The Ganymede Club (29 page)

"Fine. Why don't you start by explaining it to
me?
"

"I'll do it on the way. Come on. We have to leave this minute."

"At least, let me call him first."

"No. No time for that. Let's go." Lola led the way back to her office. Spook, mystified and trailing behind, suddenly caught sight of the figure of Jinx Barker, unconscious and bound at wrists and ankles.

He stopped and stared, wide-eyed. "Conner Preston—"

"Isn't Conner Preston at all." Lola bent over and checked one more time that her silent prisoner had not stirred. "This man is Jinx Barker. He's one good reason for leaving, so let's get out of here. I'll tell you everything as we go—at least, I'll tell you as much as I know."

* * *

It was two hundred kilometers to Alicia Rios's home, but the journey should not take more than an hour. Bryce Sonnenberg entered the location of her home into the Ganymede transportation guide and received a detailed list of the chutes, slides, vehicles, and rapid-transfer points that he needed to get there. Her message service indicated that she was at home. Bryce also received a note that he should have expected: Alicia Rios lived in a region of restricted access. When he got there, he was likely to find himself excluded by her security system.

That was one good reason for pausing before he entered the descent tube that formed the final stage of the journey. The other reason had nothing to do with Alicia Rios.

He halted at a travelers' transfer node, walked over to a service area with dozens of tables and scores of service machines, and sat down. He ignored the server that rolled across and stood waiting for instructions.

Something was going on, something deep inside him. During the most recent haldane sessions, Lola Belman had suggested that he was approaching a breakthrough point in his treatment. She had not said how it might be triggered or how it would show itself—in fact, she had said that she did not know what form it might take. But he had assumed that there would be an end, either sudden or gradual, to the blackouts and the bizarre "memories" that arose during them. Then he could return to the calm life that he had enjoyed on Callisto before his brain began to misbehave.

He realized now that he had been a simple-minded optimist. Changes were occurring, as predicted, but they were going in the wrong direction. False memories were no longer the stuff of dreams and blackouts. They had become a continuous part of his existence, surfacing by association during his normal waking hours.

The sight of Jinx Barker—bound and unconscious—followed by Lola's talk of deception and murder, had been the final hard jolt. He suddenly "remembered" another whole life. He had been a youth on Earth, mathematically talented as he was talented now, but raised in tough and frightening surroundings. In that other life he had been forced to turn his back on his mathematical gift in order to survive. And survive he had, to become rich, powerful—and wary.

When he assured Lola Belman as he left her that he knew how to be careful, he had spoken from experience. He knew a hundred ways that an assassin might choose, and he had learned a hundred defenses. He had learned the danger of friendships. He recognized the awful power of money. A lovely woman who shared your bed, apparently so willing, might be a purchased killer waiting for her chance. The price of life was eternal vigilance. You learned to break into locked apartments as easily as into locked data files, or to escape from danger along routes that did not seem to exist.

All of which meant—Bryce, now sitting at the table while the little serving machine stood in front of him and waited patiently to take his order, leaned far forward and placed his hands over his face—it all meant that rather than being close to a cure, he was more unbalanced than he had ever been. Other memories of other lives were beginning to creep in. He was an old man living quite alone, pottering about a huge apartment and playing his quiet statistical games. And then he was young again, lying in agony in an aseptic low-gee hospital bed, knowing that he had returned from the very edge of death and realizing that he was still years away from normal health.

As impossible memories flowered within him, his own life flickered and faded. He tried to recall his years on Hidalgo and Callisto, and could not produce a single moment of vivid memory. He tried to picture his mother's face, and it would not come into focus. When he made a more concentrated effort, the image of Miriam Sonnenberg, the cool and intellectual Von Neumann designer, vanished. In its place appeared a scowling vision of stringy brown hair and bad teeth, leaning over with arm lifted to strike. He was defiant, ducking under that brawny raised arm and running down the stairs and out into a narrow alley littered with garbage. It was late at night. He was very small. But no one came after him.

