Titan

27 December 2095: Evening

Kris Cardenas could see the tremendous strain that Urbain was under. As the only Nobel laureate in the habitat, she had invited Dr. Wexler, Pancho, Urbain and his wife to a small farewell dinner at Nemo’s restaurant, the swankiest eatery aboard Goddard.

Nemo’s was decorated to look like the mock-Victorian interior of Jules Verne’s fictional Nautilus: Brass bulkheads and thick pipes running overhead. Display screens shaped like portholes showed teeming schools of fish, slithering octopuses, sleek deadly sharks.

Manny Gaeta looked uncomfortable in a maroon turtleneck shirt and ivory cardigan jacket, as close as he would come to formal dinner wear. Cardenas wore a flowered short-skirted frock, Wexler a dark blue finger-length tunic over a midcalf skirt. Pancho was in a comfortable pantsuit of hunter green, while Jeanmarie Urbain had decked herself in a clinging black sheath decorated with intricate embroidery that showed her trim figure to excellent advantage.

“I had hoped that this would be a celebration,” Cardenas said, trying to make her tone light, cheerful, “with champagne and congratulations. I guess that will have to wait for a while.”

Urbain opened his mouth to respond, then simply shook his head and reached for the glass of fruit juice in front of him.

“The celebration will come,” said Wexler, forcing a smile. “It’s too bad I won’t be here when the probe finally starts sending up data.”

“You leave tomorrow?” asked Jeanmarie. “So soon?”

“Ms. Lane’s craft departs tomorrow and there won’t be another ship out here for many months,” Wexler replied.

“I could hold it here for a coupla more days,” Pancho said. “But the bean counters back at Astro Corporation’s headquarters would get twitchy.”

“Tell ’em to twitch,” Gaeta gruffed.

Pancho grinned at him. “If I was still CEO I could and I would. With me retired, though, they’re doin’ me a favor as it is.”

“I couldn’t stay a few more days in any event,” said Wexler, glancing at Urbain and then swiftly back to Pancho. “I’ve got work piling up back home.”

“You think you’ll be able to fix the glitch in a few days?” Pancho asked Urbain.

He forced a sickly smile. “Perhaps.”

“It should take not much longer than that,” Jeanmarie said, quite firmly. “After all, they know the machine is working. Its internal systems are functioning. The only problem is the communications link, is it not?”

Urbain nodded morosely.

A human waiter came to the table hesitantly, holding large leather-covered menus. Cardenas nodded to him. Better to have them reading the menu and ordering their dinners than moping over the probe’s silence, she thought.

Although she was the oldest person at the table, Kris Cardenas looked like a vibrant outdoorsy woman in her thirties, thanks to the nanomachines that coursed through her body like a purposeful, almost intelligent immune system that destroyed invading microbes, cleared blood vessels of plaque, repaired damaged tissues. She had the broad shoulders and bright blonde hair of a California surfer, and cornflower blue eyes that sparkled in the candlelight of the dinner table. Exiled from Earth because of the nanos inside her, she had lost her husband, her children, had never touched the faces of her grandchildren. She had spent years in bitter hatred of the know-nothings on Earth who had totally banned nanotechnology, then more years of repentance as a medic for the rock rats of the Asteroid Belt at Ceres.

Now she was beginning a new life aboard this habitat orbiting Saturn, with handsome, hunky Manuel Gaeta, who had retired from his career as a stuntman to be with her.

As their appetizers were being placed on the table before them, Gaeta asked Urbain, “Do you have any idea why the beast won’t talk to you?”

Urbain, sitting across the table from Gaeta, raised his brows as he tried to interpret the man’s question. Finally he frowned slightly and said, “We are working on several possibilities. It is very puzzling.”

Wexler laid a clawlike hand on Urbain’s sleeve. “It’s always very puzzling, Eduoard, until you get the answer. Then you wonder why it puzzled you for so long.”

“I’m sure Eduoard will come up with the correct answer in a day or so,” said Jeanmarie.

Her husband scowled at her.

“You remember the first time we met?” Gaeta asked him. “In Professor Wilmot’s office?”

Urbain nodded warily.

A crooked grin broke out on Gaeta’s rugged face. “I wanted to go down to the surface of Titan. Be the first human being to set foot on the place. I thought you’d have a stroke!”

Smiling weakly, Urbain said, “We cannot have humans on Titan. The contamination …” He let his voice fade away.

“I agree,” said Wexler sharply. “There are unique life-forms down there. It would be criminal to contaminate them with terrestrial organisms.”

Gaeta raised his hands in a mock surrender. “Hey, I’m retired. I got no interest in doing stunts anymore.”

But Pancho arched a brow. “Y’know, maybe what your lander needs is a repairman. Or woman.”

“You volunteering?” Gaeta kidded her.

“I was an astronaut, ’way back when. I’ve fixed more’n one balky robot in orbit. I remember once, before Moonbase became the nation of Selene …”

Pancho regaled the table for the next hour and more with tales of her exploits on the Moon.

Meanwhile, Professor James Colraine Wilmot was entertaining an unwelcome guest in his quarters.

“I’m sorry to have interrupted your evening,” said Eberly, as he stepped into the professor’s sitting room.

“Yes, obviously,” Wilmot said with barely-concealed distaste.

