The Ganymede Club (13 page)

"He does. He is the complete professional, as lover or as assassin
par excellence
."

"Although of course no one with experience of the latter function is available to report on his prowess. Do you have first-hand experience of the former?"

"Trust me."

"Very good. Tell him that if he performs well in the first role, he will almost certainly be asked to perform later in the second, and with the same individual. That may pique his curiosity. And tell him that he will be amply rewarded, financially and possibly in other ways. I think it is time to consider again the notion of Jinx Barker as a Club member. Do not of course say anything to him about that."

"Naturally. I think we have learned a lot since Neely. But I must say that in Barker's case this is not before time."

"Remember that you have the most to lose, Rios. He is your protégé, and he would be your responsibility. You know the Club rules. Warn him to be extremely careful on this assignment. After all, Lola Belman—"

"Is a haldane." Alicia was smiling, cold and confident. She stood up. "I am well aware of that, Cayuga. Do not worry. I will make sure that Jinx is fully briefed. If I know him, that challenge will merely add to his enjoyment of the new assignment."

9

The five years from ten to fifteen are like half a lifetime. Spook, with no friends or relatives other than a sister who alternated between preoccupied and overprotective, found himself with lots of leisure time. He had spent much of it wandering alone through the interior of Ganymede. By his fifteenth birthday, he reckoned he knew as well as anyone alive the moon's labyrinth of cross-connecting tunnels and shafts and chambers, constantly enlarged on the lowest levels by the hands, scoops, picks, drills, and explosives of the tireless Von Neumanns. The connectivity and complexity were astonishing, but it was not beyond the grasp of someone at home with the topology of knotted four- and five-space.

Even so, there were many regions unfamiliar to Spook. That was not surprising, because Ganymede was after all a whole world, whose habitats, diversity reserves, sea farms, hydroponic gardens, and experimental biospheres occupied interior layers that in total would one day exceed the land area of Earth.

Not only that, some parts of Ganymede were
boring.

Spook was approaching one of those now, a bit of
Ganymedea incognita
, a level only seven kilometers below the surface but previously bypassed on his travels because it showed on the computer maps as a dull agricultural-research area. And the maps did not lie. Spook skirted a field of gigantic orange flowers—each one facing the direction of the bright overhead light—and wondered what they would do if and when the second light in the chamber's high ceiling was turned on. The plants were clearly phototropic. Would they suffer some form of vegetable schizophrenia, trying to face two ways at once? Would they need treatment from some vegetable-haldane version of his sister?

At the far edge of the field, he asked himself a more sensible question: Had he screwed up? The directions he had been given had seemed so clear and unambiguous that he had disdained to bring a written copy. But did anyone really live here, at the end of the dark, dirty, and deserted corridor at whose open end he now found himself?

If anyone did, they must be just ahead, beyond the great yellow door that marked the tunnel's blind end. Spook hurried forward, banged on one of the panels, and waited.

Nothing. After a second blow without response he tentatively pushed the door. It opened silently inward on lubricated hinges.

Spook entered, and found himself in paradise. The room he had walked into was an odd shape, no more than four meters high and three wide, but stretching back in the gloom for at least thirty. The central aisle was made still narrower by the materials stacked along both side walls.

And what materials.

Close to Spook, close enough to touch, stood a Seeker. It was not a scale model of the smart weapon that had been the Belt's deadliest contribution to the war, but the real thing. The brain must have been thoroughly lobotomized, otherwise Spook would be dead—but he felt his skin crawl when the blunt head swiveled and the five ruby lenses turned to survey him.

Just beyond the Seeker crouched the mesh cage of a Purcell invertor. The war-crimes tribunal had declared its use by the Belt colonies as an abomination and a crime against humanity. But Megachirops, on the Puzzle Network, had pointed out to Spook that winners, not losers, staffed the war tribunals. And the Belt had certainly lost. What weapons had Earth and Mars used, when Seekers and Purcell inverters could not provide a Belt victory?

An alternate point of view had come to Spook from an unlikely source. It was Lola, hearing the winners-and-losers argument, who had said, "Sure. Winners write history. But suppose that the Belt leaders really
were
monsters."

