Mercury (16 page)

“Victor’s the reason we’re moving ahead so rapidly,” Bracknell said.

Lara refocused her attention on the two men. “I thought you were into biology back at school,” she said.

“I still am,” Molina replied, his striking blue eyes fastened on her. He was as good-looking as ever, she thought, in an intense, urgent way. Lara remembered how, at school, Molina had pursued the best-looking women on campus. She had dated him a few times, until she met Mance. Then she stopped dating anyone else.

Before she could ask another question, the robot waiter rolled up to their table. Its flat top was a display screen that showed the evening’s menu and wine list.

“May I bring you a cocktail before you order dinner?” the robot asked, in a mellow baritone voice that bore just a hint of an upper-class British accent. “I am programmed for voice recognition. Simply state the cocktail of your choice in a clear tone.”

Lara asked for sparkling water and Bracknell did the same. Molina said, “Dry vodka martini, please.”

“Olives or a twist?” she asked the robot.

“Twist.”

The little machine pivoted neatly and rolled off toward the service bar by the kitchen.

Lara leaned slightly toward Molina. “I still don’t understand what a biologist is doing on this skytower project.”

Before Molina could reply, Bracknell answered, “Victor’s our secret weapon. He’s the one who’s allowed us to move ahead so rapidly.”

“A biologist?”

Molina’s eyes were still riveted on her. “You’ve heard of nanotechnology, haven’t you?”

“Yes. It’s banned, forbidden.”

“True enough,” he said. “But do you realize there’s nanotechnology going on inside your body at this very instant?”

“Nanotech?”

“Inside the cells of your body. The ribosomes in your cells are building proteins. And what are they other than tiny little nanomachines?”

“Oh. But that’s natural.”

“Sure it is. So is the way we build buckyball fibers.”

“With nanomachines?”

“Natural nanomachines,” Bracknell said, trying to get back into the conversation. “Viruses.”

The robot brought their drinks and, later, they selected their dinner choices from the machine’s touch screen. Molina and Bracknell explained how Molina had used genetically engineered viruses to produce buckyball molecules and engineered microbial cells to put the buckyballs together into nanotubes.

“Once we have sets of nanotubes,” Molina explained, “I turn them over to the regular engineers, and they string them together into the fibers that make up the tower.”

“And you’re allowed to do this in spite of the ban on nanotechnology?” Lara asked.

“There’s nothing illegal about it,” Molina said lightly.

“But we’re not shouting the news from the rooftops,” Bracknell added. “We want to keep this strictly under wraps.”

“It’s a new construction technique that’ll be worth billions,” Molina said, his eyes glowing. “Trillions!”

“Once we get it patented,” Bracknell added.

Lara nodded, absently taking a forkful of salad and chewing contemplatively. Natural nanotechnology, she thought. Genetically engineered viruses. There are a lot of people who’re going to get very upset when they hear about this.

“I can see why you want to keep it under wraps,” she said.

“What I really want,” Molina was saying, “is to get into astrobiology.”

“Really?” Lara felt surprised. In all the weeks she had been at Ciudad de Cielo, this was the first time he’d broached the subject with her.

She was walking with the biologist along the base city’s main street, wearing a colorful wool poncho that she’d bought from one of the street vendors that Mance allowed into town on the weekends. The wind off the mountains was cool, and it had drizzled for a half hour earlier in the morning. The thick wool poncho was just the right weight for this high-altitude weather. Molina had pulled a worn old leather jacket over his shirt and jeans.

“Astrobiology’s the hot area in biology,” he said. “That’s where a man can make a name for himself.”

“But you’re doing such marvelous things here.”

He looked over his shoulder at the skytower looming over them. Gray clouds scudded past it. With a discontented shrug, Molina said, “What I’m doing here is done. I’ve trained some bugs to make buckyball fibers for Mance. Big deal. I can’t publish my work; he’s keeping the whole process secret.”

“Only until the patent comes through.”

