Toshikazu knew that his brother was doing more than lifting breasts and buttocks. Men would come to him furtively, asking to have their faces completely changed. Takeo accepted their money and never asked why they wanted to alter their appearance. Toshikazu knew they were criminals trying to escape the law.
He was surprised, then, when a pair of churchmen visited him in his laboratory in Selene.
“At first I thought they wanted me to give them evidence against my brother,” he whispered painfully to Bracknell from his infirmary bed. “But no … it was worse than that…”
One of the churchmen was a high official of the New Morality. The other was a Chinese member of the Flower Dragon movement. What they wanted was a set of nanomachines that could destroy buckyball fibers.
Bracknell clutched at the injured man’s arm when he heard that, making him yowl so loud that Addie rushed in to see what had happened.
“You’ll kill him!” she screamed at Bracknell.
“I… I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I didn’t mean to hurt him.”
Toshikazu lay on the bed, his eyes glazed with pain. Addie demanded that Bracknell leave the infirmary.
“I’ll tell you when you can come back,” she said.
For a moment he thought he’d push her out of his way and get the rest of the story from the injured man. Then he took a deep breath and wordlessly left the infirmary.
All that night his mind seethed with what Toshikazu was telling him. He checked in at the infirmary on his way to the bridge the next morning, but Addie would not let him past the anteroom. “Let him rest,” she said. “He’ll be no use to you dead.”
Bracknell could hardly keep his attention on his duties. The captain snarled at him several times for his mental lapses. Then a message came in from another vessel, a Yamagata torch ship named
“We have heard your call for a medical evacuation,” said the white-haired man. “We can reach you in six hours and evacuate your injured prisoner.”
Bracknell was tempted to tell the man not to bother; he didn’t want Toshikazu removed from
As soon as his shift was finished, Bracknell hurried down the passageway to the infirmary. Addie wasn’t in the anteroom; he saw her bending over Toshikazu’s bed. He could see from the tortured look on her face that something was very wrong.
“He’s dying,” she said.
“A ship is on its way to pick him up,” Bracknell said, torn between his need to hear Toshikazu’s full story and a humanitarian instinct to get proper medical care for the man. “It’ll be here in less than four hours.”
“Thank the gods,” breathed Addie.
“Is he awake?”
She nodded. Bracknell pushed past her to the injured man’s bedside. Toshikazu’s eyes were open, but they looked unfocused, dazed from the analgesics Addie had been pumping into him.
“I’ve got to know,” Bracknell said, bending over him. “What did those church people want from you? What did you do for them?”
“Gobblers,” Toshikazu whispered.
Bracknell heard Addie, behind him, draw in her breath. She knew what gobblers were. Nanomachines that disassembled molecules, tore them apart atom by atom. Gobblers had been used as murder weapons, ripping apart protein molecules.
“To break up the buckyball fibers of the skytower?” Bracknell asked urgently.
Toshikazu nodded and closed his eyes.
“Gobblers are illegal,” said Addie. “Even in Selene…”
“But you made them, didn’t you?” Bracknell said to Toshikazu.
He understood it all now. Gobblers tore apart the skytower’s structure at the geostationary level. That’s why the lower half of the tower collapsed while the upper half went spinning off into deep space. And the evidence was at the bottom of the Atlantic’s midocean ridge, being melted away by the hot magma boiling into the ocean water.
“I made … gobblers… for them,” Toshikazu admitted, his eyes still closed.
“You made the gobblers for the Flower Dragon people?” Bracknell asked. “Or for the New Morality?”
With a weary shake of his head, Toshikazu replied, “Neither. They were … merely the agents… for…”
“For who?”
“Yamagata.”
Bracknell gaped at the dying man. Yamagata Corporation. Of course! It would take a powerful interplanetary corporation to plan and execute the destruction of the skytower.
“Yamagata,” Toshikazu repeated. “I was the last… the last one to know…”
Addie looked up at Bracknell. “Now we know.”
“No!” said Toshikazu. “I’ve told you … nothing. Nothing. I died … without telling you … anything. If they thought you knew…”
His eyes closed. His head slumped to one side.
And Bracknell said, “Yamagata.”
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
Bracknell was still in the infirmary with Addie and the unconscious Toshikazu when the rescue team from
The old man stayed and asked Addie for Toshikazu’s medical file. She popped the chip from the computer storage and handed it to him.
With a sibilant hiss of thanks, the old man pushed his long hair back away from his face and asked her, “Does this chip include audio data, perhaps?”
“Audio data?” asked Addie.
“You must have spoken to him extensively while he was under your care,” said the old man. “Are your conversations included in this chip?”
She glanced at Bracknell, who said, “He was unconscious most of the time. When he did talk, it was mostly rambling, incomprehensible.”
“I see.” The old man looked from Bracknell’s face to Addie’s and then back again. “I see,” he repeated.
Captain Farad, impatient as usual, asked, “Is there anything else you need?”
The old man stroked his chin for a moment, as though thinking it over. “No,” he said at last. “I believe I have everything I need.”
He left with the captain.
Addie broke into a pleased smile. “I think we saved his life, Mance.”
“Maybe,” Bracknell said, still gazing at the open hatch where the captain and the Japanese elder had left.
“There’s nothing more to do here,” said Addie. “I’m going to my quarters and take a good long shower.”
Bracknell nodded.
“Will you walk me home?” she asked, smiling up at him.
Her quarters were down the passageway; his own a dozen meters farther. When they got to her door, Addie clutched at his arm and tugged him into her compartment.
