Death Wave (29 page)

Her brows rising in feigned surprise, Halleck said, “If he refuses to join you, that won't be our fault, will it?”

Aditi glared at her.

“In the meantime, you're going to the habitat, along with Dr. Frankenheimer and several of his staff. And Signore Castiglione, of course.”

*   *   *

In his home in the lunar city of Selene, deep below the airless surface of the Moon, Douglas Stavenger watched every second of Jordan's presentation. He sat in stunned silence as he saw the images of the dead worlds, piles of living creatures sprawled on the ground, whole worlds absolutely still, silent, scrubbed of all life.

“He's right,” Stavenger murmured to his wife, sitting beside him.

Edith Elgin was a veteran of the news media business. “That's powerful stuff,” she agreed.

Stavenger ordered the holographic viewer to shut down. The living room lights came up, but softly, muted to their evening level.

“The next meeting of the World Council is going to be a free-for-all,” Stavenger said, almost grinning. “It'll be tough for Halleck to hold them all in control.”

“Especially you,” said Edith.

“Me? I'm just representing Selene, strictly an ex-officio member of the Council. I don't even have a vote.”

“So what are you going to do?”

He made a little shrug. “I think tomorrow I'll ask the chairman of Selene's executive committee if we can't offer the World Council a starship.”

“For free?”

“As a gesture toward helping solve the death wave crisis. Building a copy of the ship that went out to Sirius shouldn't be that expensive, not when we use nanomachines to build it.”

“A gesture? Or a kick in Halleck's backside to get her moving in the right direction?”

Stavenger chuckled. “The secret of a successful politician, Edie, is to never do anything for just one reason.”

“And how many reasons do you have in mind?”

“A few,” he replied, almost innocently. “The biggest one, of course, is to use the crisis as a stimulus to move the human race beyond the confines of the solar system, out to the stars.”

 

HABITAT GANDHI

With Castiglione sitting beside her, Aditi fretted that she couldn't call Jordan and tell him where she was going.

The passenger cabin of the spacecraft had no windows, but the forward bulkhead was almost entirely taken up by a three-dimensional viewer. It showed the habitat that they would soon be docking with. To Aditi it looked like nothing more than a large section of pipe, slowly rotating along its long axis.

Castiglione was playing at being a tour guide. “
Gandhi
is one of the oldest habitats in the Earth-Moon system. It was built by the Indian government, back when space endeavors were mostly run by governments, instead of private corporations.”

Aditi saw that indeed the cylinder looked old, its metal surface dull and pitted, the Hindi script painted along its flank faded and somehow tired-looking.

“It's more than ten kilometers long,” Castiglione explained, “and four klicks wide, if I remember correctly.”

“It rotates to produce a feeling of gravity inside,” Aditi said, to show Castiglione that she wasn't totally ignorant.

“Yes, correct. Along the inner surface you'll feel an entirely normal gravity, just a few percent less than Earth's.”

“A few percent less?”

With an easy smile, Castiglione replied, “Yes. It makes you feel just a trifle lighter, stronger. The psychotechnicians claim it's good for your mental outlook. There are quite a few elderly people who've come up to these orbital habitats to retire. Some of them are more than two hundred years old.”

Aditi nodded absently. Jordan's more than two hundred years old, she thought to herself, although most of that time he's spent in cryonic suspension, during the flights to New Earth and back.

Castiglione had not been more than a dozen meters away from her side since he'd come into her apartment in the underground Barcelona complex and directed the robots to pack her things. Aditi had drowsed for most of the flight to
Gandhi,
with the Italian in the seat beside her.

Frankenheimer and four of his assistants were also aboard the spacecraft, sitting behind her. The scientist did not look at all happy about being uprooted from his laboratory.

“But it will take days for all the necessary equipment to be hauled up from Barcelona,” he had complained. “My wife's birthday is next week, for god's sake!”

“That can't be helped,” Castiglione had replied, a trifle loftily. “Orders from the top. A-one security procedure.”

