Leviathans of Jupiter

Deirdre nodded again. Another group of people were coming down the corridor toward them, five passengers, from the way they were dressed.

Dorn waited for them to pass, then suggested, “We need some privacy to discuss this without being interrupted.”

Or overheard, Deirdre added silently.

She followed him as he headed for the elevator. He expects me to go to his quarters? she wondered.

But once they got into the elevator Dorn called out, “Observation blister.” Turning to Deirdre, he said, “We should be able to speak freely there.”

Australia’s observation blister was a glassteel ring that ran around the circumference of the ship’s outer hull. It was an adornment for passengers, where they could look out on the universe from the safety of the ship. To the surprise of the shipping company’s management, hardly any passengers took advantage of the facility during midtransit. Despite highly advertised lectures and even cocktail parties hosted by the captain, most passengers had little interest in observing the all-engulfing black emptiness of the universe. It made them uneasy, even frightened. Only when the ship was approaching planetfall did passengers come to gape at the world they were approaching.

Dorn ushered Deirdre through one of the hatches that lined the circular passageway between the elevators and the blister. She stepped through and gasped.

As Dorn closed the hatch, Deirdre suddenly felt as if she were standing in space. The lights went out automatically when the hatch shut and there was nothing between her and the infinite universe but the transparent curving bubble of glassteel. Her knees went weak.

So many stars! The universe was filled with hard unblinking points of light: red, blue, yellow, it was overwhelming. Clouds of stars, swirls of stars, endless boundless teeming stars that sprinkled the blackness of space with color and beauty. Back at Chrysalis II they had observation ports, but nothing like this. This is like being outside!

Dorn heard her gasping breath. “Are you all right?”

“I…” Deirdre had to consciously remind herself that she was perfectly safe, standing on a glassteel deck, warm and protected from the vacuum out there that stretched to infinity. “I think so,” she half whispered.

“I’m sorry,” Dorn said softly. “I forgot how overwhelming it can be the first time. I’ve spent much of my life in spacecraft. This dark forever is like home to me.”

She turned toward him, saw the starlight glinting off the etched metal side of his face.

“The Sun is behind us,” Dorn began to explain, “on the other side of the ship. We’re in shadow here. That’s why you can see so much without the Sun’s glare cutting down visibility.”

“It’s … it’s the most awesome thing I’ve ever seen.”

“The universe,” Dorn said, as solemnly as if praying. “Infinity.”

For several minutes Dorn pointed out the brighter stars for her, identified blue-hot Rigel and the sullen red of Betelgeuse.

At last she interrupted him. “You said we could talk in private here.”

“Yes,” he said, nodding gravely. “The blister goes all the way around the ship, but it’s divided into compartments that are soundproof.” He hesitated. “I believe the ship’s management thought couples might enjoy romantic liaisons here.”

Making it under the stars, Deirdre thought. Not a bad idea, once you got accustomed to having all those unblinking eyes watching you.

“You asked me when I became a cyborg,” Dorn said.

“I don’t want to pry,” said Deirdre. “If it’s painful for you—”

“Pain is part of life. If we’re going to work together at the Jupiter station, you deserve to know about me.”

So he told her. Told her of his life as a mercenary soldier during the Asteroid Wars. How the corporation he worked for supplied their mercenaries with performance-enhancing drugs. How he had murdered a woman who loved him in a blaze of narcotic-driven jealous fury. How he destroyed the old Chrysalis habitat under the battle frenzy that the drugs induced. How he had held a minigrenade to his chest once his mind cleared and he realized what he had done.

“You tried to commit suicide?” Deirdre asked.

In the starlit shadows Dorn replied evenly, “I wasn’t permitted to die. The corporations had invested too much in me. And besides, their medical technicians saw me as an interesting problem. So I was saved. I was rebuilt.”

“That’s how you became a cyborg.”

“Yes. Not every scientist works for the benefit of humankind. Some of them—many of them, I think—work to solve problems that intrigue them. Work to achieve things no one else has achieved before them.”

Deirdre remembered a quotation from her history classes. The physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer had said, “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success.”

DORN’S TRANSFORMATION

“You became a priest?” Deirdre asked.

For a heartbeat Dorn remained silent. Then, “I had a life-altering experience. I encountered … an artifact. A work of an alien intelligence.”

“In the Belt?” Deirdre jumped at his revelation. “The rumors are true? About an alien artifact in one of the asteroids?”

“True,” said Dorn. “There is an alien artifact buried inside a small, stony asteroid. The rock is the property of Humphries Space Systems, Incorporated. I was still an employee of HSS when it was discovered. I was assigned to guard the asteroid and make certain that no one saw the alien artifact.

“But I saw it. Every day, for weeks. It changed me.”

“It’s really true?” Deirdre marveled.

“Really true. However, Martin Humphries guards the asteroid jealously. At first he wanted to keep it for himself alone. When he flew out to see it, though, the artifact drove him insane. He collapsed, jibbering, helpless.”

Dorn stopped, as if the memories he was recalling were too painful to continue. But before Deirdre could think of anything to say, he resumed.

“Humphries recovered, eventually. But he would allow no one to see the artifact. And he wanted to eliminate those who saw his collapse, who heard his weeping, inconsolable pleadings.”

“He wanted to kill you?”

“He tried. But I, too, had seen the artifact. Experiencing it changed my life. I stopped being Dorik Harbin, mercenary warrior. I became Dorn. A priest. I began to try to atone for my former life.”

“Atone? How?”

“By finding the bodies of the mercenaries killed in the Asteroid Wars. Finding them and giving them proper death rites.”

“You did this?”

“For years. Wandering through the Belt, finding the dead who had been left to drift alone endlessly in space. This I did, together with the woman you saw at my trial.”

“My father exiled you.”

Almost smiling in the dim starlight, Dorn said, “He wanted to execute me. He wanted to kill me with his own hands. He settled for exile. I was recruited by the scientists of the Jupiter station. They’ve been testing me at Selene University for the past two years, to see if I can help them make deep dives into the Jovian ocean.”

“And here we are,” Deirdre said, trying to make it sound light, “on our way to Jupiter.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve lived quite a life,” she said. It sounded pathetically inane, she knew.