I shouldn’t have left her.
I have to go back and—and make sure—
Her resolve crystallizing, Elfrida reeled herself back to the floor of the cargo bay. She squeezed through the crowd to the airlock. Waiting for it to cycle, she bounced from foot to foot in impatience.
She couldn’t quite admit to herself why she felt compelled to go back to Richard Windsor’s cabin. But it had to do with the way dos Santos had sounded when she urged Elfrida to leave her. You go on, go watch. I’ll be here—
Reassuring Elfrida. Calming any doubts she may have had that it was all right to leave.
That was what people did, when they planned to take the stuff, and they planned to succeed.
The keel tube was thronged. The Galapajin had come out on the same idiotic impulse as everyone else, to get that little bit closer to the action. Elfrida shoved between them without so much as a “Sumimasen.” She waited for the elevator, and hurtled through the corridors of the crew module.
The peacekeepers who had previously obstructed her entry to Richard Windsor’s cabin were gone. Come to think of it, she’d seen them outside, in their trademark UN-blue spacesuits.
She crashed through the door.
The cabin was empty.
Dented pillows the only sign dos Santos had ever been here.
“Oh my God, oh my God—”
Spinning around, she caught sight of dos Santos’s face, and nearly screamed.
From the wall screen, dos Santos waved at her.
“Looks like you came back.”
The vid had been taken mere moments ago. Dos Santos was lying on the bunk just as Elfrida had left her. She had a calm, confident look in her eyes.
“I was lying about there not being any cameras in there,” she admitted. “I wanted to see what you’d say if you thought it was safe.”
As dos Santos spoke, she twisted onto her side. A handler bot slid its grippers under her, turning her so she could sit up.
Elfrida stood transfixed.
“Well, you thought it was safe, and it was safe, though not for the reason you thought. And you said your piece. And I’m impressed. You found out a lot. 99984 Ravilious … I would really like to know who or what is out there. Well, I’m sure the ISA will get to the bottom of it.”
The helper bot levered dos Santos upright. Pain tautened her voice.
“But they’ll have to do it without me.”
Elfrida spun around, as if she might still spy dos Santos somewhere in the tiny cabin.
Back to the screen.
The bot was helping dos Santos into an EVA suit, a crimson and gold Kharbage, LLC loaner. At the same time, from somewhere around Elfrida’s waist level, dos Santos’s voice said, “Smile. I’m hiding under the bed … Joke, joke.”
Elfrida still had her EVA suit on. Helmet in her hand.
Dos Santos’s voice was coming from the helmet speaker.
“I can see you on the surveillance feed right now,” dos Santos explained. “The camera’s in the chandelier.”
Elfrida tipped her face up to the miniature chandelier. Meanwhile, dos Santos on the screen said, “I guess I just didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye.”
“Oh my God,” dos Santos said from her helmet. “The look on your face. That’s so cute.”
This was like a warped version of a time-delayed conversation. Two dos Santoses, one a few minutes out of date, one real. Elfrida brought the helmet up to her face so she could talk into the suit-to-suit radio. “You can’t leave,” she said lamely.
“Watch me,” said dos Santos—on the screen, not from the helmet. She was on her feet now, supported by the helper bot. Shakily, she turned to face the screen she was now appearing on. In the vid, it still showed the autofeed of Venus. Supported by the bot, dos Santos’s hand slowly rose and gave Venus the finger.
“That’s why I did it, Goto. And that’s all you really need to know.”
“Why you did what?” Elfrida pleaded, talking to the screen in her confusion.
“Keep watching,” said dos Santos from her helmet. “I’m going to explain.”
On the screen, dos Santos stood in the handler bot’s embrace. The bot resembled a ladder on legs, with spindly arms that supported her under the armpits. Woman and bot looked like two robots frozen in mid-tango.
“Goto, you were on the right track to begin with. Yumiko did have orders that weren’t in her operating guidelines. Those orders came from me. Nothing to do with these clowns on 99984 Ravilious, whoever they are. Basically, she was ordered to talk you out of recommending the purchase of 11073 Galapagos.”
“Why?”
