Golden Fleece

FIVE

As mayor of Starcology Argo, Gennady Gorlov didn’t really have a whole lot to do. Terrestrial mayors always had to deal with garbage collection and zoning bylaws and municipal taxes and attracting business to their constituency and entertaining visiting VIPs.

Well, I took care of the garbage, we had no need for construction, there were no taxes to be paid—the members of the crew had left all their money back on Earth in 104-year guaranteed-investment certificates, and their salaries were supposed to be paid automatically into a trust fund—no commerce took place aboard ship, and I suspect everyone on board would be quite shocked if a visiting person showed up, regardless of whether or not he or she was deemed very important.

Mostly, Gorlov organized social events.

So it didn’t surprise me that Gorlov appeared to take a certain perverse pleasure in what had happened. We had no police to investigate the death of Diana Chandler, and, although there were trained mediators on board to settle domestic disputes, Gorlov considered himself to be the logical one to handle the inquest. And handling it he was, with typical aplomb.

“So what the fuck happened?” he demanded, his voice its usual stentorian bellow. The little man looked out over the group of people he had summoned to his office: Aaron Rossman, standing, hands in pockets; Kirsten Hoogenraad, seated in the chair in front of Aaron, long legs crossed; I-Shin Chang, triple Gorlov’s size, a four-armed mountain of flesh with a chair hidden beneath it. Three others: Donald Mugabe, who was Gorlov’s assistant; Par Lindeland, a psychiatrist; and Pamela Thorogood, who had been Diana’s closest friend.

“Medically, it’s pretty straightforward,” said Kirsten, after waiting to see if anyone else was going to speak first. “She entered the ramfield, which, of course, funnels hydrogen ions into our engines. The ions are moving at nearly the speed of light. She died, instantly I should think, of severe radiation exposure.”

Gorlov nodded. “I saw the report on that. What’s this about the radiation levels being too high?”

Kirsten shrugged. “I’m not sure. She seemed to be exposed to about two orders of magnitude more radioactivity than one might reasonably expect, given the circumstances. Of course, even the normal level of radioactivity would have been enough to kill her.”

“And the excess means?”

She shrugged again. “I don’t know.”

“Great,” said Gorlov. “Anybody else?”

Chang spoke up. “We’re working on that now. I’m assuming it’s an anomaly—a temporary aberration in the fuel flow. JASON is helping my people model it.”

“Does it present a danger to the ship?”

“No. The habitat torus is completely shielded, regardless, and all the diagnostics JASON has run show the Bussard ramjet to be operating exactly to specifications.”

“Okay,” said Gorlov. “What else? I see here that Chandler had a nosebleed.”

“That’s right,” said Kirsten. “A little one.”

“Did she use cocaine? Slash? Any other stimulant that’s inhaled?”

“No. There was no evidence of anything like that in her body.”

“Then why the nosebleed?”

“I’m not sure,” said Kirsten. “There’s no sign of an abrasion or contusion on her face, so it’s not the result of an impact. It could have been induced by stress.”

“Or,” said Chang, “by a drop in pressure. The ionized hydrogen flow would have played havoc with Orpheus’s internal systems. Cabin-pressure control might have been lost, resulting in a sudden shift in pressure.”

“Wouldn’t that have caused an oxygen mask to drop from the ceiling?”

Chang sighed. “It’s not an airplane, Your Honor. Normally, passengers and crew would be wearing their own environmental suits and would have put on their helmets and used tanked air in such a circumstance. A warning bell should have sounded, but the flight recorder was wiped clean— apparently the systems overload triggered a reformatting of the optical platter—so we can’t tell whether it actually did or not.”

“All right,” said Gorlov, “so we know how she died. I’m still waiting for someone to tell me why.”

Par Lindeland had done his best to grow a Freud-like beard, but his follicles just weren’t up to the task. Instead, a blond wispiness ran along the angle of his jaw. Still, he stroked it in good psychiatrist fashion before he replied. “Obviously,” he said at last, “Dr. Chandler committed suicide.”

