The Ganymede Club (3 page)

Jason jerked his hand away. The bare chest was moving, the first faint tremble slowing and strengthening to a regular up-and-down motion. She was breathing. A thin wisp of vapor was creeping like a pale-blue tendril from her right nostril.

"Athene!"

He reached out again, wanting to help, not sure what to do. Her eyelids were flickering. As he watched, they opened. She was trying to lift her head.

He put his hand forward, intending to assist her. At the same moment he felt a wave of heat sweep over him. It began in his fingertips and spread rapidly through his whole body. With it came a tremendous feeling of strength and well-being.

But with it also came dizziness. He found himself unable to breathe. As the cabin around him began to fade, he saw that Athene was sitting up, turning in his direction. Her eyes were bright and unblinking. The last thing that Jason saw was the streak of silvery skin creeping along the back of his own outstretched hand.

2

Mars: 2063 A.D.

A sales pitch was always the same; it hadn't changed in five thousand years. First the salesman—though this one happened to be a saleswoman—told you all the advantages: the spectacular view—from eighty kilometers up you could see the whole lower city and, beyond it, the broad curve of the planet; the amazingly generous amount of floor space, enough for a dozen people to live in comfort; the unique privacy, with no one but you living on the whole floor section; and the astonishingly low cost.

And finally, the inevitable kicker: ". . . last one left, going fast, showing to three other people later today."

Julius Szabo listened, nodded, and evaluated her performance: not bad for a beginner. But he had been in the game back when she was kicking her shapely little legs in the air and crying for a change of diaper—and he had played on a field a hell of a lot tougher than real estate.

"I just don't know, Ms. Diver." He rubbed at his nose, put on his bewildered, worried look, and cut in when she was well into her windup and just five seconds before she was ready to state an inflated price. "It's very nice, but I can already tell that this place is way too rich for my blood. I'm retired, you know. I'm looking for something in the three-eighty range, and I can't possibly go more than four-twenty. Four-thirty, maybe, absolute tops."

Gracie Diver stared at him with her mouth open and her luscious pink tongue showing. She was a lovely piece of work. Twenty years ago—make that ten—hell, if he were just back on Earth.

Down, boy. Remember your official age:
He had made his own instinctive assessment, inverting every one of the variables. Eighty kilometers up, you were well outside the thin wisps of Martian atmosphere. Damn it, you were
in space
—hard vacuum right outside the windows. The spectacular view (a 740-kilometer outlook in every direction over the arid Martian surface) was enough to terrify anyone with even a trace of acrophobia. Privacy was guaranteed by the fact that the lift tubes took forever to get you up so high. And the generous floor space and low price were sure signs that they could hardly give the place away.

But for Julius, each of those drawbacks happened to be a virtue. He had done his analysis and had quoted Gracie Diver a figure he estimated at just two percent higher than the minimum she was allowed to accept on the rental. He had cut it close not because of the price—he could afford a hundred times as much and never notice—but from sheer ingrained habit. He told himself he would have to watch out for that. He had altered his appearance, aging himself enough to fool anyone, and he was already thinking of himself as Julius; but personal foibles and vanities were hard to recognize in yourself, let alone change. And that could be fatal.

"Four hundred and thirty?" She hid her disappointment well, and she didn't even deign to mention his lower figures. Maybe young Gracie had a bright future, after all. "I'll have to check with the office, of course, because that's far less than I'm allowed to—"

"Would you do that?" The knife could cut both ways, and he had been wielding it long before she was born. "You see, if I don't take this place, I'm supposed to see another property later today, and I'll be pushed to make the appointment schedule, what with all the time we took to get up here." Julius turned toward the window. "While you call your boss, why don't I wander around and take a look at the view? I've never lived anywhere so high up, I'm not sure what it feels like. And what with today's news, all those tough words from the Belt, I'm not sure Mars is the best place at all. Sometimes I think we'd be a lot safer out in the Jupiter system, on Ganymede or Callisto."

