Saturn gt-12

by Ben Bova

  Looking across the table to Cardenas, Holly said, “I haven’t seen Manny in weeks. How is he?”

  Wunderly answered, “Terrific.”

  Cardenas looked surprised. “Come to think of it, the last time I saw him was our final test of the decon nanos.”

  Wunderly glanced from Holly to Cardenas and then back again. “I see him almost every day,” she said. A little smugly, Holly thought.

  “Do you see him nights?” asked Cardenas, raising her teacup to her lips.

  Wunderly said, “Sure. Sometimes.” Very smugly, as far as Holly was concerned.

  “He’s pretty good, isn’t he?” said Cardenas.

  Wunderly nodded with pleasure.

  Suddenly aware, Holly blurted, “Kris, have you maxed out with Manny?”

  Cardenas actually blushed. Nodding behind her teacup, she said in a small voice, “A couple of times. You said you didn’t mind, remember?”

  “I don’t mind,” Holly insisted, knowing from the turmoil inside her that it wasn’t really true.

  Wunderly’s owl eyes went even wider than usual. “You mean he’s slept with both of you?”

  Cardenas put down her teacup. “Actually, we didn’t do all that much sleeping.”

  Holly burst into laughter. The pain inside her dissolved. “He’s a flamer, all right.”

  Wunderly looked hurt, though. “Both of you,” she whispered. It was no longer a question.

  Cardenas reached across the table to touch Wunderly’s hand. “He’s just a man, Nadia. It doesn’t mean anything to him. Just fun and games. Recreational.”

  “But I thought—”

  “Don’t think. Just enjoy. He’ll be heading back to Earth soon. Have fun while you can.”

  “ ‘Gather ye rosebuds’,” Holly quoted, wondering where she remembered the line from.

  Forcing a halfhearted smile, Wunderly said, “I suppose you’re right. But still…”

  “Just don’t get pregnant.”

  “Oh, I’d never!”

  Holly was thinking, though. “He slept with me when he needed help from the administration. And he slept with you, Kris, when he found out you could help him with nanobugs.”

  “And now he’s sleeping with me,” Wunderly chimed in, “because I can help him with the rings.”

  “That sonofabitch,” Cardenas said. But she was grinning widely.

  “You know what they’d call a woman who did that,” Wunderly said.

  Holly didn’t know if she should be angry, amused, or disgusted.

  “It’s a good thing he’ll be leaving soon,” Cardenas said. “Otherwise he might get murdered.”

  “He’s getting away with murder right now,” said Wunderly, with a tinge of anger.

  “Well,” Cardenas said, “he’s good at it.”

  Holly asked, “Nadia, are you going to keep on with him?”

  “I couldn’t! Not now.”

  “Why not?” Cardenas asked. “If you enjoy being with him, why not?”

  “But he’s … it’s… it’s not right.”

  With a shake of her head, Cardenas said, “Don’t let the New Morality spoil your fun. There’s nothing wrong with recreational sex, as long as you understand that it’s recreational and nothing more. And you protect yourself.”

  Holly wondered, How do you protect your heart? How do you let a man make love to you and then just walk away and let him go do it with someone else? With your friends, for god’s sake.

  Wunderly nodded slightly, but she looked just as unconvinced as Holly felt.

  “It’s not like the old days,” Cardenas went on, “when you had to worry about AIDS and VD.”

  “I read about AIDS in history class,” Wunderly said. “It must have been terrible.”

  “Just don’t get yourself pregnant.”

  “I won’t. I can’t. The habitat’s regulations won’t allow it.”

  Cardenas was no longer grinning. “I can remember a time, back before either one of you were born, when religious fundamentalists were against abortion. Against any kind of family planning.”

  “Really?” Holly was surprised.

  “Yes. It wasn’t until they dropped their ‘right to life’ position that the New Morality began to gain real political power. Once the Catholics got an American Pope, even the Vatican caved in.”

  For several moments all three of the women were silent. The cafeteria seemed to be waking up. There were more people coming in, more chatter and clatter as they lined up for their breakfasts before heading off to their jobs.

