Labyrinth of Night (25 page)

‘So your…’ Nash was careful with his words ‘…employers asked you to return to Cydonia Base and find out what L’Enfant is doing.’

Sasaki didn’t fall for the bait. ‘Yes. Very much the same as your own assignment. Of course, I’m only supposed to be escorting the MRV to Cydonia. After I’m through, I am to return to Arsia Station to take up my new position as senior astrophysicist.’ She shrugged a little. ‘My report may be redundant to your own, but at least we’ll be able to verify each other’s accounts.’

‘We might.’ Nash mulled it over for a moment as he leaned against a stack of crates. ‘But if your people knew about what my people were doing, why didn’t they simply get in touch with Skycorp? We seem to have the same goals, and it might have saved a long trip for one or the other of us.’

Her furtive smile reappeared again. ‘For a very good and simple reason, Mr Nash…’

He grinned back at her. ‘C’mon, Miho. Call me August.’

‘Certainly, August.’ Absolutely immune to his charm. Miho turned again to the hatch. ‘The reason why we didn’t contact you earlier is because we don’t trust you.’

As she undogged the hatch and pulled it open, the glanced over her shoulder at him. ‘Please, though, don’t hold it against my country. I don’t trust you either.’

Then she left the cargo bay, shutting the hatch behind her. Nash let out his breath as he watched her go.

For the life of him, he couldn’t tell whether or not she was joking.

W
ITHIN AN HOUR
of their departure from Arsia Station, the
Akron
entered the crater fields of the Lunae Planum. From the windows, they could see long, meandering channels leading south toward the Valles Marineris, carved by long-extinct rivers in the ancient eras when the Martian atmosphere had been more dense and the planet had free-flowing water. Boggs deliberately kept their airspeed below seventy knots to conserve fuel; when he wasn’t in the gondola with his hands on the yoke, he set the autopilot so that the altitude remained constant at one thousand feet, taking best advantage of the wind.

Sunset of the first day of the journey occurred while they were still over the Lunae Planum; all three of them gathered in the control cab to watch as the sun set in the western horizon off their port side. Boggs slipped an old bluegrass CD into his jury-rigged deck, and they listened in silence as Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs ushered out the end of the day on an alien world far from Nashville. Night on Mars was as dark and deep as the night in Antarctica: the pitch-black sky broken only by starlight, the distant ground a sullen, featureless mass without form or depth. Miho microwaved their tasteless meal in the galley, and after they ate—with little more than polite conversation between the three of them—she went to sleep in her curtained bunk while Boggs and Nash took four-hour shifts on watch in the flight deck.

Daybreak found them high above the south-west edge of the Chryse Planitia. The terrain had transformed itself overnight, abruptly changing from craters and dead river channels to a vast plain of drifting dunes and wind-scored boulders and rocks. Shortly before noon, Boggs summoned Nash to the flight deck and pointed out a metallic glint on the surface, glittering like a bit of silver in a dark red sandbox: the Viking 1 lander, periodically buried under the sand and uncovered again by recurrent dust storms since its touchdown in 1976. The old NASA probe gradually receded from view and then Boggs announced that they were now halfway to Cydonia Base.

An hour later, upon Boggs’ request, Nash donned a skinsuit, cycled through the main airlock, and climbed through the over- head hatch into the airship’s envelope for a midflight inspection. It was like entering a mammoth, girdered cavern; a narrow catwalk led through the skeleton’s polycarbon rings, taking him past the immense translucent bags of the hydrogen gas cells. Fiberoptic lights along the catwalk lent a dim glow to the airship’s vast interior.

This was a land of giants; everything here was on a larger-than-life scale, dwarfing him like a toy play-figure captured in an adult’s room. Nash had to hold tight to the handrails as he toured the vast core of the airship, feeling it sway back and forth with each breeze. He went all the way to the stern of the ship, found the aft maintenance hatch and reconfirmed that it was shut tight by the Arsia ground crew, then he began to make his way forward again, the bright circle of light from his helmet lamp dancing across the inner skin as he searched for pinhole leaks.

He located one in the mid-aft section, caused by a windborne bit of gravel, and scaled it with a foam dispenser which Boggs had given him. He then scaled a long ladder to an upper gangway near the top of the airship. No more holes here; but instead he found the crow’s-nest: a tiny, seldom-used observation blister on the
Akron’s
upper fuselage.

