Jupiter (11 page)

He quickly found that his major function was repairing old and faulty equipment. From laboratory centrifuges to a wallscreen that had developed a maddening flicker, Grant's most intellectual pursuit was reading instruction manuals and trying to make sense of them. One whole afternoon he spent trying to free up a stubbornly stuck drawer in a biochemistry department file cabinet. He finally got the drawer open, but his fingers were battered and the knuckles of both his hands were raw and bleeding.

It was mindless work, sheer dumb labor that a trained chimpanzee could have done. Grant realized that much of the station's equipment was outmoded and long overdue for replacement. Like the furniture in the living quarters, like the cafeteria and the threadbare carpeting along the main corridor, the laboratory equipment was shabby.

His schedule seemed to be at odds with those of the few friends he had made. Only rarely did he see Karlstad or Muzorawa or any of the others he knew, and when they did manage to sit together in the cafeteria, they discussed their work, the scientific problems they were struggling with. All Grant could talk about was his hours of sweatshop labor.

Muzorawa introduced him to two more members of the small team focused on Jupiter itself: Patricia Buono was a medical doctor, short, plump, with curly honey-blonde hair so thick and heavy that Grant wondered how she could keep her head up under the load. Kayla Ukara was from Tanzania, her skin even darker than Zeb's, her eyes seething with a fierce emotion that Grant could not fathom; she seemed perpetually on guard, always ready to snap or snarl.

Karlstad grinned when Grant told him he had met the two women.

'Patti and Kayla,' he said, with a knowing air. 'The butterball and the panther.'

'Panther,' Grant mused. Yes, it suited Ukara, he thought. A prowling black cat, sleek and powerful and dangerous.

'Know what Path's name translates to?' Karlstad asked, still grinning.

'What?'

'Patti Buono… it means "pat well."'

Grant shook his head. Dr Buono seemed more motherly than sexy. 'She's not my type,' he said.

'Mine neither. I like 'em long and lean, like Laynie.'

Grant attended chapel services most Sundays, but the people he met there seemed totally indifferent to him. A newcomer, he was not part of their social life. And he didn't know how to break into their cliques and make friends with them.

Then, one Sunday, he saw Tarniko Hideshi at the worship service. Delighted to see a familiar, friendly face, Grant slipped out of his pew to sit next to her.

'I didn't know you were a Presbyterian,' he said as they left the chapel together.

'I'm not,' she said, with a toothy grin. 'But they don't have any Shinto services, so I rotate among the services that are available. Today is my Presbyter Sunday.'

'You go to all the services?'

'Only one per week,' she said. 'It's like being a spy, sort of: checking on the competition.'

Grant's breath caught when she said
spy
, but Tami's cheerful expression showed she had no inkling of his own situation.

He bumped into Lane O'Hara now and then, mostly in the aquarium, but she was strictly business, a staff scooter telling a grad student which chore had to be done next. Now and then he saw her swimming in the tank with the dolphins, a sleek white wetsuit covering her completely yet revealing every curve of her lean, lithe body. She swam among them happily, playfully, as if she were at home with the dolphins, glad to be with them in their element, much friendlier to them than she was to Grant.

Every night Grant prayed for release from his slavery. How am I going to get a doctorate when I'm stuck washing glassware and fixing broken-down equipment?

He felt so depressed, so ashamed of how low he had fallen, that he couldn't bring himself to talk about it in his messages to Marjorie. Guardedly, he told his parents about the situation. His mother was nearly in tears when she replied; his father counseled patience.

'They're just testing you, I'm certain. Do your best and soon enough they'll see that you're too talented to remain a lab helper. This is a test, you'll see.'

Grant hoped his father was right, but didn't believe a word of it. He begged his parents not to reveal his problem to Marjorie.

He tried to be upbeat and smiling when he spoke to his wife, avoiding any mention of the work he was doing. Worst of all, he realized he was not accomplishing one iota of progress toward his doctorate in astrophysics. There wasn't even another astrophysicist in the station to serve as his mentor — assuming he had time to continue his studies.

