by Ben Bova
“You ought to come out to Selene one of these days,” Torre said cheerfully, “and see our lab. Finest in the solar system. It was started by Professor Zimmerman himself, one of the real pioneers in the field.”
Deirdre listened with only half an ear. She couldn’t help watching Andy, across the room, picking listlessly at his dinner.
“Selene’s a terrific place,” Torre was going on, oblivious to her inattention. “You’d love it there. I could get you a reservation in the best suite in the Hotel Luna.”
“That would be nice,” Deirdre said absently.
Once they finished dinner they had to walk past the table where Corvus, Yeager, and Dorn were still sitting over coffee and dessert. Andy followed Deirdre with his eyes. She could feel him staring at her back as she left, her arm firmly in Torre’s grip.
As they neared Deirdre’s door, Torre said, “They’ve got Jan and me quartered down in the third wheel.”
“Not up here, with everybody else?” Deidre asked, stopping in front of her door.
“No,” he said, with a theatrical sigh. “I’ve got to go all the way down there.” Then his face brightened impishly. “Unless you let me stay in your place!”
Deirdre shook her head. “I don’t think so, Franklin.”
“Frankie,” he said softly, reaching for her.
Deirdre fended off his grasping hands. “Frankie, I think you ought to go back to your own place now.”
He raised both hands in mock surrender. “You don’t know what you’re missing, Dee.”
Thinking that she knew exactly what she was rejecting, Deirdre said, “You’re rushing too fast, Frank.”
He took the rebuff easily enough. “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow down in the lab we’ve rigged in the third wheel, then.”
“That’s fine, Frankie,” said Deirdre. “I’ve got to go down there anyway to work with the dolphins.”
Grinning at her, he said, “See you tomorrow, then.”
Deirdre felt grateful that he wasn’t more aggressive. He could use his nanotech work to pressure me, she thought. But he didn’t. Maybe he will later, but for now he’s being pretty reasonable. For now.
That night she dreamed of dolphins. And Andy Corvus watching her swimming with a sad, betrayed expression on his slightly misshapen face.
* * *
The day was long and difficult. After giving a blood sample to Janet Torre, Deirdre spent the morning in the dolphin tank, swimming with Baby and learning more of her vocabulary. Baby chattered and clicked away, usually faster than the translator built into Deirdre’s swim mask could follow. But one thing came through clearly: Baby’s parents had told the young dolphin the tales that they had heard about the open sea, the endless water that was too deep to reach the bottom, where tasty squid darted in numbers too big to count and the upper layers were warm with sunlight and wave-tossed.
“They’re not happy here, Andy,” she told Corvus once she had climbed out of the tank. “They want to be in the ocean, free.”
Corvus shook his head. “Baby’s never been in the open ocean, Dee. Her parents were scooped out of the sea when they were practically newborns, younger than Baby is now.”
“But they remember the ocean,” Deirdre said as she toweled off. “At least, they remember tales they’ve been told about it.”
She thought that this sign of intelligence would please Andy. But he merely shook his head and replied, “I suppose we ought to write a paper about it.”
“We certainly should,” said Deirdre.
Corvus chewed his lip for a moment, then said, “Looked like you and that new guy had a good time at dinner last night.”
“Frankie?” Deirdre blurted. “He’s one of the nanotechnicians from Selene.”
“I know.”
“They’re going to get rid of the viruses in my body.”
Corvus said forlornly, “That’s more than I can do for you.”
NANOTECH LABORATORY
For three days Deirdre spent her time mostly in the third wheel, giving blood samples to the Torres and then swimming with the dolphins while Corvus watched her, glum and sad-eyed. Each evening she had dinner with Franklin Torre, fearing that it would be terribly ungrateful of her to refuse him. After all, Deirdre told herself, he’s come all the way from Selene to help me. The least I can do is be sociable.
Torre always made halfhearted passes at her after dinner and always took her rebuffs with rueful good grace. “You don’t know what you’re missing,” he said each time. Deirdre simply smiled and said good night.
