The Trikon Deception

by Ben Bova

  Lewis was angry, his fleshy face blotchy red. Jaeckle was exactly one sentence into his explanation of the morning’s event when Lewis launched into a tirade. He railed about confusion in the control room and about the co-anchor who had taken a break from the set during the live broadcast from space and then could not be located when the transmission abruptly ended.

  “You think we like showing an empty chair!” shrieked Lewis. He started ranting about advertising dollars and market share.

  Eventually Lewis slowed down and Jaeckle had a chance to talk. He used all of his narrative skills to paint a picture of confusion and horror on the stricken space station.

  “Jesus,” said the chastened Lewis. “Hey, maybe we can start the next broadcast with a reenactment. I’ll get one of the segment directors to contact you about it pronto. How is Carla Sue doing?”

  “Actually,” said Jaeckle, shifting narrative gears, “I think the mission is beginning to wear on her.”

  “You know, it’s funny,” Lewis said. “I was thinking the exact same thing this morning. Those legs. I mean, come on. We’re talking anorexic.”

  “I’ve explained the fluid shift several times on the air.”

  “Words are words. Pictures are what counts,” said Lewis. “We don’t want people coming away with images of anorexic astronauts.”

  “Unfortunately, it cannot be avoided.”

  “Maybe if you had someone else,” Lewis suggested. “Someone with a little more heft or a little less fluid shift. Paint a prettier picture for our viewers.”

  “There is someone,” Jaeckle said slowly, as if the idea had just entered his mind. “But she isn’t a part of the Mars Project.”

  “Hey, there’s nothing in the contract that says your assistant has to be a part of the Mars Project. She could be a Venusian for all I care.”

  “I don’t know how Carla Sue would react to being replaced.”

  “It’ll a rough business, Kurt.”

  “This other one may not even want to be on television.”

  “Everybody wants to be on television,” said Lewis. “Who is she?”

  “Lorraine Renoir.”

  “I like it,” Lewis said. “French?”

  “French Canadian, actually. She is the station medical officer.”

  “Nice tie-in. She could interest the Canadian audiences. Ratings have been low there. Attractive?”

  “Well,” said Jaeckle. “Not anorexic.”

  “Talk to her and let me know. Have to run.”

  The telelink broke. Jaeckle snapped off his communications console. He felt encouraged, expansive. Talking to TBC always was entertaining, especially since Jared Lewis was so malleable.

  Jaeckle propelled himself toward the observation blister up at the tip of the module, a dome of strong and perfectly transparent Lexan. The outer surface of the dome was covered by an aluminum clamshell shield that could be closed to prevent damage from meteoroids or debris. Retracting the shield in different ways offered stunning views of the Earth, the night sky, or both.

  Everyone on the station was allowed to use the blister for personal R and R on a reservation basis. In the context of the Mars Project, the blister was more than just a place for quiet solitude or spectacular scenery. Since transit to Mars would entail long stretches of time out of Earth view, project coordinators assigned specific viewing privileges to the two groups. The segregated group was allowed to view only the empty night sky; they never saw the Earth. The other group had no restrictions. Psychologists on the ground were eager to see if the two groups differed in long-term adaptation. Carla Sue Gamble was part of the “free” group.

  Jaeckle rapped on the metal hatch of the blister. After a long moment, the bolt slid back and the door opened. There was the Earth, immense, breathtaking, sparkling blue and brilliant white, gliding past beyond the Lexan windows. But Jaeckle barely noticed the spectacular panorama. He focused on Carla Sue, long, lean, and angry. He could tell from the tightness of her lips and the knit in her brow that the delay in unlocking the blister hatch had been carefully calculated.

  Jaeckle closed the door softly, carefully. Carla Sue waited until she heard the click of its latch. Then:

  “If you don’t think I’m beautiful anymore, I’d be obliged if you would tell me before you tell the rest of the world.”

  Her voice was deadly calm. Carla Sue was never strident, never out of control. Even when she was angry. Even in the heat of lovemaking. Her mind always ruled her body.

