by Ben Bova
“I … I didn’t know,” Tray stammered. “Nobody at the medical center discussed that.”
With a careless wave of her hand, Loris went on, “Oh, there are primitive cults here and there, religious communities, even ordinary women who want to experience pregnancy and natural childbirth. Ugh!”
“But sex,” Tray asked, “that’s still normal?”
“As normal as sunshine and apple pie,” Loris said happily.
Tray heard himself ask, “And Mance? What about him?”
“He wants me to go to Jupiter, of course. He’d love to have me all to himself for a few weeks.”
Tray felt his cheeks warming. “You two…” He couldn’t finish the sentence.
Her smile fading, Loris said, “There’s nothing serious between Mance and me. We have sex together now and then, but that doesn’t mean anything.”
“It doesn’t?”
She shrugged. “Not as much as it did in the old days. We’re a lot more free and happy. Sexual tensions and all the troubles they produced are almost a thing of the past.”
Tray stared at her, red-faced with embarrassment.
PASSAGE
Loris was smiling at him as if what she had just proposed to do was no more important than asking a friend for a favor.
Loris’s words repeated themselves in his brain: Sex is for pleasure, not for procreation. But that takes away all the responsibility, he told himself. And the guilt. And the furtive satisfaction.
Oh brave new world, he quoted silently, that has such people in it.
But something deeper in his mind rose to confront him. I can’t let her do this, he told himself. It might mean nothing to her, but it means a lot to me.
With a sad shake of his head, Tray said, “I can’t let you go to bed with Harold Balsam just to help me. Or with anybody else, either. It’s not right.”
Loris’s smile turned pitying. “You’re a prisoner of ancient myths, Tray. We’ve outgrown those old ways.”
“I can’t let you do it,” he said, feeling miserable. “I just can’t.”
Loris stared at him. At last she murmured, “You’re locked in ancient superstitions.”
“I guess I am,” he admitted.
“Like someone from an old story book: a man of honor.”
With a dismal nod, Tray replied, “I just can’t do it, Loris. I can’t agree to let you … allow you…”
Loris reached out and clasped his hand. “All right, Tray. All right. Let me see if I can get Uncle Harold to let you onto his ship without going to bed with him. Will that be all right?”
“Could you do that?”
“I could try.”
He clutched her hand in both of his. “That would be fine. Wonderful.”
“We’ll see,” said Loris.
* * *
For two days Tray waited for word from Loris. Para watched him pacing anxiously across the apartment’s sitting room, endlessly rubbing his hands together, as if washing them.
Atkins’s robot assistant had called each day to ask when Tray would be available to begin the memory erasure procedure. Tray had neither answered nor returned the calls. Para had warned that sooner or later the police would call on him.
“You are a prisoner of outdated attitudes,” the android said. “I never realized what complications such an antique sexual mind-set can produce.”
Tray stopped pacing. Staring at Para, he responded, “Maybe Atkins and his team should remove my attitudes about sex.”
Para shook its head. “I doubt that they could. Such attitudes must be ingrained in so many parts of the brain that—”
Tray heard the brief tone that announced a phone message.
“A call for you,” the android announced. “From Loris De Mayne.”
“Yes?” Tray fairly shouted.
Loris’s familiar figure appeared in the middle of the sitting room. She was on her feet, wearing a simple knee-length dress of light blue that complemented her eyes beautifully.
Smiling, she announced, “Tray, you can board Jove’s Messenger tomorrow, any time after nine a.m. You are listed on the ship’s manifest as resident astronomer.”
“You did it!” Tray called out.
“Yes. Everything is set.”
Suddenly embarrassed, Tray heard himself flounder, “You didn’t have to … you know … he didn’t make you…”
Loris’s smile widened. “No, Uncle Harold was a perfectly sweet gentleman. I didn’t have to use my feminine wiles on him.”
Tray felt weak-kneed. “Thank you, Loris. Thank you so much.”
“I’ll see you on the ship when I come aboard, in two days.”
“You’re coming to Jupiter, too?” Tray’s voice shot half an octave higher than normal.
“Yes,” said Loris. “I’ve decided to go with you and Mance.”
Tray’s elation vanished like a puff of smoke. She’s coming aboard with Mance Bricknell, he realized.
EVASION
“One of the many advantages of a global government,” Para was saying, “is that human beings are no longer divided into separate nations.”
The android and Tray were sitting side by side in a sleek, swept-wing commercial rocketplane, heading for Quito, Ecuador, and the space elevator that rose to orbital altitude and beyond, based a few kilometers outside the city.
Tray had felt nervous as they filed past the customs examiner at the Denver spaceport, but the robot passed them with only the briefest hesitation as it scanned the identification information on its desktop screen.
“The purpose of your trip?” the robot had asked.
“Vacation,” Tray had lied.
And that was it. The two of them followed the line of passengers to the debarkation gate and into the airliner.
The rocketplane took off like a normal aircraft, but once at altitude its nose lifted and its rocket engines ignited with enough thrust to force Tray deep into his cushioned seat.
Turning to Para, Tray said over the muted growl of the rockets, “Next stop, Quito!”
