by Thorne Moore
‘No. Of course he wouldn’t.’
‘He’d really prefer to round you all up on the last day and shoot you. But that wouldn’t be good for recruitment. He needs a trickle of returning millionaires to encourage more gullible fools to sign up. Just as long as it’s a trickle, not a flood.’
‘And you’re working to open the flood gates.’
‘Hardly a flood. But I aim to take a few of those gullible fools and turn them into survivors, who will come home alive, with a fortune at Pascal’s expense. Survivors who will be there to stand witness, if and when the world is ever willing to start asking questions.’
‘I see. And how many of your fox cubs have survived so far?’
‘Most. Let’s see, how many? There were twelve on our first run. I hadn’t fully thought it through at that stage, but nine of them came home alive. Only five on the second, but they all made it. Thirty-five on the third, after a big recruitment drive. That was a mistake. You can’t give adequate one-to-one tuition to that many. But most of them are still there. Nine on the last run. I’ll find out how they’re doing when we arrive.’
‘You keep tabs?’
‘Of course.’
‘Are we going to have a class reunion in seven years?’
‘I’ll bring my sax.’
She shook her head. ‘Your cubs probably stand a better chance of surviving than you. Quit while you can, Tod. If you really must stay Out, join up with Pan.’
‘Ah, Pan. Where good independents go when they die. But I’ve still got some life in me.’
‘Idiot! Your luck can’t hold. You need better protection than the hull of the Heloise. Pan would give you that and still leave you free to take pot-shots at Pascal.’
Tod smiled. ‘I do know. But if we joined Pan, we’d have to give up the Triton run. Pascal would cut his own throat rather than use a Pan ship. However, I like to see you worrying about it, Miss Gwynne. It shows an almost healthy interest in survival, even if not your own. We must be making progress.’
‘All right, Professor Foxe. If you start calling me Miss Gwynne, you’re going into educational mode again. I’m too old. I’ll leave you to educate someone else.’ She turned for the door.
Tod shot out an arm to block her way. ‘Weren’t Mr Smith’s instructions to offer me payment in kind for the information you were to tease out of me?’
She hesitated, then laughed and ducked under his arm. ‘No.’
‘You mean I gave that brilliant presentation for nothing?’
‘Be satisfied that I’m here to justify the ways of Tod to men.’
He smiled, watching her go. ‘I’m chalking it up on the slate,’ he called after her.
Chapter 20
‘All right, Davey. Pill.’ Tod proffered the medication and David swallowed.
‘Arm?’
David held up his arm.
Tod examined the healing slash. ‘As good as mended. So what about this?’ He touched David’s forehead. ‘There’s a bruise. How did you get that?’
David flinched expressionlessly. ‘I fell over.’
‘By accident?’
David puzzled over this.
‘Did someone trip you up?’
‘I tripped over...’ David struggled for a name. ‘Siegfried.’
Tod sighed. ‘He knocked you down?’
‘I fell over,’ repeated David.
‘You’re going to have to learn to defend yourself, where you’re going,’ said Tod. ‘Learn to fight back.’
‘Yes,’ said David.
‘I don’t think he could,’ said Yasmin. She was standing at the door of the infirmary.
Tod straightened up. ‘I don’t know. A few lessons in ju-jitsu, maybe. Fast learner is David. He can do all sorts of tricks, if properly trained. David, sit.’
David sat.
‘David, hands on your head.’
David put his hands on his head.
‘Now sit up and beg.’
‘Tod, don’t!’ Yasmin came into the room. ‘That’s sick.’
Tod turned to face her. ‘Yes. I know. The whole thing is sick. I can do nothing about it and it makes me angry.’
‘And anger makes you sadistic?’
‘I am naturally sadistic. Ask Merrit and Abigail.’
‘No, Professor, you like to deconstruct and reconstruct. That’s not the same thing.’
‘But I’m not David’s professor, I’m his top dog and he obeys. He’d obey, I think, if I ordered him to slice his own head off. Strangely, I find myself resenting it.’
‘Can’t you do any better than make him perform like a circus animal?’
