Probability Sun (3 page)

“May I sit down?”

“If you insist.”

“Will you sit down, too?”

“Certainly. I can say no just as well sitting down as standing up. It’s an inherited family ability, passed along for generations.”

They sat. Colonel Byars pulled her chair uncomfortably close to Capelo’s and said calmly, “This assignment is not an exploratory committee, Dr. Capelo. And you are not just any civilian—you’re a scientist with irreplaceable and non-duplicatable skills needed for this project, which is priority one, Special Compartmented Information clearance carrying ‘most vital to war effort’ status. You
can
be recruited for a project with that status, and you are being so recruited. Now.”

Capelo said, “You’re wearing a portable communications shield. With a Faraday field big enough to encase these chairs.”

“Affirmative. Your SCI clearances are already in process, and until they come through, I can’t give you all the specifics on the project. I can say that it’s one worthy of your prodigious talents, as they’ve been described to me. Of course, we can’t forcibly carry you off and make you do physics for us, but if you absolutely refuse to serve the Alliance, we can find you a willful obstruction to the war effort.”

“And send me to prison,” Capelo said. “My God.”

“And send you to prison,” Byars agreed. “But we don’t expect that to happen. First, there’s nothing in your record that indicates you oppose the war, and at least one personal reason to think you have an interest in defeating the Fallers who—”

“Stop,” Capelo said. “Stop right now.”

“As you wish. Second, the project is one with genuine and major scientific interest, one that we think will hold authentic fascination for you. Real physics, at the experimental and theoretical edge.”

“You’re not a physicist,” Capelo said. “Not even a minor one. You wouldn’t know the theoretical edge if it sliced you in half.”

“No. I’m proceeding on the words of people who are physicists.”

“And you’d really send me to prison if I say no.”

“We would indeed. We don’t like doing it this way, Dr. Capelo. A reluctant scientist on a military mission is nobody’s conception of ideal. Especially not mine. If this were up to me, I’d choose somebody else.”

“Points for honesty, Colonel. But not many. I don’t like being pushed around.”

“I don’t like doing it. But apparently you, and only you, are needed for this.”

“And from the way you’re studying me, you can’t imagine why.”

She didn’t answer. Capelo got up and strode around his sister’s sensibly decorated room, fighting the impulse to throw something. The bastards. The fucking imperial bastards. High-handed, dictatorial … Abruptly he flung himself back into the chair that stood too close to Byars’s.

“I’m going to astonish you, Colonel. I’m going to accept.”

“I’m pleased.”

“No, you’re not. You wanted me to say no, that’s why you presented this as autocratically as possible. Your starched little military soul really does want somebody else. But somewhere above you there’s a military physicist who knows better, and I think I can guess who. He’s worth listening to. So I’ll accept, with two conditions:”

Byars said levelly, “The Solar Alliance Defense Council doesn’t accede to conditions, Dr. Capelo.”

“You will this time. This little recruiting session is being recorded, isn’t it? Of course it is. I already called you on your overall approach. Don’t add to it unreasonable obstruction of a war effort on
your
part.”

Byars was good. She didn’t retort, didn’t move even a facial muscle. But Capelo saw the anger in her eyes.

He said, “First condition: You confirm for me that the military physicist who wants me is Vladimir Cherkov. Confirming that surely doesn’t violate security.”

“Affirmative. It is Dr. Cherkov, responding to a request for recommendation from non-scientist officers.”

“The opinions of non-scientists don’t count. Second, no matter where this project is, anywhere in the galaxy, my two daughters and their nanny go with me.”

“Unacceptable.”

“Then I’ll go to jail.”

For the first time, Byars’s expression changed. “You’d take two children into a war zone?”

Capelo threw back his head and laughed.

The laughter—sharp, bitter—finally seemed to disconcert Colonel Byars. But she said nothing until Capelo turned on her.

