Mercury (8 page)

“Not yet,” Alexios said, in a barely voiced whisper.

Yamagata frowned at him.

“We won’t have to stop all our work,” Alexios said, trying to sound a little brighter. “We still have the power satellites coming in from Selene. Getting them up and running will be a considerable task.”

“But how will we provide the life-support materials for the crew?” Yamagata growled. “I depended on your team on the surface for that.” Alexios clasped his hands behind his back and turned to stare at the planet’s surface gliding past. He knew his base on Mercury was too small to be seen by the unaided eye from the distance of the
Himawari’s
orbit, yet he strained his eyes to see the mound of rubble anyway.

“Well?” Yamagata demanded. “What do you recommend?”

Turning back to look at his decidedly unhappy employer, Alexios shrugged. “We’ll have to bring in the life-support materials from Selene, I suppose, if we can’t scoop them from Mercury’s regolith.”

“That will bankrupt us,” Yamagata muttered.

“Perhaps the suspension will only be for a short time,” said Alexios. “The scientists will come, look around, and then simply declare certain regions to be off-limits to our work.”

Even in the shadows of the darkened observation blister Alexios could see the grim expression on Yamagata’s face.

“This will ruin everything,” Yamagata said in a heavy whisper. “Everything.”

Alexios agreed, but forced himself to present a worried, downcast appearance to his boss.

Fuming, trying to keep his considerable temper under control, Yamagata repaired to his private quarters and called up the computer program of Robert Forward. The long-dead genius appeared in the middle of the compartment, smiling self-assuredly, still wearing that garish vest beneath his conservative tweed jacket.

Between the smile and the vest, Yamagata felt too irritated to sit still. He paced around the three-dimensional image, explaining this intolerable situation. Forward’s holographic image turned to follow him, that maddening smile never slipping by even one millimeter.

“But finding life on Mercury is very exciting news,” the image said. “You should be proud that you helped to facilitate such a discovery.”

“How can we continue our work if the IAA forces us to shut down all activities on the surface?” Yamagata demanded.

“That won’t last forever. They’ll lift the suspension sooner or later.”

“After Sunpower Foundation has gone bankrupt.”

“You have four powersats in orbit around Mercury and six more on the way. Can’t you begin to sell energy from them? You’d have some income—”

“The solar cells degrade too quickly!” Yamagata snapped. “Their power output is too low to be profitable.”

Forward seemed to think this over for a moment. “Then spend the time finding a solution for the cell degradation. Harden the cells; protect them from the harmful solar radiation.”

“Protect them?”

“It’s probably solar ultraviolet that’s doing the damage,” Forward mused. “Or perhaps particles from the solar wind.”

Yamagata sank into his favorite chair. “Solar particles. You mean protons?”

Forward nodded, making his fleshy cheeks waddle slightly. “Proton energy density must be pretty high this close to the Sun. Have you measured it?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“If it’s the protons doing the damage you can protect the powersats with superconducting radiation shields, just as spacecraft are shielded.”

Yamagata’s brows knit. “How do you know about radiation shielding? You died before interplanetary spacecraft needed shielding.”

“I have access to all your files,” Forward reminded him. “I know everything your computer knows.”

Yamagata rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “If we could bring the powersats’ energy output up to their theoretical maximum, or even close to it…”

“You’d be able to sell their energy at a profit,” Forward finished his thought. “And go ahead with the starship.”

Nodding, Yamagata closed the Forward program. The physicist winked out, leaving Yamagata alone in his quarters. He put in a call for Alexios, who had returned to the base on the planet’s surface.

“I want to find out what’s causing this degradation of the solar cells,” Yamagata said sternly. “That must be our number one priority.”

Alexios’s mismatched image in the wall screen looked as if he had expected this decision. “I already have a small team working on it, sir. I’ll put more people on the investigation.”

“Good,” said Yamagata. To himself he added silently, Let’s hope we can solve this problem before the IAA drives me into bankruptcy.

