by Mercury(lit)
"Lara, you can't tell me that you love Victor the way you loved me."
She said nothing.
"We were perfect for each other," he said. "The minute I first saw you, back in that dull statistics class with the Chinese T.A. who could barely speak English, I fell hopelessly in love with you."
For long moments she remained silent. Then, "You certainly didn't show it."
"I was too shy. It didn't seem possible that anyone as wonderful as you would have the slightest interest in me."
Lara smiled faintly.
"We belong together, Lara. They've separated us for so many years, but we can be together again now."
Again that slight shake of her head. "So many years have gone by."
"But we can start again," he urged.
"It's not that simple."
"It can be, if you want it to be. Victor got what's coming to him. He's finished, out of the picture."
"He's my husband," she said, still again.
"He stole you from me!"
She looked away for a moment, then turned back to him. "Look, Mance or Alexios or whoever you are. I am married to Victor Molina. He's the father of my child. You've tried to ruin him-"
"Nothing less than he deserves," Alexios growled, feeling his anger simmering inside him again. "In fact, he deserves a lot worse."
"What you've told me might save him," Lara said.
Alexios was thunderstruck. He felt a wave of nausea wash over him. "You'd take him over me?"
"Mance Bracknell is dead," Lara said, her voice flat and cold. "So be it. We could never recapture what we had all those years ago. Do you think I could leave Victor and go with you, knowing what you've done to him?"
"But he deserves it!"
"No, he doesn't. And even if he did, his wife should be by his side, protecting and supporting him. For the sake of our child, if for no other reason."
"You belong with me!"
"No. My place is with my husband and son, no matter what happened in the past."
"That's..." Alexios ran out of words. This has gone all wrong, he said to himself. All wrong.
Lara got to her feet. "I'm going to tell Victor about this, and then McFergusen. I won't mention Mance Bracknell. I'll simply tell them that you confessed to me that you planted the false evidence."
"They'll find out who I am!" Alexios pleaded. "They'll send me back to the Belt!"
"Not if you can prove that the skytower was sabotaged. Not if you can lead the authorities to the people who are really responsible for all those deaths."
He stood up beside her, his knees unsteady, and watched as she abruptly turned away from him and left the observation lounge. He stood frozen, watching as the door slid closed. Then he felt the glare from Mercury's surface blaze through the heavily tinted blister of glassteel. It felt like the hot breath of doom.
GOETHE BASE
It's all gone wrong, Alexios said to himself as he sat miserably alone in his sparely furnished office at the construction base. Horribly wrong.
Lara, Victor, and Danvers had left for Earth on the ship that had shepherded the six new power satellites from Selene. She must be telling Victor everything, Alexios thought. It's only a matter of time before the IAA or some other group sends investigators here to check me out. If they suspect I'm not who I say I am, they'll want to do DNA scans on me. If I refuse they'll get a court order.
It's finished, he told himself. Over. She's not the same Lara I knew. The years have changed her.
He stood up and studied his reflection in the blank wall screen. They've changed me, too, he realized. He paced across the little office, thinking that he was still all alone in the universe. Lara doesn't love me anymore. No one in the entire solar system cares about me. There's only one thing left to do. Get Yamagata down here and finish the job. Make him pay before they come after me. After that, it doesn't matter what happens.
Yet he hesitated. When the investigators come I could tell them the whole story, tell them how Yamagata sabotaged the skytower, how he's the one who's really responsible for all those deaths.
But the mocking voice in his head sneered, And they'll believe you? Against Yamagata? Where's your evidence? He's murdered everyone connected with the sabotage. Toshikazu was the last one, and his assassins even killed themselves so there'd be no possible witnesses remaining.
Alexios knew the severed end of the skytower lay more than four thousand meters beneath the surface of the Atlantic, near the fracture zone where hot magma wells up from deep beneath the Earth's crust. No one would send an expedition to search for the remains of nanomachines that had probably been dissolved by now, he knew.
He also knew that Saito Yamagata maintained the convenient fiction that his son ran Yamagata Corporation. He was in a lamasery in Tibet when the skytower went down, Alexios remembered. Yes, of course, the voice in his mind taunted. He pulled all the strings for this vast murderous conspiracy from his retreat in the Himalayas. Try getting the authorities to buy that.
Alexios shook his head slowly. No, I'm not going to try to get the authorities to do anything. I'm going to take care of Yamagata myself. I'm going to end this thing once and for all.
He told the phone to call Saito Yamagata.
Yamagata was clearly uncomfortable about being out on the surface; Alexios could see the unhappy frown on his face through the visor of his helmet. Don't worry, he said silently, you won't be out here long. Only for the rest of your life.
The two men were riding a slow, bumping tractor across the bleak surface of Mercury, dipping down into shallow craters and then laboring up the other side, moving farther and farther from the base. It was night; the Sun would not rise for another hour, but the glow of starlight and the pale glitter of the zodiacal light bathed the bleak landscape in a cold, silvery radiance.
