The Medusa Encounter (22 page)

No matter. This world was his destiny. He knew in his heart that he would grow used to its inhuman scale.

Yet as he stared toward that unbelievably distant horizon, he felt as if a wind colder than the atmosphere around him was blowing through his soul. All his arguments for a manned exploration of Jupiter had been disingenuous, and he realized now that his inner conviction was indeed the truth. This would never be a place for humans. He would be the first and last man to descend through the clouds of Jupiter.

The sky above was almost black, except for a few wisps of ammonia cirrus perhaps twenty kilometers overhead. It was cold up there on the fringes of space, but both temperature and pressure increased rapidly with depth. At the level where
Kon-Tiki
was drifting now it was fifty below zero Centrigrade, and the pressure was five Earth atmospheres. A hundred kilometers farther down it would be as warm as equatorial Earth, and the pressure about the same as at the bottom of one of the shallower seas. Ideal conditions for life.

A quarter of the brief Jovian day had already gone. The sun was up halfway in the sky, but the light on the unbroken cloudscape below had a curious mellow quality. That extra six hundred million kilometers had robbed the sun of all its power. Though the sky was clear, it had the feel of an overcast day. When night fell, the onset of darkness would be swift indeed; though it was still morning, there was a sense of autumnal twilight in the air.

Autumn was something that never came to Jupiter. There were no seasons here.

Kon-Tiki
had come down in the center of the equatorial zone—the least colorful part of the planet. The sea of clouds that stretched out to the horizon was tinted a pale salmon; there were none of the yellows and pinks and even reds that banded Jupiter at high altitudes. The Great Red Spot itself—most spectacular of all of the planet’s features—lay thousands of kilometers to the south. It had been a temptation to descend there, where the probes had hinted at such spectacular vistas, but the mission planners had judged that the south tropical disturbance had been “unusually active” these past months, with currents reaching over a thousand million kilometers an hour. It would have been asking for trouble to head into that maelstrom of unknown forces. The Great Red Spot and its mysteries would have to wait for future expeditions.

The sun, moving across the sky twice as swiftly as it did on Earth, was now nearing the zenith; it had become eclipsed by the great silver canopy of the balloon.
Kon-Tiki
was still drifting swiftly and smoothly westward at a steady 348 klicks, but only the radar (and Falcon’s private, instantaneous calculation) gave any indication of this.
Was it always this calm here? Falcon wondered. The scientists who had analyzed the data from the probes spoke persuasively of the Jovian doldrums; they had predicted that the equator would be the quietest place, and it seemed they’d known what they were talking about after all. At the time, Falcon had been profoundly skeptical of such forecasts. He’d agreed with one unusually modest researcher who had told him bluntly, “There are no experts on Jupiter.”

Well, there would be at least one by the end of the day. If he survived until then.

Aboard
Garuda
, flight director Buranaphorn released his harness catch and floated smoothly away from his console. Moments later his relief, Budhvorn Im, slipped gracefully into the harness. She was a petite Cambodian woman wearing the uniform of the Indo-Asian Space Service, with a colonel’s firebirds on her shoulders.

“So far it’s less exciting than a simulation,” said Buranaphorn.

 

“That is very nice,” said Im. “Let us hope it stays that way.” She checked in her colleagues one by one as, throughout the circular room, the first-shift controllers handed off to the second shift.

 

Garuda
’s internal commlink crackled with Captain Chowdhury’s tired voice. “Bridge to
Kon-Tiki
Mission Control.”

 

“Go ahead, Captain,” Im replied.

 

“I’ve got a permission-to-come-aboard request from a Space Board cutter now leaving Ganymede Base. Two people to board. Their ETA is at our MET nineteen hours, twenty-three minutes.”

 

“What is the reason for this visit?” Im asked, puzzled.

 

“No reason given.” He paused, and she heard the crackle of a commlink in the background. “Cutter repeats this is a request.”

 

“No reflection on either crew, but I would prefer not to risk misalignment during docking procedures.”

 

“Shall I say you ask me to refuse permission, then?”

“I suppose if they really want to come they will make it an order,” said Im. When Chowdhury didn’t reply, she said, “No point in antagonizing them.” Or putting Chowdhury on the line. “Please stress to the cutter’s captain the delicate nature of our mission. Also please keep me informed.”