The International Consortium of Universities was less an organization than a collection of powerful fiefdoms. It consisted of nearly a hundred universities around the world, no two of which ever agreed completely on anything. Moreover, each university was a collection of departments ranging from ancient literature to astrobiology, from psychodynamics to paleontology, from genetic engineering to gymnastics. Each department head tenaciously guarded her or his budget, assets, staff, and funding sources.

It took a masterful administrator to manage that ever-shifting tangle of alliances, feuds, jealousies, and sexual affairs.

Jacqueline Wexler was such an administrator. Gracious and charming in public, accommodating and willing to compromise at meetings, she nevertheless had the steel-hard will and sharp intellect to drive the ICU’s ramshackle collection of egos toward goals that she herself selected. Widely known as “Attila the Honey,” Wexler was all sweetness and smiles on the outside and ruthless determination within.

Today’s meeting of the ICU’s astrobiology committee was typical. To Wexler it seemed patently clear that a top-flight team of investigators must be sent to Mercury to confirm Dr. Molina’s discovery and organize a thorough study of the planet’s possible biosphere. Indeed, everyone around the long conference table agreed perfectly on that point.

Beyond that point, however, all agreement ended. Who should go? What would be their authority? How would they deal with the industrial operation already planted on Mercury’s surface? All these questions and more led to tedious hours of wrangling. Wexler let them wrangle, knowing precisely what she wanted out of them, realizing that sooner or later they would grow tired and let her make the effective decisions. So she smiled sweetly and waited for the self-important farts—women as well as men—to run out of gas.

The biggest issue, as far as they were concerned, was who would lead the team sent to Mercury. Rival universities vied with one another and there was much finger-pointing and cries of “You got the top spot last time!” and “That’s not fair!”

Wexler thought it was relatively unimportant who was picked as the lead scientist for the team. She worried more about who the New Morality would send as their spiritual advisor to watch over the scientists. The spiritual advisor’s ostensible task was to tend to the scientists’ moral and religious needs. His real job, as far as Wexler was concerned, was to spy on the scientists and report what they were doing back to Atlanta.

There was already a New Morality representative on Mercury, she knew: somebody named Danvers. Would they let him remain in charge of the newcomers as well, or send in somebody over his head?

A similar meeting was going on in Atlanta, in the ornate headquarters building of the New Morality, but there were only four people seated at the much smaller conference table.

Archbishop Harold Carnaby sat at the head of the table, of course. Well into his twelfth decade of life, the archbishop was one of the few living souls who had witnessed the birth of the New Morality, back in those evil days of licentiousness and runaway secularism that had brought down the wrath of God in the form of the greenhouse floods. Although his deep religious faith prohibited Carnaby from accepting rejuvenation treatments such as telomerase injections or cellular regeneration, he still availed himself of every mechanical aid that medical science could provide. He saw nothing immoral about artificial booster hearts or kidney dialysis implants.

So he sat at the head of the square table in his powered wheelchair, totally bald, wrinkled and gnomelike, breathing oxygen through a plastic tube inserted in his nostrils. His brain still functioned perfectly well, especially since surgeons had inserted stents in both his carotid arteries.

“Bishop Danvers is a good man,” said the deacon seated at Carnaby’s left. “I believe he can handle the challenge, no matter how many godless scientists they send to Mercury.”

Danvers’s dossier was displayed on the wall screen for Carnaby to scan. Apparently someone in Yamagata’s organization had specifically asked for Bishop Danvers to come to Mercury. Unusual, Carnaby thought, for those godless engineers and mechanics to ask for a chaplain at all, let alone a specific individual. Danvers must be well respected. But there was more at stake here than tending souls, he knew.

The deacon on Carnaby’s right suggested, “Perhaps we could send someone to assist him. Two or three assistants, even. We can demand space for them on the vessel that the scientists ride to Mercury.”

