The Jupiter Theft Part 8

"Okay, Gramps," the towheaded one said. "Put on some clothes. You're taking a trip."

"Aren't you supposed to show me some identification?" Ruiz said, sounding almost amused. "And read me the little homily about good citizens cooperating voluntarily with the government's efforts to establish their reliability?"

The RB man sighed. "You wanna make trouble? Come on, move it!"

Ruiz got dressed under their watchful eyes. Maybury sat on the bed, eyes downcast, her face pale. By the time Ruiz was ready, she had gotten her trembling under control. The arbee with the flat nose grasped her roughly above the elbow and hauled her to her feet.

"Hands off her!" Ruiz snapped, his eyes smoldering dangerously. His intercession only got Maybury a painful, bone-grating squeeze.

"Take it easy, Gramps," the other man said. "Awright, let's go."

Two hours later they were sitting in a windowless office north of Washington, D.C. Somebody in authority had thought them worth the expense of a suborbital flight in a military craft-and worth all the broken windows and deafened vacationers in Nevada before they got above the atmosphere.

"What are we going to do with you, Dr. Ruiz?" General Harris inquired from across an acre of polished desk. "And now you've gotten this young lady in trouble."

His little beak of a nose was pinched and red in the sloping cliff that was his face. He drummed his fingers on the desk top.

"Trouble?" Ruiz said in a controlled voice. His eyes burned, red-rimmed, in a tired face. "Maybury was paying a kind visit to an old friend and former a.s.sociate."

Maybury said nothing. She sat in the big chair, hands in her lap, looking around the blank walls of the office.

"Giving-or receiving-restricted information is a Federal crime," the general said. He pressed a b.u.t.ton, and Maybury's recorded voice came through a hidden speaker, telling Ruiz about the orbiting spark and the astonishing course change that had put the planet from Cygnus in orbit around. Jupiter. Harris let it run for a minute, then switched it off.

"My Reliability Index hasn't been lowered, as far as I know," Ruiz said. "And Maybury has never received official notification that I've been barred from the receipt of observatory data." He leaned back and waited.

"In security matters, a post facto determination can be made," the general said. "As a matter of public policy-"

"As a matter of public policy, you've decided to use me, haven't you," Ruiz said. "Otherwise I'd be in a cell right now. Let's stop the nonsense, General. What do you want?"

The general hemmed. Then he hawed. Then he looked at Maybury. He reached for a b.u.t.ton.

"Maybury stays," Ruiz growled. "She's been bullied and hara.s.sed and braindipped. And now she's going to hear what you have to say."

"You're a stubborn and cantankerous old man, Dr. Ruiz."

"Never mind the flattery."

"We want you to go along on the Jupiter expedition."

Ruiz caught his breath. Then he said carefully, "Want to get me out of the way, do you? So that I can't stir up any embarra.s.sment for you while we're discovering what that thing orbiting Jupiter is?"

The general's lips tightened. "You're determined to make things as difficult as possible, aren't you."

"Yes."

They locked eyes for a moment.

"We want an observer on the spot," Harris said finally. "Somebody with an independent turn of mind.

We'll be drowning in observational data. We'll need value judgments."

Ruiz smiled sourly. "And I'll be conveniently away from Earth while things are turning up."

"We don't want to lock you up, Dr. Ruiz. You're a very important man."

"Thanks for being blunt, General," Ruiz said dryly. "I thought you'd never get around to that."

"We can't risk any public unrest," the general said blandly. "You of all people ought to have learned that by now. If that thing out there turns out to be any danger to Earth-as you suggested when you first discovered it-there are all sorts of Rad elements ready to exploit the situation. The Chinese Coalition is just as worried about it as we are, I can a.s.sure you."

"Why don't you just arrest it?" Ruiz asked. "If it starts giving off X-rays again, that is."

"I'm beginning to lose my patience, Dr. Ruiz."

Ruiz scratched his ear. He stared at the ceiling. After a while he said, "That's quite a choice. Get locked up or go back to work."

"You'll have full access to data," Harris said eagerly. "And when you get back, and policy is firmed up on this thing, you'll have your pick of options. Maybe a special project-"

"What happens to Maybury?"

The general pursed his lips. "We won't prefer charges. Naturally, we'll have to take steps to insure reasonable security. But when this is over..."

"Lock her up and throw away the key, is that it?" Ruiz said.

"I can a.s.sure you that the young lady will be given every consideration."

"I'll tell you what," Ruiz said. "I'll need an a.s.sistant. Somebody bright. Not one of your trained-seal brains. Send her along too. Maybury, how does that appeal to you?"

She leaned forward in her chair, eyes shining. "Dr. Ruiz, I'd do anything to go along with you! Anything but go back to Farside. Or the kind of place they were keeping you!"