  Jaeckle summoned his most sheepish grin.

  “Don’t try to mollify me, Kurt. Flabby legs. I know what you were driving at.”

  “I was stressing a point, Carla. I told you when I first asked you to be my assistant that I would make comments you might construe as critical. You can’t take them personally.”

  “So you think I’m still beautiful.”

  “I think you are brilliant and beautiful.”

  Carla Sue’s expression changed from an angry frown to a grudging smile. Jaeckle moved forward to kiss her, but his knee struck her hip before his lips reached hers and she tumbled away. He caught up with her and squeezed her lips into a pucker. Those lips. Microgravity had improved them, if nothing else. They were redder, thicker, pouter. They made him want to unzip his fly on sight, and many times he had. He kissed her deeply, then spun her around so that they both faced the Earth.

  “I never know where we are,” said Carla Sue.

  “The North Atlantic. We’ll cross the Azores soon.”

  He felt warm toward her, warmer than he had felt in days. It wasn’t a sign that their relationship was on the rebound. His conversation with Jared Lewis had solidified that decision. He recognized it as the last flourish of ardor before he pulled one of his patented disappearing acts.

  “Did I ever tell you what people did in the Azores?” he said, nestling against her from behind.

  “Mmmmm,” said Carla Sue.

  As head of the North American research team aboard Trikon Station, Thora Skillen should have been respected and admired. Instead, she counted herself the loneliest person on the station.

  She walked the treadmill in the ex/rec room, setting herself a blistering pace, working out her fury and contempt for those around her with tireless long-legged strides. David Nutt, she seethed to herself. A good name for him. The perfect name. And Commander Tighe, Mr. Machismo himself. Warning me about Roberts bugging Nutt’s files. As if I didn’t know how irresponsible Roberts can be.

  There were five other men and women in the ex/rec room, working the bicycle, the rowing machine, throwing darts in the strangely flat trajectories of weightlessness. No one spoke to Thora Skillen. No one even looked in her direction.

  She was a tall, athletically lean woman in her late thirties with severe, chiseled features and prematurely graying hair. Almost a classic face, strong and serious, like a sculpture from ancient Athens. She seldom smiled.

  She knew that they called her “Stone Face” behind her back. That, and worse.

  She was in the prime of life: a brilliantly successful molecular geneticist who already had taken on heavier responsibilities than women ten years her senior. Everyone predicted a splendid career for her, but Skillen knew better. Her career was already finished. Her life was finished. She was merely going through the motions.

  Thora Skillen was dying. No one on Trikon Station knew that except the medical officer. But the males who dominated the worlds of scientific research and corporate politics knew it. They knew it full well.

  The only reason they had selected her for Trikon Station, she realized, was to make an experiment of her. They wanted to see what effect microgravity might have on the corruption that was eating away her lungs. Her work, her brilliance, her drive and dedication all meant next to nothing to them. She was a laboratory animal, that’s all. Naming her head of the North American segment was a sop, a meaningless bone thrown to a dying lab specimen.

  What they did not know was that she had lost all faith in he
r own work. The achievements of her science meant nothing to her now. She felt as if she had spent her life working for the enemy. It had taken the death of her sister to awaken her to the awful reality of the world. The death of her sister, and her own impending death.

  They’re killing us, she knew. Their factories and automobiles and supermarket foods are killing all of us. Even the scientists are part of it, probing into the secrets of life, releasing all kinds of poisons without even thinking about it. I was part of that. I was one of the guilty ones. It took Melissa’s death to make me see the truth.

  So what I’m doing isn’t wrong, she told herself. Of all the people on this station, I’m the only one who does see the truth. The only one willing to act on it. I’m going to die anyway, so what does it matter?

  The men aboard the station hardly spoke to her, except when their work required it. Once she had trounced a few of the overconfident oafs at micro-gee handball they steered clear of her and made crude jokes about testicles. The women seemed afraid to strike up an acquaintance with her, as if they thought she would try to seduce them. Skillen had never announced her sexual preferences; her personnel record certainly contained no hint of it. But they knew. As if they could smell it on her. They all knew and they all shunned her.

