head of the IAA’s legal department. The man’s image filled her wall screen. He was wearing a somber dark jacket, the expression on his once-handsome face set in a grim scowl, as if he knew the news he was bringing would not be welcomed.
“The long and the short of it,” he said, in a bleak, droning voice, “is that while nanotechnology has been banned in all its aspects everywhere on Earth by the Nanotech Treaty of 2039, human communities off Earth are not bound by the treaty’s provisions. In fact, the nation of Selene fought its war of independence mainly to be free from restrictions on nanotechnology.”
The lawyer’s office was in the IAA headquarters complex in Amsterdam, on Earth. Westfall could see palm trees outside his window, and the sea glittering beneath a bright sun. Much of Amsterdam and the rest of the Netherlands had been flooded by the greenhouse warming and then painfully regained from the encroaching waters by a generation of hard, ceaseless labor.
She started to interrupt the man’s sermon, then realized that the distance between Earth and Jupiter meant that he wouldn’t hear her words for a quarter of an hour, at least. So she bit her tongue and continued to listen to his dreary monologue.
“The upshot is,” the lawyer continued, “that the scientists on station
Westfall angrily snapped her fingers and the lawyer’s image winked out.
I’ll get no help from the lawyers, she told herself. Archer and his minions can play with their nanomachines and cure the Ambrose girl of her rabies. That will break my control over her completely.
Closing her eyes briefly, Westfall wondered what her next move should be. It’s obvious, she told herself. You’ve got to make those nanobugs into a dangerous threat, something that will attack the station and the people in it.
Then she smiled. No, she realized. Not attack the station. I need nanobugs that will attack that ship Archer’s sending into the ocean. Destroy the ship and the people in it.
I need a nanotech specialist, she realized. And quickly.
SACRIFICE
“So what about Dr. Corvus?” Janet asked as she walked with Deirdre down the third wheel’s main passageway toward the dolphin tank.
Deirdre glanced down at Janet, hesitating. She looked so much like her brother: short, slightly built, her light brown hair in bangs that framed her round face. Her eyes were light, too, a bluish brown hazel color. They looked bright, honest, trustworthy.
“I think I’ve hurt him,” Deirdre said at last.
“Hurt him? How?”
“I’ve been going to dinner with your brother every night since you two arrived here. I think Andy feels hurt over that. He sure acts unhappy.”
“Has Frankie come on to you? Is he making a pest of himself?”
Deirdre said, “Nothing I can’t handle. He’s actually a lot of fun to be with.”
“My brother?”
“Yes,” Deirdre said. “Of course, he can be … very attentive.”
“He can be an insensitive jerk about women,” Janet grumbled.
“Not just about women,” Deirdre said. “He made something of a fool of Andy that first night. Made him look kind of stupid.”
With a sigh, Janet said, “Frankie’s a jokester. He likes to think he’s a comedian.”
When Deirdre didn’t respond, Janet asked, “Were you and this Corvus guy involved before we came here?”
“No, not really. We were just friends. Along with Max Yeager and Dorn.”
“Dorn?”
“The cyborg,” Deirdre explained. “The four of us rode out here on the same torch ship and we sort of became buddies.”
“And now Corvus feels hurt because you’re having dinners with my brother.”
“There’s nothing going on between us,” Deirdre said.
For several paces neither woman said anything. Deirdre saw the doors to the dolphin tank area up the passageway ahead of them.
“There’s something more,” she admitted. “Andy—Dr. Corvus—he wants me to go with him on the mission into the ocean. He says I’d be better able to make contact with the leviathans than he would.”
“And you don’t want to go?”
“I’m scared! Living in that perfluorocarbon liquid for days and days. Hundreds of kilometers deep in the ocean. People have been killed on missions like that!”
They reached the double doors and stopped.
Very businesslike, Janet summed up, “So you think that Corvus is jealous of my brother and he’ll be hurt even more if you refuse to go on the mission with him.”
Deirdre nodded. “That’s about it.”
“Okay.” Janet grinned as she slid the doors open. “Let’s have dinner together, all four of us.”
“All four of us?”
“You, me, my brother, and Dr. Corvus.”
“Dinner,” Deirdre murmured.
“Let’s see how much of this we can thrash out over a decent meal,” Janet said cheerfully.
Deirdre didn’t know how Janet arranged it, but when she came down to the galley for dinner that evening, Andy was already sitting at a table with the Torre twins. Both men jumped to their feet when they spotted Deirdre and waved her over to the table.
Feeling tense, Deirdre sat between Corvus and Franklin, opposite Janet. Automatically she scanned the busy, noisy galley for Dorn and Max, but neither of them was in sight.
“Dee and I have been talking,” Janet said, without preamble, “about this mission into the ocean that you’re planning, Andy.”
Deirdre blinked with surprise. Janet was already on a first-name basis with Andy, and calling her Dee. She doesn’t waste any time, Deirdre thought.
“That’s the reason we’re here,” Corvus said, his eyes focused on Deirdre. “To get down there and make contact with the leviathans.”
“I don’t know if I can do it, Andy,” Deirdre blurted.
He looked surprised. “But you’re working fine with Baby and the other dolphins. You went through the perfluorocarbon immersion with no trouble.”
“Andy,” said Janet, in an almost motherly tone, “what Dee’s trying to tell you is that she’s frightened of the prospect. She didn’t come here to take a cruise in the Jovian ocean.”
Corvus’s brows shot up. “You don’t want to go?” he asked, in a little boy’s disappointed whimper.
Forcing herself to keep her hands in her lap, Deirdre replied, “It’s not that I don’t want to, Andy. I’m afraid to. I’m scared.”
He blinked, digesting the information. Then Corvus shook his head as if he were arguing with himself. At last he said, “Dee, I don’t blame you for being scared. This is all new to you.”
Franklin Torre muttered, “I’d sure be scared.”
Ignoring him, Corvus went on, “If you’re scared, Dee, you shouldn’t go. I want you to be safe. I want you to
