Leviathans of Jupiter (7 page)

Her frustration gave way to understanding. Too many stars, she told herself. God's overwhelming me with more information than I need. It was a trick she had used herself, from time to time. Drown an investigator in data. Give them what they want, but bury it in so much information that they'll never be able to find the pattern they're looking for.

Katherine Westfall smiled at the stars. And she thought that an astronomy display that showed all the myriad of stars one sees in space, but highlights the stars that one would see from Earth, might make a decent profit for an entrepreneur who knew how to bring a new product to market. She filed the idea away in her mind, alongside other ideas that she had stored there. It's never too late to make a profit, she reminded herself. I may be retired from the corporate world, but that doesn't mean I have to stick entirely to philanthropy.

Philanthropy. The word jogged her back to reality. You're not here to study astronomy, she told herself. You're spending six precious weeks heading for Jupiter to do what's needed out there. It's time to cut them off. No excuses. No mercy. Take a good look around their research station and then send them all packing back to Earth. Take Archer down before he can make his move against you.

Grant Archer was a threat. The head of the scientific team at Jupiter was on the short list to be appointed the next director of the IAA, the position Katherine wanted for herself. Not merely a council member; she had to be the director. Had to be. She heard her mother's voice in her mind: “Get to the top, Katie. Whatever you do, get to the top. You're not safe until you're on top.”

She knew that Archer and his staff of scientists were feverishly trying to complete a new submersible craft and send a crew of volunteers down into that murderous ocean. To study the leviathans. It was supposed to be a secret, but the scientists could keep no secrets from her. She had her sources of information in place aboard the research station.

He thinks that a successful mission to study those creatures will guarantee his appointment to the IAA directorship. He thinks he'll be able to jump ahead of me.

Unconsciously, Katherine shook her head. Archer and his scientists may say they want to study those Jovian beasts, but what they're really going to do is kill more people. Like they killed Elaine.

It had been a shock to Katherine Westfall when she discovered that she had a sister. Her mother had never told her of it. Not in all the years they had lived together had her mother once mentioned that she'd had another daughter, years before Katherine: Elaine.

Katherine discovered her sister's existence the day after her mother's funeral, as she went through the pitiful remnants that her mother had left behind. A scattering of photos, most of them obviously taken many years earlier, when her mother had been young and pretty, long before the years of toil had ground her down to a hard, suspicious shell of a gray-haired woman.

Two images in the computer file showed her mother with a baby. Only two images out of hundreds that had accumulated over the years. But those two images sparked Katherine's lively interest because both dated from before her own birth. Who was this baby? Why was her mother cradling the infant so tenderly in her arms?

The advantages of wealth include the ability to buy information. Katherine used her corporate security office to hire private investigators and track down this mystery child.

She learned at last that her mother had borne a daughter to one of her earliest lovers, nearly ten years before Katherine had been born. The man was wealthy, powerful. He refused to marry her mother, but took the baby from her to raise as his own. Mother never saw her again, Katherine realized. That's what made her so bitter. That's why she was so wary when Katherine met Farrell Westfall. “Get him to marry you,” Mother had insisted. “Marriage or nothing.”

So she had married. And her mother had died wealthy and comfortable. And Katherine learned she had a sister.

Her sister was a scientist who had been at research station
Thomas Gold,
orbiting Jupiter. But now, Katherine had found, she was back on Earth. In a convalescent hospital in Ireland.

She had traveled halfway across the world to meet her sister and arrived exactly two hours too late. Elaine O'Hara had died at almost the moment Katherine had left Sydney. She had been in poor health physically and emotionally since she'd taken part in the ill-fated mission into Jupiter's deep, seething ocean.

Jupiter had killed Katherine's only sister.

No, she told herself as she lay on the bed in her luxurious stateroom aboard
Australia
. It wasn't Jupiter that had killed her; it was the single-minded, blindly arrogant scientists who had sent her to her death.

