Titan

by Bova, Ben

  “So you’re the one who really discovered the ice bugs,” Pancho said, reaching for her wine. “How come they gave the credit to that woman?”

  “She’s a scientist,” Gaeta replied easily. “I’m just a stunt stud.”

  The three couples were sitting at one of the Bistro’s outdoor tables, on the grass. The restaurant’s special holiday menu featured faux turkey, faux goose, and faux ham—all derived from the genetically modified protein that the biolab produced. The vegetables, sauces, and desserts were fresh from the habitat’s farms, however.

  As they relaxed over a bottle of local Chablis, Pancho leaned back in her yielding plastic chair and admired the view. Everything’s so damned clean and tidy: the grass is manicured and the trees prob‘ly drop their leaves in neat little piles so you can vacuum ’em-up one-two-three. And instead of sky overhead there’s more land! Clean little whitewashed villages and roads in-between ’em. She could see the lights marking the paths like stars as the big solar windows shut down for the night. You can have an outdoor restaurant here without ever worryin’ about rain, she said to herself. They don’t even use sprinklers for the grass; underground drip hoses instead.

  Wanamaker, looking overdressed compared to Gaeta and Tavalera in a neatly pressed short-sleeved shirt and dark blue slacks, mused aloud, “I wonder if the Titan probe touched down in one of the methane seas and just sank to the bottom.”

  “That’s a navy man talkin’,” Holly joked.

  Pancho said, “They know where it landed. It’s on solid ground. The dingus sent telemetry confirming its landing and checked out all its internal systems. Then it shut itself down; won’t talk to Urbain’s people. Not a peep all day.”

  “Poor Urbain,” Cardenas said. “He must be going crazy.”

  Jeanmarie Urbain stared at her husband. She had never seen him like this. Ever since returning from the control center he had paced about their apartment, his face dark as a thundercloud, his eyes sullen, accusing. He cancelled the Christmas dinner that had been scheduled with Wexler and the other visiting notables. When she asked him what had gone wrong, all he did was snap at her.

  This was not the Eduoard she knew, not the patient, gentle man who had spent his life watching others climb past him, not the man who was content to allow younger scientists to advance while he stayed in place, who timidly acceded to the directives and procedures of the university hierarchies. I have misjudged him all these years, Jeanmarie realized. He was not being timid; he just didn’t care. As long as he was allowed to pursue his own research interests, none of the politics mattered to him one iota. Even when I nagged him to seek advancement, he shrugged it off as if it meant nothing to him.

  Jeanmarie had refused to go with him on this five-year mission to Saturn. It was the final blow. He had no self-respect, she felt, and no appreciation for her feelings. He was being sent into oblivion, a second-rate scientist assigned to obscurity in the farthest reaches of the solar system. She was still young, desirable. Some called her vivacious. Even among the sharp-clawed faculty wives she was considered attractive. Too bad Jeanmarie’s burdened with that husband of hers, she had overheard more than once. She could do much better.

  But he had unexpectedly returned from Saturn full of fire and confidence. One of his scientists had made an important discovery, which made him an important person. He dined with the head of the International Consortium of Universities; he was invited to lecture at the Sorbonne. He stayed on Earth only long enough to accept acclaim for the discovery of the ice creatures in Saturn’s rings and to reveal his plans for exploring Titan with the robotic vehicle he had built. And to sweep Jeanmarie back into his life. She realized that she loved him, that she had put up with his failings and lack of drive all those years because she truly loved him. When he returned to the habitat orbiting Saturn she was at his side.

  This mission to Saturn has changed him, she realized. Now he cares. He’s tasted glory; now he understands that one must have power in order to succeed. Now he wants to be admired, respected.

  And now this failure. His robot sat dead, inert, useless on the surface of Titan. It was enough to make a man weep.

  But Eduoard did not weep. He seethed. He fumed like a volcano about to erupt. He paced their sitting room radiating anger and frustration. All the passion he had kept bottled up inside him when he was among his scientists came boiling out now that he was alone with her.

  “Dolts,” he muttered. “Idiots. All of them. From Wexler on down.”

