by Ben Bova
“Then who should do the work?”
“You,” said Eberly, so clearly and precisely that there was no room to argue. Morgenthau’s heart sank; she saw long dreary nights of snooping into the professor’s phone conversations and entertainment vids.
She lapsed into silence, thinking hard as they walked slowly along the path.
“Well?” Eberly prodded.
“It might be very boring. He’s nothing more than an elderly academic. I doubt that there’s much there to use.”
Eberly did not hesitate a microsecond. “Then we’ll have to manufacture something. I prefer to find a weakness that he actually has, though. Drumming up false accusations can be tricky.”
“Let me talk to Vyborg about it.”
“No,” Eberly snapped. “Keep this between the two of us. No one else. Not yet, at least.”
“Yes,” she agreed reluctantly. “I understand.”
All the time during the long walk back to their offices in Athens, Morgenthau thought about Eberly’s commitment to their cause. He’s seeking nothing more than his own personal aggrandizement, she thought. But he has the charisma to be the leader of these ten thousand people. I’ll have to put up with him. Wilmot, she told herself, is an out-and-out secularist: an atheist or an agnostic, at best. Find something that will hang him. I’ve got to find something that will hang him.
SATURN ARRIVAL MINUS 28? DAYS
“I haven’t slept with him, if that’s what’s worrying you,” said Kris Cardenas.
Holly looked into her cornflower-blue eyes and decided that Kris was telling the truth. She was spending an awful lot of time with Manny Gaeta, but it was strictly business, she insisted. On the other hand, Manny hadn’t asked Holly out or dropped into her office or even phoned her since the night he had walked Kris home.
And Malcolm was as cool and distant as ever. All business, nothing but business. Some love life, Holly thought. It’s all in tatters.
“I’m telling you the truth, Holly,” Cardenas insisted, misinterpreting Holly’s silence.
“I know, Kris,” she said, feeling more confused than unhappy. “Point of fact, I wouldn’t blame you if you did. He’s a dynamo.”
The two women were having a late lunch in the nearly empty cafeteria, well after almost everyone had cleared out of the place.
Cardenas leaned closer to Holly and confided, “He hasn’t come on to me at all. If you weren’t interested in him, I’d be kind of disappointed. I mean, I’m a lot older than he is in calendar years but I’m not repulsive, am I?”
Holly giggled. “Kris, if you’re interested, go right ahead. I’ve got no claims on him.”
“Yes you do.”
“No, not really. In fact, I think I’m better off with him off my scanner screen.”
Cardenas raised a disbelieving eyebrow.
“Really,” Holly said, wondering inwardly if she were doing the right thing, “his only interest in me was purely physical.”
“A lot of relationships have started that way.”
“Well this one’s over. It isn’t really a relationship, anyway. It never was.” Holly was surprised that it didn’t hurt to admit it. Not much, anyway.
Cardenas shrugged. “It’s a moot point. He’s nothing but business with me.”
“Prob’ly in awe of you.”
Cardenas laughed. “I’ll bet.”
“Sure.”
“Never mind,” she said, waving one hand as if brushing away an annoying insect. “You said you’ve got a possible lab assistant for me?”
“Maybe,” Holly said. “I haven’t raised the idea with him, yet. But he’s got some of the qualifications you’re looking for. An engineering degree—”
“What kind of engineering?”
“Electromechanical.”
“How recent?”
Holly pulled her handheld out of her tunic pocket. Raoul Tavalera’s three-dimensional image appeared in the air above their table, together with the facts and figures of his dossier.
Cardenas scanned through the data. “Whose department is he working in?”
“Maintenance,” Holly replied. “But he’s just putting in time there; he doesn’t officially belong to any department. He’s the astronaut that Manny fished out.”
“Oh.” She went through the dossier again, more slowly this time. “Then he’ll only be with us until Manny packs up and leaves.”
“I guess. But he’s available now and you said you needed help right away.”
“Beggars can’t be choosy,” Cardenas agreed. “I’ll have to talk to him. Has he agreed to work with me?”