  Wunderly pushed her chair back from the table and stood up. “I’ve got to make a progress report to Dr. Urbain.”

  “And Manny?” Cardenas asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. He can be … well, attractive, you know.”

  “Seductive,” said Cardenas.

  “Charming,” Holly added. “Like a snake.”

  Wunderly just shook her head and walked off, leaving her half-finished breakfast on the table.

  “What do you think she’ll do?” Holly asked.

  Cardenas chuckled. “She’ll go to bed with him but feel bad about it.”

  “That’s brutal.”

  “Yep.”

  “Would you go to bed with him again?”

  Cardenas gave her a guarded look. “Would you?”

  Holly felt her lips curling upward into a rueful smile. “Only if he asks me.”

  They both laughed.

  “The sonofabitch is getting away with murder, all right,” Cardenas said.

  Suddenly serious, Holly said softly, “I wonder if somebody else has gotten away with murder.”

  “Huh? Who?”

  “I don’t know. I just wonder about Don Diego.”

  “You’re still gnawing on that?”

  “They didn’t find anything wrong with him.”

  “Except that he drowned.”

  “But how could he drown?” Holly wondered. “How could a man fall into a few centimeters of water and drown himself?”

  “He was pretty old,” Cardenas said.

  “But his health was fine. They didn’t find any heart failure or any sign of a stroke.”

  “You think someone pushed him into the water and deliberately drowned him?”

  The scene appeared in Holly’s mind, every detail, just as she had seen it that day. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Who? Why?”

  Holly shrugged. “I don’t know. I wish I did.”

  CAMPAIGN SPEECHES

  The political debate was held in the habitat’s outdoor theater, a big concrete shell that curved gracefully to focus the sound waves produced on its stage out into the rows of seats set up on the grass.

  It’s a fairly good crowd, Eberly thought as he looked out over the audience. Must be more than a thousand out there, and a lot more watching by vid. Seated on the stage three meters to his left was Edouard Urbain, looking stiffly elegant in an old-fashioned dove-gray suit over a sky-blue turtleneck. Next to him sat Timoshenko, sour and gruff; he wore gray coveralls as a symbol of pride in his profession. Eberly thought he looked like a janitor. Eberly himself wore a dark charcoal tunic and comfortable slacks of lighter gray, true to the dress code he had promulgated.

  Wilmot stood at the podium in his usual tweed jacket and shapeless trousers, explaining the rules of the debate.

  “…each candidate will begin with a five-minute summary of his position, to be followed by another five minutes apiece for rebuttal. Then the meeting will be opened to questions from the audience.”

  Eberly kept himself from smiling. Vyborg and Kananga had “seeded” the audience with dozens of supporters, each of them armed with questions that would allow Eberly to dominate the Q A period. He had no intention of allowing Urbain or Timoshenko to say a single word more than absolutely necessary.

  “So without further ado, allow me to introduce Dr. Edouard Urbain, head of our scientific section,” said Wilmot. He began reading Urbain’s curriculum vitae from the displ
ay on the podium.

  What a bore, thought Eberly. Who cares what scientific honors he won in Quebec?

  At last Urbain got up and went to the podium to the accompaniment of scattered applause. There are only a few scientists in the audience, Eberly realized. So much the better. He saw that Urbain limped, ever so slightly. Strange I’d never noticed that before, he said to himself. Is that something new, or has he always walked with a little limp? Looking out over the audience, Eberly recognized several of his own people, including Holly and the stuntman, Gaeta, sitting in the front row. Good. Just as I ordered.

  Urbain cleared his throat and said, “As you know, I am not a politician. But I am a capable administrator. Managing more than one hundred highly individualistic scientists and their assistants has been compared to attempting to make a group of cats march in step.”

  He stopped, waiting for laughter. A few titters rose from the audience.