Once alone in her quarters, she began to study the files of the leviathans’ imagery. Sitting at her little desk, staring intently at the display screen on the wall, Deirdre tried her best to make some sense of the aliens’ images. But the images were incomprehensible to her. They didn’t seem to represent anything visually. They’re abstracts, she thought, nothing but splashes of color that flash on and off so fast I can barely make out their shapes. I haven’t a clue to what they could possibly mean.
When she entered the makeshift nanotech lab on the fourth morning Franklin Torre announced, “Our little bugs are starting to work.”
“They are?”
Pointing elatedly to a graph on the rollup display screen taped to the bulkhead, Torre said, “Look at the red curve. It’s definitely taken a downward trend.”
Janet, smiling just like her brother, said, “By the time you go down to the ocean your system will be rid of the virus completely.”
“That’s wonderful!” Deirdre said.
“I think we ought to celebrate,” said Franklin. “How about dinner tonight?”
“Again? We’ve had dinner together every night since you arrived here,” Deirdre said.
“Yeah, but tonight should be special,” Torre countered. “Tonight we can toast to victory over the rabies virus.”
Deirdre nodded, but in her mind’s eye she saw Andy’s disconsolate face. “Dinner,” she murmured, feeling that she was doing the wrong thing.
“Are you all right?” Janet asked.
“Yes,” said Deirdre. “Fine.”
“No puncturing today,” Franklin said happily. “We won’t need any more blood samples.”
“That’s good.”
Janet handed her a plastic cup of orange juice. “Your morning cocktail,” she said. “Chock-full of nanobugs.”
Deirdre accepted the cup from her and sipped at it.
Glancing at her brother, who was intently peering at a laptop display, Janet asked softly, “Are you really okay? You look a little … unsettled.”
“I’m worried about Andy … Dr. Corvus.”
“Oh?” Her hazel eyes widened.
“It’s … personal,” said Deirdre.
With a nod, Janet called to her brother, “Frankie, I’m going to walk Deirdre over to the dolphin tank. You don’t need me for anything important this morning, do you?”
Without taking his eyes from the screen, Franklin answered absently, “Everything’s under control here. Take the day off if you want to.”
Janet grinned at her brother’s back, then said to Deirdre, “Come on, let’s talk.”
* * *
Katherine Westfall was far from happy as she sat in her comfortable lounge watching the report from the head of the IAA’s legal department. The man’s image filled her wall screen. He was wearing a somber dark jacket, the expression on his once-handsome face set in a grim scowl, as if he knew the news he was bringing would not be welcomed.
“The long and the short of it,” he said, in a bleak, droning voice, “is that while nanotechnology has been banned in all its aspects everywhere on Earth by the Nanotech Treaty of 2039, human communities off Earth are not bound by the treaty’s provisions. In fact, the nation of Selene fought its war of independence mainly to be free from restrictions on nanotechnology.”
The lawyer’s office was in the IAA headquarters complex in Amsterdam, on Earth. Westfall could see palm trees outside his window, and the sea
glittering beneath a bright sun. Much of Amsterdam and the rest of the Netherlands had been flooded by the greenhouse warming and then painfully regained from the encroaching waters by a generation of hard, ceaseless labor.
She started to interrupt the man’s sermon, then realized that the distance between Earth and Jupiter meant that he wouldn’t hear her words for a quarter of an hour, at least. So she bit her tongue and continued to listen to his dreary monologue.
“The upshot is,” the lawyer continued, “that the scientists on station Gold are free to engage in nanotechnology research and use nanomachines as they see fit.” His dark brows rose slightly as he added, “So long as they follow standard operating procedures and take all the necessary safety precautions. These include—”
Westfall angrily snapped her fingers and the lawyer’s image winked out.
I’ll get no help from the lawyers, she told herself. Archer and his minions can play with their nanomachines and cure the Ambrose girl of her rabies. That will break my control over her completely.
