Maelstrom (25 page)

Blake hung up the phonelink and quickly moved to another cafe, where he dosed himself with expresso while he considered his next move. He realized he was in great physical danger, perhaps as much danger as Sparta. He knew too much; indeed, he knew even more than the Free Spirit knew he knew.

Although Blake had no surgically enhanced memory or calculating skills, the SPARTA project had developed his natural abilities to their peak. He had had an opportunity to study the stolen papyrus thoroughly before handing it over to Lequeu, and he had had more than a week to think about its significance in the light of the teachings of the Free Spirit.

The papyrus was a star map. Evidently the Free Spirit were interested in a particular star, and Catherine had been assigned to find out which star it was. More than that, she had been sent to do something about it.

What could anyone
do
about a star? Nothing but observe it. And what could be revealed by observation? Blake could think of only one thing that would be of interest to the Free Spirit. The Free Spirit believed in the return of the Golden Age. No doubt they hoped to find out where it was returning
from.

In his days of solitude and introspection, Blake had mentally reconstructed the pyramid described in the ancient papyrus. The text of the scroll had named the days when the pyramid would specify a line through the heavens that would point the way, as the papyrus phrased it, to the stars the “god-messengers” had “steered by.” The relation of visible sky and Earth and the count of days by calendar had changed much in the past few thousands of years; without access to the right computer programs Blake could not pick a star, but he could pick a group of likely candidates. And he knew exactly what constellation to look in.

Blake found another infobooth and linked himself to his computer in London. In a few seconds he had determined that someone, presumably Sparta, had accessed the README file. If she’d read the file, surely she’d found and deciphered his message. Why hadn’t she followed him?
He broke the link before his computer overheated, promising himself to rig a means of remote-controlling its cooling system just as soon as he got home. Then he placed another call, still routed through his London address, to the Earth Central headquarters of the Board of Space Patrol. “My name is Blake Redfield. I have a message for Inspector Ellen Troy.”

“Where are you now, Mr. Redfield?”

 

“I can’t tell you that. My life could be in danger.”

 

“Stand by, Mr. Redfield.”

 

“I’ll call back,” he said quickly. “Please locate Troy and tell her I’m trying to reach her.” He keyed off the phonelink and walked quickly away.

Blake was on his way up the Boul Mich to find a different infobooth when a gray electric sedan glided silently to the curb a few paces in front of him. A tall man with blue eyes and iron-gray hair, his skin so dark Blake momentarily took him for an Arab, alighted from the passenger side of the sedan in a movement of quick athletic grace. His left hand was held away from his side, palm out to show that it was empty, while in his right hand he held an open badge case displaying the gold star of the Board of Space Patrol.

“You must be Redfield,” he said, forcing the words out of his throat in a harsh whisper. “Troy’s out of touch, but I happened to be in the neighborhood.”

 

“Who are you?” Blake demanded.

 

“Sorry, no time to get acquainted,” the blue-eyed man whispered. “Whatever you have to say to Troy, I’ll see she gets the message.”

 

Blake had turned sideways, reducing the size of the target he presented, and his weight was balanced to run. “What I have to say is for her alone.”

 

The blue-eyed man nodded. “That can be arranged.”

 

“How?” Blake demanded.

“I’ll let you handle this on your own, if that’s the way you want it. But be cautious, Redfield. We traced your call right through London and back to you in five seconds flat. You’re lucky Troy left me here with instructions to find you.”

“You work for her?”

“You could put it that way. If you want to talk to her, you can come with me now–or if you prefer, get to DeGaulle on your own. Tonight at twenty-two hundred. C terminal, shuttle gate nine. We’ll get you to her. If you don’t show, forget it.”

“Where is she?” Blake asked.

 

“You’ll recognize the place when you get there.”

 

“All right,” Blake said, allowing himself to relax. “I guess I may as well let you give me a lift.”

 

The man with the gravelly voice left Blake at the shuttle gate. The Space Board shuttle lifted off minutes later.

