Uranus

GORDON ABBOTT

Gordon Abbott tugged at one end of his extravagant moustache as he repeated in his mind a few lines from Kipling:

“Penny-fights,” he muttered. “That’s what I’m doing. Penny-fights.”

With an exasperated sigh, he gazed up again at the wall-sized viewscreen that displayed the habitat Haven II: a huge spoked wheel riding in orbit alongside the original Haven space station. Dozens of teams of workmen and robots crawled across the habitat’s skin. To Abbott they seemed like maggots infesting a corpse.

His superiors at the Astronomical Association’s headquarters on Earth had sent another “reminder” this morning. Abbott scanned it quickly and suppressed the urge to delete it and send it to electronic oblivion.

The message told him that the construction of Haven II was still behind schedule—a fact that Abbott was well aware of—and asked when it would be ready for the groups of scientists who were champing at the bit for their chance to investigate the extinct civilization of Uranus—a question to which Abbott had no reliable answer.

Trying to use the man-and-woman power of the refugees living on the original Haven habitat to build Haven II had been—at best—a long shot. The Reverend Umber had hatched the idea and insisted on it; his administrator, Waxman, had reluctantly bowed to the lamebrained concept.

Uneducated, for the most part, and unskilled, the immigrants were doing their best, and actually learning to control and command the robot workforce, but it wasn’t good enough, fast enough, polished enough for the deskbound bureaucrats Earthside.

Abbott pointed out to his superiors that the task of organizing an experienced construction team and sending them a few billion kilometers out to Uranus was extremely expensive. Use the local talent. Train the uneducated. Teach the beggars. Besides, Umber insisted on it, and without his cooperation nothing could be accomplished.

But the Earthside bureaucrats saw only the original timetable of the construction task and the fact that Abbott’s amateurs were lagging behind their preset goals.

There’s only one way to ease the pressure they’re putting on me, Abbott knew. It was a course he did not really want to take, but when one’s career is on the line, a certain amount of risk is called for.

“Memo to Harvey Millard, Interplanetary Council Executive Director,” he dictated. As he spoke, his words appeared on the viewscreen.

“Harvey: We’re working as hard as we can to prepare the habitat Haven II for the scientists who want to come here to Uranus. But we’re behind schedule, and the Astronomical Association is putting a lot of pressure on us. Do you think it might be possible to send a small group of the scientists here, sort of an advance guard? We can house them in the portion of the habitat that we’ve finished and let them get started on their investigation. Then we can add more groups as the work on the habitat progresses. Do you think that’s a reasonable course of action?”

Abbott leaned back in his chair and studied his words. Yes, that sums up the problem and the potential solution very neatly. Harvey can take it from there. He’ll get the credit for solving the problem, of course. But I’ll get the pressure off my back.

With a satisfied nod, Abbott told the computer,

“Send.”

That should do it, he said to himself.

The Reverend Kyle Umber rose from his knees slowly. His left knee throbbed with a sullen pain. Praying and arthritis don’t go together well, he told himself.

With great reluctance, Umber had canceled the shipment of two hundred more refugees from Earth. Waxman had told him he had no choice, the Astronomical Association had commandeered the vessel, stranding the poor people in a makeshift shelter so that a team of astronomers and other scientists could fly out here and disturb everything.

Well, they’re not going to disturb this sanctuary, Umber told himself firmly. They’ll occupy Haven II for a while, but they won’t set foot in Haven itself. As far as I’m concerned, those scientists will be living completely separately from us.

Waxman has apparently agreed with that decision, Umber thought. But I’ll have to watch him closely. Evan smiles and nods and then goes off and does what he wants to. Well, that’s going to end. I’m going to step up to my duties as the spiritual head of this community. Even if it means a conflict with Evan.

He stumbled to his desk, his knee aching, and sat down heavily in his sculpted chair. The knee’s throbbing eased, but did not stop altogether.

OPENING SHOP

Raven and Alicia stood side by side in the entry of their boutique. Behind them hung rows of women’s clothes, outfits of bold colors and striking styles, displays of shoes, blouses, underwear.

Alicia was staring at her wristwatch, counting off the seconds. “Eight… seven… six…”

Raven peered through the blinds that covered the shop’s front door. She couldn’t see anyone out there. All the work we’ve put in, all the advertisements we’ve put on the video network, and nobody’s come to our opening? She felt a surge of bitter anger. The clods. The stupid clods.