‘I do. Even David has productive and useful talents.’ Tod packed the medication away. ‘Go on, Davey. Back to work.’ He watched David obediently amble away. ‘At the moment, he’s drawing up a complete chart of S97. As far as I can see he seems to have retained every nut and bolt in his head.’
‘And this is productive and useful? A map of S97.’
‘You never know. I’ll add it to the library. No knowledge is wasted, and David is busily employed.’ Tod growled his aggravation. ‘If anyone is in a position to come to an understanding with Pascal, it’s Michael Rabiotti. They must have arranged something between them. Some meaningful future for David.’ He shook his head.
‘You don’t mind the thought of handing over the rest of us. Just David.’
‘You’re all volunteers. Blame your own greed or guilt or despair for your situation. But do you think David volunteers for anything that happens to him? Still, that’s him dealt with for another day.’
‘Can you spare some time for your other students? Give them some homework or they’ll start smashing the bar. Extreme boredom is setting in.’
‘Tell them to follow Smith’s example. I’m not letting him play with the Ultima, so he’s been busy in the library. Read Proust. Learn Mandarin.’
‘While you hunt for the Tripoli.’
‘I know where the Tripoli is. I know where the Pelican is. The Pelican is still looking for the Tripoli. If they don’t pull their finger out soon, I’ll have to feed them some co-ordinates as a clue. If they were my crew, I’d shoot them.’
‘So it’s going to be a while yet?’
‘Tell Smith to ask me himself.’
‘I’m asking for me. How long do these—’
She was interrupted by two soft buzzes.
Tod touched the intercom. ‘What?’
‘She’s locked on,’ said Addo.
‘Finally!’ Tod whirled Yasmin out of his way. ‘We’re in business. You’ll have to occupy yourselves for a little while longer. Research and exercise.’
‘Yes, sir!’ Yasmin watched him go, then turned back to the infirmary, thoughtfully inspecting the contents of the medical cabinet. ‘Research at least.’
Smith was prowling around the library, peering along monitors and into cabinets.
Yasmin looked up from her own screen. ‘Are you going to put that terminal back together again?’
Smith returned, to stare at the inner workings of the station he’d dismantled. ‘It must be possible to rig up a connection to the Ultima from here.’ He lay on the floor to peer underneath.
‘Think up another project to keep yourself busy. Research us.’
‘I already have. All of you. And the crew. And Pascal. Pascal’s section leaders, Pascal’s aunty, Pascal’s hamster. And for good measure, Pan too, as much as I can. Might as well dig up everything there is to learn about Pascal’s enemies, as well as his friends, if I’m going to get out of this. No good!’ Smith wriggled free. ‘This is useless. Not a hope.’ He started reassembling.
‘What did you learn about Pan?’
Smith dropped a panel into place. ‘Claims to be some sort of salvage operation. Mostly salvaging anything Ragnox leaves unattended for five minutes. CEO is one Benedict Darke. A very colourful guy – if you believe half the rumours about him.’
‘I wouldn’t. I made up most of them. And none of them had any
effect. Discrediting slander may work on Ragnox’ rivals on the JCC, with reputations to ruin. But Darke doesn’t have a reputation in Platinum City. He’s an unknown enigma, except in the Outer Circles. Maybe he’s an enigma out here too.’
‘In that case, he’s an enigma I’ll unravel.’
‘Good luck with that. Meanwhile, you say you investigated all of us, too?’
‘Even you, Yasmin Gwynne.’
‘Even David?’
‘Oh, sure. Took a while to work through the Rabiotti secrecy screens, but, needless to say, I got there.’
‘Medical records?’
‘That’s about all there is on him. You want the low-down on the Rabiotti family ailments? Several cases of irritable bowel syndrome, in case you’re interested. And there was a prescription for Ventrix. That’s David’s medication, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. So it says on the packet. A heart regulator. Go on.’
Smith shrugged, less interested in the results than in the exercise. ‘Nothing about him being retarded or autistic or whatever it is. He has Lundquist check-ups every five years. The Lundquist is on Ganymede Beta. Heart clinic. I found his early records. Major surgery to repair defective valves, on a male infant, 9 months old, initials D.M.R.’
