Leviathans of Jupiter (6 page)

“Scoopship team,” Yeager explained to her. “Engineers. You know what they say about engineers: so narrow-minded they can look through a keyhole with both eyes.”

Andy giggled. Dorn remained impassive. Deirdre wondered why Yeager made fun of engineers.

“I've heard about you,” Yeager said to the cyborg. “You're a priest or something, aren't you?”

“Or something,” Dorn muttered.

Deirdre felt Dorn's reticence like a palpable force. She said to Yeager, “And what's your reason for going to Jupiter, Mr. Yeager?”

“It's
Doctor
Yeager,” he replied, drawing himself up haughtily. “Doctor of engineering physics, University of Arizona.” Then he grinned at her. “But you can call me Max.”

“Hi, Max,” Corvus said good-naturedly from Deirdre's other side. “I'm Andy.”

Yeager hadn't taken his eyes off Deirdre. “And pray tell, fair one, what might your name be?”

With some reluctance, she told him, “Deirdre. Deirdre Ambrose.”

“Deirdre,” Yeager echoed. “That's an Irish name. It means ‘passionate,' doesn't it?”

“I don't know,” Deirdre lied.

The dining room was just as sumptuously decorated as the lounge, and it was filling up rapidly. Yeager spotted a table for six halfway across the big chamber and led the others to it. He moved around the table to sit beside Deirdre, then tipped the chair on his other side to lean against the table.

“Put up the chair beside you, Andy,” he said to Corvus as they all sat down.

Blinking in puzzlement, Corvus asked, “Why?”

“They'll think we're saving the seats for another couple of people,” Yeager explained. “That way we can just be the four of us without any strangers butting in.”

“But we're all strangers,” Corvus blurted. “I mean, we just met a few minutes ago.”

Yeager waved him down. “Nah, we're old buddies. Shipmates.”

He dominated their conversation all through dinner, talking almost exclusively about himself.

“So I tackled the challenge. Me and my grad students. That's three of them over at the table across the room, with the scoopship team. We designed a submersible vehicle that can carry a maximum of six human crew a thousand kilometers deep into the Jovian ocean and allow them to cruise down there for at least five days.”

“A considerable engineering challenge,” Dorn admitted, as he carefully brought a forkful of hydroponic greens to the human side of his mouth.

Yeager agreed cheerfully. “There've been two human missions into that ocean and both ended in disaster. Casualties. People got killed.”

“The pressure down that deep must be incredible,” Corvus mused.

“It is, and then some,” Yeager said. “Some of the uncrewed probes have been crushed. I mean, it's
tough
down there.”

Deirdre listened with half an ear as Yeager nattered on. She wondered about Dorn. He was a priest? That was weird. He wasn't wearing anything that looked clerical: just plain gray coveralls. The left side of his face was etched metal, as was the top of his head. His left arm was prosthetic. A priest? she wondered. He said the scientists wanted to see if he could handle the pressures of a deep dive better than a normal human. That means they're planning a crewed mission into the ocean. After nearly twenty years. After killing people both times they tried it before.

“So I completed the design and my people have built the dingus out at Jupiter orbit,” Yeager was saying. “Now I'm heading out to the
Gold
station to supervise the final checkout before we start testing the beast.”

Andy Corvus looked impressed. “A submersible that can carry humans safely deep down into that ocean.”

Yeager mopped up the sauce on his plate with a crust of soybread. “It was a tough design challenge, let me tell you.”

No one responded to that, so he went on, holding the dripping crust in two fingers, “The secret is, you've got to make the beast big. I mean
big
. Big as the research station, almost. The problem with those earlier birds is they made 'em too small.”

“As big as
Gold
itself?” Dorn asked, intrigued despite himself.

Yeager nodded as he popped the bread in his mouth and chewed vigorously.

“That big, just to hold six people?” Corvus asked.

Gulping down the crust, Yeager said, “You need the size to handle the pressures. Compression. The vehicle's built like a series of nested shells, one within the other. Like those Russian dolls, you know.”

“Babushka dolls,” Corvus said.

