The Silent War gt-11

by Ben Bova

  Saito’s face grew solemn when Nobu told him of the tentative agreement they had hammered out.

  “But this will keep Yamagata from moving back into space operations,” the older man complained.

  “Not entirely,” Nobuhiko replied. “We will gain only a small share in the profits from asteroidal mining, true enough. But the price for asteroidal resources will become so low that we will be able to continue our rebuilding programs and invest in new space ventures, as well.”

  “Lower our costs,” Saito muttered. “H’mm. I see.”

  In the end, the elder Yamagata agreed that his son’s best course was to accept the agreement. By the time Nobuhiko ended his conversation with his father, Saito was already talking about building solar power satellites in orbit about the planet Mercury.

  “The sunlight is much more intense that close to the Sun,” he said. “Perhaps I will leave this dreary monastery and lead the Mercury project myself.”

  Soaked with well-earned perspiration, Martin Humphries held Tatiana Oparin’s naked body close to his own and contemplated his future.

  “Maybe I won’t rebuild the house,” he said, gazing up at the darkened ceiling of the hotel bedroom. It sparkled with a thousand fluorescent flecks of light, like stars on a summery evening back on Earth.

  “Not rebuild it?” Tatiana murmured drowsily.

  “I could go back to Connecticut. That’s where my boys are living. The runt’s nothing much, but Alex is turning into a real son. Just like his father.” He laughed at his private joke.

  “You’d leave the Moon?”

  “Just for a visit. To see the kids. And there’s other family still down there. Can’t take too much of them.”

  “But you’ll still live here at Selene, won’t you?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Hell Crater’s an interesting place. Maybe I’ll buy into one of the casinos there. Be a playboy instead of a captain of industry. Might make a nice change for me.”

  “You would make an excellent playboy,” said Tatiana, snuggling closer to him.

  Humphries laughed in the darkness. This is a lot easier than running a corporation, he thought. Let the others do the work. I’ll spend the profits.

  Stavenger spent much of his evening sending a long, detailed report to his wife about the peace conference.

  “I think it could work,” he concluded. “I think we can make it work.”

  Edith was on her way back to him, he knew. She had survived the atrocity at Ceres unscathed, physically. Her news coverage, complete with computer-graphic simulations of the actual attack based on her eyewitness description, had been the biggest news event since the greenhouse floods had first struck. There was already talk of a Pulitzer for her.

  None of that mattered to Stavenger. Edith’s all right, he thought. She’s on her way back. She wasn’t hurt. It was an emotional trauma for her, but she wasn’t physically harmed. She’ll be all right. I’ll help her recover.

  Edith’s news reporting had been the key to making the peace agreement, Stavenger realized. With the Chrysalis massacre in full view of every person in the solar system, Humphries and the others had no choice except to come to some sort of an agreement to end the fighting.

  Now comes the hard part, Stavenger told himself. Now we have to make the agreement work.

  Pancho was packing her travel bag when the call from Jake Wanamaker came through. She invited him to come to her residence.

  By the time he buzzed at the front door, Pancho was packed and ready to go. She carried her travel bag to the door and let it drop to the floor, then opened the door to let Wanamaker in. In the languid lunar gravity, the bag thumped on the carpeting as Wanamaker stepped into the entryway.

  “Going somewhere?” he asked.

  “Yep,” said Pancho, ushering him into the sitting room. “But I got lots of time. Want a drink?”

  The room’s decor was set to the Mediterranean isle of Capri: steep, green-clad cliffs studded with little white-walled villages clinging here and there, and the placid sea glittering beneath a warm Sun.

  Wanamaker asked for a bourbon and water. Pancho had the auto-bar pour her an ice-cold lemoncello, to go with the scenery.

  She gestured him to a comfortably wide armchair, and perched herself on the smaller upholstered chair next to it. They clinked glasses. Pancho noticed that Jake took a healthy swig of his bourbon, rather than a polite little sip.

  “What’s on your mind?” Pancho asked.

