The Ganymede Club (21 page)

"Unless you have a better idea, we're going home."

"Whatever you say." She saw that they were not the only ones thinking of leaving; others were crowding ahead of them and pushing against them as they approached the great double doors. She held tightly to his arm. "Whatever you say. You're in charge."

In charge.
Now
there
was a strange notion: that someone else would decide where you should go next and what you would do. Like being a child all over again, back safe on Earth, hanging on to mother's hand. Strange. But nice.

Lola allowed herself to be led through a maze of chambers and corridors. She didn't know where she was going and she felt a little bit clumsy and awkward. It didn't matter. Conner was in charge, he was completely self-confident, and he had coordination enough for both of them.

It was inevitable that he would lead her safely back to her own apartment, and perfectly natural that when she fumbled with the lock, he would take over and let them in. The only odd moment came when they had moved together into her bedroom, and he paused.

"What's wrong?" She slipped off her shoes and sat down on the bed.

"Are you fertile?"

"Not today."

"Then nothing's wrong." He sat down next to her, and ran his fingers gently along her forearm. "I just like a clear division of responsibilities."

Lovemaking had not been on Lola's wish list for the evening, but within the next two minutes she knew that it should have been. He felt, smelled, and moved exactly right. When he whispered in her ear, "You know, I've been thinking about doing this since the first moment I saw you in your office," she had no doubt that it was true.

She did not know if he was a good media reporter; but she was soon sure beyond question that Conner Preston was a wonderful lover.

* * *

"Every job seems strange unless it's your own job. For instance, I can't begin to imagine what it's like being a haldane."

They were lying close. All the lights were off and he was playing with her hair, coiling a long lock around his forefinger. Lola was feeling warm and sleepy and utterly relaxed. She had been telling him how rare it was for her to meet a media person, and asking him what his job was like.

"I mean," Conner went on, "don't you find it hard to keep your patients sorted out in your head? If it was me I'm sure their emotional problems would all get mixed up inside me."

"Mental problems are unique, usually nothing like each other. You don't mix them up, any more than you have trouble distinguishing your friends. And I don't take many patients. The legal limit is twenty-four people at any one time, but most haldanes prefer to deal with a lot less."

"How many do you have?"

"At the moment?" Lola would have to count, and she didn't feel like doing it. "I guess it's thirteen or fourteen. But a couple are at the end of their treatment, and three—I should say two—are new."

The memory of the patient who had committed suicide just that morning came like a sudden cramp in her midriff.

"What's wrong?" He had felt her movement.

"Nothing you can do anything about. Nothing anybody can." But Lola found herself talking about what had happened, while Conner listened in sympathetic silence and gently stroked her cheek and neck.

"You couldn't help him?" he said, at last.

"He wouldn't let me try. I knew he had awful problems, but he wouldn't agree to any session using drugs and telemetry. He was too afraid of what I might find out. I couldn't make him understand that no matter what I found out—and haldanes hear some terrible things—I wouldn't judge him or tell anyone. He only came to me because his boy friend forced him to, but I was useless. Worse than useless. He was scared of me
because
I'm a haldane."

"I'm sure he was. Don't you realize how intimidating it is to meet somebody and find out she's a haldane? I mean, I was lucky. I breezed into your office without reading your sign, and I reacted to you before I had any idea what you did for a living. Otherwise—well, I probably wouldn't be doing this."

"Which would be a pity. Don't stop. Right now I'm a woman first and a haldane last."

"You know what I mean. But it makes me wonder about your clients. I don't mean what's wrong with them, or what you do for them—that's none of my business, and I know you can't talk about it anyway. I wonder what it is that makes someone seem right for haldane treatment. You say you have fourteen patients—"

"Thirteen now."

"Thirteen. And that their problems are all unique. The sign in your office says that anyone who thinks he can be helped shouldn't come to you. But everyone I know, deep down, thinks they're crazy. So who comes, and how do they know to come to you?"

