Cold as Ice (10 page)

Which had filled Magrit with the urge to say, "Fine. So why didn't
you
do something about it in the two years you had him?" But her predecessor was moving up in the system, and Magrit Knudsen already had a kernel of shrewd political sense.

She had watched Battachariya for the next few weeks and decided that the advice she had been offered was quite appropriate. Bat, at twenty-five years old, massed over five hundred pounds. To Magrit's eye, he appeared more huge and unkempt at every meeting. She heard others call him in his presence "The Fat Bat," and "Blubber-Bat." The terms were appropriate, but he ignored them. He treated their originators with disdain. He ate sweetmeats constantly; his clothes were all-black and three sizes too small for him; his appearance was slovenly; and his office, at the deepest level of Ganymede burrows, was a true bat cave. It held such an insane jumble of papers and computers and ineffable bric-a-brac from all over the system that Magrit was sure he would never be able to find anything that he needed in order to do his job. Fire the man!

There was only one problem. Magrit had never fired anyone. She didn't know how to. She was too inexperienced to realize that you got rid of a person you didn't want by transfer to another department.

And so in her first three months as branch chief, she had found herself in the bizarre and unhappy position of
defending
Rustum Battachariya in staff meetings. "Sure he's fat, and he doesn't wash as often as I do, or have many social graces. But his private life is his affair, not mine or yours. He's competent, he's quiet, and he does his job well. That's what matters."

Of course she could not keep the psychology crew away from Bat, whose strange and solitary disposition was a magnet to them. In that arena, however, he proved more than able to look after himself. From his thirteenth year, he had "wasted his time" in the solar system's Super-Puzzle Network. Twelve years had taught "Megachirops" (his puzzler code name) to be endlessly alert for logical traps and infinitely devious in setting them.

The psych crew and their poorly disguised hidden agendas didn't stand a chance.

"You mass five hundred and thirty pounds. How do you feel about the potential effect of this on your survival?"

"Sanguine. I employ the best-known prophylaxes for life extension, including interior symbiotes. By the standards of any human of one hundred, or even fifty, years ago, I am disgustingly healthy. My life-style is also consistent with longevity. Compare, if you will, my survival expectancy with your own. And in making that comparison, do not omit the travel that you undertake to perform your profession. Travel has its inevitable risks, you know. Factor in the life-shortening effect of changes in circadian rhythms, implied by that same travel; and do not ignore the mental stress endemic in your work. When your analysis is complete, you will find that I am likely to outlive you by a decade or more."

They did the calculations and were horrified to learn that Bat was right. They tried again.

"You have a high regard for your own intellect. Why do you have no interest in handing your intellectual gifts on to the next generation?"

"
Another
sex question! Do psychologists think of nothing else? But I will answer you. In the first place, you make an invalid assumption. My sperm was donated to the central bank nine years ago, and remains available today. It will be available for use centuries hence—but not, as you suggest, for the
next
generation, since I have given instructions that my sperm must remain frozen until fifty years after my death. You see, by the time that I was sixteen years old, I had realized something that many never learn: Human breeding patterns are based on a shocking logical error, one set in place long before there was any understanding of genetics. Most children result from the fusion of
fresh
sperm and ova. When they are born, their parents are still alive and
still young
—too young for lifetime achievements to be assessed, or for fatal flaws to have appeared. Do you want in the solar system the offspring of an Attila, or of a Hitler? Is it not more logical to wait until a man or woman's life is over, when an objective evaluation of virtues and vices can be made? The potential value to the human race of any man or woman is contained
only in their genes
, not in their bodies. And that genetic material—sperm or ova—can be frozen indefinitely. It is quite unimportant that the parental bodies exist when their children are born, and from most points of view, it is better if they do not."

The psych crew was in retreat, but its members tried one more question of revealing subtlety.

"Rustum Battachariya, you live a solitary and introverted existence. Have you ever considered suicide?"

Bat thought for a few moments. "Frequently. But only for others."