Carnaby nodded noncommittally and focused his rheumy eyes on the man sitting at the foot of the table, Bishop O’Malley. Physically, O’Malley was the opposite of Carnaby: big in the shoulders, wide in the middle, his face fleshy and always flushed, his nose bulbous and patterned with purple-red veins. O’Malley was a Catholic, and Carnaby did not completely trust him.

“What’s your take on the situation, Bishop?” Carnaby flatly refused to use the medieval Catholic terms of address; “your grace” and “my lord” had no place in his vocabulary.

Without turning even to glance at the dossier displayed on the wall behind him, O’Malley said in his powerful, window-rattling voice, “Danvers showed his toughness years ago in Ecuador. Didn’t let personal friendship stand in the way of doing his duty. Let him handle the scientists; he’s up to it. Send him an assistant or two if you feel like it, but keep him in charge on Mercury.”

“He’s done good work since Ecuador, too,” Carnaby agreed, his voice like a creaking hinge.

The two deacons immediately fell in line and agreed that Danvers should remain in charge.

“Remember this,” Carnaby said, folding his fleshless, blue-veined hands on the table edge in front of him, “every time these secularists find another form of life on some other world, people lose a portion of their faith. There are even those who proclaim that extraterrestrial life proves the Bible to be wrong!”

“Blasphemy!” hissed the younger of the deacons.

“The scientists will send a delegation out to Mercury,” Carnaby croaked on, “and they will confirm this man Molina’s discovery. They’ll trumpet the news that life has been found even where no one expected it to exist. More of the Faithful will fall away from their belief.”

O’Malley hunched his bulky shoulders. “Not if Danvers can show that the scientists are wrong. Not if he can give them the lie.”

“That’s his real mission, then,” Carnaby agreed. “To do whatever is necessary to disprove the scientists’ claim.”

The deacon on the left, young and still innocent, blinked uncertainly. “But how can he do that? If the scientists show proof that life exists on the planet—”

“Danvers must dispute their so-called proof,” Carnaby snapped, with obvious irritation. “He must challenge their findings.”

“I don’t see how—”

O’Malley reached out and touched the younger man on his shoulder. “Danvers is a fighter. He tries to hide it, but inside his soul he’s a fighter. He’ll find a way to cast doubt on the scientists’ findings, I’m sure.”

The deacon on the right understood. “He doesn’t have to disprove the scientists’ findings, merely cast enough doubt on them so the Faithful will disregard them.”

“At the very least,” Carnaby said. “It would be best if he could show that those godless secularists are lying and have been lying all along.”

“That’s a tall order,” said O’Malley, with a smile.

Carnaby did not smile back.

Captain Shibasaki allowed himself a rare moment of irony in the presence of his employer.

“It’s going to become crowded here,” he said, perfectly straight-faced.

Yamagata did not catch his wry attempt at humor. Standing beside the captain on
Himawari’s
bridge, Yamagata unsmilingly watched the display screen that showed the two ships that had taken up orbits around Mercury almost simultaneously.

One was the freighter
Urania,
little more than a globular crew module and a set of nuclear ion propulsion units, with dozens of massive rectangular cargo containers clipped to its long spine.
Urania
carried equipment that would be useless if the scientists actually closed Mercury to further industrial operations. It also brought Molina’s wife to him, a matrimonial event to which Yamagata was utterly indifferent.

The other vessel was a fusion torch ship,
Brudnoy,
which had blasted out from Earth on a half-g burn that brought its complement of ICU scientists and IAA bureaucrats to Mercury in a scant three days. Yamagata wished it would keep on accelerating and dive straight into the Sun. Instead, it braked expertly and took up an orbit matching
Himawari’s.
Yamagata could actually see through the bridge’s main port the dumbbell-shaped vessel rotating slowly against the star-strewn blackness of space.

“Urania
is requesting a shuttle to bring Mrs. Molina over to us,” Captain Shibasaki said, his voice low and deferential. “They are also wondering when they will be allowed to offload their cargo containers.” Yamagata clasped his hands behind his back and muttered, “They might as well leave the containers in orbit. No sense bringing them down to the surface until we find out what the scientists are going to do to us.”