Lola paused.
"And then?" asked the polite voice, for what felt like the hundredth time.
"I don't know." Lola sighed. She wanted an answer as much as he did. "I told you, after my ship was in the landing circle my view was cut off from anything on the surface. I didn't see anything until I saw the other ship."
"Very good." The Security officer was tall and thin, with dark hair and eyebrows and a serious, owlish face. He glanced across to some hidden camera, to make sure that everything was still going into the record, and continued. "If you don't mind, I would like to review everything one more time. From the beginning. Your first meeting with Bryce Sonnenberg . . ."
He was always the same. Unfailingly polite, solicitous for her comfort, stopping whenever she showed the slightest sign of fatigue or discomfort; and remorseless when it came to recapturing every tiny detail of her memories.
He was only doing his job, and doing it very well; but it would have been much more tolerable for Lola if he had answered questions as well as asking them, giving as well as receiving. She felt as though she had been in an information vacuum for the past forty-eight hours.
After her arrival on Lysithea she had sat stunned for a few minutes, dazed and perplexed by what she had seen and felt on the final approach. When at last she put on a suit and opened the Dimbula's hatch, she had no real idea what to do next. Joss Cayuga was supposed to meet her, to guide her to the Lysithean habitat. But his ship had been destroyed before it landed.
She was standing irresolute by the air lock, wondering how to reach a communication point from which she could talk to Ganymede, when the meshed plates of the landing circle opened wide above her. The stars were visible and another ship was descending. Joss Cayuga's ship? Lola waited, wondering if some accidental trompe l'oeil of the Lysithean docking system had made her see a ship being destroyed when no such thing had happened. She watched the vessel drift down to a soft landing and wandered over to it in a daze. She expected Joss Cayuga to come out. When not one but two suited figures emerged, it merely added to her sense of unreality.
The final touch was provided when she saw the faces behind the suit visors: Spook and Bryce Sonnenberg. They were gaping at her in disbelief, apparently as surprised to see her as she was to see them.
"Lola!" Spook said. "We thought that was you up there. I mean, we saw that ship smash into the surface—"
"What are you two doing here? You're supposed to be back on Ganymede."
Then they were both talking at once. "We couldn't get through to you."
"We didn't like the idea that you were heading out to see Joss Cayuga."
"Alicia Rios and Jinx Barker were both definitely murdered; we heard it on the news broadcast."
"You're wanted for questioning."
"Now wait a minute!" Lola tried to stop them, but they flowed right on.
"Bat says Joss Cayuga is the same as Jeffrey Cayuga."
"The very same person!"
"And Alicia Rios is the same as Athene Rios—"
"—the one who was on the original Saturn expedition."
What they were saying was making less and less sense to Lola, but one statement had jumped out from all the others. "Did you say I'm wanted for questioning? By Security? I hope you didn't tell them that I was out here."
Spook shook his head vigorously. "We didn't."
"Good, because once they get started on something like this—"
Lola paused. What she had been about to say had just become completely irrelevant. The plates of the landing circle were still wide open, and drifting down through the broad aperture came yet another ship. It was one of the new, high-performance pinnaces that Lola had heard about but had never seen before, capable of a continuous four-gee thrust. On its flat underside it bore the emblem of the sun and planets sitting within a bright red guarding circle.
Security had arrived.
* * *
No one mentioned the words "accuse" or "arrest." It was standard procedure that Lola, Spook, and Bryce would be kept separate from each other and isolated during questioning. In spite of all that, Lola's cabin felt very much like a prison cell as the Security vessel whipped the three of them from Lysithea to Ganymede in less than a fourth of the time that it had taken her to fly out. When they reached Ganymede, the rooms that she was assigned were luxurious but there was no doubt that she was not free to leave.
But the rules had apparently changed. Her questions could now coax information out of the man assigned to the interview (her brain thought "interrogation").
"We're not incompetent, you know," he said mildly. "But we are required to follow procedures. We knew from the passenger registry, almost the minute you left Ganymede, that you were on a ship bound to Lysithea. Since you weren't a prime suspect in Jinx Barker's murder, there was no great hurry. It took a little while to obtain approval to follow you."
"I thought I was a suspect. I mean, it happened in my office and everything. What made you decide that I didn't do it?"
The owl eyes blinked at her. He seemed to be considering just how much Security might gain by telling her more. "Barker was suffocated with a pillow," he said at last. "The most recent skin microsamples on that pillow had Y chromosomes. Barker was killed by a male. We are still looking for his ID match."
"But if you knew I didn't do it, and you weren't in a great hurry to get your hands on me, why did you come out so fast to Lysithea?"
"We had a call suggesting that you might be in danger. A very strange call, from someone we now know to be a friend of you and of your brother. Rustum Battachariya is an interesting character." The man's expression suggested that he found Bat as curious as the call. "What did he tell you?"
"At the time, almost nothing. If he had been less cryptic we might not have hurried out after you so promptly. He may have said more to us by now, because he was scheduled for questioning."