Para nodded once, completely calm. Tray’s pulse was thumping.
Customs inspection at the Quito airport was slightly more exacting than it had been in Denver. The inspector, a uniformed human woman, checked Tray’s identification on her viewscreen, then asked him where in Quito he would be staying.
Before Tray could think of an answer Para replied, “We haven’t decided that yet. This trip is a rather spur-of-the-moment decision.”
The woman eyed the android with some distaste.
Tray found his tongue. “I’ve always wanted to see Quito,” he lied. “I understand it’s a very beautiful city.”
The inspector broke into a pleasant smile. “It is indeed a very beautiful city. Especially the central square. My brother manages the finest hotel in the city there. It’s called El Paradiso.”
“El Paradiso,” Tray repeated. “We’ll look for it.”
With that, the woman waved them through customs.
A dead-black car was waiting for them at the curb outside the terminal, with a rake-thin young man in a dark suit leaning against its fender, holding up a tablet-sized screen that proclaimed Trayvon Williamson.
Tray shook hands with the youngster, who opened the car’s rear door and took his and Para’s meager travel bags.
With a purr of power the car pulled out into the moderate traffic. “To the star tower!” the driver called happily over his shoulder as they reached the lane where the car lifted off the ground and took to the air.
“That was easy,” Tray said to Para. “No problem.”
The android nodded minimally. “I expect that we’ll be subjected to deeper scrutiny at the elevator.”
Tray said, “I guess so.” Then he turned and watched the city of Quito passing below them.
* * *
Once they landed at the foot of the space elevator, Tray offered the driver a generous tip. Which the young man refused, with a wave of his hand. “Señor Balsam’s people have
already paid me very well. Vayan con Dios, señores.”
As Tray and Para walked along the beautiful flowered shrubbery that lined both sides of the curving walkway, Tray craned his neck at the space elevator, rising from a set of foundation mountings that gripped the earth solidly and soaring up beyond the clouds.
“It’s magnificent, isn’t it?” he breathed.
Para said, “Splendid indeed.” Then the android nodded toward the trio of uniformed policeman standing in front of the entrance to the elevator’s housing.
As they approached the waiting policemen, Tray rehearsed the story they had invented. We’re here to check out the astronomical equipment aboard the ship. We were invited by Council president Balsam himself.
But the sergeant in charge of the trio, portly, with a thick dark mustache, grinned widely at them. “Señor Williamson, welcome! Council president Balsam has personally instructed us to help you in any way you require.”
Surprised and relieved, Tray thanked the sergeant. Turning slightly toward Para, he introduced, “This is Para, my—”
“Your servant, of course,” said the sergeant. “Come! This way to the elevator. It has been reserved specifically for you.”
The two other policemen took the bags that Tray and Para had been carrying and the five of them marched calmly to the waiting elevator.
The elevator doors slid open, revealing a luxurious room lined with comfortable cushioned benches with a fully-stocked refrigerator and drink dispenser in one corner.
“It will take more than two hours to reach the level where your spacecraft is orbiting,” said the sergeant, still smiling. “Have a pleasant ride!”
Then he and his men stepped out of the elevator, the doors slid shut, and Tray and Para sat side by side on one of the luxurious benches.
Before either of them could speak a word, the elevator began to rise smoothly, silently, and they left Earth behind them.
BOOK TWO
JUPITER
JOVE’S MESSENGER
Tray felt a tendril of anxiety as he and Para walked along the Glassteel-covered passageway that led from the space elevator’s Low Earth Orbit level to Council president Balsam’s spacecraft, looming huge and bulbous in front of them.
Glancing backward over his shoulder, Tray saw that the elevator’s intricate structure soared far beyond this level, past the geosynchronous orbit’s altitude, more than 40,000 kilometers high.
It’s magnificent, he said to himself. A tower that reaches toward the stars.
Yet he couldn’t escape the tendril of fear that roiled deep within him. There’s nothing between us and the vacuum of space except this frail covering of Glassteel. The cold and emptiness of space is hardly more than an arm’s length away from us.
Para brought his attention back to the here and now. Nodding toward the oversized hatch at the end of the walkway, the android said calmly, “A welcoming committee of one is waiting for us.”
Tray looked along the passageway and saw a single smartly dressed young woman waiting in front of the hatch.
“Welcome aboard, gentlemen,” she called as Tray and Para neared her.
Tray smiled at her. In this age of virtually perpetual youth it was impossible to guess her age, but she looked bright, vigorous, smiling, with the cool blue eyes and short-cropped golden hair of a Viking princess.
“Thank you,” he said as he came close enough to extend his hand. She took it in a firm, warm grasp.
“I am Rihanna,” she said.
Tray’s implanted communicator flashed that her name, in Scandinavia, translated as “nymph.” She looked too buxomly solid for a nymph, he thought. Pretty, though, with a welcoming smile that dimpled her cheeks.
“I’m one of Captain Tsavo’s aides,” she said to Tray, ignoring Para, standing at his side. “He’s asked me to show you around the ship, get you familiarized with everything.”
Tray smiled and nodded. Para said nothing.
