Hide and seek (12 page)

have
done your homework this morning. Do you know why I chose that apartment?”

 

“For its view, I assume.”

“In fact that’s a good part of the reason.” He leaned back in his chair and sipped his tea. “When followers of Islam first embarked into space, Inspector, there arose the problem of determining the
qibla
, the direction of prayer, which as you know is toward the Kaaba in the Great Mosque of Mecca. The times for prayer can be decided locally, but the position of Mecca–which at a sufficient distance is coincident with the position of Earth, of course–is in constant relative motion. So we orthodox carry these.” He set down his tea glass and brought a flat round object from his pocket, the size of a large pocket watch but much thinner. He laid it on the table. “Mine is a copy, about one-quarter size, of a rather unusual 14th-century astrolabe made by the astronomer Ibn al-Sarrajof Aleppo.”

The astrolabe consisted of a thin stack of incised bronze disks, inscribed in Arabic. The topmost was a net of spherical coordinates, a rete. Tiny scratches and irregularities revealed that the piece had been made by hand.

She looked at it with interest, studying it more closely than human eyes permitted, although no one would have suspected that her glance was anything more than casual . . . for the brain is a flexible organ: it can be trained to suppress or ignore double exposures, as users of old-fashioned monocular microscopes well knew. Like those ancients, Sparta could focus closely on any small or distant object with her macrozoom right eye with both eyes open, and without betraying herself by squinting.

“An expensive copy.”

“It is functional,” Khalid said. “It can actually be used as an astrolabe in the northern latitudes of Earth– or with suitable conversions, even on Mars, I suppose–but its principal operations are carried out by a microminiature inertial guidance system.” He rotated the tiny astrolabe with his fingers until a bronze pointer fastened to its center pivot had risen above the curving equator of the rete. “My spiritual compass. No matter where I go, or where the Earth wanders, the alidade points to Mecca.”

“A beautiful device,” she remarked, without expression. “What does it have to do with your choice of an apartment near the shuttleport?”

 

“Simply that my little room faces sky through some two hundred degrees of arc. Thus the
qibla
is rarely in the direction of a blank wall.” He looked up. “Ah, here we are . . .”

The waiter arrived, with timing so precise it might have been rehearsed. Khalid smiled; his uninsistent charm was as glassy as the table between them. The presentation of the astrolabe, which he now repocketed, had been a fascinating diversion from which Sparta had learned nothing germane to her case.

Khalid led the waiter though a recitation of the specials–roast goat stuffed with garlic and prunes, all grown on Mars Station, and poached salmon, fresh by freight shuttle from the hold of the freighter
Doradus
, recently arrived in orbit–and details of the preparation of several of the more elaborate items on the menu.

When Sparta asked for a green salad, Khalid reacted as if this were not only normal but in fact an exceedingly rational choice; but as for himself, the salmon was too tempting.

 

The waiter left. Sparta said, “Tell me about your argument with Morland, Dr. Sayeed.”

 

His smile thinned. “I’ll give you the bare bones. I trust you’ll flesh them out from your own sources.”

 

“I have plenty of time.”

“Some background, then.” He sipped his tea and made a show of considering his words. “Xenoarchaeologists and xenopaleontologists have a difficult task,” he began. “The Martian atmosphere was once rich in water vapor; the Martian desert once flowed with liquid water . . . as in fact it still does, several times a year, in a few low places where exposed ice hasn’t sublimed and the atmospheric pressure is just sufficient to keep water from evaporating instantly. But these are scattered, evanescent episodes. A billion years ago, or more, things were different. The atmosphere was thicker, the climate of Mars was mild, conditions were stable long enough–just–for the appearance and rapid evolution of life. Thus today we find fossils of living creatures. And thus the much rarer evidence that Mars was visited, perhaps only briefly, by an ancient intelligent race. No scrap of these most precious of treasures must escape our attention.”

