Cold as Ice (20 page)

"Not everyone on Earth is mindless jelly, Tristan, even if we do have our fair share of deadheads." Nell had to follow her hunch. She quietly turned on her video recorder. "I wanted to ask you, how come you and Hilda Brandt seem to be such good friends?"

"What makes you think we are?" But there was a knowing gleam in his eyes.

"Well, for one thing, you said you were. Last night you said you were friends and allies. And the way you dropped in on her this morning during our meeting."

"Dropped in?" The caution was replaced by indignation. "I never did. You don't 'drop in' on Hilda's private meetings. Not if you want to come away with your head on your shoulders. She made an appointment with me—told me to be there at four-eighty. Come to think of it, I never did find out why. I was too wrapped up with Wilsa's running off to Europa."

But I know
, thought Nell.
You were scheduled to arrive just after I did, so Hilda Brandt could send us off to console each other. But I don't know why, either.

"You did say you were allies, though."

"Yes." Caution and evangelical zeal struggled on Tristan's face. Caution lost—easily. "We
are
allies, though most people wouldn't realize it. You just said that not everybody on Earth is the same. I accept that, and I apologize for the stupid remark. But I'm sure that if you say 'Jovian system' to people back on Earth, you'll find that they think
we're
the same."

"I'm afraid you're right."

"Well, they're
wrong.
There are conservative stick-in-the-mudders here, the same as there are on every planet. They don't care that someday we'll run out of Jovian-system resources."

"But you're not one of them."

"Of course I'm not." Tristan was full of passionate conviction. "We
have
to keep pushing out, pushing on. We
have
to explore and develop the Outer System, all the way to the Cloud. If we don't, we'll find ourselves sitting on overpopulated worn-out worlds, like Earth was before the war took some of the pressure off you."

It was not the first time that Nell had heard the suggestion that the Great War had been
good
for Earth, because it had wiped out three-quarters of the people and given the planet a breathing space. If you said it fast, "nine billion dead" didn't sound as unthinkable as it was.

"I don't see how that ties you to Hilda Brandt. Isn't she committed to the exact opposite of what you want? To
preventing
the development of Europa?"

"She is. But she's a clever woman. She sees that the best way to make sure that Europa remains unspoiled is to offer
other worlds
for the developers. New worlds, Saturn's moons and beyond. And that puts the two of us on the same side of the argument." He glanced around the room, although there was no way that anyone could possibly have entered. He lowered his voice. "We're both members of Outward Bound!"

How old was he? Thirty-three, maybe. Older than Nell. But she looked into Tristan's bright eyes, bubbling over with naive enthusiasm, and felt the weight of centuries upon her.
I'd hate to have him as my co-conspirator. He speaks as though Outward Bound is a big secret, when it's one of the best-known organizations in the solar system.

"You've heard of it?" he was asking.

"Many times. There are Bounders, even on Earth."

"But not the way there are here." Tristan hesitated. "Actually, there's a meeting tonight. Hilda Brandt won't be able to make it, but if you'd like to go . . . you wouldn't be allowed to take those cameras in, of course." He gestured to her work bag.

"Of course."
Not these cameras. Hasn't he ever heard of micros? Such innocence, he should be a priest. But there's something underneath all this, I swear it, if only I can find a way to dig down far enough. Don't laugh at me yet, Glyn Sefaris.

"I'd love to attend, Tristan. Just tell me when and where."

* * *

In agreeing to go to the Outward Bound meeting, Nell had no particular end in mind. She was simply following the first rule of video reporting:
Go take a look.

But Tristan was making a big deal of it. He wound them through a maze of darkened and little-used corridors, in which Nell became totally lost, and came at last to a paneled door. He gave her a little lapel pin that identified her as a nonmember but an approved guest, and showed her the special way to attach it. Finally he rapped a syncopated sequence on the panel.

