by Mercury(lit)
He waited for two days. Then he rode the shuttle back to Himawari with the evidence in his tunic pocket.
Lara and Victor eagerly greeted him at the airlock. They hurried down the passageway together toward the Molinas' stateroom, Victor in a sweat to see what Alexios had uncovered, Lara just as eager but more controlled.
As soon as the stateroom door closed Molina demanded, "Well? What did you find?"
"Quite a bit," said Alexios. "Is McFergusen still here? He should see-"
"He left two days ago," Molina snapped. "What did you find out?" Alexios pulled two thin sheets of plastic from his tunic and unfolded them on the coffee table as Molina and his wife sat together on the little sofa. He tapped the one on top.
"Is this the anonymous message you received?" he asked Molina.
The astrobiologist scanned it. "Yes, that's it."
Alexios knew it was. He had sent it. He turned that sheet over to show the one beneath it.
"What's this?" Lara asked.
"A copy of a requisition from the International Consortium of Universities, selling eleven Martian rocks to a private research facility on Earth."
"My rocks!" Molina blurted.
"How did they get from Earth to Mercury?" Lara asked.
Alexios knew perfectly well, but he said, "That part of it we'll have to deduce from the available evidence."
"Who sent this message to me?" Molina demanded, tapping the first sheet.
"It wasn't easy tracking down the sender. He was very careful to cover his tracks."
"Who was it?"
"And he had a large, well-financed organization behind him, as well," Alexios added.
"Who was it?" Molina fairly screamed.
Alexios glanced at Lara. She was obviously on tenterhooks, her lips parted slightly, her eyes wide with anticipation.
"Bishop Danvers," said Alexios.
"Elliott?" Molina gasped.
"I can't believe it," said Lara. "He's a man of god-he wouldn't stoop to such chicanery."
"He's my friend," Molina said, looking bewildered. "At least, I thought he was."
Alexios said, "The New Morality hates the discoveries you astrobiologists have made, you know that. What better way to discredit the entire field than by showing a prominent astrobiologist to be a fraud, a liar?"
Molina sank back in the sofa. "Elliott did this? To me?"
"What proof do you have?" Lara asked.
Alexios looked into her gold-flecked eyes. "The people who traced this message used highly irregular methods-"
"Illegal, you mean," she said flatly.
"Extralegal," Alexios countered.
"Then this so-called evidence won't hold up in a court of law."
"No, but there must be a record of this message in Danvers's computer files. Even if he erased the message, a scan of his memory core might find a trace of it."
Lara stared hard at him. "The bishop could claim that someone planted the message in his computer."
Alexios knew she was perfectly correct. But he said, "And why would anyone do that?"
Impatiently, Molina argued, "We can't examine Elliott's computer files without his permission. And if he really did this he won't give permission. So where are we?"
"You're forgetting this invoice," said Alexios. "It can be traced to the New Morality school in Gabon, in west Africa."
Lara looked at her husband. "Elliott was stationed in Libreville."
"For almost ten years," Molina said.
She turned back to Alexios. "You're certain of all this?"
He nodded and lied, "Absolutely. I paid a good deal of money to obtain this information."
"Elliott?" Molina was still finding it difficult to accept the idea. "Elliott deliberately tried to destroy me?"
"I'm afraid he has destroyed you," Alexios said grimly. "Your reputation is permanently tainted."
Molina nodded ruefully. Then his expression changed, hardened. "Then I'm taking that pompous sonofabitch down with me!"
CONFRONTATION
"It's utterly ridiculous!" cried Bishop Danvers.
Molina was standing in Danvers's stateroom, too furious to sit down. He paced the little room like a prowling animal. Lara sat on one of the upholstered chairs, Alexios on the other one. Danvers was on the sofa between them, staring bewilderedly at the two flimsy sheets that Alexios had brought.
"We have the proof," Molina said, jabbing a finger toward the message and the invoice.
"It's not true, Victor," said Danvers. "Believe me, it's not true."
"You deliberately ruined me, Elliott."
"No, I-"
"Why?" Molina shouted. "Why did you do this to me?"
"I didn't!" Danvers howled back, his face reddening. "It's a pack of lies." Desperately, he turned to Lara. "Lara, you believe me, don't you? You know I wouldn't have done this. I couldn't have!"
Lara's eyes flicked from her husband to the bishop and back again.
"Someone has deliberately ruined Victor's reputation," she said evenly, fixing her gaze on Alexios. "No matter who did this, Victor's career is destroyed."
"But it wasn't me!" Danvers pleaded.
"Wasn't it?" Molina snapped. "When I think of all the talks we've had, over the years, all the arguments-"
"Discussions!" Danvers corrected. "Philosophical discussions."
