“Ah, but you should have known him thirty years ago,” said Senta. She smiled at Anson. “Don’t misunderstand me, Howard, but thirty years ago, before the sickness took a hard hold on him, Darius was a superman. He had the energy of ten ordinary people, for work or for play. It was close to frightening. I never met anyone who had half his lust for life, and I met most of the dynamos, the men and women who make the System run. I know you think he’s something special now, and I’m sure he is; but he’s only a shadow of what he was. The disease is getting him, little by little.”
“You say there’s no treatment for it?” asked Rob. “Not even to slow it down?”
“Oh, there are treatments for both crudelis and pertinax.” Senta shook her dark head. “That’s one of the ironies of it. Joseph Morel found a treatment for cancer crudelis that is effective in every case tried so far. It’s used all the time, and it is called the Morel treatment. But that’s the wrong disease. It is cancer pertinax that Regulo suffers from, and Morel’s regime does not work for that. He tried various forms of it, but when the drugs are used on humans they produce deadly long-term side effects. There’s a subtle difference between the two forms of disease. I’m sure that Morel’s still working the problem, but from what you say about Regulo’s appearance there hasn’t been any breakthrough.”
“Don’t count Morel out too soon,” said Anson. He was lying back on the bed, looking up at the ceiling. “I’ve seen a good deal of his background, and he’s not just bright, he’s brilliant. And in one way at least he’s like Regulo — or like you, Rob, from what I’ve seen. Once he starts to pursue an idea, he never stops until he has it sorted out.”
“I had that impression, too.” Rob shrugged. “I don’t know how Morel operates, but all I do is follow up on things that interest me, wherever they lead. Maybe that’s why I don’t care for Morel. We want to chase after different goals, whereas Regulo and I are interested in many of the same things.”
“You’ve seen his desk?” Senta asked Rob. He nodded. “He had that thirty years ago,” she went on. “He was just starting to put those strange sayings into the top of it. He said he was building in his philosophy. I’d like to see what he has there now, see if he’s changed at all in thirty years.”
She shook her head, looking back over the years again, this time without the power of the drug. “What was it? Rockets are wrong. He put that motto in there, the first one of all. He was just starting to build Atlantis. I didn’t realize then that he meant to make it into a private world, one that he could retire to and leave the rest of the System to do what it liked. And now you two have the beanstalk, his answer to rockets after all this time. Howard is right, Regulo doesn’t give up easily.” She was looking at Rob with a different expression, seeing something in him that had not been visible before. “Be careful, Rob. Don’t overdo it. It’s good to have goals for yourself, but it’s bad to let them become obsessions. Darius is an addict to something as strong as taliza: he can’t bear to lose. Don’t let that rub off on you.”
Rob frowned. Senta was striking very close to home. “I’ll try not to. I know what you’re telling me, but I’ve always done things as hard and as well as I could. Stopping that wouldn’t be easy.”
“I know.” She took Rob’s right hand in hers and ran her finger lightly over the surface. “Don’t over-compensate for these, Rob. You’ve proved that you’re as good as anyone with natural hands, long ago. I spoke to Cornelia yesterday, and she says you’ve been working continuously, ever since you first met Regulo. Don’t forget that work can be an addiction and a form of escape, too.”
“I won’t overdo it.” Rob noticed that a faint trembling had returned to Senta’s hands. They were hotter than his own. “Corrie and I are going to take a break from work tonight and go over to Naples for a day, before we have to head for Quito and Tether Control. I know that you respect Regulo, but now I see there are some things about him that you don’t approve of. How do you feel about Corrie working for him? Some of the jobs he gives her are pretty strange ones — like telling her to go and collect me and bring me out to meet him in orbit. She has a lot of responsibility for her age. Did you introduce her to Regulo in the first place?”
Senta stared at Rob wide-eyed. Rob reached over and poked Anson in the ribs. The other man sat up, took one look at Senta and reached at once into his pocket.
“Come on, dear,” he said. “Time for a sedative. Thanks, Rob.”
