Cold as Ice

by Charles Sheffield

  He could think of a dozen bizarre or striking ways to announce the confirmation of Europan life. But Nell was right, they would not do. No ham today. This was too important for cuteness, too big for self-aggrandizement, too profound for trivialities.

  The message that he finally sent to Mount Ararat was addressed not to the whole solar system, but to Hilda Brandt alone. It read: "The existence of Europan native life is confirmed. I am now beginning detailed analysis. Jon Perry."

  19

  The Touch of Torquemada

  Sometimes a beautiful theory must bend in submission to an ugly fact. Bat was ready to admit that the point had been reached. Almost.

  He scowled at the screen. "Do you have physical proof?"

  "Of course I don't have physical proof." Mord scowled right back at him. "I don't have physical anything. I'm a disembodied entity, remember, the ghost of the machine. I can't carry around a bag of documents and pictures and diaries, the way you carry a bag of doughnuts. But I'm sure I'm right, sure as you're sitting there feeding your fat face."

  "And it was true for the whole period of the war?"

  "Except maybe for a week of two when he had to travel to Ceres. I saw him in the cafeteria just about every day. He must have been twenty or so, but he already had a head full of wild ideas about fusion. He'd talk your ear off if you let him."

  "No trips to Mandrake?"

  "Hell, I don't know. So what if there were? Mobarak wasn't masterminding bio weapons development, that's for sure. We were all so damned busy, we hardly had time to take a leak. Anyway, far as I know he didn't understand any more biology than I did. And I can tell you for a fact that he was right there with us on Pallas at the end of the war. I remember talking to him. We were all wondering if we were going to be blown to blazes in one last big flare-up of the fighting."

  The cameras that served as Mord's eyes zoomed in for a close-up of Bat's face. Mord's image sniffed. "I don't get this at all. You told me Mobarak's one of the few people allowed to come in here to see you without a big hassle. I thought he was your buddy."

  "He is in many ways a kindred spirit. And just as certainly he is also my long-time adversary. For he is Torquemada, and as such, he is many things." Bat sighed. "So once again it will be necessary to meet with him. In person. Do you wish to remain?"

  "Me? You're out of your tiny mind. Sit and listen to you two again, telling each other your daft riddles? I'd rather die. If I hadn't already." Mord reached out a simulated hand and switched himself off.

  * * *

  "You have heard the recent news of Europa?" Usually the conversation would begin far from its central concerns and spiral toward that axis through infinite whorls of digression. But today Bat appeared unwilling to display the subtle touch of Megachirops.

  Cyrus Mobarak shrugged. As always in his meetings with Bat he showed no signs of his public flamboyance.

  "Which I take to be an affirmative," went on Bat. "And so I ask my next question: Have you seen today's pronouncement by the members of Outward Bound?"

  "I skimmed it. They're predictable. I could have written their reaction myself."

  "But you would not. They are confident that they have the votes in the General Assembly to ban your fusion project on Europa. The reputed confirmation of native life forms has tilted the balance in their favor."

  "So they say. We shall see." Mobarak stirred in his seat, as though infected by Bat's directness and eager to move on. "I don't think they will win."

  "Indeed? The work of Dr. Perry has dealt them a powerful card, and they have long been your sworn enemies. It is tempting to identify them as the secret and inimical presence whom you detect in the Jovian system." Bat's eyes were invisible, hidden by the dark cowl around his head. His voice was distant, almost dreamy. "Of course, I cannot bring myself to offer such an identification, for two reasons well known to you. First, the members of Outward Bound could hardly be your secret enemy. They make no attempt to disguise their feelings about you."

  "And the second reason?" After twenty years of interaction through the Puzzle Network, Mobarak knew the mind of Megachirops. The opening gambit was on its way, but it would not be the main purpose of the meeting. An onlooker would have seen no more than two men sitting in civilized conversation. The other levels of communication—or combat—four or five layers deep, remained hidden.