"I'm surprised to hear you say that. I thought you haldanes claimed to cure all nut cases."

She had shuddered at the final phrase, but had only said mildly, "If we did, brother dear, wouldn't I have done better with you? Anyway, you're missing the point. It's the same nonsense that ruined psychiatry and made its practitioners a laughingstock a century ago. You see, there really
are
bad guys in the world. You think Hitler and Stalin and Attila the Hun could have been
cured?
Well, if you do you are dead wrong. They weren't misunderstood, they weren't sick, they weren't victims; they were
evil
—and incurable. A haldane's job is to look at people and determine the difference, those who can be helped and those who are beyond saving. Some men, sad to say, are just plain and simple
bad.
"

"There are bad women, too."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest there aren't. When it comes to refined torture, we have you outclassed. Men who were wounded in old Earth combat weren't afraid of the enemy men. But they prayed to die before the women got to them with their skinning knives and slow fires."

Spook had preferred not to pursue that particular line of thought. But now, pushing aside the memory, he felt a strange urge to climb the invertor's spidery frame and enter the glittering cage.

Was it this sort of irrational impulse that lured men to go to war? It was hard to believe that the invertor could do what the tribunal claimed. One hour inside, and the deepest emotional bases of a human were supposed to reverse polarity. Best friends became bitter enemies, lovers were haters, heterosexuals became homosexuals, old loyalties dissolved and vanished. Spook had no lover, no enemies, and few loyalties. How could it possibly change
him
in any way that mattered? An undertow of curiosity tempted him to find out.

The next item standing along the wall drew him on and dissolved the temptation—or, replaced it with another. It seemed no more than a simple chair, with restraining metal bands for head, arms, and legs. Spook recognized it from image files as a Tolkov Stimulator. That was wartime technology from Mars, "friendly" technology, according to its description, but illegal for use in anything but extreme need. It raised the intelligence of a subject exposed to it—if that subject was strong or lucky enough to live through the treatment. The survival rate was rumored to be three percent.

And beyond the Stimulator, those silvery cubes that were stacked head high . . .

Belatedly, Spook came to his senses. He had not come all this way to wallow in a pool of war artifacts. He was here on serious business; but it seemed he had come to a deserted museum.

"Is anybody home?" he called into the darkness at the end of the long room. "I'm Ghost Boy—Spook Belman. Are you there?"

A bass grunt, almost a snort, came from behind a partition: "We made an appointment to meet at a precise time, here in my preferred abode. It would be perplexing, would it not, should I then fail to be present?"

A black-garbed figure came around the edge of the partition, moving lightly and easily despite his size. Spook guessed that the body in its too-tight clothing massed at least four hundred pounds. The head that protruded from the dark robe was as black, round, and smooth as a cannonball.

"I am, of course, Megachirops, the Great Bat." An expression of distaste twisted his fat face. "However, to the intrusive Ganymede census, I am officially known as Rustum Battachariya. Welcome, Spook Belman, to my Bat Cave."

"This stuff"—Spook waved a dazed arm—"is all this
yours?
"

"It is my hobby." Bat still wore the suspicious expression of a bad-tempered baby. "What of it?"

"Why, it's—it's—" Spook stared all around, searching for the right word. The more he looked, the more he saw. Finally, he gave up, and said, "It's just
fantastic.
"

"Indeed? To refined tastes, the cave in truth has some small appeal." But Bat's gratification showed through the offhand words. He was trying not to smile, and failing. "Few are invited here," he went on. "And fewer are so perceptive."

"Especially old people, I bet. Old people act as though the war never happened."

"They seek to banish it from existence by ignoring its reality."

"You must be
rich.
"

"Not at all." Bat flourished pudgy fingers at the wall. "Everything you see was available for the taking. Free. It is all deemed useless, 'war surplus' goods that no one else wants."

"Your parents let you have as many war mementos as you like?"

