In the Ocean of Night (12 page)

“That’s inefficient as hell. We’ve got a whole solar system to search.”

Lubkin’s voice became hard and flat. “That’s the way it’s going to be, Nigel. And if you want to work on this program …” He did not finish the sentence.

She shook him gently in the night, and then more roughly and finally he awoke, eyes gummy and mind still drifting in fog.

“Nigel, I’m afraid.”

“What? I…”

“I don’t know, I just woke up and I was terrified.”

He sat up and cradled her in his arms. She burrowed her face into his chest and shivered as though she were cold. “Was there a dream?”

“No. No, I just…my heart was pounding so loud I thought you must have heard it and my legs were so cramped… They still hurt.”

“You had a dream. You simply don’t remember it.” “You think so?”

“Certainly.”

“I wonder what it was about?”

“Some beastly bit from the subconscious, that’s always what it is. Settling the accounts.”

She said in a weak, high voice, “Well, I wish I could get rid of this one.”

“No, the subconscious is like the commercial bits on Three-D. Without them sandwiched in, you’d get none of the good programming.”

“What’s that sound?”

“Rain. Sounds like it’s pissing down quite heavily.” “Oh. Good. Good, we need it.”

“We always need it.”

“Yes.”

He sat that way the remainder of the night, finally falling asleep long after she did.

At the Los Angeles County Museum:

Alexandria leaned over to study the descriptive card beneath the black and gray sculpture. “Devadasi performing a gymnastic sexual act with a pair of soldiers who engage in sword-play at the same time. This scene records a motif for a spectacle. South India. Seventeenth Century.” She arched her back in imitation of the Devadasi, getting about halfway over.

“Looks difficult,” he said.

“
Impossible.
And the angle for the fellow in front is basically wrong.”

“They
were
gymnasts.”

Reflectively: “I liked the big one back there better. The one who carried men off in the night for ‘sexual purposes’—remember?”

“Yes. Delicate phrasing.”

“Why did she have a touch-hole in her vulva?” “Religious significance.”

“Ha!”

“Maintenance purposes, then. It probably short-circuited the occasional desire to carve one’s initials in her.”

“Unlikely,” she said. “Ummm. ‘The eternal dance of the Yogini and the lingam,’ it says, on this next one. Eternal.” She gazed at it for a long moment, and then turned quickly away. Her mouth sagged. She wobbled uncertainly on the glossy tiles. Nigel took her arm and held her as she limped toward a row of chairs. He noticed that the gallery was oddly hushed. She sat down heavily, air wheezing out in a rush. She swayed and stared straight ahead. Her forehead beaded with sudden perspiration. Nigel glanced up. Everyone in the gallery had stopped moving and stood, watching Alexandria.

“She ought to quit that damned job
now,
” Shirley said adamantly.

“She likes it.”

Nigel sipped at his coffee. It was oily and thick, but still probably better than what he could get at work. He told himself that he should get up and clear away the breakfast dishes, now that Alexandria had left for her meeting, but Shirley’s cold, deliberate anger pinned him to the dining nook.

“She’s holding on, just
barely
holding on. Can’t you
see
that?” Her eyes flashed at him, their glitter punctuated by the high, arching black eyebrows.

“She wants to have a hand in this Brazilian thing.” “God damn it! She’s frightened. I was gone—how long? five minutes?—and when I came back she was still sitting there in that gallery, white as a sheet and you patting her arm. That’s not healthy, that’s not the Alexandria we know.”

Nigel nodded. “But I talked to her. She—”

“—is afraid to bring it up, to show how worried she is. She feels
guilty
about it, Nigel. That’s a common reaction. The people I work with, they’re guilty over being poor, or old, or sick. It’s up to you and me to force them out of that. Make them see themselves as…”

Her voice trickled away. “I’m not reaching you, am I?”

“No, no, you are.”

“I think you ought to at least persuade her to stay home and rest.”

“I will.”

“When she’s feeling better we’ll take a trip,” Shirley said quickly, consolidating her gains.

“Right. A trip.” He stood up and began stacking plates, their ceramic edges scraping, the silverware clattering. “I’m afraid I haven’t noticed. My work—”

“Yes, yes,” Shirley said fiercely, “I know about your damned work.”

He awoke in a swamp of wrinkled, sticky sheets. July’s heat was trapped in the upper rooms of this old house, lying in wait for the night, clinging in the airless corners. He rolled slowly out of bed, so that Alexandria rocked peacefully in the slow swells of the water’s motion. She made a foggy murmur deep in her throat and fell silent again.

The cold snap of night air startled him. The room was not close and stifling after all. The sweat that tingled, drying, had come from some inner fire, a vaguely remembered dream. He sucked in the cool, dry air and shivered.

Then he remembered.

He padded into the high-arched living room and switched on a lamp where the light would not cast into the bedroom. He fumbled among the volumes of the
Encylopaedia Britannica
and found the entry he wanted. Reading, he groped for the couch and sat down.

Lupus erythematosus.
May affect any organ or the overall structure of the body. Preference for membranes which exude moisture, such as those of the joints or those lining the abdomen. Produces modified antibodies, altered proteins. For long intervals symptoms may subside. Spreading through the body is usually undetectable until major symptoms arise. Communication to the central nervous system has become a consistent feature of the disease in recent years. Studies relating disease incidence and pollution levels show a clear connection, though the precise mechanism is not understood. Treatment—

Until this moment it had not seemed truly real.

He read through the article once, then again, and finally stopped when he found that he was crying. His eyes were stinging and watery.