  "They do not qualify as your enemy, Cyrus Mobarak, because you are no enemy of theirs. On the contrary, you, as Torquemada, are their principal financial supporter, and have been so for years."

  "A strange thought." But Mobarak was smiling the urbane, guarded smile that so annoyed Nell Cotter. "Why would I give money to people who hate me, and who fight against everything that I want to do?"

  "You ask me to conjecture? It would surely be quicker and more certain if you were to explain. Unless you propose to dispute my statements?"

  "Not at all." Mobarak gave a quick chopping movement of his hand to suggest that what Bat had said was self-evident. "Where do you want to begin? I'm assuming that you already know the 'big secret' of Outward Bound."

  "That the real objective of Project Starseed is not an unmanned ship to the nearer stars, but a manned ship that will carry a selected few to explore the Oort Cloud? That is obvious, but it does not enlighten."

  "Ah, but a ship with a human crew has other needs." Mobarak appeared to be scanning Bat Cave, never meeting Bat's eyes. "Why does Outward Bound insist on a helium-3/deuterium drive? Because such a drive produces only charged-fusion products, magnetically controllable fusion products, which can be diverted from the crew's living area. So there is a need for far less shielding. And why do they care about that? Only because shielding is heavy. They wish to minimize travel time. That's why they avoid the use of the Mobies, and that is why they say that I am the enemy."

  "And you are not?"

  "I am their single best hope. They do not know—because I have not yet told them—that I now have Mobies that produce only charged-fusion products. There will be a time for that revelation, when Starseed is almost ready to fly. Meanwhile, their dislike of the Mobarak fusion drives serves one central function. It unites Outward Bound. It is one of their few points of total agreement."

  "And you need that unity."

  "I do. I'm sure that you can tell me why, since it is a point amenable to the process of pure deduction. Unless you have been too busy sitting there feeding your fat face." Mobarak repeated Mord's words with no trace of expression, and they produced no reaction from Bat. But the unspoken exchange was clear to both men.

  I have a data tap that tells me what goes on in your very own Bat Cave.

  I am well aware of that. And you know that I know, or you would not have revealed your knowledge to me. But as you are also aware, more goes on in Bat Cave than you can discover from your data tap.

  More goes on in Bat Cave, and more goes on inside the head of Rustum Battachariya. That is why I am here.

  "If you heard those words," replied Bat, "you also realize that my suspicions of you as far as Mandrake are concerned have been completely banished."

  "I could have given you an assurance long ago."

  "You could have indeed. But would I have believed it?"

  "Let me say it, and you can decide: I have never visited Mandrake, not ever. And I cannot tell you who conducted those biological experiments at the time of the Great War."

  There was a tiny pause, a moment of suspense so short that no onlooker would have caught it. It said to both men; "This is the crux, the central moment of the meeting."

  "Oddly enough, I believe that each of those statements is true." Bat was smiling at some secret joke. "Language is a wonderfully flexible tool, is it not? It allows so many statements to be made, literally true ones, yet whose meaning depends wholly on interpretation. So let us return to the mystery of Outward Bound."

  "Shall I say it, or will you? There is no mystery. The Outward Bound members are fanatics. Their hearts are set on the Outer System, on Satur
n and beyond. They oppose anything—such as the large-scale changes that the devil incarnate, Cyrus Mobarak, proposes for Europa—that might focus solar system attention and resources on the Jovian system. They like to think that they are winning, and that Europa will remain undeveloped. But the issue is far from settled. The crucial Assembly votes will soon take place. Now suppose that at this critical moment, native life were to be discovered on Europa by Dr. Jon Perry, Earth's top expert on hydrothermal-vent life forms."

  Bat was nodding, his eyes half closed. "That result has not been officially confirmed."