“We’ve been sabotaging the asteroid capture program, oh, from way back. The introduction of the stross-class was supposed to speed things up.”
This was the confession Elfrida had been waiting for. She no longer wanted to hear it.
“A multi-phase, multi-agency project like this? A house of cards. Pull one out and the whole thing comes down.”
Dos Santos on the screen raised her eyebrows comically.
“And now it has come down. Thanks, indirectly, to us. The Project can’t survive the loss of Botticelli Station, and there’s no freaking way this rescue attempt is going to work. A rocket booster that’s actually an antique Longvoyager? Please. Lomax and his buds will be lucky if they don’t kill themselves.”
She paused.
“So, that’s why I feel comfortable revealing this to you now. It doesn’t matter anymore. We succeeded, though not in the way I would have chosen.”
For a moment, dos Santos’s eyes closed.
“I did not want, plan for, or anticipate the deaths of all those people. I want to get this across to you so there’s no doubt. That was not part of our plan. That’s all on these fuckers on 99984 Ravilious, and I hope the ISA takes care of them with extreme prejudice.”
Elfrida shook her head, lips folded tight. She felt sick. A conspiracy to sabotage the Venus Project. How high did it go? Who were dos Santos’s unnamed co-conspirators? Someone, or a bunch of someones, in a position to give UNVRP’s phavatars secret orders …
“What about the rest of us?” she burst out. “If the Project is cancelled, the Space Corps will have to downsize, and the people who were working with UNVRP will be the first to go. And what about all the people on all those other asteroids UNVRP expressed interest in, but didn’t end up purchasing? You know how the recycling companies operate! They evict them, take their recyclables, and dump them on Ceres with the clothes on their backs. Exactly what’s about to happen to the Galapajin.”
On the screen, dos Santos clicked her tongue at her helper bot. “I think that’s all,” she said, glancing up at the camera. “I hope this gives you some closure, Goto. You can squeal to the ISA, or not, as you like. As I said, it doesn’t matter anymore. But this vid will auto-delete when it ends, so there’s that. It’ll be your word against, well, everyone else’s. And you may be famous now, but you’re still just a field agent.”
Assisted by the helper bot, she limped out of the shot.
The screen went black.
Elfrida lifted her helmet to her mouth. “Dos Santos? Dos Santos! Where are you?”
“You don’t want to know,” the real dos Santos said, distantly. She sounded out of breath. “Frag off, Goto. Go watch the show. There should be a nice big explosion in a few minutes.”
Elfrida darted out of the cabin. She did not know which way to go. For lack of any better alternative, she headed back to the elevator. In the vestibule, the autofeed was rolling, a few Galapajin watching. But there was nothing to see on the screen except the smouldering nightside of Venus. Somewhere down in that chthonic atmosphere, the Superlifters were slowly towing the Nagasaki towards Botticelli Station.
“Ma’am! Please! Where are you?”
“What more do you want from me, Goto? An apology?”
The screen switched to the feed from one of the Superlifters. Huge and ugly, the naked torus of Botticelli S
tation wallowed in the clouds, lit by the Superlifters’ search beams.
“Yes, an apology would be nice,” Elfrida snapped tearfully. She slapped the elevator button.
“Here’s where we are,” said the Superlifter pilot Lomax from the screen’s speakers. “B-Station’s been gradually losing altitude all this time. It’s down in the troposphere now. Just 34 kilometers above the surface. How low is that? If this was Earth, the engineers working on the station would be able to see individual buildings. By the way, I would like everyone to appreciate the heroic work those guys did. It is around 180° C out there. They had to work in heat-resistant suits borrowed from Star Force, which are like freaking exoskeletons. You can’t see what the fuck you’re doing. And under those conditions, they achieved a miracle. Look.”
Through the superheated murk, the Nagasaki rose into view. It had been towed underneath Botticelli Station. In a feat of precision maneuvering, its needle-prow had speared through the torus of the station, like a dolphin catching a ring on its nose. B-Station now perched askew on top of what had been the cathedral’s domed roof.
The watching Galapajin crossed themselves.
“Is anything holding it on?” Elfrida wondered aloud.
“Nuts and bolts,” said dos Santos from the helmet in her hand.
