Arthur C Clarke's Venus Prime Omnibus

by Paul Preuss

  “Inspector Troy”—going all formal on her—“my orders are to be with you. Not to leave your side.”

  “Okay, Viktor, tell Captain Antreen everything you think you have to.”

  “First you have to tell me,” he said, exasperated.

  “I will. Then as soon as you get that stuff into the lab I want you to go out and intercept Helios. Before anybody disembarks. Keep them busy…”

  As soon as she had explained her suspicions and he understood them, he left. This business of being persuasive was draining, she found. Social intelligence—the people-manipulative intelligence—came hardest to her. Almost immediately, almost involuntarily, she collapsed into trance again.

  The brief meditation restored her. As she allowed the external world to trickle back into her awareness, she began to listen…

  At first she did not filter or focus what she heard but took in the whole symphony of the great space station, spinning in space above Venus, its sounds vibrating through the wall of Star Queen. Gases and fluids coursed through its pumps and conduits, the bearings of its great hubs and rings rolled smoothly on their eternal rounds, the hum of thousands of circuits and high-voltage buses made the aether tremble. She could hear the muted voices of the station’s hundred thousand inhabitants, a third of them at work, a third breathing deeply, asleep, a third concerned with the rich trivia of existence, buying, selling, teaching, learning, cooking, eating, fighting, playing…

  Simply by listening, she could not pick out individual conversations. No one seemed to be talking in the immediate neighborhood. She could have tuned in on the radio transmissions and the communications links, of course, had she chosen to go into receptor state, but that was not her purpose. She wanted a feel for the place. What was it like to live in a metal world constantly orbiting a hell planet? A world with parks and gardens and shops and schools and restaurants, to be sure—a world with unparalleled views of the starry night and the brilliant sun—but a contained world, one from which only the rich could easily get relief. It was a world where people from disparate cultures—Japanese, Arab, Russian, North American—were thrown into close proximity under conditions that inevitably produced strain. Some came for the money, some because they had imagined that space would somehow be free of the restrictions of crowded Earth. Some came, of course, because their parents brought them. But only a few had the pioneering spirit that made hardship an end itself. Port Hesperus was a company town, like an oil platform in the North Atlantic or a mill town in the Canadian forest.

  The message Sparta had through the metal walls was one of tension in reserve, of time bided, of a feeling close to indentured servitude. And there was something more, partly among the recent, reluctant immigrants but especially among the younger residents, those who had been born on the station—a sense of humdrum, a certain resentment, the half-conscious undercurrent of brewing discontent—but for now the older generation was firmly in charge, and they had little in mind beyond vigorously exploiting the resources of Venus’s surface, making themselves as comfortable as possible while they did so, and earning the wherewithal to get off Port Hesperus forever…

  Almost a kilometer away from where Sparta drifted dreaming in the freighter, the off-duty life of Port Hesperus was at its busiest. The enormous central sphere of the station was belted with tall trees—their tops all pointing inward—and ribbed with louvered glass windows that continually adjusted to compensate for the whirl of Venuslight and sunlight. Among the trees, paths wove among lush gardens of passion flowers and orchids and bromeliads, under cycads and tree ferns, beside trickling brooks and still reflecting ponds of recirculated water, over arched bridges of wood or stone.

  A stroller who made the entire three-and-a-half-kilometer circuit would come upon seven strikingly different views, separately climate-controlled, laid out by the master landscape architect Seno Sato to suggest the diversity of cultures that had contributed to build Port Hesperus, and the mythic past of its mother planet. Step through this torii: here is Kyoto, an eaved castle, raked pebbles, twisted pines. Brush aside these tamarisk branches: Samarkand, its arabesque pavilions of inlaid blue stone reflected in perfumed pools. Through these bare birches to Kiev, blue onion domes above a frozen canal, where today two skaters circle. The snow underfoot becomes powdered marble, then plain sand: here is the Sphinx, in a garden of bare red rocks. Up this rocky path and past this flowering plum to vanished Changan, a seven-story stone pagoda with gilded finials. Through these yellow ginkgos the boat pond of New York’s Central Park appears, complete with toy schooners, watched over with perplexed amusement by the well-polished bronze of Alice. An aisle of silent hemlocks leads to Vancouver, dripping cedars and totem poles and verdigrised gargoyles. And under these dripping tree ferns to the fern swamps of legendary, fictitious Venus, with a notable collection of carnivorous plants glistening in the eternal rain. Around this tall monkey-puzzle: Kyoto’s gate…