“As you wish.” Chowdhury keyed off. Im had no idea why a cutter would choose to descend upon
Kon-Tiki
Mission Control in the middle of the mission, but they certainly had the right to do so. And she had no real fear of a mishap. Only a docking accident—highly unlikely—would interrupt communications with the
KonTiki
capsule.

It was only when she glanced at the controllers—their consoles arrayed in a neat circle before her—that Im noticed one or two faces wearing apprehensive expressions—worried looks that couldn’t be explained by the nominal status of the mission.

Sparta’s consciousness of the dark world around her returned in a red haze of pain. She
listened
, long enough to determine the status of the mission. She heard Im and Chowdhury discuss the approach of a Space Board cutter. That did not concern her. It was none of her affair. Soon it would all be over.

She scrabbled in the tube and withdrew another white wafer. It melted with exquisite sweetness under her tongue. . . .

She isn’t “Dilys.” She is Sparta again
. Inside the black tightsuit she doesn’t feel the cold, except on her cheekbones and the tip of her nose. She is a shadow in the dawn woods, her short hair hidden under the suit’s hood, only her face exposed.

She waits in the woods for the low sun to rise, bringing the color of October to the dewy woods. The smell of rotting leaves reminds her of an autumn in New York. With Blake. When things started to split.

The smell of leaves . . . That was what Earth had that no other planet in the solar system had. Rot. Without rot, no life. Without life, no rot. Was it really Them who had made all this messy life, started it or at least coaxed it along on Venus and Mars and Earth? On Mars and Venus life had dried up, frozen or gotten pressure-cooked, washed away in the hot acid rain or blown away in the cold CO
₂
wind. Only

on Earth had it taken hold in its own filth.

 

And now it was spreading fast, trying to keep one step ahead of itself. Rot spreading to the planets. Rot spreading to the stars.

All this nasty stew a gift of the
Pancreator
—the
prophetae
’s peculiar way of referring to Them. Those who were out there “waiting at the great world,” according to the Knowledge—she had remembered it all, now; it had all been encoded in Falcon’s programming—and the Knowledge said they were waiting among “the cloud-dwelling messengers” for “the reawakening”—of which the
prophetae
were the signbearers. . . .

She
had been chosen by them to carry the sign,
made
to carry it. She had been built to find the messengers in the clouds, to listen and speak with them—with the radio organs that had been ripped out of her on Mars—to speak in the language of the signs the
prophetae
had taught her and whose memory they had imperfectly erased when they had rejected her.

The sun rises. A shaft of orange light penetrates the dew-laden forest and finds Sparta’s pale eyes, striking fire.

 

She resists our authority
To resist us is to resist the Knowledge

But the Free Spirit were those who resisted, mocking their own name for themselves. These false
prophetae
were trapped in their ambition and blind to their own tradition. What they could not see was that she had indeed yielded to the Knowledge, and in her it had flowered. Flowered and ripened and eventually burst, like a fig hanging too long on the branch, splitting open to expose its purple flesh, heavy with seed. They were too stupid to see that they had wrought better than they knew, too stupid to see what she had become. For Sparta was the Knowledge Incarnate.

When she would not follow their false path, they had turned against her. They had tried to cut the Knowledge out of her head, burn it out, drain it out of her with her heart’s blood.

She had escaped them. For these years she had slowly been reassembling herself from the torn and scorched scraps of flesh they had left to her. She was harder now, colder now, and when she had succeeded in resurrecting herself, she would do what needed doing. What the Knowledge—which was Herself—demanded.

But first she would kill those who had tried to pervert her. Not out of animus. She felt nothing for them now, she was beyond rage. But things needed to be cleaner, simpler. It would simplify matters to eliminate those who had made her, starting with Lord Kingman and his houseful of guests.

Then she would have time to kill the usurper, the quasihuman creature they had intended to substitute for her. This Falcon. Before he could take the wrong message into the clouds.

From her vantage in the woods she sees a figure appear on Kingman’s terrace. The house is rimmed in light from the rising sun. Morning mist curls across the meadow grass and bracken, rendering the mansion as gauzy as a painting on a theater scrim.