In less than an hour Blake was being escorted through the weightless corridors of the Space Board station in low-Earth orbit, onto another ship. Everyone treated him with cool courtesy, although even his most casual questions went unanswered. When Blake realized they had put him on a Space Board cutter, something like awe crept in under his nonchalant manner. Immense resources had been placed at Sparta’s disposal. He had no way of knowing that Sparta would have been as awed and puzzled as he. . . .

The cutter left orbit under brutal acceleration, and in little over a day Blake saw their destination on the cabin screens. Yes, he recognized the place. The cutter was diving for Farside Base on the moon.

 

“You are Inspector Troy?” Katrina Balakian’s eyes took in Sparta’s small frame. “You are the Inspector Troy who saved the lives of Forster and Merck on the surface of Venus?”

 

“I was lucky,” Sparta mumbled. She was not delighted to be so famous, but she supposed she’d better get used to it.

 

“I am honored to meet you,” said the astronomer, extending her gloved hand to Sparta. Both women were still wearing their pressure suits; Katrina had just come from inspecting the progress of the antenna repairs.

Katrina led Sparta to a little coffee area at one end of a brightly lit corridor in the telescope facility’s central operations bunker. She seemed not to care about privacy; men and women passed frequently, bestowing curious glances on them as they sat down. The underground was redolent of body odors, and among them Sparta noted a tantalizing suggestion of a personal aroma she had encountered somewhere before.

“My colleague Piet Gress will be envious of me,” Katrina said.

 

“Oh?” Sparta spent a fraction of a second searching her memory for the name; she realized that she’d seen it on the manifest of passengers and cargo standing by to use the launcher.

“Albers Merck is his uncle.” Katrina grinned broadly; her high cheekbones glowed. “He will be envious that I have met you. And he is already mad enough at me.”
“Why is he mad at you?” Sparta asked. Katrina seemed remarkably ready to share her thoughts, whether or not they had anything to do with the business at hand.

“He is a signal analyst; he develops programs to study the radio signals we receive–to look for patterns. His passionate dream is to receive a message from a distant civilization, to be the first to decipher it. He is mad at me because our search program is looking in areas he does not consider fruitful. And I support the current program.”

“Does he take it so personally?”

 

“He is eager to make his great discovery. Meanwhile the telescopes are pointed somewhere of more interest to us astronomers.”

 

“That would be the constellation Crux at present, is that right?” Of course it was right.

“You’ve made yourself familiar with our work, I see. Not that we will do any astronomy for a while–not until the antennas are repaired. They suffered superficial damage from debris when Leyland’s abandoned capsule impacted.”

“Yes, I know. The principal purpose of this facility is to search for extraterrestrial civilizations, isn’t it?”

 

“We are looking for signs of intelligent communication, yes. From the media stories, you would think that is our only purpose. But I assure you that we manage to do some basic science on the side.”

 

“Well, I hope Mr. Gress will not stay mad at you.”

“Once I cared what he thought. He didn’t care that I cared.” She shrugged. “Now it does not matter. We are not doing astronomy and we are not listening for aliens, not until the antennas are patched.” Katrina smiled. “Listen to me talk and talk! You came to ask questions.” Apparently the prospect of being questioned by the law did not bother Katrina Balakian in the least.

“Someone tried to kill Clifford Leyland,” Sparta went on. “You knew him. . . .”

 

Katrina laughed, a loud, rich laugh, filled with genuine good humor. “You think I would bother? He is a
worm.
”

“Leyland said that after his first meeting with you–a drink at your apartment, I believe–he decided to ask you for another meeting.” Actually he’d said considerably more, that he couldn’t get Katrina out of his mind, perhaps it was the sheer strangeness and novelty of her, so big and bold and straightforward: the strapping astronomer was not at all like his wife. Whatever Katrina’s attraction, Cliff said, he had found that he couldn’t walk away from it.

“A meeting, yes. If that is the word for it.” Katrina still seemed amused. “The next day after I tried to wrestle him, he called. He apologized to me and said he needed to talk to someone, that I was the only friend he had made on the moon. He asked me to meet him for dinner. I said yes, okay, let’s have a drink first, my room. He came over and told me that some men had beaten him up the night before, after he left my room. I convinced him to show me his bruises. They were tender, but they weren’t really serious.” She grinned wolfishly. “We never went to dinner.”

