Cold as Ice (30 page)

"Good enough." Mord nodded. "So I'll be a nice guy and go first. Let's see. Better start with the easy ones. Mandrake. You knew, did you, that it was an asteroid dedicated to Belt weapons development, right through the war? Naturally, what was being done there was a big secret. But at the end, I think a lot of high-ups in the Belt government got real nervous about whatever sort of horrors they'd been cooking up. When Mandrake was wiped out, I always wondered if mebbe our own side had done it. Too convenient otherwise. Couldn't prove that, mind you. The bosses were too clever to leave tracks.

"So Mandrake's colony and labs went bye-bye, nothing left but ash and hot rock. Official word, enemy attack. And next we got word to wipe out all references to Mandrake from the Pallas data banks. We did it, of course. It was that, or get wiped ourselves. But a few of us couldn't resist peeking as we purged, to see just what we were getting rid of. Far as I could see it was no big deal. Biological weapons of some kind, never found out what. But every one of them was destroyed during the Mandrake attacks."

"What about
Pelagic
? It left Mandrake, and it was destroyed by a Seeker missile. A Belt missile."

"Never heard that name,
Pelagic
, before today. But if it made a run out of Mandrake near the end of the war, more than likely it was a bunch of the same experimenters running for cover–running from
their own side
, see, because I doubt that the Inner System even knew Mandrake was there. But they didn't run good enough, and they got zapped by a Seeker. Don't ever believe anyone who tells you that the Belt government was good during the war and the Inner System was bad. I was there, and far as I can tell, they were
all
bastards. When they knew that peace was going to break out, they did anything they could to save their own rotten necks."

Mord scratched his nose thoughtfully, a gesture that made Bat wonder how much physical sensation could be built into a simulation. Did Mord itch? Did he–Bat could no longer think of the simulation as it–feel pain? Did he
dream
, in some cool swirl of maverick electrons?

"I think I've done my bit," Mord went on. "It's time for a little bit of the good old quid pro quo before you get more from me. You promised me some dirt. Remember?"

"It will be provided. But you must tell me the preferred form of input."

"Well, not like this, that's for sure. With all due respect to flesh–and you got a lot of it–when you have attosecond circuitry, like me, you chafe a bit when your data's fed to you at human speeds. Just give me a nice, broadband bus, and watch me guzzle. I'll help myself. Then we can talk some more about Pallas."

"At once." Bat reached for his control keyboard. "If you will permit one more thought before data transfer begins . . . I cannot help wondering if you have continuous consciousness. Or are there periods when you are turned off?"

"Getting a bit personal, aren't we?" Mord grinned. "No, I don't have continuous consciousness. What do you think I am? I need my beauty sleep, just like any other normal person." He raised his hand. "But right now I feel a data attack creeping up on me, so adios. See you in a while. And hey, Mega-chops, as one freak to another—lose some weight."

* * *

It was ridiculous to resent the insults of a mere simulation. The measure of Mordecai Perlman's success was the irritation that Bat felt at Mord's comment. But Bat knew that he should not be annoyed; Mordecai Perlman's success might be crucial to his own.

He crouched in his chair, his cowled robe pulled round his body. There had been definite progress:
biological weapons on Mandrake.

And all destroyed? Bat might have accepted that were it not for Yarrow Gobel. The inspector-general was doing well, already advanced to maybe ten years old. He was extravert, bubbling over with rebellion and wild ideas, and physically fit. Bat wondered at what age Gobel had been when his personality changed from would-be explorer and soldier of fortune to the cautious, sober monitor of fiscal irregularities.

The attack on Gobel—on Bat himself—was proof that everything that had happened on Mandrake was
not
far off in the faded past. It was making a difference here and now, on Ganymede. Why, and how? Mandrake had been a center for biological experiments, intended to create new weapons for use in the Great War. Even, perhaps, Yarrow Gobel's "secret weapon." What relevance could that possibly have for today?

"
Most
of them were destroyed." Bat was muttering to himself. He had been awake for twenty-seven hours, and he was approaching exhaustion. "But what if an experiment, or its creator,
survived
?"

