Voyage to Alpha Centauri: A Novel (49 page)

I shut down the
max
.

Day 220
:

A good deal of information had been compacted into that biography of my fellow conspirator, and a good deal of unanswered questions as well. It was a neat package. Too neat.

First of all, where were the friends who would miss “Dave”? Had they attended the funeral? Who were the men standing by the grave, and why did they all have a common ambience—the hardened mercenary-in-civvies look? Was the “metallurgy” special project listed as an activity in the roster of the ship’s science departments and sub-departments? I would check this later, not through my home
max
.

Had David been an agent of DSI all along? Had the accidental death uncovered this? Had he avoided his old fellow conspirators because we were no longer a case that needed studying? Because we had been neutralized?

My suspicions produced question after question, all of them directed at David, whoever he really was; all of them tainted with resentment, the feeling that we had been royally (or should I say, democratically) used.

Then the counterarguments began.

He had sweated as a cleaning man for a number of years, which, it seemed to me, was rather overdoing a cover story, if indeed DSI had been merely checking out a handful of eccentrics. Though I am not particularly astute at reading human character, not once had I sensed a false note in my conversations with David. His had been a real personality.

And why, above all other considerations, had such a concerted effort been made to erase his records from the ship’s computers?

Why, moreover, had the executives of DSI gone into meltdown over our tiny little revolt, and an even worse reaction when we inquired into David’s absence?

I thought about it all for many hours, tossing the contradictory scenarios around in my head until I realized I was going in circles. And the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that the funeral and public biography might be the cover story. And if this was the case, what was the reason behind such elaborate disinformation? David’s death may or may not have been accidental, but the cloak of lies pointed to something. Was he killed, not by a viper but by a two-legged snake? Or an elf? Or a skinner?

I was still brooding over this dark possibility when a slip of paper was pushed under my door.

On it was written:
Pitaji. Pool. P+P
.

I went swimming at my usual hour, about 3
A.M.
and found the pool comparatively crowded. There were five people present besides myself, and I knew only two of them—Paul doing laps like a turbine and Pia demurely sitting on the edge, dabbling her feet. Beneath her modest bathing suit, her tummy was beginning to swell a little.

I did a few geriatric laps from one side of the pool to the other. Our eyes met, and she nodded slightly. She looked troubled.

I stopped to catch my breath a few feet away, and said, “Good evening, Dr. Sidotra.”

“Good evening, Dr. Hoyos”, she replied in a cordial tone that implied no close relationship with me.

“David?” I whispered.

“Juxtaposition”, she whispered back, then pushed herself off the edge and swam away.

It was my turn to sit and dabble. What on earth had she meant by
juxtaposition
? Later, Paul thrashed past me, churning up a wake, and after a couple of more lengths, he stopped for a rest, his chest heaving, head on his arms, his face toward me. We performed our usual loud cover talk, and then he whispered, “Pia say we meet Rem-brant.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow night, twenty hundred hours, she and me are off-shift. Now she is wait for autopsy your friend.”

“Was she involved in the autopsy?”

“No. She know somebody.”

Day 221
:

I knocked on a few doors this morning, trying to locate Xue, Dariush, and Pagnol. No one was home. I then walked by a circuitous route to the library on Concourse B, where I accessed a computer terminal. A search through the ship’s main website, as well as through several primary websites dealing with the voyage, showed me that the list of personnel now numbered 677. Our missing number had been returned without explanation. I searched through all the science departments’ staff lists and couldn’t find David in any of them.

“Where are you, where are you?” I seethed through clenched teeth, knowing they had reinserted him somewhere.

I checked a number of sites that concerned themselves with the
Kosmos
, including the ones far down the line beyond the eight-hundredth site level. All along the way, I learned that the records had been recorrected to read a total of 677.

Cross-checking a few randomly selected sites, I found David at last. He was listed as a statistician working for DSI. I keyed my way back to the ship’s main site, picked my way through its maze, and sure enough, I found him in a little office with the title “metallurgy research statistics”, a section of a subdepartment of DSI. It had only one employee.

