Titan

12 April 2096: The first debate

Holly was still steaming about Mme. Urbain when she climbed the four steps to the auditorium stage. The place was packed: as far as she could see, every seat was taken. And there was Jeanmarie Urbain in the front row with her husband beside her.

Of course! Holly thought. Malcolm’s got her to oppose the petition drive ’cause she’s afraid population growth will affect her husband’s science work. I’ve got to get that crock off their screens right away.

Professor Wilmot extended his hand to her as she stepped onto the stage and led her to one of the three chairs set up behind the lectern. Eberly hadn’t shown up yet. Just like Malcolm, Holly said to herself, stewing inside. He’ll wait until everybody else is here and then make his grand entrance.

She scanned the audience, looking for friendly faces. Jeeps, none of my friends have shown up. She knew Pancho, Jake and Gaeta were on the ring mission, and Raoul was running their control operation. But Kris Cardenas was nowhere in sight, either. Maybe she’s at the control center worrying about Manny, Holly told herself. She saw Dr. and Mrs. Yañez sitting in the fifth row, the Mishimas behind them, and a lot of the volunteers who’d been working on the petition drive. But nobody who was really close to her.

She sighed inwardly. It’s lonely at the top, I guess.

The double doors at the rear of the auditorium swung open and Malcolm Eberly swept in, trailed by an entourage of several dozen people. Eberly smiled grandly as he strode up the central aisle. People got up on their feet and applauded him. Flacks, Holly decided. They all work in the administration offices.

Eberly sprang youthfully up the steps and went straight to Professor Wilmot. The professor rose from his chair, wearing a look somewhere between polite disdain and unpleasant duty. Eberly grabbed his hand and pumped it several times while the audience buzzed and chattered.

“Hello, Holly,” Eberly said as he bent over her, all smiles.

“Hello, Malcolm. Glad you could make it.”

He laughed. “A sense of humor is important. It will help you to deal with your defeat.”

Holly smiled back at him. “We’ll see.”

As Eberly sat on Wilmot’s other side, the professor got up and went to the lectern. Holly noticed that Eberly’s entourage had no place to sit, so they lined the side walls of the auditorium and remained on their feet. Hope this goes on for hours, Holly said to herself. Serve ’em right.

Wilmot quieted the crowd and explained the rules of the debate: Each candidate would make an opening statement of five minutes, then a rebuttal of three minutes. After that, the meeting would be thrown open to questions from the audience.

“Each candidate will be given the opportunity to make a final statement of three minutes’ duration,” Wilmot concluded. Turning slightly in Eberly’s direction, he said, “The incumbent will speak first.”

Kris Cardenas paced the workroom that they were using as the mission control center. It was the same chamber where they had brought the suit out of storage and refurbished it for the flight. The bare-walled room looked too large, empty, now that Manny and his suit were gone.

Timoshenko was sitting at the row of flimsy-sheet computers that Tavalera had brought from the airlock and pressed onto the work room bulkhead; the Russian’s face was set in a dark scowl of concentration. Cardenas could hear the voices of Pancho and Wanamaker through the computers’ speakers, but there had been no word from Manny for nearly half an hour.

He was afraid to go, Cardenas said to herself. He didn’t want to do this mission. He said he was a fugitive from the law of averages. But he’s out there now, risking his neck for Nadia. Cardenas shook her head, No, not just for Nadia. For all of us. His damned macho sense of honor. Come back to me, Manny. Don’t get yourself killed out there. Come back to me.

Tavalera was pouring himself a mug of coffee from the urn they had plugged in earlier. He looked serious, too, almost grim. But then Raoul always looks sour, Cardenas told herself. She wanted to ask the men if everything was all right, but she didn’t want to interfere with their work, distract them. And she didn’t want to seem like a worried, nagging “little woman.”

“Go for separation in five minutes, on my mark,” Pancho’s voice came through, sounding calm, professional. “Mark. Five minutes to separation.”

“Copy five minutes.” Manny’s voice.

“You want some coffee?”

