Titan

31 January 2096: Morning

Holly said, “I can’t stay long. I’ve got to write a speech for tonight’s newscast.”

Manny Gaeta shook his head. “I’d rather have a tooth pulled than stand up in public and give a speech.”

She shrugged. “I’m a political candidate now. I’ve gotta make speeches.”

Holly, Gaeta, Kris Cardenas, Tavalera, Pancho, Jake Wanamaker and Nadia Wunderly stood in front of Gaeta’s excursion suit, which loomed over them like a mammoth, inert robot, its pitted surface dimly reflecting the strip lights running overhead. Gaeta and Tavalera had rolled the suit from its storage locker to this workroom, then set it up on its feet, using the power winches hanging from the steel beams up near the ceiling.

Wunderly felt an almost dizzying swirl of emotions washing over her: excitement, apprehension, sheer awe at the size and massiveness of the suit. I’m going to climb into that thing and fly through the B ring in it, she told herself. My sweet lord! Me! I’m going to do it.

The little group had gathered in the same high-ceilinged workshop where Gaeta and his technicians had checked out the suit months earlier for his stunt flight through the rings. Instead of the row of electronics consoles that Gaeta’s tech team had lined against one of the bare walls, though, now there was only a pair of folding tables where Tavalera had spread out a pair of fabric-thin roll-up computers; the keyboards he had taped to the tabletops, the display screens to the wall.

“Well, here it is,” Gaeta said, patting one of the suit’s cermet arms. Turning to Wunderly, he asked, “You want to see what it’s like inside?”

Wunderly nodded wordlessly, her eyes riveted to the thick glassteel visor of the helmet towering above her.

“Is Timoshenko coming or not?” Pancho asked.

“Not,” said Holly. “He’s flatly refused to have anything to do with this mission. Says he’s got his hands full with maintenance for the solar mirrors.”

“He’s having problems with the solar mirrors?” Wanamaker asked.

“Nothing major,” said Holly. “It’s more likely an excuse for steering clear of us.”

“Those mirrors are important,” Wanamaker said. “There’s no such thing as a minor problem with them.”

“I guess,” Holly replied.

“Come on, Nadia,” Gaeta said, taking her gently by the arm. “You climb in through the hatch in back.”

“A trapdoor?” Pancho blurted. “You mean like a kid’s jammies?”

Gaeta threw her a sour look as they all walked around the bulky suit like tourists circling a monumental statue.

Pecking at the remote controller he held, Gaeta made the hatch in the rear of the suit pop open. Looking at the rim of the hatch and then at Wunderly’s stubby figure, he muttered, “I can see we’re gonna need at least one additional piece of equipment.”

“A step stool,” Pancho said.

Wanamaker cupped his hands together. “Come on, Nadia. Upsy-daisy.”

Looking slightly uncertain, Wunderly lifted her left foot as high as she could and rested it in Wanamaker’s interlaced hands. Leaning on his broad shoulder with one hand, she reached for the hatch’s edge as Wanamaker boosted her. While Gaeta watched grimly, she scrabbled her way in through the hatch. Good thing I’ve lost so much weight, she thought.

“It’s dark in here,” she said, her voice slightly muffled, even in her own ears.

Gaeta answered, “We haven’t powered it up yet. Hang five.” And he trotted back to the computers on the tables by the wall.

Crouching inside the dark suit Wunderly smelled faint odors of machine oil and old plastic and stale human sweat. From the light of the workshop spilling through the open hatch she could see that there were dark wells where she presumed her legs would go and, above her, the headpiece with its transparent visor, like a distant window or skylight. It seemed a long way above her.

Suddenly an array of lights sprang up and the suit seemed to stir into life. She heard air fans whirr and saw that the lights were from panels of gauges and miniature display screens.

“Can you hear me, Nadia?” Gaeta’s voice came through speakers set up in the helmet section.

“Yes,” she called. “But I think I’m going to be too short to get my head up into the helmet.”