  "But your sources have already picked it up, and so have many others. The word was leaked to Outward Bound, and not by me. Using all of the financial resources that they can lay their hands on—let us not waste time asking where those resources come from—Outward Bound is trumpeting the news of that discovery from every media outlet, together with the message: 'Europan life must be protected.' They are doing it now, as we sit here. Within the next few days, every person in the system will have heard their pronouncement."

  "And your Europan development will be thwarted."

  "For the moment. But suppose that Outward Bound were then to be discredited and forced to admit that they were wrong? That there is no native life on Europa? With such an admission, Outward Bound's credibility would collapse. All moderate opposition to the Europan fusion project would vanish with it. A vote in the project's favor by the General Assembly would be a foregone conclusion. The battle would be over."

  Mobarak raised bushy grey eyebrows at Bat and leaned back in his seat. He gave every impression of a man who had said all that needed to be said.

  As indeed he had. Bat could see the picture, more of it than he was meant to see. He could fill in every blank on Torquemada's canvas. Except one crucial element.

  "When do you expect a second announcement?"

  Cyrus Mobarak shrugged. "There I can only guess. That element of timing is beyond my control. But I will be surprised if it takes more than a few days."

  20

  Storm on Europa

  Mount Ararat was a small research base, designed to accommodate only a couple of hundred scientists, but nothing had been skimped in the way of equipment. Jon compared his working tools with those available on the PacAnt floating bases, and decided again and again in favor of Europa. For Hilda Brandt's researchers, it was nothing but the best.

  The Mount Ararat equipment was so good that the trickiest part of Jon's work had been the first task; the transfer of specimens from the pressurized storage units of the Spindrift to High-P tanks in the base's lab. He had done that himself, unwilling to allow anyone else to touch the containers. His official reason was that he did not want others exposed to the risk should one of the Spindrift's pressure tanks fail; their contents, still at six hundred atmospheres, had the stored energy of bombs. But the real reason had nothing to do with safety: Jon was simply fascinated by what he had found. Until his analysis was complete, he wanted the Europan life forms all to himself.

  The first few hours were spent in separating the specimens into discrete chambers, each only a foot across. Then he could change the internal pressure of any chosen tank to see how individual organisms were affected by pressure reduction. Jon had done the same thing many times on Earth. General behavior changed first, and ultimately damage came in the form of cellular disruption.

  If, that is, Europan forms had cellular structure. Jon had to remind himself, again and again: This is alien life. To assume that it had a resemblance to anything on Earth would be to run the risk of committing a major blunder.

  Remember the Burgess Shale. The history of Earth biology was full of cases like that famous one, where a worker had shoehorned new discoveries into existing classes and phyla and led the field astray for decades.

  Jon had that example in his head when he began with an analysis of the general structure and anatomy of his specimens. If he were to play the role of a new Linnaeus, a whole taxonomy for Europan life had to be created. But he had tools of which Carl von Linne, back in the eighteenth century, could not have dreamed. Low-intensity radiation and particles provided three-dimensional tomographic plots of internal structure. Tuned frequency lasers offered the chemical composition of every organ, at submillimeter resolution. Quantum interference devices delicately mapped minute magnetic fields, along with the tiny currents that created them.

  The work went slowly, but there was never a moment of tedium. By the end of the second day, Jon was ready to move to the next stage: cytology, the detail of individual cells. He was increasingly eager to see that cell structure, because during the final stages of preliminary analysis an awful suspicion had been creeping into his mind.

  It had begun as a pleasant surprise: The Europan life forms might be grossly different in appearance and function from the organisms found on Earth's surface, and even from the chemosynthetic sulfur-based life supported by Earth's oceanic vents; but there were enough similarities that his descriptions could be made with existing notations. He would not be driven to devise a whole new taxonomy for Europan life.

  And then it began to dawn on him: There were not merely enough similarities; for the big leechlike creatures, there were too many.

  He listed them: multicellular structure, with cellular differentiation. Internal body cavity, with digestive tube and mouth. Tough outer integument, an ectoderm with nervous and sensory capacities. Two-sex reproductive organs.

