by Mercury(lit)
"This region is an ancient lava flow," Yamagata went on, as much to himself as to his companion. "Planetologists claim that this entire area was once a lake of molten lava, billions of years ago."
Alexios contented himself with steering the tractor through the maze of boulders that lay scattered across the ground. Now and again he rolled right over a smaller rock, making the tractor pitch and sway. To their right, the yawning crack of the fault line was narrowing. They would reach the end of it soon, Alexios knew.
Yamagata continued, "From orbit you can see the outlines of even older craters, ghost craters, drowned by the lava when it flowed across this region."
Alexios nodded inside his helmet. The man's talking just to hear himself talk, he thought. Trying to hide his fear at being out here. Grimly, Alexios added, He has a lot to be afraid of.
They drove on in silence. The time stretched. Alexios could feel in his bones the vibrating hum of the tractor's electric motors, hear his own breathing inside the helmet. He drove like an automaton; there seemed to be no emotion left inside him.
"You are very quiet," Yamagata said at last.
"Yes," replied Alexios.
"What are you thinking about?"
Alexios turned his head inside the fishbowl helmet to look squarely at the older man. "I've been thinking," he said, "about the skytower."
"The skytower?" Yamagata looked surprised. "That was years ago."
"Many years. Many lives."
"Technological hubris," said Yamagata. "The people who built it paid no attention to the danger it might pose."
"Part of it is still spinning outward, in deep space."
"Carrying the bodies of dozens of dead men and women."
"Murdered men and women," said Alexios.
Yamagata grunted. "That's one way to look at it, I suppose."
"The tower was sabotaged. All those who died were murdered."
"Sabotaged?"
"By agents of Yamagata Corporation."
Yamagata's jaw dropped open. "That's not true! It's impossible!"
Without taking his gloved hands from the steering controls, Alexios said, "We both know that it is possible and it did happen."
"Paranoid fantasy," Yamagata snapped.
"Is it? I was told the full story by the last surviving member of the plot. Just before your hired killers closed his mouth forever."
"My hired killers?" Yamagata scoffed. "I was in Chota Lamasery in the Himalayas when the skytower fell. We didn't even hear about it until a week or more after the tragedy."
"Yes, I know. That's your cover story."
Yamagata stared at this coldly intent man sitting beside him. He's insane, he thought. Alexios's eyes glittered with something beyond anger, beyond fury. For the first time since he'd been diagnosed with brain cancer, back in his first life, Yamagata felt fear gripping his innards.
"I was the director of the skytower project," Alexios told him, all the while wondering at the glacial calm that had settled upon him, as if he were sheathed in ice.
"The director of the skytower project was exiled," said Yamagata.
Alexios made a wan smile. "Like you, I've led more than one life."
"I had nothing to do with the skytower," Yamagata insisted.
"It was sabotaged by Yamagata Corporation people, using nanomachines to snap the tower at its most vulnerable point. The man who produced the nanobugs for you told me the entire story just before your assassins caught up with him."
"And you believed him?"
"He was terrified for his life," said Alexios. "Your assassins got him. They also blew up the ship we were in, to make sure that anyone he talked to would be killed, too."
"But you survived."
"I survived. To seek justice for all those you killed. To gain vengeance for having my own life destroyed."
"But I-" Yamagata caught himself and shut his mouth. He's a madman, he told himself. I had nothing to do with this; I was in the lamasery. Nobuhiko was running the corporation, just as he is now.
Suddenly his pulse began thudding in his ears. Nobu! If Yamagata Corporation was involved in destroying the skytower, it was under Nobu's direction!
No, that couldn't be, Yamagata said to himself. Shaking his head, he thought, Nobu wouldn't do such a thing. He couldn't be that ruthless, that... murderous.
Or could he? Yamagata recalled those years when his advice to his son had led to the slaughters of the second Asteroid War, the massacre of the Chrysalis habitat. Nobu learned to be ruthless from me, he realized. The blood drained from his face. I have turned my son into a monster.
Alexios misread the ashen expression on Yamagata's face. "You admit it, then? You admit that the skytower was destroyed on your orders. Four million men, women, and children murdered-by you."
Yamagata realized there was nothing else to do. If I tell him that it was Nobuhiko's doing this madman will want to kill Nobu. Better to let him think it was me. Nobu is my son, my responsibility. Whatever he has done is my fault as much as his. Better for me to take the blame and the punishment. Let my son live.
"Well?" Alexios demanded.
Yamagata seemed to draw himself up straighter inside the bulky spacesuit. "I accept full responsibility," he said, his voice flat, lifeless.
"Good," said Alexios. He turned the steering wheel and the tractor veered slowly toward the yawning fault line, grinding slowly but inexorably toward the rift in Mercury's bleak ground as the first blazing edge of the Sun peeped above the horizon.
