Titan

8 January 2096: Morning

Malcolm Eberly did not sleep well that night. He awoke slowly, feeling dull and aching, as he did those mornings when he had been in prison in Austria. The vague memory of a bad dream haunted him; the more he tried to remember its specifics the more the details slipped away from him, leaving only a dark sense of dread.

Why? he asked himself. You have nothing to be afraid of. The Holy Disciples can’t reach you anymore, they can’t send you back to prison. You’re safe here. The people of this habitat respect and admire you.

But do they? That was what troubled him, he realized. They could vote me out of office in a few months and then where would I be? I’d have to find an ordinary job and live on an ordinary wage.

That was what had troubled his sleep, Eberly decided. The reelection campaign. He had won the election in the first place on the promise that Goddard’s inhabitants would get rich from mining the rings of Saturn. The scientists—led by Urbain—had opposed the idea, of course. But the voters had supported it wholeheartedly.

Now it was almost time to register candidates for the next election, and Eberly knew he had done nothing about mining the rings. He’d allowed the idea to fall into hibernation while he set up the new government and got it running with a modicum of efficiency. But now the voters would remember that promise of wealth and demand that Eberly make good on it. And still the scientists opposed him. They were backed by the powers-that-be on Earth.

My reelection is not assured, Eberly told himself. Urbain won’t run against me, and I’m sure that I’ve neutralized Timoshenko. But someone will stand up to oppose me. Who?

As he brushed his teeth, showered, shaved, and dressed for the day’s work, his mind kept coming back to the inevitable answer: Pancho Lane. She didn’t come to this habitat merely to see her sister. She coyly refuses to tell anyone how long she intends to stay. Within the week she’ll apply for citizenship and then register as a candidate to oppose me.

What can I do to stop her? Eberly asked himself, as he walked through the morning sunlight to his office and the light breakfast his aide would have waiting for him. How can I get rid of Pancho Lane?

He lightly touched the spot on his jaw where Pancho had hit him. How can I make her pay for that humiliation?

Urbain, meanwhile, was having breakfast with his wife in his own apartment.

“He will bribe the voters with visions of vast wealth,” he grumbled, as he sipped at his stinging hot coffee. Jeanmarie was the only woman in the world who knew how to make coffee strong enough to be palatable. He had missed her coffee during the years of their separation.

“But the ICU is on record as being against mining Saturn’s rings,” Jeanmarie said from across their narrow kitchen table.

“It means nothing,” Urbain scoffed. “What can they do? How can they enforce their position? Send an army of bureaucrats here?”

Jeanmarie almost smiled at the thought of a horde of university file surfers descending on the habitat.

“Eberly could refuse them permission to dock,” Urbain went on. “He could send them packing back to Earth.”

His wife brought her cup to her lips. She preferred tea, with lemon. “But couldn’t the ICU ask the International Astronautical Authority to enforce their decision? The IAA is not to be trifled with.”

Urbain gave his wife a condescending look. “My dear, it has been little more than a year since the Second Asteroid War was ended. Do you believe that the IAA or anyone on Earth will be willing to start another war?”

“A war?” Jeanmarie looked stricken. “Do you really think that Eberly would use force against the IAA?”

“I believe the man will do whatever he feels necessary to maintain his position as leader of this habitat.”

“But war?”

He shrugged. “Spacecraft are very fragile. A laser shot could disable an IAA ship as it approaches us. Perhaps even destroy it.”

Jeanmarie shook her head. “He wouldn’t dare.”

“Selene declared its independence and then fought off an attempt by the old United Nations to subdue them. The miners at Ceres have established their independence. Why not habitat Goddard? After all, we are much farther away than any other human habitation. What do the people of Earth care about what we do?”

“They care about mining Saturn’s rings, do they not?”

“Yes, some of them. But the people living on the Moon and among the asteroids would be in favor of having an abundant supply of water made available to them.”

“For a price,” Jeanmarie pointed out.

Urbain stared at her. Then he countered, “Eberly is very clever, wily. He will keep the price low enough for them to want to buy, and still high enough to bring wealth to Goddard.”

She started to reply but he got up from their tiny kitchen table, clearly signaling that their conversation was at an end. Jeanmarie sat there clasping her delicate cup of cooling tea in both hands. It had been her mother’s tea set. No, she remembered, her grandmother’s.

