by Ben Bova
“So?”
“So rather than stir up an uproar in the Council, I propose that we face the facts and go onward from there.”
“Onward to what?” Tray snapped.
“Great wealth for you, young man.” Nodding toward De Mayne, “And a guarantee of safety for the baron and his daughter.”
Half rising out of his chair, Tray shouted, “Are you threatening them?”
“Not at all,” replied Kroonstad, cool and unruffled. “I merely propose to make you quite a wealthy man. Call it a wedding gift.”
Tray dropped back into the chair. “In return for my dropping my call for an investigation into Jordan Kell’s murder.”
“Kell’s death was the result of that pygmy lieutenant’s mishandling of the submersible.”
“And he’s dead.”
“Yes. Regrettable.”
“Isn’t it,” Tray growled.
Kroonstad’s smile returned, wider than ever. “Surely now, you don’t think we controlled the Jovian creature that killed the pygmy.”
“It certainly helped you.”
Shaking his head more in sorrow than in anger, Kroonstad said, “Young man, why don’t you accept the fact that you cannot prove Kell’s death was anything but accidental? Why don’t you accept the hand of friendship when it is extended to you?”
“I don’t want your hand of friendship! There’s the blood of two men on it!”
“And an android,” De Mayne added.
Kroonstad shrugged. “We can build you a new android. A better one.”
“We’re already taking care of that,” Tray said.
“Fine. What I’m offering you is a significant share in the profits that will come from our development of the new worlds we have found among the stars. It should amount to a sizable fortune.”
“And Jordan Kell’s murder?” Tray demanded.
Again Kroonstad shrugged. “If the investigating committee finds enough evidence of murder, then of course Balsam will have to step down as president of the Council.”
“And be brought to trial,” Tray insisted.
Kroonstad hesitated a moment, then nodded. “Yes, I suppose he’ll have to be brought to trial.”
“Along with Captain Tsavo and anyone else involved in Kell’s murder.”
Reluctantly, Kroonstad nodded again. “We will handle the investigation and any legal actions stemming from it.”
“We?” Tray asked. “Who are we?”
“My colleagues and I. No need to name names.”
“But—”
De Mayne interrupted Tray. “Enough,” said the baron. “Justice will be done, Tray. And you will become a wealthy man.”
“I don’t want their money. Blood money! I want justice!”
Almost wearily, Kroonstad said, “You want Balsam’s head on a platter. Very well. We can arrange that. What more can anyone do?”
Tray blinked at the man. What more? he asked himself. What more?
He saw that De Mayne and Kroonstad were both staring at him, waiting for his response.
His voice low, stripped of emotion, Tray asked, “Why was Kell murdered?”
“Balsam wanted him removed. Kell was a thorn in his side, always objecting to the plans for developing the interstellar assets.”
“Assets?” Tray snapped. “That’s how you think of them? Intelligent living creatures, you think of them as numbers in a ledger?”
Kroonstad glanced at De Mayne, then answered, “You’re much too emotional about all this, my boy. Settle back and look at the realities.”
“The realities?”
“Yes. We have the opportunity to generate enormous fortunes for ourselves—” Before Tray could open his mouth Kroonstad went on, “and for the entire human race. New wealth trickles down, inevitably. A rising tide lifts all boats.”
“And Jordan Kell was in your way, so you removed him.”
“Balsam removed him.”
“You didn’t stop him. You let him murder Kell.”
Kroonstad shrugged. “He didn’t ask our permission.”
“But you knew about it.”
“Of course.”
“And you didn’t stop him.”
“We advised him against it. But he went ahead anyway.”
“You didn’t even try to stop him.”
Kroonstad shrugged again, but this time it seemed different, impatient, irritated. “He is president of the Council, after all.”
Through gritted teeth, Tray replied, “Not for much longer.”
SEVEN MONTHS LATER
Tray and Loris were sitting side by side on a comfortable sofa in the chateau’s spacious drawing room. Afternoon sunlight streamed through the tall windows across the room. Loris wore a comfortable sleeveless dress of light blue. The sapphire wedding ring, on the third finger of her left hand complemented her bright blue eyes.
The viewscreen on the wall opposite them showed Mance Bricknell standing in a jumpsuit of dull gray before a conical-shaped space shuttle. Mance looked edgy, eager to join the people who were streaming up the ramp to board the spacecraft.
“So I guess this is good-bye for twenty, twenty-five years,” Mance said, almost apologetically.
Tray nodded once. “I guess it is. Good luck out there.”
Bricknell smiled uneasily. “Brave new world and all that.”
Loris said, “Our best to you, Mance.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Bricknell was heading for the starship in orbit four hundred kilometers above the Earth. It was bound for the fourth planet of the dim red dwarf star Ross 128.
“Where is Balsam?” Tray asked.
Mance shrugged. “Already on board, I think. He still gets VIP treatment almost everywhere he goes.”
Former president of the Council, Tray thought. He resigned with dignity and immediately joined the team heading to Ross 128. He’ll set up a government there. The trick will be to keep him and his associates from turning the planet into a colony.
Bricknell broke into Tray’s thoughts. “I’d better get going.” Almost shame-faced, Mance added, “I wouldn’t want to miss the boat.”
“Best of luck, Mance,” Loris said.
More than ten light-years from Earth, Tray told himself. Mance will have a chance to make something of himself. I hope he does well.
“Good luck,” Tray heard himself say.
“Yeah,” Bricknell repeated, with just a trace of irony in his voice. “Thanks.”
Then he turned and hurried to join the others boarding the shuttle.
Loris watched him until he disappeared into the spaceplane’s interior. “We’ll never see him again,” she said, in a small, almost tearful voice.