There was his face; there was his revised name; there was his revised bio, concluding with a footnote: “Deceased. Accidental death.
Mundus Novus
”, followed by the date of death.

Now I remembered the list of staff names I had printed out for myself during the first days of the voyage, more than nine years ago. It had been the source of my notes on types of personnel. Among them was a nonspecific category I had called “odd and sundry experts in extremely obscure fields”. (See my print-out, pre-departure, Earth base—Africa.) At the time, I had not paid any attention to the names nor to the schematics of their departments.

I returned to my room and rummaged through the shelves in search of that personnel print-out. Fortunately, I had not passed it on to Paul with the rest of my written journal, since I had presumed it would be a public-access document, and thus there was no need to hide it. I found the papers tucked away between some science journals, and confirmed what I suspected. There was no office of metallurgy statistics. Moreover, this document contained the original biographical information, and it was quite different from the new official version. Here was the solid evidence that his name had been changed, along with certain details of his life. I hid the papers inside my shirt, then checked my mail. There were three messages:

Xue had sent me a text message saying that he was away for several days at a base on Nova, involved in a crucial stage of developing “research technology”. He mentioned his regret over the recent death of a member of an exploration team. He reminded me to take my medications. Of course, he knew that I knew about his project, so this, along with the reference to the meds, was nothing more than a smoke screen. Between the lines, he was telling me that he was thinking about the meaning of David’s death.

Pagnol sent a friendly voice message, also with a passing reference to the recent death. He noted that people were now being more careful about protection from snakes. He too reminded me to take my meds.

Dariush sent a voice message, telling me that he would be returning to the
Kosmos
this afternoon and giving me his time of arrival. He wished to consult a book on Assyrian cuneiform, since rational intelligence, he said, might follow universal principles in the formation of language. It was only a theory, but he wanted to assess it by comparing Assyrian patterns with emerging patterns he thought he detected in the aliens’ script. He made a simple reference to the “regrettable recent death of a crew member” and hoped there would be no more such accidents. He reminded me to take my meds.

At 4
P.M.
, I met Dariush coming out of the elevator on his deck, fresh off his shuttle flight. He looked unspeakably weary, but insisted that we go for a walk. We went down to deck D on the nearest staircase and proceeded along the concourse in the direction of the arboretum.

My heart skipped a beat when I saw Elif Larson walking toward us from that direction, swinging an attache case in one hand and smiling to himself. My fists clenched and my teeth gritted. As we neared each other, he looked up and frowned.

“Dr. Larson”, I exclaimed in an eager voice. “Did you see the aliens? Do you think they were green or blue?”

He scowled without slackening his pace and did not answer me, sweeping by as if I were a bug or a chimera.

He had gone a few steps past us when Dariush stopped and called after him, “Dr. Larson!”

The Elf paused, turned around, glanced at his wristwatch, and muttered, “Yes?”

Dariush looked at the man without expression and in a freighted tone that was quite uncharacteristic of him, he said: “
Qui legitis flores et humi nascentia fraga, frigidus—o pueri, fugite hinc—latet anguis in herba
.”

“What?” barked Elf irritably.

“A line of Latin poetry, sir. A reference to a beautiful world, though one fraught with perils.”

“Yes, yes, very nice. I expect you’re working hard at deciphering the archives in the cave. Well, I’m busy too. I’m late for a meeting.” Turning on his heel, he strode away.

“What did you say to him, Dariush?” I asked when the Elf was out of earshot.

“I said, ‘Gatherers of flowers and ground-strawberries, fly hence! O children, a cold snake lurks in the grass!’ It was a moment of weakness on my part. I hope I have not violated charity.”

“Well, you won’t get a slap on the wrist from me.”

“It is from Virgil’s
Eclogues
. You must read this magnificent opus one day, Neil. I will lend you my copy, if you wish.”

