Maelstrom (17 page)

Cliff pressed the send key and pushed his back against his chair. He should get into his bunk now. He was certainly tired enough, if he would admit it to himself. His skin was gray, stretched like parchment from his cheekbones to his chin. But he’d promised Katrina he’d drop in on her party. And truth to tell, as tired as he was, he wasn’t sleepy at all. All this shuttling back and forth between abstract points in space–he really didn’t know what time it was anymore.

Something else was bothering him, too. It bothered him that he felt so very distant from his family. It bothered him that he could not think of his newest born with anything like the feelings a father should have. It bothered him that he was allowing himself to be more than merely cordial with Katrina–that he was allowing himself to be led on. Probably it would be better to stop before he started with her, but . . .

He slipped out of his chair and went into the tiny bathroom. He splashed his face with lazy water, water that fell slowly and clung to his skin until he pushed it away with the hand blower. He peered at himself in the mirror. He had not bothered to shave during the last day of his long trip from L-5. His skin was as pale as that of most moon-moles, perhaps even a little grayer, since the white skin was overlaid by the year-old faded melanin of a deep Sahara sunburn. Nonetheless he was still a good-looking man of thirty-four, dark haired, slender, precise in his appearance, precise in his movement even to the point of fussiness. He lingered a long time with his shaver, until his skin gleamed.

He took a crisp plastic jacket from his closet, slipped it on, and walked out the door.

It was a long underground trolley ride out to the antenna array, where the astronomers lived and worked; Cliff made the trip in silent contemplation. Almost before he knew it he found himself at the door of Katrina Balakian’s apartment. He paused a moment, then took a deep breath and knocked.

The door opened on her wide bright smile. “Cliff.” She was wearing a short black clingy dress, high on her thighs; a necklace of brushed aluminum and obsidian rested on her smooth artificially tan bosom. Her fingernails took his crinkly sleeve and drew him inside.
He found himself in another candlelit room. Candles burned brighter here because the air supply was oxygenrich–oxygen was cheap and nitrogen was dear–but a room lit by candles was as much an invitation here as it was anywhere. A bottle of Luna Spumante was sweating in a bucket on the sideboard, with only two glasses beside it.

“Where’s everybody?” Cliff asked.

 

“It’s too early for the gang I am hanging out with. Let me have your jacket.” She was behind him, already slipping it off his shoulders. “May I give you a drink?”

 

“I’m really quite lagged. . . . Tonight it had better be seltzer.”

 

“Just try this.” She removed the pressure stopper from the sparkling wine. “Guaranteed to be without hangover.” She poured and handed him a glass. He hesitated but took it.

 

Gaily she poured her own, lifted it, and clinked it against his. “You see? You can be persuaded,” she said.

He smacked his lips on the acidic sparkling wine. “It’s nice.” He was not used to this bubbly stuff. His habits were simple–not, he had to admit, wholly from choice. He found that he was still gazing into Katrina’s wide gray eyes.

He glanced around her apartment, twice as big as the one he shared with another temporary bachelor. Her walls were hung with big color holos of places she’d worked before. There was a good shot of L-5’s twin cylinders from five kilometers out, with a full Earth rising behind them; there was a shot of the Synthetic Aperture Array in the Khaaki steppes.

What had she done with her chairs? The only place to sit seemed to be the couch. I really shouldn’t be here, Cliff was thinking as he sat down.

 

A moment later she was beside him, her bare knee not quite touching his, fixing him with those hypnotic eyes. Apparently she was well aware of their effect.

 

“You were on L-5?” he asked, his voice rising.

 

She smiled and decided to play her part a little longer. “It was my first assignment out of Novo Aktyubinsk. I helped set up the deep-space ULB antennas. And somehow I managed to get stuck in space.”

 

“The first ULB antennas?” He tried to act impressed. “That must have been a challenge under those conditions. The station wasn’t even half built, was it?”

 

For an answer he got her hand on his knee. “Let’s not talk business, Cliff. Thanks for coming.”

 

“Well, thanks for asking me,” he said, feeling clumsy. He moved to face her, which had the effect of making his knee a barrier between them. Her fingers slipped lightly away.