“He doesn’t know anything about it yet. I can set up a meeting for you, though.”
“Good enough.”
“In my office, kay?”
Cardenas thought a moment. “That’s probably better than inviting him to my lab. He might be scared of having nanobugs infect him.”
Tavalera looked suspicious as he sat down in front of Holly’s desk. He arrived promptly on time, though; that was a good sign, she thought.
She had asked him to come to her office fifteen minutes before Cardenas.
“What’s this all about?” he asked, almost sullenly.
“Job op,” said Holly brightly.
“I’ve got a job, with the maintenance crew.”
“Like it?”
He scowled. “Are you kiddin’?”
Holly made a smile for him. “I’d be worried if you said you did.”
“So what’ve you got for me?”
“It’s in a science lab. You’ll be able to use your engineering education, f’sure.”
“I thought all the science slots were filled. That’s what you told me when I first came aboard here.”
“They are. This is with Dr. Cardenas, in her nanotech lab.”
His eyes widened momentarily. Holly could sense the wheels churning inside his skull.
“Nanotech,” he muttered.
Holly nodded. “Some people are clanked up about nanotechnology, I know.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you?”
Tavalera hesitated a moment, then replied, “Yeah, kinda. Guess I am.”
“You’d be foolish not to be,” Holly agreed. “But working with Dr. Cardenas, you’ll be working with the best there is. It’ll look cosmically good on your resume, y’know.”
“The hell it will. I wouldn’t want anybody back on Earth to know I’d been within a zillion light-years of any nanobugs.”
“Well,” Holly said, “you don’t have to take the job if you don’t want to. We’re not going to force you. You can always stay with Maintenance.”
“Thanks a bunch,” he groused.
He was still wary about the idea when Cardenas arrived. She seemed uncertain about him, as well.
“Mr. Tavalera, I can’t work with somebody who’s frightened to be around nanomachines.”
“I’m not scared of ’em. I’m just scared they won’t let me go back home if anybody finds out I’ve been workin’ with you.”
“You can demand a complete physical,” Cardenas said. “Then they’ll see you’re not harboring any nanobugs in your body.”
“Yeah,” he reluctantly admitted. “Maybe.”
Holly suggested, “We can keep your employment with Dr. Cardenas completely off the record. As far as the authorities Earthside will know, you worked in Maintenance all the time you were aboard this habitat.”
“You can do that?” Even Cardenas looked incredulous.
“I can do it for special cases,” Holly said, thinking about how she would have to keep Morgenthau from poking her fat face into Tavalera’s official dossier.
“You’d do it for me?” Tavalera asked.
“Sure I would,” said Holly.
He looked unconvinced, but he abruptly turned to Cardenas and said, “Well, I guess if you screw up and let killer bugs loose, everybody in this tin can is gonna get wiped out anyway. I might as well work with you. Beats overhauling farm tractors
.”
Cardenas glanced at Holly, then started laughing. “You certainly are enthusiastic, Mr. Tavalera!”
His long, horsy face broke into an awkward grin. “That’s me, all right: Mr. Enthusiasm.”
“Seriously,” Holly said to him, “do you want to work with Dr. Cardenas or not?”
“I’ll do it. Why not? What have I got to lose?”
Turning to Cardenas, Holly asked, “Are you satisfied with him?”
Still smiling at her new assistant, Cardenas said, “Not yet, but I think we can work it out.”
She got to her feet and Tavalera stood up beside her, smiling shyly. Holly thought, He looks so much better when he smiles.
Cardenas put out her right hand. “Welcome to the nanolab, Mr. Tavalera.”
His long-fingered hand engulfed hers. “Raoul,” he said. “My name’s Raoul.”
“I’ll see you at the nanolab at eighta.m. sharp,” Cardenas said.
“Eight hundred. Right. I’ll be there.”
Cardenas left. Tavalera stood uncertainly before Holly’s desk for a moment, then said, “Thanks.”
“De nada,”said Holly.
