Saturn (9 page)

"This silly contest thing?" Wilmot snapped.

"A series of contests, yes. The psychologists believe it will be beneficial to the general mental health
—
"

"The psychologists actually endorse the idea?"

Realizing that Wilmot had no more than skimmed the proposal, at best, Eberly went on, "The political scientists we consulted with back on Earth believe such contests can help to strengthen group solidarity."

"Hmph," muttered Wilmot. "I daresay."

"All the proposal needs is your approval, sir," Eberly urged subtly. "Then you can announce it to the general population."

"No, no," said the professor. "You make the announcement. It's your idea, after all."

"Me?" Eberly asked as innocently as he could.

"Yes, of course. I can't be bothered with it. You announce the contests. Damned silly business, if you ask me, but if all those consultants endorse it, I won't stand in your way."

Eberly could barely contain his elation. He wanted to leap into the air and give an exultant whoop. Instead he meekly paced along the row of processors beside Professor Wilmot, thinking to himself, He chastised me about Cardenas, so he felt he had to placate me about the contests. How wonderfully predictable he is.

"I haven't walked this much in years," Kris Cardenas said, puffing slightly. "I feel kind of light-headed."

Holly smiled. "It's the gravity. We've climbed closer to the midline; the g force gets lighter."

They had left Don Diego at the irrigation canal and walked through the plowed farmlands, then climbed the grassy hills down at the endcap of the habitat. Cardenas sat on the grass, her back propped against a young elm tree. One of the habitat's ecologists had made a personal crusade of trying to save the elm from the extinction it faced on Earth.

Cardenas huffed out a breath. "Whew! I'm glad I spent all those hours in the centrifuge at Ceres. Mini-g can be seductive."

"You're in good shape," Holly said, sitting beside her.

"So are you."

The habitat stretched out before them, a green inside-out world, like a huge tunnel that had been landscaped and dotted with tiny toy villages here and there.

"What did you think of that crazy old man?" Holly asked.

Cardenas looked out at the landscaped perfection of the habitat: everything in its place, everything neat and tidy and somehow almost inhuman. It reminded her of store window displays from her childhood.

"I think we could use a few more crazies like him," she said.

"Maybe so," Holly half-agreed.

They sat in silence for a few moments, each absorbed in her own thoughts.

"I read your bio," Holly said at last. "I expected you to look a lot older than you do."

Cardenas didn't flinch, exactly, but she gave Holly a quick sidelong glance. "If you've read my bio then you know why I look younger than my years. And why I was living at Ceres."

Ignoring the tension in her voice, Holly asked, "How old do you think I am?"

Within ten minutes they were fast friends: two women whose bodies were far younger than their ages.

The man lay wheezing on the gurney, his eyes swollen nearly shut.

The young doctor looked perplexed. "What's the matter with him?"

"I don't know!" said the woman who had brought him in. She was close to hysteria. "We were walking out in the park and all of a sudden he collapsed!"

Leaning over the patient, the doctor asked, "Do you know what happened to you?"

The man tried to speak, coughed painfully, then shook his head negatively.

Glancing up at the monitors that lined the wall of the emergency cubicle, the doctor saw that it couldn't be a heart attack or a stroke. He felt a surge of panic: not even the diagnostic computer could figure out what was wrong! The male nurse standing on the other side of the gurney looked just as puzzled and scared as he felt.

The head nurse pushed past the woman and into the cubicle. "Take his shirt off," she said.

The doctor was too confused and upset to argue about who gave orders to whom. Besides, if the gossip around the infirmary was anywhere near the truth, this tough Afro-American had put in plenty of years with the Peacekeeping troops. She had a reputation that scared him.

With the male nurse helping, they pulled the man's shirt off. The patient's chest and arms were lumpy with red welts. His skin felt hot.

"Hives?" the doctor asked.

The nurse turned to the woman, staring wide-eyed at them, hands clenched before her face.

"Walkin' in the park?" she asked.

The woman nodded.

"Anaphylactic shock," the nurse said flatly. "Epinephrine."

The doctor gaped at her. "How could he
—
"

"Epinephrine! Now! He was stung by a fuckin' bee!"

The doctor barked to the male nurse, "Epinephrine! Now!"

The head nurse pulled a magnifying lens out of its slot on the cubicle wall and extended its folding arm across the patient's body. The doctor accepted the hint and took the lens in one hand. Within seconds he found the barb of the bee's stinger imbedded in the patient's left forearm, just above the wrist. With a tweezers he gently pulled the stinger out, rather deftly, he thought.

When he looked up the head nurse had gone and the patient was already breathing more easily.

"I never saw a bee sting before," he admitted to the woman, who also looked much better now. "I interned in Chicago, downtown."

The woman nodded and even managed to smile. "He must be allergic."

