Alex had some work to do but it was nothing urgent, certainly nothing that couldn’t wait until James had finished his intensive assembly. Occasionally she’d take him food or a glass of amber juice. He’d thank her automatically, take a bite or a couple of sips, and then push the nourishment aside saying that he’d return to it later.
Neither of them made any reference to that first night in the unlit lab. In the moments when her mind sought refuge from the contemplation of the bleak prospect of an unwanted separation Alex would reflect on the aggressive formality of James’s approach to her. The more she considered it, the more certain she was that it had really been a mistake, a misunderstanding caused by a wide difference in social background. I appreciate your body and I’d like to use it. He couldn’t know that he would frighten and offend her, accustomed as she was to the fierce sexual possessiveness of the frontier stations; perhaps he was now as embarrassed as she had been, and this accounted to some extent for his withdrawal into his work.
As this theory filled out and took shape Alex began to feel almost guilty. She had no reason to want to ingratiate herself with James, but nor did she want to be unfair to him; and in her social naïvety, untoughened as she was by the abrasion of the unkind and the uncouth, she was unable to dismiss from her mind the possibility that, in his silence, he might be thinking ill of her.
Adam had found his own retreat, digging out long-neglected station safety procedures and following through the checks with meticulous care. He told Alex that he’d been forgetful, and that the inspection was long overdue. He set about it with the diligent care of a clear-headed invalid ordering his worldly affairs.
When Alex next wandered into the lab the work seemed to have progressed little. Small unidentifiable units had become larger unidentifiable units, but they were not yet positioned in the body shell. Biological chauvinism dictated that it was impossible to think of the Demigod as a functional entity before it had a degree of corporeal integrity.
Perhaps that chauvinism wasn’t entirely groundless. The robot would, after all, incorporate cultured brain tissue; grown in a laboratory tank, of course, but still of a sufficiently human origin to promise a difficult blurring of the distinction between man and machine. Other parts under construction suggested that the biological overlap might not be limited to the brain alone; there was a clear jar filled with colour-coded soft, moist tubing, and carboys of thick liquid which, in blue and orange, seemed like a veinous and arterial parody.
James had two of the lab’s stumpy drone robots working for him, and he was also making use of some of the remote handling devices. The bench was a maze of activity, and even the massive overhead crane had been brought in at one stage; now discarded, it had been rolled back near the lab doors and Alex had to step around it as she entered.
James was standing back, watching the Demigod take shape. Most of his work was now done in the basic assembly of the nervous system; now the Demigod, diffuse as it was, had taken over its own creation.
He had heard the zip of the lab doors, and he looked up as Alex came around the crane.
“I was wondering . . .” she said hesitantly, wary of another misinterpretation, “I was wondering if you needed anything.”
“Not really. You have work of your own.”
“I don’t have much to do unless Adam brings back a new set of surface samples on the buggy. Then I have to melt them down and measure off the contaminations before we introduce the different bacteria. They do the rest.”
James’s face betrayed the slightest flicker of interest. “The Major? Is he out in the Rover now?”
“No. He’s checking the outer plate seals.”
“You mean he’s outside?”
“That’s not necessary. The indicators are all around the inner shell. Takes a while to get around them, though.”
James nodded, and was quiet was quiet for a moment. The articulated claws of the lab robots darted in and out with speed and precision.
“I was right, wasn’t I,” he said with an abrupt switch of subject, “that you’re space-born?”
“Yes, I am. I’ve never seen Earth.”
“It puzzled me. Spaceborn aren’t supposed to have names. And yet he calls you Alex.”
She felt a knot of tension suddenly pull tight within her in response to his probing. “It’s the name he gave me.”
“And only he can use it, right?”
“That’s right.”
Still with his eyes on the Demigod, he shook his head with a half sad, half superior smile. “You know, you’ll have to forget that kind of sentiment when you get to Earth.”
“Who says I’m going there?”
“One of you is. And at his age, he’ll never survive more than a year back at full gee.”
“Adam’s not old . . .”
“He’s old enough. You get used to this kind of life and the heart can’t take the strain. No point shipping him all the way back when he can still be of some use here. They’ll leave him to help Hector.”
“Who?”
James indicated the activity before them. “Eldest son of Priam, defender of Troy.” It meant nothing to her. He went on, “His brother Paris loved Helen and took her away from her husband. When the husband came to get her back, Hector was there to stand by his brother.”
“Who won?” said Alex.
James seemed to become disenchanted with the analogy. “It doesn’t matter. What you’ve got to think about is that when the Demigod takes over you’ll probably be shipped out of here. You’re going to have to get used to Earth ways pretty fast.”
“I’m not sure I like the sound of Earth ways.”
“That won’t matter a damn. No names for the Spaceborn, that’s the law. And no personal possession of people, that’s the law too.”
“Let’s stay impersonal, shall we, Captain?”
James was plainly stung by the trick she had picked up from Adam, but he controlled his annoyance. He changed his approach, lowering his voice and looking directly at her. She found it discomforting.
“I know why you won’t show me hospitality,” he said.
“The station’s yours,” Alex replied tightly. “Anything you’re entitled to, you can have.”