  Looking slightly nettled, Urbain went on: “Allow me to show you how I have managed the scientific programs of this habitat. In this first image we see …”

  AVs! Eberly could hardly keep himself from whooping with glee. He’s showing audiovisuals, as if this was a scientific meeting. The audience will go to sleep on him!

  Holly felt distinctly uncomfortable sitting next to Gaeta, but Eberly had told her to bring the stuntman to the meeting and she had followed his orders.

  Gaeta had smiled his best when Holly called him. “Go to the rally with you? I’m not much for listening to speeches.”

  “Dr. Eberly has asked specially that you come,” Holly had said to his image, from the safety of her office. “It would be a favor to him.”

  “Eberly, huh?” Gaeta mulled it over for a moment. “Okay, why not? Then we can have dinner together afterward. Okay?”

  Despite everything she knew about Gaeta, Holly wanted to say yes. Instead, “I’m sure Dr. Eberly would like to have dinner with you.”

  “No, I meant you, Holly.”

  “I don’t think I’ll be able to.”

  “Why not?”

  She wanted to say, Because you’ve bedded every woman who’s been able to help you. Because you just think of me as a convenience, because you’re an insensitive macho bastard. Because I want you to care for me and all you care about is getting laid.

  But she heard herself say, “Well, maybe. We’ll see.”

  From his seat on the stage, Eberly saw Urbain’s audiovisuals in a weird foreshortening as they hovered in the air behind the speaker’s podium. Urbain was explaining them in a flat, unemotional monotone.

  An organization chart. Then some quick telescope images of Titan that showed a blurry orange sphere. Urbain used a laser pointer to emphasize details that had no interest for Eberly. Or the rest of the audience, Eberly thought.

  “And the final holo,” said Urbain. Eberly wanted to break into applause.

  What appeared in three dimensions above the stage looked like a silver-gray tank.

  “This is Alpha,” said Urbain, his voice taking on a glow of pride. “She will descend to the surface of Titan and begin the detailed exploration of that world, directed in real time by my staff of scientists and technicians.”

  The tank lurched into motion, trundling back and forth on caterpillar treads, extending mechanical arms that ended in pincers or shovel-like scoops. Urbain stood to one side of the podium watching the machine, looking like a proud father gazing fondly at his child as it takes its first steps.

  Wilmot, who had been sitting in the first row, climbed the steps onto the stage and advanced to the podium.

  “A very impressive demonstration, Dr. Urbain, but I’m afraid your five minutes are up,” he said, his voice amplified for everyone to hear by the pin mike clipped to the lapel of his jacket.

  A grimace of disappointment flashed across Urbain’s face, but he immediately turned off his palm-sized projector and made a smile for the audience.

  “Thank you for your patience,” he said, then turned and took his seat on Eberly’s left. Not one person clapped his hands.

  Wilmot, at the podium, said, “And now we have Mr. Ilya Timoshenko, from the Engineering Department. Mr. Timoshenko was born in Orel, Russia, and took his degree in electrical engineering…”

  Eberly tuned out Wilmot’s drone and watched the crowd. There were lots of men and women out there who had also dressed in gray coveralls. My God, he realized: It’s like a team uniform. And almost half the crowd is wearing gray coveralls!

  Timoshenko ambled up to the podium, nodding his thanks to Wilmot and then looking out at the audience. He tried to smile, but on his dour face it looked more like a grimace.

  “I won’t need five minutes,” he said, his voice rough, gravelly. “What I have to say is very simple. Dr. Urbain says you should vote for him because he’s a scientist. Dr. Eberly is going to tell you to vote for him because he’s not a scientist.”

  A few people laughed.

  “I ask you to vote for me because I’m a working stiff, just as most of you are. I’m not a department head. I’m not a boss. But I know how to get people to work together and I’m one of you. I’ll look out for your interests because I’m one of you. Remember that when you vote. Thank you.”

  And he turned and went back to his seat. No applause. The audience was too surprised at the abruptness of his presentation.

  Wilmot looked startled for a moment, but then he rose and went purposefully to the podium.