“I’m all right,” Senta said. She was still staring at Rob. “I don’t know what you and Cornelia have been doing in all the time you’ve spent together. But didn’t she tell you anything about herself?”
“What’s the problem?” said Anson. He had lifted Senta’s bare arm and was holding a tiny vapor-injector against it. “I wasn’t listening. What did Corrie tell Rob?”
“It’s what she apparently didn’t tell him that has me surprised.” Senta let Anson move her over to the bed. “Rob, you’re so wrapped up in your work you don’t notice some things at all. Regulo and I lived together for more than five years. What do you imagine that we were doing all that time, designing rockets? When you meet Cornelia tonight, take a good look at her. Look at her eyes, and the shape of her forehead. She’s my daughter, and she uses my name — but she’s Darius Regulo’s daughter, too. I raised her, but I couldn’t keep her on Earth. As soon as she was old enough, she went off to Atlantis. Didn’t she tell you any of that?”
Rob was gazing at her in amazement. “Not a word. Maybe she thought it was obvious enough without saying it. And it ought to have been, now that you’ve told me. Corrie said she had been looking at the signs on Regulo’s desk for years and years, the very first time we met. I thought that was odd, because she looked so young, but I never took it any further. And she told me she had never seen you using taliza. Howard said you had been addicted for twelve years. That meant Corrie would have been only fourteen years old. I couldn’t understand why she had never seen you, unless she had gone off to Atlantis before that — and she wouldn’t have gone there so young to work. But it makes sense if she went there to stay with her father. I’ve just been unbelievably dense, that’s all.”
Senta was nodding her head, but while Rob was speaking her eyes had begun to lose focus. As the injection took effect, Howard Anson eased her back gently onto the pillow.
“Some day, Rob.” he said grimly. “Some day soon. I’m looking for another thing in our casting back to the past. I want to find the bastards who made Senta into a taliza addict. I’ve never believed that she did it to herself, and now I think it’s somehow tied in to another attempt to wipe her memory. But it’s working in reverse. She recalls exactly what they’d like her to forget, it’s planted so deep in her. Let’s find who did it. Then you’ll realize that I have my obsessions, too.”
“You are going to try again, and see what Senta recalls?”
“I don’t know. It’s obvious we still don’t have everything, but we can’t use a dose this strong very often. The after-effects are fierce. I’ll keep digging away at Morel’s background, you look for evidence when you are out on Atlantis. But take Senta’s advice. Be careful how you dig. I’ve heard Senta talk about Joseph Morel, and she’s terrified of the man. Don’t ever let him suspect what you’re trying to do.”
“It may be a bit late for that.” Rob stood up. “He was already suspicious when I was looking around last time. I’ll be careful. But we have to go on. I’ll admit to my own obsessions, even if they’ve been put on hold for ten years. I want to know who killed my parents, and I want to know why they did it. There’s one other thing I’d like you to look into while I’m away. Do a search for other reports of anything that might be a Goblin, on Earth or off it.”
Howard Anson shook his head. “I’ll try, Rob, but I don’t know where to start. What is a Goblin? You have no idea how much there will be in the files on references to `little people.’ We don’t even know if the Goblins are small. I’ll have to sift my way through mountains of materia
l about elves, and midgets, and leprechauns, and every other sort of real or imagined small human-like being.”
“I know. If I didn’t have extraordinary faith in your tracking powers, Howard, I would never suggest it. But I think we do know, now, that the Goblins are small. Senta said there were two Goblins in a medical supply box. That would usually be less than a meter long. I assume you already tried to find references to the Expies, the name you had heard used before?”
“Long ago. There wasn’t a trace. I’ll try again. But it will take a massive effort.”
“Don’t worry about money.”
“I wasn’t. I was thinking about time.”