‘Any details of the operation?’
‘Please. I didn’t dwell on the gory bits. It was scheduled as urgent, green light as soon as the patient arrived. Lots of medical jargon, but the records say it was completely successful.’ Smith slid the screen back into place and sat back. ‘So? You think there’s something significant in all that?’
‘Maybe. A major heart defect. Why did they wait until he was nine months old?’
‘Perhaps this Jupiter hospital was the top surgical unit in the field and they had to ship him out?’
‘There are plenty of premium surgical units on Earth or Mars. And it didn’t take nine months even then to ship a patient out to Jupiter.’
Smith was intrigued. ‘Okay, I see the question. What’s the answer?’
‘I can think of two. Michael Rabiotti’s a great exponent of eugenics. Maybe, with his own child, he prevaricated, and finally did the fallible thing.’
‘Lovely guy. Couldn’t bring himself to euthanize his own son.’
‘But I think David wasn’t taken out to Jupiter; I think he was brought in. I think he was born out here. It must have been about the time Ragnox was establishing its OC headquarters on Triton. Rabiotti had a major part in setting up various research projects out there.’
‘And he took his family?’
‘Even a pregnant wife. They hadn’t fully appreciated the problems involved in extra-terrestrial birth at that stage.’
‘Medical stuff isn’t my field. I know the vice-chair of Haley International took his wife back to Earth to give birth, which was…’ Smith grinned brightly. ‘…a window of opportunity for me. I gathered it was routine. I didn’t ask why.’
‘ET children are complicated. Physical complications quite often, but they’re almost always...’ Yasmin hesitated. ‘They’re different. Earth is in our genes. It’s where we belong and if we aren’t born there, something’s awry. Even with Inner Circle births, there’s something lacking. Our centre of gravity? They make extraordinarily loyal Corporation employees. It’s as if they lack the focus that makes us whatever it is we are, so they substitute a focus of their own; the corporation that owns them. They’re easy to control. They lack Self.’
‘That sounds like Davey.’
‘He’s extreme though. Inner Circle children wouldn’t attract any attention in the street. It was the colonisation of the Outer Circles that really made people take notice. The physical abnormalities started the alarm bells, and then it became obvious that they were all seriously different. Something major missing. Or more to the point, perhaps it’s something major added. They seem to communicate with each other, some sort of telepathy. I saw David with a typical ET child on S97. They weren’t talking, not that I could hear, but it’s the first time I’ve ever seen him really conscious of another person’s existence.’
‘Takes one to know one. Can they be cured?’
‘Cured of what? We see them as freaks, but maybe, out here, we’re the freaks. At the start, it was all put down to bad genes. The earliest O.C. settlements were trial penal colonies, psychopaths and misfits, so any offspring were expected to be odd. Maybe that’s why it didn’t occur to Michael Rabiotti that his own child would be in the same boat.’
‘So Davey’s father isn’t sending him into exile. He’s sending him home?’
‘My guess,’ said Yasmin. ‘I hope I’m right.’
‘Well, lucky Davey. Nice to think Triton is home for someone.’
‘Still determined it’s not for you?’
Smith’s jaw set. ‘There seems to have been some misunderstanding about my role on this voyage.’
‘You signed the contract, Jo Jo.’
‘It’s absurd to suggest that just because I signed a document, for purely nefarious motives, I should actually be tied to spending seven years on Triton.’
‘Life’s unfair, isn’t it?’
‘And that’s assuming we even get there alive. Do you appreciate our situation? If we’re now the inviolate property of Jordan Pascal, how come we’re being shipped out by Will Tucker, Major Addo and Dr Foxe? These guys must hate Pascal like poison.’
‘Why? Apart from the obvious reason that any sane person would hate him.’
Smith sat back, folding his arms. ‘For a start, Tucker’s brother was on U11.’
‘The station that Pascal destroyed? How do you know?’
