“Great,” she replied sarcastically. “But General Borzov is still dead. And now Reggie Wilson is too.” Nicole thought about the American journalist’s erratic behavior over the last several days and remembered her earlier conversation with Francesca. “Say,” she said spontaneously, “did either of you ever hear General Borzov complain of headaches or any other discomfort? Especially on the day of the banquet?”
Wakefield shook his head. “No,” said Janos. “Why do you ask?”
“Well, I asked the portable diagnostician, based on Borzov’s biometry data, to give me the possible causes of his symptoms, given that the general was not having an appendicitis. The most likely cause was listed as drug reaction. Sixty-two percent probable. I thought that maybe he might have had an adverse reaction to some medication.”
“Really?” Janos said, his curiosity piqued. “Why have you never said anything about this to me before?”
“I was going to… several times,” Nicole answered. “But I didn’t think you were interested. Remember when I stopped by your room on the Newton the day after General Borzov died? It was right after the crew meeting. From the way you responded I concluded that you didn’t want to rehash—”
“Goodness.” Janos shook his head. “How we humans fail to communicate. It was just a headache. Nothing more or less. I certainly didn’t mean to give you the impression that I was unwilling to talk about Valeriy’s death.”
“Speaking of communicating,” Nicole said as she rose wearily from the cot, “I must go to see Dr. Brown and Admiral Heilmann before I go to bed.” She looked at Wakefield. “Thanks a lot for your help, Richard. I wish I could say that I felt better now.”
Nicole walked over beside Janos. “Tm sorry, friend,” she said. “I should have shared my whole investigation with you. It probably would have been over much faster—”
^ “It’s fine,” Janos replied. “Don’t worry about it.” He smiled. “Come on, I’ll walk with you as far as my suite.”
Nicole could hear the loud conversation inside before she knocked on the door to the hut. David Brown, Otto Heilmann, and Francesca Sabatini were arguing about how to reply to the latest directions from Earth.
“They’re overreacting,” Francesca was saying. “And they’ll realize it as soon as they have some time to reflect. This is not the first mission to suffer a loss of human life. They didn’t cancel the American space shuttle when that schoolteacher and her crew were killed.”
“But they have ordered us to return to the Newton as soon as possible!” Admiral Heilmann protested.
“So tomorrow we’ll talk to them again and explain why we want to survey New York first. Takagishi says the sea will start to melt in another day or two and we’ll have to leave anyway. Besides, Wakefield and Takagishi and I did hear something that night, even if David doesn’t believe us.”
“I don’t know, Francesca,” Dr. Brown was starting to respond when he finally heard Nicole’s knock. “Who’s there?” he asked crossly.
“Cosmonaut des Jardins, I have some important medical information—”
“Look, des Jardins,” Brown interrupted quickly, “we’re very busy. Can’t it wait until morning?”
All right, Nicole said to herself. I can wait until morning. She wasn’t anxious to answer Dr. Brown’s questions about Takagishi’s heart condition anyway. “Roger,” she said out loud, laughing at herself for using the expression.
Within seconds Nicole could hear the discussion start again behind her. She walked slowly back to her hut. Tomorrow has to be a better day, she said as she crawled onto her cot.
31
ORVIETO PRODIGY
Good night, Otto,” David Brown said as the German admiral left his hut. “See you in the morning.” Dr. Brown yawned and stretched. He looked at his watch. It was a little more than eight hours until the lights should come on again.
He pulled off his flight suit and had a drink of water. He had just laid down on his cot when Francesca entered his hut. “David,” she said, “we have more problems.” She walked over and gave him a short kiss. “I’ve been talking to Janos. Nicole suspects that Valeriy was drugged.”
“Whaaat?” he replied. He sat up on his cot. “How could she? There was no way—”
“Apparently there was some evidence in his biometry data and she cleverly found it. She mentioned it to Janos tonight.”
