The Callisto Gambit (18 page)

“How did
you
make your money?” Michael said.

“I used to work for the UN.”

“Really?”

“I suppose I can’t blame you for not recognizing me. I was the executive director of the Space Corps. Two years on the President’s Advisory Council. Then I lost my job and came out here to mooch off Qusantin.”

The Meal Wizard trilled. Dr. Hasselblatter took out a plate of multicolored blobs on fake leaves and sat down next to Michael.

“Goodbye and good riddance to all this!” He flipped a dismissive hand at the screen on the wall of the dining-room. It was displaying the same old vista of frozen granola. “This damn war—all the fault of the UN, of course … The outlook is very bad, Michael.
Very
bad.”

Michael shrugged. Junior, moving one headphone aside, said, “They’re sending ground troops to Stickney!”

“Yes,” his father said. “Hard to believe it’s come to this. Star Force is actually planning an invasion of Mars!”

“That sounds like we’re winning,” Michael said.

“The opposite. Precisely the opposite. It’s a desperate gamble calculated to make people think we’re winning. In fact it’s a sign that we’re losing.” Dr. Hasselblatter picked a leaf out of his salad and grimaced at it. “This is
not
arugula.”

Michael laughed. “What were you expecting?”

“Precisely. What was I expecting? What was
anyone
expecting? The PLAN is a planetary war machine. We are a peace-loving society with a space-based manufacturing sector that’s already been shot to crap. We’re going to run out of resources before the PLAN does. Sending a few brave men and women to die on Mars won’t change that. All it will do is add a patina of glory to—”

“The EXTINCTION of HUMANITY!” Junior yelped, and went back to his vid. Michael could hear pew-pew-pew noises coming from his headphones.

“Yes,” Dr. Hasselblatter gloomily. “Humanity needs a fresh start. Far away from the mess we’ve made of this solar system.”

This was reassuring to hear. Michael had wondered recently if some of the people who held power on the
Salvation
were really, truly, sincerely committed to their journey to Planet X.

“I don’t think Brian really wants to go,” he said, deciding to trust Dr. Hasselblatter. “I heard him saying Planet X is too far away. He wants to go to Eris instead.”

“Yes, there is a strong Eris faction,” Dr. Hasselblatter said. “Qusantin considered it at first. But now that Brian’s come out in favor, he’s decided it’s a trap.” He filled his mouth with fake quinoa and goat cheese.

“A trap?”

“He thinks the ISA is waiting for him there.”

Michael blinked. He remembered the day he’d arrived on board the
Salvation.
Brian O’Shaughnessy himself had accused him and the Haddock gang of being ISA plants.

Unable to disentangle the apparent contradiction, he said, “Well, the real problem with Eris is its eccentric orbit. It’s only 38 AUs from the sun at perihelion! That’s closer than Pluto! The PLAN could easily get us there.”

Dr. Hasselblatter smiled fondly at him, and for a minute Michael was struck by his resemblance to the boss. “You Propulsion types.”

Michael sat back. “Well, I don’t think there are any ISA agents on Eris,” he said.

“Of course there are no goddamn ISA agents on Eris. There’s
nothing
on Eris except a few UNSA rovers chewing ice. But the boss thinks Brian is an ISA agent himself.”

“No!”

“Yes. He’s afraid if we set our trajectory for Eris, Brian and his friends will take over the ship en route.”

“The Catholic mafia,” Michael muttered.

Dr. Hasselblatter laughed out loud. “Where did you hear that?”

“My dad. He thinks the Catholics on Ceres are a cabal.”

“That’s quite funny. Come to think of it, they all are Catholic, aren’t they? O’Shaughnessy, Antoniak, Lynch, D’Souza … Ajakaye … Williams … no, she’s a Mormon. But the rest are Papists.” Dr. Hasselblatter plucked a real linen napkin out of the holder on the table and blotted his lips. “All except me,” he said, and drank something from a pouch.

Michael tasted blood again. He was so tense, he’d bitten his lip once more. “I don’t understand.”

“There’s only one thing you need to understand.” Dr. Hasselblatter stared straight at him. His face was a thinner, weaker copy of the boss’s, his stare a version of the boss’s gaze on twilight setting. “My brother has begun to see ISA agents behind every tree.”