"Your order, please."

The service machine had reached the limit of its programmed wait. Bryce lifted his head and stared at it. He had been far away, locked into the maze of his own impossible memories. But this world was still here, going on about its usual business.

"No order." He stood up and watched as the little machine rolled off. The worrier inside him said that what was going on in his head was happening at the very worst time. But another voice asked, When was a good time? There was another way to look at all of this: His wariness and instinct for danger had come along exactly when they were most needed. Confused memories were the price of the special knowledge he might need when he reached Alicia Rios's home.

He glanced at his watch, and was surprised to see that he had been at the travelers' transfer node less than a quarter of an hour. If he pushed his introspection behind him, in ten more minutes he could be at the entry point to the restricted complex where Alicia Rios lived.

He set out, reflecting on another curiosity. The
single
entry point to the whole complex. Odd. There were forty rooms in her sprawling apartment, but they were served by only the one access. Only one way in—that provided for maximum security. But only one way
out?

Not if he were designing it. You always, no matter how impenetrable and well defended the castle, provided yourself with a bolt-hole. If he could not get to Alicia Rios because the way in was restricted, perhaps he could reach her through a hidden way out.

The region that he was approaching was on the deepest residential level, but it reeked of wealth. He could see it in the elegant bioluminescent inlays that lit the corridors with soft and discreet blue-white, in the custom-designed—
human
-designed—murals and statues along the walls, in the inaudible air-supply system, in the numerous and silent cleaning machines that carefully stayed a good ten meters away from him.

The entrance to Alicia Rios's home occupied the blind end of the corridor, an innocuous white screen that could be anything from a door of thin plastic to an impermeable wall of unknown thickness. Bryce walked slowly over to the query panel on the left. He had no intention of touching it, or indicating in any other way his interest in entering. He wanted time, first to observe and then to think. His arrival at the apartment entrance would certainly have been noted and recorded by the house security systems, but unless he did more than stand there it was unlikely that the information would go beyond a low-level fax.

The panel lights, to his surprise, were all switched off—every one, even the little power indicator. That suggested one of two things: Either the whole panel was a sham, and access to the apartment complex was obtained in some other way; or the security systems were not operating, and anyone who wanted to could simply walk on in.

The wary underside of his mind pointed out that there was of course a third option. This could be a trap, intended to lure him inside.

He paused to assess the odds. Lola had learned only this morning that Alicia Rios was behind the attempt to kill her, and now he knew also. But he and Lola had spoken to no one else, so no one
knew
that Bryce knew. Without that information, he would never have found his way down to this deep, exclusive level of Ganymede. Therefore, no one could possibly be expecting him.

Bryce walked over to the smooth white wall that formed the end of the corridor and paused with his fingers an inch away from it. He was making another assumption: that Alicia Rios had no other enemies she wanted to trap. If she had tried to kill Lola Belman, for whatever unknown reason, she might be just as eager to kill someone else. And he could finish up just as dead, even if he were not the intended target.

Odds, odds, odds,
whispered a now-familiar voice deep inside him.
Everything in the world is odds. You can calculate and calculate, but when it's all done you still have to throw the dice.

Bryce moved his left hand forward to meet the wall. He could see no seam where a door might be located, but as his fingertips reached the smooth white panel, they passed right on through and he felt a tingle in their ends. He jerked back. It was not a material wall at all, it was a hologram. He could walk right in—unless some other type of protective field were active. He could think of half a dozen that would offer excellent security. Something as simple and lethal as a triggered laser, able to reduce Bryce to his component elementary particles—that was a little extreme, and the Ganymede laws would not permit it. But what about something as benign but binding as a magnetic freeze field? That would lock him rigid in one position once he was completely within it, then hold him there until he died or someone came along to turn it off.