“I’m talking about you. I think you’re afraid of the Major.”
“I’m not afraid of anybody.”
“You’re scared he’ll be jealous. All right, so he gets jealous. What does it matter? Couple of months and you’ll be moving out. You want to dump him before that, you can move in with me.”
“I’ve got no intention of moving in with you.”
“Think again and you’ll see it’s the only way.” He stabbed a finger up towards the ceiling, in the general direction of where he thought the Survey platform might be. “It’s a completely different world out there, and, believe me, you won’t last a week. Right now I’m the only useful friend you’ve got.”
“i don’t need any help from you.”
“Come on, Alex. I’ve seen the way your eyes light up every time Earth gets mentioned. You’ve always wanted to see it and you won’t be happy until you do—all Spaceborn are like that, it’s natural. What you’ve got here—you and him—that’s all that’s holding you back, don’t you see?”
“You can’t understand. And don’t call me Alex.”
His eyes narrowed, and he leaned towards her. “I’m no loser,” he said. “Remember that. And don’t try to tell me you don’t want to see Earth.”
“Some day,” she admitted, “maybe. But we do things differently here on Tethys. Please remember that, Captain.”
Adam flicked the switch to kill the picture on the bedroom monitor. The silent image of the lab faded and he sat quietly for a few moments, his eyes on the blank screen and his mind far away. Then he moved slowly to the bathroom to shower away the sweat and grease of his crawl along the station’s inner shell.
SEVEN
Still A-one. For some reason Adam seemed to be throwing himself into his iso
s with renewed enthusiasm since James’s arrival. Even he wasn’t entirely sure whether he was impelled by an uneasy sense of competition from the younger man, or whether it was the prospective dangers of a return to a more demanding environment that led him to set muscle against muscle in non-productive strain.
Alex had seen the spacers’ ritual before, and even had a similar exercise sequence herself; as far as man might spread and settle, Earth was always home and the planet’s physical conditions dictated the health and strength of the organism. Laxity in low-gee gave eventual muscular and circulatory problems along with a gradual loss of bone calcium; physical jerks and metered mineral intake, directed by a feedback of regular checkups, were the spacers’ survival programme.
She sat on a low beam in Saturn Three’s small but fully-equipped gymnasium, and watched as Adam completed the last of his routines. He’d acknowledged her as she’d entered, but his efforts were too strenuous to allow him to speak; and as he braced himself against the wall and tried to drag tempered steel bars out of their concrete mounts she thought about James’s estimate of the Major’s prospects on Earth.
Adam was in better shape than many men half his age. His pulse rate invariably rose in a smooth curve throughout the routine, flattening out well within acceptable limits, and the cardiogram showed a steady and well-tempered beat. James himself hadn’t set foot in the gym since his arrival although, as with all the station’s facilities, it was freely available to him.
All the station’s facilities except one, Alex reminded herself grimly. And perhaps he was prepared to lie and exaggerate to gain access to that.
“What’s it like,” she asked as Adam completed the bar-pull and moved across to the scales, “being under full gee?”
“It’s not like anything. It’s just something you get used to. You’ll find out when you get to Earth.”
“But I’m not going.”
“You’ve always wanted to.”
“And you’ve always told me I’ll be disappointed. Who wants to go all that way just to be disappointed?”
He read off the numbers on the digital display, and then touched the key which would automatically correct them to Earth-normal. “I’m old and jaded. You shouldn’t take my word for anything.”
“Whose word should I take? Not James’s, I’m sure.”
“Just because he’s unlikeable, it doesn’t mean everything he says should be dismissed. What’s he been telling you?”
“Nothing much. But if what he says about the Demigod is true . . .”
Adam smiled. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” he said, but there was a hollowness to his words that he couldn’t completely conceal.
Alex pressed the point. “But if it happens. If they decide to cut the staff on Saturn Three to one . . .”
“. . . then I’ll have to stay and you’ll have to go—you don’t have the rank to stay on as nominal commander.”
“But that means they’ll be splitting us up. That’s not what you want, is it?”
“Maybe it’s for the best,” he said, and hoped it sounded convincing. It should—it was costing him enough effort and determination. “You want to see Earth, and I’d guess that he’s asked you to go with him. Is that right?”
“He’s said I won’t have any choice. I don’t believe him.”
“Whether you get the choice or not, you’re wasting yourself here. Saturn Three’s just a backwater in the System—it’s all right for an ageing spacer like me, but you’ve hardly started out. You can’t let your whole life go rambling by in a dusty corner like this.” He tried to keep his voice light, his manner casual as the undercurrent of agony grew. One day, perhaps, he would be able to extract some minor satisfaction from his act of sacrifice, but such a day seemed impossibly far away.
Alex was bewildered. “You don’t want us to stay together?”
“It’s not what I want. That doesn’t count. I’m thinking of you.”
“Well, I don’t want to leave.”
“Of course you do. You’ve always wanted to see Earth.”
“But you’ve always said that I’d hate it.”
“Maybe I was only being selfish, trying to slap you down and keep you here. Getting all your ideas secondhand is no way to live. And that’s all you’ll do if you keep on getting your opinions from me—you may hate Earth, you may love it. But at least find out for yourself.”