“There aren’t any trees …”

“Figure of speech! He’s always been the paranoid type. Witness his decision to move to Planet X. But now it’s getting out of control. Do you remember when he had that woman from Life Support executed?”

Michael nodded wordlessly. Brian’s boys had pushed the woman out of an airlock last week, in full view of dozens of people, for stealing. Everybody had cheered.

“It wasn’t for stealing. It was because Qusantin decided she was an ISA agent. Of course she wasn’t. But that brought clarity to many minds. The
Salvation’s
management structure needs to change.”

“Are … are you going to fire
the boss?”

“If only it were that easy.”

“Are you going to …
kill
him?”

Dr. Hasselblatter shuddered. “He’s my
brother!
I will not
allow anyone to hurt him.” Michael smiled gratefully. “But I’m afraid they will try to hurt him, unless he addresses these concerns about … er, himself. In short, an intervention is needed. And that’s why I’m here in this stupid ship, waiting for him to come strolling across the ice fields.”

“I wish you the best of luck, Doctor,” said the
Angel.

“Thank you,” Dr. Hasselblatter said.

Michael looked up at the ceiling. Surely the
Angel
would tell the boss about this conspiracy?

As if reading his troubled gaze, the
Angel
said, “I belonged to Abdullah before I was Qusantin’s. In fact, all of the bots in Qusantin’s former harem were Abdullah’s first.”

“Ahem,” Dr. Hasselblatter said. “No need to dig up ancient history.”

“He
is,” the
Angel
said, but she didn’t interrupt again.

“As I was saying,” Dr. Hasselblatter resumed. “When he calls us to pick him up, I’ll talk to him. I’ll lay it all out: how he’s lost the trust of his inner circle, how unlikely it is that he will reach Planet X without being murdered. I’ll urge him to get a grip. Stop suspecting everyone. And so on and so forth. I’ll flatter him with reminders that the vast majority of people on board love him. That’s true, by the way. They signed up for
him,
not Planet X. He’s a visionary, nobody can deny it. This whole mission, potentially humanity’s last chance to survive, is his brainchild! That’s what I’ll say. Carrots, you see, lots of carrots … and a stick.” Dr. Hasselblatter leaned towards Michael. Now Michael could see how this man had once been a world-class politician. He had a persuasive way all his own. “If he doesn’t agree to shape up, we will leave him.”

“Leave him?”

“Here.”

“You can’t do that!”

“Oh yes, we can … with your help, Michael.”

Michael gripped the arms of his chair in white-knuckled hands. “He put me in command of the
Angel.
She won’t leave him here unless
I
tell her to.”

“Correct. And now you know why he chose you for this job.”

“Why?”

“Because you—a ten-year-old boy—are the only person out of six thousand he still trusts.” Dr. Hasselblatter slumped in his chair. He pushed his salad away. “It’s so damn sad.”

Michael smelt the quinoa. His stomach rumbled. “I think I’ll have something to eat, after all.” He stood up. “Oh, by the way?” His voice shook. “I’m not leaving here without the boss.”

“Only if he refuses …” Dr. Hasselblatter started.

Junior pulled off his headphones. He yelled at Michael, “You have to do what my dad says!”

“No, I don’t. Your dad isn’t the boss!”

“Poopy head!!” Junior yelled.

Michael leaned on the Meal Wizard. He appealed to Dr. Hasselblatter, “Could you please tell your son not to be so childish?”

“He is a child, Michael. And so are you. I’m so very sorry no one has ever let you be one.”

Kiyoshi stood on the observation deck of the Spires View Visitor Center, eating a sandwich in a pouch. At 120 meters, the observation deck was high enough to have had a view of the ice spires over the horizon, if it hadn’t been dark. The blazing lights on the support and recycling facilities around the visitor center blotted out the stars. He could see nothing beyond the immediate area.

He wasn’t interested in the ice spires, anyway. He had his retinal implants on maximum zoom. He was watching tourists disembark from the all-terrain bus that had just pulled up in front of the visitor center.

Their EVA suits bore glow-in-the-dark slogans:
Here today, Ceres tomorrow …My friend went to Ganymede and all I got was this lousy spacesuit.
Kiyoshi got a chuckle out of that one. A couple of people carried babies in their own infant-sized spacesuits. Camera bots the size of pigeons perched on their shoulders, or hopped behind them, vidding the whole adventure. These were real tourists. They’d probably planned their Jovian tour years ago. Then a war had come along and sucked the fun out of it all.

