Diamonds in the Sky (8 page)

“I think I follow you. You squish into a biobod that’s right there, physically, instead of beaming your brain to another planet?”

Reege jabbed a finger toward Meyer. “Exactly. Five years planning, and you can have a much younger replica of yourself, through the magic of the squisher. Plus, the direct-access squisher isn’t as expensive, since you don’t need to go off-planet to use a gravitational waveguide.”

“You could essentially use a high-volume optical cable, right? Combined with the brain mapping completed half a century ago, it’s a simple process of deconstructing, transmitting and reconstructing — like Bell’s telephone?”

Reege laughed. “Not so simple, but close enough for the layman. The biggest problem is the brain mapping — the process itself damages the brain beyond repair, rendering the body useless. Remapping doesn’t do this. The data stream is decrypted at the other end real-time and rehosted to the new biobod, which can be grown to be perfect.”

“I have to say, I’m not feeling very perfect.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Reege said drily. “Back to the point: What if I could squish to
two
places at the same time?”

Meyer stared blankly.

“You don’t need to know the details; all that really matters is that I put a team on it, and they managed to find a way of manipulating the waveguide to split the beam.”

Stunned, Meyer opened his mouth and shut it, like a dying fish.

“And then I thought, what if I could squish to
ten
places at the same time?” Reege paused. “Turns out I could. So I squished to all nine of my colonies at once, and replicated locally as well. We all keep in touch, and collectively we get ten times the work done in the same amount of time.”

“Impressive,” Meyer said after the revelation had sunk in. “But you still haven’t told me why I’m here.”

“Ah. Yes.” Reege pressed a button on his desk and stood up. “I’d like to show you our facilities.”

Puzzled, Meyer stood up. Something sharp poked his thick neck, and everything went black.

* * *

Meyer’s brain
squished
again. He felt dizzy, as if he were swaying.

After a few minutes, Meyer’s eyes focused. He was alone with a petite female Reege medtech — trim and redheaded, she looked northern European. “Earth?”

The woman shook her head. “Venus Sky City 4, 50 clicks above the surface,” she said in a raspy alto. “Up here, it’s similar to Earth’s temperature and pressure.”

The room shifted unexpectedly as Meyer tried to stand, throwing him to the floor. “I don’t feel well.”

“Welcome to living in the air. It’s usually pretty stable, but every four or five days, the traveling winds come around at the cloud layer and remind us we’re not on solid ground.” The medtech shrugged. “Then again, the ground’s no picnic, either. That’s why we’re floating up here. Feels like Earth, doesn’t it?”

“Except for the swaying.”

“That could be solved if we could grow Venusian bodies that don’t crush halfway to the surface — it’s 92 times Earth’s pressure. We can lick the temperature problem. It’s over 460
everywhere
on the Venusian surface, like a planet-sized greenhouse, close enough to Mercury’s max, 420, to benefit from their high temp research. But we’re still struggling with the pressure.”

Meyer sighed. “I suppose I’m to see Reege?”

Meyer followed the medtech down a long hallway with several glass doors. Through one of them, green bodies hung lifeless. They resembled humans only in basic form; they looked more like foliage. “What are those?” Meyer asked, jabbing a finger at a door in passing.

The medtech glanced back at Meyer, but didn’t slow down. “We call those the Martians. They’re experimental photosynthetic biobods, modeled after Earth plants, green from the chlorophyll, an attempt to grow a
fully
environment-adapted biobod, capable of breathing the Venusian atmo and withstanding the environment. The surface atmo is almost all carbon dioxide — add a little water, and you get photosynthesis. The problem is that there’s none on the surface, and it
never
rains.” She glanced back again and scowled. “They wouldn’t last very long down there without a healthy supply of water —
if
they could take the pressure, which they can’t.”

Arriving at the end of the hallway, the medtech swung open a hand-carved wooden door — in stark contrast to the glass and steel everywhere else — and escorted Meyer inside. There at his desk, identical to the one on Mercury and Earth, sat a twin to Earth’s Reege.

“Good to meet you, Meyer. Sit down, please. I have some questions for you.” Reege smiled pleasantly and indicated a chair opposite his desk.