"They come to me when nothing else works. Other than that, they're all different. And they're all difficult."

With his warm, steady hands touching her body and his breath on her cheek, Lola found it easy to say things that she had never said before. How being a haldane was in some ways as she had expected it to be before she qualified, yet still a total surprise. How being a haldane was often rewarding, but never simple. How the psychotropic drugs, when she was in their grasp, made her own sense of reality weaker than that of any of her patients, and left her, when she emerged from their spell, adrift in a dream world and wondering about her own sanity. How people found intimacy with a haldane impossible, because they were afraid that too much of their inner self would be laid wide open and bare.

Just as Lola, at this very moment, felt wide open and bare. The difference was that this was not in the least frightening. It was thrilling. She trailed off at last into silence, because once again his body was stirring against hers.

Her last thought, before she gave up thinking, was an odd one. If Spook had come home before Conner Preston entered her office, none of this would have happened. When she saw Spook in the morning, she ought to thank him for staying away.

* * *

Alcohol was supposed to be a depressant, but after drinking too much Lola always found it hard to sleep properly. She would drop off easily enough, then waken much too soon. Sure enough, four hours after she and Conner had drifted away into satisfied sleep, she found herself lying wide awake and staring into darkness.

She turned on the little bedside lamp. He was sleeping naked by her side, his well-muscled body curled toward her. His knees were slightly raised and one arm shielded his head.

She studied his peaceful face. He looked quite innocent. But was he?

For most of the previous evening her critical faculties had been firmly turned off. But her memory had not. Now she could recall events and analyze them logically, rather than reacting to them with pure emotion. She was puzzled by what the rational side of her brain was telling her. Turn things any way she chose, and she could not deny that Conner had asked far too many questions about her job as a haldane. Or rather, and more peculiar, he had asked about her
patients.
That was where his focus had been. Who came to her, why did they come to her? Every question but one: What are their names? He must have realized that she would stop short of telling him that, no matter how carefully he phrased the question.

She gazed down at him, wishing that they were in her office and he was in the patient's chair. Her fondness for him was not less—maybe more. She had her own suspicion about what might be happening. He had told her during their first dinner together that there were no haldanes in the Belt—a fact of which she was already well aware. But that did not mean there was no interest in haldanes in the Belt.

He was here on Ganymede on a press assignment. It was more than plausible that he had been told to prepare a dirt-digging piece about haldanes—that would be the media preference, something that confirmed the general public paranoia. Maybe Conner had even chosen the location of his office to be near a haldane.

He had met Lola, according to plan. But then the unexpected had arrived: He had found her attractive—very much so, if tonight's physical responses were anything to go by. At that point, more personal factors had taken over. He had realized that he could not get what he wanted from Lola, and still hope to remain close to her.

Her patients, though, were another matter. If they chose to talk to the media about their experiences—for money—that was up to them. Lola would not mind. She had no professional "secrets" that they might expose. In fact, all that Conner would hear, if he did manage to contact one of her patients, was exactly what she had been telling him about being a haldane.

He rolled his head a little on the pillow, and she looked down at him fondly. So. he was playing a game with her. Well, two could do that. Everyone said "haldane" and thought drugs and telemetry, but there were other weapons in the arsenal. She would employ those, when he was drifting off to sleep or in a dream cycle. Then she would learn exactly what his assignment was. And then, when he least expected it, she would spring it on him.

Lola switched off the light and settled down, turning her back and snuggling close to Conner so that she fitted all along the curve of his body and legs. The wine she had drunk was still in her system, and she was not sure that she would be able to go to sleep again. She was sure of one thing, though. If you were going to lie awake all night, you couldn't find a more pleasant environment to do it in.

And there was always the possibility of a nice morning surprise.

14

It was all very well for Bat to propose that Spook dash off for a quick look at the off-line Hidalgo data base tucked away on Callisto, and while he was at it check on Bryce Sonnenberg's background. Spook loved the idea of going. But Bat, in a way that Spook was beginning to find typical, ignored or brushed off the practical problems.