Sparta nodded solemnly. According to what Leyland had told her, he’d spent the night with Katrina, and when he went to work the next day he was still dazed with fatigue, plagued with guilt–only to find out that he’d suddenly been transferred back to Earth–back to his family. He didn’t even bother to inform Katrina. Terrified by what he’d done, he turned off his commlink and for the next few days refused to answer her messages.

“Let a man sleep with you, then he pretends you don’t exist, refuses to talk to you, not even to say ‘no more’– how would
you
feel?” Katrina’s grin had faded, and her pink skin was bright with remembered indignation.

Sparta had never been in such a situation and could not imagine it. For a moment she felt more like an eavesdropper–a rather eager one–than a somber investigator. She became aware that she was sympathizing with Katrina. There was something about Cliff Leyland, something
sneaking
masquerading as shyness, that might fool a woman once or twice but would finally, inevitably, infuriate her. He seemed to Sparta like a victim walking around waiting for disaster to strike. She didn’t reveal her feelings to Katrina, however. “You admit you had a motive, then?”

“Yes,” Katrina said fiercely. “If you think that is a strong motive. But in the end, what importance? Besides, if I had killed him, everyone would know it. I would have broken his neck.”

 

“I see.”

Katrina’s hands were hidden by the gloves of her pressure suit, but her arms were long and her shoulders were wide; she looked as if she’d been made to tame horses–perhaps her ancestors had been among the legendary Scythians. At any rate, Katrina seemed like a woman who acted upon her desires right away, if she intended to act on them at all, the kind of woman who would write off her losses, not endlessly brood over them.

Cliff Leyland’s launch failure had occurred the day Sparta had traveled from London to Paris in search of Blake–shortly after Cliff had met Katrina Balakian as she was returning from her extended leave. If Katrina had wanted to, she’d had the time she needed to plot his demise–although, privately, Sparta doubted she’d had anything to do with it. “If necessary, can you establish where you were for the twenty-four hours preceding the launch?”

Katrina smiled. “In a place this small, everyone knows where everyone else is all the time. Or thinks they do.”

 

“Assuming you
didn’t
try to kill Leyland . . .”

 

“Sorry, I don’t know who did. He said the men who beat him up wanted him to smuggle for them, and he refused. Perhaps they decided to go farther, to make sure he would stop spreading tales.” “Do you know who they were?”

 

“One hears names.” She leaned away.

 

“Is one of the names Pontus Istrati?”

 

“Perhaps.”

 

“Others?”

 

“Many people here use drugs, it is not hard to find a source. I don’t like repeating hearsay,” Katrina said.

 

“This isn’t the 20th century,” Sparta replied. “We don’t throw people in jail without sufficient evidence, properly come by. Tell me the names.”

 

Katrina took a second to think about it. She expelled her breath through flared nostrils. “Okay,” she said–and gave Sparta a half-dozen names. “But Inspector, don’t you think it might have been an accident after all?”

 

“The capsule was almost certainly sabotaged.”

 

“I mean it was an accident that Cliff was aboard that capsule. Perhaps the guilty party wished to destroy the capsule itself. Or something in it.”

 

Sparta smiled. “An interesting hypothesis.”

 

“But to you, obviously, not a new idea.”

 

“I’ll let you know how it all comes out.” Sparta rose easily in the fractional gravity. “Thanks for your help.”

 

Katrina got to her feet and this time stripped off her glove, shaking hands with Sparta vigorously. Then she hesitated, looking past Sparta’s shoulder.

 

Sparta turned to see a sad-eyed, tall young man, passing in the hall. He was dressed in a pressure suit and carried a suitcase.

 

“Goodbye, Piet,” Katrina said to him quietly.

 

The man said nothing, only nodded briefly and kept walking.

 

Katrina looked back at Sparta, then smiled and turned away.

Sparta thought her parting smile was rather sad. But that was only one of the startling facts she had registered in the brief exchange. In touching the bare skin of Katrina’s hand she had analyzed the woman’s amino-acid signature and had suddenly identified the aroma, mixed until now with the human reek of the crowded corridor, that had eluded her.