Titan

31 December 2095: Noon

Eberly was walking with Holly along the path that led down to the lake. He distrusted offices and even restaurants. Too many ears, too many prying eyes. He preferred to take a leisurely stroll around the lake when he had something important to think about, or something he wanted to tell someone without anyone else nearby.

“Are you going to the New Year’s Eve gala?” Eberly asked, as an opening ploy.

“You betcha,” Holly replied enthusiastically. “We’ve got a whole party together: my sister and her guy, Dr. Cardenas and Manny Gaeta, my friend Raoul, even Nadia Wunderly with her date.”

He noted that she did not invite him to join their festivities. “It sounds as if you’ll have lots of fun.”

“We aim to.”

Eberly’s smile faded. He grew serious. “Holly, I’m glad you agreed to meet me outside the office. After all we’ve been through, it’s rather awkward for me to have a private discussion with you.”

“I guess,” Holly replied.

“I suppose I can’t blame you for hating me,” he said, turning up the wattage on his smile.

Once, Holly’s knees would have gone watery if he’d smiled at her like that. But that was before Eberly had stood by passively and watched his Holy Disciples cronies beat her unmercifully and methodically break her fingers.

“I don’t hate you, Malcolm,” she said evenly. “It’s your so-called friends who I’d like to see rot in hell.”

“They weren’t friends of mine!” he protested. “I was forced to work with them.”

“They killed that harmless old Don Diego.”

Eberly went silent for several paces. “They’ve paid for that. All of them.”

“I s’pose,” said Holly. She turned her face from him.

As they walked slowly along the bricked path, Holly looked around at the green grass, the flowers blooming along the edge of the walkway, the gentle hills and trees. In the distance she could see the neat checkerboards of the farmlands. The sunlight streaming in from the solar windows felt warm, comforting. A perfect springtime day, she thought. Just like every day here in the habitat. She raised her eyes and saw the ground curving up all the way overhead, villages and clumps of trees and brooks and little lakes above her, a bit hazy with distance but still discernable. A perfect inside-out world.

It’s so beautiful, she thought. Why do people have to mess it up? Why did those friends of Malcolm’s want to take over the government and turn this into another one of their fundamentalist dictatorships?

“You’re very quiet,” Eberly said gently.

“Why can’t people be good to each other? I mean, we’ve got a flaming paradise to live in and people still can’t get along the way they should.”

Eberly stared at her for a long moment, his mind clicking along. She’s given me an opening, he told himself. Use it!

“That’s part of our responsibility, Holly.”

“Our responsibility?”

“As leaders of this community. As directors of the government.”

“You’re the chief administrator. I just run human resources.”

“Don’t say just, Holly. You hold a position of great responsibility.” He made his best smile for her. “Remember, that was my position when we first came to this place.”

She couldn’t help but smile back at him. “I click.”

“I really want to build a fair and generous government here,” Eberly said with great seriousness. “I really do.”

“I guess.”

“And I need your help, Holly. I can’t do it by myself.”

“My help?”

“As director of human resources you hold a key responsibility. I want to make certain that we’re on the same team.”

“Of course we are. What else?”

Eberly walked on for a few paces before answering. Holly matched him, stride for stride. She was slightly taller than he, her legs longer.

“You know our reelection campaign will start in a few weeks,” he said at last.

“The election isn’t for another six months, Malcolm.”

“I know, but the deadline for registering as a candidate is January fifteenth. And once the candidates are registered, the campaigning has to begin. We can’t just sit around and expect people to go out and vote for us without a campaign to stir them up.”

“Not us,” Holly said. “You. You’re the only one who has to get elected. The rest of us are appointed.”

“Yes, that’s true, but I think of us as a team. You, me, the other department heads. We’re the ones who have to make this government work. We’re the ones who have to serve the people.”

“Not that the people care that much, one way or the other,” Holly said. “Most of ’em won’t even bother to vote, betcha.”

“We’ve got to make them care. It’s their government, their lives.”

Holly looked into his face. He seems so blinking serious, she thought. Maybe he really believes what he’s saying.

“Malcolm, all they really want is to be left alone. The less they see or hear of the government, the better they like it.”

He fell silent again for a few paces. Then, “You may be right.”

“Just leave them alone. That’s all they really want.”

“You may be right,” he repeated.

“There’s more to it than that, isn’t there?” Holly asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re worried that my sister might ask for citizenship and then run against you. That’s why you want to start the campaigning so early, to preempt her.”

Eberly’s pale smile returned. “You’re a very perceptive woman, Holly.”

“No prob,” she said. “Pancho’s retired. She doesn’t want to do anything, let alone run for chief administrator. She says she’s finished with sitting behind a desk.”

He thought that over for a heartbeat or two. “That may be what she says now—”

“Pancho says what she means and means what she says. She’s not running for your job, Malcolm. Jeeps, she’s not even sure she’s going to stay here for more’n a few months.”

“I’m relieved.”

“I bet.”

“Not for the reason you think,” Eberly said. “It’s not because I’m glad she won’t oppose me. I’m relieved because you won’t be caught in the middle, between us. I’m relieved because you can work with me with a clear conscience, and no family ties getting in your way.”

“Oh. Yeah, I click. Me too, I guess.”

Eberly refrained from smiling. Show her you’re serious, he told himself. Show her you care about her feelings. But inwardly he exulted. I won’t have to worry about Pancho Lane! And I’ve got Holly’s undivided allegiance. Now to get my campaign rolling.