Closing her eyes briefly, Westfall wondered what her next move should be. It’s obvious, she told herself. You’ve got to make those nanobugs into a dangerous threat, something that will attack the station and the people in it.
Then she smiled. No, she realized. Not attack the station. I need nanobugs that will attack that ship Archer’s sending into the ocean. Destroy the ship and the people in it.
I need a nanotech specialist, she realized. And quickly.
SACRIFICE
“So what about Dr. Corvus?” Janet asked as she walked with Deirdre down the third wheel’s main passageway toward the dolphin tank.
Deirdre glanced down at Janet, hesitating. She looked so much like her brother: short, slightly built, her light brown hair in bangs that framed her round face. Her eyes were light, too, a bluish brown hazel color. They looked bright, honest, trustworthy.
“I think I’ve hurt him,” Deirdre said at last.
“Hurt him? How?”
“I’ve been going to dinner with your brother every night since you two arrived here. I think Andy feels hurt over that. He sure acts unhappy.”
“Has Frankie come on to you? Is he making a pest of himself?”
Deirdre said, “Nothing I can’t handle. He’s actually a lot of fun to be with.”
“My brother?”
“Yes,” Deirdre said. “Of course, he can be … very attentive.”
“He can be an insensitive jerk about women,” Janet grumbled.
“Not just about women,” Deirdre said. “He made something of a fool of Andy that first night. Made him look kind of stupid.”
With a sigh, Janet said, “Frankie’s a jokester. He likes to think he’s a comedian.”
When Deirdre didn’t respond, Janet asked, “Were you and this Corvus guy involved before we came here?”
“No, not really. We were just friends. Along with Max Yeager and Dorn.”
“Dorn?”
“The cyborg,” Deirdre explained. “The four of us rode out here on the same torch ship and we sort of became buddies.”
“And now Corvus feels hurt because you’re having dinners with my brother.”
“There’s nothing going on between us,” Deirdre said.
For several paces neither woman said anything. Deirdre saw the doors to the dolphin tank area up the passageway ahead of them.
“There’s something more,” she admitted. “Andy—Dr. Corvus—he wants me to go with him on the mission into the ocean. He says I’d be better able to make contact with the leviathans than he would.”
“And you don’t want to go?”
“I’m scared! Living in that perfluorocarbon liquid for days and days. Hundreds of kilometers deep in the ocean. People have been killed on missions like that!”
They reached the double doors and stopped.
Very businesslike, Janet summed up, “So you think that Corvus is jealous of my brother and he’ll be hurt even more if you refuse to go on the mission with him.”
Deirdre nodded. “That’s about it.”
“Okay.” Janet grinned as she slid the doors open. “Let’s have dinner together, all four of us.”
“All four of us?”
“You, me, my brother, and Dr. Corvus.”
“Dinner,” Deirdre murmured.
“Let’s see how much of this we can thrash out over a decent meal,” Janet said cheerfully.
* * *
Deirdre didn’t know how Janet arranged it, but when she came down to the galley for dinner that evening, Andy was already sitting at a table with the Torre twins. Both men jumped to their feet when they spotted Deirdre and waved her over to the table.
Feeling tense, Deirdre sat between Corvus and Franklin, opposite Janet. Automatically she scanned the busy, noisy galley for Dorn and Max, but neither of them was in sight.
“Dee and I have been talking,” Janet said, without preamble, “about this mission into the ocean that you’re planning, Andy.”
Deirdre blinked with surprise. Janet was already on a first-name basis with Andy, and calling her Dee. She doesn’t waste any time, Deirdre thought.
“That’s the reason we’re here,” Corvus said, his eyes focused on Deirdre. “To get down there and make contact with the leviathans.”
“I don’t know if I can do it, Andy,” Deirdre blurted.
He looked surprised. “But you’re working fine with Baby and the other dolphins. You went through the perfluorocarbon immersion with no trouble.”
“Andy,” said Janet, in an almost motherly tone, “what Dee’s trying to tell you is that she’s frightened of the prospect. She didn’t come here to take a cruise in the Jovian ocean.”