He paused for further contemplation. “The task of the xenologists is not only difficult but noble,” he resumed, “the task of preserving the past. On the other hand”–the fingers of his right hand opened like a flower–“in the future Mars will again be a living paradise. Even without human intervention–given the passage of another billion years.”
When she did not react to his dramatic assertion, he went on. “The period of precession of Mars’s orbit around the sun and of its poles suggests that every couple of billion years or so Mars becomes warm enough for icecaps and the permafrost to melt and for liquid water to collect on the surface. The Mars Terraforming Project has been charged with accelerating this natural cycle. To do so we must increase the density of the atmosphere and enrich it with water vapor. At some point the greenhouse effect will take over and begin to raise atmospheric temperatures, one consequence of which will be to increase atmospheric pressure even more. Once the positive feedback is established, the plentiful water resources now locked up will melt and flow freely across the open desert, without instantly evaporating. True plants will survive in the open. The plants will excrete oxygen; meanwhile a much greater supply of oxygen will be released from the rocks by seeded bacteria. Eventually we Martians will not have to worry about keeping our pressure suits handy.”

She was sure he’d given this speech often, and his oratory was rousing. But she said only, “You were telling me about your argument with Morland.”

He nodded. “Mars is dead and has been for a billion years. But because there was life here once, the xenoarchaeologists and xenopaleontologists and xenobiologists–
xeno
-is a prefix that seems to apply only to previously Earthbound disciplines; there are no xenophysicists or xenochemists–these xenooptimists would like to believe that indigenous life survives to this day. Somewhere. Somehow. I understand their passion. I would like to believe so too,” he said, his expressive fingers drumming the green glass, “but I don’t. That was the gist of my disagreement with Dr. Morland.”

“You don’t seem the sort of man to get into a shouting match over theories,” she said.

“There was nothing abstract about our argument. Liquid water is the key to everything I have described. In the past there have been many schemes: to melt the north polar ice-cap by spreading it with dark earth to absorb solar radiation, or by engineering especially dark lichens or algae to achieve the same thing. Or by using nuclear reactors, dozens of them, perhaps hundreds or thousands of them. Other ideas. Any of these methods
might
work, but it would be centuries before the partial pressure of atmospheric water vapor would rise to significant levels. Schemes to melt the permafrost have been even more outlandish, including the subterranean detonation of nuclear devices by the thousands–an idea motivated less by concern for Mars, I think, than by the desperation of Euro-Americans to rid themselves of the antique weapons with which they once threatened each other. All of these plans have serious drawbacks.”

“They all seem hard on the planet,” she observed.

“
Unnaturally
hard on the planet,” he said. “But there is a way to speed up the natural Martian cycle of water and drought using only natural means. These means would also be hard on the planet. But at least they would be consistent with its ecological history.”

This time when he paused she cooperated, supplying him with the question he was fishing for. “And what would those be?”

“Cometary bombardment,” he said eagerly. “Comets are mostly ice. During the early history of Mars– and the other inner planets–swarms of comets fell, bringing water and carbon and organic molecules. Eventually the intensity of the swarms decreased, starting a billion years ago. But we can engineer a new bombardment. We can steer comets. In fact, Inspector, we’re planning to steer one now.”

“A comet to hit Mars?”

He nodded. “A test case, but if it works, the water will not be wasted. It will briefly flow over the surface of the Tharsis plateau before evaporating in the atmosphere–a greater injection of water vapor than fifty years’ slow melting of the polar cap.”

“When will this test be completed?”

 

“Not for several years. Our first candidate comet is still beyond the orbit of Jupiter.” He smiled. “As far away as it is, it is already encountering resistance from hot air.”

 

She almost laughed. “I see. . . .”

“That’s what Morland and I argued about, Inspector, not abstract theory but the specifics of Project Waterfall. He was opposed to it in any form; he went so far as to compare it to that odious nuclear-bomb scheme I mentioned. Of course he was quite drunk at the time.”

“Drunk?”

“He’d been in the Phoenix Lounge for two or three hours, I’m told. I often have dinner here, Inspector– an indulgence, but I allow myself only a few indulgences. As I was leaving I encountered Morland coming out of the lounge. It was . . . the only adequate word is ‘assault’ . . . he assaulted me with his crude sarcasms.”

“Why did he attack you?”

