Rama II

21 PANDORA’S CUBE

Nicole could see David Brown sit­ting behind the desk. Francesca was leaning over him, pointing at something on a large chart that was spread out in front of the two of them. Nicole knocked on the door of the com­mander’s office.

“Hello, Nicole,” Francesca said, as she opened the door. “What can we do for you?”

“I came to see Dr. Brown,” Nicole replied. “About my assignment.”

“Come on in,” Francesca said.

Nicole shuffled in slowly and sat in one of the two chairs opposite the desk. Francesca sat in the other. Nicole looked at the walls of the office. They had definitely changed. General Borzov’s photographs of his wife and children, along with his favorite painting, a picture of a solitary bird with outstretched wings soaring above the Neva River in Leningrad, had been replaced by huge sequencing charts. The charts, each one headed by a differ­ent name (First Sortie, Second Sortie, etc.), covered the side bulletin boards from one end of the wall to the other.

General Borzov’s office had been warm and personal. This room was defi­nitely sterile and intimidating. Dr. Brown had hung laminated replicas of two of his most prestigious international scientific awards on the wall behind his desk. He had also raised the height of his chair so that he looked down on anyone else in the room who might be sitting.

“I have come to see you about a personal matter!” Nicole said. She waited several seconds, expecting David Brown to ask Francesca to leave the room-He said nothing. Finally Nicole glanced in Francesca’s direction to make her concern obvious.

“She has been helping me with my administrative duties,” Dr. Brown explained. “I find that her feminine insight often detects signals that I have missed altogether.”

Nicole sat silently for another fifteen seconds. She had been prepared to talk to David Brown. She had not expected that it would be necessary also for her to explain everything to Francesca. Maybe I should just leave, Nicole thought fleetingly, somewhat surprised to find that she was irritated ahout Francesca’s being there.

“I have read the assignments for the first sortie,” Nicole said eventually in a formal tone, “and I would like to make a request. My duties, as outlined in the sequence, are minimal. Irina Turgenyev, it seems to me, is also un­derworked for the three-day sortie. I recommend that you give my nonmedi-cal tasks to Irina and I will stay onboard the Newton with Admiral Heilmann and General O’Toole. I will follow the progress of the mission carefully and can be available immediately if there is any significant medical problem. Otherwise Janos can handle the life science responsibilities.”

Again there was silence in the room. Dr, Brown stared at Nicole and then at Francesca. “Why do you want to stay onboard the Newton?” Francesca responded at length. “I would have thought that you couldn’t wait to see the inside of Rama.”

“As I said, it’s mostly personal,” Nicole answered vaguely. “I’m still ex­tremely tired from the Borzov ordeal and I have a lot of paperwork to finish. The first sortie should be straightforward. I would like to be fully rested and prepared for the second.”

“It’s a highly irregular request,” David Brown said, “but under the cir­cumstances, I think we can do it.” He glanced again at Francesca. “But we’d like to ask a favor of you. If you’re not going into Rama, then perhaps you’d be willing to spell O’Toole as communications officer from time to time? Then Admiral Heilmann could go inside—”

“Certainly,” Nicole answered before Brown had finished.

“Good. Then I guess we’re all agreed. We’ll change the manifests for the first sortie. You will remain onboard the Newton.” After Dr. Brown was through talking, Nicole still made no move to leave her chair. “Was there something else?” he asked impatiently.

“According to our procedures, the life science officer prepares certification memoranda on the cosmonauts prior to each sortie. Should I give a copy to Admiral—”

“Give all those memos to me,” Dr. Brown interrupted her. “Admiral Heilmann is not concerned with personnel matters.” The American scientist looked directly at Nicole. “But you don’t need to prepare new reports for the first sortie. I’ve read all the documents you wrote for General Borzov. They are quite adequate.”

Nicole did not let herself be cowed by the man’s penetrating gaze. So you know what I wrote about you and Wilson, she thought, and you think I should feel guilty or embarrassed. Well, I don’t. My opinions have not changed just because you are now nominally in charge.