Frankenheimer had grumbled but gone along. The chance to measure precisely how fast Aditi's FTL communicator worked was too tempting to ignore.

Now, as they approached
Gandhi,
Aditi saw that its slowly rotating length was studded with antennas, docking ports, pods of one sort or another. And several long rows of windows ran its length, glinting as they caught the sun.

“The habitat is completely self-sufficient,” Castiglione described, as if reciting from a guidebook. “Much of the interior is farmland, to support the population.”

“How many people live inside?” Aditi asked.

Castiglione frowned slightly, trying to remember. “It was designed to house one hundred thousand, I believe. But you know the Indians: they've allowed many more than the designed capacity to pack themselves into the habitat.”

“How could they—”

“Corruption, pure and simple, dear lady. Officials are paid to look the other way and whole families are smuggled into the habitat.”

“Our arrival will add six more people to their population,” Aditi mused. Then she added, “But we won't be there permanently, of course.”

With a shrug, Castiglione said, “Probably not.”

*   *   *

It was close to midnight in Boston. Jordan and Otero were having a drink together in Otero's office. Well deserved, Jordan thought, after two hours of being on camera.

They sat in a pair of comfortable recliners in a corner of the outsized office, tired and feeling slightly deflated. Through the long windows across the way Jordan could see the lights of Boston: office towers, mostly, but there was a slice of the old Boston Common showing. Jordan remembered riding the swan boats there as a child visitor to America.

A continually fluctuating set of numbers was scrolling on one of the wall screens. Otero's eyes never strayed far from the display. He had pulled his bolo tie loose and kicked off his loafers.

“Damned near fifty percent of the global audience was watching us!” he exclaimed between gulps of his tequila. “And that's not counting the off-world watchers.”

“I presume that's good,” said Jordan.

“Good? It's fantastic! You're a vid star, Jordan.”

Reaching out to clink his glass of scotch against Otero's glass, Jordan said, “And so are you, Carlos.”

Otero laughed. But then he said, “Now we see what the critics have to say. The pundits and opinion-shapers.” His voice dripped with contempt.

The phone on Otero's desk announced, “Vera Griffin to see you, sir.”

With a pleased smile, Otero said, “Let her in.”

The door opened and Griffin stepped through. In Jordan's eyes, she looked almost like a waif, slim and small and vulnerable. But she strode across the thickly carpeted office with sure, determined steps. He saw that Otero remained seated as she approached, so—with some misgivings—he did, too.

“Mr. McKinley says that more than a hundred news organizations want to interview Mr. Kell,” she announced happily.

Otero grinned up at her. “And why hasn't McKinley come in person to deliver the good news?”

“He's still fielding requests,” Griffin replied. “Besides, I'm the producer of the show. He talks to me first.”

Turning to Jordan, Otero asked, “How do you want to handle this?”

“I'd be happy to be interviewed.”

“One at a time, or all at once, like a news conference?”

“Which do you recommend?”

Griffin broke in with, “Like a news conference. I can arrange it.”

“That's McKinley's area,” Otero said with a mock scowl.

“I meant that I could produce the show. We could put it on the air.”

“Certainly,” said Otero. “My phone tells me that four other major network chiefs have called.”

“Requests to rerun your interview?”

With a slight shake of his head, Otero said, “If I know these pigeons, what they're after is some way to get Jordan on their own networks.”

“Feeding frenzy,” Griffin said.

“Yes,” said Otero. Turning to Jordan, “You're now a very famous person. I'm going to have to get you some protection.”

“Protection?” Jordan echoed.

“Halleck isn't entirely wrong about security,” Otero said. “News reporters, bloggers, self-important media analysts and commentators—they're all going to be hounding you now.”

“The price of fame,” Jordan muttered.

“Yes, but in with them there could be a few crazies, fanatics who want to kill you. You're going to need protection wherever you go.”