“You didn’t react when he told you, did you? I mean, we must be absolutely—”
“Of course not,” Francesca answered. “Anyway, Janos would never suspect anything in a thousand years. He is a total innocent. At least where things like this are concerned.”
“Damn that woman,” David Brown said. “And damn her biometry.” He rubbed his face with his hands. “What a day. First that stupid Wilson tries to be a hero. Now this… I told you we should have destroyed all the data from the operation. It would have been an easy matter to wipe out the central files. Then things would never—”
“She would still have his biometry records,” Francesca countered. “That’s where the prime evidence is. You would have to be an absolute genius to take the data from the operation itself and deduce anything.” She sat down and cradled Dr. Brown’s head against her chest. “Our big mistake was not when we failed to destroy the files. That would have aroused suspicion at the ISA. Our error was in underestimating Nicole des Jardins.”
Dr. Brown shook free from the embrace and stood up. “Dammit, Francesca, it’s your fault. I never should have let you talk me into it. I knew at the time—”
“You knew at the time,” Francesca sharply interrupted, “that you, Dr. David Brown, were not going on the first sortie into Rama. You knew at the time that your future millions as the hero and perceived leader of this expedition would be seriously compromised if you stayed onboard the Newton.” Brown stopped pacing and faced Francesca. “You knew at the time,” she continued more softly, “that I too had a vested interest in your going on the sortie. And that I could be counted on to provide you with support.”
She took his hands and pulled him back toward the cot. “Sit down, David,” Francesca said. “We’ve been over and over this. We did not kill General Borzov. We simply gave him a drug that created the symptoms of an appendicitis. We made the decision together, If Rama had not maneuvered and the robot surgeon had not malfunctioned, then our plan would have worked perfectly. Borzov would be on the Newton today, recovering from his appendectomy, and you and I would be here leading the exploration of Rama.”
David Brown removed his hands from hers and started to wring them. “I feel so… so unclean,” he said. “I’ve never done anything like this before. I mean, whether we like it or not, we are partially responsible for Borzov’s death. Maybe even for Wilson’s as well. We could be indicted.” He was shaking his head again. There was a forlorn expression on his face. “I’m supposed to be a scientist,” he said. “What has happened to me? How did I get mixed up in these things?”
“Spare me your righteousness,” Francesca said harshly. “And don’t try to kid yourself. Aren’t you the man who stole the decade’s most important astronomical discovery from a woman graduate student? And then married her to keep her quiet forever? Your integrity was compromised a long long time ago.”
“That’s unfair,” Dr. Brown said petulantly. “I have mostly been honest. Except—”
“Except when it was important and worth a lot to you, What a pile of shit!” Francesca now stood up and paced around the hut herself. “You men are so damn hypocritical. You preserve your lofty self-images with amazing rationalizations. You never admit to yourselves who you really are and what you really want. Most women are more honest. We acknowledge our ambitions, our desires, even our basest wants. We admit our weaknesses. We face ourselves as we are, not as we would like to be.”
She returned to the cot and took David’s hands in hers again. “Don’t you see, darling?” she said earnestly. “You and I are soulmates. Our alliance is based o
n the strongest bond of all — mutual self-interest. We are both motivated by the same goals of power and fame.”
“That sounds awful,” he said.
“But it’s true. Even if you don’t want to admit it to yourself. David, darling, can’t you see that your indecisiveness comes from your failure to acknowledge your true nature? Look at me. I know exactly what I want and am never confused about what to do. My behavior is automatic.”
The American physicist sat quietly beside Francesca for a long time. At length he turned and put his head on her shoulder. “First Borzov, now Wilson,” he said with a sigh. “I feel whipped. I wish none of this had happened.”
“You can’t give up, David,” she said, stroking his head– “We’ve come too far. And the big prize is now within our reach.”
Francesca reached across him and started to remove his shirt. “It’s been a long and trying day!” she said soothingly. “Let’s try to forget it.” David Brown closed his eyes as she caressed his face and chest.