Urbain came back to the kitchen, fumbling with the ascot he had slid around his neck. Jeanmarie knew he expected her to knot it for him, yet she did not get up from her chair.

“Is this business of mining the rings so important?” she asked. “Will it do irreparable harm to the rings?”

“In time,” Urbain said, looking into the mirror behind his wife as he worked on tying the ascot. “The real problem is that he will not lift a finger to help me unless I support his proposal of mining the ice.”

She saw the expression on his face: utter distaste and, beneath it all, the fear of failure. His probe of Titan has gone rogue and he cannot even locate it, she thought. Now Eberly refuses to help him and he fears that his career will collapse around his ears. My poor darling! To come this far and then fail. He’s had a taste of success and now his fall will be deeper and more humiliating because of it.

She pushed her chair back, brushed his hands away from the poorly knotted ascot, and retied it for him. Urbain pecked her on the cheek by way of thanks and left for his office and another day of frustration, of edging closer to the brink of disaster.

Jeanmarie stood there in her kitchen for a long time, alone, wondering what she could do to help her husband.

Holly intercepted Eberly as he walked toward the administration building at the crest of the low hill on which the village of Athens had been built. He knew it was no accidental meeting.

“Good morning,” he said cheerfully.

“Aren’t they all,” Holly replied, as she fell into step alongside him.

“Yes. I suppose we tend to take our perfect weather for granted.”

Holly reached out and tugged at the sleeve of his tunic, stopping him. “Look around, Malcolm. Look at this place. I mean, really look at it.”

Puzzled, Eberly swept his gaze across the carefully landscaped scenery, green and lush and flowering. The clean white buildings. The glittering lake. “It’s really wonderful, isn’t it,” he murmured.

“What’s missing?” Holly asked.

From the set of her square jaw, Eberly could see that Holly had a specific point to make. “What’s missing, Malcolm?” she asked again.

“Rain,” he replied lightly. “Snow. Fog, sleet …”

“Don’t try to make a joke of it,” she insisted.

“All right. You tell me what’s missing from this demiparadise, this other Eden, this—”

“Kids!” Holly snapped. “Children. We have no children here.”

“Oh, that.”

“Yes, that,” said Holly. “You’ve got to face up to it, Malcolm. You’ve got to do something about the ZPG rule.”

“I’m thinking about it,” he muttered grudgingly.

“Think harder, then. And faster. The deadline for registering candidates is next Monday. ZPG could be a major issue.”

“Only if someone makes an issue out of it,” Eberly answered testily.

“Somebody’s bound to.”

“They would need a petition signed by two-thirds of the citizens to repeal the zero-growth protocol,” he pointed out.

Holly’s lips curved into a knowing smile. “You looked up the regulations, huh? So did I.”

“I doubt that anyone in this habitat has the inclination to mount a petition drive. They’re all too apathetic.”

With a slight shake of her head, Holly replied, “Don’t underestimate the people, Malcolm. ‘Specially the women.”

Feeling uncomfortable, Eberly decided to shift the focus of their conversation. “Speaking of issues, how do you feel about mining ice from the rings of Saturn?”

Holly made a small shrug. “Nadia Wunderly’s dead set against it and so are the rest of the scientists.”

“But they’re less than a tenth of this community’s population.”

“If you make an issue of it, the scientists’ll put up a candidate to run against you. Wouldn’t you prefer to run unopposed?”

Unopposed? The idea hadn’t occurred to Eberly. He’d assumed that someone would come up to run against him, maybe more than one candidate. He actually preferred to have several candidates running; that would split the votes against him, while as the incumbent he could count on a solid bloc—especially if he started to put the ice-mining plan into operation.

“Naturally I’d prefer to run unopposed, but I doubt that things will work out that way.”

“’Smatter of fact,” Holly said, a slow grin creeping across her face, “the constitution requires an opposition candidate. I checked.”

He looked at her with newfound appreciation. “You’ve been checking a lot of things, haven’t you?”

“Part of my job,” Holly said. “If nobody volunteers to run against you, a candidate has to be selected at random by the personnel computer.”

“Which is run by your human resources department,” Eberly said.

“Right.”

“Which means that you, Holly, can select my opponent.”

“Not me. The computer.”

“You,” Eberly said, pointing an index finger at her like a pistol.

“Then I’ll have to find somebody who’ll bring up the ZPG issue.”

Eberly scowled darkly at her.