Despite all the months he'd been on Mercury, Alexios still could not get accustomed to the little planet's short horizon. It was like the brink of a cliff looming too close; the edge of the world. In the airless vacuum the horizon was sharp and clear, no blurring or softening with distance, a knife edge: the solid world ended and the black infinity of space lay beyond.
"You'll be out of camera range in two more minutes," the base controller's calm flat voice said in Alexios's helmet earphones.
"You have a satellite track on us, don't you?" he asked.
"Affirmative. Two of 'em, as a matter of fact."
"Our beacon's coming through all right?"
"Loud and clear."
"Good enough."
Even though the tractor's glassteel cabin was pressurized, both Yamagata and Alexios were wearing full spacesuits, their helmet visors closed and sealed. Safety regulations, Alexios had told Yamagata when the older man had grumbled about getting into the uncomfortable suit.
"How far are we going to go?" Yamagata asked as the tractor slewed around a house-sized boulder.
Taking one gloved hand off the steering controls to point out toward the horizon, Alexios said, "We've got to get to the other side of that fault line. Then we'll double back."
Yamagata grunted, and the frown on his face relaxed, but only slightly.
It had been easy enough to get him down to the planet's surface.
"I'd like to show you the site we're considering for the mass driver," Alexios had told Yamagata. "Naturally, we can't make the final decision. That's up to you."
Yamagata's image in Alexios's wall screen had turned thoughtful. "Is it necessary for me to inspect this location personally?"
Choosing his words carefully, Alexios had replied, "I understand, sir, that it's inconvenient and uncomfortable to come down here to the surface. Even a little dangerous, to be truthful."
Yamagata had stiffened at that. Drawing himself up to his full height, he'd told Alexios, "I will come to the base tomorrow. My transportation coordinator will inform you of when you may expect me."
Alexios had smiled. Touch the man on his Japanese brand of machismo and you've got him. The o
ld samurai tradition. He doesn't want to lose face in front of his employees.
"I received a report from my son's technical experts in Japan," Yamagata said, staring straight ahead as he sat alongside Alexios in the lumbering tractor. "They believe your numbers on the solar cell degradation problem are exaggerated."
Alexios knew perfectly well that they were. "Exaggerated?" he asked.
"Overstated," said Yamagata, his voice muffled slightly by the spacesuit helmet.
It was impossible to shrug inside the heavy suit. Alexios said smoothly, "I admit that I showed you the worst-case numbers. I thought it best that way."
Yamagata grunted. "We may not have to harden the power satellites after all."
"That's good news, then," Alexios replied. It didn't matter now, he thought. None of it mattered any more.
Yamagata was silent for several kilometers. Then, "What makes you think this is the best site for the catapult launcher?" he demanded. "If it takes this long to get there, why is this site so preferable?"
Alexios smiled behind his visor. "It's that blasted fault line. If you approve the site, we'll bridge over it. But right now we have to go all the way around it. Won't be long now, though."
Yamagata nodded and seemed to settle down inside his suit.
It won't be long now, Alexios repeated silently.
FREIGHTER XENOBIA
Lara Tierney Molina could not sleep. Victor lay beside her, dead to the world on the sedatives and tranquilizers he'd been taking ever since boarding the creaking old freighter, coasting now on a four-month trajectory back to Selene.
The clock's digits glowing in the darkness read 12:53. She slipped out of bed, groped in the shadows of the darkened stateroom for the first dress she could find in her travel bag, and pulled it on. Victor would sleep for hours more, she knew. She tiptoed to the door, opened it as softly as she could, and stepped out into the passageway. As she slid the door closed and heard the faint click of its lock, she wondered which way led to the galley.
I have to think, she told herself as she walked slowly along the passageway. Its plastic walls were scuffed and dulled from long use, the floor tiles even worse. Xenobia had ferried a set of solar power satellites to Mercury for Yamagata's project; now its only cargo was a disgraced New Morality bishop, a humiliated astrobiologist, and herself. The IAA was paying Victor's fare and her own. The New Morality had refused to pay for Danvers's return; Saito Yamagata had graciously taken care of it.
Victor had demanded a hearing before the IAA's disciplinary board. McFergusen will chair that meeting, Lara thought. I'll have to tell them what Mance confessed to me. No, not Mance. He's a different man, this Dante Alexios. He's no longer Mance Bracknell.
Deep inside her she wondered why she hadn't told Victor about Alexios's confession. Victor was dazed and thick-witted from the tranquilizers that Yamagata's medical people had dosed him with, but she knew that wasn't the reason. Could she believe this Alexios person? Is he really Mance? How else would he know about how we met? He must be Mance. But that makes it even worse, even more complicated. Mance deliberately ruined Victor, revenged himself on poor Victor like some savage out of the dark ages. I'll have to tell Victor, I can't keep this from him. It might save his career, save his life.