“You meant it, about keeping this out of my dossier?”
“Certainly.”
He fidgeted for a few heartbeats more, then said, “Uh … would you like to have dinner with me tonight? I mean, I ’predate what you did for me—”
Holly cut him off before he spoiled it. “I’d be happy to have dinner with you, Raoul.”
Two weeks later, Cardenas invited Edouard Urbain to her laboratory, to show him what progress she had achieved in decontaminating Gaeta’s suit. Tavalera sat at the master console, set against the wall opposite the door to the corridor.
“Remember, Raoul,” Cardenas said, “we want to be completely honest with Dr. Urbain. We have nothing to hide.”
He nodded, and a small grin played across his face. “I got nothing to hide because I don’t know anything.”
Cardenas smiled back at him. “You’re learning fast, Raoul. I’m very impressed with you.” To herself, Cardenas thought, He’s been a lot brighter than I thought he’d be. Maybe having a couple of dates with Holly has helped him to cheer up about being stuck here.
When the chief scientist stepped through the door, more than ten minutes late, he looked as tense and guarded as a man walking into a minefield. Cardenas tried to put him at his ease by showing him through her small, immaculately neat laboratory.
“This is the assembly area,” she said, pointing to a pair of stainless steel boxlike structures resting atop a lab bench. Gauges and control knobs ran across the face of each. “The nanomachine prototypes are assembled in this one,” she patted one of the breadbox-sized enclosures, “and then the prototype reproduces itself in here.”
Urbain kept a conspicuous arm’s length from the apparatus. When Cardenas lifted the lid on one of the devices, he actually flinched.
Cardenas tried not to frown at the man. “Dr. Urbain, there is nothing here that can harm you or anyone else.”
Urbain was clearly not reassured. “I understand, in my head. Still… I am nervous. I’m sorry, but I can’t help it.”
She smiled patiently. “I understand. Here, come over to the main console.”
For more than an hour Cardenas showed Urbain how the nanomachines were designed and built. How they reproduced strictly according to preset instructions.
“They’re machines,” she stressed, over and over. “They do not mutate. They do not grow wildly. And they are deactivated by a dose of soft ultraviolet light. They’re really quite fragile.”
With Tavalera running the scanning microscope from the main console, Cardenas showed how the nanomachines she had designed broke up the contaminating molecules on the exterior of Gaeta’s suit into harmless carbon dioxide, water vapor, and nitrogen oxides.
“The suit is perfectly clean within five minutes,” she said, pointing to the image from the console. “The residues outgas and waft away.”
Urbain appeared to be intrigued as he leaned over Tavalera’s shoulder and peered intently at the data and imagery. “All the organics are removed?”
Nodding, Cardenas said, “Down to the molecular level there’s not a trace of them remaining.”
“And the nanobugs themselves?”
“We deactivate them with a shot of UV.”
“But they are still on the surface of the suit? Can they reactivate themselves?”
“No,” said Cardenas. “Once they’re deactivated they’re finished. They physically break down.”
Urbain straightened up slowly.
“As you can see, we can decontaminate the suit,” Cardenas said.
“Not merely the suit,” Urbain said, his eyes looking past her. “This process could be used to decontaminate every piece of equipment we send to Titan’s surface.”
“Yes it could,” Cardenas agreed.
For the first time since entering the nanotechnology laboratory, Urbain smiled.
SATURN ARRIVAL MINUS 273 DAYS
“This man Berkowitz has got to go!” Eberly insisted.
Wilmot sank back in his comfortable desk chair, surprised at the vehemence of his human resources director’s demand.
Softly, he asked, “And what gives you the right to interfere with the working of the Communications Department?”
Eberly had stoked himself up to a fever pitch. For weeks Vyborg had been pressuring him, threatening to act on his own if Eberly could not or would not get rid of Berkowitz. Vyborg wanted to be head of communications, and his scant patience had reached its end. “Either you get him removed or I will remove him myself,” the grim little man said. “In a few months we’ll be entering Saturn orbit. I want Berkowitz out of the way before then. Long before then!”