Nash climbed up a short ladder into the tiny compartment and involuntarily sucked in his breath. It was as if he had been hiking a mountainside, surrounded by the forest, until he had passed the treeline and abruptly found himself at the summit. Through the Plexiglas dome, in front of and behind him, the hull of the
Akron
stretched out as a giant gridwork, rendered metallic-black by the solarvoltaic cells which covered the airship’s topmost outer skin. All around the ship, he could view the Martian desert, the scarlet barrens stretching out as far as the eye could see.

Directly in front of him, past the tapering prow, lay the great curve of the north-west horizon. Somewhere beyond that horizon, on the other side of this hellish and beautiful terrain, was Cydonia Base…

And L’Enfant.

He gazed into the north-west for a time, then climbed back out of the blister, secured the hatch, and began to make his way down to the cab.

Shortly after lunch, Boggs returned to his customary post in the flight deck; Nash was seated behind the little fold-down wardroom table, gazing out of a window at the dunefields, and Sasaki was disposing of the last of the paper trays when she spoke up.

‘Why did they send you after L’Enfant?’ she asked.

The question was almost innocuous, phrased as if she’d asked him whether he was married, or what was his favorite movie. It took Nash by surprise, though; Sasaki had said little to him since yesterday’s brief conversation in the cargo hold, and even less than that to Boggs. He looked at her where she was standing in the galley with her back turned toward him.

‘Pardon me?’ he asked.

She didn’t bother to repeat the question, nor did she turn to face him. ‘According to your dossier, you were aboard the USS
Boston
when L’Enfant was in command. Isn’t it reckless for your company to be sending an operative who might be recognized by his target?’

God, how much did this woman know about him? On the other hand, any good intelligence agency kept tabs on everyone else’s known agents; unwittingly, Sasaki had proven his hypothesis that she was working for JETRO. Nash rubbed a napkin across his mouth to disguise his grin.

‘I wouldn’t exactly call him a target,’ he said. ‘That implies that we’ve picked him for assassination. I prefer the term “opposition.”’

‘Forgive my choice of words,’ she replied stiffly. She wiped down the counter, then opened the microwave to polish the inside. ‘Yet the question remains. If you were a crewman aboard the
Boston,
why would you be sent, considering the chances that you could be recognized by L’Enfant?’

Nash shrugged. ‘Fair question…but let’s play on equal terms for a change.’ She looked quizzically over her shoulder at him, but said nothing. ‘That is, instead of my giving you all the answers and you avoiding my questions, why don’t you be a bit more open with me for a change. A little more cooperative. Okay?’

Miho looked away; for a few moments, Nash was certain that he had lost her again. Sasaki was a tough lady, he had to admit. She was capable of building fortifications around herself that no one could breach, raising and lowering the drawbridge at will. Even if she was not a professional agent, she was astute enough to have mastered one of the cardinal tricks of the trade: the ability to get others to talk while revealing only as much information about herself as she chose to give. And now, she might clam up permanently…

Instead, she picked up the coffee pot and walked back to the table, stopping to refill Nash’s mug before sitting down across from him. ‘Fair enough,’ she said haltingly. ‘We seem to be sharing the same general objectives, so there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be…cooperative with each other.’

She paused, then added with frost in her voice, ‘At least in professional matters.’

Nash looked at her closely; she met his eyes with aloof composure. ‘Don’t take offense,’ he said softly, ‘but what you just said…the way you said it…makes it sound like you think I’m out to seduce you.’

She blushed and looked away, but for a second her enigmatic smile returned. ‘Isn’t espionage a form of seduction?’ she asked.

‘You’re dodging again.’ Nash traced the rim of the hot mug with his fingertip. ‘Look, Miho, let’s get one thing straight. I’m no James Bond and you’re definitely no Mata Hari. You’re a very lovely woman, but I’m here strictly on business, and that doesn’t include trying to get you into bed, even if I was so inclined.’

Her eyes remained locked on the window, yet she seemed to thaw slightly. ‘You don’t mean that.’

He didn’t allow his own gaze to waver. ‘Yes, I mean that, so come off it already. It’s getting in the way.’ He let out his breath, and added, ‘Besides, it’s beginning to piss me off.’

