by Ben Bova
But after a few steps he stopped and said over his shoulder, “My dossier is on file at Ceres. Look under the name ‘Dorik Harbin.’ ”
Then he proceeded up the passageway, the overhead lights glinting off the etched metal of his skullcap. Deirdre watched him for several moments, then touched the fingerprint-coded lock that opened her door.
Dorik Harbin, she thought. He is the man who wiped out the original Chrysalis, slaughtered all those people! He’s the man Dad wanted to execute. Yet he doesn’t seem like a murderer now. He’s … She searched for a word, decided at last to give it up. Then she remembered that Yeager said Dorn was a priest of some sort.
A priest?
It’s been a strange first night, Deirdre thought as she stepped into her stateroom. And we have two more weeks to go.
She closed the door behind her and leaned against it. She felt that it would be good to get into bed and stop fighting this heavy gravity that was pulling on her.
Then she looked around the spacious compartment for the first time. Deirdre’s stateroom was considerably more splendid than the quarters she was accustomed to at home. All this space for one person! she marveled. Of course, she realized, it’s designed for a couple. Eying the wide, low bed, she giggled at the thought that it was big enough for a team of acrobats.
Her one travel bag was sitting on a luggage rack at the foot of the bed. She unpacked, then undressed, did her ablutions in the handsomely appointed lavatory, and avoided the temptation to try out the deep tub of the spa. Pulling on a shapeless old pullover shirt that reached to her hips, Deirdre sat on the bed and tried not to look at the blank wall screen.
Go to sleep, she told herself. Don’t pry into the man’s past.
Yet it was Dorn himself who told her that the rock rats’ settlement at Ceres held a dossier on him, under the name Dorik Harbin. She wondered why he no longer called himself that.
Yeager seemed to know something about him, Deirdre thought. All through dinner the engineer behaved as if he knew all about Dorn’s past. But then Yeager acted as if he knew everything about everything, she told herself.
Forget about it, she told herself. Let sleeping cyborgs lie. She stretched out on the bed and pulled the thin sheet up to her chin. But in her mind’s eye she kept seeing Dorn, half human, half machine. Why? How?
She remembered a line she’d read at school about a famous financier who had faced an ethical problem of some importance. “Bernard Baruch sat on his favorite park bench, struggling with his conscience,” the author had written. Then he added, “He won.”
Smiling to herself, Deirdre decided that she would override her conscience, too.
She sat up and called, “Computer, what’s the time lag between here and Ceres?”
The wall screen glowed softly and the computer’s synthesized voice answered, “Four seconds, one way.”
I can get the information in less than eight seconds, Deirdre realized.
“Computer, query the Chrysalis II habitat for the personnel dossier of Dorik Harbin.”
“Acknowledged.”
Deirdre lay back on the bed again and commanded the lights to switch off. I’ll read his file in the morning, she said to herself. After a good night’s sleep.
But she found that she could not sleep. Tired from the heavy gravity though she was, she was too curious to fall asleep. She got up and went to the tiny swivel chair at the compartment’s built-in desk and switched on the computer again.
And there it was: Dossier, Dorik Harbin. Born in Montenegro, Earth. Parents, two sisters killed in ethnic cleansing. Joined local militia at age twelve. Recruited by International Peacekeeping Force. Quit IPF to join Humphries Space Systems as mercenary soldier. Convicted of destroying original Chrysalis habitat, killing one thousand seventeen men, women, and children. Sentenced to permanent exile from Chrysalis II and all other Asteroid Belt communities.
Deirdre stared at the words on the wall screen. Her blood ran cold. He’s been involved in death and murder since he was a child!
She watched the video of Dorik Harbin’s trial. He offered no defense. He seemed to expect to be executed, seemed to want to be killed. But then an elderly woman in a powerchair rolled herself up to the cyborg and pled for mercy, saying that he had completely changed his personality, begging the inhabitants of Chrysalis II to exile Dorik Harbin, not kill him.