Wilmot’s two-room suite was no larger than the standard apartments in the village of Athens: a sitting room and a bedroom, spacious by the standards of a spacecraft, yet as compact as an efficiency apartment in a major Earthside metropolis. It was as comfortable and unpretentious as Wilmot himself, though. The professor had furnished it just like his old digs in Cambridge; indeed, most of the warm, dark wooden furniture had been taken from his home there. He even had a section of one of the smart walls displaying a fireplace, complete with hypnotic crackling flames.

Wilmot himself was obviously dressed for an evening alone. He wore a deep burgundy dressing gown over rumpled, baggy tweed trousers. His feet were shod in comfortable old slippers. He was considerably bulkier than Eberly, a tall, thickset man with a bushy gray moustache and iron-gray hair, his face seamed and permanently tanned by long years in the field on anthropological expeditions.

Eberly was in his office attire: a light blue hip-length tunic over crisply creased charcoal slacks. Wilmot thought the tunic hid the man’s potbelly well. Strange creature, the professor said to himself, as he gestured Eberly to a worn old leather armchair. The man has obviously spent a great deal of effort to make his face look handsome, even commanding. Yet below the neck he’s soft as putty.

“To what do I owe the honor of this visit?” Wilmot asked, sinking into his favorite chair. A half-empty glass of whisky sat on the coffee table between them. Wilmot did not so much as glance at it, nor did he offer his visitor a drink.

Eberly’s sculpted face grew serious, almost grave. “I thought it best to discuss this face-to-face, and not in my office,” he began.

There he goes, thought Wilmot. Always some dire emergency. Always the need for secrecy. The man’s a born schemer.

“Some sort of problem?” he asked.

Nodding, Eberly said, “We need to amend the constitution.”

“Do we?”

“Yes. I can see now that calling for elections every year was a mistake. We need to change that.”

“Ah.” Wilmot smiled knowingly. “Now that you are in power you don’t want to run the risk of being voted out.”

“It’s not that,” Eberly protested.

“Then what?”

Eberly’s face twisted into a nervous grimace. Wilmot could see the wheels turning in his mind.

At last the younger man said, “Having elections every year means that whoever is in office must prepare for the coming election campaign. Every year! It distracts from his duties. I’m so busy trying to convince people I’m doing the best possible job for them that I don’t have the time to do the job they elected me to do.”

Wilmot considered this for a moment. “You could step down and allow someone else to take the job.”

“But I’m the best qualified!” Eberly cried. “I really am. You know the people of this habitat. They’re lazy. They don’t want the responsibilities of office. They’d rather let someone else do it.”

“They are averse to political responsibilities, true enough,” Wilmot admitted. “Perhaps we should institute a draft—”

“A draft?”

“It’s been suggested, you know. Pick our administrative officers by lot. Let the personnel department’s computer run the show. It might even generate some enthusiasm among the people, a lottery.”

“And whoever got picked would refuse to serve,” Eberly said, almost sullenly.

Wilmot realized he was tired of this tomfoolery. Besides, his drink was waiting for him. He rose to his feet. Eberly looked surprised, then slowly got up out of his chair.

“The real reason we have elections every year,” he said, gripping Eberly’s thin arm in one strong hand, “is to allow the people of this habitat to vent some political steam. Elections are a safety valve, you see. They give people the illusion that they have some degree of control over their government. Without elections, who knows what kind of protests and outright rebellions we might get—even from these lazy, noninvolved citizens. They’re slackers and noncomformists, no doubt, but if they feel the government is not sensitive to their needs, they will hunt for a way to change the government. Elections are better than revolts.”

Eberly stood there, looking decidedly unhappy. He’s trying to think of a rebuttal, Wilmot could see. I can smell the wood burning.

“I doubt that you have anything to worry about, my boy,” Wilmot said jovially, clapping Eberly on the shoulder and steering him to the door. “As you say, the good citizens of this habitat are woefully apathetic. Most of ’em don’t even bother to vote—as long as there are elections. But take away the elections and you’ll have trouble on your hands. Remember, as the incumbent, you have a powerful advantage. I doubt that you have anything to fear. Really I do.”

Eberly looked far from reassured as he said good night and Wilmot closed the door on him.

Damned schemer, Wilmot thought, as he headed back to his drink. Blackmailer. He’d do anything to hold on to power.

He sat heavily and took a long sip of the whisky. Feeling its warmth working its way through him, Wilmot relaxed somewhat. I’m out of it, he said to himself. I’m merely an observer now, nothing more.

He took another sip, then leaned his head back. It’s damned interesting, though. Ten thousand men and women locked inside this oversized sardine tin. The ideal anthropological experiment. Despite it all, I’m quite a lucky man.

Eberly, meanwhile, was walking along the corridor to his own apartment. There were plenty of people coming up in the other direction. Eberly was surprised to see that most of them looked tanned, even golden. What is this? he asked himself. A new fad that I haven’t caught onto?

Everyone who passed him recognized Eberly, of course, and greeted him with smiles and hellos. That made him feel better. They know me. They like me. They even admire me, most of them.

Wilmot’s not going to offer any support for amending the constitution, he realized. But then he brightened. Still and all, the old man won’t offer any opposition, either. His moral power in this habitat is nil. I’ve seen to that.

He quickened his stride as he headed for his apartment.