 

“Tell me about yourself,” she said. “You say you’ve been popping in and out of here for six months and we’ve never met? I haven’t been gone
that
long. How were you avoiding me so skillfully?”

 

“Really, I wasn’t. Honestly, I never saw you.”

 

Her smile widened. “Am I so easy to ignore, then?”

 

“Of course not”–he blushed furiously–“Sorry. Frankly I never know what to say. Maybe because I don’t know what I’m doing here, really.”

 

She let it pass, sipping her champagne. “You miss Earth a lot?”

He nodded. “I miss the Nile. . . .” Cliff wanted to say he missed Myra and their children, but somehow the simple words didn’t come out. “The Sahara project. Simply the scale of it–it’ll be a century or two before we can ever experience that kind of landscape renewal anywhere but on Earth.”

“Mars is as big a desert as all the land on Earth, and reclaiming that . . . I say that’s where socialist man and woman will come into their own.” She laughed. “See, you’ve got me talking business after all. Or politics, which is worse.” She sipped her drink.

“You’re thinking of moving to Mars.”

“Perhaps I would like that. I said to you I am not an adventurer, but some things are worth adventure. To be an astronomer, yes. Even more, to someday be a pioneer of science in new lands.” Her eyes were bright in the candlelight. “Let me tell you something, Cliff, it’s hard being in the minority all the time. As a woman, I mean. I’m not the housekeeping, mothering type. I’m not one of your Christian nuns either, but the way the
men
plague a woman in these places–they expect us to pick one of them just to keep the others inside their caves.” She stood up quickly, a practiced move in the low gravity, leaving her glass behind on the back of the couch. “Sorry. I am making you nervous.”

Cliff’s gaze had been captivated by a glimpse of Katrina’s long, firm thighs beneath her floating skirt. “Why do you say that?” He tacked on a little hum to clear his throat.

 

She stared down at him. “You are not the type of man who likes to be told he is hard to resist.”

 

Cliff sighed. “Katrina, you know very well that I’ m . . .”

 

“You’re married, you have little children, and you love your family. Yes, yes, you have told me. I
like
that.”

“Well, mmm, you’re really quite attractive too. That is . . .” She moved to him and lifted him easily to his feet. She leaned her head against his shoulder. Her breasts gently nudged his chest. “No complications. One of these days I am going to Mars, and you are going back to the Sahara. Meanwhile we are very discreet. And the long nights aren’t as long as they would be.”

“Listen, I . . .” Cliff reddened. “Your friends will be along.”

 

Her laugh was a purr. “No friends tonight, Cliff. You are the whole party.”

 

“You said . . .”

 

“Relax, yes? Let’s just talk a minute.”

 

He took her by the arms and stepped back. “I don’t think I have anything to talk about.”

 

“Cliff . . .”

“Sorry. I really am sorry. I’m in love with my wife, I think. I mean, I’m not sorry about that, but . . . Katrina, you really are a very beautiful woman. It’s simply that I really don’t want to complicate my life–in, uh, the way you’re suggesting.”

She smiled her bright smile. “Okay! I get it–the message. Don’t become strange with me. Sit down, finish your drink. Relax.” She raised both hands. “I am keeping my mitts off.”

 

“I think . . . Thanks again. I must go.” He crossed the room and retrieved his jacket from where she’d hung it.

 

Her smile vanished. “Are youso simple-minded as you pretend?”

 

“I suppose I must be.” Cliff found himself still holding the wine glass. “Sorry, could you . . . ?” He handed it to her, then struggled awkwardly into his jacket. “Look, well–”

“Become lost, why don’t you?” She threw the glass on the floor as hard as she could, hard enough to lift herself a millimeter or two off the carpet in reaction. Globules of liquid sprayed across the room. The glass hit slowly; unbroken, it sailed back into the air.

By the time the glass had settled gently to the floor, the door was closing behind him. Katrina shrugged and picked up the glass. In a few minutes she had rearranged the apartment; there was no sign she had had a visitor.

Cliff’s mind was so full of confusion and guilt, not unmixed with frustrated desire, that he was hardly aware of the two men who followed him toward the main corridor. This sector was far from the busy halls of the central base. The ceilings were low, the walls close, and no one was around.