  “Eduoard,” Jeanmarie said as soothingly as she could, “perhaps it is only temporary. Perhaps tomorrow the probe will respond.”

  He glowered at her. “You should have heard them. The high and mighty geniuses. Throwing off theories like little children tossing handfuls of leaves into the air.”

  She saw the fury in his face.

  “It must be a programming error,” he whined in falsetto, mimicking Wexler’s penetrating nasality. Then, in a deeper voice, “No, it has to be an antenna malfunction. No, there must be damage from the entry into the atmosphere. No, it must be … must be …”

  His face was so red she feared a blood vessel would burst. Balling his hands into fists he shook them above his head. “Fools! Stupid, smug, self-important idiots! And all of them staring at me. I could see it in their eyes. Failure! That’s what they think of me. I’m a failure.”

  Only then did Eduoard Urbain actually break into tears, deep racking sobs that tore at Jeanmarie’s heart. She folded her arms about him and gently led him toward their bedroom, wondering to herself, What can I do to ease his pain? How can I help him? How?

  At the Bistro restaurant, Pancho had tipped her chair back to a precarious angle and lifted her softbooted feet off the grass, balancing herself teeteringly on the chair’s back legs.

  “You could get hurt if the chair goes over,” Gaeta warned.

  She grinned at him, slightly drunk from the wine and cognac they had absorbed. “Wanna bet I can keep it on two legs longer’n you can?”

  Gaeta shook his head. “No thanks.”

  “You’re a stuntman, ain’tcha?” Pancho teased. “You laugh at danger, right?”

  “I do stunts for money, Pancho. I don’t risk my spinal cord on an after-dinner dare.”

  “Betcha a hundred. How’s that?”

  Kris Cardenas grasped Gaeta’s hand before he could reply. “Manny has better things to do than play games with you, Pancho.”

  Pancho let the chair drop forward. “Like play games with you, Kris?”

  Cardenas smiled sphinxlike.

  Turning to Holly and her guy, Pancho asked, “How ’bout you, Raoul? I’ll give you odds: five to one.”

  Holly got up from her chair. “We’ve got to be going, Panch. Thanks for the dinner.”

  “Welcome,” Pancho slurred.

  Her sister smiled. “This was the best Christmas I’ve had in a long time, Panch. The best I can remember, f’real.”

  Slouching back in her chair, Pancho drank in the warmth of Holly’s smile. “Me too, kid. Me too.”

  Wanamaker said, “It’s time we got to bed, too, Pancho.”

  “Oh? Whatcha got in mind?”

  He laughed, but Pancho caught a hint of embarrassment in it.

  As they got up from the table, Holly asked, “Are you going to watch them try to make contact with Titan Alpha tomorrow?”

  With a shake of her head, Pancho replied, “I been disinvited. Nobody allowed into the control center tomorrow except the workin’ crew.”

  “I’ll bet Wexler will be there,” said Cardenas. “Urbain can’t lock her out.”

  Turning curious, Pancho asked, “I heard you were gonna lace the probe with nanomachines.”

  “We had talked about it, Urbain and I,” Cardenas said, as they started up the path that led back to the village’s apartment buildings. “But he sent the beast down to Titan before I could work up the nanos for him. Impatient.”

  “Bet he wishes he had ’em on board now.”

/>   “Maybe,” Cardenas said guardedly. “Frankly, Pancho, I’m just as glad they’re not. He’d be blaming me for whatever glitch has shut down his beast.”

  TIMOSHINKO’S MESSAGE

  I know you can’t send an answer back, they won’t let you do that. It’s okay. Well, no, it’s not really okay but I understand. I’m an exile, a nonperson, and it would be dangerous for you to reply to me or even admit you’ve received a message from me. Still, I wish there was some way for you to let me know you at least get my messages. I don’t care even if you don’t listen to them; it’s just so damned lonely out here not knowing if you even received them.