“…four… three… two… one…”

Raven unlatched the door and swung it open. Out in the passageway one lone person was walking past, a middle-aged man.

“Hi!” he said, with a shy wave.

“Hello,” said Raven.

The man looked less than handsome: his hair was peppered with gray, his belly strained the front of his light tan shirt.

“This the new shop?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You sell joolery?”

Before Raven could answer, Alicia said from behind her, “Yes, we do. Come on in and see.”

“Uh, no. Not now. Gotta get to work. How late you open?”

“Until six,” said Raven and Alicia, in unison.

“That’s gonna make it tough. I wanna bring my sugar to look over your joolery. She wants some kinda ring.”

“We could stay open later,” Alicia said.

“Seven, seven thirty?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. See you then.” And he walked away.

“Our first customer,” Raven said.

“Maybe.”

“We really don’t have much of a selection of jewelry, do we?”

Alicia grinned. “We have the best selection in the habitat. The best selection this side of the Earth-Moon system.”

The day wore on slowly. Several women came into the shop during the morning, poked around among the dresses and blouses, bought nothing and left.

Raven went to the nearest cafeteria at noontime and brought back a pair of prepackaged lunches. As they were sitting behind the counter, chewing morosely on their sandwiches, two youngish women came into the boutique and started thumbing through the dresses hanging on display.

“You got anything my size?” asked one of them. She was tiny, only as tall as Raven’s shoulder and elfin slim.

Raven quickly put her sandwich down and stepped around the counter. “The smaller sizes are over here,” she said, leading her deeper into the shop.

It took nearly an hour, but the diminutive young woman finally picked a short-skirted dress and a pair of shoes to go with it. Her companion smiled as she studied herself in the mirror.

“Andy will love it,” the companion approved.

The woman nodded and, with a shy smile, extended her arm for Raven to record her credit account from her wristwatch. Alicia wrapped the dress and Raven boxed the shoes and the two women left the boutique chattering happily.

“Tell your friends about us!” Raven called to their departing backs.

“We will!”

As Raven turned back toward the counter, Alicia breathed, “Our first sale.”

“The first of many,” said Raven.

Then they both said, giggling, “From your mouth to God’s ear.”

Evan Waxman stared at his desktop screen. “You’re coming here?”

The man on the screen wouldn’t hear the question for more than two hours, Waxman knew. He frowned inwardly at being so stupid.

The man was saying, “…so I talked Millard into appointing me as the official news representative to accompany the first team of scientists going out to your cabin in the sky.”

His name was Noel Dacco. He was a news reporter with the Central African Journalism Organization (CAJO). A big-shouldered black man with lustrous dark eyes and an infectious laugh, his head shaved bald, his chin rimmed with a sparse beard, he was Waxman’s chief link with the international high-society celebrities and VIPs who were a significant part of the market for Rust.

Waxman frowned at his desktop screen. Noel can’t come here! I need him on Earth, handling my contacts with the wholesalers and distributors.

As if he could read Waxman’s mind even over the interplanetary distance that separated them, Dacco smiled widely and explained in his deep, rich baritone voice, “Everything is fine at this end, Evan. Everything is going as smoothly as clockwork. I thought it would be fun to ride out there and see your operation firsthand. I am a newsman, after all. I won’t get in your way, I promise. This is going to be like a vacation for me.”

Vacation, Waxman grumbled inwardly. There’s more to this than a vacation. He’s coming all the way out here for a reason. Are the distributors on Earth trying to move in on me? Take over the production end, as well as distribution and sales?

Waxman stared at Dacco’s smiling image on his desktop screen. This is going to be trouble, he told himself. I’ve got to be prepared for him.

VINCENTE ZWORKYN

Zworkyn felt a surge of fatherly pride as he gazed at the wall screen. It showed segments of four extensive circles, linked by straight lines. All buried beneath nearly a hundred meters of stones and sand.

“It’s a city,” said Tómas Gomez, sitting beside him, his voice hushed with awe.

“It was a city,” Zworkyn agreed. “Or whatever the Uranians’ equivalent of a city might have been.”

The two men were sitting side by side on the sofa in Zworkyn’s makeshift office, which was crammed with computers and analytical sensors.

Gomez nodded without taking his eyes from the image. “How old is it? When was it destroyed? What destroyed it?”

“Good questions,” said Zworkyn. “Let’s hope we can find some answers.”