“Take two kids into danger, you mean? Where the enemy is? Let me finish what I wouldn’t let
you
finish before, Colonel. You said I have at least one personal reason for wanting to see the Fallers defeated. You meant the death of my wife in the Faller raid on New London. Were you there, Colonel? No, you probably weren’t. New London is a peaceful colony—
was
a peaceful colony—with no military presence whatsoever, on a peaceful planet beyond Space Tunnel #264, where my wife was surveying alien fishes. She was a xenobiologist, as your briefing undoubtedly told you. The Fallers attacked and she died, just as they’ve attacked numerous other human settlements, military and civilian. With no apparent obstruction of their war effort by the Solar Alliance.”

“Their beam-disrupter shield—”

“Is impenetrable, I know. We all know. And if I can do anything real to crack the science of that bugger, I will. Because that’s what this project is connected with, isn’t it? Has to be. I’ll do it. Just don’t sit there and try to tell me that there’s anywhere I could go that’s more dangerous than anywhere else for my girls. Because I know better. Where I go, they go. They’ve already lost one parent—they’re not going to lose the other. I’ll go to prison first, and make sure they’re housed right outside the walls. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly,” Byars said. She stood. “I’ll report your answer.”

“And hope it disqualifies me, right? It won’t. Not if Vladimir Cherkov wants me. Make reservations for four, Colonel. Table near the war.”

“I’m turning off the communications shield now.”

“Fine by me. Have a good trip back. Stay in touch.”

She walked out of the room, back stiff with disapproval. Or with military uprightness. Or with something—who the hell cared?

A moment later, Amanda and Sudie burst into the room. “Your company’s gone! Can we make a fort?”

“Sure you can. Upend the furniture. Puncture the dome. But first come give your daddy two kisses. Oh, hell, you taste of crabbiness! You’ve been swimming in the underground Martian sea again!”

Sudie giggled. Amanda said with disgust, “You’re being fizzy again, Daddy.”

“Always.”

“Why can’t we have a normal daddy, like other kids?”

“You were born lucky. I knew it the minute I saw all those angels singing in the sky.”

Kristen entered, looking vaguely worried. “Tom? What was it?”

“Nothing, sis. But we may have to cut our visit short a bit.” Howls of protest from the girls. “Yes, we may. The university is sending us all on a nice paid vacation.”

THREE

LUNA CITY, LUNA

M
ajor Kaufman walked in his spacesuit from the shuttle to the clear piezoelectric plastic dome on Luna. These days he spent all his time under the hazy red-dust sky of Mars; he had almost forgotten how a sky looked without an atmosphere. Black, cold, pricked with diamond-bright and diamond-sharp stars. Beautiful.

He wasn’t here to admire stars. He was here in his professional military capacity, to recruit a civilian. It was to be,
had
to be, recruitment through persuasion only. Dr. Thomas Capelo, Kaufman had heard, had not been persuaded so much as bullied. However, bullying was out of the question here, even if he’d been good at it, which he wasn’t. But he was pretty good at persuasion, especially for a soldier. To recruit Marbet Grant, he’d have to be.

Lyle Kaufman had never wanted to be a soldier. This was not something that a major in the Solar Alliance Defense Army, attached to High Command of the Solar Alliance Defense Council, could admit to anyone. Kaufman never had.

His family was military, all of them, UAF Army. When the time came for seventeen-year-old Lyle to choose a college, no one had ever asked him if he wanted to go to West Point. It was assumed he was going, even if West Point wasn’t what it had been, was in fact only the heavy-gravity training arm of the SADA Military Academy on Mars. Lyle Kaufman, intelligent and hard-working but with minimal genetic enhancements, could not aspire to the Martian Academy. Even acceptance at West Point was not assured, although only Lyle seemed to realize this. His parents, uncle, sisters, and brother never questioned his going, and Lyle never discussed it with them.

He knew, somewhere in the recesses of his orderly and conventional mind, that the reason he was going to West Point was that he had no particular desire to go anywhere else, study anything else, become anything else. He also knew that wasn’t a good reason for becoming an Army officer. But he ignored the knowledge. He was seventeen, amiable and calm by temperament, and he had not been brought up to think very much or very deeply. Certainly not about choices in life. A good soldier did what was expected.