 

MITCHELL THORNBERRY

No matter how palatial his home on the lakefront above Chicago, Mitchell Thornberry found himself reminiscing about his old digs at Trinity College. The friendly old ramshackle residences, the people on the campus and outside in the streets of Dublin, the pubs, the chat.

Enough of that, he told himself. You're a wealthy man now, you've got to take the sour with the sweet.

Looking around at his spacious bedroom, with the tall windows that gave a view of Lake Michigan sparkling in the moonlight, Thornberry chuckled softly to himself. The sour is pretty damned sweet, he thought. That it is.

Alone in his twelve-room house except for the serving robots, he'd watched Jordan's program from beginning to end. The early minutes, when they showed images from New Earth, almost made Thornberry nostalgic for the alien world.

But then Jordan had revealed that the World Council was keeping Aditi separated from him. Protective custody indeed! Keeping a man's wife apart from him.

Thornberry fumed over that even while he stared, aghast, at the scenes of devastation that Jordan had shown. Once the program ended Thornberry put through two phone calls: one to the chief of the American delegation to the World Council, and one to his friend and fellow star traveler, Jordan Kell.

He didn't expect to have either call returned at this time of the night. Get yourself a good night's sleep, Mitchell me boy, he told himself. Tomorrow you start working to help Jordan.

He called for his butler robot to bring him a glass of Paddy Irish whiskey. One of Ireland's many contributions to civilization, he thought, and a grand consolation in times of trouble. Wrestling with the World Council isn't going to be easy, he knew.

Thornberry pulled off his clothes, then went to the bathroom, brushed his teeth and urinated, and finally settled himself in bed. As he reached for the glass that the butler had left on the bed table the phone announced, “Jordan Kell, returning your call.”

Surprised, Thornberry commanded the phone to accept the call. Jordan appeared in the holographic viewer at the foot of the bed.

“Mitch,” he said, his brows rising slightly, “I should have waited until the morning.”

“No, no, no,” Thornberry replied. “I'm glad you called.”

Jordan was also in a bedroom somewhere; looked like a private home, expensive, elegant. He was sitting in an angular chair by a heavily draped window.

“How are you, Mitch?”

“I'm grand. I saw your show. Impressive.”

“Thank you.”

“The World Council is keeping you separated from Aditi?”

“I'm afraid so.”

“That's criminal! What can I do to help?”

Jordan hesitated, then answered in a rush, “You can get me nominated for a seat on the World Council.”

*   *   *

Aditi's breath gusted out of her when she stepped out into the open interior of habitat
Gandhi
.

With Castiglione leading her and Frankenheimer's little team of scientists, she had gone from the spacecraft that had carried them to the habitat into a sizable air lock chamber and then through a series of offices and corridors. Officials checked the digital information about the new arrivals and politely ushered them through a set of scanners that quickly and efficiently probed their physical health.

Satisfied that the newcomers did not pose any health hazards for the habitat, a dark-skinned young guide in a crisp tan uniform led them to still another doorway and with a smile and a slight bow, said, “Welcome to habitat
Gandhi
.”

Aditi followed the young guide through the doorway and onto a path bedecked with three-meter-high flowering shrubbery on either side. She could smell gardenias and jasmine in the air; it was like walking through a corridor of flowers.

Castiglione explained with a smile: “We are now inside the habitat—inside that big pipe we saw on our approach.” The young guide immediately took over. “The inner surface of the cylinder has been carefully landscaped. Most of it is devoted to farmlands, with towns and villages spaced among them. The people live in comfortable homes or apartments. Most of them work in the community in which they live, unless they are retired. Even the retirees find many ways to occupy their time, however.”

They stepped past the shrubbery and into an open area. That's when the air gushed out of Aditi's lungs.

A panorama of green countryside stretched before her startled eyes, kilometer after kilometer of neatly squared farmland, with white-walled villages dotted here and there. In the distance she could see a larger community, a town with red-roofed buildings and slim towers rising above the ground.