  He gave her a sheepish grin. “Looks like I’m out of a job.”

  “Guess so,” she said. “Your contract runs to the end of the year, though.”

  “I don’t feel right taking money for doing nothing.”

  Pancho considered this for a moment, then heard herself say, “So why don’t you come with me? Be my bodyguard.”

  His brows shot up. “Bodyguard? Where are you going?”

  With a shrug, she admitted, “Dunno. Just want to get away from all this. I’m going to resign from Astro Corporation.”

  “Resign?” “Yep. I sorta fell into this job by accident. Took me a lotta years to realize I don’t really want to be a corporate executive.”

  “So you’re going to travel?”

  “For a bit. My sister’s out at the Saturn habitat. Thought maybe I’d have a look-see out there.”

  “You don’t need a bodyguard for that,” Wanamaker said.

  Pancho grinned at him. “Okay then, I’ll be your bodyguard. How’s that?”

  Realization dawned on Wanamaker’s face. He broke into a wide grin.

  Shanidar was in orbit around Vesta. There was a delay getting the crew transferred down to the base because most of the surface facilities had been eaten away by the nanomachine attack. Just as well, Harbin thought. He was in no hurry to leave the ship.

  He had remained in his quarters, as ordered by the executive officer. He had not slept for several days. Without his medications, sleep brought dreams, and Harbin did not like what his dreams showed him.

  He replayed the news broadcasts of his attack on Chrysalis over and over. Each time it seemed worse to him, more horrifying, more damning.

  What does life hold for me now? he asked himself. They’ll send out some troops to arrest me. Then a trial, probably back on Earth. And then what? A firing squad? More likely a lethal injection. Or perhaps life in prison.

  I can save them the trouble, he thought.

  His mind resolved, Harbin slid open the pleated door to the passageway and headed toward the rear of the ship, away from the bridge. I’ve got to do this quickly, he knew, before they realize I’ve left my quarters.

  He went straight to the weapons locker, unattended now that the ship was in orbit and the crew waiting to transfer to their base. The grenade storage bins were locked, but Harbin knew all the combinations. He tapped out the proper sequence and the lock clicked open. A small one, he told himself. You don’t want to damage the ship too much.

  A minigrenade, hardly larger than his thumbnail. Enough explosive in it, however, to blast open an airlock hatch. Or something else.

  “Hey, what’re you doing?”

  Harbin whirled to see one of his crewmen coming down the passageway.

  “Oh, it’s you, Captain.” The man looked suddenly embarrassed. “Sir, eh—you’re supposed to be confined to your quarters.”

  “It’s all right, trooper,” Harbin said reassuringly. “Nothing to worry about. For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man is blackened…”

  “Sir?” the crewman asked, puzzled. Then he saw the minigrenade in Harbin’s hand. His eyes went wide.

  “Nothing,” Harbin muttered. He flicked the grenade’s fuse with his thumbnail as he spun around to place his body between the crewman and the blast. The explosion nearly tore him in half.

  ASTEROID 67-046

  “What do you mean, Dorn’s not available?” Humphries shouted at the blank phone screen. “Get me the officer on watch aboard the Humphries Eagle.”

  “All exte
rior communications are inoperable at the present time,” replied the phone.

  “That’s impossible!” “All exterior communications are inoperable at the present time,” the phone repeated, unperturbed.

  Humphries stared at the empty screen, then turned slowly toward Elverda Apacheta. “He’s cut us off. We’re trapped in here.”

  Elverda felt the chill of cold metal clutching at her. Perhaps Dorn is a madman, she thought. Perhaps he is my death, personified.

  “We’ve got to do something!” Humphries nearly shouted.

  Elverda rose shakily to her feet. “There is nothing that we can do, for the moment. I am going to my quarters and take a nap. I believe that Dorn, or Harbin or whatever his identity is, will call on us when he is ready to.”

  “And do what?”

  “Show us the artifact,” she replied, silently adding, I hope.