Francesca bent over and kissed him slowly on the lips. A few moments later she abruptly stopped. “You see,” she said, slowly removing her own clothes, “as long as we are in this together, we can derive strength from each other.” She stood up in front of David, forcing him to open his eyes.
“Hurry,” he said impatiently, “I was already—”
“Don’t worry so much about it,” Francesca replied, lazily pulling down her pants, “you’ve never had a problem with me.” Francesca smiled again as she pushed his knees apart and pressed his face against her breasts. “Remember,” she said, tugging easily at his shorts with her free hand, “I’m not Elaine.”
She studied David Brown as he slept beside her. The strain and anxiety that had dominated his face just minutes before had been replaced by the carefree smile of a boy. Men are so simple, Franceses was thinking. Orgasm is the perfect pain reliever. I wish it were that easy for us.
She slipped off the small cot and put her clothes on again. Francesca was very careful not to disturb her sleeping friend. But you and I still have a real problem, she said to herself as she finished dressing, which we need to address quickly. And it will be more difficult because we are dealing with a woman.
Francesca walked outside her hut, into the black of Rama. There were a few lights near the supplies at the other end of the camp, but otherwise the Beta campsite was dark. Everyone else was asleep. She switched on her small flashlight and walked away in a southerly direction, toward the Cylindrical Sea.
What is it that you want, Madame Nicole des jardins? she thought as she walked along. And where’s your weakness, your Achilles” heel? For several minutes Francesca flipped through her entire memory bank on Nicole, attempting to find any personality or character flaw that could be exploited. Money’s not the answer. Sex. isn’t either, at least not with me. She laughed involuntarily. And certainly not with David. Your dislike for him is obvious.
What about blackmail!” Francesca asked herself as she drew near to the banks of the Cylindrical Sea. She remembered Nicole’s strong reaction to her question about Genevieve’s father. Maybe, she thought, if I knew the answer to that question… But I don’t
Francesca was temporarily stumped. She could not figure out any way to compromise Nicole des Jardins. By this time the lights from the campsite behind her were barely visible. Francesca extinguished her flashlight and very cautiously sat down to dangle her feet over the edge of the cliff.
Having her legs suspended above the frozen ice of the Cylindrical Sea brought back a suite of poignant memories from her childhood in Orvieto. At the age of eleven, despite the barrage of health warnings that assaulted her from every direction, the precocious Francesca had decided to start smoking cigarettes. Every day after school she would wind her way down the hill to the plain below the town and sit on the bank of her favorite creek. There she would smoke in silence, an act of solitary rebellion. On those lazy afternoons she would inhabit a fantasy world of castles and princes, millions of kilometers away from her mother and stepfather.
The memory of those adolescent moments produced an irresistible desire to smoke in Francesca. She had been taking her nicotine pills throughout the mission, but they satisfied only the physical addiction. She laughed at herself and reached into one of the special pockets of her flight suit. Francesca had hidden away three cigarettes in a special container that would preserve them in fresh condition. She had told herself before leaving the Earth that the cigarettes were there “in case of an emergency”…
Smoking a cigarette inside an extraterrestrial space vehicle was even more outrageous than smoking at the age of eleven. Francesca wanted to hoot with delight when she threw back her head and expelled the smoke into the Raman air. The act made her feel free, liberated. Somehow the threat represented by Nicole des Jardins did not seem so serious.
While she was smoking, Francesca recalled the acute loneliness of that young girl stealing down the slopes of old Orvieto. She also remembered the terrible secret that she had kept locked forever in her heart. Francesca had never told anyone about her stepfather, certainly not her mother, and she rarely thought about it anymore. But as she sat on the banks of the Cylindrical Sea, the anguish of her childhood appeared to her in sharp relief.
It began right after my eleventh birthday, she thought, plunging back into the details of her life eighteen years before. ! had no idea what the bastard wanted at first She took another deep drag from her cigarette. Even after he started bringing me gifts for no reason.