"I'll tell you what." At once she was right in front of him, smiling guilelessly up into his eyes and holding her remote-entry unit out toward him. "Why don't we fill out your application and transfer it in, right now? My office can evaluate it as it arrives, and we'll have a go/no-go decision in just a few minutes. Then we can both go on to our next appointments."

Good girl, he thought. Don't waste time thinking of profits you might have made. Take what you can get, tie it down, and go on to the next one.

Julius reached out and patted Gracie on her bare upper arm. It was a friendly touch; even—steady, man; act your age—a paternal touch. He felt a real affection for her. If she ever wanted to move into a different line of business . . .

He cut that thought off early. "Let's do just what you suggest. You know, you're a good saleswoman, Gracie. And in a couple more years you're going to be a lot better."

Seeing the blush of pleasure on fair young cheeks was worth the extra one percent he was sure he could have squeezed out of her on the rental price.

* * *

Julius Szabo, who used to be Danny Clay, had pondered the problem for twenty years. You could run Earth's highest-stakes gambling operation. You could have a genius for rapid calculation and a memory for numbers and statistics that guaranteed your own success. You could accumulate more wealth than your modest tastes would let you spend in a hundred lifetimes.

What you could not do was get away. You were bound to the system by a thousand shackles, and you knew too much about too many people ever to be allowed to leave. In fact, a quarter century of observation suggested only one way out. Some young upstart would covet the top spot, as you had coveted it yourself. You would guard against that as best you could, and your own long experience would help. You watched for "accidents"—aircar or lift-tube failures, a Hecate spider in a flower bouquet, shower faucets that turned instantly from warm water to superheated steam, idiopathic diseases uniquely tailored to your own body chemistry, even things as simple as stray bullets and natural food poisons. Those had all been used on others, and they could just as well be tried against you. You'd be on the lookout—of course you would—but there was a basic rule of life: The one that got you would be a surprise, the one you had not thought of.

Your talents allowed you to calculate the chances of your own death from natural causes. They were depressingly low, odds unacceptable to any self-respecting professional gambler. Throw in what Danny saw as the high probability that before the decade was out, there would be a no-holds-barred war with the Belt, and your survival chances dropped so close to zero you couldn't calculate them.

So, you had to find another approach. And the only one that he could think of called for lots of planning and a long lead time.

When Danny Clay died early in his fifty-second year, in a vacation boating accident on Lake Baikal, Julius Szabo had already been officially "alive" for six years on Mars. He was a sprightly eighty-three-year-old bachelor with no surviving siblings. His bank credit, as a successful retired actuary and statistician, was substantial. It was less than a fiftieth of what Danny left behind in his estate, but so what?
You can't take it with you.
Danny/Julius was smart enough not to try. Given the infighting, legal and illegal, that would be going on for his territory and possessions in Mexico City, no one would be able to estimate his wealth at the time of his death to within even ten percent of the total. A two percent skim would be perfectly safe.

He would be safe, too, provided that he made the separation complete. It had to be mental as well as physical. Julius told himself—morning and midday and evening— that he was
not
that other man, whatever his name was. He did not even know such a person. Danny Clay—who was that? If the mental block was to be effective, it had to be total. But it wasn't easy.

He moved into his new home on the eightieth-kilometer level in the Space Fountain pyramid, a huge ziggurat that stretched for another eight kilometers above him. He furnished the open vastness of the apartment in a spare, drab style that would have disgusted Danny Clay, who had had decadent casino/bordello tastes for plush red velvet and gold-framed mirrors. He provided a change-of-address notice to the Mars Society of Actuarial Consultants; placed a discreet sign, "Dr. Julius Szabo, MMSAC (Ret.)," in the building directory; and settled in to watch sunrise and sunset through-the planet's thin apology for an atmosphere. He was prepared for several happy decades of a new and more relaxed life.

Danny had been thorough. Julius was fully certified and a genuine actuary, totally at home with and fascinated by the probabilities that governed human life expectancy. It was actually not far from the gambling life, except that vagaries of human heredity and environment took the place of a hand of cards or the spin of a roulette wheel.