Meyer hesitated; he remained standing, ready to run if needed. “Before we get comfortable and someone jabs me in the neck with a hypo, let me ask
you
a question. Why am I here?”

Venusian Reege’s smile faded. “An excellent question, Meyer. Why do you think you’re here?”

Meyer relaxed and sat down. “First, I’m here to establish that you’re the real Benton Reege, using a simple question that you would answer in a specific way — which you’ve done. The rest I’m a little hazy on, now. When I left for Mercury — this morning, was it? — I thought there was an imposter Reege on one of the colonies, undermining the Reege empire from within, and I was supposed to find him. When I saw Reege on Mercury, I figured he was the imposter, and my job was done.”

“But you’re no longer sure of this?” Reege steepled his fingers and looked gravely over them.

Meyer hesitated and fiddled with a pen lying on the desk. “Mercurian Reege told me an interesting — and plausible — story about there
already
being bona fide Reeges on
all
of the colonies.”

Fidgeting in his chair, Reege stared at his desk for a minute before looking up to answer. “That’s correct; there are ten of us.”

Meyer cocked his head to one side. “Thus, my dilemma. If he’s not the imposter, why’d he drug me and send me here? If he
is
the imposter, why’d he send me here instead of just killing me or something?”

“Let me be clear. That Reege should
not
have confided this information to you; but the fact that he did establishes his authenticity. The imposter would not have known this fact; the particular team involved in that one-time experiment are all fiercely loyal — and closely monitored.” Reege looked up and smiled, but he looked
past
Meyer. “Isn’t that right, Dolores?”

Meyer realized too late that he hadn’t seen the redheaded medtech leave. Twisting violently, he tried to spin around and stand simultaneously, but she was quicker, and the hypo found its mark.

“Fiercely loyal, Mr. Reege,” she said, smiling, as Meyer lost consciousness for the second time that day.

* * *

Squish.

Meyer groggily opened his eyes after a few minutes. Even with the haze, he knew he was alone. Struggling to his feet, he lurched toward a door.

A sumo wrestler biobod? Am I back on Mercury?

The door swung open. A husky, dark-skinned man in a Reege lab coat paused in the doorway, frowning. “See what happens when you don’t wait long enough? Sit down.”

Shaking his head, Meyer refused. “I’m okay now,” he wheezed. “Where am I?”

The medtech pointed to the window. “Look.”

Stumbling over, Meyer looked outside at the reddish-orange desert landscape. Mars, probably the Victoria Crater, judging by the view. Every schoolchild had memorized that crater, since it was near the site of Earth’s first off-world colony.

That explained the plus-sized biobod. The Mars gravity and pressure were similar to Mercury’s, but without the temperature extremes — merely 140 below on the South Pole’s winter ice cap to a pleasant 20 above in summer up north. Because of the planet’s tilt and lopsided orbit, the seasons got milder the farther north you went. Near equatorial Victoria Crater was practically idyllic for Mars — bearable temperatures and interesting views.

“Mr. Reege is waiting,” the medtech said drily, and led the way out the door and around the perimeter of a large round room where several other medtechs busied themselves. “It’s mostly carbon dioxide here, like Venus — didn’t you come from there just now? — but here we can get oxygen and small amounts of nitrogen from the atmo, too, so we can recycle our air.”

“What? No green Martian bodies here?”

The medtech’s face contorted, confused. “Why would there be — oh! You saw the Martians, didn’t you?”

Meyer grinned.

“Those are actually based on a
working
design we use here. Oh, don’t you raise an eyebrow at me! They’re up at the North Pole, where there’s plenty of ice we can melt.” The medtech headed down a hallway nearly opposite the squisher recovery room.

“So, there really
are
little green men on Mars?”

Laughing, the medtech corrected, “
Big
green men.” He turned a corner and knocked on a plain metal door, then opened it.

Reege stood by a window. He turned as Meyer entered.

Meyer sighed, and quizzed him as he had the other two. “If you’re going to stick me like the others, just do it now,” he said tiredly after a swallow of water the medtech had offered him before leaving. Meyer sat down.