Nell wanted to laugh. Shouldn't there be an eye-level slot that slid to one side and a husky voice growling, "Okay, gimme de passwoid?"

But instead, the door was opened by a fresh-faced twenty-year-old who gave Nell one quick look, then said breathlessly, "Tristan, you're late. D'you have your stuff ready? You're on first. Let's go!"

He whipped Tristan away to the far end of the long hall, leaving Nell to her own devices. So much for maximum security. She was carrying three cameras, two of them designed to elude any normal body scan, but here a search was not even attempted.

Not that she was much inclined to switch on a camera.

Nell inspected the meeting room. There were forty to fifty people present, a few of them sitting in the first two rows of seats, but most still standing in the aisles. All but four of them were males. She edged her way to the periphery of a group of eight containing two of the four women.

"Less than
one half of one percent
of the budget." A gangling beanstalk of a youth who sported an unsuccessful attempt at a beard on the very tip of his chin was speaking in a loud voice. "
That's
the problem. The rest is squandered on social programs—and when did a social program ever
solve
anything?"

"But it's
always
been that way, right through history," said a stocky, fair-haired man on Nell's right. "Research never gets enough funding. It's no different now than it ever was. We have to take that as a fact and find a way to live with it."

" 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,' " said one of the women. "That's what Santayana said, and he was right. People like us have managed to get things done in the past, and always without enough funding."

"That's all very well." The skinny, unkempt man who had spoken first gave her a superior look. "But I can improve on Santayana: 'Those who remember the past
too well
will never learn to do anything new.'
That's
what's wrong with our General Assembly. They say, humans have managed very well without star travel. Why do we need it, they say, when we have problems still to solve right here on Ganymede? They don't realize that star travel is the tool—the
only
tool—that can solve those problems."

He smirked at Nell, inviting her admiration for his insight, while others around the group chimed in with their opinions. She automatically smiled back at him, busy with her own thoughts.

They're all not so much listening as waiting for their turn to speak. And they're all so young—not necessarily in age but in outlook. Even the man at the front there with Tristan, trying to bring the meeting to order. He has to be at least ten years older than I am, but look at him. He's as awkward and self-conscious as an eight-year-old. And nobody's taking any notice of him.

"I don't think we've met."

Nell turned in surprise to find that the lanky, straggle-beard youth had moved to her side and was grinning down at her. It took her a second or so to identify his expression—and to control her own.

She was being
propositioned
, for God's sake. And as ineptly as she had ever seen it done.

"Do you come here often?" His smile was almost condescending.

Never in the mating season.
But she didn't have the heart to slaughter the innocent. She gestured at her pin. "No. It's actually my first time. I'm just a visitor."

"Oh . . ." He peered at her lapel with the squinting concentration of the purblind. "Well. Maybe after the meeting is over—"

". . . for the
third time
." The man at the front had finally found out how to work the sound system, and it boomed through the hall loud enough to make other speech impossible. "So if those in the aisles will
please
take their seats. We have a lot of important business tonight."

Saved by the chair.
Nell gave the scarecrow a vague noncommittal nod and moved to take the last available seat in a row. As the man on the podium rambled on, she studied the audience. In less than five minutes she had formed her impression of the Ganymedean Outward Bound. These people were a perfect example of what Glyn Sefaris described as "single-issue voters," driven by one overpowering interest.

Except that it would also be a mistake to dismiss this group. Nell took another look around the room. Single-issue advocates they certainly were. But they had youth, they had intelligence, and they had endless focused energy. Single-issue voters, and single-issue workers. "Fanatics" might be a better word for them. How many other cells of Outward Bound were meeting today, all through the solar system? Anyone who
did
remember history would recall that it was people just like this who changed the universe; who started revolutions, bloody or intellectual; who died on the battlegrounds, stormed the Bastille, or turned accepted scientific wisdom on its head.

"Starseed."
Tristan's voice brought Nell's attention back to the platform. He was standing at the microphone.