She smiled to herself, coldly. The sister she had never known would become the excuse she needed to kill the scientists' investigation of Jupiter. One way or another, she was going to send them all packing back to Earth. And if anyone questioned her motives, she could always tell them about her dear, martyred sister and point the finger of accusation at Archer and all the other heartless scientists who willingly sent innocents to their deaths.

ELECTRONICS WORKSHOP

Andy Corvus was not smiling as he bent over the electronics components scattered across the worktable.

“Murphy's Law,” he muttered to himself. “If anything can go wrong, it will.”

“What seems to be the problem?” Dorn asked.

The cyborg was sitting easily on a swivel-topped stool a meter or so from Corvus, who was on his feet, staring unhappily at the hardware strewn along the table. The electronics workshop was small, hardly big enough for the two men. Its one workbench was fully equipped, though, with tools and diagnostic instruments. Corvus wondered how
Australia
's maintenance crew kept the ship going with such a minuscule workshop, but then he guessed that the ship's systems got inspected and overhauled regularly in port, after a trip was finished.

Corvus looked up at Dorn and his face went from a frustrated scowl to a sheepish expression. “I've been working on this rig since we left Selene and it's still not right.” Pointing at a gray titanium cylinder resting on the workbench, no bigger than his fist, he said, “I've got to get all these components to fit into that container. Six kilos of goods in a five-kilo bag.”

Dorn waved his human hand. “Get a bigger container.”

“It's not that easy,” Corvus said, looking chagrined. “The size of the container is dictated by the volume available in the dolphin's skull.”

“Dolphin?”

Grinning crookedly, Andy said, “Sure. Didn't you know we're carrying dolphins aboard the ship? Taking them out to the
Gold
station.”

“Dolphins.” Dorn seemed incredulous.

“It's part of my work,” Corvus explained. “I'm brain-linking with the dolphins as a sort of preliminary test, to see if I can make contact with the leviathans.”

“And we're carrying dolphins on this ship all the way out to Jupiter?”

Corvus nodded enthusiastically. “We sure are. Four whole decks have been converted into an aquarium for them.”

Dorn shook his head in disbelief.

“I was going to try to make contact with them later today, but if I can't get my transceiver into the volume they've allowed for their skulls…”

“You'll have to make smaller components,” Dorn said, quite matter-of-factly. Then he added, “Or make more room in the dolphins' skulls.”

*   *   *

Deidre had slept poorly, her dreams filled with scenes of war and bloodshed. Dorn—Dorik Harbin—didn't appear in those dreams; at least she didn't remember his presence. But the dreams were horrifying, people being slaughtered, villages burned to the ground. And the old
Chrysalis
habitat methodically destroyed, slashing laser beams ripping its components apart, people blasted into the vacuum of space, not even able to scream as their lifeblood spewed out of them.

She was glad that Dorn wasn't in the dining room when she came down for breakfast. But as she slid her tray along the dispenser tables she saw Max Yeager sitting off in a corner by himself, as if he'd been waiting for her.

As soon as he saw Deirdre the burly engineer got up from his solitary table and buzzed over to her.

“Good morning,” he said, smiling widely. “I hope you slept well.”

“Not very,” Deirdre replied.

She filled her tray with a plate of eggs, a mug of fruit juice, and a dish of melon balls, Yeager beside her every step of the way. She found an empty table and Yeager immediately pulled out a chair in his meaty hands and held it for her.

“I didn't sleep all that well, either,” he said as he sat across the table from her. “Strange surroundings, eh? Have you done much traveling?”

With a shake of her head, Deirdre admitted, “This is my first trip away from home.”

“I've traveled a lot,” Yeager said. “Been to Mercury twice, helping Yamagata Corporation design those big solar energy satellites they're putting up out there. Rumor is, they want to use some of 'em to power lasers that'll propel lightsail ships out to Alpha Centauri.”

“Alpha Centauri?” she marveled.

Before Yeager could respond, Deirdre's pocketphone buzzed. She fished it from the pocket of her slacks and saw the text message on its minuscule screen: “DEIRDRE AMBROSE, PLEASE REPORT TO DR. POHAN IN THE INFIRMARY. AT ONCE.”

