Jupiter (12 page)

Grant didn't realize he was staring at her until she unceremoniously took him by the chin and pointed his face back to the display screen.

It wasn't a demonstration so much as a tutorial. By Dr Wo, no less.

Grant sat and watched and listened. And learned. Building on nearly a century of researchers' attempts to communicate meaningfully with dolphins, Wo and a handful of the station's biologists — including Lane O'Hara — had created a dictionary of dolphin phrases.

'If the same phrase is used in the same situation, every time,' Wo's voice was saying over a video scene of three dolphins swimming in lazy circles,'then one may conclude that the phrase represents an actual word, constructed from actual phonemes - deliberate sounds intended to convey a meaning.'

As Grant watched, two human figures clad in black wetsuits entered the tank, trailing sets of bubbles from the transparent helmets that encased their heads. Grant could not make out their faces, but one of them had the supple, slim figure of O'Hara.

The human swimmers bore oblong boxes of metal or plastic strapped to their chests. Dolphin-like clicks and whistles came from them, and the dolphins responded with chatter of their own.

'One may conclude,' said Wo's off-camera voice,'that the dolphins have developed a true language. We have been able to transliterate a few of their phrases into human speech sounds, and vice versa.'

There was something strange about Wo's voice, Grant thought. It seemed richer, deeper than he remembered it from his one stressful meeting with the director. Then, Wo's voice had seemed harsh, strained, labored. Listening to the director on this video presentation, though, his voice came through relaxed and smooth. Maybe it's just me, Grant thought. Maybe he sounded worse to me than he actually was. Still, the difference nagged at him.

'… conclusive evidence that the dolphins truly use language can be seen in this demonstration,' Wo was saying.

Another human voice - O'Hara's, it sounded like - asked, 'Can you blow a ring for me?'

One of the dolphins swam toward her and expelled a set of bubbles from its blowhole that formed a wobbly but recognizable ring. As the circle of bubbles expanded and drifted toward the tank's surface, the dolphin nosed upward and swam through it, squeaking and clicking rapidly.

'Observe,' said Wo's voice,'that no reward has been offered for this performance. The only exchange between the human experimenter and the dolphin subject was an audible communication.'

At the end of the video Wo appeared in his office, sitting at his desk, peering intently into the camera.

'While much of the dolphins' language remains beyond our grasp, for reasons that are undoubtedly due to the wide gap in environment and socialization between our two species, we have succeeded in creating a primitive dictionary of dolphin speech. That is, we can accurately and repeatably transliterate human speech sounds into dolphin phonemes, and vice versa. While this is limited to a dozen or so phrases, the work continues and the dictionary will grow.'

Wo got up to his feet and walked slowly around his desk. 'Our aim, as stated at the outset of this demonstration, is to understand the intellectual workings of an alien intelligence. Thank you for your attention.'

The screen went dark, but Grant continued staring at it for several moments more. In the video, Dr Wo could stand and walk. Yet when Grant had seen him, his legs had been terribly wasted, useless; the man had to stay in a powered wheelchair. But in this video his legs were strong, normal.

As Grant pulled the headset off, O'Hara asked smilingly, 'Well, are you convinced now, Mr Skeptic?' 'What happened to Dr Wo?'

Her smile winked off. 'Ah, yes. That video was made before the accident.'

'What accident?'

Her lips tightened, almost as if she were biting them. With a shake of her head, O'Hara replied, 'That's best left unsaid, Mr Archer. Sensitive information, don't you know.'

Grant leaned back in the wheeled typist's chair to look up into her brilliant green eyes. 'What can be so all-hallowed sensitive? Who am I going to tell? I'm locked up in this station, the only people I see already know all about all this dratted sensitive stuff!'

O'Hara started to reply, then apparently thought better of it. She took a breath, then said, 'Those are Dr Wo's orders. Information is sensitive if he says it is. He's the director and we do what he tells us… or else.'

'Or else what?' Grant snapped, feeling more irked by the second. 'What can he do to us? We're stuck out here already.

What's he going to do, send us home with a bad report card?'

She gave him a pitying look. 'You don't really want to know what he can do to you, believe me, Mr Archer.'