The dossier stopped with the rock rats’ decision to exile Dorik Harbin. They had no further interest in Dorik Harbin. But Deirdre did. She was riding out to Jupiter with a mass murderer. He may say he’s a priest now but he has blood on his hands. She wanted to know a lot more about this Dorik Harbin, or Dorn, as he now called himself. A lot more.
KATHERINE WESTFALL’S SUITE
Katherine Westfall’s three-room suite was up near the top of Australia’s long, slim body, one level down from the captain’s quarters. The staff people she had brought with her were ensconced two levels lower, separated from Mrs. Westfall by “officer’s territory,” the compartments where the ship’s officers were quartered. Still, even her staff’s accommodations were much more spacious and sumptuously decorated than the compartments for ordinary passengers and the ship’s crew.
Katherine was reclining against a mound of pillows on her bed, gazing out through the glassteel port set into the bulkhead of her bedroom. Countless stars hung out there, brilliant jewels against the eternal darkness, steady and unblinking. Earth and its bleak, sad-faced Moon were far behind the ship as it hurtled through space toward distant Jupiter.
Her personal communicator lay on the bed beside her, its palm-sized screen displaying a star chart. Katherine was teaching herself astronomy, or trying to. The chart didn’t seem to match what she was seeing outside, though.
Her slim brows knitting in frustration, she thought she understood where the problem was. The stupid tutorial on the screen was displaying how the stars would look from the surface of Earth. The ship was in space, and many, many more stars were visible. Thousands of stars too dim to be seen through Earth’s thick atmosphere now glowed at Katherine, blanketing the outlines of the constellations that she should be finding.
Her frustration gave way to understanding. Too many stars, she told herself. God’s overwhelming me with more information than I need. It was a trick she had used herself, from time to time. Drown an investigator in data. Give them what they want, but bury it in so much information that they’ll never be able to find the pattern they’re looking for.
Katherine Westfall smiled at the stars. And she thought that an astronomy display that showed all the myriad of stars one sees in space, but highlights the stars that one would see from Earth, might make a decent profit for an entrepreneur who knew how to bring a new product to market. She filed the idea away in her mind, alongside other ideas that she had stored there. It’s never too late to make a profit, she reminded herself. I may be retired from the corporate world, but that doesn’t mean I have to stick entirely to philanthropy.
Philanthropy. The word jogged her back to reality. You’re not here to study astronomy, she told herself. You’re spending six precious weeks heading for Jupiter to do what’s needed out there. It’s time to cut them off. No excuses. No mercy. Take a good look around their research station and then send them all packing back to Earth. Take Archer down before he can make his move against you.
Grant Archer was a threat. The head of the scientific team at Jupiter was on the short list to be appointed the next director of the IAA, the position Katherine wanted for herself. Not merely a council member; she had to be the director. Had to be. She heard her mother’s voice in her mind: “Get to the top, Katie. Whatever you do, get to the top. You’re not safe until you’re on top.”
She knew that Archer and his staff of scientists were feverishly trying to complete a new submersible craft and send a crew of volunteers down into that murderous ocean. To study the leviathans. It was supposed to be a secret, but the scientists could keep no secrets from her. She had her sources of i
nformation in place aboard the research station.
He thinks that a successful mission to study those creatures will guarantee his appointment to the IAA directorship. He thinks he’ll be able to jump ahead of me.
Unconsciously, Katherine shook her head. Archer and his scientists may say they want to study those Jovian beasts, but what they’re really going to do is kill more people. Like they killed Elaine.
It had been a shock to Katherine Westfall when she discovered that she had a sister. Her mother had never told her of it. Not in all the years they had lived together had her mother once mentioned that she’d had another daughter, years before Katherine: Elaine.
Katherine discovered her sister’s existence the day after her mother’s funeral, as she went through the pitiful remnants that her mother had left behind. A scattering of photos, most of them obviously taken many years earlier, when her mother had been young and pretty, long before the years of toil had ground her down to a hard, suspicious shell of a gray-haired woman.