She heard Gaeta chuckle softly. “Put your feet into the leg wells. There’s notches in them, like a ladder. Find a level that’s comfortable for you, and then straighten up until your head’s at the level of the visor. There’s an adjustable fold-down seat behind you; you can set it to the level of your butt.”

“I can sit?”

“If you want to.”

It took several minutes of adjustments and a few bangs of her shins and elbows, but at last Wunderly wriggled her head up into the helmet section. She could see Kris and Holly and the others standing on the floor below her. They looked like pygmies; she felt like a giant.

“Hello there, Earthlings,” she said, and saw them wince and grab at their ears.

“Lower the volume on your audio output,” Gaeta told her. “Audio panel’s on your right, lit in pastel blue.”

Wunderly found the panel and nudged its control slide along the thin wedge that indicated volume.

“How’s that?” she asked.

“Much better,” Pancho yelled. Her voice was muffled by the suit’s insulation.

For the next quarter hour Gaeta talked Wunderly through the suit’s controls, constantly admonishing, “Don’t touch anything. Not yet. Look, but don’t touch.”

“Yes, Daddy,” she said caustically after half a dozen such warnings. He acts as if I’m some stupid kid in here, she thought.

At last Gaeta said, “Okay. You know where the arm controls are?”

“One in each sleeve,” Wunderly recited, “and the override control is on the master panel right in front of my chest.”

“Okay. See if you can move the grippers on your right hand.”

Wunderly felt for the controls inside the sleeve while she peered down at the display panel just below her chin. There, she thought, that’s the grippers. The screen showed all green lights. Gingerly, she flexed the fingers of her right hand.

“Good!” Gaeta called. “Good work.”

But she couldn’t see the grippers; the right arm was down by the suit’s flank. Without asking, she began to slowly raise the right arm so that she could see the tools at its end.

“Hey!” Gaeta shouted. “Whattaya think you’re doing?”

“It’s okay,” Wunderly answered. “I’m just moving the arm a little bit.” She stopped the motion and made the grippers clamp together. “I want to see what I’m doing.”

Gaeta’s voice was like the rumble of distant thunder. “Don’t you do anything unless I tell you to. I’m in charge of this test. You follow my orders or else this whole deal is off!”

Wunderly’s first instinct was to tell him to jazz off. But she held on to her temper and replied meekly, “Okay. Right.”

Standing at the tables with the roll-up computers, staring at the ton and a half of machinery that could easily crush flesh and snap bones, Gaeta suddenly realized how his own controller must have felt whenever he played a little prank with the suit. Jezoo, Gaeta said to himself, I’m starting to sound just like Fritz.

Holly left them working on the suit and went to her own office to write a five-minute speech that she was slated to deliver for the evening news broadcast. It took her the rest of the morning merely to get a first draft down, and several hours of the afternoon to polish it to the point where she was halfway satisfied with it.

No wonder Malcolm dropped all his regular duties when he was running for the office, she realized. This politics stuff takes all your time.

She tried to do her day’s work in the few hours remaining, skipping dinner to finish the tasks accumulated on her schedule. At the appointed hour she walked to the building where the habitat’s broadcast studio was housed. Berkowitz was at the studio door, smiling his usual amiable smile.

“Right on time,” he said, ushering Holly into the studio proper. It was nothing more than a small, well-lit room, empty except for a small desk and chair. No one else was there, only the two of them. Each of the studio’s four walls was a floor-to-ceiling smart screen that could show an almost infinite variety of backgrounds. Holly saw that the two minicams, balanced on their spindly unipods, were aimed at a wall that showed a three-dimensional image of a bookcase.

“Kind stuffy background,” Holly said, feeling disappointed.

“Oh, that was for Eberly’s speech earlier today,” Berkowitz replied. “I was going to ask you what kind of backdrop you’d like.”

“Not a bookcase,” said Holly.

“Maybe a view of Saturn?” Berkowitz suggested. “Although that might pull the viewers’ attention away from you.”

Holly thought a moment. “How about a view of the habitat, maybe up by the endcap where it’s kind of like a park.”