Molina frowned at her. “Do you have any idea of how long it takes to get an international patent? Years! And then the Skytower Corporation’ll probably want to keep the process to themselves. I could waste the best years of my career sitting around here and getting no credit for my work.”

Lara saw the impatience in his face, in his rigidly clenched fists, as they walked down the street. “So what do you intend to do?”

Molina hesitated for a heartbeat, then replied, “I’ve sent an application to several of the top astrobiology schools. It looks like Melbourne will accept me.”

“Australia?”

“Yes. They’ve just gotten a grant to search for more Martian ruins and they’re looking for people.”

“To go to Mars?”

He made a bitter smile. “Australia first, then maybe Mars. If I do well enough for them here on Earth.”

“I suppose that would be a good career move for you, Victor.”

“Ought to be. Astrobiology. The field’s wide open, with all the discoveries they’re making on the moons of Jupiter and all.”

“Then you’ll be leaving us?”

“I’ve got to!” His voice took on a pained note. “I mean, Mance won’t let me publish my work here until that fucking patent comes through. I’ll be dead meat unless I can get into an area where I can make a name for myself.”

“You and Mance work so well together, though,” Lara said. “I know he’ll be shocked when you tell him.”

“He doesn’t need me around here anymore. He’s milked my brain and gotten what he wants.”

Lara was surprised at the bitterness in his voice. “Mance will miss you,” she said.

“Will you?”

“Of course I’ll miss you, Victor.”

He licked his lips, then blurted, “Then come to Melbourne with me, Lara! Let’s get away from here together!”

Stunned, Lara staggered a few steps away from him.

“I’m in love with you, Lara. I really am. The past couple of months … it’s been so…” He hesitated, as though gasping for breath. “I want to marry you.”

He looked so forlorn, so despairing, yet at the same time so intense, so burning with urgency that Lara didn’t know what to reply, how to react.

“I’m so sorry, Victor,” she heard herself say gently. “I really am. I love Mance. You know that.”

He hung his head, mumbling, “I know. I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have told you.”

“It’s very sweet of you, Victor,” she said, trying to soften his anguish. “I’m really very flattered that you feel this way. But it can’t be.”

“I know,” he repeated. “I know.” But what he heard in her words was,
If it weren’t for Mance I could fall in love with you, Victor.

Elliott Danvers knew that the elders of the New Morality were testing him. He had sweated and struggled through divinity school, accepting the snickers and snide jokes about a punch-drunk ex-prizefighter trying to become a minister of God. He had kept his temper, even when some of his fellow students’ practical jokes turned vicious. I can’t get into a fight, he would tell himself. I’d be accused of attempted manslaughter if I hit one of them, and they know it. That’s why they feel free to torment me. And I’m not clever enough to outwit them. Be silent. Be patient with those who persecute you. Turn the other cheek. This nonsense of theirs is a small price to pay for setting my life on a better path.

He graduated near the bottom of his class, but he graduated. Danvers was a man who drove doggedly onward to complete whatever task he was burdened with. He had learned as a child in the filth-littered back alleys of Detroit that you took what came and you dealt with it, whether it was the punches of a faster, harder-hitting opponent or the thinly veiled contempt of a teacher who’d be happy to flunk you.

His reward for graduating without getting into any trouble was a ministry. He was now the Reverend Elliott Danvers, D.D. His faculty advisor congratulated him on bearing all the crosses that his playful classmates and vindictive teachers had hung on his broad shoulders.

“You’ve done well, Elliott,” said his advisor, a pleased smile on his gray, sagging face. “There were times when I didn’t think you’d make it, but you persevered and won the final victory.”

Danvers knew that his academic grades had been marginal, at best. He bowed his head humbly and murmured, “I couldn’t have made it without your help, sir. And God’s.”

His advisor laid a liver-spotted hand on Danvers’s bowed head. “My blessings on you, my son. Wherever the New Morality sends you, remember that you are doing God’s work. May He shower His grace upon you.”

“Amen,” said Danvers, with true conviction.

So they sent him to this strange, outlandish place in the mountains of Ecuador. It’s a test, Danvers kept telling himself. The elders are testing my resolve, my dedication, my ability to win converts to God.