* * *
Rihanna led Tray, with Para beside him, through a maze of passageways that led to his quarters, a sparse bedroom only slightly larger than a closet.
“We don’t have accommodations for your android,” she explained cheerily. “You can let it stand in a corner at night, I suppose.”
Tray felt his brows knit slightly, but Para said, “I can stand out in the passageway. It makes no difference to me.”
Rihanna grinned at the android. “Like a faithful hound, protecting its master’s sleep.”
“I’m not Para’s master,” Tray snapped, immediately regretting his impulse. He tried to explain, “Para is my friend, my companion.”
Rihanna’s grin morphed into surprised puzzlement.
“Your companion?” she asked, clearly unable to believe Tray’s words. “Your friend? A machine?”
“An intelligent machine,” said Tray.
The young woman gawked at Para for an uncomfortable moment, then shrugged her slim shoulders. “Have it your way,” she said.
GRAND TOUR
Tray’s orientation took several days. Rihanna seemed determined to show Tray every aspect of the huge ship’s facilities, from its command center to its power plant, from the food processing equipment to the life support systems. She showed up at his door precisely at 0900 hours each day, and led Tray and Para to a different section of the huge ship.
Tray trudged along dutifully, with Para beside him, as the young officer rattled off prepackaged descriptions of the various sets of equipment and introduced Tray to the crew personnel at each station. Tray nodded and said what he hoped were the proper things while Para patiently recorded each word.
After several days of mind-numbing orientation lectures, Rihanna led them along a short, blank-walled passageway. Her perpetual smile seemed to grow even larger than it had been over the previous days.
“Now we get to the interesting part,” she said, as if what she’d already shown them had been ordinary, humdrum.
She stopped in front of an oval hatch marked EXCURSION MODULE: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
“This is the entrance to the excursion module,” said Rihanna.
Tray nodded, thinking, That’s what the sign says.
“Once we’re down near the surface of the Jovian ocean,” she went on, her voice betraying just a hint of excitement, “you and your party will board this module and go out into the ocean, down to the depths where the Leviathans swim.”
“How deep will that be?” Tray asked.
Rihanna blinked once, and Tray suddenly realized that she might be an android, like Para, and not human at all.
“The Leviathans swim at a level that’s at least several hundred klicks below the surface of the ocean.”
“Then we’ll have to go that deep,” said Tray.
“And deeper, most likely.”
Tray stared at her. She certainly looked human enough, he thought. But there was something about her, something that seemed … programmed instead of spontaneous.
Unfazed by Tray’s staring, or perhaps not noticing it, Rihanna was reciting, “The Leviathans cruise through Jupiter’s planet-wide ocean in gigantic family groups. They are intelligent, sort of, but their intelligence has very few points in contact with our own. We live in such a different environment from theirs. Our scientists have managed to establish some contact with them, but it’s rather rudimentary. The differences between our two levels of intelligence are sizable.”
Para spoke up. “Humans have a much wider range of experiences than the Leviathans.”
“That’s true enough,” Rihanna responded. After a heartbeat’s pause, she added, “Of course, the Leviathans must deal with the Darters, the predators that attack them—especially their young.”
Tray asked, “The Leviathans communicate among themselves, don’t they?”
“Visually,” said Rihanna, with a very human nod. “They flash pictures on the flanks of their enormous bodies. You’ll see, when we get down among them.”
She’s human, Tray thought. I
t’s just the prepackaged lectures that she delivers that makes her seem almost like a machine.
Dimpling into a smile, Rihanna asked, “Are you ready to enter the Excursion Module?”
“Yes!” Tray answered eagerly.
It turned out to be a big disappointment. Rihanna gave a spoken order and the heavy oval hatch swung outward, revealing a long narrow passageway. With Para behind him and Rihanna up front, Tray stepped carefully over the hatch’s coaming and followed the young woman along the tight metal-walled corridor.
“This is no ordinary submersible. The module is spherical,” Rihanna was explaining, falling back into her lecture mode of speech. “It consists of seven layers of spheres, one within another, which compress in reaction to the enormous pressure of the Jovian ocean at depth.”
“May I ask,” said Para, “what the pressure will be at the level where we’ll be cruising?”
Rihanna hesitated before answering, “I don’t have the exact numbers at my fingertips…”
Tray realized she was human, after all.
“… but it’s enormous,” Rihanna went on. “More than a million times the pressure at the deepest level of any ocean on Earth. Megapascals, enough to crush an ordinary submersible like an eggshell.”
“And that’s where we’ll be cruising,” said Tray.
Rihanna nodded. Tray could see her shoulder-length blond hair bobbing up and down.
“That’s where you’ll be cruising,” she agreed.
* * *
The long passageway ended in a circular deck. Tray saw what was obviously a control center, rows of dials and gauges curving around a deeply padded chair.
Rihanna pointed toward hatches along the curving bulkhead. “Privacy stations for six people, with complete sanitary systems.”
Moving to the unoccupied central chair, she pointed to the large viewscreens studding the forward bulkhead. “These will give you a complete, three-hundred-sixty-degree view of your outer surroundings. With luck, you’ll cruise among the Leviathans and even communicate with them—within the limits of their understanding, of course.”
