brain and in some of the organs. So you tell me: was Nadeen Selassie a biologist?”
In moments of high excitement, Bat turned to food. He had stuffed his mouth so full with candied orange peel that it was a few seconds before he could chew and swallow enough to answer Mord’s question.
“Even after thirty years and considerable research, Nadeen Selassie remains a figure shrouded in mystery. She was, in terms of weaponry, the Grand Designer for the most exotic forms that were ever found or ever lost. I am forced to rely on rumor and hearsay, but by all accounts she was unique. Her talents embraced biology, chemistry, and physics. If it is possible that she is still alive…”
“No. Not even assuming that Pearl Landrix was Nadeen Selassie. Her medical record at the time of her operation and after is still in the data file on Heraldic. When she left, they told her to go to the best treatment center she could find. If she did that, and soon, she might live as long as ten years. If she didn’t get treatment, she would die within five. But either way, that was thirty years ago. Calm down, Bat. She’s gone.”
“You are undoubtedly right.” Bat had moved rapidly from skeptic to believer. “And the legacy of her work, the ultimate weapon…”
“That’s gone, too. If we’re lucky.”
“Perhaps.” Bat turned to look around the Bat Cave, as though seeking a suitable open spot for yet another Great War relic. “One cannot help but speculate on what it might have been.” He stood up, which in the micro- gravity of Pandora looked rather like an act of levitation. “Even before you called, a variety of incidents today had already made it impossible for me to think straight. I beg your indulgence. I must go now and seek circumstances which will permit me to regain my mental equilibrium.”
“You mean you’re going to gorge. That’s enough for me. I’m out of here.”
Mord’s image vanished. As always, Bat wondered just what it was that had vanished. Mord was no more than a different form of Fax, a set of logical operators embodied as an evanescent swirl of electrons. Today, however, the puzzle of Mord’s incorporeal existence was no more than a fleeting thought. Something more urgent was on Bat’s mind.
Rather than heading for the other end of the Bat Cave and the pleasures of the kitchen, he sank slowly back down onto the padded chair. He said, aloud, “Something more deadly than a Seeker missile. Something more surprising than the super-adapted humans whom we learned about during the incident on Europa. And yet they survived to the present. Why not this? Mord feels it, too. Something is stirring within the System, something big and mysterious. The ultimate weapon? Or the ultimate shared illusion?”
This was why a person needed solitude. This was why a man could not afford to be interrupted by the constant clamor of mailings and messages and media. Magrit — his recent conversation with her already felt old and distant — had stated it succinctly and correctly. He was the smart one.
And he was baffled.
He set the sidereal clock back more than thirty years, and queried the astronomy programs for solar system positions and velocities of a select group of bodies.
Mandrake — Heraldic — Ceres. Mord had been right. Transit from Mandrake to Heraldic would have been easy in the closing days of the Great War. But movement from there to Ceres? That would be a lengthy and energy-expensive trip.
What about other destinations? Bat called in the ones he saw as most likely, given the starting point of Heraldic, and asked for evaluation.
One of them at once jumped out of the pack. Mars. If Pearl Landrix, perhaps aka Nadeen Selassie, wanted to go anywhere in her little ship, Mars would be the destination of choice. But Mars had itself been hideously battered during the Great War. It represented a first destination, but surely not a final one.
Where? If Nadeen Selassie was indeed carrying with her a doomsday weapon to make the solar system “dark as day,” where would she have taken it — or, if she were dying as Mord insisted, have sent it?
Bat sat alone in darkness for many hours, brooding on unanswerable questions. He had the feeling that forces he sensed only dimly were gradually coming closer.
15
ABOARD THE OSL ACHILLES
Mars, for Janeed at least, promised to be at best an anticlimax. At worst it might turn out to be a disaster. For starters, no one aboard the Achilles would be allowed to land. The ship would go no closer to the planet than synchronous orbit, seventeen thousand kilometers above the surface, and sit there and wait for a couple of days. They had detoured to Mars, so far as Jan could tell, for three unrelated reasons: to permit an official inspection of the engines; to collect another eight passengers outward bound for the Jovian system; and, the one that worried Jan, to pick up Dr. Bloom.
Why did Valnia Bloom want more meetings with Sebastian? You would think that with all the examinations, mental and physical, performed down on Earth and in orbit around Earth, everything that could be tested had been tested. Also, what did Dr. Bloom want with her? Jan had learned, only a couple of hours ago, that she too was scheduled for another session with the head of the Ganymede department of scientific research.
From that moment Jan had been in hold mode. Now she was staring down at the surface of the planet and simply waiting. The exhilaration that she had felt since leaving Earth was draining away, minute by minute. Valnia Bloom had boarded, and Sebastian was already meeting with her. Was there any way that, having come so far, Jan and Sebastian might be rejected and returned to Earth? She had wandered the ship, hoping to see Paul Marr and perhaps receive some reassurance that acceptance aboard the Achilles meant final approval for outbound colonists. He was nowhere to be found. She assumed that he was with the inspection engineers behind the bulkhead with its red-lettered no passengers sign.
The view of Mars offered no relief. The planet was enduring one of its periodic months-long dust storms, clouding the ruddy face almost to the poles. It was mid-morning down there, and Jan could make out — or imagine that she made out — the great crack of Valles Marineris. That was all. Mars had struggled back close to its prewar population of seventeen million people, but no one, seeing the world from Jan’s vantage point, would discern any evidence of their existence.
Suddenly, after waiting for what seemed like forever, she felt a touch on her elbow. It was Sebastian, moving, as usual, as silently as a cat. He dismissed the view from the port with a summary glance — No clouds! — and said, “Your turn.”
“With Dr. Bloom? What did she say to you? What did she want? How did everything go?”
“It was fine.” Sebastian smiled. “It was good.”
That was probably the best that Jan could get. She nodded, turned, and headed at maximum speed for the cabin where Valnia Bloom had set up a temporary office. When she came to the door, she hesitated. She didn’t want to seem worried or nervous. She smoothed her hair, waited for five seconds, then knocked and went in.
Valnia Bloom seemed as intense and anorexic as ever. She nodded to Jan, waved her to a chair, and said, “This shouldn’t take long.”
Probably she thought she was being reassuring. Her expression was anything but. Her next words were worse. “Janeed Jannex, you said in our earlier meeting that you had known Sebastian Birch for more than thirty years, since you were small children. To your knowledge, was he ever placed for any reason in an institution?”
“No!” The word burst out of Jan. All her life she had defended Sebastian, arguing that he was normal, covering for him when he did something especially weird, explaining away his lack of interest in conventional learning. And now, just when she thought all that was past, here it came again.
“He’s a little slow to catch on, that’s all,” she said. “But once he understands an idea, he has it forever.”
“I can very well believe that.” Valnia Bloom was studying a display, but it was tilted so that Jan could not see what was on it. “Did he ever have any form of brain surgery?”
“No.” Jan’s mind instantly popped up tumor. “He’s all right, isn’t he?”
“Physically, he is in very good shape. He would otherwise not be here on this ship. His brain scans, however, are unusual and show very lopsided mental activities. In addition to the odd neurotransmitter activity noted by Christa Matloff, there is extra tissue in one of the sulci. The functions of that tissue remain a mystery. And so far as his mental abilities are concerned, they too are unusual. There are elements of the classical idiot savant, although
