Asimov’s Future History Volume 9

by Isaac Asimov

  “No.”

  “The cyborgs I encountered—on Kopernik Station—were working for Hunter. You said they were building a research facility? What kind?”

  “Biomedical.”

  “And it’s never been shut down?”

  “No.”

  “When did the reanimés start appearing?”

  “About ten years ago. There aren’t many of them, that’s why they’re considered more myth than meat by most people.”

  “How do you know about them?”

  Rekker grinned. “Allow me to keep a few secrets. So what is it you’re here to do?”

  “If Kynig Parapoyos owns that facility, he’s building cyborgs. Maybe the ones you’ve seen don’t work very well, but the one I saw worked very well. It’s only a matter of time before their . . . creation . . . is perfected.”

  “And a source of cyborgs for an arms dealer could be a real problem. You think you can stop them?”

  “No one on the blockade knows about the relationship between Parapoyos and Nova Levis. Baleys are being smuggled in here. I’m thinking there’s a slave traffic or at least a black market biomedical resource flow operating out of Nova City. I have no idea what I can do, but I can’t do anything until I know for certain what’s going on and who’s involved.”

  “Can’t fault your logic.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You may be shy on common sense, though. I’ll tell you one thing: Even if this Kynig Parapoyos owns that facility, the research it’s doing is for Solaria.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I’ve been here long enough to recognize patterns and players.” He remained silent until Masid understood that no other answer was going to be offered.

  “What have you been doing for the last thirty years?” Masid asked.

  “Oh, that. Well, after my kidnapping, a new liaison was assigned. My captors held me for two years. When I was freed, no one would acknowledge my existence. To be perfectly honest, that suited me just fine. I’d been betrayed. I’d had enough. I turned my back on the whole mess and moved out into the country. Here. I thought for a couple of years that I might one day find a way to uncover what was going on and expose it. A hero’s return, maybe. But I realized after a while that, frankly, nobody would thank me. So I became a local tinkerer. I fix things for people. I’m no threat to anyone because I have no interests that conflict with anyone else’s.” He pointed a finger at Masid. “I help you, that could change.”

  “Are you going to?”

  “Depends. What do you think would be the next step?”

  “Getting inside Nova City.”

  “That’s right. You know you might never come back out?”

  “If I’m ever going to get out, it’ll be from there.”

  Rekker grinned. “Okay, you’re not stupid. Fine. You want to get inside Nova City, it’ll take time. You can’t just walk in. The perimeter is well secured. So you’re going to have to get an invitation. To do that, you’ll have to go to work for the local boss.”

  “Filoo?”

  “Have you met him?”

  “No.”

  “Good. That’ll make it easier. What I’ll do is start a useful rumor that he ought to look into you and maybe hire you. What’ve you been doing for a living since you got here?”

  “Selling pharmaceuticals.”

  “That’s just his sort of thing. He may well know who you are already, then. I can set it up so he won’t think you’re a threat. Once he hires you, it’s up to you. The bosses are the only ones who regularly go to Nova City from the outlying townships.”

  Rekker stood. “So to answer your question, what have I been doing the last thirty years? Waiting for you, it looks like.”

  “Why are you helping?”

  “I would dearly love to know who fucked me.” He waved. “Come on, you need to get Kru back to Tilla before she bursts from anxiety.”

  “I have one more question.”

  “I doubt that. What is it?”

  “How come you’re not sick? Almost everyone else here seems to be.”

  Rekker smiled sadly. “I’m a Spacer. Spacers never get sick.”

  Chapter 15

  MIA SNAPPED THE book closed at the sound of her cabin door chime. She reached over to her desk and touched a contact. The display identified her visitor as Commander Reen.

  Mia closed the surveillance screen and slipped the book into a locking drawer at the base of her desk. She rolled her chair around to face the flatscreen on which shipping route tables waited for her attention.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “Reen, Lt. Daventri. May I come in?”

  “Certainly, sir.” She touched the contact that opened her door.

  Reen stepped quickly in, hands clasped behind his back. Mia began to rise, but he lifted one hand and gave a slightly shake of his head.

  “You’re on personal time,” he said. “Formalities can wait.”

  “Then . . .” Mia bit back a demand to know why he was here, disturbing her “personal time,” but instead she said, “May I offer you something to drink?”

  “No, thank you. May I sit?”

  She gestured to a chair. He glanced at her flatscreen as he folded himself into the seat. “Working?”

  “Puzzles annoy me. I have a hard time relaxing when they’re unresolved.”

  “I understand completely. I wanted to offer you an opportunity to sit in on Corf’s interrogation. Perhaps get a sense of where you might take it before we begin.”

  “I was under the impression that he already had been interrogated.”

  “Preliminaries. I’ve assigned a specialist to do a more thorough examination.” He smiled thinly. “Corf is the first one we’ve caught of any real rank or position. Granted, Stores isn’t much of a position, but it’s a perfect one for a smuggler. He has to know more than he’s given us so far.”

  “Of course, I’ll be glad to assist . . .” Mia frowned. “A specialist? What service?”

  “Independent.”