“Matryoshka,” Deirdre corrected.

Yeager grinned at her. “You know, for an incredibly beautiful woman, you're pretty smart.”

Dorn bristled visibly, but Deirdre simply gave the engineer an icy glare.

Yeager took it all without malice. “Freedom of speech,” he said, almost wistfully. “It can get you into a lot of trouble. Ah well. What's for dessert?”

“Tell us more about this ship you've designed,” Corvus said. “I'm going to be one of your passengers.”

“You?” Yeager looked surprised.

“Me,” Andy said. For once, he looked totally serious.

PASSENGER QUARTERS

Dorn accompanied Deirdre to her stateroom once dinner was finished. As Dr. Pohan had told her, the map screens placed strategically along the passageway bulkheads showed where her quarters were and how to get there. All she had to do was ask.

Despite her assurances to her father, the higher
g
force of the ship's acceleration was making Deirdre feel weary, slow.

“Thank you,” she said as they walked slowly along the passageway. “I appreciate your protecting me from Dr. Yeager.”

“I learned courtesy from a very noble woman,” Dorn said, his voice low, heavy.

With a tired smile, Deirdre added, “I've fended off showoffs like Yeager most of my life, but I'm glad I didn't have to do it alone, tonight.”

“De nada,”
he said.

“You speak Spanish?”

“She did.”

“You must have loved her very much.”

Dorn shook his head slowly. “It's not that simple.”

“Oh.”

Following the maps displayed upon the wall screens, they at last found Deirdre's stateroom. Its door was like all the others that lined the passageway except that the oblong electronic screen on it bore her name. Another couple came up the passageway from the other side, deep in whispered conversation. They stared at Dorn as they squeezed by.

“I should be jealous of you,” Deirdre said, once they had passed.

“Jealous?”

“Usually I'm the one people stare at.”

Dorn said nothing.

“Since I was twelve,” she went on.

It was impossible to read the expression on the human side of his face. For long moments they simply stood there in the passageway, silent. For the first time in many years, Deirdre wasn't sure what she should say, how she should handle this … cyborg.

“Thank you,” Dorn said at last.

She blinked at him. “For what?”

“For not asking about my past. For not probing into my life story.”

“It's painful to you.”

“Painful. Yes.”

Very softly, she said, “Everybody has pain in their lives, Dorn.”

“I suppose that's true,” he said, without much conviction.

Even more unsure of herself, Deirdre said, “Well, if you ever want to talk about it, I'll listen.”

“That's very kind of you.”

“Good night, then.”

“Good night.”

This was the moment when guys made their move, Deirdre knew, but the cyborg merely bowed stiffly a few centimeters, then turned and started walking up the passageway.

But after a few steps he stopped and said over his shoulder, “My dossier is on file at Ceres. Look under the name ‘Dorik Harbin.' ”

Then he proceeded up the passageway, the overhead lights glinting off the etched metal of his skullcap. Deirdre watched him for several moments, then touched the fingerprint-coded lock that opened her door.

Dorik Harbin, she thought. He
is
the man who wiped out the original
Chrysalis,
slaughtered all those people! He's the man Dad wanted to execute. Yet he doesn't seem like a murderer now. He's … She searched for a word, decided at last to give it up. Then she remembered that Yeager said Dorn was a priest of some sort.

A priest?

It's been a strange first night, Deirdre thought as she stepped into her stateroom. And we have two more weeks to go.

She closed the door behind her and leaned against it. She felt that it would be good to get into bed and stop fighting this heavy gravity that was pulling on her.

Then she looked around the spacious compartment for the first time. Deirdre's stateroom was considerably more splendid than the quarters she was accustomed to at home. All this space for one person! she marveled. Of course, she realized, it's designed for a couple. Eying the wide, low bed, she giggled at the thought that it was big enough for a team of acrobats.

Her one travel bag was sitting on a luggage rack at the foot of the bed. She unpacked, then undressed, did her ablutions in the handsomely appointed lavatory, and avoided the temptation to try out the deep tub of the spa. Pulling on a shapeless old pullover shirt that reached to her hips, Deirdre sat on the bed and tried not to look at the blank wall screen.

