The Diamond Moon (8 page)

He was a bright enough young man, but he was mightily opinionated and, as was often the case with such people, fundamentally shy. He didn’t so much talk as lecture; if he were wound up in his subject, he could even be rather charming at first. But he didn’t know when to stop talking—or how to stop, once he’d run out of things to say. Thus what social advantages he had often turned into liabilities. He was vulnerable.
Marianne Mitchell was also staying at the Interplanetary. In managing an effective introduction to a woman more than two decades younger than he was, it helped Mays to know that she was already among his fans. And that she had a thirst for knowledge.

It was essential that he approach them together. Mays staked out the hotel bar, making no attempt to hide; as a consequence, for most of one day and a good part of the next he signed books and cocktail napkins, even stray bits of lingerie, until the current crop of autograph seekers was sated. His patience was rewarded: late on the second day of his watch, Hawkins and Marianne entered, sat down, and ordered cocktails. He gave them ten uninterrupted minutes. Then . . .

“You’re Dr. William
Hawkins
,” he said, looming sud-denly out of the shadows, wasting no time on subtlety.

 

Hawkins looked up from what did not seem a happy conversation with Marianne. “Yes . . . oh! You’re . . .”

“If one were to
count
the number of people who can even
begin
to read the infamous Martian script, one would need only
one
hand to do it. And there
you
would be,” Mays said, sounding immensely pleased with himself. “But
sorry
, my name’s Mays.”

“Of course, Sir Randolph”—Hawkins almost knocked his chair over, standing up—“won’t you sit down? This is my friend, Miss . . .”

 

“
Terribly
rude,” Mays said. “You will
forgive
me.”

 

“. . . Mitchell.”

 

“Marianne,” Marianne said sweetly. “It’s an honor to meet you, Sir Randolph.”

 

“Why,
really
.”

 

“Really, yes. Bill and I have talked about you a great deal. I think your ideas are so fascinating.”

Mays threw Hawkins a quick look; upon hearing this from the woman he’d been trying to impress by cataloguing Mays’s follies, Hawkins suddenly realized how incongruous were his own obsequious noises. Abruptly he straightened his chair and sat down.

“How
good
of you to say so . . . Marianne?” A quick nod of her glossy brunette head confirmed that Mays had permission to use her first name. “If there is any secret to my success with the public, it is simply that I have managed to
focus
attention on some great thinkers of the past, too
long
neglected. Toynbee, for example. As of course
you
know.”

“Oh yes. Arnold Toynbee.” She nodded again, more vigorously. She’d definitely heard of Toynbee— mostly from Bill Hawkins.

 

“You’re suggesting, Sir Randolph,” Hawkins suggested for him, “that like Newton, if you have seen farther it is because you stand on the shoulders of giants?”

 

“Mmm . . . well . . .”

 

Hawkins was all heavy humor and undisguised resent-ment. “I’ve heard that Isaac Newton intended that remark to insult his rival, Robert Hooke—who was a dwarf.”

 

“In that case, apparently I am even
less
like
Hooke
than like
Newton
.”

 

Marianne laughed delightedly.

 

Hawkins flushed; she was not laughing with him. “I’ll find a waitress.” He jerked his hand up and looked about.

 

“Bill says you’re here to investigate Professor Forster’s expedition to Amalthea,” Marianne said to Mays.

 

“That’s right.”

 

“Bill says they aren’t doing anything except making an archaeological survey.”

 

“Perhaps the professor hasn’t told Bill everything,” said Mays.

 

She persisted. “But do you
really
think the professor is part of a conspiracy?”

 

“I say, Marianne,” said Hawkins worriedly, his hand still in the air.

“I’m afraid my views on that subject have not been ac-curately reported,” Mays replied. “I haven’t accused Profes-sor Forster of being part of a
conspiracy
, only of knowing more than he’s telling the public. Frankly, I suspect he has discovered a secret that the Free Spirit have jealously guarded for centuries.”

“The Free Spirit!” Hawkins exclaimed. “What could some centuries-old superstition possibly have to say about a celestial body that was unknown until the 1880’s?”