“Well,” he said slowly, “I’d better be getting back to my office. There’s no end of work for me to see to.”

Holly nodded. “Think I’ll finish walking around the lake, then go back.”

“All right.” He turned and started back toward the village.

“Oh, hey, Malcolm,” Holly called.

He turned, a questioning look on his chiseled features.

“In case I don’t see you—Happy New Year.”

“Oh! Yes, of course. Happy New Year to you, too, Holly.”

Nadia Wunderly waited for Kris Cardenas in the corridor outside the nanotech lab. The warning light on the heavy steel hatch began flashing red, indicating that the inner door had been opened. Impatiently, Wunderly watched the light panel cycle through yellow and green before the corridor hatch swung slowly inward. Cardenas stepped through, looking chipper and bright in butter-yellow coveralls.

“Hi, Nadia.”

“Hello, Kris. Is Raoul coming, too?”

“Soon as he gets through the airlock,” Cardenas said, gesturing at the light panel.

Once I get down to the weight I want to be, Wunderly thought, I’ll have to get Kris to flush the nanos out of my body. The authorities won’t allow me back on Earth if I have nanos inside me. I’m not going to stay in this habitat forever, she told herself. I’ve got to go back home someday.

“Are you coming with us tonight?” Cardenas asked. “I reserved a table for ten at the pavilion.”

Wunderly felt her cheeks flush. “You bet I am. With our chief computer engineer. His name’s Da‘ud Habib. A real hunk.” That wasn’t entirely true, she knew, but Da’ud was a good-looking guy in a quiet, intense way.

“Good,” Cardenas said absently.

Tavalera came through the airlock, carefully closing the heavy steel hatch into its rubberized frame. Wunderly could feel a sigh of air pass by her.

Raoul Tavalera’s normal expression was a worried, suspicious scowl. He had been plucked from his home in New Jersey by the New Morality as soon as he graduated from engineering college and sent to the research station orbiting Jupiter for his mandatory two years of public service, complaining every centimeter of the way. When the habitat Goddard passed Jupiter on its two-year journey to Saturn, it took on a load of hydrogen and helium isotopes scooped from Jupiter’s upper atmosphere to fuel the habitat’s fusion propulsion engines. Tavalera had been hurt in an accident during the refueling procedure and would have gone drifting to his death if Manny Gaeta hadn’t saved him in a daring impromptu rescue.

But that resulted in Tavalera being brought into Goddard, an unwilling passenger heading for Saturn. He bitterly resented that, all the more so because he could hardly complain that the habitat had saved his life. Then he met Holly Lane and gradually, almost grudgingly, fell in love with her. He impulsively decided to remain in Goddard to be with her. He even applied for citizenship. Yet two uncertainties plagued his mind with doubt: He was not truly convinced that he wanted to remain in Goddard forever and never return home; and he was not truly sure that Holly loved him deeply enough to return to Earth with him should he decide to leave.

So, as he walked with Wunderly and Cardenas, his boss, to the bustling, clanging cafeteria, his face remained set in that troubled, distrusting scowl.

Wunderly felt nervous as she moved along the cafeteria counter, filling her tray. Her resolution to stick to fruits and salad always melted away once the aroma of real food reached her. Today it was roast beef, sliced thin and accompanied by mouth-watering sauces. Wunderly knew that the protein had never been within a billion kilometers of a cow; it was all synthetic, but it still smelled too delicious for her to pass up. A glance at Cardenas, though, firmed her resolve. I’m going to make a New Year’s resolution, she told herself. I’ll lose another ten kilos; I’ll look great then. Then Kris can flush the nanos out of me. Nobly she ignored the dessert table on her way to joining Cardenas and Tavalera at a table by the window. But she couldn’t help noticing that they had three different types of cobblers on display. Fruit, she thought. That’s not fattening.

“All right.” Cardenas said, once Wunderly had sat down and arranged her dishes on the table. “What are you wearing to tonight’s party, Nadia?”

Wunderly took in a breath, then said swiftly, “Never mind that. I’ve decided to go into the rings myself.”

“What?”

“I know it’s too much to ask Manny to do it, so I’ve decided to do it myself.”

“You’ll get yourself killed,” Tavalera said.

Ignoring him and focusing on Cardenas, Wunderly said urgently, “Manny can show me how to use his suit, and he can run the operation from here. Just like that German guy who was Manny’s chief technician.”

“Fritz,” Cardenas murmured. “He was Austrian.”

“Whatever.” Turning to Tavalera, she went on, “And I thought that you, Raoul, could pilot the ferry ship that takes me in and brings me back after I’ve gone—”

“Me?” Tavalera yelped. “Fly a transfer vehicle into the rings? You gotta be kidding!”

“Not into the rings,” Wunderly countered. “Just close enough for me to go in.”

“And then I’ve gotta fish you out again?”

Cardenas interrupted them. “Nadia, Manny almost got killed when he went through the rings. The ice particles attacked him, for god’s sake.”

Wunderly shook her head impatiently. “They didn’t attack him. They coated his suit—”

“And blocked his communications antenna, covered his helmet visor, nearly froze him to death.”

“But we know about that now. We can keep the suit’s exterior too hot for the ring organisms to attach themselves.”

They argued all through lunch. Wunderly never did get dessert. The best she got was a reluctant agreement from Cardenas to discuss the idea with Manny. Tavalera said very little, but he was thinking that if Gaeta agrees to this he can fly the fricking transfer ship himself. I’m not going out into the rings. Mother Tavalera didn’t raise her son to be a hero. Or an idiot.