Titan

by Bova, Ben

  Cardenas straightened up on her stool, crossed her legs, glanced over at her assistant, then made a little shrug. “I don’t see what we can do to help you, Dr. Urbain. It’s—”

  “Please. Call me Eduoard. We have known each other long enough to use our first names.”

  “Eduoard,” Cardenas said, with a slight dip of her chin. “I’m afraid I don’t see how nanos can help you, unless you can pinpoint the cause of the malfunction.”

  Urbain sighed mightily. “That is the real problem. We don’t know what is causing the silence. No one knows. My people have been racking their brains for three days now. And three nights, I might add. They are going over all the computer programming, line by line. It is maddening.”

  “So how can nanos help?”

  With a shake of his head, Urbain said, “I was hoping that perhaps there might be some way to deliver nanomachines to Alpha that could construct a new uplink antenna.”

  “A backup to the existing antenna?”

  “Or a replacement,” said Urbain.

  He’s desperate, Eberly said to himself. Grasping at straws.

  Cardenas got down from the stool. “Let me think about it, Eduoard. That might be possible, but it won’t be easy …” Her voice trailed off.

  Urbain got to his feet. “I would appreciate anything you can do.”

  Cardenas walked him to the door of the laboratory, Eberly following a pace or so behind them. “Please keep me informed of your analysis of the situation,” she told Urbain. “You never know, something that seems trivial to you might open a window for us.”

  “I will,” said Urbain. His gloomy tone showed how hopeless he felt. “Thank you.”

  As soon as the lab door closed behind them, Eberly made a hasty farewell to Urbain and hurried outside the laboratory building, into the sunshine, along the gently rising street up to the administrative center and into his own office. Sliding into his desk chair he told the phone to locate Ilya Timoshenko and ask him to come to the chief administrator’s office immediately.

  Timoshenko ran against me in the general election, Eberly told himself. So did Urbain. If they’re smart enough to combine their votes they could defeat me in June. I’ve got to get them working against one another. Divide and conquer, that’s the rule.

  Timoshenko was not in the navigation center, which was his nominal work station, for the simple reason that he had nothing to do there now that Goddard was plying its orbit around Saturn. Nothing to do except think, and remember the life he had left behind on Earth. The woman he had left behind. His wife, the golden-haired Katrina. Katrina of the sweet smile and delicate hands. When she spoke it was like silver bells chiming in his heart.

  No, that way lay remorse. And anger. A rage so towering that its black storm could engulf him utterly. Timoshenko fought against the rage, because he knew that he himself was its focus, its center. At the thundering heart of his bloodred fury was the knowledge that he had brought this exile on himself. He drank too much, he talked too much, he cared too much. So they had exiled him to this green and luxurious prison more than a billion kilometers from Katrina.

  Timoshenko was working with the Titan Alpha mission control team when the call from Eberly reached him. Now that the probe was on Titan, the control center was on twenty-four-hour status: all consoles manned at all times. Timoshenko had volunteered to help fill mission control’s manpower needs. The job wasn’t really work; just babysitting the consoles. Boring routine, nothing more. The telemetry was coming through fine and showed that the stupid machine down there was functioning as it should. Except that it refused to send any sensor data to Urbain and his twitching scientists. Timoshenko almost laughed. Urbain’s pride and joy was sitting on a cliff of dirty ice like a sullen teenager, refusing to talk to its daddy.

  So what? he asked himself. Why shouldn’t Urbain have his dreams shattered? Welcome to the club.

  The phone’s synthesized voice spoke in its flat, dull tones in his earplug: “The chief administrator wishes to see you in his office immediately. Please acknowledge.”

  Suppressing an urge to tell the chief administrator to pound sand up his ass, Timoshenko took in a breath, then replied into his lip mike, “I am on duty at the mission control center and cannot leave my post. My shift will end at seventeen hundred hours. I will report to the chief administrator’s office at seventeen-twenty, unless I hear otherwise from our respected and unparalleled chief administrator.”

