“Yessir, I agree.”
“And how is Sheena reacting to the idea of wearing the neural headgear?”
Grant had worn the spiderweb of electrodes draped over his own head the previous night, to get Sheena accustomed to the idea of the net. The gorilla might have been amused; she was unable to laugh, of course, but she referred several times to “Grant hat.”
“I think she’ll be okay with it, in a week or so. She’s not spooked by the console any longer. It just takes her a little time to get comfortable with new things— especially things that have the smell of a laboratory about them.”
Wo drummed his stubby fingers on the desk. “She has a long memory.”
“She doesn’t forget something that frightened her, or gave her pain.”
“The neural net will not hurt her in any way.”
“But it could frighten her, unless she sees it as a toy or a game.”
“Yes,” Wo conceded. “Very clever.”
“It doesn’t take much to outsmart a two-year-old,” Grant heard himself say, with some bitterness. “Only time and patience.”
Wo gave him a sardonic smile. “I am pleased that you are learning patience.”
“Sheena’s a good teacher, in that regard.”
The director’s thin smile widened. “You are becoming almost Confucian in your growing wisdom, Mr. Grant.”
Not knowing what else to say, Grant replied, “Thank you, sir.”
“I am afraid, however, that I have still another duty to place upon your shoulders.”
“Another?”
“I have appointed you to join the deep mission team. You will report to the mission control center tomorrow for intensive training. You must be capable of assisting the mission controllers by the time the mission is launched.”
“Intensive training?” Grant echoed. “But … when? How can I … there aren’t enough hours in the day for everything that’s on my plate.”
Curtly Wo replied, “Then I shall remove some items from your plate. Your duties in the fluid dynamics lab will be suspended until the mission is completed.”
“But my thesis!”
“It can wait for a few weeks.”
“The ocean mapping … you’ll need that for the mission.”
“The mapping is sufficiently detailed for the purposes of the mission. Further refinement is not necessary.”
Shaking his head vehemently, Grant argued, “How can you say that? How can you tell how much information is enough? The more data I generate—”
Wo cut him short with an angry slash of one hand. “It is
“You’re making an arbitrary decision.”
“Yes. Of course I am.” Wo looked away from Grant for a moment, as if trying to control his anger, then said in a more reasonable tone, “As a scientist, I agree with you. Wholeheartedly. The more data the better. Keep probing, keep learning.”
“So then—”
“But I am not merely a scooter. I am director of this station and chief of this deep mission. I must make hard decisions. I must decide how to use the personnel I have at my disposal, and I have decided that the best use for you is to assist in the control center during the mission.”
“There are several dozen technicians on this station who can do that job, and do it better than I could.”
“Perhaps,” Wo conceded, “but I do not choose to bring additional personnel into this mission.”
“Why not? Wouldn’t it be smarter to—”
“Enough!” Wo snapped. “I have made my decision and you will carry out my orders. End of discussion.”
Grant fell silent for a moment. The two of them glared at each other across the director’s gleaming desk.
“This is a security matter, isn’t it?” Grant asked in a much softer voice. “You don’t want to bring additional people into the mission for fear of a security leak.”
Wo did not reply for several heartbeats. Grant felt perspiration trickling down his ribs. Why does he keep this office so hellishly hot? he wondered silently.
At last Wo said, “Dr. Muzorawa has told you about the Zealots.”
Grant conceded it with a nod. Lord Almighty, he really
“I fear them,” Wo said, so low that Grant barely heard the words.
“But surely, here on this station, we’re millions of kilometers away from them.”
“Are we? Who among those dozens of technicians you spoke of might be a Zealot? Who among the scooters working on Europa or studying Io?”
“Not a scientist,” Grant protested.
“Why not? You are a Believer, are you not?”
“Yes, but I’m not a fanatic.”
Wo’s eyes bored into Grant’s, as if trying to pierce to his soul. “No,” he said at last, “I trust that you are not.”
It was that word “trust” that hit Grant. He heard himself say, “When I was assigned to come to this station, the New Morality asked me to report back to them on what you are doing.”
Wo said nothing; his expression did not alter one millimeter.
“They asked me to spy on you,” Grant admitted.
“And have you?”
“I haven’t told them a thing. I haven’t learned anything that they didn’t already know. But if you’re going to make me a part of this deep mission …”
Dr. Wo closed his eyes and nodded. “I see. Your loyalties are divided.”
“No, they’re not,” Grant snapped. “I’m a Believer, and I’m a scientist, also. But my loyalties are clear. I’m not a spy, and whatever the New Morality people back on Earth want to know has nothing to do with faith in God. What they’ve asked me to do is politics, not religion.”
Again Wo lapsed into silence. Grant waited for several moments, then said, “You can trust me, sir. I’m not a spy. I never wanted to spy on you. They never gave me a choice.”
“I want to trust you, Archer. There are very few people aboard this station whom I can trust. That is why my team for the deep mission is so pitifully small.”
“That’s why you put the team in quarantine,” Grant said.
Wo’s chin sunk to his chest. In a voice trembling with inner rage he added, “It would take only one of them, you must understand. One Zealot. This station is a very fragile place. One fanatic could destroy us all.”
“A terrorist?”
“A man—or a woman—who is convinced that our search for intelligent alien life is sinful. One person who is willing to die in order to kill all of us.”
“Don’t the psych profiles screen out such fanatics?”
Wo glowered at his naivete. Then his anger seemed to fade. “I should never have allowed nanomachines in this station,” he whispered, so low Grant could barely hear him. “That was a mistake. A personal frailty.” He shook his head disconsolately.
Grant had no response for that. The idea was too foreign to his thinking, alien to everything he believed.
“If this station is destroyed, it will never be replaced,” Wo continued, his anger palpable. “Never. It is difficult enough to get the funds for maintenance and repair. They would never allow a new station to be built.”
“No, that can’t be true. The work that we’re doing here—”
“They