  Lorraine Renoir was the only one on the station she could confide in, and even there Skillen was careful not to reveal the entire truth. Dr. Renoir was sympathetic and discreet, but she also kept her distance.

  Dave Nutt was leaving as soon as the shuttle could get to the station and take him away. Good! she told herself as she paced the tireless treadmill. He had accomplished far too much during his six-month stint. Now he could spend the next six months on Earth writing reports instead of making progress.

  Skillen watched the others as she strode nowhere. Inwardly she snarled at them. You think you know all my secrets, she silently said to them. You think you can avoid me and crack jokes about me behind my back. Go right ahead! Your day will come. I promise you. And it will come sooner than you think.

  16 AUGUST 1988

  BATH, ENGLAND

  I should have been wise enough to see the trouble brewing, but I was not.

  With perfect hindsight, of course, it is all so clear. Even as far back as 1994 when the foreign ministers of the European Community voted to allow the Eastern European nations to join them.

  The emergency meeting in Brussels was filled with angry voices for many days. It had been called by the French foreign minister, Pierre Belroi, in order to resolve this thorny issue of permitting the impoverished former communist nations to join the far wealthier EC.

  Since the European Community had officially begun, in 1992, there had been growing tension over the question. France and Germany wanted all of Europe—including, eventually, even Russia—to become part of a single, integrated economic group. Britain, traditionally suspicious of the continental powers, feared that by admitting the poor nations of the former communist bloc the Western Europeans would be placing undue strains on their own economic future.

  At the meeting in Brussels the vote went 11-1 in favor of the French and Germans, with Britain the sole dissenter. The British foreign minister, Sir Derek Brock-Smythe, pleaded with his fellow ministers to nullify the vote, saying that he feared Britain would pull out of the European Community altogether if the decision was not reversed.

  The vote stood. Furious, Brock-Smythe returned to London. Although he represented his nation’s position as strongly as he could, it was clear that Brock-Smythe was at odds with the xenophobes in his own government. While he was not especially fond of having the Eastern European nations join the EC, he was clever enough to realize that Britain’s economy would stagnate if she were not part of the Community.

  As Brock-Smythe predicted, Parliament reacted violently and Britain quickly cut all ties to the European Community. Brock-Smythe publicly damned the decision; he said it would be ruinous for Great Britain.

  Privately he took other actions.

  —From the diary of Fabio Bianco, CEO, Trikon International

  The mist was heavy enough to drive the tourists into the shops and pubs, but not so heavy that walking was unpleasant for a man accustomed to English summers. Sir Derek Brock-Smythe crossed Pulteney Bridge, his patent-leather elevator shoes tapping smartly on the stone pavement, his double-breasted chalk-stripe suit maintaining its razor creases despite the humid air. Bath had been the city for natty dressers ever since Beau Nash established it as the capital of polite society in the seventeenth century. Sir Derek, the nattiest of all despite his diminutive stature, was perfectly at home in his weekend retreat.

  Harry Meade, not so dapper, lumbered ten paces behind. He was sweating beneath his black turtleneck and tweed sports coat, and his shoulder holster dug into the sheath of burly muscle curving under his armpit. His feet were swollen in his rubber-soled Clarks; he had been walking most of the day.

  Sir Derek descended the stairway on the east side of the bridge, gallantly tipping his bowler to a pair of elderly ladies making their way up the stone steps. Meade passed the stairs, lingered momentarily at the head of Argyle Street as if wondering whether to continue away from the city center, then turned back and followed Sir Derek’s path. If anyone had noted the pair of them they would have thought of a husky prizefighter trailing after a dapper tap dancer.