'Grant,' he said, automatically. It came out surly, almost a growl.

'Grant,' she agreed. 'And my friends call me Lane.' He knew she was trying to mollify him, trying to get his mind off the issue of sensitive information and Dr Wo's powers as director of the station.

But there's something going on here that Wo is keeping secret. He's not even letting the IAA know what he's doing. Is that because the New Morality has its own representatives on the IAA's council?

With a glance at her wrist, O'Hara said, 'It's almost past time for lunch. Come on, let's get to the cafeteria before they close it.'

Grant followed her through the humming, quietly intense communications laboratory and out into the main corridor. It was bustling with people going back and forth.

Walking alongside Lane, Grant again noticed her limp. But if I ask her about it she'll tell me to mind my own business, he thought. Maybe that's sensitive information, too.

Instead he asked, 'You said your friends call you Lane?'

'That's right.' She nodded.

'I heard someone refer to you as Laynie.'

Her eyes flicked toward him for just an instant. 'And who might that be?' she asked coolly.

Grant hesitated a moment, thinking. 'Egon, if I remember correctly.'

'Dear old Egon,' she murmured.

'Is Laynie a special name? I mean, well…'

'It's not a name I prefer. Call me Lane, if you please.'

Grant nodded as they continued walking toward the cafeteria. They seemed to be swimming upstream; a tide of people were heading in the opposite direction, coming out of the cafeteria.

'What else did Egon say about me?' O'Hara asked.

An image of her swimming naked with Karlstad amidst the dolphins flashed through Grant's mind. But he said, 'Um, nothing much.'

'Egon has a way of talking about his fantasies as if they were real, don't you know.'

'Oh, sure.'

She stopped and pulled Grant over to one side of the corridor, practically pinning him against the wall. Grant felt the strength of her grip against his biceps, the intensity of the glare in her eyes.

'He's said things about me before, you know. Things that are utterly untrue.'

Grant looked up into those green eyes and saw smoldering anger.

'What did he tell you?' she demanded.

Shaking his head, Grant said, 'I… uh, I don't really remember. It was my first day here. Maybe it wasn't him who said it, there were several others around the table.'

'And he mouthed off to all of them.'

'I don't recall,' Grant lied.

'As bad as that, is it?'

Grant had no idea of what to say. He certainly had no intention of repeating what Karlstad had said — boasted about, now that he thought of it.

O'Hara stomped off toward the cafeteria, hurrying through the crowd despite her limp. Grant headed after her.

Sure enough, Karlstad was sitting at a big table, with Patti Buono, Nacho and several others. Quintero was regaling them with some story that had them all laughing hard. O'Hara seemed to ignore them; she went to the steam table and began filling her tray with a bowl of soup, a sandwich, fruit cup and soda.

Feeling somewhat relieved, but still cautious, Grant slid his tray toward her, grabbing a sandwich and a salad. As he was filling a mug with fruit juice, O'Hara carried her tray toward Karlstad's table.

Grant followed her as O'Hara marched straight to the table. Karlstad and the others looked up as she approached. Their laughter died away. Grant thought they looked kind of guilty, although that might have been just his overworked imagination.

Karlstad smiled up at O'Hara as she put her tray on the table next to him. Then she picked up her bowl of soup and emptied it onto his head.

Everything stopped. The cafeteria went completely silent, except for Karlstad's shocked sputtering. He sat there with soup dripping from his ears, his nose, his chin; soggy noodles festooned his thin silver hair.

O'Hara said absolutely nothing. She merely smiled, nodded as if she were satisfied with her work, then picked up her tray and limped off to a different table.

Quintero burst into roaring laughter. Karlstad scowled at him, but the others started to laugh, too.

Grant left his tray and headed out of the cafeteria. He had no desire to be caught in any crossfire.

For several days Grant steered clear both of Karlstad and O'Hara. He became something of a recluse, avoiding everyone, taking his meals in his quarters, coming out only for his hours of work. But it was impossible to escape the gossip flickering all through the station.

It was a lovers' spat, some said. Other maintained that O'Hara had somehow been wronged by Karlstad and the soup dumping had been her revenge. No, still others insisted: he had rejected her, and she'd humiliated him because he had humiliated her.