Good luck, thought Lola, to anyone who had the job of interviewing Bat. He tended to be a pain to deal with even when he thought he was being cooperative.
"Is he in custody?"
"With your permission, I would like to return to the mode in which I am the one asking the questions." The man smiled at Lola, taking any edge off his words. She decided that she rather liked him, and also that he was good at his job. Lots of empathy. With a little training he might even be a haldane prospect.
"One more time," he asked after a few silent moments, "how well did you know Joss Cayuga?"
He was going over the same old ground, but this time he had used the past tense. Apparently he thought it might help to pry information out of Lola if she knew that Joss Cayuga was definitely dead. She stared at him. The round eyes were hooded by heavy lids. She could read nothing from his face.
"I didn't really know Joss Cayuga at all. We talked over a video link—that was it. I saw him as a possible source of information."
"About Jeffrey Cayuga. How well did you know him?"
"We never met or talked."
"Alicia Rios?"
"I saw her once at a First Family party. We did not speak."
"Jinx Barker?"
"We were lovers. And—he tried to kill me."
"You think that he tried to kill you."
"He admitted it."
"Only to you. And he is dead. What do you know about the Ganymede Club?"
"To the best of my knowledge, I have never heard of such a group."
"Nor had I, until yesterday." He came to a decision, stood up, and extended a hand to Lola. "Thank you, Lola Belman. You have been very cooperative. You are free to go."
"You mean—I can go home?"
"Exactly. Assuming that is where you wish to go. Let me mention two things before you leave. First, we would appreciate it if you do not seek to leave Ganymede until we approve it."
"You mean you won't let me leave Ganymede."
"Phrase it that way if you wish. Second, do not be alarmed if you feel that you are being followed. You are, by us, until we are abs
olutely sure of your safety."
"I should have come to you people right at the beginning."
"You are not the first person to say that to me." He smiled. "Next time, maybe. Except that I hope there will not be a next time for you."
"What about my brother?"
He paused for a moment, as though he were listening. It confirmed Lola's opinion that unseen, two-way communication with others had been available to him all through her interview. At last he nodded.
"Augustus Belman was released half an hour ago."
"Spook. Call him Augustus and he'll kill you."
"I will remember that. As I said, Spook is free. Bryce Sonnenberg and Rustum Battachariya have also been released."
"Great. Do you know where each of them went? Actually, I'm quite sure you do. Will you tell me where each of them went?"
"They did not go anywhere. They were told that you might shortly be free to depart, and they remained here on Security premises. We have made accommodation and meeting rooms available for as long as you choose to stay."
"While you watch and listen behind the walls?"
"I said no such thing." His grey eyes gave her a secret, sideways glance. "But it is a curious fact, that even when people are told that they are being watched, within less than an hour they seem to forget it. Their conversation becomes quite open and natural."
He had said more than he was supposed to—Lola could tell by the final look that he gave her. She nodded, impulsively reached out and squeezed his thin upper arm, then dashed for the door.
She almost expected that Spook and the others would be waiting right outside, but that idea ended when she emerged into a bare, dismal corridor. She looked both ways and saw nobody.
"I would have come and showed you if you hadn't been in such a hurry," called an amused voice from the open door behind her. "To the right, then first left, and left again."
"Thanks." Brinkson? Berickson? Lola realized that she didn't even remember his name, though he had certainly told it to her when they first met. That was the problem—when they met, she had been in a total surrealistic daze.
She nodded her thanks and started out as directed, reflecting as she did so on how useful Security would find the tools employed by haldanes. The problem was, of course, that use of the psychotropic drugs and monitoring systems was voluntary. Every haldane patient had to sign off on them before they could be employed. No one with anything really worth hiding would ever agree to that.
The other three were waiting for her in silence when she got there. Bat, unable to find a chair wide enough for him, had spread out over the only couch. It was angular and sharp-cornered, and he was lying there with eyes closed and the mournful expression of a uniquely obese martyr. Spook was draped over a chair facing the door, looking casual. He nodded to Lola as though nothing out of the ordinary had been happening. Bryce Sonnenberg, unshaven, was over at a small bar mixing drinks of a virulent green.
He handed one to Lola without missing a beat, as though he had known the exact moment when she would arrive. Maybe he had. Lola took the glass and collapsed into the nearest chair. The sight of Spook and the others, obviously unharmed, cut a great knot of tension inside her. For the first time in a week she could begin to relax.
She took a big gulp and stared at each of the others in turn. "I'm sure each of you knows exactly what has been going on. But I don't have a clue. Spook?"
"Not me. I got things secondhand and I don't think I got everything. Bryce?"
"Not me, either." Bryce pointed to the couch. "Bat's the one who did it all. He knows the whole picture."
"An overstatement, regrettably." Bat finally opened his eyes. After Security's rude arrival and its insistence that he leave the Bat Cave, followed by a full day of questioning, he was ready for a little relaxation. Only the pleasure of logical exposition and a certain pride in hypotheses verified kept him awake and relatively agreeable. "What I actually know is very limited. What I am able to conjecture is rather more."