"Let's start with the propulsion system. That's where the remaining problems are. First graphic, if you please." He began a whirlwind progress report, flashing up a too-rapid sequence of spacecraft schematics and talking just as fast. If Nell was not lost, it was only because she had seen much of the design when she was editing the documentary. It was a bulb-nosed, plunger-tailed rocket whose midsection was girdled by two clusters of spheres. The only difference she could see from the earlier design was that now the nose of the rocket was a lot bigger. She turned on her hidden camera and added subvocally a simplified commentary.

Those rings of spheres held the fuel. A thin stream of a helium-3/deuterium mixture was fed from them to the cup-shaped tail, where it was fused at stellar temperatures to create three fusion byproducts: charged particles, radiation, and neutrinos. The particles were gripped by a magnetic field and steered by the Lorentz force to emerge from the back of the rocket as a precisely collimated beam. Radiation was reflected from the inner face of the cup with equal efficiency and precision, and exited just as well collimated. The neutrinos alone could not be harnessed by any available technology. Spreading out at light-speed in a ghostly sphere, they provided in front of the rocket the evanescent and only evidence that
Starseed
was approaching.

"We could hold the exhaust beam tight for light-years," Tristan was saying. "We don't do that, because we don't want to fry any interstellar neighbors by accident. Let me wrap this up with a few words about the current schedule. The propulsion system is twenty-eight months from completion. The communication and navigation systems, a year and a half. Propellant will be no problem; we already have ample helium-3 and deuterium in storage. We have enough mirror matter for a dozen missions. So the big item before
Starseed
is finished will be systems integration. And
then
. . . "he paused. "... and then we make the
big
decision. Questions?"

"We'll take them in a little while," said the chairman. "Before that, we have some urgent new business.
Cyrus Mobarak
." There was hissing from the audience. "I don't have to tell you what he means to Outward Bound. We've worried about him for the past two years, but now
we
—in this room—have more direct reason to worry. He's
here
—on Ganymede. And that's bad news. He
says
he's here to push for the big Europan fusion project, but he won't stop at that. He'll try to push the Mobies into every project in the whole Jovian system. You know how much money he has, and how much influence. So this is the word for tonight:
Cyrus Mobarak is the enemy.
We have to work to learn what he is doing and then stop him. Who has suggestions?"

A dozen hands were raised, and a babble of eager voices sounded from the audience. Nell was recording, but she hardly noticed them. Time was still stretching. The rush of new experience, new people, and new environments had continued. It had been enough to throw her off balance and to make her miss the most obvious thing of all about Outward Bound.

This group wag smart and energetic—and utterly naive. Nell's very presence proved that. Any rational group would not have allowed her through the door. And it was not simply a naivety that came from lack of experience. Jon Perry—
curse the man, off on Europa without her
!— didn't have much experience of Nell's world, either; but he had a natural sense of balance that would keep him out of the worst kinds of trouble. Not so these people. Here was the cannon fodder, the young men and women who would give their lives for the cause. They would be the ones to storm the fort, to advance through the mine field, to fight and die on the wire.

But revolutions did not succeed without older heads. Where was Franklin, where was Lenin, where was Ho Chi Minh? Where were the masterminds, the
generals
of Outward Bound?

Nell did not know. She did know one thing: Kindly, motherly,
shrewd
Hilda Brandt, Tristan's "ally" and fellow member of Outward Bound, did not belong in this group at all. She would be out of place here, as out of her natural element as Nell Cotter piloting a Europan submersible.

11
The Service of the Sun King

Camille Hamilton was twenty-seven years old, blond, and according to most people, thin enough for elegance and too thin for health. She massed maybe fifty kilos. Rustum Battachariya was thirty-seven, black, and who knew how many times as heavy as Camille. Five? Six? Don't ask Bat; scales were for masochists, grocers, and the outside of fish.

The two had never met. And yet on at least one subject they were in perfect agreement: Work, real work, was best done
alone.