  On either side of the magnificent gardens, in parallel belts around the central sphere, were the casbah, plaka, Champs Élysées, Red Square, Fifth Avenue, and Main Street of Port Hesperus—shops, galleries, dime stores, Russian tea shops, rug merchants, restaurants of fifteen distinct ethnic persuasions, fish markets (aquacultured bream a specialty), fruit and vegetable markets, flower stands, temples, mosques, synagogues, churches, discreetly naughty cabarets, the Port Hesperus Performing Arts Center, and the streets outside jammed with shoppers and hawkers, jugglers and strolling musicians, people wearing bright metals and plastics and their own colorized skin. Sato’s gardens brought wealthy tourists from throughout the solar system. Port Hesperus’s merchants and boosters were ready for them.

  The central sphere was frequented by the station’s workers and families too, of course. It’s just that a Disney kind of world—even a Disney world equipped with a cosmopolitan selection of foods and beverages and real, sometimes kinky people—grows familiar after the fifth or sixth visit, and deadly dull after the hundredth. Every excuse for news, for a diversion, becomes precious…

  Which is why Vincent Darlington was in a snit.

  Darlington waddled about the spectacularly gaudy main hall of the Hesperian Museum aimlessly straightening the baroque and rococo paintings in their ornate frames, trying to keep his fingers out of the piles of cultured shrimp and caviar and tiny lobster tails and synthetic ham rolls the caterers had hauled in by the kilo and which now gleamed oilily beneath the odd light of the room’s stained glass dome. Every few seconds Darlington returned to the empty display case at the head of the room—positioned where, had this place been a church, as its spectacularly intricate overarching stained glass apotheosis suggested, the altar would have stood. He drummed his chubby fingers on the gilt frame. It had been specially built to hold his newest acquisition, and he’d placed it where no one entering the museum could possibly miss it—especially that Sylvester woman, if she had the brass to come.

  One reason he’d staged the reception. And invited someone, that oh-so-special someone, who was quite likely to drag her along. He hoped she did come; he couldn’t wait to see the hunger on her face…

  But now the whole thing was off. Or at least postponed. First the news that his acquisition had been impounded. Then the news just now that the police were delaying the disembarkation of Helios! What in heaven’s name could be so complicated about a simple accident in space…?

  Horribly embarrassing, but he certainly had no intention of reopening the Hesperian Museum until his treasure was safely enthroned.

  Darlington pushed himself away from the empty altar. He’d recoiled from the notion of mingling with the crowd of media persons and other rabble that had rushed to the security sector when Star Queen, at last, had arrived. He had subsequently placed one discreet call to the powers-that-be, urging—one might in fact say pleading, but only really in the gentlest possible fashion—that something be done about the red tape that prevented him from taking immediate delivery of the most valuable book in the entire history of the E
nglish language—and honestly now, if it weren’t the most valuable book, then why had he been forced to pay such an outrageous sum for it, surely the largest sum ever paid for a book in the English language in the history of the English language itself, and that surely said something… and out of his own pockets, which weren’t, shall we say, bottomless, after all…?

  Not, of course, that he cared about the book, actually, the actual contents of the book, that is to say, the words in the book. War stories, you know. Given that this fellow Lawrence was said to have written rather well, and there were those endorsements, G. B. Shaw, Robert Graves, whoever they were, but they were said to have written well themselves, for the period, that is, anyway someone said so, and really, any reputation that lasts a century has some value, wouldn’t-you-say? But not really what he thought he was getting, in fact—permitting himself to make a small confession to himself—some confusion actually, quite understandable, another chap named Lawrence from the same period, after all it was more than a hundred years ago.