Khalid lifted a wagging finger, paraphrasing his late opponent: “Cometary impacts may preserve polar caps, but they dig large holes; something could be lost, some pocket of tenacious bacteria, some precious artifact.” His palm opened upward, conceding the point. “He couched these objections in language I don’t care to repeat.”

“Had you met before? How did he know you?”

“We had met, briefly, at a reception that Wolfy–Mr. Prott, the manager of the hotel–held for him a week earlier. Thereafter I would gladly have stayed out of his way. Morland was a flamboyant character, but in his opposition to the project he was not unlike others in the xeno-professions. He found me as offensive professionally as I found him personally.”

“What’s your role in Project Waterfall, Dr. Sayeed?”

 

“To put it concisely, it was my idea.”

 

The waiter arrived, bearing an iron tray. He slid their plates in front of them.

 

For the next few minutes neither Khalid nor Sparta spoke; she was busy absorbing the odd textures of the space-station-grown lettuce. He relished his salmon.

When the meal was finished there was an awkward silence that neither seemed eager to break. For Sparta it was a delicate moment, and she found herself uncertain how to handle it. “You should know, Dr. Sayeed, that you are a principal suspect in the murders of Morland and Chin.”

“I had thought so, but thanks for confirming it.”

 

“You can’t stage-manage your own interrogation, you know. You can’t walk cleanly away. There are too many unanswered questions.”

He didn’t argue or protest his innocence or try to explain himself. He only watched her, evidently weighing his options. “For my own sake, I’d like you to get to the bottom of this. If I could delay my trip, I would. But it would be dangerous–at this time of year the weather grows worse every day.”

“Don’t worry, Doctor. I’ll be waiting for you when you get back. No matter how long you’re gone.”

 

He leaned toward her, his dark eyes filled with serious purpose. “In the interests of both of us, then: if you want to continue our discussion, come with me. I promise you will learn more than you imagine.”

 

Here it was, the crux of the meeting, the real goal of his stage-managing.

 

“I’ll consider it,” she said.

“Call the MTP office when you’ve decided. If the answer is yes, I’ll meet you in the lobby at five-thirty tomorrow morning,” he said. “Wear your pressure suit.” Abruptly he stood. “If you will excuse me . . . the account is already settled. I have to leave.” He turned and walked away.

She watched him go. His long, deliberate stride seemed more suited to the desert than to a hotel restaurant.
With the pistol on full automatic she fired a full clip into the paper target twenty meters away. The roar of the gun was continuous in the long stone room, its muzzle flash a single strobing flare. Spurts of sand leaped from the bullet trap against the back wall; shreds of paper fluttered lazily down from the target.

She lowered the gun and cleared the chamber, then stepped away from the line and pushed the headset back from her ears.

The range director lifted his own ear protectors from his head and set them on the bench. “Well, let’s see the bad news.” He was a burly man in whites, with the hotel’s insignia on his close-fitting tee-shirt. He punched a button and the target traveled slowly along its guide wire until it came to the line.

He unclipped the paper target and studied it in silence, then looked up at Sparta with sour suspicion knitting his thick black brows. “Fair shooting.”

 

He handed her the target. A hole the size of a dime had been punched out of the center.

 

“Beginner’s luck,” she said.

“You’re trying to hustle me, Inspector. You’ve shot on Mars before.” He nodded at the target. “ ‘Course you did miss once”–there was one other hole in the paper, a hole the diameter of a single bullet, outside the outer ring in the lower right-hand corner; Sparta’s first shot had missed the bull’s-eye–“Still, I wouldn’t mind taping this on my office wall. Inspire the other amateurs.”

“That’s a nice compliment, but I’d better decline.” She handed him the target pistol, handle first. “Thanks for letting me try out.”

 

“Go ahead, use another clip. The hotel can afford it.”

 

“No, I don’t want to get a sore wrist–these uranium slugs pack a wallop.”

 

“Don’t do anything for you except make the pistol harder to control.” He took the gun and set it aside for cleaning. “Goes against the natural advantage you’ve got here, a lighter weapon with the same punch.”

 

“Why does Mr. Prott use them? He’s an excellent shot, I’m told.”

 

“He’s not as hopeless as some.” He hesitated. “Never knew him to use uranium slugs, though. Doesn’t mean he didn’t.”