"The question does not arise. Since my fifteenth birthday, my parents and I have—by mutual consent—seen little of each other. Their idea of a 'normal' existence is not compatible with mine. I refer in particular to their ideas on diet. They are macrobiotic vegetarians, and they were in my opinion actively engaged in starving me to death." Bat eyed Spook's skinny form. "Are you hungry?" He obviously didn't know Spook.

"I'm famished."

"So am I. Let us remedy that." Bat led the way around the partition, into a kitchen that doubled as a communications center. Terminals and displays filled the right-hand wall. An elaborate range occupied the whole back of the room, with a long table and four chairs set in front of it. One of them was an enormous padded black seat that would have swallowed Spook up into its depths. Bat sat down on it and gestured to the covered pot that was waiting on the table. "Goulash. A specialty of the house. Help yourself."

Spook lifted the lid and his respect for Megachirops went up another notch. The steaming tureen held enough food for a dozen people, and it smelled great. Not only that, but when they began to eat Bat turned out to be one of those rare individuals with enough sense not to talk while he was doing it. There was a long period of contented silence, until at last Spook sighed, stared sadly at his empty bowl, and said, "I'm stuffed. Pity. Did you cook that?"

"Of course."

"Invite me anytime." And, at Bat's snort, "Well, sometime. But I guess we ought to get down to business. I wanted to ask, did you take a look at the file I sent you?"

"I did indeed." Bat placed the lid on the heavy pot, licked the back of his spoon regretfully, and leaned back. He gestured to the end wall, where a display region stood waiting. "Of course, that file raises more questions than it answers. Someone has been through it and edited it with a heavy hand."

"Not my doing and not my fault. My sister Lola did it. She wouldn't let me send it to you otherwise."

"I would welcome the opportunity to explore the original. But even this, with all its defects, was not without interest. I assume that there is no dispute as to the
place?
"

"Mars."

"Of necessity. The strength of the gravitational field indicates either Mars or Mercury, while the more distant horizon and the presence of numerous buildings eliminates the latter possibility. There is a major problem, of course, in that whoever experienced such a fall could not have survived it. However, did you also note another small anomaly?"

"I thought I did. I wanted an independent opinion."

"Which I am certainly in a position to provide. It is Mars, yes. But
today's
Mars, no. The size of the buildings points to Oberth City. But Oberth City as it existed
before
the war, before it was flattened to rubble."

"That's just what I thought."

"So the file came from a memory at least five years old, from someone who was on Mars before the war. I assume that we still agree?"

"Yes. But there's another problem. According to Lola, the person that the memory came from was
never on Mars.
"

"Then, at the risk of appearing obtuse"—Bat's tone suggested that such a risk was not to be taken seriously— "since this person is apparently available to your sister, why does she not opt for the simple solution and
ask
for an explanation?"

"She can't. You see, he doesn't know himself. That's why he came to her for treatment—"

Spook paused. As usual, he had said much more than he was supposed to. Until Lola met Bat in person and was convinced of his discretion, she had insisted that not one word be said about the subject of the memory file. Not even his sex, and certainly nothing of his background on Mars or anywhere else.

"Look," Spook went on, "I think there's a fine puzzle here—as tough and as interesting as anything on the Puzzle Network. But my hands are tied. Any additional information has to come from my sister. In person."

"You mean, I will be obliged to
meet
her?" Bat's puckered lips looked as if he had been sucking a lemon slice.

"Sure. Have a meal with her. It won't be as good as you gave me—or as much—but it will be all right. Her food's really not bad. She's all right, too. Even if she is a haldane."

As soon as Spook said it, that sounded like another tactical error. He knew Lola, and she was easy enough to get on with; but he also realized how most people felt about encountering a haldane.

Fortunately, Rustum Battachariya did not seem the slightest bit worried. He was sighing, rising from the broad black stool, and pulling up the black cowl of his robe to cover his head. "It is no wonder," he said thoughtfully, moving away from the table and along the narrow room toward the exit, "that I choose to frequent the Puzzle Network, where all acceptable problems are soluble by knowledge and logic alone. Every other interesting enigma appears to be accompanied by some irritating encumbrance. In this case . . ."