The psychs fled the field, to argue whether that was a yes or no answer. They did not return.

And during the next three months, Magrit discovered a great secret: What she had been saying about Bat was true, and more than true. Rustum Battachariya carried in his great round cannonball head every detail of every passenger transport system throughout the whole solar system. He loved games (provided they involved no physical exertion) and Megachirops' Super-Puzzle Network experience had made Bat expert in everything from chess to double-acrostic sonnets to hidden ciphers. In his view, complex transport scheduling was just another variety of puzzle.

One day Magrit had gone to him as her last resort. She had a set of wildly conflicting requirements, a desired schedule that she and all of the department analysts had beaten out their brains on, with no result.

Bat glared at the offending document. He was sitting on his specially made seat, like a great rolling ball of black-clad flesh that would have sagged and sunk in higher gravity. "A few moments of cerebration are in order, Madam Knudsen. And of silence." He blew out his cheeks, grunted, and half-closed his eyes.

While he was thinking, Magrit roamed the office, finally picking up one of the more perplexing objects that littered it.

"You are holding an infrared communications beacon." Battachariya must have eyes in the back of his head, because she was standing on the side of the chamber behind his chair. "Developed on Pallas, and the smallest one ever made. Be careful with it. There are only three other copies, all in the Ceres Museum."

He had been scribbling on a scrap of paper, but now his fat, dimpled fingers went running across a keyboard, while at the same time he dictated verbal inputs to the computer.

"Here." He sniffed, held out the paper, and indicated the output display. "You might see if that is satisfactory."

Magrit had looked at the screen with no special hope. It took a minute or two for her to realize that she was seeing a simple and economical solution to her problem, one that met all of the scheduling constraints.

"It's
perfect
."

She was still holding the communications beacon. Bat took it gently from her hands. "It was trivial. But this device reminds me of something else." He spoke with—for him—unusual diffidence. "According to the passenger rosters, you will be visiting Ceres in two weeks?"

"I guess so. I'm supposed to attend a meeting of transportation heads."

"Then I wonder if you might do me a big personal favor. A Palladian genome-stripper is being held at the Ceres Museum, awaiting my collection instructions. It is an item developed by Belt scientists in the final days of the war. It masses less than half a kilo, and it is of course inactivated. But it is also fragile, and I have some reluctance to entrust it to orthodox transfer methods."

He paused.

"I'll bring it back to you, sure I will. Just let them know I'll be coming for it." (Magrit had resisted the temptation to repeat to Battachariya the conversation she had overheard a few days earlier, between him and one of her other analysts: "The only reason you never travel anywhere, Fat-Butt, is 'cause you can't pack all the blubber into a standard suit."

"That is intolerable slander." Battachariya was unperturbed. "Why should I endure a peripatetic existence when you and my other witless minions are available to serve my needs?")

Magrit Knudsen had received the genome-stripper permit from Battachariya and carried the solution of the scheduling problem away in triumph. Every branch head in the department had sworn that it couldn't be done. She knew that at the next staff meeting she would have something
real
with which to fight off attacks on Battachariya. At that moment she had decided—with relief—that she could drop any thought of firing him.

And now, twelve years later, Magrit watched Bat interact with Gobel and reminded herself that he no longer
needed
her defense for anything. He was the acknowledged master of all tricky transportation problems, capable of levels of subtlety that left newcomers gasping.

Except that such skill meant not a thing to the inspector-general. Yarrow Gobel followed his own audit agenda. He had plowed right through the authorizations and expenditures for Battachariya's work on transport planning, ignoring all jibes or distractions. Apparently he had found nothing out of line there, since that heap had been checked off and placed to one side, but now a final thick stack was being placed in front of him.

Magrit winced. The stack contained Battachariya's discretionary account. Or what, in her mind, she thought of as his
in
discretionary account. It showed the items of expenditure for which no budget had been allocated. It had not been audited for nearly five years. It was, when Magrit Knudsen descended to the reality level, the reason she had come here. She had approved every item on that list, at least in principle. Her signature was on them. In practice, she had no idea of what most of them were, but she could guess.