  Which was quite beside the point. He’d paid money for this bloody book. There were only five copies in the universe, and three of those were lost, and now there was only the one in the Library of Congress of the United States of America and his—the Hesperian Museum’s, which itself was his. And he’d bought it for one reason, to humiliate that woman, who had humiliated him in the aftermath of her disgraceful public pursuit of his … well, that oh-so-special someone. His legal companion, once.

  He supposed he should simply say good riddance to the little slut. But he couldn’t. She had her quite remarkable charms, and Darlington was not likely to find her equivalent on this sardine-can-in-space.

  Which set him to brooding, as he did endlessly, over whether he would ever get off Port Hesperus, whether he could ever go home again. He knew, deep down, that he wouldn’t. They’d bury poor Vince Darlington in space, unless by some miracle they buried his sisters first. Not a matter of fighting extradition to Earth, nothing so public, or so legal. No, it was the price the family—the poisonous sisters, actually—had exacted for keeping their persimmon-lips puckered tightly—for keeping him out of a Swiss jail, to be precise. Of course it would have had to be their money…

  This was the retreat he’d made for himself, and here he would stay, in these few small rooms with their velvet walls and this … really amazing glass dome (perhaps it really had been built as a church?), surrounded by his dead treasures.

  He eyed the shrimps. They weren’t getting any fresher.

  He set off on another round of picture straightening. When would he be allowed to take possession? Perhaps he should cancel now. Captain Antreen had been most unhelpful. Oh, smiles and all that, said she’d do the best she could, but results? No promises there, darling. It all had a sour taste to it, rather curdling his intended triumph over Sylvester.

  Darlington passed nervously into one of the smaller, darker side rooms, He stopped beside a glass case, caught by his reflection in its lid. He patted his thinning black hair and adjusting his old-fashioned horn-rimmed eyeglasses—hadn’t lost his looks quite yet, thank God—twitching his lips in a little moue, then moving on, ignoring the contents of the case.

  What Darlington left behind in this small room were his real treasures, although he refused to acknowledge them. Here were those odd scraps of fossil imprints, found on the surface of Venus by robot explorers, which had made the Hesperian Museum a place of intense interest to scientists and scholars, and, after Sato’s gardens, one of the chief tourist attractions of Port Hesperus. But Darlington, absurdly wealthy even on a negotiated allowance, was a collector of second-rate European art of the melodrama-and-curlicue periods, and to him rocks and bones belonged in some desert gas station or Olde Curiosity Shoppe on Earth. His Venusian fossils brought him system-wide attention, so he grudgingly allowed them their space.

  He continued to pace, staring at his garish paintings and sculptures and expensive bric-a-brac and brooding on what that busybody police person from Earth was up to, poking about on the derelict ship that held his precious book.

  Shortly before Helios was due to rendezvous with Port Hesperus and shortly after Sparta had asked him to assure its quarantine while she went off on business of her own, Viktor Proboda presented himself at the Board of Space Control’s local headquarters. Captain Antreen called him into her office; Lieutenant Kitamuki, her aide, was already in the room.

  “Your instructions were simple, Viktor.” Antreen’s smiling mask had slipped; she was rigid with anger. “You were not to leave Troy’s side.”

  “She trusts me, Captain. She has promised to inform me promptly of everything she finds.”

  “And you trust her?” Kitamuki demanded.

  “She seems to know what she’s doing, Lieutenant.” Proboda felt it was getting awfully warm in this office. “And Central did put her in charge.”

  “We requested a replacement. We didn’t ask that the investigation be taken away from us.” Antreen said.

  “I didn’t like that any better than you did, Captain,” Proboda said stoutly. “In fact I took it personally at first, considering you’d already given me the assignment. But after all, most of the principals in the case are Earth-based…”

  “Most of the principals are Euro-Americans,” Kitamuki said. “Does that give you a clue?”