  Jon had never seen anything like the creatures that he was examining; but he could well imagine a hybrid of mollusk and annelid worm that would fit their description.

  And at the cellular level?

  He did the analysis, already afraid of what he would find.

  The results ticked in. True eukaryotic cells, with well-defined nuclei. Twenty familiar amino acids. Mitochondria, and ATP for energy production within them. And then, the final coffin nail: the cell scans were unambiguous. A DNA-based system was used for the coding of genetic material, with RNA as messenger.

  Jon stared with a sinking feeling at the listing of bases produced by the first part of the genome scan. Even the RNA codons for the amino acids were the same; CGU produced arginine, ACG gave threonine, UAC coded for tyrosine . . .

  At the most basic molecular level, the organisms that he had dredged up from the depths of Scaldino were not just like Earth organisms—they were Earth organisms. Parallel evolution might lead to DNA and RNA as the most efficient method for the transfer of genetic material, but the odds were impossibly long that the very same amino acids would be used and that the same symbiosis of cell and mitochondria would have taken place.

  Far more likely—overwhelmingly likely—was a much simpler explanation: Europan quarantine, designed so carefully to protect that pristine ocean environment, had failed. Sometime, perhaps as long ago as the original prewar Europan expeditions, Earth life had found its way through the shield of ice and drifted down to the warm hydrothermal vents. And there, without competition, that same Earth life—vigorous, tenacious, uncompromising—had established a toehold. It had grown, mutated, and multiplied into riotous profusion.

  Jon was filled with a colossal, soul-wounding gloom. He slumped at the terminal and laid his head on his forearms. A new living biosphere? No way. Instead of discovering a whole different world, he had found nothing, not one thing of value, only careless contamination. He did not need to travel all the way to Jupiter to find that. It was common enough on Earth.

  The dreadful feeling of disappointment lasted for less than a minute. It was swept away by an even stronger emotion: relief.

  He had come so close—so close to the absolute brink! He had, thank God, sent word of the confirmation of native Europan life to Hilda Brandt alone. Suppose he had followed his first inclination, and blazed a message out through the news media? Then he, Jon Perry, would have become the laughingstock of the whole solar system.

  Jon wandered out of the lab with a copy of his results, convinced that he was a coward fir
st and a scientist a poor second. Sure, it would be nice to become the new Linnaeus and live in the glow of fame. But suppose he had made his announcement at a big public press conference before he made his detailed analysis? That had been the temptation. Then he would be remembered all right—remembered as another Lamarck, a great and once-distinguished scientist now famous to most people only as the creator of a discredited theory.

  Jon could point to half a dozen other cases of bogus "great discoveries," from Blondlot's N-rays early in the twentieth century to polywater and cold fusion. His skin ran with goose bumps at the thought of joining that select leper colony of scientific pariahs.

  Another thought suddenly made things worse: Suppose he was too late? Suppose that Hilda Brandt had already presented his earlier message to the Jovian General Assembly?

  He had to talk to her. At once. Jon found himself racing through the white corridors of Mount Ararat, stared at by the few people he passed.

  Hilda Brandt was in a meeting with half a dozen of her senior staff. Fortunately, Europa possessed none of the multiple layers of bureaucracy that plagued Earth. Jon hammered on her door and blundered through. She took one look at his face and turned to the others.

  "You can manage this well enough without me. Buzz, I'd like you to carry on in your own office." And as Sandstrom and the rest left, staring at Jon with annoyance and undisguised curiosity, "Cheer up, Jon Perry. Whatever it is, it can't be that bad."

  "It's worse." How was he going to tell her? Straight. There was no other way. "What I said to you about Europan life—it's all wrong. It's not native life forms. There's been contamination of the Europan ocean. The life down there developed from Earth forms. Look at this."

  He laid the summary of his results in front of her. The kindly, concerned expression did not change. Only a flicker of bright brown eyes showed that she heard him, and understood the significance of his statements.