That was apparently not true for Inspector-General Gobel. He was frowning in perplexity at the tables of expenditures and at the entries that sat beside each.

Finally he raised his head and stared at Rustum Battachariya. "Most of these purchases and requisitions do not correspond to anything on the chart of accounts for the Transportation Department. They appear to be for—" the expression on his face changed, to one that Magrit had never seen before "—for
Great War relics
, and for
war records
."

It was not an explicit question, so Bat chose to be awkward again and treat it as a statement. He stared very hard at the inspector-general's face and said nothing. There was a long silence, until Magrit could not resist jumping in.

"There is a supplementary list of approved expenditures specific to Coordinator Battachariya's department. I'm sure that all of the items you are looking at are covered by that set."

Gobel turned his chilly attention to her. "Then it should be obvious to you that I need that list. And I also require the memoranda that show how such an anomaly came into existence."

"The list is on the computer here. The original memoranda are over in my office. I can go along and get them if you like. Naturally, we are cooperating fully."

He nodded slowly. "I am sure you are. But while you are finding the memoranda, Mr. Battachariya and I will review the materials described in these documents.
In detail.
"

The two men stared at each other, ignoring Magrit. She sighed and headed out of Bat's office toward the suspension tube that would carry her five hundred meters up to the main department. How much explanation would be necessary—or sufficient—to satisfy Gobel? Some of those data and equipment requests had seemed strange even to Magrit's tolerant eyes. Only Bat could justify them. All Magrit could do was to look for her written records and hope that they were accurate enough and complete enough to satisfy a nitpicker like the inspector-general.

The discretionary account went back such a long way. Long ago, even before she brought the genome-stripper back from Ceres, Magrit had learned that there were other deeps within the brooding mind of the Great Bat. His office might appear to her and others as a random junk heap, but to him every item in it had its own place, value, and significance.

Half of Bat Cave was devoted to relics of the Great War. Battachariya was a war buff, although of a curious kind. The general Ganymedean view of the war was that it had been a disaster of enormous cost, but also that it had served as a pivotal event necessary before the move from Earth-centered to system-centered human psychology could take place.

Bat cared nothing for nostalgia, philosophy, or historical imperatives. He saw the war differently. Although the Inner System had suffered far more casualties, in his mind it was the Belt that had sustained the greater, and perhaps irretrievable, loss. The war had arrived at a time when Belt technology was bursting out toward a period of incredible fertility of invention. All of that had been blown to bits. Many Belt discoveries had been destroyed, along with their creators. But not all of them were necessarily lost forever. Bat was convinced that their secrets might yield to careful analysis and systematic search. It was the puzzle to exceed all puzzles.

Through the branch, he had made tiny investments in old records, ones that Magrit could justify, if necessary, as evidence of former patterns of passenger movement around the Belt. He had studied the faded printouts in the seclusion of Bat Cave and finally requested that a certain orbit be close-scanned for objects of specific description. Magrit had approved the search. The wreckage of the Belt freighter located there contained design procedures and samples of an unknown class of bonding adhesives, superior to anything currently available.

Magrit Knudsen had been praised for the discovery. She had refused credit and made sure that the true source of the accomplishment was acknowledged. Bat was a department hero—for a few days; then his arrogance and pomposity again became too much for most people to stand.

On Battachariya's second data request, the department had been a little more generous with funds. The subsequent search had yielded no new invention, but the Ceres Museum had paid handsomely for the little antique Von Neumann. It was the original model, used in the mining of the Trojan asteroids before Fishel's Law and Epitaph—"
Smart is Dumb:
It is unwise to build too much intelligence into a self-replicating machine"—became accepted dogma. Everyone thought that the particular Von Neumann model had been exterminated, but this one was still functioning after forty years of drifting in space. The museum put it on display . . . in a triple-sealed, inert enclosure. Deprived of raw materials, the Von Neumann was not judged dangerous.