“As soon as possible. For all our sakes.” Rob paused at the door, his gaze turning back to the silent form on the bed. “One other question, then I’ll go. You told me that Senta was terrified of poverty, and she came from a poor background. Now she seems to have all the money she can use. Do you know where she gets it? If it’s yours, that’s fine and I don’t want to pry. But if it isn’t…”
“It’s not, and I do know where she gets it.” Anson’s tone was unusually bitter. “She has never taken anything from me — never needed to, though I’d give it gladly. She has an unlimited credit of her own. I traced the charge code back through the files, and everything terminates at a single number. Everything that Senta spends is charged to the central account of Regulo Enterprises.”
CHAPTER 10: The Birth of Ourobouros
The city of Quito lay less than thirty miles to the south-west. From the excavation site it could no longer be seen. Immense mounds of earth and broken rock completely circled the pit, hiding all the surrounding countryside from anyone inside the lip of the crater.
The landscape had become lifeless. Nothing grew on the steep sides of the rock piles, nor in the cavernous interior of the pit with its sheer, metal-braced walls. Rob was standing about thirty meters from the edge, looking about him at the bleak, dead scene.
“I hope all this is worth it,” he said to the man standing beside him. “You’ve certainly carved the earth up here. You know we have to hit the point exactly, then hold it down when it starts to pull? Otherwise, we lose the whole thing.”
The other man was small, dark-skinned, and short of stature. He was much at home in the thin mountain air. His smile at Rob was brilliant and gap-toothed. “Not my department,” he said, with the ease of long familiarity. “Landing it in the right place is your job. Me, I just dig the holes. Come on over and take a look at the bottom of this one. She’s a big mother, biggest I’ve ever done.”
Rob allowed himself to be led to the edge of the pit. It was a little more than four hundred yards across, with an even, circular boundary. The sides were smoothly vertical. Rob took a quick look over, then stepped back.
“That’s enough for me, Luis. I’m not all that fond of heights.”
“You say?” The other man stared at Rob challengingly. “You try and tell me that, when Perrazo told me you went off climbing the Himalayas — alone? What is that, if it is not heights?”
“That’s different. I had my mind on getting up the mountain, and down again. Here, it’s all the way down in one swoop. I’ve always wondered how you could feel so comfortable, working the heights like this.” He took another quick step to look over the edge, then promptly backed up again. “It manages to look a lot deeper than five kilometers from up here. I can’t even see the excavation equipment, and they’re big machines.”
“Biggest I could find. We’ll be all ready here in a couple more months.” Luis advanced to the very edge of the pit and leaned casually over it. He nodded in satisfaction at what he saw and spat into the depths. “This is still the easy part, eh? When she comes in, and we have to get the rock back in there — that’s when we begin to sweat. She’ll be a bitch to tether. You sure you don’t have more time for me to fill her in? Couple billion tons, less than five minutes. That’s a tall order.” The confident tone of his voice belied his words as he leaned far over the edge and peered downwards.
“You’ll do it, Luis.” Rob was staring up, straight above them, as though seeing something descending in his mind’s eye. “We’ve built in a mushroom at the end of the beanstalk. It broadens out to about three hundred and fifty meters at the bottom, so you won’t have any trouble watching it arrive. It will be coming in at less than a hundred kilometers an hour on the final entry, and its arrival position will be accurate to better than one meter. You can start shovelling rock in there as soon as the leading edge goes below ground level. You’ll have loads of time. Way I look at it, I wonder why we’re paying you as much as we are — it’s like giving the money away.”
“All right.” Luis was laughing and still looking down into the pit. “Maybe you’d like to take over this job for yourself, eh? Then I can have the easy part, sit over there in Central Control and watch while other people do all the work.”
“Easy? Where do you think all the worry will be? You can sit here and be full of blind faith — I’m the one who has to worry about the stability, all the way in.”
The short man shrugged. “Stability? You calculated all that months ago. Now, you sit and watch and tell me you’ll be worrying. What will you be doing, tell me that.”
Rob sniffed. The two men had played this game many times before. “I’ll be sitting there trying to control a hundred thousand kilometers of live snake, that’s all. Not to mention the ballast, out at the far end. How’d you like it if we miss on that? You’ll get the whole thing in your lap, here at Quito.”
