by Ben Bova
“Well, now he’s got me, too,” Holly said.
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
SATURN ARRIVAL MINUS 3 DAYS, 45 MINUTES
Eberly frowned as Kananga shooed the last of the well-wishers out of his apartment. He had enjoyed his triumph at the rally, gloried in the crowd’s adulation. Carried off on their shoulders! Eberly had never known such a moment.
Now, as midnight approached, Kananga officiously shoved the last starry-eyed young woman out into the corridor and slid the apartment’s front door firmly shut. Morgenthau sat on the sofa, nibbling at one of the trays of finger food that had been set out. Vyborg hunched by a three-dimensional image of the newscast, already showing a rerun of Eberly’s minidebate against the red-haired scientist.
“You’ve got them,” Vyborg said. “They all want to get rich. Most of them, at least.”
“It was a brilliant stroke,” Morgenthau agreed.
Still leaning against the door, Kananga snapped, “Turn that thing off. We’ve found her.”
A surge of sudden fear cut through the elation Eberly had been feeling. “Found her? Holly?”
Smiling grimly, Kananga said, “Yes. She tried to sneak into Professor Wilmot’s quarters. Looking to him for help, I suppose.”
“Where is she now?”
“Still there. My people have the apartment sealed off. I told them to cut Wilmot’s phone off, too.”
“What are you going to do with her?” Morgenthau asked.
The euphoria ebbed out of Eberly like water swirling down a drain. Morgenthau had asked Kananga, not him.
“We’ll have to eliminate her. Permanently.”
“Tricky,” said Vyborg. “If she’s with Wilmot you can’t just go in there and snap her neck.”
“She can always be killed trying to escape,” Kananga said.
“Escape how?”
Kananga thought a moment. Then, “Perhaps she runs away from my guards and goes to an airlock. She puts on a spacesuit and tries to go outside, to hide from us. But the suit is defective, or perhaps she didn’t seal it up properly.”
Morgenthau nodded.
Spreading his hands in a fait accompli gesture, Kananga said, “Poor girl. She panicked and killed herself.”
With a mean chuckle, Vyborg said, “She always was unbalanced, after all.”
The three of them turned to Eberly. This is getting out of control, he thought. They’re making me a party to their murders. They’re forcing me to go along with them. They’ll be able to hold this over my head forever.
And after tomorrow, when I’m the elected head of the government, they’ll still have power over me. I’ll be a figurehead, a puppet dancing to their tune. They’ll have the power, not me.
Kananga slid the door open. Eberly could see that the corridor outside was empty now. It was late. All his adoring crowd had gone to their own homes.
“Shall we go pick her up?” Kananga said.
“I’ll go,” said Eberly, trying to sound firmer, more in control, than he really felt. “Alone.”
Kananga’s eyes narrowed. “Alone?”
“Alone. It would be more believable if she escaped from me than from two of your thugs, wouldn’t it?”
Before Kananga could reply, Vyborg said, “He’s right. We’ve got to make the story as plausible as possible.”
Morgenthau eyed Eberly carefully. “This young woman is a definite threat to us all. Whether we like it or not, she’s got to be eliminated. For the greater good.”
“I understand,” said Eberly.
“Good,” Morgenthau replied.
Kananga looked less agreeable. He obviously wanted to take care of this himself. Eberly pulled himself up to his full height and stepped to the door. He had to look up to see into Kananga’s eyes. The Rwandan tried to face him unflinchingly, but after a few heartbeats he moved away from the door. Eberly walked past him and out into the corridor.
Not daring to look back, he strode down the hallway toward the outside door.
Standing in the apartment doorway watching him, Kananga muttered, “Do you think he’s strong enough to carry this out?”
Morgenthau pushed herself up from the sofa. “Give him a few minutes. Then you go to Wilmot’s building and take the guards away from his apartment door. Wait for him and the girl outside the building. When Eberly brings her out, you and the guards can take over.”