That night Nicole continued with her investigation. Her detailed analysis of the biometry data from General Borzov showed that he had had extraordi­nary levels of two strange chemicals in his system just before his death. Nicole could not figure out where they had come from. Had he been taking medication without her knowledge? Could these chemicals, which were known to trigger pain (they were used, according to her medical encyclope­dia, to test pain sensitivity in neurologically distressed patients), somehow have been manufactured internally in some kind of allergic reaction?

And what about Janos? Why couldn’t he remember reaching for the control box? Why had he been reticent and withdrawn since Borzov’s death? |ust after midnight she stared at the ceiling of her small bedroom. Today the crew enters Rama and I will be here alone. I should wait until then to con­tinue my analysis. But she couldn’t wait. She was unable to push aside all the questions that were flooding her mind. Could there be a connection between fanos and the drugs in Borzov? Is it possible that his death was not completely accidental?

Nicole took her personal briefcase out of the tiny closet. She opened it hastily and the contents spilled into the air. She grabbed a group of family photographs that were floating above her bed. Then she gathered up most of the rest of the items and returned them to her briefcase. Nicole retained in her hand the data cube that King Henry had given her in Davos.

She hesitated before inserting the cube. At last she took a deep breath and placed it into the reader. Eighteen menu items were immediately displayed on the monitor. She could choose any of the twelve individual dossiers on the cosmonauts or six different compilations of crew statistics. Nicole called for the dossier on Janos Tabori. There were three submenus for his biogra­phy: Personal Data, Chronological Summary, and Psychological Assessment. She could tell from the listed file sizes that the Chronological Summary contained most of the details. Nicole accessed Personal Data first to gain familiarity with the format of the dossiers.

The brief chart did not tell her much that she didn’t already know. Janos was forty-one and single. When he was not on duty for the ISA, he lived alone in an apartment in Budapest, only four blocks away from where his twice-divorced mother lived by herself. He had received an honors engineer­ing degree from the University of Hungary in 2183. In addition to mundane items like height, weight, and number of siblings, the chart listed two other numbers: IE (for Intelligence Evaluation) and SC (for Socialization Coeffi­cient). Tabori’s numbers were +337 for IE and 64 for SC.

Nicole returned to the main menu and called up the Glossary to refresh her memory about the definitions of IE and SC. The IE numbers supposedly represented a composite measure of overall intelligence, based on a compari­son with a similar worldwide student population. All students took a set of standardized tests at specified times between the ages of twelve and twenty. The index was actually an exponent in a decimal measuring system. An IE number of zero was average. An IE index of +1.00 meant the individual was above 90 percent of the population; +2.00 was above 99 percent of the population; +3.00 above 99.9 percent, etc. Negative IE indices indicated below-average intelligence. Janos” score of +3.37 placed him in the middle of the upper one tenth of one percent of the population in intelligence.

The SC numbers had a more straightforward explanation. They too were based on a battery of standardized tests administered to all students between the ages of twelve and twenty, but the interpretation here was easier to understand. The highest SC score was 100. A person scoring close to 100 was liked and respected by virtually everybody, would fit into most any group, was almost never quarrelsome or moody, and was very dependable. A footnote to the explanation of the SC scores acknowledged that written tests could not accurately measure personality traits in all cases, so the numbers should be used with discretion.

Nicole reminded herself to do a comparison sometime of all the cosmo­naut IE and SC scores. Then she accessed the Chronological Summary file for Janos Tabori. The next sixty minutes was an eye-opening experience for Nicole. As the life science officer, she had of course studied the official ISA personnel files for the entire crew. But if the information about Janos Tabori on the cube given to her by King Henry was correct (and she had no way of knowing one way or the other), then the ISA files were woefully incomplete.