“Yes, yes,” said Gorlov, irritated with the Swede. “But how could that be permitted to happen?” He looked up at my camera pair mounted on the far wall. “JASON, you should have prevented this.”

I was prepared for such a statement, of course, but feigned surprise. “I beg your pardon, sir?”

“It’s your job to make sure everyone is safe at all times. How could you let this happen?”

“I was deceived,” I said.

“Deceived? How?”

“Diana told me she wanted to look inside one of the landers to get, as she put it, a feel for its cockpit dimensions. I offered to provide her with blueprints, but she said it wasn’t the same thing. She said she was thinking of designing some astrophysical test equipment to be used once we arrived in orbit around Eta Cephei IV. That equipment was to be mounted in a lander cockpit.”

“But the ship was powered up,” Gorlov snapped.

“Of course. I had to turn on the interior lighting so she could see.”

“And then what happened?”

“I wasn’t really paying attention—you’ll recall, sir, that I was engaged in one of our late-night debates and that required my full concentration. I didn’t realize what was happening until she had actually fired the main engines.”

The mayor’s voice was louder than normal. “But the hangar space door is under your control. I’ve checked with Bev Hooks: she tells me even the manual door system runs back through you, so you could have countermanded Dr. Chandler’s instructions.”

“True,” I said. “But I had to make a split-second decision. If I hadn’t opened the door—”

“You initiated the opening of the door? Not her?”

“Yes, it was me. Please let me continue. If I hadn’t opened the door, and at double speed on emergency override, her lander would have plowed right into it. She might, indeed, have broken through the door, if she hit one of the seams between the metal plates. But at the very least she would have warped the door beyond my ability to slide it open in future, effectively putting an end to the scheduled planetary survey.” The room was silent, except for the susurrations of human respiration and mechanical air-conditioning. I let it remain silent until I saw from his telemetry that Gorlov was about to speak again. Just before he opened his mouth, I jumped in. “I believe I acted correctly.”

Gorlov’s mouth did open for an instant, but then he closed it and looked at his feet. At last he nodded. “Of course. Of course you did, JASON.” His voice grew calmer, if no less voluminous. “I’m sorry if I implied otherwise.”

“Apology accepted.”

Gorlov turned away from my camera pair to look at the others in the room. “Par, how could this happen? Was she under any kind of psychiatric treatment?”

Lindeland stroked his quasi-beard again. “Certainly not from me, and certainly nothing formal from anyone else. I’ve talked to the others on board who have psychological training and to Barry Delmonico—did you know he’s a Catholic priest?—to see if she had turned to anyone else for counseling. The answer seems to be no.”

“Then why did she kill herself?” The mayor swung his chair around. “Pamela, you were her friend. Any ideas?” Pamela Thorogood looked up, her face taut. She had had the sclera and iris of each eye dyed black, so that her pupils were lost against the pitch background. It was impossible to tell at whom she was looking as she replied. “Of course I have an idea,” she said. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? She killed herself because of him.” She fairly spat the word as she pointed a long finger at Aaron.

“That’s not fair!” protested Kirsten.

Light played across the black orbs of Pamela’s eyes as they shifted. The slight bulging around the lens cast different highlights across the darkness, the only indication that she was now looking at Kirsten. “Of course you’d say that,” sneered Pamela. “You’re the other woman.”

“What are you talking about?” demanded Gorlov.

“Diana and him,” said Pamela, again indicating Aaron by the point of a finger.

“What about them? Rossman, I called you here because the accident took place in your jurisdiction—”

I-Shin Chang placed his upper right hand at the side of his mouth, cupping his words. He spoke softly, but in his usual crisp tones. “Diana and Aaron used to be married.”