 

“Just so,” Mays said amiably. The waitress appeared, dressed in an elaborate Balinese temple dancer’s costume.

 

“What will you have?” Hawkins asked Mays.

 

“Ice tea, Thai-style,” said Mays.

 

“Two more here,” said Hawkins, indicating the tall rum drinks he and Marianne had been sipping.

 

“Not for me,” Marianne said. Her glass was still more than half full. The waitress bowed prettily and left.

“You were asking about centuries-old superstitions, Dr. Hawkins,” Mays said suavely, turning his attention full on Hawkins. “Before I address your question, let me first ask if you can tell me
why
the underground temples of the Free Spirit cult have the southern constellation
Crux
depicted on their ceilings—when at the time the earliest of them were built no one in the
northern
hemisphere knew the config-uration of the
southern
sky? And just what secrets were those two astronomers on the moon trying to keep when they plotted to destroy the Farside radiotelescopes, which were then trained upon Crux?”

“That the aliens are from Crux, and they’re coming back,” Marianne said with satisfaction.

 

“Oh, Marianne,” Hawkins groaned.

 

“A very reasonable hypothesis,” Mays said, “one among several.”

“Including coincidence, which in a probabilistic world is not only possible but inevitable.” If Hawkins had not been so flustered, he would have stopped there—“And what clues could Professor Forster have concerning these living aliens . . . that he wouldn’t share with the rest of his team?”—realizing too late that there were all sorts of things someone in Forster’s position would want to keep secret from his academic rivals.

But again Mays declined a frontal attack. “As to that, I really don’t know. I assure you, however, there will be no
secrets
when I discover what the professor is keeping to himself.” Mays knitted his furry brows, but there was a kind of mockery in his challenge. “Perhaps you should consider this fair warning, sir. I intend to follow every
clue
.”

“There won’t be many clues to a nonexistent secret.”

“Dr. Hawkins, you are such a . . .
straightforward
man, I’m sure you would be surprised at what I have uncovered already. For example, that Professor Forster has acquired both a small ice mole and a Europan submarine—tools that give your expedition capabilities well beyond the scope of its stated survey goals.”
Hawkins was indeed surprised, and failed to hide it. “How did you know that?”

Mays answered with another question. “Can you offer a straightforward explanation for these rather odd acquisi-tions?”

“Well, certainly,” said Hawkins, although he was unsure how he’d been maneuvered into defending himself. “Amal-thea is obviously a different place than it seemed when the professor wrote his proposal. The subsurface geology . . .”

“. . . could be understood with conventional seismo-graphic imaging techniques. Perhaps already is understood. The Space Board has kept watch on Amalthea for more than a year,” Mays said. “No, Dr. Hawkins, Professor Forster wants more than a survey of Amalthea’s surface or a picture of its interior. He is looking for something . . . something
beneath
the ice.”

Hawkins laughed. “The buried civilization of the ancient astronauts from Crux, is that it? Quite imaginative, Sir Randolph. Perhaps you should be writing adventure viddies instead of documentaries.” It was a juvenile retort. To Hawkins’s evident dismay, Marianne did not bother to hide her contempt. . . .

Days later, Mays could still smile triumphantly at the memory of that moment. When Hawkins left the table a few moments later, he’d recovered just enough of his dignity to avoid making false excuses. “It’s clear that you have more to talk about with Sir Randolph than with me,” he’d said to Marianne. “It would be churlish of me to interfere.”

And indeed they did have more to talk about. Much more. PART TWO
GANYMEDE CROSSING VIII
Two weeks earlier
. . .

 

“You were right. I can’t leave Blake and the others out there floundering. I’m probably the only one alive who knows what to do.”

 

“
I
was right?” Amusement touched Linda’s calm features. “Did
I
tell you all that?”

 

“You got me to think it, and then to say it. Which is the same thing.”

 

Linda nodded. “I suppose so.” The faint smile remained.

 

Sparta nervously paced her end of the room, her boot heels knocking softly on the bare polished boards. “Maybe I gave you the wrong impression. I’m not here for our reg-ular session.”

 

“Somehow I sensed that. For one thing, you haven’t sat down.”

