The Silent War

HUMPHRIES MANSION

“Somebody tried to kill Pancho?” Martin Humphries could barely hide his elation. “You mean there’s somebody else who wants that guttersnipe offed?”

Grigor Malenkovich was not smiling. Humphries sometimes wondered if the man knew how to smile. The chief of HSS’s security department, Grigor was a lean, silent man with thinning dark hair combed straight back from his forehead, and dark, probing eyes. He said little, and moved like a furtive shadow. He habitually wore suits of slate gray. He could fade into a crowd and remain unnoticed by all except the most discerning eye. Humphries thought of him as the ultimate bureaucrat, functioning quietly, obeying any order without question, as inconspicuous as a mouse, as dangerous as a plague bacillus.

He stood before Humphries’s desk, sallow-faced, humorless.

“You are being blamed for the attempt on her life,” he said, his voice low and soft as a lullaby.

“Me?”

Grigor nodded wordlessly.

“I didn’t order her killed,” Humphries snapped. “If you freelanced this—”

“Not me,” said Grigor. “Nor anyone in my department.”

“Then who?”

Grigor shrugged.

“Find out,” Humphries commanded. “I want to know who tried to kill Pancho. Maybe I’ll give him a reward.”

“This is not funny, sir,” Grigor replied. “An order has gone out from Astro Corporation headquarters to arm Astro’s vessels in the Belt.”

Humphries could feel his cheeks flush with anger. “That damned greasemonkey! She wants a war, does she?”

“Apparently she believes that you want one.”

Humphries drummed his fingers on his desktop. “I don’t,” he said at last. “But if she wants to fight, by god I’ll flatten her! No matter what it costs!”

Long after Grigor had left his office, Humphries’s phone said in its synthesized voice, “Incoming call from Douglas Stavenger.”

Humphries glared at the phone’s blinking amber light. “Tell him I’m not available at present. Take his message.”

Humphries knew what Stavenger’s message would be. He wants to be the peacemaker again, just as he was eight years ago. But not this time, Humphries decided. Pancho wants to go to war, and I’m going to accommodate her. I’ll get rid of her and take control of Astro in one swoop.

What was it that German said, he wondered silently, the guy who wrote about war? Then he remembered: War is a continuation of politics by other means.

Other means. Humphries smiled, alone in his office, and told his phone to instruct Grigor to contact that mercenary, Dorik Harbin. He’s a one-man Mongol horde, Humphries remembered. A madman, when he’s high on drugs. Time to get him onto Pancho’s trail.

Amanda kept her eyes closed and her breathing deep and regular. Humphries lay beside her in their sumptuous bedroom, twitching slightly in his sleep. Nightmares again, she thought. He’s such a powerful and commanding person all day long, demanding and imperious, but when he sleeps he whimpers like a whipped little boy.

She couldn’t hate Martin Humphries. The man was driven by inner demons that he allowed no one to see, not even his wife. He was alone in his torments, and he kept a high wall of separation around the deepset fears that haunted his dreams. Even his sexual excesses were driven by a desperate need to prove himself master of his world. He says he does it to excite me, Amanda told herself, but we both know it’s really to control me, to make me obey him, to prove that he’s my master.

At least that’s ended, she thought. For the time being. He won’t do anything that might harm my baby.

If he knew it wasn’t his. If he knew this life growing inside me is Lars’s son, Martin would kill me and the child both. He mustn’t know! He mustn’t find out!

It had been simple enough to hack into Humphries’s medical records and replace his genetic profile with Lars’s. Amanda had done that herself, no accomplices, no chance of anyone revealing to her husband what she had done. To the doctors and medical technicians in Humphries’s employ the baby’s genetic profile seemed consistent with those of its parents. And it was.

Yet she knew it would be bad enough, once the baby was born. Humphries wanted a perfect child, healthy and intelligent. His six-year-old son was like that: bright, athletic, talented, strong.

The baby Amanda was carrying would not be so.

“It’s a rather minor defect,” the doctor had told her, after her examination at the Hell medical center. The somber expression on his face said it was worse than minor. “Thank god that the genetic screening revealed it. We can prepare for it and take steps to control his condition.”

A minor genetic defect. The baby would be born with a form of chronic anemia. “It can be controlled with proper medication,” said the doctor, trying to reassure Amanda. “Or we could replace the defective gene, if you choose to undergo the procedure.”

They could operate on the fetus while it’s in my womb, Amanda was told. But that would mean a major medical procedure and I’d never be able to keep that secret from Martin. Just getting the genetic screening tests done was difficult enough. If it weren’t for Doug Stavenger’s help I wouldn’t have been able to do it.

“It might be just a random mutation,” said the doctor, trying to look optimistic. “Or perhaps there was some chromosomal damage due to the zygote’s long immersion in liquid nitrogen. We just don’t know enough about the long-term effects of cryogenic temperatures.”