He saw O'Hara now and then, despite his best efforts not to. She was constantly working with the dolphins, swimming with them, talking with them. Grant tried to head the other way whenever he saw her, but it was impossible to avoid all contact. She seemed cheerful and friendly, though, as if nothing had happened. For that matter, so did Karlstad, when Grant saw him — usually at a distance, in the cafeteria or in passing along the main corridor.

One night, when he couldn't sleep despite watching Marjorie's two latest messages and reading from the Book of Job for what seemed like hours, Grant pulled on a pair of slacks, stuffed his shirt into its waistband and padded barefoot out to the empty, darkened cafeteria.

He punched the automated dispenser for a cup of hot cocoa. The machine seemed to take longer now to make the brew than it did during the busy hours of the day.

'Can't sleep, hey?'

Startled, Grant turned around to see Red Devlin standing beside him. The Red Devil's bristling hair and moustache stood out even in the shadows of the dimly-lit cafeteria. His white jacket was limp, sweaty, unbuttoned all the way down, revealing Devlin's olive-drab undershirt.

'You're up pretty late, yourself,' Grant replied.

'It's a lot o' work, runnin' this joint.'

'I guess it is.' The dispenser beeped at last. Grant slid up the plastic guard and reached for his steaming cup of cocoa.

'Need somethin' to put in it?' Devlin asked.

Grant shook his head. 'It's got enough sugar already, I'm sure.'

'I meant somethin' stronger.'

Grant blinked at him.

'I know you're a straight arrow an' all that,' Devlin said, 'but a man can't go without
some
stimulation now an' then, can he?'

'I don't drink,' Grant said.

'I know.' Devlin patted Grant's shoulder. 'An' you don't even take sleepin' pills, do ya?'

'I've never needed them.'

'Until now, huh?'

'I don't want any. Thanks.'

'Maybe some entertainment?'

'Entertainment?'

'VR, y'know. I could fix you up with some very good stuff. Just like the real thing. Make a new man o' you.'

'No thanks!'

'Now wait, don't get all huffy on me. You're a married man, aren't you?'

'What's that got to do with it?'

'I can work up a VR sim for you, special. Just gimme some videos of your wife and I'll put together a sim that'll be just like she was with you, just about.'

Grant's jaw dropped open.

'Sure, I can do it!' Devlin encouraged, mistaking Grant's shocked silence. 'I did it for 'Gon, y'know. Fixed him up with Laynie… in virtual reality.'

My God in heaven, Grant thought. So Egon's fantasies about Lane aren't just wet dreams, after all. He's got a VR session with her in it. Maybe more than one.

'How about it, Grant?' Devlin urged.

But Grant was thinking, If Lane knew about this she'd kill the two of them.

'Well?'

'No thanks,' Grant said firmly. 'Not for me.'

He turned and strode away, splashing hot cocoa from the mug onto his hand, thinking that he'd never let that filthy devil get his paws on videos of Marjorie. Never.

Days later, Grant was in the biochemistry lab, checking the delicate glassware he was taking out of the dishwasher, to make certain nothing had been broken or chipped. The glass tubes and retorts were still warm in his hands. He'd been thinking that it - would be much more efficient if they made the lab apparatus out of lunar glassteel, which was unbreakable, but then figured it would cost too much. Cheaper to gather up the broken bits and recast them. Just as graduate students were an economic advantage over robots, old-fashioned chippable lab glassware was used instead of glassteel.

'I haven't seen you for a while.'

The voice startled Grant so badly he nearly dropped the hand-blown tubing he was holding.

Looking up, he saw it was Zareb Muzorawa.

'Oh… I've been around,' said Grant. 'I've… uh, been pretty busy, you know.'

Muzorawa hiked one leg on a lab stool and perched casually on it. Still in those metal-studded leggings, Grant saw.

Very seriously, he said, 'What happened between Lane and Egon was not your fault, my friend.'

'Yeah, sure. I know that.' Grant turned back to emptying the dishwasher.

'Lane told me about your conversation with her.'

Grant said nothing, kept busy unloading the glassware.

'You can't hide all the time, Grant,' Muzorawa said. 'The station isn't that big.'