Titan

2 May 2096: Nanolab

“Yes,” Kris Cardenas said to Urbain’s image on her wall screen, “given these specs we can generate nanomachines that will build a new antenna system on Alpha.”

Urbain appeared to be seated at the desk in his office. There were dark rings under his eyes, and his face seemed thinner, more lined than Cardenas remembered it from earlier meetings. She was no physician, but it looked to her as if the chief scientist was under tremendous stress.

He nodded somberly. “Good. Can you proceed to build the devices at once?”

Cardenas nodded back at him. “I’ll give it my highest priority.”

“How soon will they be done?”

Calculating mentally and adding a generous safety factor, Cardenas said, “In ten days. A week, if everything goes smoothly.”

Urbain sighed as if he were about to sign a pact in blood. “Very well, then. Please proceed as quickly as you can.”

“Fine,” Cardenas said. “But once we’ve produced the nanos for you, how are you going to get them to your machine down on Titan’s surface?”

Urbain didn’t answer. He had already broken the phone connection before Cardenas finished her question. The wall went back to displaying one of her favorite paintings, an Impressionist street scene from nineteenth-century Paris.

Swiveling her chair, she looked out across the nanotechnology lab from the alcove that she used as her office. Tavalera was just coming in through the airlock door.

“Sorry I’m late,” he called, as he walked past the work benches toward her. “I had breakfast with Timoshenko and we got to talking about beefing up the protection on the superconductor shielding.”

Cardenas got up from her chair, thinking, We’re getting popular. It’s taken a year for people to get over their fear of nanos and come to us for help. Now Timoshenko wants us, and Urbain has finally decided to let us help him.

The question popped into her mind again. How will Urbain get our nanos to his machine on Titan’s surface?

“Uh, I need some advice,” Tavalera said. He looked distressed, embarrassed.

Cardenas smiled at him. “It’s easy to get advice, Raoul.” She gestured to the wheeled chair beside her desk and they both sat down. “What’s the problem?”

“There’s a ship coming from Earth.”

“With a contingent of scientists to look at Wunderly’s bugs,” Cardenas said. “Nadia’s planning to go back to Earth with them.”

Tavalera nodded somberly. “I could hitch a ride home with them.”

Cardenas understood. “Is that what you want to do?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

She studied his long, gloomy face. “You’d like Holly to come with you, wouldn’t you?”

“Yeah.” It came out as a long, sorrowful groan. “But I know she won’t.”

“Raoul, she can’t. She’s running for election.”

“I know.”

“She can’t leave the habitat. Even if she wanted to.”

“Which she doesn’t.”

Cardenas thought for a moment. “What do you want to do, Raoul?”

He looked away from her, studied his shoes. “I want to go back home,” he muttered, without lifting his face.

Cardenas waited, and sure enough he added, “And I want Holly to come with me.”

“You can’t have both.”

“I know. But you asked me what I want. That’s what I want.”

She hesitated, then decided to plunge ahead. “Have you asked Holly what she wants?”

Still looking down, Tavalera replied, “She wants to be chief administrator of this place. She’ll never go back to Earth.”

“Has she told you that?”

“I know she won’t.”

“Have you asked her?”

Tavalera shook his head. “What good would it do?”

“I don’t know, Raoul. But at the very least you should talk this over with her.”

The sour expression on his face showed what he thought of the idea. “Yeah,” he said. “Right.”

Timoshenko was coasting along the outer hull of habitat Goddard, unencumbered by a space suit. The virtual reality program allowed him to see what the maintenance robot saw, feel whatever it touched with its pair of steel grippers. While the robot trundled along the guideway built into the hull, Timoshenko felt that he was walking—no, not walking, gliding on ice, skating the way he used to do in Gorky Park with Katrina.

She wasn’t coming to him. Timoshenko had checked the passenger manifest for the ship bringing a load of scientists to Goddard, and her name was not on the list. He had tried putting through a call to her, but of course the operators in Moscow refused to allow it: he was a nonperson, an exile, not permitted to speak to law-abiding citizens. With a sinking heart, he realized that if somehow he did manage to get a message to Katrina then she would be breaking the law; she would get into trouble with the authorities.

In desperation, he had asked Eberly to contact her as he had before. He practically begged the chief administrator to do this favor for him. Eberly, wise in the ways of collecting gratitude, had told him that he had specifically asked the authorities in Moscow and even the main office of the Holy Disciples for permission to speak to the woman. She had refused to reply to his call.

Refused, Timoshenko repeated to himself. Refused. She doesn’t want to come out here. She doesn’t want to be with me. She said she would, when there didn’t appear to be a chance in hell of doing it. Easy enough for her to say it then. But now, now when there’s a ship she can get onto and really come to me, she refuses.

Timoshenko looked out at the curving hull of the habitat, and the black infinity of space beyond it. The robot was built to inspect the hull, not gaze at the stars. It could not lift its eyes to search for the blue gleam in that emptiness that was Earth.

I don’t blame her, he told himself. This is exile, far from everything and everyone she knows. Everyone except me. Why should she give up her whole life to come here and be with me? I don’t blame her. I don’t. No matter how fancy they’ve made this flying stovepipe, it’s still a place of exile, a high-tech Siberia. She’s right not to come here. I don’t want her to give up her life on Earth just for me. I had my chance to make her happy and I ruined it. She’s right to stay away from me.

As he glided along the curving shape of the hull, it occurred to him that Eberly had lied. Eberly had told him that Katrina wanted to join him here, to share his exile, share his life. That had been a lie, Timoshenko realized now. Eberly had twisted him into taking this job as chief of maintenance by dangling the prospect of Katrina’s joining him here. Had the man lied to him?

Timoshenko blanked the VR program, lifted the goggles off his head and pulled off the sensor gloves. He knew some of the people in the communications department; one fellow in particular had become a drinking buddy. He called that man and, after a little wheedling, got him to check on the chief administrator’s calls to Russia.

“Nothing in the log,” the beefy-faced comm clerk told him.

“Nothing?” Timoshenko asked.

“Eberly hasn’t put in any calls to Russia. Not one.”

Numb with grief and rising anger, Timoshenko nodded, thanked his pal and broke the phone connection. Eberly lied to me. The devious bastard twisted me around his little finger. He used the possibility that Katrina might come here to me to get me to do what he wanted me to. The lying, smug-faced son of a bitch.

How to get back at him? Timoshenko wondered, feeling the heat of his rage burning inside him. The answer was astoundingly simple. Kill him. Kill the bastard and all those around him. Kill him and kill yourself. Destroy this habitat and end this exile once and for all. Put an end to everything and everybody. It wouldn’t be difficult. In fact, it could be done with ease.