Molina was in his glory, with his wife hanging on his every word and two of the leading astrobiologists of Earth paying attention to him, as well. His obvious misgivings about his wife’s unexpected arrival seemed far behind him now.
“Chance favors the prepared mind, of course,” he was saying, wineglass in hand. “No one expected to find any trace of biological activity on Mercury, but I came out here anyway. Everybody said I was being foolish; even my lovely wife told me I was throwing away months that could be better spent back at Jupiter.”
His wife lowered her eyes and smiled demurely.
“What brought you to Mercury, then?” Alexios asked. He had not touched his wine, Yamagata noted.
“A hunch. Call it intuition. Call it a belief that life is much tougher and more ubiquitous than even our most prestigious biologists can understand.”
The elder of the ICU investigators, Ian McFergusen, russet-bearded and heavy-browed, rumbled in a thick Scottish accent: “When a distinguished but elderly scientist says something is possible, he is almost always right. When he says something is impossible, he is almost always wrong.”
Everyone around the table laughed politely, Molina loudest of all.
“Clarke’s Law,” said the younger ICU scientist.
“Indeed,” Yamagata agreed.
“But surely you must have had more than a hunch to bring you all the way out here,” Alexios prodded, grinning crookedly.
Yamagata saw that Mrs. Molina stared at Alexios now. Is she angry at him for doubting her husband’s word?
Molina seemed not to notice. He drained his wineglass and put it down on the tablecloth so carefully that Yamagata thought he must be getting drunk. One of the waiters swiftly refilled it with claret.
“More than a hunch?” Molina responded at last. “Yes. Of course. A man doesn’t leave his loving wife and traipse out to a hellhole like this on a lark. It was more than a hunch, I assure you.”
“What decided you?” Alexios smiled, rather like the smile on a cobra, Yamagata thought.
“Funny thing,” Molina said, grinning. “I received a message. Said that the team working on the surface of Mercury was finding strange-looking rocks. It piqued my curiosity.”
“A message? From whom?” asked Bishop Danvers.
“It was anonymous. No signature.” Molina took another gulp of wine. “I kind of thought it was from you, Elliott.”
“Me?” Danvers looked shocked. “I didn’t send you any message.”
Molina shrugged. “Somebody did. Prob’ly one of the work crew down on the surface.”
“Strange-looking rocks?” Alexios mused. “And that was enough to send you packing for Mercury?”
“I had the summer off,” Molina replied. “I was in line for an assistant professorship. I thought a poke around Mercury would look good on my curriculum vitae. Couldn’t hurt.”
“It has certainly helped!” Danvers said.
“I think it probably has,” said Molina, reaching for his wineglass again.
“I’m sure it has,” said Alexios.
Yamagata noticed that Alexios stared straight at Lara Molina as he spoke.
EXPLANATIONS
“Messages?” Molina blinked with surprise.
He and Lara were alone now in the stateroom that Yamagata had graciously supplied for them. It was larger than Molina’s former quarters aboard the ship. The Japanese crewmen who had moved Molina’s belongings to this new compartment laughingly referred to it as the Bridal Suite. In Japanese, of course, so neither of the gaijin would be embarrassed by their little joke.
“I couldn’t leave you alone out here,” Lara said as she unpacked the travel bag on the stateroom’s double- sized bed. “You looked so sad, so lonely.”
Molina knew he had never sent a single message to his wife until his triumphant announcement of his discovery. He also knew that he had promised to call her every day he was away from her.
“You got messages from me?” he asked again.
She turned from her unpacking and slid her arms around his neck. “Don’t be shy, Victor. Of course I got your messages. They were wonderful. Some were so beautiful they made me cry.”
Either I’ve gone insane or she has, Molina thought. Has she been hallucinating? Blurring the line between her dreams and reality?
“Lara, dearest, I—”
“Others were so sad, so poignant … they nearly broke my heart.” She kissed him gently on the lips.
Molina felt his body stirring. One thing he had learned over nearly ten years of marriage was not to argue with success. Accept credit when it comes your way, no matter what. It had been a good guide for his scientific career, as well.
He kissed her more strongly and held her tightly. Wordlessly they sat on the edge of the bed. Molina pushed his wife’s half-unpacked travel bag off the bed; it fell to the floor with a gentle thump in Mercury’s low gravity. They lay side by side and he began undressing her. I’ll figure out what this message business is all about tomorrow, Molina told himself as the heat of passion rose in him. Tomorrow will be time enough.
Dante Alexios had returned to Goethe base on Mercury’s surface after dinner aboard
Did she recognize me? he wondered as he undressed in his tiny compartment. Not my face, surely, but maybe she remembers my voice. The nanomachines didn’t change my voice very much.
He stretched out on his bed and stared at the low ceiling. The room’s sensors automatically turned the lights out, and the star patterns painted across the ceiling glowed faintly.
Victor looked puzzled that his wife had flown out here, Alexios said to himself. Wait until she tells him about the messages she got from him. That’ll drive him crazy, trying to figure it out. Who would be nutty enough to send love letters to Lara and fake his image, his voice, for them?
It had been easy enough to do. Alexios had secretly recorded Molina’s face and voice from his university dossier. It was simple to morph that imagery into the messages that Alexios composed. He had poured his heart into those messages, told her everything he wanted to say to her, everything he wanted her to know. Plagiarized from the best sources: Shakespeare, Browning, Rostand, Byron, and the rest.
He told Lara how much he loved her, had always loved her, would always love her. But he said it with her husband’s image, with Victor’s voice. He didn’t dare use his own. Not yet.
Ian McFergusen was a burly man of delicate tastes. His fierce bushy beard and shaggy brows made him look like a Highland warrior of old, yet he had dedicated his career to the study of life. He was a biologist, not a claymore-swinging howling clansman.
Still, he was a fighter. Throughout academia he was known as a tough, independent thinker. A maverick, a burr under the saddle, often an inconvenient pain in the ass. He seldom followed the accepted wisdom on any subject. He asked the awkward questions, the questions that most people wished to shove under the rug.
McFergusen had studied all the data about the evidence for Mercurian biology that Molina had sent Earthward. Alone now in his compartment, as he sipped his usual nightcap of whisky, neat, he had to admit that the data were impressive. Molina may have made a real find here, McFergusen said to himself.
But something nagged at him. As he drained the whisky and set the empty glass on his night table, he fidgeted uneasily, scratched at his beard, knitted his heavy brows. It’s all too convenient, he told himself, too convenient by far. He began pacing across his narrow compartment. Molina gets an anonymous tip. He’s given a clutch of rocks that the construction workers have found. All in the same location.
The rocks contain PAHs and all the other biomarkers, that’s sure enough. But it’s all too easy. Too convenient. Nature doesn’t hand you evidence on a platter.
He shook his shaggy head and sat heavily on the bunk. Maybe I’m getting too old and cranky, he said to