Bryce patted his pockets, looking for something ferromagnetic. He had ID cards, with their tiny metal strips, but they might not be enough to trigger a defense system. The only thing he could find was the key ring on which he kept the controls that allowed him into the Callistan space-scooter hangar.

He stared at those thoughtfully, almost wistfully. Why did any of the past few months have to happen? He had been busy and mindlessly happy, with his work in mathematics and his sport in low-gee space racing. Now here he was in unknown territory, wondering if the next few minutes would see his body blown apart or his brain scrambled.

He backed up half a dozen steps and lobbed the key ring at and through the field. There was no ringing of alarm bells, no flash of incandescent metal. After waiting another thirty seconds he approached the field and walked on through. His key ring was waiting on the floor at the other side.

He picked it up and looked around. He was at the edge of an enormous foyer, fifteen meters square and six meters high. The ceiling was elaborately decorated and was supported by pencil-thin, fluted columns. Gravity was higher here than on Callisto, but hardly a hindrance to architectural design. The corridor that led away from the far side of the foyer ramped steeply downward, while other openings, clearly intended as doors, were two or three meters up in the walls.

Everything in the apartment foyer seemed normal, and yet something was badly wrong. It took Bryce half a minute to pin it down.

Air.

Everywhere on Ganymede, as on all worlds of the Belt or Outer System, you heard the continuous background noise of air circulators. A region without a steady breeze of pumped air was dead or dying. But here within the apartment there was total silence. The still air was breathable, although he detected in it a lung-searing whiff of ozone.

In an apartment this size he could stay for weeks without running out of oxygen, so he was in no immediate danger of asphyxiation. But he could not imagine that Alicia Rios would choose to live without circulating air. He was already feeling uneasy after just a few minutes.

There was one obvious conclusion. No matter that her message service said she was home, she was actually away and she planned to be away for some time. For some odd reason she had chosen to turn off the air circulators. He must look for her elsewhere. However, in her absence the opportunity for a thorough search of the living complex was too good to pass up.

Bryce began to prowl. It seemed completely natural to pause at the entrance of each new room and run a survey for possible traps. His subconscious mind apparently knew exactly what to look for. He identified five problems as he penetrated deeper into the complex. Two of them were nothing but hidden monitors, designed to provide an alarm to some central control room. Both of them were turned on and apparently working. The other three were more dangerous. They could be used to kill any unwanted visitor. After he negotiated the third one unscathed, he should have been breathing easier—except that something else was raising the hair on the back of his neck.

It was a smell. In the still air, another odor was diffusing through to add itself to the ozone. This one was more acrid, a lung-burning mixture of ionized atoms.

He followed his nose. He was approaching the master living room, a great chamber furnished in an old-fashioned style. The furniture, screens, and murals presumably reflected Alicia Rios's own tastes—Earth fashions that had been popular forty years ago.

The unpleasant smell was coming from this room. He halted at the threshold. At the far end stood a long, low table, with six wing-backed chairs around it. They would have been a matched set, with covers of pale blue—except that one of them had been burned to a black skeleton of metal. The thick carpet beneath it had vanished, to reveal seared metal floor panels. A wall screen, five meters behind the chair, was charred and ruined.

Bryce stepped forward carefully. From the pattern of burns on the wall and floor he could deduce the geometry of the event. The beam of heat that destroyed chair, carpet, and screen had propagated in straight lines so that the chair had partly protected the wall screen and the carpet behind it, and the screen in turn had partly protected the wall. Following the line of the beam back to its source, Bryce placed its origin at a chest-high point just in front of a chair at the other end of the table. The table itself was untouched, except for a charred few centimeters at the end closest to the chair.

That chair was not completely burned to a skeleton. He walked over and inspected it, and felt his pulse speed up. A broad region along the center line had been protected from the heat. It formed the silhouette of a human figure, seated and with one arm by its side. The other hand's outline was on a control board, whose remnant was fused into the chair's frame.