  Big doings among the high-and-mighty scientists. The big lump of a probe they sent down to Titan’s surface isn’t talking to them. Just sitting there on the ice like the big pile of junk that it is. Makes me laugh. I worked for more than a year on that machine, on my own time, even. Put a lot of sweat into it. And for what? Like everything else in my life, it’s all been for nothing.

  Urbain is tearing his hair out, what’s left of it. The other scientists are running around like chickens trying to figure out what went wrong. Me? I sit all alone here in the navigation center with nothing to do. That’s where I am now, talking to you. Oh, I check the instruments, but we’re in orbit around Saturn now. We’re just going around in circles. No more navigation. No more propulsion. The only problem we could possibly have is if some chunk of ice hit the outer shell and broke one of the superconducting wires of the radiation shield. Then we’d have to go outside and fix it. It would be a relief from the boredom.

  I miss you. I know we fought when I had to leave and it was all my fault. I can see that now. I’ve made a mess of everything. The only thing I hope for is that I haven’t made a mess of your life too, Katrina. You deserve a good life with a man who loves you and can give you good, healthy kids.

  Me, I’m here in this fancy Siberia forever. It’s not bad, really I’m a free man, as free as you can be in this glorified tin can. I even ran for political office. Can you imagine? Me! I lost, of course, but it was a different experience, let me tell you.

  I miss you. I know it’s too late, but I want you to know that I love you, dear Katrina. I’m sorry I ruined our lives.

  26 DECEMBER 2095: MORNING

  Malcolm Eberly had worked hard to reach his lofty position as Goddard’s chief administrator. Plucked from an Austrian prison cell on the promise that he would set up a fundamentalist government to rule the habitat’s ten thousand souls, he had outmaneuvered the murdering zealots who’d been sent to keep watch over him and now he stood at the head of the habitat’s administration, admired and respected.

  Truth to tell, most of the habitat’s population didn’t give a damn about their own government so long as no one bothered them with rules and regulations. They had been picked from the dissatisfied, disaffected free thinkers, men and women who had run afoul of the authoritarian fundamentalist regimes of Earth. They were dissidents, idealists, troublemakers. Now they were more than a billion kilometers away from Earth, and for the most part both they and the Earthside politicians felt better for it.

  But they admire me, Eberly told himself as he strolled down from the center of Athens to the lovely little lake at the village’s edge on his morning constitutional. They voted for me overwhelmingly. As long as I don’t saddle them with too many restrictions, they ought to keep on voting for me.

  That business a few days ago with Pancho Lane troubled him, though. She certainly surprised me. Eberly touched his jaw where Pancho had hit him. It still felt slightly swollen but the teeth weren’t loose, thank goodness. The people are all buzzing about it: Pancho Lane knocked down the chief administrator and he just laughed it off. Does it make me look noble, forgiving? Or weak and cowardly?

  He ambled once around the lake, passing people afoot or on electrobikes. They all gave him respectful hellos or smiled their greetings at him. He nodded and smiled back automatically. Normally he would bask in their admiration, but this morning his mind was on Pancho Lane. Why did she come here? A woman of her wealth and power doesn’t travel to the edge of civilization merely to see her sister. She could talk to Holly electronically any time she wishes. There must be something more to it. There’s got to be.

  He barely noticed that the sunlight didn’t seem as bright as usual as he finished his morning’s walk and started back up the slight rise of Athens’s main street, heading for the administration headquarters at the top of the hill. Once in his office, he leaned back in his desk chair and steepled his fingers before his face, considering this new aspect of his situation. What are Pancho’s intentions? Does she plan to stay in this habitat indefinitely? Will she apply for citizenship? She was the CEO of a huge corporation until she retired. What if she’s come to take control of this habitat? Will she run against me in next year’s election? Could she throw me out of office?

  His face clenching into a worried scowl, Eberly regretted allowing the habitat’s constitution to call for elections every year. His original reasoning had been clear enough: Give the population the illusion that they have control over their government by allowing them to vote every year. They’ll think their leaders will be responsive to their wishes because there’s always a new election coming up. In actuality, Eberly had figured, the more often they have to vote the fewer of them will bother. Most of our so-called citizens are lazy and complacent. As long as they don’t have any major grievances with their government they’ll allow me to stay in office.