It’s the drugs, she knew. All those years and all those uppers and aphrodisiacs and designer specials. They must have done the damage, carried to the poor helpless embryo through my bloodstream. My son will pay for my weakness.

So the baby will be born with chronic anemia, Amanda thought. Martin will just have to accept that. He’ll be unhappy about it, but he’ll have to accept it. As long as he believes it’s his son he’ll do whatever is necessary for the baby.

The doctor had hesitated and stammered until he finally worked up the courage to suggest, “There’s nanotechnology, of course, should you choose to use it. It’s banned on Earth, and I couldn’t recommend it there. But here on the Moon you might be able to use nanotherapy to correct the baby’s faulty gene. And your own.”

Amanda thanked him for being so open. But she knew that nanotherapy was impossible for her. Martin would find out about it. Not even Doug Stavenger could keep it a secret if she went to the nanotech lab in Selene. The news that Martin Humphries’s wife wanted nanotherapy for her unborn child would flash to Martin’s ears with the speed of light. The only nanotechnologist Amanda could trust was Kris Cardenas, and she’d been living in Ceres for years in self-imposed exile from Selene. Now she was on the Saturn mission, going even farther away. No, nanotherapy is out, Amanda swiftly decided. I’ve got to handle this without using nanotech.

I’ve got to protect my baby, she said to herself as she lay in the darkness next to her sleeping, dreaming husband. I’ve got to protect him from Martin.

Which means I’ve got to live through the birth. Unconsciously, Amanda clenched her fists. Women don’t die in childbirth. That hasn’t happened in years, not in a century or more. Not in a modern medical facility. Not even women with weak hearts.

She had known that the years of living in low-gravity environments had taken a toll on her heart. All those years living in Ceres, practically zero gravity. Even here on the Moon it’s only one-sixth g. Bad for the heart. Deconditions the muscles. It’s so easy to enjoy low g and let yourself go.

Amanda had exercised regularly, mainly to keep her figure. Martin had married a beautiful woman and Amanda worked hard over the years to remain youthfully attractive. But it wasn’t enough to strengthen her heart.

“Perhaps you should consider aborting this pregnancy,” the doctor had suggested, as tentatively as a man suggesting heresy to a bishop. “Work to get your heart into proper condition and then try to have a baby again.”

“No,” Amanda had replied softly. “I can’t do that.”

The doctor had thought she had religious scruples. “I know abortion is a serious issue,” he had told her. “But even the Catholics permit it now, as long as it’s not simply to terminate an illegitimate pregnancy. I can provide medical justification—”

“Thank you,” Amanda had said, “but no. I can’t.”

“I see.” The doctor had sighed like a patient father faced with an intractable child. “All right, then we can use an auxiliary heart pump during the delivery.”

It’s very simple, he had explained. Standard procedure. A temporary ventricular assist pump, a slim balloon on the end of a catheter is inserted into the femoral artery in the thigh and worked up into the lower aorta. It provides extra cardiovascular pumping power, takes some of the workload off the heart during labor.

Amanda had nodded. When I go for my prenatal checkup at the hospital here in Selene, they’ll find out about my heart and make the same recommendation. Martin will know about it but that’s perfectly all right. He’ll call in the best cardiovascular experts. That’s fine, too. As long as no one realizes I’ve switched Martin’s genetic profile for Lars’s. That’s what I’ve got to avoid. Martin thinks his genes are perfect. He’s got a six-year-old son to prove it.

We’ve already done a genetic screen on me, of course. I passed that test. It’s just the baby, my poor helpless little baby, that has a problem.

I’ve got to make certain that Martin doesn’t know. He mustn’t find out.

Amanda lay in her bed for hours while Humphries thrashed and moaned in his sleep next to her. She stared at the darkened ceiling, watched the digital clock count the minutes and hours. At last, well after four a.m., still wide awake, she sat up and softly slipped out of bed. On bare feet she tiptoed across the thick carpeting past the lavatory, into the walk-in closet that was lined with the finest clothes money could buy. Only after she had gently closed the closet door did she grope for the light switch on the wall. Months earlier she had disconnected the sensor that automatically turned on the overhead lights. Squinting in the sudden brightness, she stepped deeper into the closet, ignoring the gowns and frocks and slacks and precious blouses. She went to one of the leather handbags hanging in the rear of the closet and, after rummaging in it for a few moments, came out with a handful of soft blue gelatin capsules.

Tranquilizers, Amanda told herself. They’re nothing more than good, strong tranquilizers. I need them, if I want to get any sleep at all. She stared at the capsules in her palm; her hand was shaking so hard she feared she would drop them. She closed her fingers around them. They won’t hurt the baby. They can’t, that’s what the chemist told me. And I need them. I need them badly.