The elevator came. Elfrida jumped in. She searched the Kharbage Can’s public feeds until she found Lomax’s Superlifter, so she could keep watching on her contacts.
“Status update,” Lomax said. “We’ve taken everyone off, except for that bearded madman. We are now running away like little girls.”
“Girls can run faster than that,” shouted someone, perhaps Petruzzelli.
“We’re being careful,” Lomax said.
B-Station and the Nagasaki, conjoined, sank away into the clouds, like sea creatures sinking back into the depths. In reality, Elfrida understood, they were not sinking. The Superlifters were retreating into space as fast as they could trudge.
“No one’s ever fired up a fusion drive in six bars of mostly carbon dioxide before,” Lomax mused. “The whole dang atmosphere might go up. Who knows?”
The elevator reached the transfer point. Elfrida swam down the keel tube, dodging Galapajin, clamping her helmet back on as she went.
She burst out of the airlock just in time to see light bloom in the clouds of the nightside.
It was like watching an asteroid impact in reverse. Instead of vanishing, the flash grew whiter, brighter, bigger.
Shouts erupted all over the public channel. “The whole atmosphere is going up!”
“Told you it wouldn’t work,” dos Santos said in Elfrida’s helmet.
“The oxygen’s burning,” Elfrida groaned in distress. “Six bars of carbon dioxide? Not even half! They forgot to figure in what the Project has already done to the atmosphere! Our green slime produces oxygen, and because oxygen is lighter than CO2, it’s all risen into the troposphere. And now it’s burning. Our oxygen!”
Now easily visible without filters, the spot of fire on the nightside of Venus flickered blue and green around the edges.
“And methane!” Elfrida moaned.
“Yeah,” dos Santos agreed. “Major facepalm moment.”
Elfrida tethered herself to a stanchion and kicked off into the crowd. There were too many crimson and gold EVA suits to count. She peered at faceplates, saw faces transfixed with horror, greenish in the light of the burning atmosphere. Why did she think dos Santos would be out here with the rest, anyway?
A familiar, long-unheard voice cut across the hullaballoo on the public channel. “Yee-haaaa! Vee have escape velocity!”
Captain Sikorsky—in the words of Lomax, ‘that bearded madman’—was on the bridge of Botticelli Station, piloting the station on its wild ride towards space. He had lobbied successfully for the job because no one else wanted it.
“Now firing explosive charges,” Sikorsky screamed. “Nagasaki ees jettisoned! Do svidaniya!”
Out of the inferno spreading across the nightside, Botticelli Station came flying like a frisbee. It hurtled into orbit and coasted to an altitude appropriate for its momentum.
The Nagasaki followed, flaming like a comet. For a moment it appeared as if the ancient passenger ship, too, would escape Venus’s gravity well. Then it exploded.
With everyone else in the cargo bay, Elfrida instinctively hid her face.
So it was that she, and everyone else, missed the moment when that Steelmule slid out of Cargo Bay No. 1, scant meters above their heads. Unpowered, the Steelmule drifted away from the Kharbage Can. Its trajectory differed slightly from the Can’s, thanks to a push from a certain helper bot. Its shadow flickered across Cargo Bay No. 2, but when Elfrida looked up, it was already out of sight.
“They did it,” she said. Everyone on the public channel was rejoicing, while Sikorsky outshouted them all, singing his own praises in Russian. “They did it! B-Station is safe!”
Blinking back tears, she accidentally blinked Cydney Blaisze’s feed up again.
“We do not yet know the outcome of the attempt,” Blaisze pontificated, far away on Earth. “But we know one thing beyond a doubt: Venus matters so much to these brave men and women that some of them are prepared to die for humanity’s future here. No matter what the fate of Botticelli Station, the United Nations Venus Remediation Project will live on as a testament to their dedication and courage, a symbol of the pioneering human spirit.”
“Oh, damn it,” said dos Santos’s voice, very faint now and staticky.
“Ma’am!” Elfrida wheeled on her tether. “Stay with me! Keep talking!”
