Karlstad said, 'Grant Archer, this is Ignacio Quintero.'
'Nacho,' said the newcomer, in a surprisingly sweet tenor voice.
'Macho Nacho, he's known as,' Karlstad said.
Quintero looked like a football lineman: big in every direction. He was smiling pleasantly, though, and his brown eyes looked friendly.
He stuck out a big hand. 'Good to meet you, amigo. Bienvenido and all that.'
Grant shook hands with Quintero.
'Nacho works with us,' Karlstad explained. 'He's a structural engineer, but his main talent is entertainment.'
'Entertainment?' Grant asked.
Quintero shrugged massively. 'I try to keep people amused. It gets too dull around here. Too solemn.'
'Once he sprinkled black pepper in the air circulation system and when people started sneezing their heads off he spread a rumor about a mysterious virus causing a plague.'
Quintero made a hushing gesture with both hands. 'Hey, not so loud, amigo. The medics still don't know it was me who did it.'
'And then there was the incident of the pornographic data dump…'
'You can't blame me for that one,' Quintero said, shaking a finger at Karlstad. 'I had plenty of help.'
'Sure you did.'
'So what do you do, Grant?'
Grant explained that he was an astrophysicist, and hadn't yet received his work assignment.
'Astrophysicist?' Quintero scratched his head. Grant noticed that his dark hair was tightly curled, almost kinky. 'You're in the wrong part of the universe for that.'
Before Grant could reply, Karlstad said, 'I'm taking Grant down to the aquarium. Want to come?'
Something flashed across Quintero's face, an expression that came and went so quickly Grant could not tell what it was.
'No can do, amigo. Got too much work to catch up with. Wo's got us on double shifts now.'
'Double shifts?' Grant asked. 'What are you working on?'
Quintero glanced at Karlstad, then hauled himself to his feet. 'Got to run. Nice to meet you, Grant. Adios muchachos!'
He practically ran out of the cafeteria.
Once Grant finished his dessert, Karlstad led him out into the corridor.
'We could do this tomorrow,' Grant said. 'I mean, if it's your time to retire for the night—'
'No, no,' Karlstad said quickly. 'Sometimes I stay up even past ten o'clock.'
Grant didn't know if that was supposed to be a joke or not, so he stayed silent. Karlstad seemed impatient to get to the fish tanks, whatever they were. Grant couldn't believe the station had an aquarium built into it, but then, why was there a marine biologist on the staff?
Karlstad set a brisk pace as they walked through the corridor. He glided along, wraithlike, but the expression on his wan face seemed eager. The corridor was deserted, empty of people, all the doors closed for the night.
Up ahead, though, the corridor seemed to end in a metal wall with a single small door set into it. No, not a door, Grant saw as they got nearer. It was a pressure hatch, much like the kind of hatch he'd seen on airlocks, with a security keypad set into the bulkhead alongside it.
Letters in fading, flaking red paint above the hatch proclaimed AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Someone had scrawled beneath it,
No faking allowed
. The metal of the bulkhead seemed to be covered with freshly-scrubbed areas and patches of new-looking paint. Apparently other graffiti had been written or scratched into the bulkhead and then erased or painted over.
'Wo tries to stay ahead of the graffiti artists,' Karlstad explained. 'If he catches you at it, you spend the next week of your off-duty time with Sheena, scrubbing and painting.'
Pointing to the official notice above the hatch, Grant asked, 'Are we authorized personnel?'
Karlstad shrugged his slim shoulders. 'We are if we know the entry code.'
He tapped on the keypad with quick, nervous fingers. The red light atop the keys turned green and the hatch popped open with a thin puff of chill, dank air from the other side of the bulkhead.
Karlstad pulled the hatch open, grunting. 'Laynie gave me the combination,' he said. 'She likes to play in here. She likes an audience.'
Completely puzzled, Grant stepped over the coaming of the hatch. This section of the station felt cooler, chilly, and clammy with humidity. The corridor was much narrower here, and dimly lit, but Grant could see a glow along the wall.
Then his breath caught in his throat. It
was
an aquarium! The glow was from a thick, long window. On its other side swam a dizzying assortment of fish, big ones, little ones, some nuzzling the gravelly bottom, others weaving through swaying fronds of plants. They were every color of the rainbow: bright stripes, bold patterns of spots, gleaming silvery squid slithered through the water, tentacles waving.