Crosshairs darted over the tourists, projected on Kiyoshi’s retinal implants. He’d downloaded the needlegun’s synching app earlier, in the privacy of his hotel room.

Where IS he?

Just as he was about to give up, one more passenger got out of the bus.

Kiyoshi’s fist spasmed on his sandwich-in-a-pouch. Fake cheese squirted out and splattered the glass. He didn’t even need the zoom function to know he was looking at the boss. Those gorilla shoulders, the way he carried his head thrust forward, ready to pick a fight … Unfamiliar EVA suit. A baggy silver rental. Wouldn’t want to have
SALVATION
splashed on your back, down here. But it was definitely him. He was carrying an unfamiliar case, a long handle sticking out.

Kiyoshi strode quickly towards the elevator.

The pressurized capsule descended smoothly from the observation deck to the hotel. The Spires View resembled the Eiffel Tower with a plate balanced on top. Kiyoshi had a room on the fifth floor. You had to take a room as part of any tour package. The train only made one round trip a day, making an overnight stay inevitable. Anyway, most people who came this far went on two or more viewing trips, to see all the most famous individual spires. There were three separate bus routes.

Kiyoshi hurried to his room and locked the door. He was in a fix. He couldn’t do anything here at the visitor center. Too many innocent tourists in the splatter zone.

He had to catch the boss-man alone. But how? Where?

He wished he had access to the Spires View’s surveillance cameras. Jun could have gotten in there in a few seconds ...

But he knew there
were
cameras, and that was enough to rule out the hotel and the observation deck.

So, do it tomorrow,
he thought.
On the train. Or on the way to the station.
There was a half-klick walk to the train station, winding between cunningly illuminated baby ice spires, a preview of what you could expect to see later. When Kiyoshi arrived this afternoon, people getting off the train had straggled along the path, often out of sight of one another.

He spent the evening cooped up in his room. He ordered a lavish meal from room service. Surveying the tasty spread, he felt like a condemned prisoner about to enjoy his last meal … except that
he
wasn’t the one who was going to die.

Morning, local time, brought a notification that Callisto’s night was almost at an end. In another 18 hours, the moon’s eight-sol day would begin. “So if you were thinking about heading home today, stick around!” the chirpy message concluded. “The ice spires are impressive at night, but by daylight, they’re out of this world!”

Kiyoshi got up—he’d hardly slept—and put on his EVA suit over a freshly laundered liner. His clothes went in his rucksack, the needlegun on top, easily accessible.

Kill the boss.

Then
get in touch with Brian and Zygmunt. Tell them the suicide mission was off.

The
Salvation
was the boss-man, the boss-man was the
Salvation.
With him gone, it would all fall apart.

Brian could have the ship, if he wanted. Make a run for Eris or wherever. But people didn’t trust him like they trusted the boss. Kiyoshi figured most of the former residents of 99984 Ravilious would opt to get off here … including the Galapajin.

Just gotta do this.

He headed out into the corridor.

The hotel had a central atrium five storeys deep. Kiyoshi peered down from the mezzanine level into the foyer. A group of people was assembling in front of the reception desk.

“West Spires group over
here!
South Spires group over
there!”
a tour guide trilled, waving her arms.

The group parted into two.

Among the tourists joining the South Spires group, Kiyoshi spotted the boss-man.

He was going out on
another
tour!

Kiyoshi changed his plan on the spur of the instant. He ran downstairs, taking each flight in a single bound, and lurked at the edge of the foyer.

By a stroke of good luck, the South Spires group shuffled into the airlock first.

Kiyoshi strolled up to the West Spires group and gave the tour guide his best melting smile. “Is it too late to join this tour?”

“Oh, not at all, if you’re … yes, you’re all suited up! Come on!” She made a big beckoning gesture. “Helmets on, everyone! Ask your neighbor to check your seals!”

★

Despite everything else preying on his mind, Kiyoshi had the same reaction to the ice spires as the other tourists: drop-jawed wonder.

Whereas the rest of Callisto was merely flat or lumpy, these mountains of ice reared from the cratered plain like alien sculptures.

Humans had installed floodlights at the feet of the most impressive spires, so that even in the blackness of Callisto’s night, they gleamed like pearl. Humped, hooked, or curved like the fossilized bones of some giant beast, they invited the eye to linger on their distant summits.