She had a nightmarish vision of dos Santos drifting in space, just as Elfrida had drifted on that fragment of 11073 Galapagos. Drifting up to join Jun Yonezawa’s corpse in a graveyard orbit. A different, penitential way of committing suicide.
“Goodbye, Goto,” dos Santos said faintly.
“Where are you? We’ll come and get you!”
“No, you won’t. Everyone’s busy just now, and Steelmules can burn pretty fast.”
Elfrida stared into space. But all she could see was Venus.
“One last thing … ssszzzt … stand by my beliefs one hundred percent. Sssfffppt … speak for the others … best intentions … ssssss …”
Dos Santos’s signal faded into static. Then, for an instant, it came back loud and clear.
“But if there’s one thing I learned in the slums of Sao Paulo, it’s don’t squeal.”
With that, dos Santos was gone.
xxxii.
“You helped her to escape, didn’t you?” Elfrida said to Martin Okoli.
The captain smiled. “Don’t say that kind of thing unless you can prove it, Ms. Goto.”
“The Steelmule. You had the Kharbage Dump drop it off. It was for her. She waited until everyone was busy with the rescue attempt, and then she just went for it. But she had help! Literally! That helper bot. That wasn’t hers, it belonged to the Kharbage Can. You let her have it!”
“She took it without permission,” Okoli said. “Same as the Steelmule.” His jaw jutted truculently. “I’m the one that should be PO’d here, Ms. Goto. That truck cost fifty million spiders. Good thing it was insured.”
“Maybe they’ll catch her,” said Petruzzelli, watching them warily.
Elfrida shook her head. “Somehow, I don’t think they will.”
Around the trio, Galapajin families dispersed into a spacious passenger lounge. They were boarding the quad-module barge Kharbage In, Kharbage Out. Two days after the successful rescue of Botticelli Station, the Kharbage In, Kharbage Out had arrived to evacuate the last of the Galapajin, as well as the B-Station survivors.
The ship would first swing out to the Belt to drop the Galapajin off on Ceres. Then it would return to Earth. The whole journey was projected to take about three months, owing to an upcoming conjunction with Mars, which necessitated a wide detour.
And Elfrida was going on the Kharbage In, Kharbage Out, too.
/> “Be happy, Ms. Goto,” Okoli said. “The Venus Project didn’t get cancelled. Money’s pouring in. I can tell you I’m happy. We’re all happy.”
Elfrida nodded. She saw that Okoli was not going to admit a damn thing, and she wished she hadn’t spoiled their goodbyes with her long-stored-up accusation.
“I’m happy,” she said, by way of an apology.
“You don’t look it.”
Elfrida sought another explanation for her melancholy, apart from dos Santos. “It’s just like, it’s all about politics. Remember what that awful talking head, Cydney Blaisze, said about UNVRP? By the way, she asked me for an interview. I might do it, to tell my side of the story. Anyway, she said the Venus Project is a testament of hope and a symbol of the human spirit, blah blah blah. That’s why they’re not closing it down.”
“I could have told you that a long time ago,” Okoli said. “UNVRP’s always been politically motivated. It sure ain’t economically motivated.”
“It’s simple, in my opinion,” Petruzzelli interrupted. “If they shut UNVRP down now, it would look like the PLAN was winning.” She spread her hands and brought them back together, as if crushing something.
Maybe the PLAN is winning, Elfrida thought, but she did not say it aloud, not wanting to completely kill the mood.
The conflagration in Venus’s troposphere had burned itself out, as the planet’s turbulent Hadley circulation diluted the oxygen with non-flammable CO2. Only about 10% of the oxygen excreted by UNVRP’s green slime had been consumed. That set the biogenic phase of the Project back by several years, but it was hardly a fatal obstacle, in the face of the political determination since exhibited by the General Assembly and the President herself. The successful recovery of Botticelli Station had struck the opening note of a system-wide chorus of self-congratulation. Now politicians and pundits were lining up to pay tribute to the Project.
And to the casualties.
To the roster of B-Station personnel killed in the PLAN attack, was now appended the name of Toshio Hirayanagi. The old priest had died on the Nagasaki. Someone had had to stay on board to throw the switch, and he had volunteered.
The Galapagos Incident by Felix R. Savage Page 25
