Priscilla looked away from me. I knew she didn’t want to tell me. Problem was, not telling wasn’t helping.
‘‘Spill it, Priscilla.’’
‘‘We should have been quicker to react,’’ she said, then hesitated.
‘‘Spill it, you big ape.’’
Priscilla slumped over, hands behind her back. ‘‘Things are bad . . .’’
‘‘Define bad,’’ I said.
‘‘Ah,’’ Priscilla said fingering her lips, ‘‘Sputnik has already pushed the ZAP asteroid towards Earth.’’
‘‘That is bad,’’ I said. ‘‘Has Earth noticed yet?’’
Priscilla shook her head no. ‘‘Not yet. By the time they do they won’t have any chance to stop it. They trust us.’’
‘‘Why?’’ Carol, HARV, and I all asked simultaneously.
Priscilla shrugged. ‘‘They’re politicians. Like Sputnik, their egos are so big they probably can’t conceive of us turning on them.’’
‘‘But they’ll figure it out and respond with force.’’
Priscilla and all the apes behind her nodded. ‘‘Yep, probably. What they lack in brains they overcompensate for with brawn.’’
‘‘Isn’t Sputnik worried about this?’’ I asked.
Priscilla shrugged again. ‘‘He probably hasn’t considered the possibility of something going wrong. In his mind, he thinks anything he thinks becomes reality.’’
I considered what Priscilla said; it was deranged, therefore it probably all made sense in the world of politics. Like they say, ‘‘those who do, do, those who can’t go into politics.’’ The powers that be weren’t going to stop any of this. It was up to us.
‘‘First off we need to prevent that asteroid from hitting Earth.’’ I thought for a nano. ‘‘I suppose the Blocking and Tracking Station is heavily guarded?’’
All the apes nodded yes.
‘‘How about the beam itself?’’
The apes all shook their heads no.
‘‘There are no guards there because even if you destroy the beam the asteroid will still hit Earth,’’ Priscilla said.
Now it was my turn to shake my head. ‘‘I’m not going to destroy it. I’m going to use it to push the asteroid past Earth.’’
‘‘But the controls are in the Asteroid Tracking and Blocking Station, hence the name,’’ Priscilla said, very slowly, as if I was slow.
I looked at HARV. ‘‘Can you do it?’’
‘‘From the beam itself?’’
‘‘Yes.’’
‘‘By bypassing the station?’’
I shook my head impatiently. ‘‘Yes.’’
‘‘Easy as you calculating the square root of four.’’
‘‘Really?’’ all the gorillas asked at one.
HARV turned to them and gave them his ‘‘ah, I can tell you haven’t evolved yet’’ look. ‘‘Or as easy as me calculating the square root of 444444444.’’
‘‘So can you get us there?’’ I asked the apes.
They all nodded yes.
‘‘Let’s make it so.’’
Chapter 34
Racing through the thin Moon atmosphere toward the deflector beam, I did some reflecting. The plan, such as it was, was simple in theory. Priscilla and two of her best apes were to escort Carol, HARV, and me outside the city to the deflector beam. Once at the beam, HARV would reprogram it to push the incoming asteroid out of Earth’s way at the closest to the last possible moment. With the killer rock no longer a threat to Earth, my team and I would swoop into the Blocking and Tracking Station and take control of it, thereby making it impossible for Sputnik to push it back at Earth. While we were doing that, some of the other apes were to bring the ARC conference members out of stasis.
We were staging a coup, attacking Sputnik, his apes, and his psis. If were going to succeed we were going to need more help,
powerful
help.
‘‘We have to free Elena,’’ I said out loud, to nobody in particular.
‘‘Ah, why?’’ Priscilla asked. ‘‘She’s a bit of a loon.’’
‘‘True, but she’s a powerful loon and we need all the power we can get right now.’’
Carol nodded in agreement. The others looked on, trying to cover the fear in their eyes. Even HARV was leery.
‘‘I don’t like anybody who can shut me down,’’ he said, hands on hips.
‘‘Don’t worry. She won’t turn you off,’’ I said to HARV. I looked at the apes. ‘‘And she’ll help us.’’
‘‘You base this on what?’’ HARV was the one to ask the question but the apes nodded their approval.
‘‘Her hatred of Sputnik,’’ I said.
‘‘Ah, the enemy of my enemy,’’ Priscilla said.
‘‘Exactly.’’
‘‘Cute and smart,’’ Priscilla said.