"Must be," the doctor agreed.

The male nurse unclipped the patient's ID badge from the shirt they had dropped to the floor and slid it into the computer terminal. The man's name, occupation, and complete medical history came up on the display. No mention of allergies, although he did have a history of bronchial asthma. The doctor noted that the patient had grown up in Cairo and had been a lawyer before running into trouble with the Sword of Islam and accepting permanent exile instead of a fifty-year prison term for political agitation. Aboard the habitat he worked in the accounting office.

"A lawyer?" the male nurse grumbled after the patient had recovered enough to walk home with his girlfriend. "Shoulda let him croak."

The next morning when Holly arrived at her cubbyhole office, there was a message on her desktop screen from Eberly. Without even sitting at her desk, she went straight to his office.

The door was open; he was already at his desk, deep in discussion with a young Asian couple. She hesitated. Eberly glanced up at her and nodded briefly, so she stayed in the doorway and listened.

"We understand the regulations and the reasoning behind them," the young man was saying, in California English. Holly saw that he was tense, sitting stiffly on the front five centimeters of the chair.

"It's my fault," said the woman, leaning forward and gripping the edge of Eberly's desk with both hands. "The protection I used was not sufficient."

Eberly leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. "The rules are quite specific," he said gently. "Your only choice is an abortion."

The man's face crumpled. "But... it's only this one case. Can't an exception be made?"

"If an exception is made for you," Eberly said, "others will expect the same consideration, won't they?"

"Yes. I see."

Eberly spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "We live in a limited ecology. We're not allowed to expand our population. Not until we arrive at Saturn and prove that we can sustain larger numbers will anyone be allowed to have children."

"I must have an abortion, then?" the woman asked, her voice shaking.

"Or we could put you off when we refuel at Jupiter and you could return to Earth."

The young man shook his head slowly. "We can't afford the transport fare. Everything we had was invested in this habitat."

Eberly asked, "Do you have religious inhibitions against abortion?"

"No," the man answered, so quickly that it made Holly wonder.

"Is there no other way?" the woman asked, almost begged.

Eberly steepled his fingers again and tapped them against his chin. The young couple strained forward unconsciously, waiting for a word of hope.

"Perhaps..."

"Yes?" they said in unison.

"Perhaps the fertilized zygote could be removed and frozen
—
kept in storage until it's decided that we can expand our population."

Frozen!
Holly shuddered at the idea. Yet it had saved her life. No, she thought. It had allowed her to begin a new life after her old one ended in death.

"Then the zygote can be reimplanted in your womb," Eberly was saying. "You'll have a perfectly normal baby; you'll simply have to wait a year or two."

He smiled brightly at them. They looked at each other, then back to him.

"This can be done?" the young man asked.

"It would require special permission," said Eberly, "but I can take care of that for you."

"Would you?"

He hesitated just a fraction of a second, then smiled again and answered, "Yes. Of course. I'll handle it for you."

They were unendingly grateful. It took a full ten minutes of handshaking and bowing before Eberly could usher them out of his office. They did not even notice Holly standing by the doorway as they left, still bowing their thanks.

"That was wonderful of you, Malcolm," Holly said as she went to the chair that the woman had been sitting in.

"Population control," he muttered as he stepped behind his desk and sat down. "I made certain that the human resources department got that responsibility. The ecologists wanted it, but I wrangled it away from them."

Holly nodded.

Pointing to the still-open doorway with a grin, Eberly said, "There's a couple who will be loyal to me forever. Or until their child becomes a teenager."

Holly did not see any humor in that. "You wanted to see me?" she said.

"Yes," he said as he snapped his fingers, the signal for his computer to boot up.

Holly waited in silence as the image formed above Eberly's desk. It was a list of some sort. It was facing him, so to her the hologram was turned backwards, inverted. She sat and waited while he studied the list. The office seemed small and bare and, somehow, cold.

At last he looked up from the image and gazed directly at her. Holly felt those laser blue eyes penetrate to her soul.

"There are going to be some changes in this office," he said, without preamble, without asking how she was or noticing that she was wearing a plain sky blue tunic over her slacks, with no adornments other than her name badge, just as the dress code guidelines called for.

"Changes?"

"Yes," Eberly said. "I won't be able to continue directing the day-to-day operations of this office. I will be busy organizing the government of the habitat."

"Government? But I thought
—
"

"Holly," he said, leaning forward slightly in his desk chair, toward her. She leaned toward him, too. "Holly, we have ten thousand men and women here. They must have a voice in choosing the kind of government they want. And their leaders."

Holly said, "You mean the government we'll create once we get to Saturn."

Eberly shook his head. "I don't believe we should wait until we arrive in Saturn orbit. The people should decide on the government they want now. Why wait?"

