Titan

19 February 2096: Midnight

And where have you been?” Urbain snapped.

Coolly stepping to the chair before his desk and sitting in it, Yolanda Negroponte brushed a tress of ash-blonde hair from her face and said, “A group of us had a little political discussion over supper.”

Habib, already seated in front of Urbain’s desk, looked puzzled. “What group?”

“The women of the scientific staff,” Negroponte replied, smiling faintly. “Didn’t you watch Holly Lane’s speech earlier this evening?”

Shaking his head, Habib answered, “I was here, going over these ghost tracks—”

“Where you should have been,” Urbain said sternly to Negroponte. “A break for supper should not take three hours.”

“As I said,” Negroponte replied, unflinching, “we had a political discussion over our meal.”

Before the two of them fell into an actual argument, Habib pointed to the display on the wall screen and said, “We’ve been trying to piece together these ghost tracks from Alpha.”

The display of Titan’s surface was the only light in Urbain’s office. As Negroponte turned in her chair to look at the screen, Urbain noticed that Habib was watching her, not the smart wall. She is a well-proportioned woman, Urbain noticed. Slightly fleshy, big as an Amazon. Habib seemed fascinated by her.

“If those faint traces in the ground actually are the remains of Alpha’s tracks,” Habib said, “maybe we can use them to find the beast.”

Urbain bristled at his “if,” and even more at his referring to Alpha as a beast.

Negroponte was shaking her head, which made that troublesome lock of hair fall across her face again. “There’s something else involved here,” she said. “Something more important.”

Urbain felt his brows rise. “More important than finding Alpha?”

“If those smooth areas are the remains of Alpha’s tracks, then the question is, what smoothed the tracks?”

Habib said, “You mentioned this before, the idea that something is actively smoothing over the beast’s tracks. Something in the ground.”

“Actively smoothing the tracks,” Urbain repeated.

“Within a matter of days,” said Negroponte. “Perhaps only hours.”

Despite himself, Urbain felt intrigued. “It could be erosion from rainfall.”

“Or something tectonic, geological,” Habib mused.

“What geological force could do that?”

Negroponte shook her head. “I don’t think it could be geological. And not weathering. Not on this time scale.”

“You believe it’s biological?” Urbain murmured.

“What else could it be?”

Habib said, “We’d better get the bio team in on this.”

He scrambled to his feet. Negroponte got up beside him. Urbain absently noted that she was slightly taller than he. They headed for the door.

“It’s past midnight,” she said to Habib.

“So what?” he replied, almost laughing. “They’ll want to get started on this right away. They can sleep some other time.”

The two of them left the office, leaving Urbain sitting there, his mouth hanging open, his mind spinning: But we must find Alpha! That is our primary task. And we have only another day or so, perhaps only hours, before she goes into hibernation.

But he was now alone, talking to no one but himself.

Eberly had settled down in his favorite easy chair to watch Holly’s speech with smug assurance that she would trip over her own feet. But her crack about the power outage infuriated him. As if it’s my fault! he raged, pacing up and down in his apartment.

At last he decided that he had no choice. He had to fire Aaronson. Someone’s head had to roll—he had to show the voters that he was doing something. I’ll reorganize the maintenance department, Eberly said to himself. I’ll put Timoshenko in charge of the entire department, with Aaronson’s number-two under him. And the first job for Timoshenko will be to find out what caused that power outage and make certain it doesn’t happen again. Not until the election’s over, at least.

Tamiko and Hideki Mishima were so excited by Holly’s speech that they couldn’t sleep.

“She really wants to help us,” Tamiko said to her husband, as they lay together, wide awake, in the darkened bedroom.

“Yes, but she will run into a lot of opposition,” Hideki warned. “Many people will be afraid of a population explosion that could ruin us. They’ll want to cling to the ZPG protocol.”

“You think so?”

“I’m certain of it.”

Tamiko propped herself on one elbow and peered down at her husband’s face. “Then we must take positive action. Bring people together to support Ms. Lane. Organize into a political force.”

“We?” he asked doubtfully.

“Women who want to start having babies,” she replied. Then, laughing, she tousled his hair. “Don’t worry, darling, you won’t have to do a thing. This is my responsibility.”

Oswaldo Yañez had watched Holly’s speech while sitting beside his wife on the sofa in their living room. He had paid careful attention to every word, then dismissed her speech from his mind. He got up from the sofa, went to the office he had created out of an alcove in their bedroom and spent the remainder of the evening studying the latest medical bulletins from Earth and Selene.

The research reports from Earth concentrated on public health efforts to contain epidemics of diseases long thought eradicated. But ebola, tuberculosis and even plague were on the rise in new strains that resisted antibiotics. Even in the major cities, with their sanitized buildings and public water and sewage systems, such diseases were stalking the streets. In the poorer parts of the world the epidemics were almost out of control.

Yañez wondered about his native Buenos Aires. How were the people there being affected? He felt an unaccustomed sense of mean pleasure at the thought of the people who had exiled him from Earth being cut down by the very diseases he had worked to curtail. Vengeance is the Lord’s, Yañez reminded himself. Yet he took a cold satisfaction from the thought.

Of course there were no reports on research dealing with AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases. The self-righteous prigs who had exiled him refused to allow such research; they considered the agony and death from such diseases to be a punishment for sin.

The bulletins from Selene were very different. Research in the lunar laboratories concentrated on life extension work, rejuvenation therapies, nanotechnology—areas of study that were forbidden on Earth.

Blinking tiredly, Yañez looked up from his screen and saw that it was past midnight. Strange that Estela had not come to bed. Rubbing his eyes, he walked back into the living room.

Estela was watching Holly Lane’s speech again.

“Are they rerunning it?” he asked, heading for the kitchen and the leftover empanadas that Estela had stored in the bread box.

“No, I recorded her speech,” Estela replied calmly. She was a slim, spare woman without a gram of fat on her. He often thought of her as a dear little sparrow. But Yañez knew his little sparrow had the inner strength of an eagle.

He stopped before reaching the bread box. “You recorded it?”

“I think what she is saying is important.”

Yañez chuckled uncertainly. “You’re too old to have another baby.”

She smiled thinly at him. “Women my age have given birth. You know that.”

“After being implanted with ova from a donor.”

“So?”

“Estela, I’m too old to put up with a baby!”

She laughed out loud. “Don’t worry, querido. I’m not going to go through all that again.”

“Good,” he said, not recognizing the bitterness in her laughter. He went to the bread box, thinking that Estela had voted for Eberly last election and would probably do the same again this time.

He hoped.