By the time Lyle Kaufman did get around to thinking about his choices, he was a captain. To his faint surprise, advancement came from doing what he was told to do as well as he could do it, without either opposition or self-interest. This held true in combat as well as out of it. At some level, that didn’t seem right. Surely he should feel more involved with the decisions he made, decisions which affected other men’s lives as well as his own? But he didn’t. He proceeded with whatever task was at hand to the best of his ability. Other officers, he saw, seemed to respect this, although Lyle could not shake the feeling that he was on autopilot, not all that different from a very sophisticated computer. After his tour of combat duty, he was promoted to major.

The rest of his life seemed to possess the same mild, competent tone. He dated women, slept with them, grew fond of some, married none. He enjoyed reading physics journals, but not enough to study physics seriously, even if he had possessed the necessary aptitude for mathematics, which he knew he did not. His post on Mars, in the Solar Alliance Defense Council Military Advisory Committee, was interesting enough. He explored and recommended, with level-headed judiciousness, diplomatic options among the sometimes fractious member nations of the council and military options in the war against the Fallers. He played politics, of course—in his position it was inevitable—but not for partisanship, revenge, or self-aggrandizement. He expected to make colonel in due time.

The first time Lyle Kaufman had ever stepped outside the expected was to champion Dr. Dieter Gruber’s passionate desire to return to the planet he called “World” to dig up the object he called “an alien probability machine.”

Gruber himself didn’t move Kaufman. In fact, he found the German geologist to be the sort of man Kaufman didn’t much like: noisy, one-sided, bull-headed. Nor did Gruber’s passion impress Kaufman. The military was full of passion, especially in wartime. No, what impressed Kaufman was Gruber’s story. The fascinating physics of it. The possibilities for a new weapon. And the desire, which Kaufman hadn’t even known he possessed, to forward, in some small behind-the-scenes way, a major scientific find. For Lyle Kaufman, science had always been a spectator sport, but the only sport that interested him, however moderately.

Now on Luna he was about to meet one of that sport’s … no, not major players. Perhaps major outcomes. It was hard to tell.

She was waiting just inside the dome, beyond the airlock, alone. Kaufman removed his helmet. “Hello, Ms. Grant.”

“Hello, Major Kaufman.”

She matched the space under the dome. All the living and working quarters on Luna were below ground, safe from meteor bombardment. The dome served as elevator exit-point, observatory, visitor reception, and garden for Luna City’s eight thousand inhabitants, who were mostly scientists, technicians, military, and their dependents. The number was low enough that the dome could be small and still contain separate areas: some shielded bunkers, a playground for kids, a sports field (for what?), and the “garden” where Marbet Grant greeted him.

Like it, she was pared-down and stylized. The garden consisted of raked smooth sand set with boulders, benches, and the occasional bed of genetically modified flowers developed from low-light fungi. Marbet Grant, short and slim, wore a white tunic and pants with no adornment except her own beautiful bone structure. Her cheekbones cut like knives above a wide, soft nose. Her skin was chocolate brown, her eyes emerald green, her short curly hair auburn. Never had Kaufman seen anyone so aggressively genemod. She was wholly artificial, as artificial as human habitation where there was neither water nor arable soil.

He said, “Thank you for agreeing to see me.”

“Would you like to go below, or sit out here? You’ve never been to Luna City before.”

How did she know that? It seemed as good a place to begin as any. “May I ask how you know that, Ms. Grant?”

She smiled, and he had his answer.

“Let’s sit out here. You’re right, I haven’t ever been to Luna City. But I don’t want a tour. I’d rather just tell you why I’ve come. Unless you already know that, too.”

He said it with deliberate playfulness, but she didn’t take the bait. Instead she led him to a bench made of laser-carved lunar rock. Kaufman’s suit had adjusted for the heated air under the dome, but he still found the gravity, one-half of Mars’s, unsettling. Marbet Grant obviously did not, lounging with her legs curled under her, a small graceful figure against the stone.

She began, “No, Major, I don’t know what you’re thinking. I’m not telepathic in the slightest degree. You’re safe from mental eavesdropping.”

“From what I’ve read, that’s only half true. The mental inevitably gets mirrored in the physical, except for good actors. I’m not that.”

“No.” She smiled again. He liked her honesty.

“So does my physical presence tell you that I want something from you?”

“Oh, yes.”

“But not what?”

“That would be a lot to ask from body language.”