FREIGHTER XENOBIA
Bishop Danvers's mind was churning as he made his way back to his compartment. Is Lara telling the truth? he asked him self. She must be. She must be! She wouldn't make up a story like that, she couldn't. But the other side of his mind argued, Why wouldn't she? She's desperate to save her husband and protect her son. She might say anything if she thought it would help Victor.
As he slid back the door to his compartment he saw that the phone's yellow message light was blinking in the darkness. A message! His heart began thumping. From Atlanta. It must be an answer to my calls to Atlanta. Flicking on the ceiling lights, Danvers rushed to the compartment's flimsy little desk and told the phone to display the message.
It was indeed from Atlanta. From the archbishop himself!
Carnaby's wrinkled, bald, gnomish features took form in the phone's small display screen. He was unsmiling, his eyes flinty.
"Bishop Danvers, I am replying to your messages personally because your case is one of extreme importance to the New Morality movement."
Danvers felt immensely grateful. The archbishop is replying to me personally! Even though he knew it would take half an hour, at least, to get a reply back to Earth he automatically started to frame his message of gratitude to the archbishop.
Carnaby was going on, however, "A great American once said that extremism in the defense of our values is no vice. I can appreciate the extreme measures you took to discredit the godless scientists you've been battling against. But in our battle against these secularists, the movement must be seen by the general public as being beyond reproach, above suspicion. Your methods, once exposed to the public, will bring suspicion and discredit upon us all."
But I didn't do it! Danvers screamed silently at Carnaby's implacable image. I haven't done anything discreditable! Lara can prove it!
"Therefore," the archbishop continued, "I have no choice but to ask you for your resignation from the New Morality. One man must not be allowed to throw doubt upon our entire movement. I know this seems harsh to you, but it is for the higher good. Remember that a man may serve God in many ways, and your way will be to resign your office and your ordination in the movement. If you refuse you will be put on public trial as soon as you return to Earth and found guilty. I'm truly sorry it has to be this way, but you have become a liability to the New Morality and no individual, no matter who he is, can be allowed to threaten our work. May God be merciful to you."
The screen went blank.
&nb
sp; Danvers stared at it for long, wordless minutes. His mind seemed unable to function. His chest felt constricted; it was an effort just to breathe.
At last, blinking with disbelief, lungs rasping painfully, Danvers realized that he had been drummed out of the New Morality movement. Thrown out into the gutter, just as the gamblers had done to him all those long years ago. All my work, all my years of service, they mean nothing, he thought. Lara's claim to know who actually planted the false evidence won't move them. I've been tainted, and they will be merciless with me.
I'm ruined. Destroyed. I have nowhere to go! No one to turn to. Even if I could prove my innocence they wouldn't take me back. I'm tainted! Unclean!
My life is over, he told himself.
Lara returned to her compartment, where Victor was still tossing fitfully in their bed. She sat at the desk and sent a message to Victor, Jr., smiling reassuringly for her son and telling him she and his father would be back home in a few weeks.
Then she sat, wide awake, until Victor rose groggily from the roiled bedclothes and blinked sleep-fogged eyes at her.
"You're up?" he asked dully.
"I couldn't sleep."
He padded barefoot to the lavatory. She heard him urinate, then wash his face. He came back, hair still tousled, but looking reasonably alert.
"Victor," Lara heard herself ask him, "at Mance's trial, did you tell the truth about the skytower's construction?"
He looked instantly wary. "Why do you ask that?"
"Did you tell the truth?"
"It was so many years ago..."
"Did you deliberately lie to put the blame on Mance?"
Molina stood next to the lavatory doorway, wearing nothing but his wrinkled underpants, staring at his wife.
"I've got to know, Victor," said Lara. 'You've got to tell me the truth now."
He shuffled to the bed and sat wearily on it. "The tower collapsed," Molina said. "There was nothing any of us could do about that. They were going to blame it on Mance anyway-he didn't have a chance in hell of getting out of that trial alive. I wanted you, Lara! I've always wanted you! But as long as Mance was around you wouldn't even look at me!"
Lara said nothing. She didn't know what she could say.
"I wanted Mance out of the way," he admitted, his voice so low she could barely hear him. "I was so crazy in love with you. I still am."
He burst into tears.
Lara got up from the desk chair and went to the bed. Cradling her husband's head in her arms she crooned soothingly, "I understand, darling. I understand."
"I shouldn't have done it, I know," Molina blubbered. "I ruined Mance's life. But I did it for you. For you."
Lara was quite dry-eyed. "What's done is done," she said. "Mance is dead now. We've got to live the rest of our lives."
As she held him, Lara did not think of Mance Bracknell, nor of the strangely vicious man who called himself Dante Alexios. She did not think of Bishop Danvers or her husband, really, or even of herself. She thought of their son. Only Victor, Jr. He was the only one who mattered now.