"I see no problems." Bat, a gigantic ebony Buddha on his Bat Cave chair, was at his most snooty and infuriating.

Spook paced the length of the Bat Cave, aware how much Bat disliked him moving around all the time. "That's because you're not looking for them. Try these two. First, I need a ticket to get to Callisto. And one to bring me back, I guess, unless I decide to stay there forever."

"Trivially easy, and not worthy of the name of 'problem.' Have I not assured you that I am more knowledgeable concerning outer system transportation than any other person, living or dead? You will have the tickets that you need, to leave and to return, whenever you decide to go."

"
Legal
tickets?"

"Legal beyond dispute. Not only do I have favors owed to me by all the major transporters, I also have accumulated travel credits sufficient for a hundred such trips."

"You've not been using them yourself?" But Spook said it only to annoy, and went on at once, "I mentioned the tickets first, but that's not the worst problem. It's Lola. What am I supposed to tell Lola?"

"What can you tell her, that will persuade her to allow you to make the trip?"

"It doesn't matter what I say. I'm grounded for the next two weeks, because she says I've been into her haldane data base."

"A vile calumny, I am sure."

"Well . . . sort of. Actually, I have been in there. Just a little. Not as much as she says, though. But that's not the point. The point is, she'll say no, regardless. She won't let me go."

"Then the matter becomes very simple." Bat gave a magisterial sniff. "You are permitting personal emotions to impede your mental processes. Were this part of a problem on the Puzzle Network, you would have reached the solution instantly. There is a solution, and from what you have told me it is the only clean and logical answer. No matter what you tell your sister, you say, she will not permit you to go to Callisto. Therefore . . ."

"Therefore, I go and don't tell her? Bat, she'll skin me."

"Possibly. But only upon your return. Do you really desire to go?"

"I can't wait."

"Then we will now obtain your tickets." Bat swiveled his chair, so that he was facing his communications console. "It is something I learned long ago in dealing with my own parents, that absolution is always easier to obtain than permission." He paused, as though obliged by honesty to make his next remark but reluctant to do so. "That, of course, was before they threw me out of the house."

* * *

Spook had escaped from Earth and come to Ganymede at the impressionable age of ten. He had never visited Callisto—the next moon out in the Jovian system—so his ideas about that world had been largely shaped by what he heard on Ganymede.

It was not complimentary. Callisto was almost as big as Ganymede, but in spite of—or because of—that, Ganymede treated Callisto with the disdain of an older sister for a younger one. A not very attractive sister, at that. Ganymedeans spoke disparagingly of the pockmarked face of Callisto—all ancient craters—and of the too-low gravity field, indicative of an interior that was low in valuable metals and high in water ice. While Ganymede was home to a thriving civilization and the power center of the outer system, Callisto was regarded as a coarse and backward frontier world.

Spook, after half a day on Callisto, decided that everything he had been told was true. This was a primitive world of risks and roughness and rapid change. The surprise was how much he liked it. Bat might be happy sitting in a hole in the ground for the rest of his life, but Spook for the first time knew what he wanted to do with his. He wanted to spend his days out on the edge, where things were new and wild and exciting.

He had left Ganymede at short notice and with no time for preparation. When he arrived he didn't know his way around the changing interior of Callisto. It didn't matter. He asked his way, and was cheerfully directed by busy men and women toward the central data facility. He passed through steaming caverns with their scattered lakes of melting ice, the future home of sea farms, enough to provide protein to the whole Jovian system. He took hair-raising rides along slideways at speeds that would never be allowed on Ganymede. He ate a meal in the ultimate fast-food cafeteria, where the dishes came by on conveyor belts and you had to grab what you wanted and eat it before the next course passed. He sat on a curved metal plate like a great pie dish and took an endless and heart-stopping drop down an unlit tube—twenty kilometers of free fall—until at last his raft was electromagnetically slowed for the landing.