"Stop stringing us along." Spook knew Bat well enough to realize that he was savoring the moment. "Mix everything together and tell us what you think happened. And don't stretch it out too long. Tell it Alice-style. Begin at the beginning and go on until you come to the end."
"The beginning?" Bat sniffed the drink that Bryce had given him, grimaced, and put it down untasted. "I am not sure that I know the beginning. The best that I can do is to go back forty years, to the first Saturn expedition: ten people from Earth, on a four-year mission to follow up on the robot probes and explore the rings and the moons. While they were out there, something peculiar and unprecedented occurred."
"An accident?" Lola, like every other school child, had been told of the early human explorations of the solar system. "I don't remember reading about that."
"It was not recorded—or rather, I now believe that it was recorded, and the records were later destroyed. I have scoured the data banks, and there are no complete files for members of any of the Saturn expeditions. You have already remarked on the fact that those expeditions are very much a family affair, dominated and staffed by First Family members.
"So. Was there some kind of accident? Only if we extend the meaning of the word. I do not believe that what happened was an 'accident' in the usual sense. I did at first, when I found that every member of the first expedition had died between eighteen and twenty-two years after their return from Saturn. The only exception was the leader of the expedition, who died before the party returned. The rest seemed to have been subjected to some lethal but slow-acting infection, like a slow virus. Could they all have acquired it somewhere in the unexplored reaches of the Saturn system? That idea seemed strengthened when I found that no member of the expedition had left direct descendants. I began to think of an infection that was not merely fatal in the long term, but caused rapid sterility in the sufferers. I could imagine that the victims of such a slow but eventually fatal infection would not wish to advertise their plight.
"All the expedition members departed Earth soon after the expedition's return and made their homes elsewhere. By the time that fifteen years had passed, every survivor was living in the Jovian system—all but one of them here on Ganymede. That was curious, but understandable in a group whose illness had set them apart from most of humanity, and whose interests had always been in the outer solar system.
"But then the data-bank records began to appear stranger yet. The people who inherited from the original expedition members also died between eighteen and twenty-two years later. And so did their inheritors. It seemed as though any heir of the original expedition was doomed to die after forty and before sixty, and be succeeded by someone between twenty and thirty.
"Was it some sort of family taint, a hereditary curse that came down generation after generation? Hard to believe, since many different families were involved. However, I examined the backgrounds of the people who had inherited, and I found something else that defied explanation: Not one of them possessed a complete and verifiable background. They had lived on Earth, or Mars, or in the Belt; but when I looked for their original records, they were not to be found. The heirs appeared to have sprung up from nowhere.
"A fine puzzle indeed, but one that still seemed incompletely specified. I added in one other fact: Every individual in this whole affair died in circumstances leaving no body available for autopsy. Note that this includes the only case of which we have direct knowledge. Whoever killed Alicia Rios went to great pains to ensure that there would not be a body available for autopsy.
"Now I had the basis for a strange conjecture. The original Saturn expedition had indeed suffered an encounter with an alien entity, which we may, if we wish, still call an infection. However, it cannot fairly be called an infectious disease, since the affected hosts did not sicken and die. Quite the opposite. They were protected from all the usual forms of infectious disease, including the aging process. Anyone 'infected' could still die by accident or violence, but otherwise they might look f
orward to a very long life span. I do not know how long."
"I do." Bryce had been sitting with his hands over his eyes. Now he moved them to cup his chin. "I know."
"You mean you believe all this stuff?" Lola was staring at Bat and Bryce with equal skepticism.
Bryce ignored her. "What was her name, now? Lord, it feels like it's been a hundred years. Nelly? No, Neely. Neely Rinker. She came to see me seven years ago when I was Julius Szabo and living on Mars. She wanted to know how long she would live if she was immune to infectious diseases and she did not age. I told her: almost three thousand years. She died that same day." He sighed. "And so did I, dropping to my death through the thin air of Mars. So much for statistics."
"But I've never heard of anyone called Rinker," Spook protested. "That's not one of the First Family names."
"No. I don't believe her real name was Rinker. And she was scared."
"With reason." Bat was frowning, absorbing a new variable into his thought pattern. "We have seen that the group we are dealing with is totally ruthless in protecting its secret—whether dealing with an outsider or one of their own. Jinx Barker was expendable, and he was not a member of the Club; but so too was Alicia Rios, when she became unreliable. It is bizarre. You, Bryce, have apparently encountered the group not once, but twice. Each time they have sought to kill you, and each time they have failed. What are the odds of that happening?"
"The odds are certainty—because it did happen." Bryce straightened up in his seat and was suddenly a different person. Lola, watching the shift, wondered how long it would be before Bryce recovered his memory completely and became an integrated personality. That was her department, but she was not at all sure she was up to the challenge.
The Ganymede Club Page 30