Marjorie's messages to him became rarer, as well. She was obviously busy and immersed in her work. She still seemed cheerful and energetic, smiling into the camera for him even when she looked tired and sheened with perspiration. Often she appeared to be in a tent or in some clearing in a tropical forest. Once he saw a raging fire behind her, hot flames licking angrily through the trees and thick oily black smoke billowing skyward, while heavily-armed troops in the sky-blue helmets of the International Peacekeeping Force prowled past. Yet she always seemed chipper, enthusiastic, telling Grant excitedly of their success in tracking down hidden drug factories or caches of biological weapons.

Yet Grant saw something in Marjorie's bright, joyful face that puzzled him. For weeks he tried to determine what it was. And then it hit him. She was pleased with herself! She was delighted with the work she was doing, excited to be helping to make the world better, safer - while all Grant was doing was janitorial work in a remote station, hundreds of millions of kilometers from home.

And he realized one other thing, as well. Marjorie no longer ended her messages "with a count of the hours until they would be reunited.

I've lost her, Grant told himself. By the time I get back to Earth we'll be strangers to each other.

Still he could not bring himself to mention his fears to Marjorie. He could not tell her of his loneliness, his weariness, his growing desperation. He tried to be cheerful and smiling when he spoke to her, knowing that she was doing the same in her messages to him. Is she trying to keep my spirits up? Grant asked himself. Or is she just being kind to me? Does she still love me?

Then he wondered if he still loved her, and was shocked to realize that he did not know whether he did or not.

He saw Sheena often enough, shambling through the narrow corridor of the aquarium or sitting quietly in her glassteel pen, munching on mountains of celery and melons. The gorilla was like a two-year-old child: her repertoire of behaviors was quickly exhausted and her conversation was limited to a dozen simple declarations. In the back of his mind Grant marvelled at the fact that he could accept a talking gorilla as commonplace.

On the other hand, Sheena was so massive and strong that she frightened Grant, even though she showed no indication of violence. But every time he looked into the gorilla's deep brown eyes he saw
something
there, some spark of intelligence that was chained inside her hugely powerful body. Grant had nightmares of Sheena suddenly turning into a roaring, smashing, murderous beast who grabbed him in her enormous hands and began to tear him apart.

The only touch of gratification in Grant's life was the dolphins. Sleekly streamlined, they glided effortlessly through the big aquarium tanks, permanent grins on their faces, clicking and squeaking to one another like a group of chattering school kids.

There were six of them, plus a nursing pup that grew noticeably larger every day. They seemed to watch Grant as he stood outside their tanks and looked at them. He thought he could see their eyes focus on him. Grant would wave to them, and get a burst of clicking from them.

'They're saying hello to you.'

Startled, Grant whirled around to see Lane O'Hara standing a few paces away. Her turtleneck shirt was a warm sunshine yellow, a good complement to her light brown hair.

'Wave to them again,' she said.

Grant did, and got another burst of chatter from the dolphins.

'Did you hear? The same response, don't you know.'

'All I heard was a bunch of clicks,' Grant said.

'Aye, but it was the
same
bunch of clicks. They have their own language, you know.'

'I know they seem to communicate with each other.'

'And we're trying to communicate with them.'

Grant said, 'I've read about attempts to speak with dolphins. They go back more than a hundred years.'

'They do,' she said.

'With no success,' Grant added.

'No success, d'you say? Are you certain about that?'

Thrown on the defensive, Grant replied, 'I haven't heard of any.'

'Well, then, listen to this.' Lane walked to a phone built into a metal partition between transparent glassteel sections of the tanks.

With a knowing look toward Grant, she pressed the phone's ON button and said into its speaker, 'Top o' the morning, Lancelot. And to you, Guinevere.'

Two of the dolphins swam toward O'Hara, bobbing up and down in the water as they emitted a series of rapid clicks and a squealing whistle.

'And how is little Galahad this morning?'

More chatter from the dolphins. The pup came up toward the window, followed by another adult. Grant stood and watched, trying to suppress a growing feeling of annoyance. Either she's joking with me or she's fooling herself, he thought.