Yet she hesitated, wondering, uncertain of herself or anything. Victor had lied at Mance's trial? Perjured himself to get rid of Mance? For me? How can I believe that? How can I believe any of this?
She saw a phone screen on the passageway wall and called up a schematic of the ship's interior layout. She'd been heading in the wrong direction, she saw. Turning, she started more confidently toward the galley. No one else was in the passageway at this time of night. There's probably a crew on duty in the bridge, Lara thought. Otherwise they're all sleeping.
All but me. I can save Victor. I'll go to the meeting and tell them that he was deliberately duped by false evidence planted by Dante Alexios. I can clear Victor's name. Elliott's, too.
And what happens to Dante Alexios? she asked herself. She thought she knew. McFergusen and his committee would not take her unsupported word. They'd want corroboration. They would send investigators to Mercury to question Mance-Alexios. And what if he claims innocence? What if he tells them my story is a total fabrication, a desperate attempt to save my husband?
The galley was empty. Nothing more than a small metal table and four swivel chairs bolted to the deck, with a row of food and drink dispensers lining one wall. Lara poured herself a mug of tepid coffee and sat wearily in one of the chairs.
I'll have to tell them that Alexios is really Mance Bracknell, she realized. They'll run tests on him to settle his identity. Once they find that he's Mance they'll send him back to the Belt, back to exile.
Can I do that to him? He said Victor stole me from him, said that he still loves me and wants me. Can I reward him by sending him back into exile? She wanted to cry. It would be such a relief to simply dissolve into tears and wait for someone else to solve this problem for her.
But there is no one else, she told herself. Except Victor, Jr. That made her sit up straighter. Her son. Hers and Victor's. He has a stake in this, too. I can't allow McFergusen or Mance or anyone else to ruin little Victor's future. He needs my protection.
A shadow fell across her and she turned to see Elliott Danvers's hulking form filling the hatchway.
"You couldn't sleep either?" Danvers said, going to the coffee dispenser.
"No."
Danvers settled his bulk in the chair opposite Lara. It groaned as he sat on it, and the bishop sighed heavily.
"I've sent half a dozen messages to my superiors in Atlanta and they haven't seen fit to reply to any of them."
Lara saw that his fleshy face was pale, creased with lines she'd never noticed before. "What will happen to you once we get back to Earth?" she asked.
Danvers shrugged his massive shoulders. "I wish I knew. A reassignment, at least. They'll want to strip me of my title, I'm sure. Perhaps they'll throw me out altogether."
"I know you didn't do it," Lara said.
Danvers's eyes flared briefly. Then he murmured, "Thank you."
"I'm not merely being kind, Elliott. I know who actually duped Victor and planted the evidence that puts the blame on you."
Now his eyes stayed wide. "You... you do?"
"But if I tell who it really is, it will ruin his life."
"But he's trying to ruin my life!"
"I don't know what I should do," Lara said plaintively.
"Yes, you do," said the bishop. "You must do what is right. You can't cover up a lie. Forget about me-your husband's career is at stake."
"I know," said Lara.
"And what about your son? This affects him, too."
"I know," she repeated.
Danvers stared at her as if trying to pry the information out of her by sheer willpower. At last he asked, "Why wouldn't you name the wrongdoer?"
"Because it will hurt him. Because he's been terribly hurt already and I'm not sure that I can do this to him, hurt him again."
"But... your husband! Your son! Me!"
Lara gripped her cup with both hands and stared down into it. "Maybe if I simply tell the committee that the man told me he did it, that he cleared you entirely, maybe that would be enough."
"Without naming him, so they can check? They'd think you're nothing but a wife who's willing to lie to protect her husband."
She nodded dejectedly. "I can't help one without hurting the other."
The bishop waited a heartbeat, then reached across the table to take her hands in his massive paws. "Lara, morality doesn't come in shades of gray. It's black and white. You either do the right thing or you do the wrong thing. There's no middle ground."
She looked into his soft gray eyes, red with sleeplessness, and thought that morality was simple when doing the right thing would save your own neck.
"It's more complicated than that," she said quietly.
"Then think of this," D
anvers said, almost gently. "What is the greatest good for the greatest number of people? You have your husband and son to think of, as opposed to this mysterious wrongdoer."
She nodded. "My husband and son-and you."
BOREALIS PLANITIA
Wrapped in their cumbersome spacesuits, Alexios and Yamagata sat side by side in the tractor's transparent cab as it slowly trundled along the pitted, rock-strewn landscape.
"Borealis Planitia," Yamagata muttered. "The northern plain."
He sounded slightly nervous to Alexios, a little edgy. Inside the pressurized glassteel cabin they could hear one another without using the suits' radios, although their voices were muffled by the heavy helmets.