Then there would be a reason for that person to cut off any investigation likely to lead toward him—or her. Which raised the next question: Who in the Jovian system
today
could have been active on Mandrake at the time of the Great War?

Bat could not answer that. Not until he had slept. Tomorrow, with further help from Mord, he might find another angle of attack.

But the information he had already received was enough to set in train a new line of thought. The phrase "survival pod" carried its own psychological weight. A person hearing the term automatically thought "survival of people." But nothing required that a pod had to be used for such a purpose. Suppose that the pods had been used for something very different—say, as protected environments for something small, like microorganisms? Then the usual cutoff time beyond which the pod would be unable to support life was meaningless. The pod trajectories should have been examined not for the span of a mere month or two after the
Pelagic
's destruction, but for their course over the years.

The programs to propagate those trajectories forward through time were already set up in Megachirops' file. Bat gave the command to execute them over an increased time range, and asked the same question as before: Were any survival pods picked up consistent with those orbital paths?

He did not have to watch the computations proceed. The results would be awaiting him when he awoke. He went to lie down, a mound of exhausted flesh pillowed and draped sybaritically in cushions and sheets of black silk.

His thoughts moved to Mord, to a Mordecai Perlman stripped of all material attributes, freed of all material needs, divested of all material pleasures. What was left? Thought, and the joys of pure intellect.

That would not suffice for Bat. Certainly not now, with thirty kilos of live lobster from Yarrow Gobel's sea farm still crawling in the Bat Cave tanks. To wait or not to wait? And for how long? Today's Gobel was disgusted at the very idea of eating something that he said looked like an enormous diseased insect. Yet it seemed unfair to feast on the gift without the participation of its donor . . .

Bat yawned, hugely.

Intellect was surely not everything. Not yet.

But someday, perhaps, when appetites waned and the burdens of aging flesh increased . . . well, then it might be enough . . . for Megachirops.

Bat slept, in curious contentment, while at the far end of Bat Cave tireless programs stepped a set of orbits forward through time from the destruction of the
Pelagic.
Possible fits were sought with the coordinates and velocities of pods recovered from space. And, at last, times and places of matches were recorded.

They were the simplest of routines, these programs, without the ability to be surprised or delighted at anything they found.

That pleasure would be reserved for Bat, upon his awakening.

17
De Profundis

Jon Perry and Wilsa Sheer returned to a different world.

They had left the surface of Europa and entered into the black pupil of Blowhole with the communications unit of the
Danae
set to maximum volume. They had not realized that it was even turned on, because Europa's ice blanket provided a quiet radio environment. The signal bands had been inactive when they were above the surface, and once beneath it all messages were damped to nothing by the surrounding water.

They had spent two days exploring the upper layers of the Europan ocean. Peaceful and productive days for Wilsa, frustrating days for Jon. It was galling to be confined to the "continental shelves" of Europa, above the ten-kilometer level, when he knew that the interesting part of the seabed, with its black and grey smokers, was dozens of kilometers deeper.

Yet he recognized the importance of this preliminary dive. He had to learn how well his experience gained on Earth applied to Europa; and he had to develop a feel for the important variables: the rate at which pressure increased with depth; the range of visibility through the clear, salt-free water; and the characteristic shape of submarine features. The last was surprisingly similar to Earth's. The undersea reefs and mountains of Terra, buoyed by surrounding water, often rose close to vertical from the deeps. Jon saw structures in the Europan ocean that he could swear he had met before on the PacAnt Ridge.

And then, at last, it was time to put surface suits on and ascend through Blowhole's narrow cylinder of warmed, open water to the icebound Europan surface. The final climb was made in total and uncanny silence. Neither Jon nor Wilsa felt like talking as the
Danae
rose under its own buoyancy, all of its engines off.

The blurt of sound that burst from the communications unit as the submersible rose the final few meters to the top of Blowhole and the antennae of the
Danae
cleared the waterline was enough to make Wilsa clap her hands over her ears. She was super-sensitive to sounds, and that loud, discordant noise
hurt.