Ciudad de Cielo was a little prefab nest of unbelievers, scientists and engineers who were at best agnostics, together with local workers and clerks who practiced a Catholic faith underlain with native superstitions and idol worship.

Worst of all, though, they were all engaged in an enormous project that smacked of blasphemy. A tower that reached into the sky. A modern, high-technology Tower of Babel. Danvers was certain it was doomed to fail. God would not permit mortal men to succeed in such a work.

Then he remembered that he had been placed here to do God’s work. If this tower is to fail, I must be the agent of its destruction. God wills it. That’s why the New Morality sent me here.

Danvers knew that his ostensible task was to take care of people’s souls. But hardly anyone wanted his help. The natives seemed quite content with their hodge-podge of tribal rituals and Catholic rites. Most of the scientists and engineers simply ignored him or regarded him as a spy sent by the New Morality to snoop on them. A few actively baited him, but their slings and barbs were nothing compared to the cruelty of his laughing classmates.

One man, though, seemed troubled enough to at least put up with him: Victor Molina, a close assistant of the chief of this tremendous project. Danvers watched him for weeks, certain that Molina was showing the classic signs of depression: moodiness, snapping at his coworkers, almost always taking his meals alone. He looked distinctly unhappy. The only time he seemed to smile was on those rare occasions when he had dinner in the restaurant with the project chief and the woman he was living with.

Living in sin, Danvers thought darkly. He himself had given up all thought of sex, except for the fiendish dreams that were sent to tempt him. No, he told himself during his waking hours. It was the desire for women and money that almost led you to your destruction in the ring. They broke your hand, they nearly destroyed your soul because of your indecent desires. Better to pluck out your eye if it offends you. Instead, Danvers used modern pharmacology to keep his libido stifled.

He approached Molina carefully, gradually, knowing that the man would reject or even ridicule an overt offer of help.

During lunchtime the city’s only restaurant offered a buffet. After thinking about it for weeks, Danvers used it as an opening ploy with Molina.

“Do you mind if I sit with you?” he asked, holding his lunch-laden tray in both hands. “I hate to eat alone.”

Molina looked up sourly, but then seemed to recognize the minister. Danvers did not use clerical garb; he wore no collar. But he always dressed in a black shirt and slacks.

“Yeah, why not?” Molina said. He was already halfway through his limp sandwich, Danvers saw.

Suppressing an urge to compliment the scientist on his gracious manners, Danvers sat down and silently, unobtrusively said grace as he began unloading his tray. They talked about inconsequential things, the weather, the status of the project, the sad plight of the refugees driven from coastal cities such as Boston by the greenhouse flooding.

“It’s their own frigging fault. They had plenty of warning,” Molina grumbled, finishing his sandwich. “Years of warning. Nobody listened.”

Danvers nodded silently. No contradictions, he told himself. You’re here to win his confidence, not to debate his convictions.

Over the next several weeks Danvers bumped into Molina often enough so that they started to be regular luncheon partners. Their conversations grew less guarded, more open.

“Astrobiology?” Danvers asked at one point. “That’s what you want to do?”

Molina grinned wickedly at him. “Does that shock you?”

“Not at all,” Danvers replied, trying to hide his uneasiness. “There’s no denying that scientists have found living organisms on other worlds.”

“Even intelligent creatures,” Molina jabbed.

“If you mean those extinct beings on Mars, they might have been connected in some way with us, mightn’t they?”

“At the cellular level, maybe. The DNA of the extant Martian microbial life is different from ours, though, even though it has a similar helical structure.”

Danvers wasn’t entirely sure of what his luncheon companion was saying, but that didn’t matter. He said, “It doesn’t seem likely that God would create an intelligent species and then destroy it.”

“That’s what happened.”

“Don’t you think that the Martians were a branch of ourselves? After all, the two planets are—”

“About sixty million kilometers apart, at their closest,” Molina snapped.

“Yes, but Martian meteorites have been found on Earth.”