'Aquaculture,' said Karlstad. 'That's how it started. The first settlers on the Moon found that they could grow more protein in less space from fish farming than from meat animals.'
With a pang, Grant remembered that he should be at Farside, on the Moon, or at least in Selene or one of the other lunar communities. Instead…
'Come on,' Karlstad beckoned, heading along the narrow passageway. 'You've got to see this.'
They passed more tanks filled with fish. The pale glow from the underwater lights made Karlstad look more ghostly than ever, with his silvery hair and pallid complexion.
He stopped and jabbed a thumb at the next window. 'This is where Laynie likes to do it,' he said, with a malicious grin.
Grant stared into the tank. A pair of dolphins were swimming there, sleek and huge, bigger than horses, gliding effortlessly, playfully, through the water.
'Their tank is almost a kilometer long,' Karlstad said. 'At feeding time it's opened to the other tanks.'
Grant gaped, slack-jawed. He heard himself ask, in an awed, faint voice, 'Why in the world did you bring dolphins all the way from Earth?'
Karlstad made a derisive grunt. 'It's Wo's idea. Our intellectual cousins, he calls them. Old Woeful thinks the dolphins can help us to explore Jupiter's ocean.'
'Our intellectual cousins,' Grant repeated slowly, still staring at the graceful dolphins. They seemed to be smiling at him as they swam past, then turned to stare back at him.
'There's something else you should see,' Karlstad said, motioning Grant farther along the passageway.
'What is it?' Grant asked, following the biophysicist as they walked past the end of the dolphins' tank. The lighting was dimmer here, the walls on both sides of the narrow corridor of blank metal.
'Quiet now,' Karlstad whispered, a finger to his lips.
Slowly, softly the two men walked down the dimly-lit way. Karlstad stopped and motioned Grant to move ahead of him. 'It's on the right,' he whispered.
Grant tiptoed through the shadows until he saw an opening in the wall on his right. He glanced back at Karlstad, who motioned him to go through it.
Puzzled, Grant stepped into the wide entryway and found himself in some sort of darkened chamber. There was something in the far corner, a large heap of—
A full-grown gorilla opened its eyes not more than three meters in front of Grant. He realized it had been slumped down on its haunches, asleep. There were no bars between Grant and the gorilla, no partition at all.
Before Grant could move or think or even yowl with terror the gorilla shambled to its feet, huge, fierce, leaning on its knuckles, fangs bared. Grant could feel the heat of the animal's body, smell its breath and its hideous, hairy stench.
He stood there petrified as the gorilla raised a powerful, hairy arm, thick as Grant's torso, its massive paw nearly brushing his face.
'No!' it said, in a rasping voice. Its open hand was bigger than Grant's head. 'You go! Now!'
Grant stood transfixed, too frightened to move, unable to breathe, almost, as the angry gorilla took a shambling step toward him, fangs bared, eyes glaring.
And it talked! 'Go!' it repeated. 'You go!'
He heard Karlstad making a strange, strangled noise behind him. Turning his head ever so slightly, Grant saw the biophysicist nearly choking with barely-suppressed laughter. The gorilla blinked, put down its raised arm.
Karlstad stepped up beside Grant and said lightly, 'Now Sheena, it's all right. You know me.' He was grinning broadly, barely able to contain his merriment.
The gorilla hunkered down on its knuckles. Grant saw its red-rimmed eyes shift from Karlstad's face to his own and then back again.
'Ee-ghon,' the gorilla said. Its voice was a raspy, painful whisper. It reminded Grant of Director Wo's hoarse, strained voice.
'Good girl, Sheena!' Karlstad said brightly, as if speaking to a two-year-old. 'You're right, I'm Egon. And this is Grant,' he added, pointing.
He's talking to a three-hundred kilo gorilla, Grant said to himself. And the gorilla's talking back!
'Grant is a friend,' Karlstad said amiably.
'Grant,' the gorilla whispered.
'That's right.' Turning slightly toward him, Karlstad said, 'Grant, this is Sheena. She works with us.'
It took Grant two hard swallows to find his voice. 'H… hello, Sheena.'
Sheena blinked at him, then slowly, solemnly, extended her massive right hand toward Grant.
'Just put your hand on her palm,' Karlstad told him,
sotto voce
. 'Gently.'
