Back | Next
Contents

VII

Standing in Hague's lab was remarkably like being inside the summer crown of a five-hundred-year-old oak. With the sort of single-minded devotion of which the diminutive savant was the unique practitioner, Hague had set out to turn his laboratory into the perfect lunar home for his squirrel friends from Earth. He'd had wire mesh branches fashioned in the metal shop, had holders and tables and hangers fabricated upon which to put live oak saplings imported from Michigan. He himself had put in the plastic tubing to carry nourishment to the trees, as well as the equipment to keep the squirrels fed and happy during his inevitable absences.

Dykstra liked coming here. He liked the smell—of nothing but fresh nature—Hague's system for removing squirrel feces had already brought a visit from Admiral Towner, whose family owned a private zoo on Earth—he liked the artificial breeze, and he liked the constant chatter of the squirrels.

Dykstra leaned heavily on his cane. He'd just come from an uncomfortable interview with three of his superiors. They'd had a lot of questions to ask him about the Hyperlight and what ideas he might have as to why her return had been delayed. Though they hadn't directly come out and accused him, they'd left little doubt that they suspected him of duplicity, of engineering his own plan for the first mission of the FTL ship.

In short, the truth.

A squirrel with a patch of black on her right shoulder stopped to look him over. Dykstra took an acorn from his pocket and handed it over. "Here you go, Bixy," he said. Bixy was one of the few that he recognized. The squirrel took the offering and bounded off.

Dykstra had parried their questions. He reminded them of the unique character and unique dangers of the mission, confessed (falsely) to uncertainties he still felt about some of his physical assumptions concerning hyperdimensional structure, and admitted (honestly) that he had no idea why the men had yet to return even though they were almost a week overdue.

In short, he snowed them.

But he didn't like doing things this way. In fact, he hated it. But at least Knoedler hadn't been at the interview. The colonel would have been able to ask much more difficult questions. No doubt, though, that the colonel would still get his chance at him.

"Welcome, Dr. Dykstra. Oh yes, welcome, welcome," Hague said, interrupting Dykstra's thoughts. Hague had just come out of his adjoining quarters, carrying a bag of food for his friends.

"Thank you, Arie. Are you just about to feed the family?"

"Oh yes, Dr. Dykstra. Yes, yes. They get hungry, oh yes. And they need me." Hague proceeded to a "limb" nearly a meter wide, and the whole chattering congregation soon assembled.

One squirrel, by far the most yellow of the whole group, got the first bite. "Here you go, Sunshine. Oh, yes, yes. This is for you, Sunshine. Oh yes." Sammi's namesake scampered off to a nearby branch with her treasure and Hague went on to the others. The woman herself would be arriving any time now.

"Here you go, Sarobi, oh yes. You always gave me your food, oh yes you did. Yes."

Hague's sister. The mystery girl out of the little man's past. "When was the last time you saw your sister, Arie?" Dykstra asked.

Arie looked at the clock briefly, then answered, "Forty-two minutes, eight hours, seventy-two days, and thirty-nine years ago, yes."

"Why did she have to take care of you? Where were your parents?"

Suddenly Hague stopped moving. The squirrels chattered impatiently, waiting for the next handout, but Hague stood immobile, then suddenly spoke in a voice not his own.

" `We have to do it, June. We gotta put the kids in the lifeboat!' " It was a man's voice, oddly raspy, like he was very sick and weak.

" `We can't, Ted. I can't do it. How will they take care of themselves?' " This was a woman's voice issuing from Hague. Dykstra had no doubt that he was doing a perfect impression. The woman's voice sounded even sicker and hollower than the man's.

" `The boat will take them to Ceres by itself. We gotta, June. The radio ain't going to be fixed. We can't wait for help. We ain't gonna make it another day.' "

" `Mommy! Mommy! I don't want to go. I want to stay with you and Daddy! Don't make us go. Don't, please!' " This time it was a little girl's voice.

" `We don't have any choice, Sarobi. Your mom and me—we, we ain't ever going to get better. You and Arie have to go in the lifeboat. It will take you to Ceres. People will help you there. And you have to look after your brother. He's special, Sarobi. Jesus wants you to look after Arie. You tell folks you want to get him to Earth.' " The talk was interrupted by periodic bouts of coughing, Hague being faithful to his recollection.

" `Good-bye, Mommy. Good-bye, Daddy. I love you. I love you,' " said the little girl's voice, choking with tears and sobs.

The image Hague's recitation brought to Dykstra's mind came close to choking him up, and perhaps would have had Hague not then suddenly come out of his state and resumed feeding his squirrels as if nothing had happened at all. "Yes, Peter, this is for you, oh yes."