  “Thank you, Mr. Timoshenko,” Wilmot said, looking over his shoulder at the engineer. Turning back to the audience he said, “I think we should give Mr. Timoshenko a hearty round of applause, for being so brief, if for no other reason.”

  Wilmot started clapping his meaty hands together and the crowd quickly joined in. The applause was perfunctory, Eberly thought, and it quickly faded away.

  “Our final candidate,” said Wilmot, “is Dr. Malcolm Eberly, head of the Human Resources section and chief architect of the proposed constitution that we will vote on, come election day.”

  Without a further word of introduction, he turned halfway toward Eberly and said simply, “Dr. Eberly.”

  Several dozen people scattered through the audience got to their feet, applauding loudly, as Eberly rose and stepped to the podium. Others looked around and slowly, almost reluctantly, got up from their seats, too, and began to clap. By the time Eberly gripped the edges of the podium half the audience was on their feet applauding. Sheep, thought Eberly. Most people are nothing better than stupid sheep. Even Wilmot was standing and clapping halfheartedly, too polite to do otherwise.

  Eberly gestured for silence and everyone sat down.

  “I suppose I should say that I’m not a politician, either,” he began. “Or at least, I wasn’t one until I came into this habitat.

  “But if there is one thing that I’ve learned during our long months of travel together, it is this: Our society here must not be divided into classes. We must be united. Otherwise we will fragment into chaos.”

  He turned slightly to glance at Urbain. Then, looking squarely at his audience again, Eberly said, “Do you want to be divided into scientists and non-scientists? Do you want a small, self-important elite to run your government? What makes these scientists believe that they should be in charge? Why should you have to take orders from an elite group that puts its own goals and its own needs ahead of yours?”

  The audience stirred.

  Raising his voice slightly, Eberly said, “Did the scientists help to draft the constitution that you will vote on? No. There was not a single scientist on the drafting committee. They were all too busy with their experiments and observations to bother about the way we’re going to live.”

  Urbain began to protest, “But we were not asked—”

  Wilmot turned off Urbain’s lapel mike. “Rebuttals will come after the first position statements,” he said firmly.

  Urbain’s face went red.

  Suppressing a satisfied grin, Eberly said, “Our new government
must be managed by people from every section of our population. Not only scientists. Not only engineers or technicians. We need the factory laborers and farmers, the office workers and maintenance technicians, butchers and bakers and candlestick makers. Everyone should have a chance to serve in the new government. Everyone should share in the authority and responsibility of power. Not just one tiny group of specialists. Everyone.”

  They got to their feet with a roar of approval and applauded like thunder. Eberly smiled at them glowingly.

  Wilmot stood up and motioned for them to stop. “Your applause is eating into Dr. Eberly’s allotted time,” he shouted over their clapping.

  The applause petered out and everyone sat down.

  Eberly lowered his head for a moment, waiting for them to focus their complete attention on him. Then he resumed:

  “I’ll tell you one other thing we need in our new government. A person at its head who understands that we must be united, that we must never allow one elite group to gain power over the rest of us. We need a leader who understands the people, a leader who will work tirelessly for everyone, and not merely the scientists.”

  “Damn right!” came a voice from the audience.

  Eberly asked, “Do you want an elite group of specialists to impose their will on you?”

  “No!” several voices answered.

  “Do you want a government that will work for everyone?”

  “Yes!”

  “Do you want a leader who can control the scientists and work for your benefit?”

  “Yes! Yes!” they shouted. And Eberly saw that his own people were only a small part of those who rose and responded to him.

  He let them cheer and whistle until Wilmot came to the podium to announce that his initial five minutes were up.

  Eberly went placidly back to his seat, noting with pleasure that Urbain looked upset, almost angry, and Timoshenko’s scowl was even darker than usual.

  Q A SESSION

  Urbain sputtered through the rebuttal period, defending the importance of the habitat’s science mission, denying that he would put the scientists’ needs above those of all the others. The more he denied, Eberly thought, the more firmly he fixed in the audience’s mind the fact that he considered the scientists to be separate and apart from — above, really — everyone else.