“No, we drug the water instead,” Reege said with a straight face, then chuckled. “Just kidding; it’s safe.” He turned his head and stared out the window.

“Is there
really
an imposter, Mr. Reege?”

Reege walked to the door. “No tricks, Meyer. Come with me.” He left abruptly.

Meyer followed quickly, but struggled to catch up to Reege through frequent twists and turns down labyrinthine hallways. At last, Meyer found Reege waiting by an open door.

“In here,” Reege said and slipped inside. “Close the door behind you. This is just between us.”

Once closed in, Meyer eyed Reege suspiciously. “I don’t trust you.”

“That’s okay;
I
trust
you
— that’s why you were hired for this task.” Reege sighed. “Could you take a seat over there, please? This … procedure will only take a moment.”

Meyer hesitated.

“I assure you, you’ll be out of here in no time at all. Put on that headset by the chair.”

Still suspicious, Meyer settled into the seat and donned the headset.

* * *

Squish
.

Meyer fought the urge to escape this time; he waited for the inevitable arrival of a medtech to escort him to Reege.

“Jupiter, I presume,” he croaked.

“No,” giggled a statuesque blonde woman, looking straight off Malibu beach. “We can’t make biobods for the gas giants! You’re on one of a few dozen observation stations in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Reege squished in earlier to meet you.” She huffed and glanced at the door.

Meyer stood. “Shall we go?”

Navigating the curved hallways in the wagon-wheel space station to a transport tube that would take them across the spokes to the other side, Meyer chatted with the blonde medtech. Spinning at one-gee and atmoed with Earth air, his space station biobod was identical to his now-destroyed Earth body — except for the scar.

“We do more than just monitoring out here, you know,” she said defensively when Meyer challenged the usefulness of observation stations. “We also have raw mineral mining operations all over these asteroids, especially the M-types — metallic, that is. Like Mars, these are
working
colonies here, not just research colonies. That’s how we’ve been able to multiply the number of observation stations out here so quickly, not to mention that the waveguides here established the original departure points for the outer system colonies. This station orbits our mining HQ on Ceres — also considered a dwarf planet for the last century, by the way; look out that window there — which has about a third of the total mass in the main belt, comprised of some two million asteroids. Of course, we’re tracking the other three main asteroids, Vesta — that’s the only one you can see with the naked eye from Earth — Pallas and Hygiea. Together, they make up another half the mass of Ceres.”

“So, if those four are half the material out here, the other two million asteroids are pretty small?”

“In comparison, yes. But the one that hit Earth 65 million years ago was still big enough to make the dinosaurs extinct!”

Meyer laughed. “Point taken. By the way, with all those asteroids and comets out here, how do you keep from hitting them? This space station is
huge
!”

The medtech grinned. “First off, comets are different; asteroids don’t have a coma, a fuzzy atmo formed from frozen gases released as a comet nears the Sun. The gases grab dust, which makes the comet’s tail. With the exception of a few main-belt comets orbiting here, most comets only come
through
the asteroid belt; even the short-period comets — recurring in less than 200 years — originate farther out. The closest is near Jupiter’s orbit; most travel well past the Kuiper belt, where Pluto orbits, some may even go to the edge of the Solar System. We still don’t know for sure, but we think the long-period comets come from the Oort cloud.”

The medtech paused outside Reege’s office. “As for the asteroids in the main belt here, they look bunched together on star maps, but there’s an incredible amount of space for all of them, so don’t worry. You can go on in; maybe we’ll get to talk later.” The blonde smiled affectionately and retreated around the hallway.

Unlikely, considering my previous receptions
. Furious, Meyer twisted the doorknob and barged in unannounced. “Why am I here?” he asked without preamble. Once verified, before Reege could distract him Meyer blurted out angrily, “Why bother with the formalities, Reege? Why not just drug me and get on with it?”

Reege shrugged. “Okay,” he said simply and went back to his work.

Rustling behind Meyer was quickly followed by a sharp pain in his neck.
Me and my big—

* * *

Squish.

I’m getting tired of this routine.

A few minutes later, Meyer followed a medtech to Reege’s office on the largest of Jupiter’s 63 named moons, Ganymede.