“Okay, if you agree to read Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness
. I’ll lend you my copy.”

“Recall that it was I who first introduced you to that estimable book.”

He smiled wanly, and we entered the Mexican bistro. Over a suitably hot repast, I described to him in a low voice what I had learned about David’s files.

“Why has there been this change of names?” he said. “Why the subtle shifting of initials, nicknames, a letter added or subtracted?”

“Smoke and mirrors, Dariush. Now you see him, now you don’t. Then you see him again in a new costume. Only, now he ain’t talking.”

“It seems to me that there can be only one reason for it. If the death were ever to be investigated, or if David’s absence for the past many months were suspected as unlawful incarceration, the authorities would be able to deny it. They would attribute it to poor record-keeping, a clerical error.”

“Sounds like a snake in the grass.”

“Yes, there is a snake in the grass”, he nodded.

After that, he went off to consult his books, and I returned to my own room.

At ten o’clock this evening, I went downstairs to the Rembrandt alcove—the anatomy lesson—Pia’s wit again, or perhaps a late-blooming symbolic tendency.

She and Paul arrived shortly after the hour.

“What did you mean by
juxtaposition
?” I asked her.

“Neil, did you notice how the accidental death occurred precisely in the middle of the most dramatic discoveries? The attention paid to the death and funeral were short-lived, preceded and followed by the most fascinating programs.”

“Yes, I noticed.”

“That’s distraction by juxtaposition, swamping the perceptions with stronger stimuli. It’s also an ominous sign.”

“In what way?”

“Because it means the time of his death was chosen”, said Paul.

“We don’t really know that”, I said. “It may be one of those coincidences. I’ve had times in my life when everything went wrong at once. We used to call them ‘a week of calamities’. Everyone gets a week like that at some point.”

Pia shook her head. “I might have reserved judgment too, Neil, but there’s more to tell you. I have a physician friend in the deck-D clinic, where autopsies are performed.”

“Have you read the autopsy report?”

“Yes, all clinics received a copy. It tells us that the victim died of snake venom. However, microscopic analysis has revealed that the body had been frozen and thawed before its supposed death.”

“What!”

“David’s body had been frozen for approximately thirty-nine months before it was thawed and then deposited on the shores of Continent 5. Someone killed him, someone stored him away for all that time. Then he was thawed out at the right moment, the corpse flown to C-5, the distress signal and homing beacon activated, and then whoever did it flew back here to watch the tragic tale unfold.”

“So this is how they’re covering their tracks”, I said.

“Yes, death by accident, and a nice clean autopsy report for the archives.”

“But won’t there be an uproar when all the physicians on board read it?”

“There is no mention of the freezing in the report.”

“Why not?”

“At first, the doctor didn’t know what had really happened. He had his doubts about the cause of death—or I should say, he maintained an open mind about it. That’s the proper approach for any forensic pathologist. He was also concerned about the way the directors of DM and DSI wanted a quick autopsy and report. They had talked up the fact that the cause of death was obvious. And so it seemed. But the doctor is a perfectionist, and he didn’t like the way the directors stood by, breathing down his neck, eager for him to complete his findings so they could file it. Usually, after an autopsy report is filed, all lab samples taken from a body—blood, urine, stomach contents, bone marrow, etc.—are destroyed. That’s standard procedure. But the lab people hadn’t yet been notified that the report was completed, so they were still holding onto samples until told they could do so. After the report was officially filed, the doctor went personally to the lab people to inform them. He obtained the samples and made his own analyses in private. He found that the lab had done its work correctly. However, he submitted the samples to other tests, including a look at everything through an atomic microscope.”

“What did he find?”

“Of course, he found fresh venom traces in every sample.”

“But that means David did die on the planet.”

“Not necessarily. The most disturbing evidence he discovered was in the molecular condition of cells. The crystallography tracks in the hemoglobin revealed conclusively that the body had been frozen for around thirty-eight to thirty-nine months.”