  Legally, the artifact and the entire asteroid belonged to Humphries Space Systems. It had been discovered by a family—husband, wife, and two sons, ages five and three—that made a living from searching out iron-nickel asteroids and selling the mining rights to the big corporations. They filed their claim to this unnamed asteroid, together with a preliminary description of its ten-kilometer-wide shape, its orbit within the asteroid belt, and a sample analysis of its surface composition.

  Six hours after their original transmission reached the commodities market computer network on Earth—while a fairly spirited bidding was going on among four major corporations for the asteroid’s mineral rights—a new message arrived at the headquarters of the International Astronautical Authority, in London. The message was garbled, fragmentary, obviously made in great haste and at fever excitement. There was an artifact of some sort in a cavern deep inside the asteroid.

  One of the faceless bureaucrats buried deep within the IAA’s multi-layered organization sent an immediate message to an employee of Humphries Space Systems. The bureaucrat retired hours later, richer than he had any right to expect, while Martin Humphries personally contacted the prospectors and bought the asteroid outright for enough money to end their prospecting days forever. By the time the decision-makers in the IAA realized that an alien artifact had been discovered they were faced with a fait accompli: the artifact, and the asteroid in which it resided, were the personal property of the richest man in the solar system.

  Martin Humphries was something of an egomaniac. But he was no fool. Graciously he allowed the IAA to organize a team of scientists who would inspect this first specimen of alien intelligence. Even more graciously, Humphries offered to ferry the scientific investigators all the long way to the asteroid at his own expense. He made only one demand, and the IAA could hardly refuse him. He insisted that he see this artifact himself before the scientists were allowed to view it.

  And he brought along the solar system’s most honored and famous artist To appraise the artifact’s worth as an art object, he claimed. To determine how much he could deduct from his corporate taxes by donating the thing to the IAA, said his enemies. But over the days of their voyage to the asteroid, Elverda came to the conclusion that buried deep beneath his ruthless business persona was an eager little boy who was tremendously excited at having found a new toy. A toy he intended to possess for himself. An art object, created by alien hands.

  For an art object was what the artifact seemed to be. The family of prospectors continued to send back vague, almost irrational reports of what the artifact looked like. The reports were worthless. No two descriptions matched. If the man and woman were to be believed, the artifact did nothing but sit in the middle of a rough-hewn cavern. But they described it differently with every report they sent. It glowed with light. It was darker than deep space. It was a statue of some sort. It was formless. It overwhelmed the senses. It was small enough almost to pick up in one hand. It made the children laugh happily. It frightened their parents. When they tried to photograph it, their transmissions showed nothing but blank screens. Totally blank.

  As Humphries listened to their maddening reports and waited impatiently for the IAA to organize its handpicked team of scientists, he ordered his security manager to get a squad of hired personnel to the asteroid as quickly as possible. From corporate facilities at the Jupiter station and the moons of Mars, from three separate outposts among the Asteroid Belt itself, Humphries Space Systems efficiently brought together a brigade of experienced mercenary security troops. They reached the asteroid long before anyone else could, and were under orders to make certain that no one was allowed onto the asteroid before Martin Humphries himself reached it.

  “The time has come.”

  Elverda woke slowly, painfully, like a swimmer struggling for the air and light of the surface. She had been dreaming of her childhood, of the village where she had grown up, the distant snowcapped Andes, the warm night breezes that spoke of love.

  “The time has come.” It was Dorn’s deep voice, whisper-soft. Startled, she flashed her eyes open. She was alone in the room, but Dorn’s image filled the phone screen by her bed. The numbers glowing beneath the screen showed that it was indeed time.

  “I am awake now,” she said to the screen.

  “I will be at your door in fifteen minutes,” Dorn said. “Will that be enough time for you to prepare yourself?”

  “Yes, plenty.” The days when she needed time for selecting her clothing and arranging her appearance were long gone.

  “In fifteen minutes, then.”

  “Wait,” she blurted. “Can you see me?”

  “No. Visual transmission must be keyed manually.”