Vyborg agreed. “That way he’s not party to the killing. Good.”
Morgenthau cast him a contemptuous glance. “He’s party to it. We’re all party to it. I want to make certain that the girl is taken care of properly.”
Holly came out of Wilmot’s bathroom and sat tiredly on the sofa. The digital clock showed it was past midnight.
“My phone doesn’t work,” the professor grumbled. “They really want to keep us incommunicado.”
“What’s going to happen now?” she wondered.
With a sigh that was almost a snort, Wilmot replied, “That’s in the lap of the gods. Or Eberly and his claque, rather.”
“I wish there was some way I could talk to Kris Cardenas.”
“Dr. Cardenas lives in this building, doesn’t she?”
“Yes.”
Wilmot glanced at the door. “With those two guards outside, I don’t suppose we’d be able to get to her.”
“Guess not.” The sofa felt very comfortable to Holly. She leaned back into its yielding softness.
“It’s rather late,” said the professor. “I’m going to bed. You can stretch out on the sofa if you like.”
Holly nodded. Wilmot got up from his armchair and walked slowly back to his bedroom.
He hesitated at the bedroom door. “You know where the bathroom is. If you need anything, just give a rap.”
“Thank you,” said Holly, suppressing a yawn.
Wilmot went into his bedroom and shut the door. Holly stretched out on the sofa and, despite everything, fell into a dreamless sleep as soon as she closed her eyes.
Thinking furiously, Eberly walked slowly along the path that led from his apartment building to Wilmot’s.
The voting starts in a few hours, he said to himself. In twelve hours or so I’ll be the head of the new government. I’ll have it all in my grasp.
But what good will that be if Kananga and the rest of them can hold their murders over my head? They’ll be able to control me! Make me jump to their tune! I’ll just be a figurehead. They’ll have the real power.
It was enough to make him weep, almost. Here I’ve struggled and planned and worked all these months and now that the prize is at my fingertips they want to keep it from me. It’s always been that way; every time I reach for safety, for success and happiness, there’s someone in my way, someone in power who puts his foot on my neck and pushes me back down into the mud.
What can I do? What can I do? They’ve put me in this position and they’ll never let me out of it.
As he came up the walk in front of Wilmot’s building he saw that one of Kananga’s guards was standing outside the front door, waiting for him.
Of course, Eberly thought. Kananga’s already talked to him, told him that I’d be coming. Kananga and the others are probably coming up behind me.
And then it hit him. He stopped a dozen meters in front of the black-clad guard. The revelation was so powerful, so beautiful, so perfect that a lesser man would have sunk to his knees and thanked whatever god he believed in. Eberly had no god, though. He simply broke into a wide, happy smile, grinning from ear to ear. His knees still felt a little rubbery, but he strode right up to the guard, who opened the building’s front door for him. Without a word, without even a nod to the man, Eberly swept past him and started up the steps to Professor Wilmot’s apartment.
The knock on the door startled Holly awake. She sat up like a shot, fully alert.
“Holly, it’s me,” came a muffled voice from the other side of the door. “Malcolm.”
She got up from the sofa and went to the door. Sliding it open, she saw Eberly. And
only one guard in the corridor.
Turning to the guard, Eberly said, “You can go now. I’ll take charge here.”
The guard touched his right hand to his forehead in a sloppy salute, then headed toward the stairs.
“Holly, I’m sorry it’s come to this,” Eberly said as he stepped into the sitting room and looked around. “Where’s Professor Wilmot?”
“Asleep,” she replied. “I’ll get him.”
Wilmot came into the room, wearing the same fuzzy robe. Otherwise he looked normal, wide awake. Not a hair out of place. His face, though, was set in an expression that Holly had never seen on the old man before: wariness, apprehension, almost fear.
“May I sit down?” Eberly asked politely.
“I imagine you can do anything you bloody well like,” said Wilmot, irritably.