  Sir Derek stood with one hand balled into a tiny fist and the other drumming its manicured nails on the top of the stone parapet. The Avon was swollen from several days of rain and skimmed across Pulteney Weir without breaking into foam, so silently that he could hear the soft strains of the waltz being played by the band in the gazebo on the green across from the cricket field. Meade took up a position five feet away and studiously avoided looking at Sir Derek. Across the river, the market shops were crowded. A sightseeing boat moved south with the current. It would be forty minutes before the queue for the next departure began to form.

  Meade pulled a bag of stale bread from his jacket pocket. He nervously tore a slice and tossed the pieces into the water.

  “I understand there was an incident aboard Trikon Station yesterday,” said Sir Derek, his eyes following the bobbing tufts of bread.

  “A theft of American computer files, apparently by one of the Japs. All for naught, Sir Derek. The files were protected by a bug, and the American station commander cut power to prevent the bug from entering the computer system. They never found the thief, but at least it’s been made clear that he can’t access the data without wiping out the whole station.”

  Meade stole a sidelong glance at Sir Derek and searched for some hint of a reaction. There was none.

  “What else?” Sir Derek snapped.

  “Well, uh…” Meade always thought he was sufficiently prepared for these meetings. He would pace his hotel room and rehearse buzz words to jog his memory. But Sir Derek’s brusque manner always struck him speechless. His reports, as neat and as clean as one of Sir Derek’s suits, became rumpled tangles of stuttered sentences.

  “There was a bit of a row,” Meade said, seizing upon an innocuous tidbit of gossip. “The American scientist and a Japanese tech in the station wardroom.”

  “I am not interested in barbaric behavior,” said Sir Derek. “What about Dr. Ramsanjawi?”

  “The loss of power ruined an experiment,” Meade reported, his memory jogged. “He made a great howl about having worked a month to create a microbe that could neutralize seven different toxic-waste molecules. It was completely destroyed.”

  Sir Derek permitted himself a smile. This incident could not have occurred at a more propitious time. Fabio Bianco was due to address the directorate of the European arm of Trikon International at its annual meeting in Lausanne within the week. Bianco was prepared to boast of Trikon’s success. He was prepared to predict that Trikon International, with its ability to coordinate the new technologies of North America, United Europe, and Japan, could rid the world of the pollution spawned by centuries of misguided old tec
hnology. In short, he was prepared to drive the last nail into Great Britain’s economic coffin.

  Now Bianco had, in the Yank vernacular, egg on his face. The incident aboard Trikon Station was worthy of headlines in tabloids from Fleet Street clear around the world to Tokyo and New York. The Nips and the Yanks were taking pokes at each other. It would be months, perhaps years before they cooperated again, if indeed they ever had since the beginning of Trikon. And to top it all, Chakra Ramsanjawi had convinced everyone that the most complex toxin-devouring microbe ever engineered by man had vanished in a power outage ordered by a Yank astronaut.

  Meanwhile, a team of scientists in a Lancashire laboratory, using data gleaned by Ramsanjawi and transmitted in code directly to Sir Derek, were already testing a microbe capable of neutralizing fourteen distinct toxic-waste molecules. Britain would beat the foreigners at their own game.

  No, not Britain. England. Not the Welsh nor the Gaels nor the damnable Irish nor any of the mongrels that had been allowed onto this blessed isle. England would triumph over them all.

  Sir Derek excitedly patted the damp stone of the parapet. Common men, preoccupied with banal concerns, saw events as merely happening willy-nilly. The visionary could sense the stirring of distant events long before they crossed the horizon. This evening, in the soft summer mist, Sir Derek positively heard a rumble. England would no longer be the outsider, the also-ran.

  “There is one more item,” said Meade. “About the shuttle.”

  “Delayed by Hurricane Caroline, I know,” said Sir Derek.

  “Trikon has added another scientist. An American.”

  Sir Derek looked at Meade for the first time. “Who?”

  “Name of Hugh O’Donnell.”

  “Well, who is he, man? Out with it.”

  “We don’t exactly know, Sir Derek. We haven’t had the time to investigate him thoroughly.”