Go to sleep, she told herself. Don't pry into the man's past.

Yet it was Dorn himself who told her that the rock rats' settlement at Ceres held a dossier on him, under the name Dorik Harbin. She wondered why he no longer called himself that.

Yeager seemed to know something about him, Deirdre thought. All through dinner the engineer behaved as if he knew all about Dorn's past. But then Yeager acted as if he knew everything about everything, she told herself.

Forget about it, she told herself. Let sleeping cyborgs lie. She stretched out on the bed and pulled the thin sheet up to her chin. But in her mind's eye she kept seeing Dorn, half human, half machine. Why? How?

She remembered a line she'd read at school about a famous financier who had faced an ethical problem of some importance. “Bernard Baruch sat on his favorite park bench, struggling with his conscience,” the author had written. Then he added, “He won.”

Smiling to herself, Deirdre decided that she would override her conscience, too.

She sat up and called, “Computer, what's the time lag between here and Ceres?”

The wall screen glowed softly and the computer's synthesized voice answered, “Four seconds, one way.”

I can get the information in less than eight seconds, Deirdre realized.

“Computer, query the
Chrysalis II
habitat for the personnel dossier of Dorik Harbin.”

“Acknowledged.”

Deirdre lay back on the bed again and commanded the lights to switch off. I'll read his file in the morning, she said to herself. After a good night's sleep.

But she found that she could not sleep. Tired from the heavy gravity though she was, she was too curious to fall asleep. She got up and went to the tiny swivel chair at the compartment's built-in desk and switched on the computer again.

And there it was: Dossier, Dorik Harbin. Born in Montenegro, Earth. Parents, two sisters killed in ethnic cleansing. Joined local militia at age twelve. Recruited by International Peacekeeping Force. Quit IPF to join Humphries Space Systems as mercenary soldier. Convicted of destroying original
Chrysalis
habitat, killing one thousand seventeen men, women, and children. Sentenced to permanent exile from
Chrysalis II
and all other Asteroid Belt communities.

Deirdre stared at the words on the wall screen. Her blood ran cold. He's been involved in death and murder since he was a child!

She watched the video of Dorik Harbin's trial. He offered no defense. He seemed to expect to be executed, seemed to
want
to be killed. But then an elderly woman in a powerchair rolled herself up to the cyborg and pled for mercy, saying that he had completely changed his personality, begging the inhabitants of
Chrysalis II
to exile Dorik Harbin, not kill him.

The dossier stopped with the rock rats' decision to exile Dorik Harbin. They had no further interest in Dorik Harbin. But Deirdre did. She was riding out to Jupiter with a mass murderer. He may say he's a priest now but he has blood on his hands. She wanted to know a lot more about this Dorik Harbin, or Dorn, as he now called himself. A lot more.

KATHERINE WESTFALL'S SUITE

Katherine Westfall's three-room suite was up near the top of
Australia
's long, slim body, one level down from the captain's quarters. The staff people she had brought with her were ensconced two levels lower, separated from Mrs. Westfall by “officer's territory,” the compartments where the ship's officers were quartered. Still, even her staff's accommodations were much more spacious and sumptuously decorated than the compartments for ordinary passengers and the ship's crew.

Katherine was reclining against a mound of pillows on her bed, gazing out through the glassteel port set into the bulkhead of her bedroom. Countless stars hung out there, brilliant jewels against the eternal darkness, steady and unblinking. Earth and its bleak, sad-faced Moon were far behind the ship as it hurtled through space toward distant Jupiter.

Her personal communicator lay on the bed beside her, its palm-sized screen displaying a star chart. Katherine was teaching herself astronomy, or trying to. The chart didn't seem to match what she was seeing outside, though.

Her slim brows knitting in frustration, she thought she understood where the problem was. The stupid tutorial on the screen was displaying how the stars would look from the surface of Earth. The ship was in space, and many, many more stars were visible. Thousands of stars too dim to be seen through Earth's thick atmosphere now glowed at Katherine, blanketing the outlines of the constellations that she should be finding.