Two images in the computer file showed her mother with a baby. Only two images out of hundreds that had accumulated over the years. But those two images sparked Katherine’s lively interest because both dated from before her own birth. Who was this baby? Why was her mother cradling the infant so tenderly in her arms?
The advantages of wealth include the ability to buy information. Katherine used her corporate security office to hire private investigators and track down this mystery child.
She learned at last that her mother had borne a daughter to one of her earliest lovers, nearly ten years before Katherine had been born. The man was wealthy, powerful. He refused to marry her mother, but took the baby from her to raise as his own. Mother never saw her again, Katherine realized. That’s what made her so bitter. That’s why she was so wary when Katherine met Farrell Westfall. “Get him to marry you,” Mother had insisted. “Marriage or nothing.”
So she had married. And her mother had died wealthy and comfortable. And Katherine learned she had a sister.
Her sister was a scientist who had been at research station Thomas Gold, orbiting Jupiter. But now, Katherine had found, she was back on Earth. In a convalescent hospital in Ireland.
She had traveled halfway across the world to meet her sister and arrived exactly two hours too late. Elaine O’Hara had died at almost the moment Katherine had left Sydney. She had been in poor health physically and emotionally since she’d taken part in the ill-fated mission into Jupiter’s deep, seething ocean.
Jupiter had killed Katherine’s only sister.
No, she told herself as she lay on the bed in her luxurious stateroom aboard Australia. It wasn’t Jupiter that had killed her; it was the single-minded, blindly arrogant scientists who had sent her to her death.
She smiled to herself, coldly. The sister she had never known would become the excuse she needed to kill the scientists’ investigation of Jupiter. One way or another, she was going to send them all packing back to Earth. And if anyone questioned her motives, she could always tell them about her dear, martyred sister and point the finger of accusation at Archer and all the other heartless scientists who willingly sent innocents to their deaths.
ELECTRONICS WORKSHOP
Andy Corvus was not smiling as he bent over the electronics components scattered across the worktable.
“Murphy’s Law,” he muttered to himself. “If anything can go wrong, it will.”
“What seems to be the problem?” Dorn asked.
The cyborg was sitting easily on a swivel-topped stool a meter or so from Corvus, who was on his feet, staring unhappily at the hardware strewn along the table. The electronics workshop was small, hardly big enough for the two men. Its one workbench was fully equipped, though, with tools and diagnostic instruments. Corvus wondered how Australia’s maintenance crew kept the ship going with such a minuscule workshop, but then he guessed that the ship’s systems got inspected and overhauled regularly in port, after a trip was finished.
Corvus looked up at Dorn and his face went from a frustrated scowl to a sheepish expression. “I’ve been working on this rig since we left Selene and it’s still not right.” Pointing at a gray titanium cylinder resting on the workbench, no bigger than his fist, he said, “I’ve got to get all these components to fit into that container. Six kilos of goods in a five-kilo bag.”
Dorn waved his human hand. “Get a bigger container.”
“It’s not that easy,” Corvus said, looking chagrined. “The size of the container is dictated by the volume available in the dolphin’s skull.”
“Dolphin?”
Grinning crookedly, Andy said, “Sure. Didn’t you know we’re carrying dolphins aboard the ship? Taking them out to the Gold station.”
“Dolphins.” Dorn seemed incredulous.
“It’s part of my work,” Corvus explained. “I’m brain-linking with the dolphins as a sort of preliminary test, to see if I can make contact with the leviathans.”
“And we’re carrying dolphins on this ship all the way out to Jupiter?”
Corvus nodded enthusiastically. “We sure are. Four whole decks have been converted into an aquarium for them.”
Dorn shook his head in disbelief.
“I was going to try to make contact with them later today, but if I can’t get my transceiver into the volume they’ve allowed for their skulls…”
“You’ll have to make smaller components,” Dorn said, quite matter-of-factly. Then he added, “Or make more room in the dolphins’ skulls.”