Nicole had known previously that Janos had twice been selected as the outstanding engineering student at the University of Hungary; she had not known that he had been president for two years of the Gay Students Associa­tion of Budapest. She was aware that he had entered the Space Academy in 2192 and had graduated in only three years (because of his previous experi­ence with major Soviet engineering projects); she had never been told that he had applied to the Academy twice previously and had been rejected both times. Despite sensational entrance scores, he had twice failed his personal interview — both times the interview committee had been headed by General Valeriy Borzov. Janos had been active in various gay organizations until 2190. Subsequently he had resigned from them all and never rejoined or participated in any organized gay activities. None of this information had been in his ISA file.

Nicole was stunned by what she had learned. It wasn’t that Janos had been (or was) gay that disturbed her; she was free of prejudices where sexual orientation was concerned. What bothered her most was the likelihood that his official file had been deliberately censored to remove all references both to his homosexuality and to his earlier interactions with General Borzov.

The last entries in the Tabori Chronological Summary were also surprising for Nicole. According to the dossier, Janos had purportedly signed a contract with Schmidt and Hagenest, the German publishing conglomerate, in the last week of December, just before launch. His task was to perform unspeci­fied “consulting” for a wide variety of post-Newton media endeavors in support of what was referred to as the Brown-Sabatini project. Cosmonaut Tabori was paid an initial fee of three hundred thousand marks for signing. Three days later his mother, who had been waiting almost a year for one of the new artificial brain implants that reversed the damage from Alzheimer’s disease, entered the Bavarian Hospital in Munich for neurological surgery.

Her eyes weary and burning, Nicole finished reading the extensive dossier on Dr. David Brown. During the hours that she had been studying his Chronological Summary, she had created a special subfile for herself of those items in the summary that were of particular interest to her. Before trying again to sleep, Nicole scrolled through this special subfile one more time.

Summer 2161: Brown, eleven, enrolled in Camp Longhom by father over strenu­ous objections of mother. Typical outdoor summer camp in hill country of Texas for upper class boys, featuring athletics of all kinds, riflery, crafts, and hiking. Boys lived ten to a barracks, Brown was extremely unpopular immediately. On fifth day bunkmates seized him coming out of shower and painted his genitals black. Brown refused to move from bed until mother had traveled almost two hundred miles to pick him up and take him home. Father apparently ignored son alto­gether after this incident.

September 2166: After being valedictorian from private high school, Brown en­rolled as freshman in physics at Princeton. Remained in New Jersey only eight weeks. Completed undergraduate work at SMU while living at home.

June 2173: Awarded Ph.D. in physics and astronomy by Harvard. Dissertation advisor Wilson Brownwell called Brown “an ambitious, diligent student.”

June 2175: Brown completed post-doctorate research on the evolution of stars with Brian Murchison at Cambridge.

April 2180: Married Jeannette Hudson of Pasadena, California. Ms. Hudson had been graduate student in astronomy at Stanford. Only child, daughter Angela, born in December 2184.

November 2181: Was refused tenure in astronomy department at Stanford be­cause two members of evaluation committee believed Brown had falsified scien­tific data in several of his many scholarly publications. Issue was never resolved.

January 2184: Appointed to first ISA Advisory Committee. Prepared comprehen­sive plans for series of major new astronomical telescopes on far side of the moon.

May 2187: Brown named chairman of Department of Physics and Astronomy at SMU in Dallas, Texas.

February 2188: Fistfight with Wendell Thomas, Princeton professor, in atrium outside AAAS meeting in Chicago. Thomas insisted that Brown had stolen and published ideas they had discussed together.

April 2190: Electrified scientific world by not only publishing breakthrough mod­els of supernova process, but also predicting nearby supernova to occur in mid-March 2191. Research done in collaboration with SMU doctoral student, Elaine Bernstein of New York. Strong suggestion from graduate associates of Ms. Bern­stein that she was actually one with the new insights. Brown catapulted to fame as a result of his bold and correct prediction.

June 2190: Brown divorced wife, from whom he had been separated for eighteen months. Separation had started three months after Elaine Bernstein had begun graduate work.