"But I thought that as long as we're in transit out to Saturn we have to
—
"

"We have to follow the protocols set down by the consortium," Eberly finished for her.

"Yes," Holly said.

"Why?" he demanded. "Why should we allow ourselves to be governed by rules written by a group of university graybeards who remained behind on Earth? What right do they have to force us to obey their rules?"

Holly thought a moment. "That's what we agreed to, though."

"It's time to end that agreement. What difference does it make if we do it now or wait until we arrive at Saturn?"

She thought his question cut both ways. Why rush into this now?

"We should
not
allow arrogant old men to tell us what we can and cannot do," Eberly said, with some heat. His face was reddening, Holly saw.

"Maybe not," she agreed, half-heartedly.

"Of course not," he said. "The people must decide for themselves."

"I guess."

"These contests you're setting up to pick names for the villages and everything else, they are a part of my plan," he confided.

That surprised her. "Your plan?"

"Yes. By themselves, the contests are little more than trivia, entertainment for the masses. But they serve a larger purpose."

"I click," Holly said. "Getting the people to vote in the contests will be like a sort of training exercise, right? It'll prepare the people to vote for their government when the time comes."

Eberly gave her the full radiance of his best smile. "You are extremely bright, Holly. Extremely bright."

She could feel her cheeks grow warm.

But Eberly's face grew somber. "There's something else, though. Something lacking."

"Lacking?"

With a preoccupied nod, Eberly muttered, "Some sort of goal, something that I can focus everyone's attention on." He looked into Holly's eyes and said, "I need an aim, a lofty mission for these people, something to unite them behind me."

"We already have a goal," Holly reminded him. "We're going to explore Saturn and its moons."

Eberly made a disappointed grumble. "That's a goal for the scientists. What about the rest of us?"

She shrugged. "There's the rings. They're pretty spectacular. Maybe we could make entertainment videos
—
" Suddenly Holly's eyes flashed wide and her mouth dropped open.

"What is it?" Eberly asked.

"The rings," she said. "They're made of ice. Water ice."

He frowned, uncomprehending.

"Water's valuable, isn't it? Miners in the Asteroid Belt get as much for water ice as they do for gold, don't they? More, even."

"Water ice," Eberly murmured.

"The rings are made of it."

"We could sell it, yes. We could be rich on it!"

"If Dr. Urbain gives permission to mine the rings."

"Urbain," Eberly growled. "That academic."

"But he's in charge
—
"

"Not once we get a new constitution in place."

"Oh," said Holly. "I click."

Eberly raised a warning finger. "Not a word about this to anyone, Holly. I don't want to get Urbain broiling before we're ready for his resistance."

"I'll keep quieter than a tomb."

"Good. We both have a lot of work ahead of us, Holly."

She nodded.

"While you are running the contests," he said, utterly serious, almost grim, "I must devote all my efforts to drawing up a constitution for the people."

"So, if you're going to be busy setting up this new constitution and everything, who's going to run the office here?"

"You will."

Holly gulped. "Me?"

He smiled at her surprise. "Of course you. Who else?"

"But I can't be in charge," she squeaked. "I'm just an assistant, a house mouse
—
"

Eberly's smile widened. "Holly, haven't you been
my
assistant? What better qualifications for the task can there be?"

She wanted to turn handsprings. "But... d'you think the prof will okay me being named director?"

His smile vanished. "Wilmot," he muttered. "No, he would definitely not approve of someone as junior as you being named director. Him and his rigid regulations."

Holly watched his face, waiting for a ray of hope.

"I want you to head this office, Holly," he said. "You can do the work, I know you can."

"I'd do my warping best."

"Of course you will. But since I can't officially name you director, I must place someone else in the acting director's position. A figurehead. To placate Wilmot."

"Figurehead? Who?"

"Ruth Morgenthau will fill the role nicely. She's working in the administrative services office at present. I can transfer her here and Wilmot won't blink an eye."

Morgenthau, Holly thought. So that's why he's been spending so much time with her.

"She's rather lazy, you know," he said, grinning naughtily. "And rather vain. We'll let her sit at this desk and stay out of your way. You will run the department."

"She would do that?"

Nodding, he replied, "She'd leap at the chance. More prestige, less work. She'll love it."

"I click." Holly tried to grin back at him, but it was forced.

He reached across the desk and lifted her chin so he could stare into her eyes. "It all depends on you, Holly. Will you take on this responsibility? Will you do this for me?"

Holly felt a rush of emotions surge through her: gratitude, loyalty, a longing to please Malcolm Eberly, a yearning to have him love her.

"Yes," she said breathlessly. "I'll do anything for you, Malcolm."

He smiled dazzlingly. And thought, This ought to make Morgenthau happy: the trappings of authority, a whole department to lord it over. It should keep her busy enough to stay out of my way.