 

“I wanted to tell you what I’ve decided.”

 

“And I’d like to hear it.”

“Yes . . . Yes.” Sparta stopped pacing and stood at something resembling parade rest, her feet spaced apart, her hands clasped behind her. “I’ve made arrangements to join Forster. A fast cutter will take me to Ganymede. Planetary alignments are almost ideal. It should take a little over two weeks.”

Linda said nothing, only sat upon her plain pine chair and listened. The light from the window was fitful, bright-ening and dimming with the swift passage of clouds before the sun, causing Linda’s and Sparta’s shadows to shrink and swell on the polished floorboards and enameled walls.

“And there are some other . . . details,” Sparta said.

 

“Which you wish to discuss with me.”

 

“That’s right. What we talked about before.”

 

“We’ve talked about a lot of things.”

 

“Specifically about . . . humanness. What it is to be hu-man.”

 

“Oh.”

“Well, I don’t think I can define it for you—for myself—any better than I ever could.” In struggling to express con-cepts that seemed self-evident to the majority of those who ever thought of them at all, Sparta seemed younger than her years. She swiped at the short blond hair that fell below her eyebrows. “But I think I know now that . . . I mean, I don’t think it has anything to do with what’s done to the body. After a person is born, anyway.” Quickly she added, “I’m speaking generally.”

“Of course.” Linda showed no amusement; Sparta’s state-ment, which in the abstract was so general as to be virtually without content, coming from her was a major concession. “Do I take it you no longer feel that you were robbed of your humanity by those who altered you?”

“More than that,” Sparta said. “I think . . . I mean, I’ve decided that nothing others do to me
can
rob me of my humanity.”

 

“Say more about that.”

 

“Nothing done to me, that is, so long as I can remain conscious of my own feelings.”

 

Linda smiled. “To hear you say so makes
me
feel very good.”

 

Sparta, startled, laughed abruptly. “You claim you can feel?”

“Oh yes. You’re the one who taught me that feelings are thoughts that need no words. Granted I’m not human; I’m the projection of what we agree is a machine. Nevertheless I have both thoughts and feelings.”

Sparta was momentarily confused. She had come here to tell Linda about matters of profound importance and inti-macy; Linda seemed to be confusing the issue with these remarks about herself . . .
it
self.

But perhaps Linda had anticipated the rest of what Sparta intended to reveal. Sparta pushed on. “What they did to me wasn’t arbitrary. Some of it was a mistake; still they . . .” But she quickly floundered again; it was difficult to find straightforward language for what she was trying to express.

Linda tried to help her. “We’ve talked about the mission they planned for you.”

 

“The mission remains.” Sparta took a sharp breath. “To fulfill it I will require certain modifications.

Some that they anticipated, but that I . . . that have been . . . damaged. I need to restore the capacity to
see
, microscopically and telescop-ically—and the capacity to image the infrared. And other modifications, specific to the anticipated environment . . .”

Linda interrupted her before she could begin busily list-ing them. “You intend to change yourself?”

 

“The arrangements have been made.” Sparta seemed edgy, defensive. “The commander is cooperating. I haven’t said anything to my mother and father . . . yet. But I will, really.”

 

Linda was still; she gave the impression that she was lost in thought.

 

She was quiet so long that Sparta sniffed noisily and said, “I don’t have a lot of time before . . .”

“You have made vital progress,” said Linda, abruptly cutting her off. “I applaud and admire your courage in de-ciding to
choose
this difficult task, which others tried to thrust upon you without your consent, but which nothing now compels you to undertake. You have mastered your groundless fears and faced up to one or more fundamental questions that must eventually confront all people of sensitivity and imagination.” She paused only a moment before she added, “I worry about only one thing.”

“What?”

 

“No one can make progress by running away.”

 

“Meaning?” Sparta demanded.

 

“You must interpret what I say in your own words. You are aware by now that I am little other than what is poten-tial in you.”

With that, as if to underscore her Sibylline message, a blue flash of light and a soft “pop” emanated from the cen-ter of Linda’s persuasively solid body, and she vanished. Sparta stared at the empty room, shocked and a little offended.