“The first gaggle of astronomers will be arriving here in a week,” Gomez said. “Will we be able to accommodate them on Haven II?”

Zworkyn nodded guardedly. “Waxman says they’ll have a section of the station prepared for twenty arrivals. The incoming ship is carrying eighteen people: seven astronomers, five geologists, and six mining engineers. Plus their equipment.”

“And they won’t be allowed here, in Haven?”

“Strictly off-limits, as far as Reverend Umber is concerned.”

Gomez looked troubled. “Umber expects them to stay on Haven II all the time?”

“That’s what he wants. No contact with them for the inhabitants here in Haven.”

“That’s going to be sticky.”

“I’ve seen worse,” said Zworkyn. “Boring through the ice on Europa, that was a hassle and a half, let me tell you. The locals were mining the ice and they didn’t want a bunch of snotty scientists and engineers from Earth bothering them.”

Nodding, Gomez said, “Well, at least we don’t have locals to interfere with our work.”

“Not yet,” said Zworkyn.

The first team of scientists arrived and Professor Abbott supervised their transfer from their ship to Haven II, together with the massive loads of equipment they had brought with them.

Gomez goggled at the excavators and retrievers that were loaded into three separate cargo bays of Haven II. The geologists and engineers were all strangers to him, of course, but Gomez was disappointed to find that he didn’t know any of the astronomers, either. And they were all so young! I’m only a few years out of grad school, but these guys are just children!

Very bright children, he quickly learned. Professor Abbott had personally picked this advanced guard of investigators. Gomez felt outclassed.

Still, he stood in the reception area aboard Haven II as the newcomers arrived. Abbott was already there, hands clasped behind his back as the newcomers trooped into the reception area.

Abbott strode to the first of the newbies and swept up her hand in his. For an instant Gomez thought he was going to bend over and kiss it. But the instant passed as the rest of the new arrivals crowded into the reception area.

There was one additional member of the incoming crew. It turned out that he wasn’t a scientist, but a newsman: Noel Dacco.

Dacco went straight to Gomez as the scientists made their way through the identity-checking computer systems of the ship’s reception area.

“You’re Tómas Gomez, aren’t you?” Dacco said, as he put out a meaty hand. “You’re going to be a very famous man, you know.”

He was the blackest man Gomez had ever seen. His shaved scalp gleamed almost purple beneath the overhead lights. He was big, heavy-shouldered, with a wide, bright, toothy smile.

Gomez accepted his offered hand as he asked, “And you are?”

“Noel Dacco, with the CAJO news outfit. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Thomas.”

“Tómas,” Gomez corrected, his hand still in Dacco’s iron grip.

“Tómas,” Dacco repeated, with a slight dip of his chin.

“You’re a newsman?”

“Yes. I’m going to make your name a household word, my man.”

Gomez finally pulled his hand away from Dacco’s as he smiled weakly. “I’m an astronomer, not a dishwasher soap.”

Dacco laughed, a deep, bubbling sound. “Good one! I can use that.”

Suppressing a frown, Gomez asked, “Would you like me to show you to your quarters? It’s not far—”

“That would be fine,” said Dacco. With a grand gesture, he boomed, “Lead the way.”

As they started toward the hatch that led to the habitat’s main passageway, Dacco asked, “Whatever made you come all the way out here?”

Gomez smiled a little and repeated the answer he had given so many times that he knew it by rote.

From his office in Haven, Evan Waxman watched Dacco and Gomez walking side by side through the passageway in Haven II. The walls were unfinished in places, open spaces that showed wiring and sensors behind them. Still a lot of work to finish up, Waxman said to himself.

Neither man paid any attention to the gaps in the walls as they passed. Gomez was chattering away and Dacco was nodding, grinning, giving every appearance of enjoying the astronomer’s discourse.

“There’s something wrong about him,” Waxman muttered to himself. “I wouldn’t trust that toothy smile of his for a nanosecond.”

DINNER

Waxman fumed and fidgeted in his desk chair as he watched Dacco and the astronomer Gomez walk along the passageway that led to the quarters prepared for the new arrivals. Gomez was doing most of the talking, with Dacco nodding and asking a question here and there. It was difficult to make out their words, since they were amidst the other newbies, and the new arrivals’ chatter nearly drowned out the conversation Waxman wanted to hear.

“Doesn’t really matter,” Waxman muttered to himself. “It’s astronomical talk. Gomez never talks about anything else.”