“With him? No thanks.”
Her rejection of James in such positive terms gave Adam strength to continue. “But all that apart. You still want to go, don’t you?”
Her bewildered indignation deflated a little. “Of course,” she admitted. “I always have. Even if I hate every minute of it, something inside draws me back there. I can’t describe it to you, Adam—you’re not Spaceborn, you can’t know how insecure it makes you feel to be out on the fringes and never really have a sense of belonging. But I don’t want it if it’s on his terms—and I don’t want it if it’s without you.”
Adam shrugged, a little gesture of futility. As much as his own inner defences might crumble, he could fall back upon an immovable buttress of logic. “It won’t really be our choice. Looks like James and his Demigod are going to make the decision for us.”
They moved away from the scales and approached the records terminal, a typewriter input on a wheeled dolly in the corner of the gym.
“It doesn’t necessarily follow,” Alex said as they walked.
“I’m afraid it does.” Adam tapped in his personal code and began to transfer across the brief details of the exercise session for comparison and monitoring purposes. “The survey’s run by a machine just like this one. It doesn’t laugh, it doesn’t cry, it doesn’t care—apart from caring for the things it’s been programmed to pay attention to. Like efficiency and economy and damn-all else.”
“You said you’re close to abort time. Ready to be pulled out and put one one side, and we already know that there’s no chance of me being left here alone. What’s wrong with us both going together?”
“They’ve got to decide to pull me first.”
“They will. You said they don’t want decrepit spacers messing things up.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Well, thanks!”
“Survey doesn’t know what kind of shape you’re in. All it will have to go on when it checks will be the records in the base computer.”
“Which in my case are a consistent A-one, apart from the time I picked up some bug from one of the lab cultures. They’re not going to pull me until the very last moment as long as I’ve got a record like that.”
“Right. So this morning I jinxed the records for you.”
His hand paused in mid air over the terminal keys. “You did what?”
“I’ve got the basic training, it was easy. I went back as far as the time you were ill and down-graded all the results consistently. Survey says that Saturn Three’s behind schedule. We know it’s because we don’t get back-up, but the Survey computer only knows what it’s told; it won’t take account of the way that everybody gives priority to Six. When it sees your record it will think that it’s the reason for the trouble, and you’ll be pulled. They’ll replace you, and we can go to Earth together.”
Adam didn’t know what to say. His arguments, his sacrifice, all his efforts at persuasion seemed to be draining away inside. Alex misunderstood his momentary silence, and said hurriedly, “I kept a tape of all the original data. If it isn’t what you want, I can put the records back the way they were and nobody will ever know.”
He shook his head. He could no longer press an issue for which he felt no conviction against such determined resistance. “If you want me,” he said simply, “I’ll come.”
“To Earth?”
“If it makes you happy.”
“I’m sure I’ll hate it, but I need to see it some day. And I’d rather we hated it together.”
Alex cancelled the input on the terminal and retyped Adam’s results, reducing the efficiency levels of each to a
slight degree. Adam watched her at work and began to laugh, suppressing it at first but then laughing out loud. This devious, capable side of her nature was one that he had never seen before; perhaps he should thank James for helping to bring it out. Alex started to giggle, and Adam was reassured; his greatest worry had always been that contact with the harsher forces that prevailed outside the comfortable world of the station would be Alex’s destruction. Now it seemed that the opposite was true, and he could only marvel at the inadequacy of his own judgement.
They were still laughing when Alex finished the input and signed off the terminal. He put his arm around her shoulder, her slight form fitting in against his side as if by design as they moved towards the gym doors.
“Hold me up, I’m a decrepit old spacer,” he pleaded in a quavering voice, and she raised an admonitory finger for a half-serious reproach.
The gym doors shot apart abruptly and half a ton of glittering metal stumbled into the chamber, barely under control and swaying dangerously. Adam jumped back and pulled Alex with him as the robot took another faltering step and threatened to overbalance on to them, and when Alex squealed it tried to turn in the doorway, obviously confused.
James was in the corridor, blocked from entering by the intervening bulk. “Don’t make noise,” he was shouting, “he has to be able to hear me!”
The robot took another stride but stopped half-way, as if it were uncertain of its ability to stay upright if it completed the move. This gave James sufficient room to squeeze through into the gym.
“Stand, Hector,” he said. “Stand!”
Hector hesitated, and then carefully drew his trailing foot level and shuffled into a reasonably stable stance, servos whining and whirring to make the necessary minute adjustments in his posture. The Demigod was a full head taller than either Adam or James, and his outward design reflected his name. His bodyshell was like classical armour, pressed and sculpted into a semblance of muscle and sinew with necessary compromises for the placing of sockets and displays. Legs and torso were almost human in their moulding, narrow hips and waist rising in a series of overlapping gold plates to massive shoulders and chest, but the arms and the sensory apparatus were of a more utilitarian design. There was no head, as such; between the shoulders was a swivelling turret on which was mounted a triple-jointed angle-poise mechanism carrying a single sensory eye.
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