He put the volume back and noticed a new book on the shelf. A Bible bound in ridged acrylic. Curious, he opened it. Some pages were well thumbed. Shirley? No, Alexandria. Had she been reading it, even before their conference with Hufman? Had she suspected in advance? He sat down and began reading.

SIX

“The President does not
know
how long, Nigel,” Lubkin said sternly. “He wants us all to hold on and try to find it.”

“Does he think anybody can suppress news about something this big
forever
? It’s been
five
months now. I don’t think the Washington or UN people will keep quiet much longer.”

Once more they were framed in the pool of light around Lubkin’s desk. The one window in the far wall let in some sunlight, giving Lubkin’s sallow skin a deeper cast of yellow. Nigel sat stiffly alert, lips pressed thin.

Lubkin casually leaned back in his chair and rocked for a moment. “You aren’t hinting that you might…?”

“No, rubbish. I won’t spill it.” He paused for a second, remembering that Alexandria knew. She could be trusted, he was sure. In fact, she didn’t seem to quite grasp the importance of the Snark, and never spontaneously spoke of it. “But the whole idea is stupid. Childish.”

“You wouldn’t feel that way if you had been with me at the White House, Nigel,” Lubkin said solemnly.

“I wasn’t invited.”

“I know. I understand the President and NASA wanted to keep the number of attendees down. To avoid attracting notice from the press. And for security reasons.”

The trip had been the high point of Lubkin’s career, clearly, and Nigel suspected he burned to tell someone about it. But at JPL only Nigel and the Director were privy to the information, and the Director had been present at the White House, anyway. Nigel smiled to himself.

“The way the President put it was really convincing, Nigel. The emotional impact of such an event, coupled with the religious fervor afoot in the country, in fact in the
world
… those New Sons of God have a senator to speak for them now, you know. They would kick up quite a bit of dust.”

“Which wing of the New Sons?”

“Wing? I don’t know…”

“They come in all colors and sizes, these days. The fever-eyed, sweaty-palmed ones can’t count to twelve without taking off their shoes. If they have any. The intellectual New Sons, though, have a doctrine cobbled together about life existing everywhere and being part of the Immanent Host and that sort of thing. So Alexandria says. They—” Nigel stopped, aware that he’d begun to rattle on about a side issue. Lubkin had a definite talent for deflecting from the point.

“Well,” Lubkin said, “there are also the military people. They’re pretty nervous about this thing.” Lubkin nodded unconsciously to himself, as though this last statement needed added weight.

“That’s bloody
simple-minded.
No species from another star is going to come all this way to drop a bomb on us.”

“
You
know that.
I
know that. But some of the generals are worried.”

“Whatever the hell for?”

“The danger of triggering the Nuclear Warning Net, though that is reduced now that more participants know of the, ah, Snark. There is also the possibility of biological contamination if this thing should enter the atmosphere…”

Lubkin’s voice trailed off and both men stared mood-ily for a long moment at a eucalyptus tree that dripped steadily from the light gray fog outside the window. The continuing alteration in the world weather cycle made these fall fogs more intense each year; the process was understood but beyond control.

Lubkin tapped his pen on his desk’s polished sheen and the ticking rhythm echoed hollowly in the still room. Nigel studied the man and tried to estimate how Lubkin was dealing with the politics of this situation. He probably saw it as a matter of containment, of separate spheres of activity. Lubkin would do what he could to keep Nigel toeing the line, keeping mum, and rummaging around the solar system after the Snark. Meanwhile, Lubkin could play the steely-eyed, competent, can-do type back at the UN. To harried diplomats someone like Lubkin, with hard, sure answers, must seem like a good bet, a bright candidate for better things.

Nigel twisted his lips and wondered if he was becoming cynical. It was hard to tell.

“I still believe we have an obligation to tell the human race about this. The Snark isn’t merely another strategic element,” Nigel said.

“Well, I’m sorry you feel that way, Nigel.”

There was no reply. Outside drops pattered silently in a moist, gray world, beading the pane.

“You
do
acknowledge the need for secrecy in this, don’t you? I mean, despite your personal feelings, you
will
maintain security? I would—”

“Yes, yes, I’ll go along,” Nigel said testily.

“Good, very good. If you hadn’t, I’m afraid I would have had to remove you from the group. The President was
very
firm about it. We, nothing personal, of—”

“Right. Your only concern is the Snark.”

“Uh, yes. About that. There was a little concern about attaching such an odd, mythical name to it. Might excite interest, you know, if anybody overheard. The UN Chancellor’s office suggested we give it a number, J-27. With twenty-six discovered Jovian moons, this is the next, you see—”

“Um.” Nigel shrugged.

“—but of course, the main interest expressed by the Chancellor lay in finding out where we can expect it next.”

Nigel saw he could wait no longer. The card in his hand couldn’t be turned into a trump, so he might as well play it. “I think I may already know,” he said evenly.

“Oh?” Lubkin brightened and leaned forward gingerly.

“I guessed the Snark would follow a reasonably energy-saving orbit. No point in squandering essentials. Given that, and the crude Doppler shift measurement we got of its fusion flame, I figured it for a long, sloping orbit in toward Mars.”

“It’s near
Mars
?” Lubkin stood up excitedly, his distant manner forgotten.

“Not any more.”

“I don’t—”

“I’ve been putting in a lot of hours on the Mars Monitors. Used that blanket budget charge and had the camera and telescope rigs doing a piecemeal scan of the available sky around Mars. The program ran round the clock and I’d check the results each day. I got behind. Yesterday I found something.”

“You should’ve told me.”

“I
am
telling you.”

“I’ll have to call Washington and the UN at once. If the object is in orbit around Mars now—”

“It isn’t.” Nigel folded his arms, a faint sour taste in his mouth.