December 2190: Married Ms. Bernstein in Dallas.

March 2191: Supernova 2191a filled night sky with light, as predicted by Brown etal.

June 2191: Brown signed two-year science reporting contract with CBS. Jumped to UBC in 2194 and then, at recommendation of agent, to INN in 2197.

December 2193: Brown awarded top ISA medal for Distinguished Scientific Achievement.

November 2199: Signed exclusive multimillion mark, multiyear contract with Schmidt and Hagenest to “exploit” all possible commercial applications of New­ton mission, including booh, videos, and educational material. Teamed with Francesca Sabatini as other principal, cosmonauts Heilmann and Tabori as consul­tants. Signing bonus of two million marks deposited in secret account in Italy.

Her alarm awakened her after she had been asleep for only two hours. Nicole dragged herself out of bed and freshened up in the retractable wash-basin. She moved slowly into the corridor and turned toward the lobby. The other four space cadets were gathered around David Brown in the control center, excitedly reviewing the details of the initial sortie.

“All right,” Richard Wakefield was saying, “first priorities are the light­weight individual chairlifts by the right and left stairways and one heavy load elevator from the hub to the Central Plain. Then we set up a temporary control center at the edge of the plain and assemble and test the three rovers. Crude campsite tonight, base camp at the Beta site near the edge of the Cylindrical Sea tomorrow. We will leave the assembly and deployment of the two helicopters for tomorrow, the icemobiles and motorboats for Day Three.”

“That’s an excellent summary,” Dr. Brown replied. “Francesca will go with the four of you while you’re setting up the infrastructure this morning. When the lightweight lifts are installed and operational, Admiral Heilmann and I will join you along with Dr. Takagishi and Mr. Wilson. We’ll all sleep inside Rama tonight.”

“How many long-duration flares do you have?” Janos Tabori asked Irina Turgenyev.

“Twelve,” she answered. “That should be plenty for today.”

“And tonight, when we go to sleep in there, it will be the darkest night that any of us have ever seen,” Dr, Takagishi said. “There will be no moon and no stars, no reflection off the ground, nothing but blackness all around.”

“What will the temperature be?” Wakefield asked.

“We don’t know for certain,” the Japanese scientist answered. “The ini­tial drones carried only cameras. But the temperature in the region around the end of the tunnel was the same as in Rama I. If thaf s any indication, then it should be about ten degrees below freezing at the campsites.” Takagishi paused for a moment. “And getting warmer!” he continued. “We’re now inside the orbit of Venus. We expect the lights to come on in another eight or nine days, and the Cylindrical Sea to melt from the bottom soon thereafter.”

“Hey,” kidded Brown. “It sounds as if you’re becoming converted. You no longer qualify all your statements, just some of them.” Takagishi replied, “With each datum that indicates this spaceship is like its predecessor sev­enty years ago, the probability that they are identical increases. Thus far, if we ignore the exact timing of the correction maneuver, everything about the two vehicles has been the same.”

Nicole approached the group. “Well look who’s here,” Janos said with his usual grin. “Our fifth and final space cadet.” He noticed her swollen eyes. “And our new commander was right. You do look as if you might benefit from some rest.”

“I, for one,” Richard Wakefield interjected, “am disappointed that my rover assembly assistant will now be Yamanaka instead of Madame des Jardins. At least our life science officer talks. I may have to recite Shake­speare to myself to stay awake.” He elbowed Yamanaka in the ribs. The Japanese pilot almost smiled.

“I wanted to wish you all good luck,” Nicole said. “As I’m sure Dr. Brown has told you, I felt I was still too tired to be very helpful. I should be fresh and ready by the second sortie.”

“Well,” Francesca Sabatini remarked impatiently after her camera had panned around the room and captured one final close-up of each face. “Are we finally ready?”

“Let’s go,” said Wakefield. They headed toward the airlock at the front of the Newton spacecraft.