Instead of sitting, though, Eberly took an oblong black box from his tunic pocket and swung it across the room in a full circle, then swept it up and down, from ceiling to floor and back again.
“What’re you doing?” Holly asked.
“Exterminating bugs,” said Eberly. “Making certain our conversation isn’t overheard by anyone else.”
Wilmot bristled. “You’ve had my quarters bugged for some time, haven’t you?”
“That was Vyborg’s doing,” Eberly lied smoothly, “not mine.”
“Indeed.”
“I want to get this all straightened out before there’s any more violence,” Eberly said as he finally sat in the nearer of the two armchairs.
“So do I,” said Holly.
Wilmot sank slowly into the armchair facing Eberly. Holly went to the sofa. She sat down and tucked her feet under her, feeling almost like a little mouse trying to make herself seem as small and invisible as possible.
“You’re in danger, Holly. Kananga wants to execute you.”
“What do you intend to do about it?” Wilmot demanded.
“I need your help,” Eberly replied.
“My help? What do you expect me to do?”
“In eighteen hours or so I’ll be the elected head of the new government,” said Eberly. “Until then you are still the director of this community, sir.”
“I’m under house arrest and threatened with scandal,” Wilmot grumbled. “What power do I have?”
“If you ordered those guards away, they would obey you.”
“Would they?”
Eberly nodded. “Yes, providing I second your command.”
“I see.”
Holly swiveled her attention from Eberly to Wilmot and back again. Scandal? she wondered. House arrest? What’s going on between these two?
She said to Eberly, “Kananga killed Don Diego, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“And he wants to kill me.”
“He certainly does.”
“How are you going to stop him?”
“By arresting him,” Eberly said, without hesitation. But his face looked worried, doubtful.
“Suppose he doesn’t want to be arrested?” Wilmot said. “He’s the chief of the security forces, after all.”
“That’s where you come in, sir. You still have the legal power and the moral authority to command the security officers.”
“Moral authority,” Wilmot mumbled.
“We’ll need to arrest Morgenthau and Vyborg as well. They were parties to Kananga’s crime.”
“Easier said than done. If Kananga wants to resist, I’ll warrant most of the security force will follow his lead, not mine.”
Holly said, “But the security force is only about three dozen men and women.”
“That’s a dozen for each of us,” Wilmot pointed out.
“Yes,” said Holly. “But there are ten thousand other men and women in this habitat.”
ELECTION DAY
Kananga looked at his wristwatch, then up at the apartment building. He’d been waiting out in the street with a half-dozen of his best people for nearly an hour.
“I don’t think she’s coming out, sir,” said the team’s leader. “We could go in and get her.”
“No,” Kananga barked. “Wait.”
He yanked his handheld from his tunic pocket and called for Eberly.
“What’s going on?” he demanded as soon as Eberly’s face appeared on the miniature screen.
“Miss Lane is going to stay here in Professor Wilmot’s quarters for the time being,” Eberly said smoothly.
“What? That’s not acceptable.”
“She’ll remain here until after the election is finished. We don’t want to have anything disturb the voting.”
“I don’t see why—”
“I’ve made my decision,” Eberly snapped. “You can post guards around the area. She’s not going anywhere.”
His image winked out, leaving Kananga staring angrily at a blank screen.
“What do we do now?” the team leader asked him.
Kananga glared at her. “You stay here. If she tries to leave the building, arrest her.”
“And you, sir?”
“I’m going to try to get a few hours’ sleep,” he said, stalking off toward his own quarters.
The phone woke Kris Cardenas. She sat up groggily and called out, “No outgoing video.” Glancing at Gaeta sleeping peacefully beside her, she thought that the man could probably snooze through the end of the world.
Holly’s face appeared at the foot of the bed. “Kris, are you there?”
“Holly!” Cardenas cried. “Where are you? Are you okay?”
“I’m in Professor Wilmot’s apartment, upstairs from you. Can you come up here right away?”