Sasaki looked back at him again, then ducked her head in embarrassment; her long black hair swept forward, veiling her face. He heard her murmur something; it was unintelligible and in Japanese, but it sounded like an apology. When she raised her head again, he was surprised to see a smile which didn’t vanish immediately.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I understand. It’s just that…’

She stopped, then went on, choosing her words carefully as her expression became serious again. ‘It’s just that Japanese women have had to endure much sexism,’ she continued, ‘even more so than Western women. There’s an unspoken assumption among my countrymen that, if you’re thirty-two years old, have a doctorate in astrophysics, and have been assigned to Mars as a member of a scientific investigation, you must have slept with a few men to get there. It’s built upon centuries of traditional prejudices which have yet to completely die, and I’ve had to deal with that assumption throughout my career. After a time, you begin to assume that every man who asks you to cooperate…’

‘And if he’s a spy…’

Sasaki grinned sheepishly. ‘Yes. Especially if he’s an American spy…’

‘Then he’s using double-talk for something else on his mind,’ Nash finished. Sasaki blushed again, but this time she didn’t hide her face. ‘And then there’s the tension between you and Boggs. An old affair, I guess.’

Her eyes widened in alarm and shock. ‘Did he tell you?’ she demanded. Her voice was an urgent whisper, despite the masking throb of the airship engines, and she glanced over his shoulder at the passageway leading to the open hatch of the gondola.

‘No…and he didn’t need to. To quote one of our great Americans, John Dillinger, “I may be dumb, but I ain’t stupid”.’ He didn’t add that she herself had just confirmed his suspicions. He also had to reconsider his evaluation of her; Sasaki was good at keeping secrets, but she was no pro. ‘There was once something between you two. A blind man could see that.’

Sasaki hesitated, then slowly nodded her head. ‘My last tour at Cydonia Base…and it didn’t last longer than one night spent together. I thought I had put it behind me when I left.’

‘But then you come back,’ Nash surmised, ‘and look who’s waiting for you at Arsia Station.’ She winced and nodded again. ‘Well, it’s none of my business, but you’re going to have to put those feelings away. We’re entering into some dangerous business here and the three of us are going to have to depend on each other. If you want to slap him and me both, wait until after we’ve left Cydonia…but you’re going to have to trust both of us until then.’

He grinned and shook his head. ‘Believe me, Miho, you could throw yourself nude into my bunk tonight and I still wouldn’t do a thing about it. All that testosterone just fogs the brain.’

Miho gave another quick, shy smile. Composing herself, she straightened in her seat and poured coffee into her own mug. ‘Yes,’ she replied, all her former coolness having returned, ‘but I think you’re the one who is avoiding questions now.’

Nash picked up his coffee and took a sip. Unlike the brew on the
Lowell,
at least Sasaki’s coffee didn’t taste like caffeine-enriched motor oil. ‘There were ninety-eight men and women aboard the
Boston
,’ he said, ‘and most of them did little more than swab decks and polish bulkheads…myself included. For a year after I got off the boat I didn’t want to even look at a mop. I was an enlisted man, not an officer, nor did I ever visit officer country. I was just another swabbie barely out of my teens and that’s about it…and that was almost two decades ago. The company compared photos of me when I was in the service and recent pictures, and decided that the chances of L’Enfant recognizing me under another name were less than one in a hundred.’

He rubbed at his new beard. ‘And that’s even without the face hair, of course, Exodermic pseudoskin-grafts were briefly considered…I’ve worn ’em before…but those last only a little while before they begin to peel off. The company doctors determined that they wouldn’t have survived biostasis, and no one thought it was necessary for me to go through permanent plastic surgery. In any case, they don’t think he’ll pick up on me. We’re only going to be there for a few days.’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘But that’s only half an answer. Why did they pick you for this assignment?’

‘Well, I went into the Navy airship corps after I left sub duty, so as far as establishing a workable cover, it…’

‘I know that already. You’re still not answering the question.’

It was now Nash’s turn to be reticent. He played with the mug as he cast his gaze out the window, watching the ancient stones of Mars as they drifted past. ‘Because,’ he said at last, ‘I was on the
Boston
the night the
Takada Maru
was torpedoed.’