Eberly knew this was a test of his power. Vyborg would never challenge him so unless he felt that Eberly was deliberately procrastinating. Now, Eberly knew, if I don’t deliver Berkowitz’s head, Vyborg will stop believing in me, stop obeying me. So, like it or not, he had to confront Wilmot.
Morgenthau hadn’t come up with a thing that he could use against Wilmot. Although she swore that she spent every night faithfully plowing through his phone conversations and his computer files, she had found nothing useful, so far.
I can do it without her help, Eberly told himself as he arranged to meet the chief administrator. A man can do anything, if he has the unbreakable will to succeed.
Yet now, as he sat before Wilmot’s desk and saw the professor’s steel-gray eyes assessing him coolly, Eberly wondered which of them had the stronger will.
“After all,” Wilmot said, “your position as head of Human Resources doesn’t give you the right to meddle in other departments, does it.”
“This is not meddling,” Eberly snapped. “It’s a matter of some urgency.”
Wilmot thought, He had a big success with the naming contest and the voting connected with it. That rally he held out in the park was a rather rousing event. It’s gone to his head. He thinks he’s already in charge of every department. He thinks he’s going to replace me as chief of the entire habitat. Well, my lad, you have another think coming.
“Urgency?” he asked, deliberately calm and methodical. “How so?”
“Berkowitz is incompetent. We both know that.”
“Do we? I thought the Communications Department was running rather smoothly.”
“Because Dr. Vyborg is doing all the work,” Eberly said.
“Vyborg. That little reptilian fellow.”
Eberly stifled an angry reply. He’s deliberately trying to goad me, he realized. This old man is trying to make me angry enough to make a mistake.
He took in a breath, then said more calmly, “Vyborg is a very capable man. He is actually running the Communications Department while Berkowitz sits on his laurels and does nothing.”
“Much as Ms. Morgenthau is running your office, I should imagine,” said Wilmot, with the trace of a smile.
Eberly smiled back at the older man. You’re not going to make me lose my temper, he said silently. I’m not going to fall into your trap.
“Vyborg is ambitious,” he said aloud. “He’s come to me to ask my help. He feels frustrated, unappreciated.”
“Why doesn’t he come to me? You can’t help him.”
“I agreed to speak to you about the situation,” Eberly said. “Vyborg feels he shouldn’t go over Berkowitz’s head and speak directly to you. He’s afraid that Berkowitz will hold it against him.”
“Really?”
“Berkowitz is a drone, and we both know it. Vyborg does all the work for him.”
“As long as the Communications Department runs well, I have no reason for removing Berkowitz from his position. This discussion is actually over the man’s management method. To his underlings he may seem like a drone, but as long as the department hums along, he’s doing his job effectively, as far as I’m concerned.”
Eberly sat back, thinking furiously. This is a test, he realized. Wilmot is testing me. Toying with me. How should I answer him? How can I get him to do what I want?
Wilmot, meanwhile, studied Eberly’s face carefully. Why is he so worked up about the Communications Department? Does he have some personal grudge against Berkowitz? Or some personal relationship with Vyborg? I wish old Diego Romero were still with us; he kept the department’s different factions working together smoothly enough, before he died.
Eberly finally hit upon a new ploy. “If you find it impossible to remove Berkowitz, perhaps you could promote him.”
Wilmot felt his brows rise. “Promote him?”
Hunching forward on his chair, Eberly said, “Apparently this man Gaeta is going to be allowed to go to the surface of Titan after all.”
“That stuntman?”
“Yes. Dr. Cardenas has convinced Urbain that she can decontaminate Gaeta’s suit so well that the man can go to Titan’s surface without harming the life-forms there.”
“Urbain hasn’t told me of this,” Wilmot said sharply.
Eberly held back a snicker of triumph. You sit in your office and expect everyone to come to you, he sneered inwardly at Wilmot. The real life of this habitat swirls around you and you know almost nothing of it.
