Icehenge (3 page)

The arguments began quite soon after those first weeks. We were an arrogant pair and didn't know any better. For a long time I didn't even realize that our disagreements were particularly serious, for I couldn't imagine anyone arguing with
me
for very long. (Yes, I was that self-important.) But Oleg Davydov did. I can't remember much of what we argued about—that period of time, unlike the beginning, is a convenient blur in my memory. One time I do remember (of course the rest could be called up as well): I had come into Burroughs on the late train, and we were out eating in a Greek restaurant behind the train station. I was tired, and nervous about our relationship, and sick of Hellas. Hoping to compliment him, I made some comment about how much more fun it would be to be an asteroid miner like he was.

“We aren't doing anything out there,” he said in response. “Just making money for the corporations—making a few people on Earth rich, while everything else down there falls apart.”

“Well, at least you're out there exploring,” I said.

He looked annoyed, an expression I was becoming familiar with. “But we aren't, that's what I'm saying. With our capabilities we could be exploring the whole solar system. We could have stations on the Jovian moons, around Saturn, all the way out to Pluto. We
need
a solar watch station on Pluto.”

“I wasn't aware of that fact,” I said sarcastically.

His pale blue eyes pierced me. “Of course you weren't. You think it's perfectly all right to continue making money from those stupid asteroids, and nothing more, here at the end of the twenty-second century.”

“Well?” I said, annoyed myself by this time. “We're all going to live for a thousand years, so what's your rush? There's time for all of your great projects. Right now we need those asteroids.”

“The corporations need them. And the Committee.”

“The Committee's just organizing all of our efforts for our own good,” I said.

“They just make the trains run on time, eh?” he said, taking a deep swallow from his drink.

“Yes,” I said, not understanding what he meant. “Yes, they do.”

He shook his head with disgust. “You're an all-American girl, all right. Everything is
oh kay.
Leave the politics to the others.”

“And you are a true Soviet,” I retorted, struggling away from him in our dining booth. “Blaming your problems on the government.…”

And we went on from there, senselessly and for no reason but pride and hurt feelings. I remember him making a grim prediction: “They will make a happy American Kremlin up here, and you won't care, as long as your job is secure.” But most of what we said was less logical than that.

And a long, miserable week later, a blur of bitter fights, one of those times when you have ruined a relationship though you don't know how, and wish desperately that time could be reversed and the unknown mistake undone, he left. The Soviet mining people wanted him in space again and he just left, without saying goodbye, though I called his dorm again and again in those last few days. And then I knew—I learned it, in the course of long black walks over the broad basin, standing alone on that rocky plain—that I could be spurned. It was a hard lesson.

In a few years I was out among the asteroids myself, working for Royal Dutch. I heard stories about Davydov getting in trouble with the Soviet mining command, but I didn't pay much attention. It was a matter of pride to ignore anything I heard about him. So I never got the full story of what had happened to him.

Then, many years later—just three years before this mutiny, in fact—the
Hidalgo
disappeared out in the Trojans, breaking radio contact with the famous last words, “Now wait just a minute.” No wreckage was ever found, the matter was hushed up by the Committee censors, and no explanation was ever offered. Looking over the list of crew members I saw his name at the top—
Oleg Davydov
—and the pain flooded through me again, worse than ever before. It was one of the worst moments of my life. We had parted in anger, he had left me without even saying good-bye, and now, no matter how many years the gerontologists gave me, I would never be able to change those facts, for he was dead. It was very sad.

… Thus, when Eric Swann came to take me across to the
Hidalgo,
to see Davydov again, I did not know exactly what I felt. My heart beat rapidly, I had to strain to make casual, terse conversation with Eric. What would he look like? What would I say to him, or him to me? I didn't have the slightest idea.

Well, he looked very much like he had sixty years before. Perhaps a little heavier, bearlike with his dark hair, his broad shoulders and chest and rump. His ice-blue eyes surveyed me without any visible sign of recognition.

We were on the empty bridge of the
Hidalgo.
At a nod from Davydov, Eric had slipped away down the jump tube. In the breathy vented silence I walked around the bridge slowly, my velcro slippers making little
rip rip rip
noises. My pulse was fast. I discovered that I was still angry with him. And I felt that he had personally deceived me with the news of his death. Or perhaps it was the mutiny.…

“You look much the same,” he said. The sound of his voice triggered a hundred memories. I looked at him without replying. Finally he said, with a stiff, slight smile, “Has Eric apologized for our kidnapping of you?”

I shook my head.

“I am sorry we shocked you. I hear you fought hard against the takeover. Eric probably explained that we kept you ignorant for your own protection.”

So smooth, he was. It just made me mad. He squinted at me, trying to gauge my mood. Hard without a voice.

“The truth of the matter is,” he went on, “the success of all the MSA's years of effort depends on the creation of a fully closed life-support system in the starship. I believe our scientists will be able to do it, but Swann has always said your ability with BLS systems is extraordinary, and our scientists agree that you are the best. And they tell me we need your help.”

Did he think I would still be vain? “You're not—” I cleared my throat. “You're not going to get it.”

He stared at me, calm and bemused. “You still support the Committee? Even though they have jailed your father on Amor, isn't that true?”

“Yes,” I said. “But the Committee doesn't have anything to do with this.”

“That is the equivalent of saying you still support them. But enough of that. We need your help. Why won't you help us?”

After I didn't reply, he began to stride back and forth,
rip rip rip.
“You know,” he said with a nervous glance, “what happened between us occurred a long time ago. We were both children then—”

“We were
not
children,” I broke in. “We were free adults, on our own. We were just as responsible for our actions then as we are now.”

“All right,” he said, pushing a hand through his hair. “You're right. We were not children, admittedly.” This was turning out to be more difficult than he had expected. “But it was a long time ago.”