Berkowitz immediately nodded. “Good thinking. Very good thinking.” He pulled a handheld out of his tunic pocket and fiddled with it until a view of the endcap’s greenery filled the wall behind the desk.

“Do you want to run through your speech before we turn on the cameras?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” Holly said uncertainly.

“Do you know it well enough to deliver it without reading it?”

“I guess.”

“All right. If you can give me a copy of the speech I’ll have it displayed on the wall opposite the desk. Nice big type. That way you can glance at it whenever you’re uncertain of the next line.”

“Great.”

“But try to look at the camera or at me while you’re speaking. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“And don’t worry if you flub a line. Just repeat it. I’ll edit out the goofs.”

“Great.”

Holly sat at the desk, wondering if anybody in the habitat would bother to watch her when the speech was aired. Berkowitz lined up the two cameras almost side by side, then stood between them. Holly could see the first two lines of her speech on the wall above his head.

“Ready?” he asked.

She heard herself ask, “Can we get rid of the desk? I think I’d rather be on my feet.”

Berkowitz looked slightly surprised, but he nodded and pushed the desk off to one side of the set, out of camera range. Holly started to help him, but then saw that the desk moved easily on well-oiled wheels.

“Okay now, stand right there. Try not to move around too much,” Berkowitz told her. “Ready?”

She licked her lips. “Ready.”

The five minutes seemed to fly by faster than light. Before Holly realized it she was saying, “Thanks for your attention and good night.”

“Great!” Berkowitz said. “Did it in one take. You’re a natural, Holly.”

Holly found that she was drenched with perspiration and feeling totally worn out. Her logs felt wobbly.

“Come on,” Berkowitz said. “I’ll bet you haven’t had any dinner yet, have you?”

“Not yet.”

“I’m buying,” he said grandly. Then, with a wink, added, “Actually it’s on the comm department’s budget.”

By the time she got home, Holly felt exhausted, emotionally drained. Is this what running for office is all about? she wondered. You put every gram of adrenaline you’ve got into a dinky five-minute speech? How’m I going to get through making speeches to big crowds? Or debating against Malcolm?

Her phone screen was blinking. One call. From Raoul.

Suddenly Holly’s exhaustion disappeared. She had the phone return Raoul’s call as she scurried to her most comfortable armchair.

Once his long, sad-eyed face appeared on the screen, though, Holly took a deep breath and said merely, “You called, Raoul?”

He looked somewhere between apprehensive and resentful. “Yeah. I watched your speech. You did fine.”

“Oh, it was easy,” Holly said, trying to keep her voice light. “Berkowitz is a dream to work with.”

Tavalera seemed to be on the verge of saying something, but he merely nodded. Silence stretched between them. Holly thought, Well, you called me, didn’t you? Don’t you have anything to say?

Finally, trying to get a conversation started, Holly asked, “How’d Nadia’s session with the suit go?”

“Not bad. Manny let her clump around the workshop a few steps. Looked like Frankenstein’s monster, she was so stiff.”

“The suit’s stiff,” Holly corrected, “not Nadia.”

Tavalera came close to breaking into a grin. “She was pretty scared in there, with Manny yelling at her every half second.”

“He’s testing her,” Holly said. “He’s got to make sure she can survive in the suit.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Again a silence.

“So how are you?” Holly asked. “What do you think about this operation?”

He hesitated, then blurted, “Is it true you got your sister to fly Nadia out to the rings?”

“Pancho and Jake Wanamaker, yes,” Holly said. “They’re both experienced astronauts, although they’ll need some time in a simulator to catch up—”

“You did it so I wouldn’t hafta go?”

Now Holly hesitated. Finally she nodded slowly and admitted, “Yes, that’s right.”

“Why? How come?”

Because I love you, you dimdumb! Holly wanted to shout. Instead she said, “You didn’t want to fly the mission. It’s dangerous, I know that. I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do.”

His face went darker than usual. “Now they all think I’m yellow. They think I’m afraid to fly to the rings.”

“Well, isn’t that true?” Holly snapped. And immediately regretted the words.

His eyes flashed. But he replied merely, “Yeah, guess so.”

And he cut the connection.