SUNRISE
The rim of the slowly rising Sun was like molten lava pouring heat into the tractor's little bubble of a cab. Yamagata saw that Alexios was steering directly toward the sunrise and the yawning rift.
"What are you doing?" he demanded.
Turning the lumbering vehicle just before it reached the edge of the fault line, Alexios leaned on the brakes. The tractor ground to a halt.
"We get off here," he said.
"I thought-"
"Let's stretch our legs a little," said Alexios, popping the hatch on his side of the glassteel bubble.
Although he felt nothing inside his spacesuit, Yamagata realized that all the air in the cabin immediately rushed into the vacuum outside. Alexios turned back toward him and tapped the keypad on the wrist of his spacesuit. Yamagata heard the man's voice in his helmet earphones, "We'll have to use the suit radios to speak to one another now."
"You intend to kill me, then?" Yamagata asked as he opened the hatch on his side.
"You murdered four million people," Alexios said, his voice strangely soft, almost amused. "I think executing you is a simple act of justice."
"I see." Yamagata clambered slowly down from his seat to the hard, rock-strewn, airless ground. I'm in the hands of a madman, he thought.
"In case you're wondering," Alexios said as he walked around the tractor toward Yamagata, "your suit radio won't reach the base. Not without the tractor's relay, and I've disabled the tractor's outgoing frequency."
"I can't call for help, then," said Yamagata.
"Neither can I." With that, Alexios touched a control stud on his suit and the tractor started up again, silently churning up puffs of dust from the ground, and started trundling away from them.
"You're not going with it?" Yamagata asked, surprised.
"No, I'll stay here with you. We'll die together. Back at the base they'll see the tractor's beacon and think everything is normal. Until it's too late."
Yamagata almost laughed. "This is a simple act of justice?"
"Maybe not so simple, after all," Alexios agreed. "I've been dispensing justice for several days, but I don't quite seem to have the proper knack for it."
Alexios stepped closer to him. Yamagata backed away a few steps, then realized the edge of the fault rift was close behind him.
"Dispensing justice?" he asked, stalling for time to think. "What do you mean?"
"Molina and Danvers," Alexios answered easily. "I'm the one who brought those Martian rocks here. I led Molina to them and he took the bait like the fool that he is."
"And Danvers?"
"I put the blame on him. Now they're both heading back to Earth in disgrace."
"You've deliberately ruined their careers."
"They deserve it. They destroyed my life, the two of them. They took everything I had."
He's insane, Yamagata told himself. The tractor was dwindling slowly, lumbering off toward the disturbing close edge of the horizon.
"Message for Mr. Yamagata." He heard the voice of the base controller in his helmet's earphones. "From the captain of the freighter Xenobia."
Alexios spread his gloved hands. "We can't reply to them."
"Then what-"
The controller didn't wait for an acknowledgement. "Here's the incoming message, sir."
Yamagata heard a soft click and then a different voice spoke. "Sir! I apologize for interrupting whatever you are doing, illustrious sir. The captain thought you would want to know that one of the passengers aboard ship has committed suicide. Bishop Danvers slit his throat in the lavatory of his cabin. The place is a bloody mess."
Yamagata stared hard at Alexios, but only saw his own reflection in the heavily tinted visor of the spacesuit's helmet.
"Thank you for the information," he said, in a near whisper.
"They can't hear you," Alexios reminded him.
The base controller's voice returned. "Is there any reply to the message, Mr. Yamagata? Sir? Can you hear me?"
Alexios walked to the rim of the rift. Damn! he said to himself. If they don't hear anything back they'll start worrying about us.
"Mr. Yamagata? Mr. Alexios? Reply, please."
If they send out a rescue team they'll go after the tractor, Alexios thought. It won't be until they find that we're not on it that they'll start hunting for us.
He gripped the arm of Yamagata's suit. "Come on, we're going to take a little walk."
Yamagata resisted. "Where do you want to take me?"
Pointing with his free hand, Alexios said, "Down there, to the bottom of the rift. With the Sun coming up you'll be more comfortable sheltered from direct sunlight. It'll be cooler down there, only a couple of hundred degrees Celsius in the shade."
"You wish to prolong my execution?"
"I wish to prevent our being rescued," Alexios replied.
Yamagata stepped to the edge of the rift. Inside the spacesuit it was difficult
to see straight down, but the chasm's slope didn't seem terribly steep. Rugged, though, he saw. A slip of the foot could send me tumbling down to the bottom. If that didn't rupture my suit and kill me quickly, it might damage my radiators and life support pack enough to let me boil in my own juices.
He looked back at Alexios, standing implacably next to him. "After you," Alexios said, gesturing toward the edge of the rift.