  “I see.”

  “I do not”

  A joke? Elverda sat up on the bed as Dorn’s image winked out. Is he capable of humor?

  She shrugged out of the shapeless coveralls she had worn to bed, took a quick shower, and pulled her best caftan from the travel bag. It was a deep midnight blue, scattered with glittering silver stars. Elverda had made the floor-length gown herself, from fabric woven by her mother long ago. She had painted the stars from her memory of what they had looked like from her native village.

  As she slid back her front door she saw Dorn marching down the corridor with Humphries beside him. Despite his slightly longer legs, Humphries seemed to be scampering like a child to keep up with Dorn’s steady, stolid steps.

  “I demand that you reinstate communications with my ship,” Humphries was saying, his voice echoing off the corridor walls. “I’ll dock your pay for every minute this insubordination continues!”

  “It is a security measure,” Dorn said calmly, without turning to look at the man. “It is for your own good.”

  “My own good? Who in hell are you to determine what my own good might be?”

  Dorn stopped three paces short of Elverda, made a stiff little bow to her, and only then turned to face his employer.

  “Sir: I have seen the artifact. You have not.”

  “And that makes you better than me?” Humphries almost snarled the words. “Holier, maybe?”

  “No,” said Dorn. “Not holier. Wiser.”

  Humphries started to reply, then thought better of it.

  “Which way do we go?” Elverda asked in the sudden silence.

  Dorn pointed with his prosthetic hand. “Down,” he replied. “This way.”

  The corridor abruptly became a rugged tunnel again, with lights fastened at precisely spaced intervals along the low ceiling. Elverda watched Dorn’s half-human face as the pools of shadow chased the highlights glinting off the etched metal, like the Moon racing through its phases every half-minute, over and again.

  Humphries had fallen silent as they followed the slanting tunnel downward into the heart of the rock. Elverda heard only the clicking of his shoes at first, but by concentrating she was able to make out the softer footfalls of Dorn’s padded boots and even the whisper of her own slippers.

  The air seemed to grow warmer, closer. Or is it my own anticipation? She glanced at Humphries; perspiration beaded his upper lip. T
he man radiated tense expectation. Dorn glided a few steps ahead of them. He did not seem to be hurrying, yet he was now leading them down the tunnel, like an ancient priest leading two new acolytes—or sacrificial victims.

  The tunnel ended in a smooth wall of dull metal.

  “We are here.”

  “Open it up,” Humphries demanded.

  “It will open itself,” replied Dorn. He waited a heartbeat, then added, “Now.”

  And the metal slid up into the rock above them as silently as if it were a curtain made of silk.

  None of them moved. Then Dorn slowly turned toward the two of them and gestured with his human hand.

  “The artifact lies twenty-two point nine meters beyond this point. The tunnel narrows and turns to the right. The chamber is large enough to accommodate only one person at a time, comfortably.”

  “Me first!” Humphries took a step forward.

  Dorn stopped him with an upraised hand. The prosthetic hand. “I feel it my duty to caution you—”

  Humphries tried to push the hand away; he could not budge it.

  “When I first crossed this line, I was a soldier. After I saw the artifact I gave up my life.”

  “And became a self-styled priest. So what?”

  “The artifact can change you. I thought it best that there be no witnesses to your first viewing of it, except for this gifted woman whom you have brought with you. When you first see it, it can be— traumatic.”

  Humphries’s face twisted with a mixture of anger and disgust. “I’m not a mercenary killer. I don’t have anything to be afraid of.”

  Dorn let his hand drop to his side with a faint whine of miniaturized servomotors.

  “Perhaps not,” he murmured, so low that Elverda barely heard it.

  Humphries shouldered his way past the cyborg. “Stay here,” he told Elverda. “You can see it when I come back.”

  He hurried down the tunnel, footsteps staccato.

  Then silence.

  Elverda looked at Dorn. The human side of his face seemed utterly weary. “You have seen the artifact more than once, haven’t you?”