  “Sorry,” Proboda said stoutly. He could see the conspiracy theory coming—Kitamuki was big on them—but conspiracy theories were not his thing. He put his faith in simpler motivations, like vengeance, greed, and stupidity. “I really think you ought to take a look at these lab results. We did—Troy did, in fact—a very close inspection of the impact site, and what she found…”

  “Someone back there has passed the word that this department is to be discredited,” Kitamuki interrupted. “Here on Port Hesperus, Azure Dragon is producing spectacular results, and some among the Euro-Americans, on the station and back on Earth, don’t like it.” She paused to let her dark suspicions sink in.

  “We’ve got to watch our step, Viktor,” Antreen said evenly. “To preserve our integrity. Port Hesperus is a model of cooperation, and unfortunately some would like to destroy us.”

  Proboda suspected somebody was blowing smoke in his face—he wasn’t sure who. But while Captain Antreen didn’t always choose to make her reasoning clear, she did make her point. “How do you want me to handle it, then?”

  “You do as Troy asks you. Just know that we’ll be working with you too, sometimes behind the scenes. Troy is not to be made aware of this. We want the situation resolved, but there’s no need to go beyond the pertinent facts.”

  “All right, then,” Proboda concurred. “Shall I see to Helios?”

  “You do that,” Lieutenant Kitamuki said. “Leave Troy to us.”

  “Now what did you want to tell us about these lab results?” Antreen asked him.

  15

  Alone in Star Queen, Sparta started her investigation from the top down.

  Immediately below the inner hatch of the main airlock was a claustrophobic space jammed with stores and equipment lockers. Three spacesuits normally hung against the wall in one quadrant of the round deck. One was missing. Grant’s. Another appeared unused. Wycherly’s, the unfortunate pilot’s. Curious, Sparta checked its oxygen supply and found it partially charged—enough there for half an hour. Had McNeil been saving it, in case things went wrong, and he too decided to lose himself in space? Sparta poked here and there among the supply lockers—tools, batteries, spare lithium hydroxide canisters and such—but she found nothing of significance here. She quickly moved down to the flight deck.

  The flight deck was spacious by comparison, taking up a slice through the wide tropics of the crew module’s sphere. The consoles that circled the deck beneath the wide windows were alive with flickering lights, their blue and green and yellow indicator lamps glowing softly on auxiliary power. Facing them were seats for commander, second pilot, and engineer—although Star Queen, like other mod
ern freighters, could be flown by a single crewmember or none, if placed under remote control.

  The room was a pragmatic mix of the exotic and the mundane. The computers were state of the art and so were the window shades, although the state of the window-shade art had not changed a whole lot in the past century, and the fire extinguishers were still just red-painted metal bottles, clipped to the bulkheads. There were racks and cabinets of machines, but there was also plenty of good working space and a good view out the surrounding windows; the deck had been designed in the awareness that crews would spend many months of their lives within its confines. Sparta was struck, however, that there were no personalizing touches, no cut-out cartoons or posters or pin-ups, no cute notes. Perhaps neo-commander Peter Grant had not been the sort to tolerate individual litter.

  Besides the ship’s working programs, the logs—Grant’s verbal log and the ship’s black-box recorders—were accessed from these consoles. In fact almost all of the codable information about the ship and its cargo, except Grant’s and McNeil’s personal computer files, was accessed from this deck.

  Sparta expelled a breath and got down to work. From the chemical traces left on the consoles, armrests, handrails, and other surfaces she confirmed that no one besides Grant and McNeil had been on this deck for several weeks. There were still a jumble of traces, but most were months old, left by the workmen who had refurbished the ship.

  Sparta had internalized the computer’s standard access codes. In little more time than it took to slip her gloves off and slide her PIN probes into the ports, she’d offloaded its memory into her own much denser, much more capacious cellular storage mechanisms.

  She raced lightly through the first few files of interest. The cargo manifest was as she had memorized it on the trip from Earth—no additions, no subtractions, no surprises. Four detachable cargo holds, capable of pressurization. On this voyage, only the first compartment of Hold A pressurized—the usual foodstuffs, medicines, so on—and that diminutive bit of mass worth two million pounds Sterling, a book in its carrying case…