Still, Waxman watched intently as Gomez and Dacco stopped at a door that bore a handwritten N. Dacco sign. Dacco tapped out the entry code and the two men stepped into the apartment.

There were no listening devices inside the private quarters, of course. One of Reverend Umber’s restrictions: no snooping on private behavior. Stupid rule, Waxman thought, making a mental note to bug Dacco’s quarters as soon as he could.

But within a few minutes Gomez re-emerged from Dacco’s quarters and started back along the passageway, alone.

And Waxman’s phone buzzed.

“Phone answer.”

Sure enough, Dacco’s gleaming dark face appeared on Waxman’s desktop screen. The newsman smiled broadly. “Well, I’m here,” he said.

Waxman forced a smile back at him. “We’re neighbors.”

“Yes we are.”

“Why don’t you come over here, Noel. We have a lot to talk about, I think.”

Dacco’s smile didn’t alter a millimeter. But he said, “I’m afraid I’ve already committed myself to dinner with Dr. Gomez. He said he’d bring two charming young ladies.”

Waxman’s smile winked off. “We have a lot to talk about,” he repeated.

“Can’t it wait until tomorrow? I’d like to meet the ladies. After all, I am supposed to be on vacation.”

“We both know that’s not true.”

“But it is, Evan! All work and no play makes Noel a dull boy.”

He’s toying with me, Waxman realized. He’s having fun at my expense.

“Let me check my schedule for tomorrow,” he said, calling out, “Tomorrow’s schedule, please.”

His desktop screen split in half, one side showing Waxman’s schedule.

“Lunch tomorrow,” he said flatly. “One P.M. Come to my office.”

Still grinning, Dacco said, “Hearkening and obedience.”

The desktop screen went dark. Waxman stared at it for several wordless moments, then muttered, “He’s full of confidence. Hasn’t a care in the world. Well, I’ll have to teach him otherwise.”

“He’s a newsman,” Gomez was explaining as he walked with Raven and Alicia toward Haven’s main restaurant. “Something of a character, I think.”

“And he’s come all the way out here?” Alicia asked.

“Yes. I think—” Gomez recognized the burly form striding along the passageway toward them. “There he is.”

Noel Dacco smiled widely as Gomez introduced him to Alicia and Raven.

“You passed the restaurant’s entrance,” Gomez said, pointing to the open doorway. People were streaming into the place.

“Yes, I know. I saw you, Tómas, with these two beautiful ladies, and came up to greet you.”

Alicia smiled minimally and Raven reached for Gomez’s hand. The four of them entered the restaurant and were quickly seated.

A robot waiter rolled up to their table and took their drink orders. Dacco asked for lime juice.

“Are you a Moslem?” Raven asked.

“Very observant!” said Dacco. To Gomez, he added, “You have a very bright young lady here.”

Tómas’s face reddened. He nodded but said nothing.

Before either of the others could speak, Dacco told them, “You’d never believe the difficulty I had getting here from Haven II. Is this habitat in some sort of lockdown situation?”

“Lockdown?”

“There was no connection between this wheel and Number Two, where I’m quartered. I had to call Evan Waxman and get him to provide me transportation. I arrived here in a dinky little shuttlecraft.”

Alicia smiled a bit and said, “Reverend Umber doesn’t want the residents here to mix with the visiting scientists.”

“Why not?”

“He wants the residents to be free of all their old associations with Earth.”

“Ah! And he’s afraid I’ll contaminate his flock?”

Her smile broadening, Alicia said, “Something like that.”

Dacco swung his gaze across the crowded, bustling restaurant. “You mean all these people are refugees from Earth?”

“Émigrés,” said Alicia. “This is their home.”

“And Umber doesn’t want them contaminated by people like me.”

“By people who can return to Earth,” Alicia corrected. “All of us here have given up our former ways of life. We’re going to live here for the rest of our lives.”

Dacco blinked several times. Gomez said, “Why don’t we order some dinner?”

“Why not?” said Dacco, his toothy grin returning. “That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?”

Halfway through their appetizers, Raven asked, “You said you had to get Evan Waxman to provide you transportation between here and Haven II.”

“That’s right,” Dacco answered, as he deftly speared a stalk of asparagus from his salad plate.

“Do you know him personally?”

Dacco’s smile stayed fixed on his face, but somehow Raven thought he looked suddenly less than happy.

At last he answered, “Yes, slightly. He personally approved my request to come here.”