O'Hara said, 'I've got to be going now. And it'll be your feeding time in a few minutes. I'll be seeing you all again later.'

She jabbed the phone's OFF key and turned away from the window. The dolphins chattered for a few moments, then swam away.

O'Hara was smiling impishly, as though she'd won a major debate. 'You see?' she said.

Grant tried to be noncommittal. 'Well, you spoke and they chattered, but I don't think you can call that communication.'

'Can't you now? Then come with me to the lab.'

She started off down the corridor. There was barely room for the two of them to walk side by side in the narrow corridor of the aquarium. As Grant followed her, he noticed that she was limping slightly.

'Did you hurt your leg?' he asked, coming up beside her.

'Hurt it, yes,' O'Hara replied. 'You might say that.'

'How?' he asked. 'When?'

'It's not important.'

That shut off the conversation. Grant trudged along beside her, noticing that she was still wearing the studded black leggings that Muzorawa and a few others always seemed to wear. He wanted to ask about it, but O'Hara's abrupt cutoff of his questions kept him from speaking.

They ducked through the hatch at the end of the aquarium section and went down the broader main corridor of the station, right past all the biology labs. Grant began to wonder where she was leading him when she stopped and slid open a door marked COMMUNICATIONS LAB - AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

Grant followed her into a compartment that looked like the back room of an electronics shop. Computers lined the walls, most of them blank and unattended, but a few technicians were sitting at desks, earphones clamped over their heads and pin microphones almost touching their lips.

O'Hara directed Grant to an unoccupied computer and told him to sit down and boot it up. Once he'd done that, she leaned over his shoulder and picked up the headset resting on the desktop. She was wearing some kind of scent, Grant realized: something herbal that smelled of flowers from a far away world.

'Well, put it on,' she said, thrusting the headset into his hands.

Grant slipped the set on; the padded earphones blotted out the hum of the machines and the drone of the other subdued voices. As he swung the pin mike close to his mouth, O'Hara doggedly pecked at the keyboard with one extended finger. Her nails were polished a delicate rose pink, he saw.

Then she lifted one of his earphones slightly and said, 'There's no visual. You'll just be getting the audio recording.'

Grant nodded as she let the earphone snap itself back in place. The computer screen showed the day's date and a time; Grant realized it was just a few minutes ago. This must be a recording of her talking to the dolphins, he thought.

Sure enough, he heard O'Hara's voice, 'Top o' the morning, Lancelot. And to you, Guinevere.'

Then he heard the clicks and whistles of the dolphins. The computer screen printed: GREETINGS O'HARA.

'And how is little Galahad this morning?'

BABY IS GROWING.

O'Hara said, 'I've got to be going now. And it'll be your feeding time in a few minutes. I'll be seeing you all again later.'

GOODBYE O'HARA. GOOD FEEDING.

The screen went blank.

Grant pulled off the headset and looked up at O'Hara. She had an expectant grin on her face. He noticed for the first time that her mouth had just a trace of an overbite; it looked strangely sensuous.

'Well now,' O'Hara said. 'What do you think of that?'

Grant knew he should be diplomatic, but he heard himself say, 'I think the computer could have printed out those responses no matter what kinds of noises the dolphins made.'

Her eyes flashed for a moment, but then she nodded thoughtfully. 'All right, then. You'll make a fine scientist someday. Skeptical. That's good.'

'I mean—'

'Oh, I know what you mean, Mr Archer. And you'd be right, except for the fact that the computer has stored thousands of the dolphins' responses and categorized them and cross-indexed them very thoroughly.'

'That still doesn't mean it's translating what those noises actually mean to the dolphins.'

'Doesn't it now? Then how do you explain the fact that every time I say "good morning" to them they respond with exactly the same expression?'

'How do you know their expression means that they understood what you said and returned your greeting?'

'The phone translates my words into their language, of course.'

'Still…'

O'Hara seemed delighted with Grant's disbelief. Eagerly, she snatched a headset from the computer next to the one Grant was using, slipped it over her chestnut hair and said into the microphone, 'Language demonstration one seventeen, please.'