  There, Timoshenko thought. That ought to keep that fathead Eberly happy for a couple of hours.

  Cardenas met Nadia Wunderly at the cafeteria precisely at noon. They carried their trays through the cold food line together, and Cardenas noted with an inner smile that Nadia took nothing more than a fresh green salad and a bottle of mineral water. Not wanting to tempt her friend to anything more, Cardenas limited her own selection to a Caesar salad augmented with bits of grilled faux chicken and a tall glass of tomato juice.

  As they put their trays on an empty table and sat down, Cardenas remarked, “You’re looking well, Nadia.”

  “I feel great,” said the physicist.

  Cardenas nodded and dug into her salad.

  “I mean,” Wunderly continued, “I can almost feel the nanos melting away the fat inside me. I’ve lost six kilos already!”

  “That’s wonderful.” Cardenas smiled to herself.

  A month earlier Wunderly had come to her, almost in tears, to beg her help. “It’s almost Christmas,” she pleaded, “and look at me! I’m fat as a pig!”

  Cardenas had tried to calm her friend, but she knew what was coming and dreaded it.

  At last Wunderly had begged, “Can’t you give me some nanos, just a little bit, just enough to burn this fat off me? Nobody’s going to ask me out for New Year’s Eve when I look like this!”

  Wunderly was chubby. Her basic body type was chunky, big-boned. She would never look sylphlike or slinky unless she had a complete body makeover, which could take months.

  “What you’re asking for is gobblers,” Cardenas had told her friend as gently as she could. “They’re illegal, totally banned everywhere. They could kill you; they’ve killed others, god knows.”

  “I don’t care!” Wunderly had yelped. “I’ll take the risk!”

  But Cardenas would not. Still, she could not leave her friend to despair. Grimly, she had told Wunderly, “Come to my lab tomorrow night, around eight.”

  Wunderly had come to the lab as eager as a puppy. Cardenas gave her a fruit cocktail that contained not nanomachines, but a powerful appetite suppressant and a diuretic. A placebo, in effect. She gave Wunderly detailed instructions about dieting and exercise.

  “If you don’t follow this regimen the nanos won’t attack the fat cells,” Cardenas had warned, mentally crossing her fingers. “And you’ll be endangering your health.”

  Every two days Wunderly had returned to Cardenas’s lab for a booster. She thought she was getting nanomachines that would burn away her fat as if by magic. To her delight, she lost weight. Not magically: it was by dint of diet and exercise that she would never have undertaken without the lure of nanomachines doing their work inside her body.

  And it was working. Nadia already looks better, Cardenas thought, and she’s smiling instead of blubbering about her weight.

  Manny Gaeta came to their table, carrying a tray laden with soup, a McGlop sandwich, and a slice of peach pie. Cardenas had told him about her little deception, of course. She had to step on his foot, under the table, only three times before he caught her meaning.

  “Hey, Nadia, you’re looking terrific,” he said, grinning at Wunderly. “You been working out or something?”

  “Something,” Wunderly answered, beaming at Cardenas.

  28 DECEMBER 2095: STORAGE BUILDING

  Holly led Nadia Wunderly down the high-ceilinged corridor of the storage facility. On either side of them the walls were blank, except for long strings of numbers on each closed and locked door. Strip lamps along the ceiling
lit the corridor brightly, but to Wunderly the place seemed dusty, gritty from disuse, and eerily quiet.

  “So who’re you going with to the New Year’s Eve bash?” Holly asked, as they prowled along the corridor.

  “One of the computer techies,” Wunderly replied cheerfully. “Da’ud Habib.”

  Holly felt impressed. “He’s the head of Urbain’s computer team. From the University of British Columbia.”

  “You know him?” Wunderly asked, surprised.

  “Only from the human resources files.”

  “Oh.”

  “He’s a Moslem.”

  “But he’s no chauvinist,” Wunderly countered immediately. “He’s really kind of a sweet guy.”