“Oh!” said Gorlov. “Oh. I see. Um, Rossman—I didn’t know. I mean, with ten thousand people on board, well, it’s hard to keep track. I’m sorry.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “You may leave if you want to.”

Aaron’s tone was as restrained as his telemetry. “I’ll stay.”

Gorlov swung to face my cameras again. “JASON, why didn’t you tell me about this?”

“You asked me if Diana was married or had relatives on board. The answer to both those questions was no. You then asked me to whom Diana was closest. The answer to that was Pamela Thorogood.”

“They can only tell you what you ask them to,” said Chang with a self-indulgent little chuckle.

Gorlov ignored him. “So this—this accident—had something to do with your marriage, Rossman?”

“I don’t know. I guess so. We’d been married for two years. We split up. She—she took it harder than I’d thought she had, I guess.”

Gorlov looked up at Par Lindeland. “And that’s it?”

Par nodded slightly. “It does seem so.”

Gorlov returned the nod, then looked at Aaron. “Rossman, you realize the entire Starcology is abuzz with word of the accident. The shipboard media will want to do a story on it.”

“It’s nobody’s business,” said Aaron quietly.

The mayor gave a sad smile. “People have a right to know what happened.”

“No,” Aaron said. “No, they don’t. Diana was killed in an accident. Tell them that. But don’t stain her memory by telling people it was a suicide.”

“And,” said Pamela, her voice icy, “don’t let the world know what a rat you were.”

Aaron, I knew, had always thought of Pamela, and her husband Barney, as their friends—both his and Diana’s. It was now quite clear whose friend Pamela had been in reality. He stared directly into her solid black eyes. “Pam, believe me, I didn’t want to hurt Di.”

“She had been so good to you.”

Kirsten stood up. “Come on, Aaron. Let’s go.”

Aaron’s hands moved from out of his pockets as he crossed his arms in front of his chest, but that was the only sign that Pam’s words were upsetting him. “No I want to hear Pam out.”

“There’s no point in it,” said Kirsten. “Come on.” She reached out to take his arm, but something in his manner must have made her think better of it. Her arm fell back to her side.

Aaron continued to fix Pamela with a steady gaze, his own eyes, an agate mix of blue and green and brown, hard and unblinking, on hers. “You think I mistreated her.”

Pam sounded defiant, but she had the advantage of not having to hold his gaze. “Yes.”

“I didn’t want to hurt her. We had a marriage contract. It expired. Nothing more.”

“You didn’t exactly wait till the contract was up before you took up with her.” She made a gesture with her head in Kirsten’s direction, but there was no play of light across her ebony eyeballs to indicate that she had actually deigned to look the other woman in the face.

Aaron was silent for six seconds. “True,” he said at last. “But she didn’t know about that. It was only in the final months of the contract that Kirsten and I became involved. Diana was unaware of it.”

“Don’t be thick, Aaron,” Pamela said. “Of course she knew about it.”

This did surprise Aaron. For once, even his rock-solid vital signs showed inner turmoil. “What?”

“She knew, you bastard. She knew you were cheating on her.”

“How could she know?”

Both Pamela’s and I-Shin’s telemetry showed considerable distress. I-Shin glanced at Pamela, and Pamela, it seemed for an instant, perhaps glanced back at the engineer. Aaron appeared not to notice. “What does it matter how she found out?” said Pam at last, a slight tremble in her voice. “The fact is she knew. Everybody knew. Christ, Aaron, this ship is like a small town. There’s gossip, and there are reputations to protect. You made a fool out of her in front of the whole damned Starcology.”

This time Kirsten did reach out to take his arm. Her medical signs were in turmoil, too: she was mad as hell, and trying not to show it. Finally, in that tone that says, “If you love me, you’ll do as I say,” she spoke to Aaron again. “Come on.”

Aaron glowered at his former friend, at Pamela’s dark and empty eyes. I slid the door to the mayor’s office open in anticipation. At last, he and Kirsten walked out of the room.