  Mia kept her expression neutral. She knew what Reen meant, and it skirted legality. She wondered if he actually possessed the authority to do this, then wondered how she might find out without letting Reen know.

  “If you think that’s necessary,” she said carefully.

  “You disapprove. Actually, I’m glad you do. I would never ordinarily resort to something this . . . radical. But we’ve got an opportunity to mine information about smuggling operations before Corf gets snatched from us by the adjutant general’s office and shipped back to Earth. I want these leaks found, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m still surprised at how little we found in his cabin. Your search was thorough?”

  “All due respect, sir, I’m not prone to sloppy work. And it was a small cabin.”

  “Mmm. No disrespect intended, Lieutenant. I’m just surprised.”

  “Was there something in particular you expected to find?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. Timetables. We’ve yet to find out how shipping schedules are being passed between the various agents in this operation. We’re scanning all possible comm frequencies, inspecting all incoming and outgoing data for code, and yet all the various factions of our target know our routing schedules and their own down to the hour. Or so it seems. We catch a lot, but it’s almost a matter of luck rather than logic. I thought Corf, of all people, would possess something that might indicate how that information was being passed.”

  “If it’s not going by comm, there must be some hardcopy.”

  “My thoughts, too. But . . .” He stared at her narrowly, as if dissatisfied and suspicious. “Well, maybe it’s word of mouth. Ridiculous, but not impossible. I’ll have to tell the interrogator to do a body search for hidden recorders or something.”

  He continued to stare at her through a long silence. Mia returned his gaze evenly, acutely aware that he suspected her of lying.

  “When is Corf’s first interrog
ation by the specialist scheduled?” she asked.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Let’s hope it proves worthwhile.”

  Reen’s eyebrows bobbed once and he stood. He laughed self-consciously. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant, I do dislike doubting my subordinates, but are you withholding information? I could understand it if you thought you had a handle on something that you expected to be productive and didn’t want to share the glory—”

  Mia snapped to her feet. “Sir, you are bordering on making an accusation which I will have no choice but to meet with judicial response.”

  “I’m perfectly aware of my limitations, Lieutenant. I hope you are as aware of yours.” He gave a short bow. “Apologies. This has been driving me for some time.”

  Mia clasped her hands behind her back and broke eye contact. “I understand.”

  “You would be willing to put such a matter before an Inquest? With all that would entail?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  His face relaxed. “Then I suppose I have my answer. Very well, Lieutenant Daventri. Sorry to have bothered you.”

  At the door, he paused.

  “I consider this matter now closed,” he said. He looked at her. “Are we in agreement?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He nodded again and left her cabin.

  Her hands trembled as she sat down. You’d think after everything I’ve been through I’d be used to lying to my superiors, she thought. She stared at the chair where Reen had been sitting. On impulse, she touched a series of keys on her desk. A small sphere emerged from its niche across the cabin and began a detailed search of the room, looking for anything Reen might have left behind.

  The scan took nearly ten minutes, during which time Mia made herself a drink, and waited in silence. When it finished, the sphere—a piece of contraband illegal for her to possess, acquired from a Spacer acquaintance—returned to its niche. The screen on her desk displayed the report. Clean.

  Even so, she finished her drink slowly before she took out the book from its drawer and opened to where she had left off:

  We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of irrational events (that is to say, events the reasonableness of which we do not understand). The more we try to explain such events in history reasonably, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible do they become to us.

  Mia tilted her head back and let a quiet laugh escape. The words, written so long ago, about an ancient and altogether senseless war, stung still. Though she moved—had moved—through events which others might call “historic,” beyond the step-by-step requirements of survival, she could not—ever—admit to understanding them.

  She read on.

  Each man lives for himself, using his freedom to attain his personal aims, and feels with his whole being that he can now do or abstain from doing this or that action; but as soon as he had done it, that action performed at a certain moment in time becomes irrevocable and belongs to history, in which it has not a free but a predestined significance.

  Mia sighed. “Leo Tolstoy, where have you been when I needed you?” The passage continued:

  There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life, which is the more free the more abstract its interests, and his elemental hive life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for him.

  Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity.

  Mia grunted. “Really? That’s the first thing you’ve said that seems wrong.” She wondered how that formulation meshed with the current situation. Hive life—well, there was certainly that, from the warrens of Earth to the aggregate polities of the Spacers’ Fifty Worlds. The various Settler colonies combined aspects of both to greater or lesser degrees, but was there any discernible set of aims to the whole, or just a competing mass of wants and needs and agendas?

  And she had to wonder just how consciously most people ever lived, for themselves or otherwise . . .

  For instance, what am I doing? And is it conscious choice or instinct?

  She closed the book and gazed at its cover. WAR AND PEACE was embossed across the aging synthetic material. Mia leafed through the pages. Timetables, Reen had said. Was he lying? Maybe. Or maybe the truth would serve him just as well. Timetables . . .

  She opened the covers and studied the end papers. They were golden, covered by a fine, fractal pattern.

  On impulse, she set the book on her desk and ran the scanning wand over the end papers. She tapped in commands and watched the screen.

  Alphanumerics scrolled up.

