center to get something to eat. We had to stand in line.

  “I think we ought to go down to the main bay and begin going over your shuttle,” Jenny said.

  “Huh?”

  “Well, you’re going to have to learn how to operate it sometime. I know you’ve done some simple piloting, but—”