"May I feed them, too, Arie?" Dykstra asked.

"Oh, yes, Dr. Dykstra. Oh yes."

The door opened and Sammi took a step in, then stopped and looked around. Dykstra saw her sunshine smile emerge as she took in the room. This was her first exposure to Hague's newly furnished laboratory.

"Wow! This is really something. Oh, Arie, you've outdone yourself," Sammi said, coming toward them.

"Oh, thank you, Samantha, oh yes, oh yes, thank you, thank you!"

Samantha started feeding the squirrels, too, and Dykstra filled her in on the meeting he'd had with the superiors.

"So you're convinced they suspect you went ahead with your own plan against orders?" Sammi asked.

"I have no doubt. But I'm also sure they have yet to put together sufficient proof to come out and accuse me of it. After all, this mission was always recognized as being dangerous—that's why the conservative plan was originally adopted in the first place. I had to fight like the dickens just to get them to agree to two days instead of one for that very reason."

"Did they ask about me?"

"Not a peep, Sammi. You just keep quiet about things. If they do ask you any questions, deny everything like we said. I hate having to have to tell you to lie, but the stakes are way too high to go wobbly now," Dykstra said. "But your own work—has it been going well?"

"Now that's a piece of good news," Sammi said. "I've had some good luck. I can give the genanites any kind of latency period that I want. At least, in simulation. I won't know for sure unless—I mean, until the guys get back."

Dykstra noticed the slip. "I'm starting to get a little worried, too," he said.

"Want to come to my lab and look at what I've been doing, Chris?" Sammi asked.

"I would love to, but I cannot," Dykstra said. "I'm wanted on Farside. Paracelsus crater. I need to pack a few things. I'm leaving in two hours." He sighed. "Do you know that since my return to Luna, I haven't had the time to do a single worthwhile thing either in the lab or at my workstation? Just politicking and subterfuge and giving evasive answers to questions. And there's so much to do."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Sammi said. "So I'm almost afraid to say this, but be sure to come by after you get back."

"Certainly, Sammi. Seeing you is always a pleasure in its own right," Dykstra said, smiling gently.

He did not mention to Sammi that although he'd been asked to go to Farside, there wasn't anything like a rational reason for it that he could see.

* * *

It was while he was on the special shuttle waiting for the pilot who would take him to Farside that Dykstra got the notion that perhaps he'd find out about things even before the shuttle got to its destination. He knew he was right when Colonel Knoedler came aboard, sat down at the pilot's controls, and said, "I expect we'll have an interesting flight, Dr. Dykstra."

"No doubt," Dykstra said, taking the arrival of the colonel in stride. "May I ask if there is a genuine reason for going to Farside?"

"Why certainly there is, Doctor. But we'll be at the top of our ballistic when we'll be notified that our scheduled meeting has been canceled, and I'll abort to a single orbit return to base."

The two said no more while Knoedler took the shuttle out of the docks and sent them thrusting on their way. Within seconds of leaving the surface, Dykstra noticed that the colonel had activated the defense screens. "I gather you don't want to risk any chance of our conversation being overheard," Dykstra said.

The colonel turned to look at him. He had soft brown hair and tight, brown wrinkles around eyes that lased in the ultraviolet. Tendons in his neck stuck out like cables and his jaw muscles were prominent. "You have that right. But I wouldn't have had to bother if you'd just tell me how it is you've managed to make your quarters bugproof. I finally told my men to give up last week."

Dykstra smiled. He'd known men like Colonel "Tommy" before. This was a man of honor and honesty, even though he had been diametrically opposed to Dykstra's plans. "When this whole shebang is over, Colonel, I'll let you in on a few of my other secrets."

The message that the Farside meeting had been canceled came at the expected time, Knoedler tweaked the thrusters, and they entered the groove of an unpowered orbit that would take them around the Moon and back to the High Command.

"Let me tell you about myself, Dr. Dykstra," Knoedler began. "As a boy, you were my idol. I had a high IQ and knew I wanted to study theoretical physics by the time I was seven. Given my personality, I wanted to both emulate you and overthrow your work. But it didn't take long for me to realize that you were in a class by yourself.

"Ultimately, I wound up in the service, and in my current position, and I like it here. I also have a confession to make. It was I, and not Major Moore, who tried to keep you out of the Phinon Project in the beginning. It was only when it became clear that mortal minds were no match for advanced alien technology that the Joint Staff ordered us to take you."

"But why did you keep me out?" Dykstra asked. "Even when you knew I could help."