“This has nothing to do with that time, anyway.”

He looked confused. “Then why won't you help?”

“Because what you are attempting is impossible,” I cried. “This is all a monstrous fantasy of yours. You're ignoring the hard cold realities of deep space and leading people to a miserable death out there, all because of some boyish notion of adventure that you've been nursing all these years—for so long that you can't distinguish between fantasy and reality anymore!” I stopped, surprised by my vehemence. Davydov was wide-eyed.

“It's not my idea alone,” he said weakly. “Every member of the MSA believes it is possible.”

“There have been mass delusions larger than this,” I said, “following a fanatic leader.”

His eyes glittered angrily. (This effect is the result, I believe, of tensing the forehead muscles, thus shifting the layer of water over the eyes.) “I am no fanatic. We started as a group without a leader. I was made leader by the Committee when they tried to destroy us—they wanted to say it was a single person's doing. Like you do. When we reorganized, I was the one everyone knew about. But there are other leaders—”

“You started the reorganization, right?” Somehow I knew this was true. “Started up your little secret society, invented the handshake—”

“The fact that we had to work in secret,” he said loudly, and then lowered his voice, “is incidental. A political reality, a fact of our time and place. A lot of work had to be done that the Committee didn't want done. They wouldn't support us, but that doesn't make the project bad! We're free of political motives, we are an act of cooperation between Soviets and Americans—we try to take humanity to permanent homes outside the solar system, while we still can.”

He stopped for breath, staring at me with his swarthy jaws bunched. “Now you”—pointing at me—“completely ignorant of all this, call me a fanatic. Leading fools in a fantasy world.” He looked away, out the wide bridge window. “I could have told Swann you would react like this.”

My face burned. There we were, exactly as we had left off sixty years before. Furiously I said, “You kidnap me, put my future in great danger, and then call me a fool because I don't fall in with your fantastic schemes. Well you aren't going to get my help, Oleg Davydov, you and your secret club.” I moved to the jump tube. “Just tell me when we can take
Rust Eagle
back to Mars. Until then I'll be in my room.”

Crossing back over to our ship, Eric didn't dare say a word to me. Once on
Rust Eagle
I left him and went to my room, hit the desk and nearly cracked my skull on the ceiling. I hate no-gee. I went to the centrifuge and ran, ignoring my complaining knee. Then I went back to my little room to brood and imagine crushing rejoinders to Davydov. Why do all the best lines come to you when the argument is over? What I should have said was … I know, I know. Only serious brooding will hatch those real crushers.

But why had I fought with him at all, when he was asking for my help?

*   *   *

Later that day Andrew Duggins told me that the people who were not members of the MSA were getting together in the lounge down the hall. I went to see who they were. There were fourteen of us. Among them were Ethel Jurgenson, Amy Van Danke, Al Nordhoff, Sandra Starr, Yuri Kopanev, and Olga Dzindzhik. The others had faces I knew but couldn't put names to. We sat about exchanging our experiences during the rendezvous; everyone had been arrested, and most only released a few hours before. After these stories were exchanged we began to discuss possible courses of action, and the bickering began.

I told them what I knew, keeping to myself only the fact that I had been asked for help.

More discussion and arguing.

“We have to find out if there were any prisoners on
Lermontov.
”

“Or
Hidalgo.
” I thought about that—prisoners for three years.

“We have to act,” Duggins said. “We could organize another attack on the radio room. Take it over and put out a call to Mars or Ceres.”

“We could slip out of the ship,” Al put in. “Patch a radio onto the high gain antenna.…”

“They're probably listening to us right now,” Yuri said, and Olga nodded. In the Soviet sector they're used to such practices—or perhaps I should say they are more aware of them.

Anyway, the conversation was killed for a while. We stared at each other. It was a strange situation: prisoners of our shipmates, on what had been our ship. The talk resumed, quieter than before, until disagreements about what to do brought the volume back up. “I don't care if they steal the Committee blind,” Yuri said, “and I certainly wouldn't risk myself to stop them.”

“What do you think we should do, Weil?” asked Andrew, refusing to look at Yuri. He seemed annoyed at my lack of involvement.

“I think we should sit tight, take
Rust Eagle
back to Mars when they let us, and then tell the authorities what we know. To try to stop them here just puts us in danger.”

Andrew didn't like that either. “We should fight! Sitting here passively would be helping them, and the Committee will know it.” He squinted at me suspiciously. “You're close friends with Swann, aren't you? Didn't he ever tell you what was going on?”

“No,” I said, feeling myself blush. They all watched me.

“You're telling us he just let you walk into this situation without any kind of warning or anything?” Duggins said.

“That's right,” I snapped. “You saw me in the radio room, Duggins. I was as surprised as anyone by the mutiny.”

But Duggins was unconvinced, and the rest of them looked skeptical as well. They all knew Swann was a considerate person, and it didn't make sense to them that he would have deceived a good friend so. There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Duggins stood up. “I'll talk to some of you another time,” he said, and left the lounge. Suddenly angry, I left too. Looking back at the confused, suspicious people in the lounge, grouped in a disconsolate circle with their colored drink bulbs floating around them, I thought, They look scared.

When I got back to my room, two people were moving into it. A Nadezhda Malkiv, and a Marie-Anne Kotovskaya—both BLSS engineers, both members of the Soviet branch of the MSA. The other two ships were being emptied so that they could be worked on freely, they told me. Nadezhda was 124 years old, a specialist in the gas exchange; Marie-Anne was 108, a biologist whose study was the algae and bacteria in the waste recycling system. They were both from
Lermontov,
which they said, had been in the asteroid belt nearly four months before the MSA took over, broke radio contact with Mars, and circled around to the rendezvous behind the sun.