However, despite his genuine interest in statistics, Julius Szabo had, according to his own society statement of actuarial capability, long ago retired. He did not advertise his services. He did not seek clients. So it was astonishing and disturbing to receive a call when he had been established in his new home for one and a half Martian years.

"Dr. Szabo?" The woman peering at him from the screen had bright violet-blue eyes embedded—that was the impression, jewels in jet—in a shiny black face surrounded by a halo of frizzy black hair.

"Indeed, yes." Those dazzling eyes carried Julius back a full twenty years. He resisted the temptation to add, "my dear." The biggest danger in becoming a courtly, white-bearded gentleman was in overdoing it to the point of caricature. "I am Julius Szabo."

"And I'm Neely Rinker. I need the services of an actuary. Can I come and see you? Today?"

She didn't look or sound like anyone from the Organization. Of course, if she were any good she wouldn't. And if she were their agent, he would learn nothing by refusing to see her, while such a refusal could turn any vague suspicions to certainty. If he did see her, of course, there was a danger that she might try to dispose of him on the spot; but if he were lucky and skillful, he might learn something to protect himself. At the very least, he might gain some time. If everything went wrong, he had one other escape hole, but it was a dubious and frightening long shot, relying upon an emerging (and illegal) Belt technology that most people did not know existed. If he made it through the day, he would check that he was fully paid up for the service.

Odds, odds, everything in the world was odds. You could calculate and calculate, but after all was said and done, you still had to throw the dice. Julius nodded. "If you wish to see me, then of course I will be happy to meet with you."

"Right away?"

"If you so desire. However, to avoid any possible misunderstanding at the outset, I want to be sure that you realize that I am retired, and have been for some years."

"But you still have a mortality computer, don't you?"

"I do. And of course I am still a member in good standing of the MSAC."

"I'll be right up. I'm in the building, but I'm down at ground level."

"My fees—"

"Will not be an issue. I have plenty of money."

She vanished, leaving Julius to his own thoughts. First, in the world of his own past, only a fool ever claimed to have lots of money. Second, Neely Rinker sounded oddly tense, while a professional from that same past world would never reveal tension. Third, if she thought she would "be right up," she was an optimist. The fastest lift tube needed half an hour to ascend eighty kilometers. Julius had ample time for preparations.

He made sure that his weapons were unobtrusive and ready. With one movement of finger against thumb, he could apply force to stun or even kill anyone, anywhere in the apartment, from half a dozen different directions. When he had finished that review he called his special service and confirmed that they were on-line for a possible emergency. Finally, he forced himself to sit down in an easy chair in his study. Thus far, Neely Rinker had the feel of a genuine client. It would be curious if she were. Julius smiled. It was the rueful smile of a man who, for the first time in his whole life, was perhaps about to make money by legal means.

Half an hour was an absolute minimum to get up from the ground level. He told himself that and tried to relax, as forty minutes passed and no one arrived. The final ring of the bell was both a release of tension and a new heightening of it. He pressed the door control before he could have second thoughts.

She entered quickly, in a swirl of violet-blue cape that matched her bright eyes. She glanced around nervously as she entered. In person she was more striking than he had realized. The screen could not begin to capture the glow of total health, nor the beauty of perfect dark skin. Julius told himself, not for the first time, that total solitude wasn't working. He might pretend to eighty-three, but his hormones said otherwise.

One thing at a time. He led her along the broad corridor that ran from the lift tubes to his usual living quarters, walking carefully behind her and studying her tall, slim figure. No sign of concealed weapons—but then, if they were visible they would not be concealed. He ushered her into his study and indicated a seat across from his. So long as she was sitting there, he could destroy her instantly in a dozen different ways.

He sat down by the computer console and smiled at her. "Now, before you tell me just why you are here, satisfy my curiosity. How did you come to choose me, of all the actuaries in Oberth City? I feel sure that we have never met, for I would surely not have forgotten so beautiful a young woman."