  They walked on through the silent, dusty corridor. Wunderly eyed Holly’s lean, long-legged figure. Bet she’s never had to use a treadmill in her life, she said to herself. Still, though, her own figure was looking better every day—thanks to Cardenas’s nanos, she thought. And she was taking the enzyme injections to make her skin turn golden, just like everybody else, so she wouldn’t look so pasty. Almost everybody else, she realized. Holly doesn’t need enzymes: Her skin’s a wonderful toasty brown already.

  “It’s like a maze down here,” Wunderly murmured, as Holly walked assuredly beside her.

  “Just down another two cross-corridors, and then we turn left. Two doors in, that’s it.”

  Clear admiration showed on Wunderly’s dimpled face. “You’ve got it memorized?”

  Holly smiled gently. “Got it all memorized, Nadia. The whole layout. Everything and everybody in the habitat.”

  “Memorized?”

  “I’m a reborn, Nadia. Hope that doesn’t bother you.”

  Wunderly’s eyes widened slightly. “Cryonics? How long were you in?”

  “A little over twenty years.”

  “But I thought reborns’ memories were pretty much wiped out when they’re revived.”

  Nodding, Holly replied, “Yep. I don’t remember anything from my first life. Oh, maybe a snatch of something or other, but no connected memories.”

  “Then how come—”

  “The rehab team gave me a lot of RNA treatments and memory boosters. Didn’t work, far’s as remembering my first life’s concerned, but it surely gave me a near-perfect memory now. I see something once and I’ve got it forever, pretty near.”

  “Eidetic,” Wunderly murmured.

  “That’s what the psychs call it, yeah.”

  They turned at a cross-corridor and stopped before the second door on their left.

  “This is it,” said Holly, so flatly certain that Wunderly didn’t question her. “Manny has the combination,” she added, peering at the keyboard lock set into the door.

  “He ought to be here,” said Wunderly, glancing at her wristwatch. “We said nine-thirty.”

  Holly grinned. “He prob‘ly got lost.”

  The overhead lights flickered once, twice, then quit altogether, plunging them into total darkness. Wunderly’s breath caught in her throat, but before either of them could say a word, the lights came on again at full brightness.

  Wunderly’s brows knit as she glanced up at the ceiling. “They shouldn’t do that,” she said.

  Whatever it is that Eberly wants from me, thought Ilya Timoshenko as he walked from his apartment building to the administrative offices, it can’t be very urgent. Instead of meeting me last evening, after my shift, he set the meeting for this morning.

  Timoshenko walked with his shoulders hunched, his head thrust slightly forward, in a slightly rolling gait like an old-time sailor. He looked burly, aggressive, and while he was ordinarily as quiet and withdrawn as any introspective engineer, when he drank too much he became loudly combative. He was taller than he seemed at first glance, and his limbs were long and gangling. His face bore such an intense expression of skepticism that most people, on first meeting him, pegged him as a haughty know-it-all. His dark brown hair was thick and wiry, his stubborn chin usually bristly. It wasn’t until you looked into his wolf-gray eyes that you saw what a tormented soul he actually was.

  The administrative offices were quiet, a picture of calm, unhurried bureaucrats going about their leisurely business with the least possible amount of actual effort. Drones, Timoshenko snorted silently, as he strode through the aisle that separated their desks. More of them at the coffee machine than at their workstations, he noticed disdainfully. At least there are only a handful of them, he saw. Back in St. Petersburg every government office had swarms of drones lazing around, doing their best to avoid exerting themselves. Plus the Holy Disciples psalm-singers hanging around to make certain nobody broke any of their moral rules. Working hard wasn’t one of their rules, Timoshenko growled to himself. Taking a salary for doing as little as possible didn’t break any of their commandments.

  He strode past their desks without asking for help, knowing that if he did they’d make him wait, just to show their authority. He knew where Eberly’s office was; you could see his door with his name on it, back at the rear of this drones’ bullpen.

  “Sir,” called one of the drones, a woman. “Sir, you can’t go in without being announced.” She was dressed in a brown tunic and darker slacks, just like all the others, men and women.