Raven caught his hesitation. He’s lying, she said to herself. I wonder why.

WAXMAN AND DACCO

Precisely at 1:00 P.M., Waxman’s new assistant called over the intercom, “Noel Dacco to see you, sir.”

Looking up from the report he was reading, Waxman said, “Send him in. No interruptions while he’s here. And order luncheon for two, please.”

“Yes, sir.”

His office door slid open and Dacco stepped in, smiling, broad-shouldered, nimble as a ballet dancer.

As Waxman got up from his chair, Dacco stepped to the desk and stuck out his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you in person, Mr. Waxman.”

Taking the black man’s hand in his own and smiling tightly, Waxman said, “It’s good to meet you face-to-face, Noel.” Gesturing to the two upholstered chairs in front of the desk, he said, “Why don’t you sit down? Lunch should be here shortly.”

Dacco seated himself in the chair to his left. Is he left-handed? Waxman asked himself.

Easing back into his own commodious chair, Waxman asked, “So how is everything going back on Earth?”

“Very well,” said Dacco, still smiling. “Sales are steadily increasing. You might give some thought to raising your production goals.”

“That good?”

Nodding, Dacco said, “The habitats in Earth orbit are a strong market. So are the stations orbiting Jupiter.”

“And the Rock Rats?”

“A reliable market. It’s all in the reports I’ve sent you.”

Waxman nodded. “Your latest report mentioned some problem at the power complex on Mercury.”

“A little argument over paying for the Rust they’ve ordered. It’s being straightened out.”

“No pay, no Rust,” said Waxman. “They pay up front.”

“That’s our policy, I know. But we’ve found that letting the customer have a sample before he plunks down his money makes it much easier to get him to pony up the whole amount a little later.”

Waxman shrugged. “A distribution problem.”

“It’s being handled. No worries.”

Waxman’s phone buzzed. He glared at the tiny console. “I said no interruptions!”

His assistant’s voice replied timidly, “Your lunches are here, sir.”

“Oh. Bring them right in.”

“Yes, sir.”

The office door slid open again, and Waxman’s assistant carried in a sizeable tray loaded with a pair of lunches and drinks.

“On the conference table,” he told the woman.

Dacco eyed her appreciatively. She was tall, willowy, with reddish-blond hair and a doe’s provocative eyes. Slim figure, but long legs—almost hidden by a floor-length black skirt that was slit from the hip.

She set out the two lunches on the corner table and left the office without a word.

“She’s a refugee from Earth?” Dacco asked, once the door slid shut behind her.

“War casualty. Lost her right leg in the fighting in Tasmania.”

“Pity.”

“She does very well with her prosthetic leg.”

“In bed?”

Waxman smiled thinly. “Or on a trampoline.”

Dacco’s look of surprise made Waxman want to laugh. But he suppressed the urge.

Nearly an hour later, as the two men sat at the circular conference table with the scattered crumbs of their lunches between them, Dacco said, “I had dinner last night with a woman who told me she used to be your assistant.”

Waxman almost uttered Alicia’s name, but he held himself back at the last instant. No sense letting him know I can watch him without his knowledge of it.

“My assistant?”

“Alicia Polanyi.”

“Oh, her.” Waxman forced a chuckle. “She’s opened a women’s clothing boutique. She and a former whore. They’ll go broke in a month or so.”

“Really?”

Waxman nodded as he reached for his cup of coffee.

“She seems quite determined to make a success of her establishment,” Dacco said.

With a careless shrug Waxman replied, “They’ll be out of business very soon.”

“Pity.”

“The iron laws of economics.”

“The dismal science.”

Waxman asked, “Did you find her attractive?”

“A little too skeletal for me,” Dacco replied. “The other one was much sexier.”

“Raven Marchesi. She ought to be sexier. She was a whore, back on Earth.”

“Not here?”

With a sly grin, Waxman answered, “Almost.”

For several silent moments, Dacco seemed to mull Waxman’s reply in his mind. Then he said, “She seems attached to the astronomer.”

“Gomez? Really?”

“Looked that way to me.”

“Raven and Tómas Gomez,” Waxman mused. “That’s interesting.”

“So she’s not available?”

Waxman studied Dacco’s face and saw desire burning in his dark eyes. He asked himself, Can I bind him to me with Raven? It’s worth a try.

“She can be made available,” Waxman finally answered, with a knowing smile.