She allows the image from her right eye to enlarge on the screen of her mind. It is incredibly crisp and undistorted, better than new—Striaphan has that effect on the brain.

The man on the terrace is the one named Bill, the one whose smell is such an odd layering of unfamiliar scents. He is staring right at her as if he knows she is here—which is impossible, unless he has telescopic vision to match hers.
Where he stands, he looks to be an easy target. Unfortunately the shot is impossible, even with her rifled target pistol. The bullet’s gyroscopic spin, processing as it resists gravity’s arc, will have pulled it into a wide spiral by the time it reaches the terrace. At this range not even the fastest computer in the world— the one in her brain—can predict where the bullet will strike, except to within a radius of half a meter.

On the other hand, with the bullets she is using, if she catches a piece of flesh, even half a meter is as good as dead.

 

But no, let Bill wait.

 

Now Kingman comes out of the tall doors, wearing his shooting jacket and carrying his gun. He recoils at the sight of Bill—but though he clearly wants to avoid him, it is too late. She
listens
. . . .

 

“Rupert, I really didn’t intend to . . .”
“If you’ll excuse me, I believe I’ll have another go at that tree-rat. Maybe I’ll get himthis time.”

Kingman’s voice is clipped, soft, he never looks the other man in the eye. The shotgun rests in the crook of his arm, rests there so casually it is obvious it must pain him not to raise the muzzle and blast this species of rat who stands right in front of him. But instead he turns and marches past, down the stairs to the wet lawn, and sets out across it—straight toward her.

No dogs with him. He must consider dogs a nuisance when it comes to potting tree-rats.

 

Kingman first. Let him come halfway. Then if this Bill creature is still exposed . . .

Still she
listens
, to the squish and slither of Kingman’s Wellingtons across the rank grass. The sun is full behind the leaves at the edge of the woods, turning them bright red and yellow, silhouetting the tracery of their veins.

Better to take him in the woods. Then go back toward the house, into it if necessary, taking the rest one by one. Quietly. Privately. Head shots are best.

Kingman is in the bracken now, the stiff wet fronds of the autumn-brown fern soaking his twill trousers to the knees. The near trunks come between her and him, although now and then she can glimpse him between them, moving through the mist.

She is still
listening
, tracking his progress through the bracken, on the verge of breaking her trance, stepping off to intercept him—

—when she hears the other. Vibrations at the edge of her enhanced sensibility, way off to her right. Delicate footsteps in a slow, intricate rhythm, like the last drips of rain from the eaves, after the storm has passed.

A deer. Two of them, does probably, stepping slowly and lightly through the woods, searching the undergrowth for fodder.

 

But there is another step as well, slower yet, and heavier. Not an animal, but moving almost like one. Footsteps faint and oh-so-cautious. The moves of a professional stalker.

 

Kingman’s gamekeeper? No, as of half an hour ago, the old gaffer was sleeping off last night’s binge, in his room in the west wing.

 

This is a new player.

 

She gets a vector on the sound, then ceases
listening
and relaxes into movement. Though she can no longer hear as well, she can imagine the stranger’s stepwise moves.

Now comes Kingman on her left, pressing through the wet brush like an elephant, walking with the unthinking confidence born of a lifetime’s familiarity with these woods. She moves right, not wanting to cut off the unknown player but rather to come in behind, to have a look. She goes through the brightening forest with all the grace and alertness she can muster.

She catches herself—barely—just before she walks into him. Had she not had the advantage of knowing he was there . . . Well, he is very good. She trembles motionless against the rough bark of a bent old oak.

 

Then he moves, and she sees who he is. Curly red hair, camel’s hair coat, pigskin gloves—among the sunlit autumn leaves he is almost better camouflaged than she. His skill comes as no surprise to her.

The orange man. He’d almost killed her on Mars, and again on Phobos. She’d had a chance to kill him then, but out of some misguided impulse—of what, justice? Fair play?—she’d held back. Even though she knew he’d killed the doctor who had freed her from the sanatorium, even though somehow she knew even then—though she had not quite made the connection in memory—that he’d tried to kill her parents. Perhaps succeeded.