"It's all settled, then," Ruiz declared. "No charges, and a nice t.i.tle for her on the expedition. Something that will look good on her career record."

"Dr. Ruiz!" the general sputtered. "I'm trying to be reasonable, but there are limits!"

"I'm sure there are," Ruiz said. "But we haven't reached them yet, have we."

"Did you like it?" Maggie asked.

"It was... interesting," Jameson replied delicately. He settled back in the narrow seat behind her and latched the bubble. The tricab pulled out of the lobby and into the street, the driver skillfully avoiding the beggars and Privie hawkers who cl.u.s.tered around each emerging vehicle before it picked up speed, pawing at the fastenings of the pods. Jameson twisted around for a last look at the Houston-Dallasworth Arts Center. The opera house, an immense iridescent egg balanced on end, had been built at the turn of the century, when architectural styles were beginning to take advantage of the new structural plastics.

"I thought you would," Maggie said complacently. "You don't know what I had to go through to get tickets."

"I'm impressed," Jameson said. "I thought it was sold out."

It was the cultural event of the season-a sensational revival ofPorgy and Bess with an all-white cast and a live symphony orchestra. The critics had acclaimed the brilliance of the conception: Catfish Row could have been Privietown, and Porgy and Jasbo and Sportin' Life might have been some of the colorful characters you could find there.

"Isn't it terrible the way Privies-I mean Private Sector persons-have to live," Maggie said earnestly.

Jameson, his pre-theater supper still sitting comfortably in his stomach, said, "Maggie, any PriSec citizen is free to apply for Federal employment, get the housing that goes with it, make something of himself if he wants to. Most of them just don't have the ambition."

"You sound just like everybody else," she flared. "Sure, Privies are lazy and dirty and ignorant! Give them enough subsidy tickets to keep their bellies full of rice and soycorn, give them a free high on Sat.u.r.day night, give them a cheap holovid to keep them quiet, bottle them up and forget them! Well, I can't be as smug about it as you! There are two hundred million Privies today-twenty percent of the population. You can't just write them off!"

"n.o.body's writing them off. The Private Sector'll be brought into the system gradually. These things can't be done overnight."

"You sound just like a Washington stonewallah!"

"Maggie, let's not quarrel. We're supposed to be out for a good time. You're beginning to sound like a Rad."

That stopped her. She reached back and squeezed his hand. "You're right," she said. "I'm sorry." She laughed uneasily. "Just don't tell Caffrey."

The cabbie's voice made an insect buzz in the battered speaker. "Here we are, mizz."

The trike pulled into a huge Lexigla.s.s-enclosed courtyard with manicured lawns and dwarf trees.

Jameson paid off the driver and held the lid of the pa.s.senger pod open for Maggie while she climbed out.

She was wearing a layered pettiskirt with leg tubes, but she managed it with a supple grace that surprised him. She turned to him with a big smile.

"Home sweet home," she said.

Jameson looked around. Marine guards patrolled the walks, and transparent escalators rose to an elevated loggia lined with convenience shops. At either end of the court, visible through the arched roof, were twin residential towers, graceful trapezoids soaring a thousand feet into the night sky, ablaze with squandered energy. Jameson looked sharply at Maggie. It seemed rather expensive for someone with a computer tech rating. Maggie read his expression and said disarmingly, "I splurge on my rent. The view's worth it. Otherwise, I'm disgustingly frugal."

They pa.s.sed a lobby security check, with a hard-eyed Marine sergeant studying their silhouettes on the screen of an ultrasonic ma.s.s detector, and rode a tinted transparent box up a central shaft to a floor that was very near the top. Maggie showed the holo pattern on her pa.s.sbook cover to the door, and it let her in.

Jameson forgot to breathe when he saw the view. The city was a jeweled carpet spread out below. A pattern of streets stretched on forever like a spider web of glowing wires. The tall shapes of other residential towers rose out of the electric glitter like pillars of glowing coals. And there, across the silvered ribbon of a river, he could see the mile-high mirror of the Federal Tower dancing with reflected points of light.

He turned back to Maggie's living room. It was spa.r.s.ely furnished, but the pieces he could see looked good. There was a couch upholstered in an expensive coa.r.s.e fabric, and an antique coffee table made of gla.s.s and driftwood. There was a transparent rocking chair facing the couch, and a Lexigla.s.s cabinet holding Maggie's collection of twentieth-century plastic bottles completely covered one wall.

"Fix yourself a drink and put some music in the slot," she said, heading for the door at the far end. "I'm going to peel off these tubes and put on something more comfortable."