Corvus’s brows shot up. “You don’t want to go?” he asked, in a little boy’s disappointed whimper.
Forcing herself to keep her hands in her lap, Deirdre replied, “It’s not that I don’t want to, Andy. I’m afraid to. I’m scared.”
He blinked, digesting the information. Then Corvus shook his head as if he were arguing with himself. At last he said, “Dee, I don’t blame you for being scared. This is all new to you.”
Franklin Torre muttered, “I’d sure be scared.”
Ignoring him, Corvus went on, “If you’re scared, Dee, you shouldn’t go. I want you to be safe. I want you to be happy.”
“Even if it means your mission might not succeed?”
“Don’t worry about that,” Corvus said softly. “That’s not your problem.”
“But it means so much to you,” Deirdre blurted.
“Not as much as you mean to me, Dee. You mean a lot more.”
NANOTECH LABORATORY
Katherine Westfall rode down the elevator to the third wheel, escorted by two of her personal assistants, both tall, well-built young men in dark tunics and slacks, hired for their physical strength and agility rather than their intelligence. They thought of themselves as hired muscle, she knew; she thought of them as boy toys.
Archer thinks he can keep this nanotech business secret from me, she was telling herself. The fool. I know everything that happens in this station. Everything, thanks to that lowly cook.
She had heard about Rodney Devlin before she ever left Earth: the so-called Red Devil was a major source of information about the goings-on of the station. Nothing happened, it seemed, without Devlin knowing about it. And Westfall was making sure that Devlin reported everything he knew to her. Not in person, of course; she didn’t want to be seen in the presence of this menial. But her staff stayed in contact with Devlin and kept her informed daily. What the Red Devil knew, Katherine Westfall soon learned.
One of her female aides had called ahead to inform the chief nanotechnician that the IAA councilwoman was coming to visit his lab. “Don’t ask permission,” Westfall had told her aide. “Simply tell him I’ll be there.”
Following the directions displayed on her pocketphone, Westfall strode two paces ahead of her strapping assistants until she reached the section o
f the third wheel’s main passageway where the makeshift nanotech laboratory was housed. Flashing displays on screens on both sides of the passageway’s bulkheads warned: DANGER—HIGH INTENSITY ULTRAVIOLET RADIATION. She ignored the displays and strode up to the door that bore NANOTECHNOLOGY LABORATORY on its identification screen.
As she reached for the door’s handle it slid back before she could touch it, revealing a slightly built young man with a round, freckled face and sparkling hazel eyes.
He smiled broadly and made a courtly little bow. “Mrs. Westfall, I presume.”
Katherine Westfall nodded graciously and stepped into the lab area. Turning, she told her assistants, “Wait outside, please.”
Franklin Torre’s grin morphed into open-mouthed alarm. “Uh, Mrs. Westfall, you don’t want them to stay out there. The UV isn’t good for them, not for long exposures.”
Feeling nettled, Westfall gestured abruptly to her assistants. “Come inside, then. Stay here by the door.”
She looked around. The laboratory area was small, scarcely as large as her own sitting room, up in the top wheel.
“You don’t seem to need much space, do you?” she said to Torre.
With a good-natured shrug, Torre replied, “Nanomachines are teeny little things. About the size of viruses. We don’t need that much room.”
“I see. And you are…?”
“My name’s Franklin Torre. I’m the director of the Zimmerman Nanotechnology Lab, at Selene.”
“Ah. Dr. Torre.”
“Mr. Torre,” Franklin corrected. “I never finished my doctorate. Got too busy doing real work.”
“I understand your sister is here with you,” Westfall said.
With a bouncy nod, Torre replied, “Yes, she is. You have good sources of information.”
Westfall looked around the smallish room again and saw that no one else was present.
Torre said, “Jan-Jan’s not here at the moment.”
“So I see.”
Smiling pleasantly, Torre asked, “So what would you like to know about nanomachines?”