He had been the principal of her new school. When she had taken her first full set of aptitude tests, Francesca had made the highest scores in the history of Orvieto. She was off the scale, a prodigy. Until then he had never noticed her. He had married her mother eighteen months before and fathered the twins almost immediately. Francesca had been a nuisance, another mouth to feed, nothing more than a part of her mother’s furniture.
For several months he was especially nice to me. Then Mother went to visit Aunt Carlo for a few days. The painful memories came fast, rushing like a torrent through her mind. She remembered the smell of wine on her stepfather’s breath, his sweat against her body, her tears after he had left her room.
The nightmare had lasted for over a year. He had forced himself upon her whenever her mother was not in the house. Then one evening, while he was putting on his clothes and looking in the other direction, Francesca had smacked him in the back of the head with an aluminum baseball bat. Her stepfather had fallen to the floor, bloody and unconscious. She had dragged him into the living room and left him there.
He never touched me again, Francesca remembered, putting out her cigarette in the Raman dirt. We were strangers in the same house. From then on I spent most of my time with Roberto and his friends. I was just waiting for my chance. I was ready when Carlo came.
Francesca was fourteen during the summer of 2184. She spent most of her time that summer loitering around the main square of Orvieto. Her older cousin Roberto had just completed his certificate to be a tour guide for the cathedral in the square. The old Duomo, the chief tourist attraction of the town, had been built in phases, starting in the fourteenth century. The church was an artistic and architectural masterpiece. The frescoes by Luca Signorelli inside its San Brizio chapel were widely hailed as the finest examples of imaginative fifteenth century painting outside of the Vatican museum.
To have become an official Duomo guide was considered quite an accomplishment, especially at the age of nineteen. Francesca was very proud of Roberto. She sometimes accompanied him on his tours, but only if she agreed beforehand not to embarrass him with her wisecracks.
One August afternoon, right after lunch, a sleek limousine pulled into the piazza around II Duomo and the chauffeur requested a guide from the tourist bureau. The gentleman in the limousine had not made a reservation and Roberto was the only guide available. Francesca watched with great curiosity as a short, handsome man in his late thirties or early fo
rties climbed out of the back of the car and introduced himself to Roberto. Automobiles had been banned from upper Orvieto, except by special permit, for almost a hundred years, so Francesca knew the man must be an unusual individual.
As he always did, Roberto began his tour with the reliefs sculptured by Lorenzo Maitani on the outside portals of the church. Still curious, Francesca stood just off to the side, smoking quietly, while her cousin explained the significance of the weird demonic figures at the bottom of one of the columns. “This is one of the earliest representations of Hell,” Roberto said, pointing at a group of Dantesque figures. “The fourteenth century concept of Hell involved an extremely literal interpretation of the Bible.”
“Hah!” Francesca had suddenly interjected, dropping her cigarette on the cobblestones and walking toward Roberto and the handsome stranger. “It was also a very masculine concept of Hell. Notice that many of the demons have breasts and most of the sins depicted are sexual. Men have always believed that they were created perfect; it is women who have taught them to sin.”
The stranger was astonished by the appearance of this gangly teenager expelling smoke from her mouth. His trained eye immediately recognized her natural beauty and it was clear that she was very bright. Who was she?
“This is my cousin, Francesca” Roberto said, obviously flustered by her interruption.
“Carlo Bianchi,” the man said, extending his hand. His hand was moist Francesca looked up at his face and could see that he was interested. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest. “If you listen to Roberto!” she said coyly, “then all you’ll get is the official tour. He leaves out the juicy bits.”
“And you, young lady—”
“Francesca,” she said.
“Yes, Francesca. Do you have a tour of your own?”
Francesca gave him her prettiest smile. “I read a lot,” she said. “I know all about the artists who worked on the cathedral, particularly the painter Luca Signorelli!” She paused for a moment. “Did you know,” she continued, “that Michelangelo came here to study Signorelli’s nudes before he painted the ceiling at the Sistine Chapel?”
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