The monitor showed half a dozen messages, either being sent or in waiting mode on the emergency frequency. A man's voice, vaguely familiar but so grossly distorted by amplification that it could not be understood, was blaring from the speakers.

Wilsa turned and shouted to Jon in the pilot's seat, "What's going on?"

He shook his head and reached out to reduce the channel gain. As the
Danae
moved higher in the water and grapnels took hold to drag it up the smooth ascent ramp to open ice, a new, faint and far-off voice sounded from the speaker.

"Moving into fixed altitude, height twenty-four-fifty. We'll need a beacon direction before we can do a surface triangulation. Please confirm."

"Sorry, but we've lost it again," said the louder voice that they had first heard. "Hold on. It's the right distress signal, I'm sure of that. But it's being broadcast into a narrow solid-angle, and I think we've moved out of the cone. Maybe we have enough data anyway."

"That's Tristan!" said Wilsa. "Tristan Morgan. What can he possibly be doing on Europa?"
And am I somehow responsible for it?

"Not on it.
Above
it." Jon pointed to the three-dimensional display that showed signal direction. "He's flying—in bound orbit, for a guess.'"

"We're picking it up now, too," said yet a third voice. "You're right, there's a sharp cut-in, from no signal to maximum strength. The car must be stuck in a steep-sided surface pocket, with the ice cutting off the beam. Stand by for range data."

"Receiving," said Tristan. And then, seconds later, "Hold on. We have a preliminary data reduction and a signal origin. It's much closer to Mount Ararat than we expected. We compute only twenty-five kilometers' linear distance—less than five from Blowhole. Is anyone at the station there?"

"No, damn it." The fourth voice was Buzz Sandstrom's, as angry as ever. "I sent everybody ranging way out, because we thought that's where the car was going to be found. Get an exact fix while I start bringing them back."

Jon glanced at Wilsa and flicked the transmission switch. "This is Jon Perry and Wilsa Sheer on the
Danae.
We don't know what's happening, because we've just come up Blowhole. But it sounds like you have a problem. Can we help?"

A wild babble emerged from the speaker. "One at a time." Tristan's voice cut through the rest. "Perry, we have an emergency on the surface just a few kilometers from you. Mount Ararat, is there a spare ground vehicle at Blowhole?"

"There are a couple." It was a fifth voice, and remarkable for its calm. "Dr. Perry, this is Hilda Brandt. Camille Hamilton became stranded on the surface almost forty-two hours ago. We have finally determined her location, but her physical condition is unknown. The ground cars are straightforward to drive. You are closer than anyone else."

"Right. We're on our way." Jon was nodding to Wilsa and lifting the seal of the
Danae.
"Just tell us the direction. I'll call you as soon as we're inside a car."

"
No.
You will need more than the direction. Surface travel on Europa is always tricky, and it can be dangerous. Do not begin to drive until we provide you with detailed navigational data."

Her orders sounded like overprotection to Jon. The ground vehicle was as simple to drive as Hilda Brandt had promised. But within the first few minutes, he learned why she had insisted on providing navigation details. Travel through Europa's interior ocean called for no more than awareness of depth and pressure, plus avoidance of the upper and lower bounding surfaces of ice and seabed. Travel on the surface, though, was wholly controlled by gravity. Even on so small a world as Europa, it was not safe to plunge a car down near-vertical slopes or to risk being stuck in narrow-sided and bottomless crevices.

Jon did not try to second-guess the instructions coming through the communicator. He followed exactly as directed the sinuous lines of ice ridges and crept slowly along bleak and sheer-sided valleys. Five linear kilometers stretched to more than twice that in ground travel before Sandstrom's gruff voice was saying, "Slow now, and very cautious. We can't guide you beyond here. According to our data reduction, the distress signal from Camille Hamilton's car is coming from no more than a hundred meters ahead of you."

"Stay right there, Jon." Wilsa opened the door and stepped out onto the ice. She pointed at two parallel tracks, etched deep into the spongy surface and dark-shadowed under the slanting sunlight. "It's getting softer. Don't move forward until I tell you that it's all right. This surface is strong enough for me, but I'm not sure about the car."