  And I’ll be a good ruler for them. I’ll be just and fair. I’ll do what is needed. I’ll use my power for good, he told himself. Leaning back in his desk chair, Eberly pictured an endless future of power and happiness. Power brings respect, he knew. After two or three elections everyone will admire me so much that I’ll be able to do away with elections altogether. And with life-extension therapies I can be the head of this habitat indefinitely. Me, Malcolm Eberly. They’ll all look up to me. They’ll have to.

  But Pancho Lane is a force to be reckoned with, he told himself, simmering resentment clenching his teeth. She made me look like a fool. That can’t go unavenged, unanswered. I’ve got to deal with her. I’ve got to get even with her.

  His decision made, Eberly told his computer to display his morning’s appointments. The list appeared immediately on the smart wall to his left. He found it easier to read off the flat wall screen than to peer at a three-dimensional image hovering in the air above his desk.

  The chief of the maintenance department wanted to see him. Frowning, he returned the call. The engineer’s image appeared on the wall opposite the appointments list.

  “We’re having a problem with one of the solar mirrors,” said Felix Aaronson, the maintenance chief. His round, fleshy face looked nettled, more irritated than worried. Something about his complexion seemed different, as if he’d been sunning himself and had acquired a light golden tan. How can he do his job and have time for sunbathing? Eberly asked himself.

  Eberly did not particularly like Aaronson. The man was a paranoid, always full of anxiety. Still, he put a smile on his face as he replied, “A problem?”

  “One of the mirror segments’s out of alignment. Not much, but we might have to send a crew outside to set it right again.”

  So why bother me? Eberly complained to himself. But he kept his smile in place and replied, “If the mirror needs to be fixed, fix it.”

  Stubbornly, the maintenance chief shook his head. “But it shouldn’t be out of alignment, man. All the diagnostics check out. Nothing’s hit it and nobody’s given a command to shift its position.”

  “It’s a piece of machinery,” said Eberly. “Machinery doesn’t always work the way it should, does it?”

  “You don’t get it. We’ve got all the diagnostics and the computer extrapolations and this shouldn’t have happened.”

  “But it did.”

  “Yeah, it did,” Aaronson answered sullenly.

  “Then please fix it and stop bothering
me with your responsibilities. I have other things to do.”

  The maintenance chief mumbled an apology and promised to get right onto the problem.

  “Good,” Eberly snapped. As soon as the man’s face winked off his wall screen Eberly told his phone, “Call Holly Lane. Tell her I want to see her at”—he studied his appointments list for a moment—“ten-fifteen this morning.”

  Precisely at ten-fifteen Holly appeared at his office door, dressed in a sleeveless pale green blouse and darker green slacks that emphasized her long legs. Tasteful hints of jewelry at her wrists and earlobes. No tattoos or piercings, Eberly noted thankfully. Holly had outgrown those fads. Yet even though she nominally followed the dress code he had set down more than a year ago, her blouse was cut off to reveal her flat midriff. Others did such things, too, he knew. They obeyed the letter of the code but wore mesh see-throughs or snipped strategic cutouts in their tunics or wore skintight outfits that left little to the imagination.

  “You wanted to see me?” Holly asked from the doorway. Once, when they had first started on the journey to Saturn, she had been like an eager little puppy whenever Eberly deigned to notice her. Now she was more adult, more sure of herself, less worshipful.

  “Have a seat, Holly,” Eberly said, pointing.

  She went to the minimalist Scandinavian chrome-and-leather chair before his immaculately clear desk and perched on its front six centimeters.

  “I’ve got a meeting in fifteen minutes,” Holly informed him. “Water allotment committee.”

  “This won’t take long. I was just wondering about your sister.”

  Holly frowned. “I’m sorry Pancho socked you. She can be a real wrecking crew sometimes.”

  “Tell me about it,” Eberly said ruefully, rubbing his jaw.

  An uncomfortable silence stretched between them for several moments. Then Holly asked, “So what do you want to know about Panch?”