Jameson wandered over to the omnisound hanging on the wall. Maggie's collection of music cards was stacked untidily on a little shelf beneath it. He flipped through the plastic oblongs, reading the t.i.tles showing through the meaningless herringbone patterns of the holo imprints that held the music. It was the usual pop junk put out by the big music combines-creative-group stuff, with the words sung by whatever computer-constructed pseudovoices were the fads of the moment.

But there was a small stack of cards that didn't seem to go with the rest. They looked newer, unplayed.

Bach'sArt of the Fugue . A couple of Mozart symphonies. And-he blinked-the out-of-print collection of Farnaby virginal pieces he'd been trying to track down for years. How had Maggie managed to stumble on such a rarity?

He slipped the card into the slot of the omnisound, and the strange, otherworldly tones of "Giles Farnaby's Dreame" began to float into the room. The Moog technician had given it a pure, lutelike tw.a.n.g, sustained beyond what would have been possible for a real instrument, but otherwise hadn't tampered with it.

Jameson scooped some frozen martini from the nitrogen-chilled vessel on the sideboard and dropped it into a clear stemmed gla.s.s, where it caused a satisfying instant explosion of frost. He carried his drink over to the view window, and was losing himself in the glorious sparkle of the vista when Maggie entered the room, wearing a slinky green pantsgown made of some frictionless fluorocarbon material that slid over the surface of her body like oil.

"You must have been reading my mind," she said. "You're playing one of my favorites."

Chapter 8.

The image faded from the screen. "Is that all you have?" Ruiz asked.

"Yes, sir," the NIB tech said, lifting his head from his k.n.o.bs and dials. "We had less than a minute before the camera vehicle burned out. Only two frames at that rate of transmission. No time to adjust the focus-we were stuck with what was already in the memory acc.u.mulator. And as it was, we pushed computer enhancement to the point where that close-up image is ten percent conjecture."

"Play it again," Ruiz said.

He was sitting comfortably in an upholstered chair in the small semicircular projection room the NIB had cleared out for him. Maybury, grave and attentive, was seated next to him, an adequate little hand-held computer resting on her lap. General Harris was sitting a few seats away with a couple of his courteous thugs.

The tech replayed the sequence in real time. First there was that puzzling cl.u.s.ter of bent angular shapes, distorted by the computer's efforts to achieve optimum resolution. Details were blurred, and there was a discontinuity in some of the straight lines that suggested image compromise. Thirty seconds of that, with the original zoom stopped. Then everything on the screen twitched as the second frame cut in. The things were moving, turning somehow. All the shapes were different. There was a slice of the Cygnus Object's moon for comparison. That hadn't changed at all. The third frame was nothing but a glare of red. That was when the camera vehicle had melted.

"Well?" General Harris demanded.

Ruiz pulled at his chin. "It appears that the planet from Cygnus brought some debris along with it. A moon. And now those things. They can only be artifacts."

"Artifacts? Thirty miles across? Why not asteroids?"

Ruiz shrugged. "Don't let the irregular shapes fool you. Don't forget we're seeing them in different planes.

I'll have to write a computer program to rotate them in three dimensions-with five different shapes, we ought to have enough input-but offhand I'll guess that they're Y-shaped or T-shaped, with a fourth axis at right angles to the other three. We never see fewer than three arms-the one at upper left was almost a perfect T-or more than four, like the one that resembled the Greek letter psi, where the long center tine might be the oblique arm seen in perspective."

"We'd already come to that conclusion," the general said with grudging respect. "We had a topology team on it."

"So?" Ruiz lifted an eyebrow.

"We need an astronomer's opinion."

"One shape like that might be a natural phenomenon. The lower limit of planetary ma.s.s would give you a body with a radius of about a hundred and twenty-five miles. That's the point at which gravitational forces tend to deform a body into a more or less spherical shape. I'm a.s.suming a rocky body, of course.

Ma.s.ses smaller than that-like our friends out there-can maintain an irregular shape. Butfive of them-all out of the same bowl of Greek alphabet soup! Not a chance that it's a coincidence!"

"But thirty miles across!"

"Why not? Eurostation's a half mile in diameter. Andwe've only been in s.p.a.ce a century."

"Life?" the general whispered. He seemed shaken. Ruiz hadn't credited him with that much imagination.

"Life... tens of thousands of years ago, maybe.

That blaze of X-rays would have annihilated anything moving through s.p.a.ce with the planet. When we get out there for a closer look, I wouldn't be surprised to find that those... artifacts... have melted a bit around the edges. Museum pieces, left by some other form of life."

"What do you find in museums, Doctor?"

"Art. Cultural clues. Knowledge..."

General Harris's face had turned to stone. "And weaponry. Armor and old weapons."

"Obsolete weapons."

"Obsolete-to them!"