‘‘If we can get Elena and turn a few more psis and apes we’ll have a chance here,’’ I said, still ignoring Priscilla.
‘‘Do you really believe that?’’ HARV asked.
‘‘I do,’’ I said with as much conviction as I could muster.
Truth was, I wasn’t sure at all. Elena was a wild card at best. Even if she was on our side, if we couldn’t turn any other psis it would still be an uphill fight. This wasn’t even taking into account Earth’s reaction to the entire ordeal. The members of the World Council weren’t the most mellow, easy to deal with, turn the other cheek bunch in the world. They weren’t going to take lightly to the Moon trying to destroy them. It was going to take some smoother talking on my part to convince them not to retaliate. My job would be easier if Sputnik was out of the way. Things would have to fall just right if we were going to have a chance. All I could do was hope they did.
Continuing our flight through the Moon sky, the deflector beam slowly came into view. I had a plan— it may have not been the best plan, but it was better than no plan at all. Plus it was flexible; I would be able to adapt it quickly to any problems that might pop up. Having lived as long as I have, doing what I do, I knew unexpected problems were inevitable. As my old mentor used to say, ‘‘Expect the unexpected, especially when you least suspect it.’’ (Okay, she drank a lot, but there is still a certain Yogi Berra wisdom to those words.)
As we flew, Priscilla and her team filled me in on some of the missing blanks about Elena. They told me that her parents were not only the identical twins of Bo and Melda but they were also rivals. Both couples’ goals were to create the perfect psi, the next step in human evolution. They each believed the Moon presented the perfect environment for this as there was less corruption of the gene pool and in society in general on the Moon. Both couples believed the Moon was purer and free of mental and physical pollution.
Experience has taught me that when folks get involved with something because they believe it is pure and good, no good can come of it. Pure, by definition, means that people haven’t tried to manipulate it or change it. Once a second party jumps in and tries to improve on pure, you taint the purity. Scientists and politicians just can’t resist the urge to tinker. In baseball they say, ‘‘Sometimes the best trades are the ones you don’t make.’’ This holds true with science— sometimes it’s best to leave well enough alone. Of course, like Randy once told me, ‘‘Why settle for
nearly
perfect when you may be able to make it even closer to perfect?’’ Randy would always say that achieving perfection is impossible, but the goal of science is to make something as close to this impossible goal as possible. When a scientist sees something that is 99.9 percent perfect they can’t resist the urge to try to make it 99.91 percent perfect. This especially holds true if the scientist can convince some politician that this extra improvement is worth them throwing money to the scientist, which will, in turn lead to the politicianand scientist helping the world and turning a tidy profit. It’s like Everest to a mountain climber—you don’t really
need
to do it, but you have to do it for the challenge and the glory. The thing is, changing something for the sole sake of changing it doesn’t always work. There are times when good enough really is good enough and adding more good can lead to bad.
Things get especially mucked up when humans try to improve on purity. For one thing, one man’s purity is another man’s boredom. It’s all just different perspectives. Of course, Bo, Melda, Mo, and Shara didn’t see this. They were determined to make pure purer. After years of dealing with the darker sides of human nature, I knew this couldn’t end well.
The apes, having a surprisingly good grasp of human nature, also filled me in on Elena’s psyche. While she and Lea share DNA, the same emerald green eyes, dark blue hair, killer bods, superpsi powers, and love of purple microminis, their attitudes and demeanors were polar extremes. Elena was never a fan of Bo’s but wasn’t out-and-out hostile until the untimely death of her father. After Mo’s death, which Priscilla did say was under quite questionable circumstances, Elena stopped holding back. She become colder than the dark side of Pluto, wanting to salt the very ground Bo walked on.
After the death of Mo, Lea became even warmer and devoted to Bo. Bo could do no wrong in her eyes. That worried me. I’m a P.I.; I can deal with blind hatred. I know where that is coming from. The blind devotion, that was a whole new ball of wax. It’s a lot harder to predict how devotees will act.
The apes also clued me in on Shara Lee Sputnik. Priscilla thought she’d be sympathetic to our cause but couldn’t be certain.
‘‘Why does she support Bo at all if there is any suspicion that he killed her husband?’’ I asked.
‘‘Because she is a smart woman,’’ Priscilla answered. ‘‘There is no proof Bo had anything to do with Mo’s hover accident. Mo was a bit of hot-rodder. He preferred to drive hovers manually.’’
‘‘So it’s possible he just crashed on his own then,’’ I said.
‘‘Yes,’’ Priscilla said.