  “Damn.” She felt intense anxiety work through her body. But gradually, she grinned. “How does encryption fall into the predestined uses of historical aims?” she wondered aloud as she initiated her translation routines.

  Ariel sat in one of the smaller lounges, a brandy snifter before her on the table, staring up at the room-length viewscreen that showed Aurora Orbital Port Station. The structure possessed an elegance Kopernik never knew. Its lines arced and swept through vacuum like the penstrokes of a skilled calligrapher, iconographic and mysterious, implying secrets and meaning which, Ariel knew, did not really exist. Aurorans liked to present themselves as custodians of civilization’s potential. It had become their dominant motif, a façade of depth which, she had to admit, intimidated most of the rest of settled space. She knew better, but still enjoyed the beauty of their symbols.

  To be fair, she knew Aurorans who actually were what they seemed to be.

  The ship moved slowly now, bringing them incrementally closer to dock. Most of the passengers were Spacers, and had a Spacer sense of patience. The view, with cloud-shrouded Aurora behind the station, was worth a long gaze. Ariel judged she could get thoroughly drunk before debarkation actually occurred.

  The station was less than a century old, a compromise to the opening up of travel between worlds after the Settler Accords became law almost two centuries ago. Aurora wanted a firewall between Terrans and themselves, a precaution which ultimately proved unnecessary for the original reasons—fear of infection—but which continued as a desirable way of screening out the unwanted on other grounds. Spacer ships still grounded directly on the planet, mostly at Port Eos, just outside Eos City, the capital. All other ships, from Earth or the Settler worlds, used this or any of a dozen more utilitarian stations that now peppered the system.

  Ariel found it hard to believe that almost fifteen years had passed since her last visit here . . .

  She did a casual survey of the lounge. Her gaze caught on Clar Eliton, sitting at a table near the entrance, staring at the projected image. Ariel felt a sharp resentment at his presence, as though he did not deserve to see Aurora. Her sudden protectiveness surprised her. She finished her brandy and signaled the robot tending bar for another one, using the time to wonder why she should feel the least concern toward a world that had once thrown her off . . .

  Snifter in hand, she made her way to Eliton’s table. He did not see her until she stood at the vacant chair across from him. He looked briefly startled, mouth open and wordless.

  “Um . . .” he managed, lurching back his chair as if to rise in polite greeting.

  Ariel lifted a hand, cutting his politesse short. “Mind if I join you?” She pulled out the chair and sat down. “I feel I was rude the other day. I apologize.”

  Eliton frowned as he recovered his seat. “I don’t think—”

  She waved at the view. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “Yes . . .” He looked away. “I wanted to see it under better circumstances.”

  “Oh, wait till you get on the ground. If you think this is something—”

  “I won’t be grounding here.”

  Ariel gave him a puzzled stare.

  He reddened slightly. “I’m not allowed to see the ‘promised land.’ My assignment—my mission—to Solaria precludes me from any contact with Aurorans outside the contingent of this ship. Neither Solaria nor Earth wants
me to set foot on Aurora.” He smiled thinly. “They’re afraid I may . . . I don’t know.” He laughed. “Does Aurora accept supplicants for asylum?”

  “Not usually, no. Do you need asylum?”

  Eliton laughed again, louder. “No, good heavens, forgive me! I was speaking . . . it’s nothing. I was being sarcastic. Ironic.” He looked up at the view. “Really, I think the Solarians are afraid you Aurorans might arrest me on some pretext to keep me from them. I think Earth agrees.”

  “That’s rather paranoid thinking on their part. Why would they worry over that?”

  “The embarrassment over my abduction, which you clearly don’t accept as valid. It could be turned to political use by certain parties. Solaria is actually the safest place to keep me out of the public eye till it’s all forgotten.” He looked at her sadly. “Not paranoia—caution.”

  He had, Ariel remembered, acted the part of a victim of the Managins after his faked assassination at Union Station, D.C., on Earth. He had claimed then to have been abducted, but Ariel had satisfied herself that he had been an active participant in the debacle. Others believed as she did, and it had left him vulnerable and politically compromised.

  “That’s too bad,” she said.

  “Yes, I agree. It looks . . .”

  “A bit too neat for my taste,” Ariel said. “Overly-sculpted. Everything is in its place, even the grass.”

  “Why not, if you have a pristine environment to start with? As I understand it, the first colonists found virtually no indigenous life.”

  “Oh, not quite that simple. It had a dense atmosphere, but most of the organic forms had evolved no further than a few aggregate creatures—colony animals, like cnidran siphonophores on Earth—”

  Eliton blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “Man-of-wars, I believe they used to be called. Individuals acting as components in a more complex association. Anyway, even those were simple—polyps and proto-medusans—and dissolved to reproduce. Other than that, we had algaes, lichens, and some rudimentary molds and mosses. The oceans produced enough oxygen to make the effort worthwhile. Ridiculously simplistic biosphere. It didn’t have a chance against the Terran forms we brought with us. It only took a few generations to establish a fully compatible biosphere. I suppose with that as a canvas the urge to dictate the result was too much. The whole planet is more garden than ecology. Clean, tidy, controlled.”