"Because I knew you'd be doing exactly the sort of things that you have been doing. Those men in the Hyperlight are doing the mission you wanted them to do, not the one that was agreed to. All by itself your bearing inspires that sort of devotion. I've had my men chasing all over the Solar Union trying to ferret out the system you have under you—"

"What system? You think I'm at the top of a conspiracy?"

"No. That I could handle. It's the system of friendships you've cultivated over the course of the last century. I can't compete with that. You've made good friends and they all think they owe you something. What sort of pressure could I bring to bear against the president of the most powerful company in the Union when he has fond memories of you reading to him when he was a child?"

Dykstra did not betray his curiosity at Knoedler's indirect mention of Wayne Vander Kam. What kind of pressure, indeed? Dykstra thought. Somehow he was sure that the colonel had thought of something.

"The problem I have with you, Doctor, is that you're not bound by anyone or anything temporal," Knoedler continued. "You're a man of Destiny, with a big `D.' You'll always do what you think is best, and who the hell can argue with you that you're wrong?"

"I can see your problem, Colonel. But I can't say I'm sorry. I gather you knew I wouldn't be?"

"Yeah."

Dykstra made himself more comfortable in his seat, then Knoedler noticed his movements and promptly dropped the internal gravity down to Luna standard. "Forgive me. I should have done that first thing," he said, and Dykstra knew that, about this matter, he was sincere.

"That's okay. Now, there must be some other reason for your wanting to talk to me under these hushed conditions than just to make confessions. What is it?"

"Haaa," the colonel sighed. "I need your help."

"How can I serve?" Dykstra asked ironically.

"There are some on the Joint Staff who are calling for your hide, and for the hides of your men once they return. About what you'd expect. But despite my earlier vociferous objections to your views, it's all moot now as far as I'm concerned. Besides, we have more hyperdrive ships under construction as I speak. What I have to offer is protection for your people. When your men return they'll be accused of nothing, and we won't even question that beautiful genano engineer friend of yours." He looked Dykstra in the eye. "Don't say anything, Doctor. You haven't admitted anything and I didn't expect you to. You just run your show and I'll run mine."

"But what's your problem, Colonel?"

"The Belt. Some on the Joint Staff also want to use the new technology to slaughter the Belt. Despite the cease-fire and our sharing of knowledge about the Phinons, no one has felt particularly inclined to tell the Belt about what you've been able to accomplish, Doctor. They feel that the new impeller technology alone gives the System Patrol an unbeatable edge.

"I read a report you once wrote about our level of technology and fighting the Belt—what do you think now?"

Dykstra looked away, out the window and at the scarred surface of the Moon. Years ago he had turned his mind to running through war scenarios against the Belt, and his had been one of the voices instrumental in ending the Belt War of Independence in favor of the Belt by demonstrating that victory by the Solar Union (victory defined as resubjugation of the Belt worlds) would come at a prohibitive cost even if luck was on their side. But now he added the new drive and the mass converter into the calculus of war and said: "They're right. It would."

"I don't want that," Knoedler said. "We can't afford to fight the Belt ever again while the aliens are out there. Any aliens, for that matter. Who knows what's out there besides the Phinons? And besides, we have a freaking FTL drive now. Who the hell is going to care about Solar real estate in a few years? The Belter types will be the first to head for the stars!" Knoedler was almost shouting now, then he caught himself and settled down.

"What's your bottom line, Colonel?" Dykstra asked softly.

"I want to share the Phinon technology with the Belt. But the only person they're going to trust in a meeting with us is you . . ."

"Hold it right there, Colonel," Dykstra said. "Before you continue the hard sell, I want the whole truth. I'm having trouble believing you're magnanimous enough to just hand everything to the Belt when you don't need to. To be accused of treason to show the goodness in your heart? Please."

"We have data that strongly indicates that the Phinons may be massing ships outside the Hague Limit, possibly for an invasion," Knoedler said. Dykstra was pleased that the man hadn't bothered to protest his innocence. Knoedler filled him in on the information supplied by the Belt.

"If an invasion comes, I want the BDF to be at the same technological level that the Patrol is," Knoedler concluded.

"That's better," Dykstra said, though he wasn't entirely convinced that Knoedler had told him everything.

"It's got to be you, Dr. Dykstra," Knoedler continued. "You're the only one with the system-wide veneration who could pull this off. You have to write Einstein's letter, only this time we're giving the bomb away."

"The Belt tried to have me killed a few months back," Dykstra pointed out.

"And only you," Knoedler said. "Look at it as a gesture of great respect."

Dykstra thought about it a moment. "I'd rather have my house back," he said. "Nevertheless, I will help you, Colonel."

 

Back | Next
Contents
Framed