Except the two men behind him, whose echoing footsteps drew closer. He turned another corner. They turned with him. His pace quickened until he was walking as fast as he could without actually running. When he heard them break stride and trot toward him, he tried to run.

They were on him in seconds. These men were used to the moon; their movements were quick and precise, unlike Cliff’s overbalanced floundering. One of them grabbed his collar and yanked him back. The other kicked him hard in the back of the knees and he fell. The first pulled his jacket over his head, blinding him. His struggles were feeble, ineffectual; his terrified shouts were muffled. They hauled him, wriggling like a sack of fish, behind the steel doors of a utility substation.

Neither of them said a word at first. They just started hitting him: one held Cliff’s elbows locked behind him while the other drove his fists into his stomach. When the first man got tired, they traded places. They scrupulously avoided hitting him where the bruises were likely to show.

Finally they let Cliff fall to the floor. He lay there retching.

“Next time we ask you to do something for us, don’t say no,” said one of them, between gulps of air. He shook out his arms and shoulders, loosening them; he’d been exercising stenuously. “Or it will be the last time you say anything.”

Cliff lost consciousness, then. But his tormentor’s voice was fixed in his memory.
X

Sparta’s magneplane slid silently to a halt deep under the Gare St. Lazare after a brief supersonic trip through the Chunnel, the high-vacuum tunnel that crossed beneath the English Channel to link London with Paris. Sparta’s Space Board credentials had been passed by the electronic
dounane
at the London end, and she was able to step onto the crowded Paris platform with no more ceremony than if she’d been dismounting a Metro car. She rode the long elevator to street level and stepped off under the station’s grandiose 19th-century castiron and glass roof.

A big flatscreen was mounted above the high iron arch opening onto the busy street, silently playing newsbites and viddie commercials. Sparta was almost out of the echoing station when a dancing newshead caught her eye:

LOUVRE’S PRECIOUS PAPYRUS STILL MISSING POLICE MYSTIFIED

 

DRAGNET FOR MYSTERIOUS “GUY” ENTERS SECOND WEEK

The flashing newsheads were accompanied by scenes of the crime, including an electronically aided reconstruction of “Guy’s” appearance, presumably based on descriptions from witnesses. Blake Redfield’s mother probably would not have recognized his picture, but Sparta thought she could detect a distant resemblance.

It seemed she wouldn’t need that GUYDE to the Louvre after all. Blake was not in the habit of drawing public attention to himself; he had obviously intended his disguise to be penetrated. He
wanted
to be recognized. But it was equally obvious that if he had wanted to be caught by the police, he would have been.

Blake had plainly hoped that Sparta would find him while he was still in the Louvre–before he’d been forced to reveal himself so spectacularly. What had he been doing there? Why was he trying to advertise it? And where was he now?

The door of Blake’s cubicle banged open. Pierre walked in and grabbed him by the shoulder of his soiled shirt, pulling him roughly erect. Blake staggered and sagged against Pierre’s grip. Half-supported, halfshoved by Pierre, he stumbled into the corridor.

Pierre aimed him toward the laundry at the end of the hall. Blake played his weakness for all it was worth, wishing he didn’t feel almost as feeble as he pretended. The doors of the other cubicles stood ajar and their furnishings had been removed. In the preceding days of solitary confinement and starvation rations, Blake had heard voices and movement in the other rooms of the basement, but he hadn’t been able to tell what was going on. Now it was apparent that the Athanasians had been moving. “Guy’s” mishap could have had nothing to do with the move, which must have been planned in advance of the theft. But the discovery of Blake’s real identity might have set the game afoot.

They reached the end of the hall. The laundry room was piled high with cartons and dirty linens; no one had done any laundry here recently. Over the smell of dirty linen there was the persistent moldy odor of ancient Paris drains.

Blake shook his head groggily. He noticed Lequeu for the first time. The older man sat on a pile of packing boxes beside the door, swinging an elegantly shod foot. He looked at Blake without expression and gave a quick nod to Pierre.

A wooden folding chair stood against one of the steel sinks. “Sit,” Pierre said, pushing Blake toward the chair. Blake managed to bang his shin against the chair seat and stumble against the sink; his head bounced painfully on the edge of a shelve above it, and a big brown bottle of bleach tumbled into the sink, where it splintered with a crash.