His heart thumping wildly, Grant stretched out his right arm and let his fingertips touch Sheena's leathery palm. His hand looked minuscule in the gorilla's huge paw: Grant had a vision of her closing her fist and crushing his hand to a bloody pulp but the gorilla merely let Grant's hand rest on her palm for a few moments. She stared at Grant, then at his hand. Slowly, she bent her head forward slightly and sniffed noisily at Grant's hand.
Then she said, 'Grant,' as if to fix his name in her memory.
She pulled her hand away, and Grant let his arm drop to his side with a gusting sigh of relief.
'We're going now, Sheena,' Karlstad said, still in the tone that a man would use with a small child.
Sheena thought that over for a few seconds. 'Yes,' she said at last. 'You go.'
'Say goodnight to her,' Karlstad told Grant.
'Uh… goodnight, Sheena.'
'Grant,' the gorilla answered. 'Grant.'
Karlstad turned slowly and walked out of the gorilla's compartment, with Grant so close behind them they might have been Siamese twins. They headed back along the glowing fish tanks toward the hatch where they had entered the aquarium. Grant could hear the gorilla's heavy breathing and knew the beast was shuffling along behind them, not more than a step or two away. The dolphins seemed to be grinning at them, as if they were enjoying the show.
'This is the tricky part,' Karlstad said softly as they walked slowly away from the gorilla. 'Females don't usually attack, but when they do it's when your back is to them.'
Grant felt his knees go rubbery.
'Don't look back!' Karlstad cautioned. 'If she decides to rush us there's not a damned thing we can do about it."
His voice shaky, Grant heard himself ask, 'Has she ever attacked anyone before?'
Karlstad did not answer for several heartbeats. Then, 'Not really attack. But she's so pissing strong she's broken people's ribs by accident.'
'What… how is she able to talk?'
'That's Wo's brilliant idea. Built a voicebox for her. Injected her brain with neuronal stem cells to see how much he could boost her intelligence.'
'Our intellectual cousins,' Grant remembered. They had reached the hatch. Karlstad pushed it open and they stepped through. Grant helped to push it closed. He saw Sheena standing on all fours, so big that her shoulders brushed either wall of the narrow corridor. He felt a lot safer once the hatch clicked shut.
'Sheena's a long way from being an intellectual cousin,' Karlstad said, his voice louder now, firmer, as they started walking briskly back toward their quarters.
'But she talks,' Grant said. 'She can obviously think.' 'To a degree. Like a two-year-old, that's all. There isn't enough room in her cranium to grow a human-equivalent brain.'
'I see.'
Karlstad laughed grimly. 'Wo wanted to open up her skull, enlarge it so there'd be more room for cerebral growth.'
'What happened?'
'Sheena was smart enough to recognize what was going on. As soon as she entered the surgical theater she tore loose and ran away. That's when she broke ribs. Arms, too.'
'She understood what was going to happen?'
'You bet! She ran back to her own quarters and no one could coax her out. Wo wanted to sedate her and go ahead with the surgery but the medical staff was so banged up that it was impossible.'
'And he didn't try again?'
'Not yet,' said Karlstad. 'But he will. Wily old Woeful doesn't give up. Not him.'
The corridor was down to its night-time lighting, Grant realized. Most of the research station's personnel were in their quarters or already asleep. No one in sight, except a middle-aged couple strolling hand-in-hand through the twilight dimness toward them.
'So we have a gorilla roaming around loose back there?' Grant asked.
Karlstad did not reply until the approaching couple passed them. Then, his voice lowered, he answered, 'Sheena works as a guard for the aquarium.'
'Why does the aquarium need a guard?' 'It doesn't. It's all Wo's brilliant idea,' Karlstad said, still in a near-whisper. 'He carted the animal all the way out here when she was an infant, so he's got to show some practical reason for the expense.'
Grant shook his head in wonder.
'At least there's one advantage to Sheena's limited brainpower.'
'What's that?'
'She can clean out her own cage,' Karlstad said. 'And she's toilet-trained.' He laughed. 'You should've seen the mess she made the first time she squatted on a regular toilet. We had to build a specially-reinforced bowl for her.'
'I guess so,' Grant said, not wanting to visualize the scene. When he got to his own room and slid the door shut, Grant considered sending a message back to Ellis Beech's office on Earth. Dolphins and gorillas. Our intellectual cousins. Then he thought that the New Morality must know about that already. Wo couldn't smuggle a gorilla into the station in total secrecy, even a baby gorilla. And dolphins!