Staring at her, Yeager wondered aloud, “What's that all about?”

Deirdre pushed her chair away from the table and got to her feet. “I have to go,” she said.

“You haven't had any breakfast!”

“I'm not that hungry, really.” And she hurried out of the dining room, glad to leave Yeager standing there alone.

*   *   *

Wrinkled, bald, mustachioed Dr. Pohan smiled at her as Deirdre stepped into his office, but somehow his smile seemed tense to her, forced. The wall screens showed images of medical scans, slices through her body, circles of intestines, interiors of lungs like budding, branching flowers, pulsing, beating organs.

That's what I look like inside, Deirdre said to herself as she sat, staring fascinatedly, in front of the doctor's desk.

Without preamble, Dr. Pohan said, “We have a puzzlement on our hands, young lady.”

“A puzzlement?”

“You have rabies.”

Shocked, Deirdre gasped, “Rabies? That's impossible!”

Gesturing to the wall screens, “Impossible or not, your scans show the rabies virus lurking in your bloodstream. It can infect your brain, you know.”

“I can't have rabies,” Deirdre insisted. “You get rabies from an animal bite, don't you? I haven't been bitten by any animal. We don't allow pets on
Chrysalis II
; not animal pets, anyway.”

His strained smile still in place, Dr. Pohan said gently, “How you acquired the virus is puzzling, very puzzling. But the important thing at the moment is to neutralize the virus before it reaches your brain and you begin to show symptoms.”

“Neutralize it? You mean kill it?”

“If possible,” said the doctor. “There are injections that can eliminate the virus, but unfortunately we don't carry such medications aboard ship. Who would expect cases of rabies to show up on an interplanetary liner?”

Deirdre caught the plural. “You said cases?”

“Yes. The woman you are replacing, she died of rabies on the trip out from Earth.”

INFIRMARY

“I could die?” Deirdre cried.

“If untreated,” said Dr. Pohan.

“But you said you don't have the vaccine.…”

“The treatment requires human rabies immunoglobulin. We were able to fabricate a small amount of same in the ship's pharmacy but it wasn't enough to save my patient. The virus had spread through her nervous system and into her brain.”

Deirdre fought down an urge to scream. Forcing her voice to stay calm, steady, she asked, “Could you produce enough of it to treat me?”

For a century-long moment Dr. Pohan did not reply. At last he steepled his fingers and said softly, “We can try, Ms. Ambrose. It's a rather difficult synthesis, but we can try.”

“And if you can't…?”

The doctor shrugged. “The alternative is to freeze you until we arrive at Jupiter. I've already contacted the medical officer at station
Gold
and he has instructed his staff to produce the medication. It will be ready for you when you arrive there.”

“Rabies,” Deirdre repeated, her voice trembling just a bit.

“It is very strange,” said Dr. Pohan. “Neither you nor the unfortunate woman who died was bitten or scratched by a rabid animal. She was from Selene, a well-respected biologist. Of course, she frequently visited Earth. She could have contracted the disease there.”

“And she died.”

“Apparently she had been infected some time before boarding this ship. The preboarding medical examination missed her condition entirely. The automated scans were not programmed to check for rabies, unfortunately. By the time she began to exhibit symptoms, it was too late to save her.”

“And she died,” Deirdre repeated, in a whisper.

Dr. Pohan put on his professional smile once again. “Please do not worry unduly. We have caught your case early. You will not die from it, I am almost certain.”

That word
almost
blared in Deirdre's mind.

*   *   *

Deirdre walked like an automaton from the infirmary to the elevators and went blindly, unthinkingly, back to the dining room. It was closed: too late for breakfast, too early for lunch. It didn't matter; she had no appetite.

How could I get rabies? she asked herself a few thousand times as she headed back to her stateroom. By the time she got there, the room had already been cleaned, the bed made neatly, the lavatory sparkling.