* * *
Deidre had slept poorly, her dreams filled with scenes of war and bloodshed. Dorn—Dorik Harbin—didn’t appear in those dreams; at least she didn’t remember his presence. But the dreams were horrifying, people being slaughtered, villages burned to the ground. And the old Chrysalis habitat methodically destroyed, slashing laser beams ripping its components apart, people blasted into the vacuum of space, not even able to scream as their lifeblood spewed out of them.
She was glad that Dorn wasn’t in the dining room when she came down for breakfast. But as she slid her tray along the dispenser tables she saw Max Yeager sitting off in a corner by himself, as if he’d been waiting for her.
As soon as he saw Deirdre the burly engineer got up from his solitary table and buzzed over to her.
“Good morning,” he said, smiling widely. “I hope you slept well.”
“Not very,” Deirdre replied.
She filled her tray with a plate of eggs, a mug of fruit juice, and a dish of melon balls, Yeager beside her every step of the way. She found an empty table and Yeager immediately pulled out a chair in his meaty hands and held it for her.
“I didn’t sleep all that well, either,” he said as he sat across the table from her. “Strange surroundings, eh? Have you done much traveling?”
With a shake of her head, Deirdre admitted, “This is my first trip away from home.”
“I’ve traveled a lot,” Yeager said. “Been to Mercury twice, helping Yamagata Corporation design those big solar energy satellites they’re putting up out there. Rumor is, they want to use some of ’em to power lasers that’ll propel lightsail ships out to Alpha Centauri.”
“Alpha Centauri?” she marveled.
Before Yeager could respond, Deirdre’s pocketphone buzzed. She fished it from the pocket of her slacks and saw the text message on its minuscule screen: “DEIRDRE AMBROSE, PLEASE REPORT TO DR. POHAN IN THE INFIRMARY. AT ONCE.”
Staring at her, Yeager wondered aloud, “What’s that all about?”
Deirdre pushed her chair away from the table and got to her feet. “I have to go,” she said.
“You haven’t had any breakfast!”
“I’m not that hungry, really.” And she hurried out of the dining room, glad to leave Yeager standing there alone.
* * *
Wrinkled, bald, mustachioed Dr. Pohan smiled at her as Deirdre stepped into his office, but somehow his smile seemed tense to her, forced. The wall screens showed images
of medical scans, slices through her body, circles of intestines, interiors of lungs like budding, branching flowers, pulsing, beating organs.
That’s what I look like inside, Deirdre said to herself as she sat, staring fascinatedly, in front of the doctor’s desk.
Without preamble, Dr. Pohan said, “We have a puzzlement on our hands, young lady.”
“A puzzlement?”
“You have rabies.”
Shocked, Deirdre gasped, “Rabies? That’s impossible!”
Gesturing to the wall screens, “Impossible or not, your scans show the rabies virus lurking in your bloodstream. It can infect your brain, you know.”
“I can’t have rabies,” Deirdre insisted. “You get rabies from an animal bite, don’t you? I haven’t been bitten by any animal. We don’t allow pets on Chrysalis II; not animal pets, anyway.”
His strained smile still in place, Dr. Pohan said gently, “How you acquired the virus is puzzling, very puzzling. But the important thing at the moment is to neutralize the virus before it reaches your brain and you begin to show symptoms.”
“Neutralize it? You mean kill it?”
“If possible,” said the doctor. “There are injections that can eliminate the virus, but unfortunately we don’t carry such medications aboard ship. Who would expect cases of rabies to show up on an interplanetary liner?”
Deirdre caught the plural. “You said cases?”
“Yes. The woman you are replacing, she died of rabies on the trip out from Earth.”
INFIRMARY
“I could die?” Deirdre cried.
“If untreated,” said Dr. Pohan.
“But you said you don’t have the vaccine.…”
“The treatment requires human rabies immunoglobulin. We were able to fabricate a small amount of same in the ship’s pharmacy but it wasn’t enough to save my patient. The virus had spread through her nervous system and into her brain.”