  Timoshenko, wearing the one-piece coveralls of his profession, walked right past her with a gruff, “Eberly’s expecting me.”

  “But you’ve got to be announced,” the woman insisted as he brushed by her. All the others froze where they were; no one moved to stop him.

  “You can’t—”

  Timoshenko rapped on Eberly’s door once and slid it open. Eberly, behind his desk, looked surprised for an instant, then quickly hid it with a forced smile.

  “Exactly on time,” he said. “Please come in and take a chair.”

  Timoshenko went to the pair of cold-looking chrome and leather chairs in front of the desk and sat in one. He heard the door slide shut behind him. Whether one of the drones closed it or Eberly did it with a remote control, he didn’t know, nor did he care.

  “You wanted to see me,” he said. “Here I am.”

  Eberly’s smile showed teeth. “You’re very punctual.”

  “I’m an engineer. In my business we try to be exact.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “So?”

  “The reason I asked to see you is about your being an engineer. As I understand it, there’s not much to do in the navigation center anymore.”

  Timoshenko grunted. “That’s why I volunteered to help Urbain’s people. Turns out there’s not much to do there, either, except wonder what’s gone wrong with his probe.”

  “So you’re not doing much useful work, then.”

  “There’s not much to do.”

  “Do you fill in the time with planning for the next election campaign?”

  Timoshenko felt truly surprised at that. “The next election? Not me! Once was enough. You won, I lost. That’s the end of my political career.”

  Eberly steepled his fingers in front of his face and studied Timoshenko for a few moments, as if trying to determine if he were telling the truth.

  “No hard feelings about losing, then?” he asked.

  “To tell the truth, I was relieved. I’m not a boss, and I don’t want to be a boss.”

  “But you’re a very talented engineer, and we’re not using your abilities to their fullest.”

  Timoshenko thought, Here it comes, whatever it is that he wants from me.

  “How would you like to head the maintenance department?” Eberly asked, turning on his smile again.

  “The janitors?”

  “Come now, you know the maintenance team is responsible for the operational integrity of this entire habitat. It’s an important position, much more important than filling in at one of Urbain’s consoles.”

  Nodding warily, Timoshenko reluctantly agreed, “Maintenance is a big job, true enough.”

  “Now that we’re in orbit around Saturn,” Eberly said
, “the maintenance team has the responsibility for keeping the habitat’s outer shell in good condition.”

  “Abrasion from the ring particles,” Timoshenko muttered.

  “Ah! You’re aware of the problem.”

  “It’s not that big of a problem. The abrasion rate is well within the scale that was calculated before we left Earth.”

  “Yes, but it still requires constant vigilance. And repairs, when necessary.”

  “You’re worried about the radiation shielding.”

  Eberly looked blank for a fleeting moment, then nodded vigorously. “Precisely. If the superconducting shield fails, we’d all be exposed to dangerous levels of radiation, wouldn’t we?”

  “Dangerous?” Timoshenko almost smiled. “Lethal, more likely.”

  “So you can see what an important job this is.”

  “But isn’t Aaronson in charge of maintenance? He’s doing a decent job.”

  “It’s too big a job for him,” Eberly said. “I’m getting complaints daily about electrical power failures, mechanical breakdowns, things that shouldn’t be happening but are. It’s only minor, of course, but it’s irritating. Our facilities should be running much more smoothly than they are.”

  Timoshenko said, “That’s why you have a maintenance department: to take care of such problems.”

  “Yes, I know, but the responsibility for exterior and interior maintenance is too much for one person,” Eberly went on. “I’ve decided to split the maintenance department into two groups, interior and exterior. I want you to head the exterior section.”

  Timoshenko sank back in the armchair. Why is he doing this? he wondered. What’s he up to? He’s a slippery one, and he doesn’t do things out of the goodness of his soul. Or for the good of the habitat, either, for that matter.

  Yet a voice in his head countered, It’s a responsible position. It’s a necessary task, you know that. Ice and rock chunks are pinging this eggshell all the time. We’ve got to be able to repair any damage they do.