Cardenas almost jumped. Tavalera startled her, she had been concentrating on the voices from the spacecraft so completely.

“Look, Doc,” Tavalera said gently, “it’s gonna be a long mission. Have a seat, try to relax. He’s gonna be fine.”

“I know, Raoul. I know, but I can’t help worrying.”

He pushed the coffee mug into her hand. “At least sit down. You don’t want to be on your feet all through this.”

Fighting the fears bubbling inside her, Cardenas went to the folding chair beside Timoshenko and sat down. I shouldn’t be drinking coffee, she told herself, sipping the steaming brew gingerly. I’m keyed up enough already.

As if he could read her thoughts, Timoshenko grinned slyly at her. “What we need is vodka, no?”

Tavalera said, “When they get back we’ll break out some champagne.”

Wanamaker’s voice said from the flimsy’s tiny speaker, “Separation complete. All systems in the green.”

“I’m outside.” Gaeta’s voice. “Heading into the B ring.”

He’s outside. Cardenas’s breath caught in her throat. He’s on his own now.

Nadia Wunderly was not a religious person, but she had painted a replica of an old Pennsylvania Dutch hex sign that she had remembered from her childhood, a set of colored circles nested within one another, barely twelve centimeters across. It was perched atop the desktop screen in her cramped office, to keep evil spirits away. It’s nonsense, Nadia told herself. But somehow she felt better with it there.

The mission was going smoothly so far. Manny was outside now and Pancho was maneuvering the transfer craft to the underside of the B ring, through the Cassini gap between the A and B rings, to the spot where she would pick up Manny.

After he’s gone through the ring and collected my samples, Wunderly said silently. She suppressed an urge to reach up and touch the hex sign.

As she’d expected, Eberly’s opening statement was devoted almost entirely to the idea of mining the rings.

“There is wealth out there,” he told the audience in the rich measured tones he used for swaying crowds. “The most valuable commodity in the solar system is water, and we have within our grasp many billions of tons of frozen water. It will be the highest priority of my second term of office to begin mining the rings of Saturn and make every single person in the habitat as wealthy as an Earthly millionaire.”

They applauded lustily. Holly sat there on the stage and watched the audience roar its approval, clapping and even whistling, more than half of them rising to their feet for a standing ovation.

Wilmot waited several moments, then calmly walked to the lectern and made a shushing motion with both hands. Slowly the crowd stopped and sat down again.

I should’ve brought a claque with me, Holly thought. She mentally kicked herself for not organizing a band of loyal supporters to give her the kind of ovation that Eberly had arranged for himself.

“And now the challenger,” said Professor Wilmot, turning slightly toward Holly, “Ms. Holly Lane, formerly head of the human resources department.”

A scattering of polite applause rippled through the auditorium. Better’n nothing, Holly thought, as she stepped up to the lectern. Her prepared speech appeared on the built-in screen.

“There are other kinds of riches besides money,” she began, looking out over the sea of faces. “For good and proper reasons, we all agreed to the Zero Population Growth protocol when we started this voyage to Saturn. But that was then, and this is now.”

She saw a few heads nodding here and there. All women’s.

“This habitat is our home. Most of us will spend the rest of our lives here, some by choice, many because they wouldn’t be allowed to return to Earth.” She took a breath. “Well, if this is our home, then we should make it as much of a home as we can. I don’t mean just the physical environment. I mean that sooner or later we should begin to bring children into our world. Otherwise we’re living in a barren, empty shell. We need the warmth, the love, the humanness of raising families.”

“Do we need the aggravation?” someone in the back yelled. A man’s voice.

Heads turned to find the heckler. One of Eberly’s flacks, Holly knew. Several people laughed.

She put on a smile. “We need a future,” she replied. “Children represent the future, and without them this community will just grow older and eventually die out.”

As Holly continued speaking, Eduoard Urbain turned to his wife and whispered, “This is nonsense. Population growth would destroy this habitat.”

She nodded, knowing that what her husband meant was that population growth would threaten his work.