“Wouldn’t happen like that, would it?” Luis turned and cocked his dark head, a note of inquiry replacing the verbal sparring. His feet were inches from the lip of the excavation.
“Come away from there, Luis, and I’ll answer the question. You don’t seem to care if you fall over, but it makes me nervous.”
“You know I’m irreplaceable.”
“Bull. I’ll have no trouble getting a replacement who’s more competent — I just don’t want the bother of breaking in somebody new to run Tether Control.” Rob watched as the other man moved a couple of inches away from the edge. “You’re right, though,” he went on. “If we don’t get the ballast tied on at the other end, you won’t get the cable in here — the first time round. It will start to curl around the Earth, speeding up all the way. You’ll get it on the second sweep, and then I guarantee you’d notice it. It ought to be moving about Mach Three when it comes into the atmosphere, a couple of billion tons of it. Quito would be a lively place.”
“Siccatta! You paint nice pictures for me.” Luis spat again over the edge, turned, and walked back to join Rob by the aircar. “I suppose you told all that to the General Coordinators’ Office? What did they think of it?”
“Not my department.” Rob mimicked the other’s flat, calm delivery. “I left all that to Darius Regulo. He’s the one who handled the permits.”
“Hm. And how did he manage that?”
Rob shrugged. “I’ll have to guess. Some people he persuaded, some he bought, some owed him for past favors, some he scared more with other worries if we don’t go ahead and build the `stalk. You know how it’s done. A little carrot, a little stick. Me, I just build the cable — and she’s a big mother, too, biggest I’ve done. I’m happy to leave the manipulation of the authorities to Regulo’s fine Italian hand.”
He sat down on the stubby wing of the aircar. “We’ve got enough worries without taking on Regulo’s. Any real problems at this end? If not, we’ll keep the fabrication going and make final plans for the fly-in.”
The dark man shook his head. “I worked for you on the New Zealand Bridge, and on the Madagascar Bridge, and I’m lined up for the Tasman Bridge. All that, and you have the nerve to ask me such a question. Rob Merlin, my perfectionist friend, don’t you know me at all? Don’t you think I would have been banging your door down, long ago, if something were not going according to plan and according to schedule? Do you think I am one of those incompetent lastajas who would
rather see things screwed up than admit they have troubles?”
“All right.” Rob held up his hand to cut off the flow of words. “I’m with you. I know you’ve got everything under control here, I know your work. Damn it, Luis, if I didn’t know you’d have everything running smoothly, I’d never have asked you to work on this in the first place. But you know me, too. I have to see it all for myself, and I have to ask those dumb questions. It’s part of me, the way that digging holes is part of you.”
“It is.” Luis was smiling as the two men climbed into the aircar. “I agree, it’s part of your nature.” He looked at the huge earthworks surrounding them, man-made hills of rock and rubble. “And just you stay that way,” he said softly. “Keep insisting on seeing everything for yourself. That’s the reason why Luis Merindo has worked for you four separate times. Remember, I value my life, too — even if you think that I stand a little too close to the edge. Let’s go over and look at Tether Control. We’ll be ready here when you are.”
The view from L-4 was always a surprise to visitors. It was Earth that drew the attention first, looming four times the size of the Moon. The lunar sphere appeared exactly the same size as seen from Earth, but it was the body that finally received the closer look. The markings seemed all wrong. An Earth dweller had that same invariable face planted deep in his memory, back before he could recall any coherent sights. When the familiar face was changed suddenly to an alien profile it became a new and interesting world, no longer Earth’s age-old companion. And that feeling persisted. Rob had made the trip to L-4 many times now, and was becoming accustomed to the new face in the sky. Even so, he found that he was taking an occasional look at the bright hemisphere as he rode slowly along the length of the beanstalk, heading back towards the Spider.
The load-bearing and superconducting cables, along with the elements of the drive ladder, were being extruded as a single complex unit. That was the assembly to be flown in to a landing at Tether Control. The rest — ore and passenger carriers, maintenance robots and condition sensors — would all be added later, once the beanstalk was settled in position.
The Web Between the Worlds Page 15