Cardenas saw that it was a few minutes past seven A.M. “There’s a couple of security goons outside my door, Holly. They won’t—”
“That’s okay. They’ll let you come up here. Professor Wilmot’s already spoken to them.”
Oswaldo Yañez woke bright and cheerful. He heard his wife in the kitchen, preparing breakfast. He showered and brushed his teeth, whistling to himself as he dressed.
Breakfast was waiting for him on the kitchen table, steaming hot and looking delicious. He kissed her lightly on the forehead and said, “Before I eat, I must do my duty as a citizen.”
He called to the computer as he sat across the table from Estela.
“Who will you vote for?” she asked.
Grinning, he replied, “The secrecy of the ballot is sacred, my darling.”
“I voted for Eberly. He makes more sense than the others.”
Yañez’s jaw dropped open. “You voted? Already?”
“Of course. As soon as I awoke.”
Yañez felt all the excitement of the day drain out of him. He wanted to be the first to vote. It was unfair of his wife to sneak in ahead of him. Then he sighed. At least she voted for the right candidate.
“You’re really okay?” Cardenas asked as soon as she entered Wilmot’s apartment. Gaeta was right behind her, looking a little puzzled.
“I’m fine,” said Holly. Turning to Eberly and Wilmot, she said, “You know everybody, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
Gaeta fixed Eberly with a pugnacious stare. “What’s the idea of cooping us up in the apartment? What’s going on?”
“We are trying to save Miss Lane’s neck,” Eberly said.
“Yes,” Wilmot added. “We want to avoid violence, but there are certain steps we must take.”
Holly told them what she had planned, and what she needed them to do.
Cardenas blinked, once she understood. “Posse comitatus?” she asked, unbelieving.
Gaeta broke into a nervous laugh. “Holy Mother, you mean a posse, like in the old westerns?”
“It won’t work,” Cardenas said. “These people are too independent to form a posse just because you ask them to. They’ll want to know why and how. They’ll refuse to serve.”
“I was wondering about them myself,” said Wilmot.
Eberly smiled, though. “They’ll do it. They merel
y need a bit of persuasion.”
After a few hours of sleep, Kananga stormed into Eberly’s apartment. “What are you doing? We agreed that the Lane woman would be put into my custody.”
Sitting bleary-eyed at his desk, watching the three sets of numbers from the early voting returns, Eberly said, “I’ve been up all night, working on your problem.”
“My problem? She’s your problem, too. I want her delivered to me immediately.”
Eberly said blandly, “She will be. Don’t get upset.”
“Where is she? Why isn’t she in my hands?”
Trying to control the tension that was tightening inside him, Eberly said, “She’s in Wilmot’s apartment. She’s not going anywhere.”
“What’s going on? What are you up to?” Kananga loomed over Eberly like a dangerous thundercloud.
“Wait until the election returns are in,” Eberly said, jabbing a finger toward the rapidly-changing numbers. “Once I’m officially the head of this habitat I’ll be able to act with real authority.”
Kananga scowled suspiciously.
Hoping he had at least half-convinced the Rwandan, Eberly got up from his desk chair. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get some sleep.”
“Now? With the voting still going on?”
“There’s nothing I can do to affect the voting now. It’s all in the lap of the gods.”
Despite himself, Kananga smiled tightly. “Better not let Morgenthau hear you speaking like a pagan.”
Eberly forced himself to smile back. “I must sleep. It wouldn’t do for the newly-elected head of this habitat to have puffy eyes when he accepts the authority of office.”
SATURN ARRIVAL MINUS 1 DAY, 7 HOURS
Edouard Urbain watched the final few minutes of the voting in the privacy of his quarters with a strange mixture of disappointment and relief. Eberly had clearly won, that much was certain early in the afternoon. But Urbain waited until the voting ended, at 17:00 hours, before finally accepting the fact that he would not be the director of the habitat.
He almost smiled. Now I can get back to my real work, he told himself. I will no longer be distracted by these political monkeyshines.