"You've had it in for me ever since you found out that I was using those gengineered viruses to help build the skytower," Molina accused. "You and your kind hate everything that science stands for, don't you?"
"No, it's not true." Danvers seemed almost in tears.
Molina stopped his pacing to face the bishop. "When I told you about what I was doing at the skytower, you reported it to your New Morality superiors, didn't you?"
"Of course. It was important information."
"You were a spy back in Ecuador. You were sent to the skytower project to snoop, not to pray for people's souls."
"Victor, please believe me-"
"And now they've sent you here to Mercury to destroy my work, my career. You've ruined my life, Elliott! You might as well have taken a knife and stabbed me through the heart!"
Danvers sank his face in his hands and started blubbering. Lara stared at him, her own eyes growing misty. Then she looked up at her husband.
"Victor, I don't think he did this," she said calmly.
"Then who did?" Molina demanded. "Who would have any reason to?"
Lara focused again squarely on Alexios. "Are you certain of this information?" she asked. "Absolutely certain?"
Alexios fought down the urge to squirm uncomfortably under her gaze. As smoothly as he could, he replied, "As your husband said, who else would have a motive for doing this to him? The New Morality must have marked Victor years ago, when they learned what he was doing for the skytower."
"And they'd wait all this time to get back at him?"
Shrugging, Alexios said, "Apparently so. That's what the evidence suggests."
Abruptly, Molina bent over the coffee table and snatched the two flimsy sheets. "I'm calling McFergusen. I've been the victim of a hoax, a scam. And then I'm calling the news nets. The New Morality is going to pay for this! I'll expose them for the psalm-singing hypocrites that they are!"
Exactly what I thought you'd do, Alexios said to himself. Aloud, however, he tried to sound more reasonable. "I agree that a call to McFergusen is in order. But a news conference? Do you really want to attack the New Morality?"
"Why not?" Molina snapped. "What do I have to lose?"
Lara got to her feet. "Victor, Mr. Alexios is right. Don't be too hasty. Talk with McFergusen first. He might be able to salvage something out of this situation."
"Salvage what? Even if I can prove that I've been scammed, I still look like an idiot. Nobody will ever believe me again. My career is finished!"
"But perhaps-"
"Perhaps nothing! They've destroyed me; I'm going to do my damnedest to destroy them. And you in particular, Elliott, you go
ddamned lying bastard!"
Danvers looked up at the astrobiologist, his face white with shock, his eyes filled with tears.
Molina took his wife by the wrist and slammed out of the stateroom, leaving Alexios alone with the bishop.
"I didn't do it," Danvers mewed, bewildered. "As God is my witness, I never did any of this."
Alexios scratched his chin, trying to prevent himself from gloating. "Would you allow me to check your computer? I presume you brought your memory core with you when you came to Mercury."
Danvers nodded glumly and gestured toward the desk, where the palm-sized computer rested. Alexios spent a half hour fiddling with it while the bishop sat on the sofa in miserable silence. Alexios found the trace of the message he had paid to have planted in the computer's core. It looked as if it had been erased from the active memory, but still existed deep in the core.
Getting up from the desk at last, Alexios lied, "Well, if it's in your machine's memory it would take a better expert than me to find it."
"It doesn't matter," Danvers said, his heavy head drooping.
"I should think it would be important."
His voice deep and low with despair, Danvers said, "You don't understand. A scandal like this will ruin me. The New Morality doesn't permit even a suspicion of wrongdoing among its hierarchy. We must all be above evil, above even accusations of evil. This... once Victor tells people about this... I'll be finished in the New Morality. Finished."
Alexios took a breath, then replied, "Maybe you can get a position as chaplain on a prison ship, or out in the Asteroid Belt. They could use your consolations there."
Danvers looked up at him, blinking. He seemed to have aged ten years in the past half hour.
Alexios smiled, thinking, You wouldn't last a month out there, you fat old fraud. Somebody would strangle you in the middle of your hymns.
OBSERVATION LOUNGE
Alexios fidgeted nervously as he stood in Himawari's dimmed observation lounge, gazing through the glassteel blister as the star-flecked depths of infinite space spun slowly, inexorably past his altered eyes. The eyes of heaven, he said to himself, half-remembering a poem from his school days. The army of unalterable law, that's what the poet called the stars.
I should feel triumphant, he thought. Victor's career is in tatters, and Danvers is in disgrace. All that's left is Yamagata and I'll be taking care of him shortly. Yet he felt no delight in his victory over them. No triumph. He was dead inside, cold and numb. Ten years I've waited to get even with them and now that I have... so what? So Victor will spend the rest of his life in some obscure university trying to live down his mistake here on Mercury. And Danvers will be defrocked, or whatever they do in the New Morality. What of it? How does that change my life?