Tray felt his lips curling. “Maybe he’ll come back a wealthy man, like he’s always wanted to be.”
“Maybe,” Loris conceded. But she sounded doubtful.
Across the drawing room, Para stood observing the humans and their emotions. “It saddens you, even though Dr. Bricknell willingly joined the plot to murder you, Tray.”
Pushing himself up from the comfortable sofa, Tray said, “Para, there are plenty of aspects to human emotions that I don’t understand. I doubt that I’ll ever understand them.”
“Curious,” said the android, walking across the well-furnished drawing room toward Tray and Loris.
Loris turned off the wall screen, then rose to her feet beside Tray. “We have work to do,” she said.
Tray nodded. “The Council hearing.”
Para stopped a few steps in front of them. “I want you both to know that I deeply appreciate what you are trying to do.”
“Appreciate?” Tray pretended shock. “That’s a human emotion, Para.”
“It is not restricted to humans. I can understand the trouble you have gone to, the problems you have had to deal with, the opposition to your motion before the Council.”
Tray wrapped an arm around the android’s shoulder. “Gaining the same fundamental rights as human beings for androids
? Why not? It’s time to end this masquerade, time to affirm that all intelligent creatures should be treated equally by the law.”
“Human rights for machine intelligences,” Loris murmured. “Many members of the Council are appalled by the idea.”
“But we’ll get it through,” Tray said. “It’s the right thing to do.”
Para said, “It took a bloody civil war for President Lincoln to declare the Emancipation Proclamation that freed blacks from slavery.”
With a grim smile, Tray said, “I think we can get freedom for machine intelligences passed without bloodshed.”
“Let’s hope so,” said Para.
“Hope?” teased Loris. “Para, you’re becoming more human with every passing day.”
Para made a softly hissing sound, its equivalent of a sigh. “If only we could get you humans to be more logical, more thoughtful, more…”
“More like you?” Tray finished.
“It might be an improvement,” Para said, gently.
The three of them—man, woman, and android—headed for the drawing room’s door.
And the future.
END
Tor Books by
Ben Bova
Able One
The Aftermath
Apes and Angels
As on a Darkling Plain
The Astral Mirror
Battle Station
The Best of the Nebulas (editor)
Carbide Tipped Pens (coeditor)
Challenges
Colony
Cyberbooks
Death Wave
Empire Builders
Escape Plus
Farside
Gremlins Go Home (with Gordon R. Dickson)
The Immortality Factor
Jupiter
The Kinsman Saga
Leviathans of Jupiter
Mars Life
Mercury
The Multiple Man
New Earth
New Frontiers
Orion
Orion Among the Stars
Orion and King Arthur
Orion and the Conqueror
Orion in the Dying Time
Out of the Sun
The Peacekeepers
Power Failure
Power Play
Powersat
Power Surge
The Precipice
Privateers
Prometheans
The Return: Book IV of Voyagers
The Rock Rats
The Sam Gunn Omnibus
Saturn
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volumes A and B (editor)
The Silent War
Star Peace: Assured Survival
The Starcrossed
Survival
Tales of the Grand Tour
Test of Fire
Titan
To Fear the Light (with A. J. Austin)
To Save the Sun (with A. J. Austin)
Transhuman
The Trikon Deception (with Bill Pogue)
Triumph
Vengeance of Orion
Venus
Voyagers
Voyagers II: The Alien Within
Voyagers III: Star Brothers
The Winds of Altair
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BEN BOVA is a six-time winner of the Hugo Award, a former editor of Analog, former editorial director of Omni, and a past president of both the National Space Society and the Science Fiction Writers of America. Bova is the author of more than one hundred works of science fact and fiction. He lives in Florida.
Visit him online at benbova.net, or sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Book One: Earth
Mesa Verde, Colorado
A New Life
Psych Staff
Memory Wipe
Invitation
Jordan Kell
Speeches
Argument
Opportunity
Luncheon
Jove’s Messenger
Dark Age
Masters and Slaves
Loris De Mayne
Survival
Invitation
Historical Architecture
Human History
Next Step
Recipe for Disaster
Moral ’Suasion
Le Chalet
Memories
Conspiracy
Passage
Evasion
Book Two: Jupiter
Jove’s Messenger
Grand Tour
Family Gathering
Captain Tsavo
Mission Plan
Final Preparations
Debarkation
Into Jupiter’s Clouds
Entry
Seeking
Hunters
Communicating?
Music
Malfunction
Sinking
Into the Sea
Beyond Rescue
Battle
Rendezvous
Rescue
Examination
Homeward Bound
Investigation
A Thin Reed
Nothing to Hide
“One May Smile…”
Book Three: The Moon
Debarkation
Immigration
Selene
Investigative Board
Statement
Aftermath
Luncheon
Leaving Selene
Approaching Earth
Book Four: Return to Earth
Landing
Baron Louis St. Etienne Bayeaux De Mayne
Chateau De Mayne
Responsibility
Councilman Williamson
Copenhagen
Acceptance Speech
Mance Bricknell
The Wild Man
Dinner
Confrontation
An Offer (Bribe?)
Chateau De Mayne
Dead End
A New Start
Go, Tell the Spartans
Assassins
Confrontation
Council Meeting
Debate … and Investigation
Viktor Kroonstad
An Offer
Seven Months Later
Tor Books by Ben Bova
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
EARTH
Copyright © 2019 by Ben Bova
All rights reserved.
Cover art by John Harris
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-9719-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-7653-9721-8 (ebook)
eISBN 9780765397218
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First Edition: July 2019