‘I told you, I’ve researched everyone. Tucker was chief engineer on a Ragnox superbitch. He quit immediately after U11 and went independent with a vengeance. Five Ragnox commanders involved in that massacre came to a sticky end, two of them in a confrontation with the Heloise, three more on stations where the Heloise happened to be docked.
‘Major Addo – he commanded a UN2 unit in an A-belt sector, a buffer between settlers and corporate mining interests. With Seccor building up its role, priorities changed. Another unit was sent in to “encourage” the settlers to go. Addo went back to HQ to argue for a velvet glove approach, and while he was gone, something catastrophic happened. Settlers and Addo’s unit vanished without trace. Guess who the corporate paladin was in charge of Ragnox interests in the zone? That was just before Ragnox decided Pascal was best suited to Outer Circles business. His black ops unit went with him. It’s been pruned substantially over the years – especially when the Heloise has been around. I don’t know how many Addo is still gunning for.
‘And Tod. Well, you’ll know all about Tod.’
Yasmin studied her blank screen. ‘He lost his college.’
Smith laughed. ‘He lost a whole lot more than his college. You know who sold them out?’
‘The Physics department.’
‘Yes. Headed by Professor Susannah Lafray Foxe. His wife.’
Yasmin caught her breath. ‘His wife! Of course he had a wife. She must have gone to work for Pascal. On Ganymede?’
‘S2, I think. Eventually shipped home for medical reasons. Mental issues. Back on Earth now. He hasn’t mentioned any of this?’
‘No.’
‘Well, next time you have a cosy moment with him, ask him to fill in the one bit of the equation I haven’t been able to establish yet. A small bit, but I’m guessing it explains everything.’
‘What?’
‘Ask him what happened to Heloise.’
Chapter 21
Abigail sat watching Selden. He dozed. Just as he always accepted any food going, so he used any quiet moment to shut his eyes. She’d always assumed, scornfully, that his tendency to nod off was a sign of old age. Now she suspected it was the hard-earned wisdom of years when any moment of tranquillity, however brief, was a chance too precious to be wasted. He knew. He’d been through it.
She realised, with a start, that his eyes were open. He was watchin
g her watching him, his eyes hard, resistant like granite.
‘What do you want?’
‘Nothing.’ She averted her gaze, then took the plunge and stared back at him. ‘You know Triton. You’ve been there.’
‘So?’
‘I want to – I need to know what it’s like.’
Merrit, who had been sitting at the bar, half turned, listening. Clytemnestra was no longer so engrossed in applying lip liner.
Selden responded by withdrawing further. ‘You’ll find out soon enough.’
‘I need to know now! I need to know what to expect. Please.’ The word escaped like a first stumbling attempt at a foreign language.
Selden conceded a minimal nod. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Anything. Is it like S97?’
‘No. Nothing like S97. The complex round Triton Tower is high tech. Scientific work. The rest – everything’s organised. Militarised. It’s not a filthy swill bucket like S97. Is that what you mean?’
‘I don’t know what I mean,’ pleaded Abigail. ‘I don’t know what it is I’m going to. I don’t know what they’ll expect of me.’
‘Work,’ said Selden succinctly. ‘You work.’
‘Yes, sure—’ began Merrit impatiently.
‘Competition,’ said Selden. ‘You compete to survive. You compete to do more than anyone else, to be seen to be doing more. Every ounce of your sweat is weighed in the balance. He doesn’t like shirkers. You know what shirkers are? Workers who fall asleep because they’ve been on duty for thirty hours; people who rub their eyes because they’ve been called back to the project after only two hours’ rest; people who stop to chew when they could just swallow and get on; people trembling with fever so badly they can’t hold their tools. Everything is done at double speed. There are no safety regulations. If someone gets hurt, you finish the project, then perhaps you go back for him – if ordered.
‘And all the while you watch your back, because most of the people who go out to Triton aren’t spoiled kids like you. They’re criminals taking a so-called easy alternative to jail, or they’re fugitives, men who know how to look after themselves and take what they want. You get yourself murdered; Pascal won’t care. It shows you weren’t alert and if you’re not alert, you’re no use to him. He doesn’t punish killing. Insubordination; that’s another matter.’