Lara, he said to himself. It all depends on Lara. She's the one I did this for. She's the one who kept me alive through all those long years out in the Belt. My only glimmer of hope when I was a prisoner, a miserable exile.
As the torch ship rotated, the surface of Mercury slid into view, barren, heat-blasted, pitted with craters and seamed with cracks and fault lines. Like the face of an old, old man, Alexios thought, a man who's lived too long. He saw a line of cliffs and the worn, tired mountains ringing an ancient crater. He knew where Goethe base was, but he could not see the modest mound of rubble covering its dome from the distance of the ship's orbit, nor the tracks of the vehicles that churned up the thin layer of dust on the ground down there.
Once we've built the mass driver you'll be able to see it from orbit, he thought. Five kilometers long. We'll see it, all right.
The door behind him slid open, spilling light from the passageway into the darkened compartment. Alexios's heart constricted in his chest. He did not dare to turn around, but in the reflection off the glassteel bubble he saw that it was Lara.
He slowly turned toward her as she slid the door shut. The compartment became dim and shadowed again, but he could see her lovely face, see the curiosity in her eyes.
"You asked me to meet you here?" she said, her voice soft and low.
He realized he'd been holding his breath. He nodded, then managed to get out, "It's one of the few places aboard ship where we can meet privately."
"You have some further information about my husband?"
"No... not really..." It took all his self-control to keep from reaching out and clasping her in his arms. Surely she could hear his heart thundering.
"I don't understand," Lara said with a little frown. "You asked me to see you, to come alone, without Victor."
"Lara, it's me," he blurted. "Mance."
Her mouth dropped open.
"I know I look different," he said, the words coming in a rush now. "I had to change my appearance, my background, I came here to Mercury but I had no idea you'd come out here too and now that you're here I can't keep up the masquerade any longer, I want to-"
"Mance?" she whispered, unbelieving.
"Yes, it's me, darling."
She staggered back several steps, dropped onto the bench running along the compartment's rear bulkhead. "It can't be," she said, her voice hollow.
He went to her, knelt before her, grasped both her hands in his own. "Lara, I've gone through hell to find you again. I love you. I've always loved you."
She was staring at him, searching for the Mance Bracknell she had known. He could see the play of starlight in her eyes and then the harsh glare reflected from Mercury casting her face into stark light and shadow.
"I know I don't look the same, Lara. But it really is me, Mance. I have a new identity. I'm a free man now. The old Mance Bracknell is dead, as far as the officials are concerned. But we can begin our lives again, Lara, we can take up where we left off."
She shuddered, like a woman coming out of a trance. "Begin our lives again?"
"Yes! I love you, dearest. I want to marry you and-"
"I'm already married. I have an eight-year-old son. Victor's son."
"You can divorce Victor. Nobody will blame you for leaving him."
Recognition lit her eyes. "You did this to Victor! It wasn't Elliott, it was you!"
"I did it for you," he said.
"You destroyed my husband's career and ruined Elliott."
"Because I love you."
"What kind of love is that?"
Alexios saw the disgust in her eyes. "You don't understand," he said. "They destroyed me. Victor deliberately lied at my trial. He wanted me out of the way so he could have you. He stole you from me. He stole my entire life!"
"And now you've stolen his."
"Yes! And I want you back. You're the reason I've done all this."
"Oh, my god," she moaned.
"You loved me, you know you did. You said you wanted to be with me. Well, now we can-"
"And Elliott, too? What do you have against him?"
Anger rising inside him, Alexios said, "He's the one who started the scheme to destroy the skytower. Him and his New Morality hatred for nanotechnology or anything else that they can't find in the Old Testament."
"Destroy the skytower?"
"It was sabotaged. Deliberately knocked down. They didn't care how many people they killed, they just wanted the tower destroyed. And me with it."
She stared at him. "You're saying that Victor helped to bring the tower down?"
"No, I don't think so. I don't know. But he lied at my trial. He was perfectly willing to lie so that the blame would all be dumped on me. So that I'd be sent off Earth and he'd have you to himself."
Lara shook her head, just the slightest of movements, as she said, "I can't believe that. I don't believe any of this!"
"But it's true! It's all true! Victor is a lying thief and Danvers helped him."
She sagged back on the padded bulkhead. Alexios climbed to his feet and sat beside her.
"I know it's a lot to accept all at once. But I really am Mance Bracknell. At least I was, once. Now I'm Dante Alexios. I'm fairly prosperous; I can offer you a fine life back
on Earth. Victor stole you from me. I want you back."
"He's my husband," Lara repeated weakly.
He looked directly into her eyes. In the dim lighting of the compartment he could not see any tears in them.