‘‘Then why does Elena hate Bo so?’’
Priscilla looked at me. ‘‘She is convinced Bo wanted more control over her, control he could never have with Mo around.’’
‘‘Is that true?’’ I asked.
‘‘Well, it could be,’’ Priscilla said. ‘‘Being an ape I’m not one for idle speculation, though.’’
‘‘So Shara is no fan of Bo’s either?’’ HARV asked before I could.
Priscilla shook her head. ‘‘No, he’s always rubbed her the wrong way. Once, he tried giving her a neck massage after a late night lab session. She hated it. He longed to marry both sisters, but Shara would have nothing to do with that. She desired a more thoughtful man.’’
‘‘How do you know all this?’’ I asked.
Priscilla pointed to where I assume her ears were. ‘‘We apes may not talk much, but I assure you we do listen.’’ Priscilla continued, ‘‘Bo even offered to marry Shara after his brother’s death, claiming it was the right thing to do.’’
‘‘That’s our Bo, always doing the right thing, as long as he’s got something to gain by doing it.’’
‘‘Shara refused. She is a very proud woman.’’
I turned to Carol. ‘‘You met Shara. What did you think about her?’’
‘‘She reminded me a lot of Melda,’’ she said weakly.
‘‘They are twin sisters,’’ I said.
‘‘I mean, in demeanor. She was very cool and professional. They don’t look like identical twins.’’
‘‘She uses her mental powers to change her appearance,’’Priscilla said. ‘‘So she separates herself from her sister. She’s a little off.’’
‘‘That’s not exactly a big surprise. Hopefully, we’ll be able to convince her to help us anyhow,’’ I said.
‘‘With Shara, you never know,’’ Priscilla said.
We would know soon enough. Once HARV rigged the deflector beam to push the ZAP asteroid past the Earth then shut down, I was heading to the psi center. For now, first things first. HARV and I (well mostly HARV) had to concentrate on the task at hand.
‘‘How close to the deflector beam do you have to be before you can reprogram it?’’ I asked.
HARV appeared from my wrist communicator, shaking his head. I knew that look. I had seen it way too often. It was his ‘‘My, you are a dense human’’ look.
‘‘I need a direct physical link,’’ he huffed. ‘‘If I didn’t need to touch the thing we could have done this from anywhere.’’
‘‘By I, you mean me,’’ I said.
‘‘By I, I mean us,’’ he corrected.
‘‘So you need a direct line of sight,’’ I said.
HARV nodded. He gave me a cynical pat on the head. ‘‘Yes. Once into the inner workings of the deflector beam I will clone myself onto its operating system. I will be in control.’’
‘‘So you will be in control of a device that is capable of destroying the Earth.’’
HARV simply nodded.
‘‘And that’s a good thing because?’’
HARV sighed. ‘‘I am not a madman bent on destroying one civilization so his little corner of civilization can carry on with his vision of what he believes the human race should be.’’
‘‘Good point.’’
‘‘Yes, good to know you agree with me,’’ HARV said. ‘‘If I slept, I would sleep better knowing that.’’
I don’t think it was my imagination that HARV was growing a bit more cynical each day he was connected to my brain. I wasn’t sure if that was a bad thing, but it certainly wasn’t all that reassuring.
I turned to Carol. ‘‘Am I as annoying as he is?’’
Carol pointed to the deflector beam that was now less than a hundred meters away. ‘‘I think we better concentrate on the matter at hand,’’ she said, showing her potential for a career in politics.
I reached forward and tapped Priscilla on the shoulder. ‘‘We need to land as close to the beam as you can get.’’
She nodded. ‘‘I’ve been listening to your conversation with HARV.’’
‘‘Any thoughts?’’ I asked her.
She shook her head. ‘‘I’m glad I don’t have a computer wired to my brain.’’
‘‘Any other thoughts?’’
‘‘It’s amazing humans still run the place.’’
‘‘Any other thoughts? Ones more pertinent to our current situation,’’ I said.
‘‘No, sounds like a good sound plan,’’ Priscilla said.
‘‘She’s just humoring you because she thinks you are cute,’’ HARV said.
Priscilla’s driver pulled our hover up next to the deflector beam. The beam wasn’t that stirring, a long metallic post shooting maybe one hundred meters into the Moon’s sky. Sitting atop the post were two old-fashioned looking rotating satellite dishes. HARV told me that one of the dishes was for backup tracking and the other fired the deflector or, if needed, tractor beam.