Dark Ararat Page 7

  It was only to be expected, Matthew knew, that an ecosphere and mechanisphere as small as Hope would suffer a continuous erosion of organization. The comet core into which the original metal ship had been inserted had been intended to serve as a source of organic materials as well as providing invaluable momentum for the initial phase of the journey, but Shen would have been extremely fortunate to find an entire wish list of elements in its stonier and ferrous components. On the other hand, Hope had been in the new system for three years, and if the system contained an Earthlike planet it must also be rich in other supernoval debris. Hope’s drones should have been able to scavenge an abundance of new resources from the outer system while the decelerating ship plotted a course toward its present orbit. The ship’s environments should have undergone a spectacular renaissance by now, unless the deterioration of its machines had become chronic, or its manpower seriously depleted.

  It was, eventually, impossible to resist the conclusion that something was seriously rotten in the state of Hope, and in its mission to found a new world. The people on the surface were at odds with the crew, and seemingly with one another, and the crew seemed far from contented in their own little empire.

  But what can you expect in a world without TV, Matthew thought. If the only person who ever broadcasts to the whole population is the captain, it’s no wonder that there’s no social adhesive to hold things together, no force of consensus.

  It was wishful thinking, of course, but he couldn’t help dallying with the notion that there was nothing amiss here that couldn’t be corrected by the voice of a professional prophet: a man trained not merely to see the bigger picture but to provide it with an appropriate soundtrack.

  Seen from another viewpoint, Matthew decided, there was something rather homely about the sight of dust-filmed shelves and broken latches. They could be taken as reminders of Earth’s surface, of the world in which Matthew had grown from infancy to adulthood. Nothing here seemed to be alien to him, except perhaps the purple face of the planet they were circling—and he did not find it at all difficult, as yet, to think of that as an authentic Earth-clone nurtured and educated in a slightly different fashion.

  The crewman leading him through Hope’s corridors, by contrast, had presumably never known any environment but the ship; to Riddell and all his fellows, Hope and Hope alone was home, refuge, and prison.

  With what uneasy eyes must the crewpeople regard the kinds of images that Matthew and Vince Solari had been studying? To them, Matthew decided, the new world must be exactly as exotic, and as utterly alien, as Earth.

  They passed other crewpeople in the corridors, often having to swing their shoulders in order to pass by without making contact, but the crewpeople did not seem to regard them with any conspicuous curiosity. At first, Matthew put this down to the fact that any novelty value that the reawakened had possessed three years ago must be long gone now. There was, however, something odd in the character of their disinterest, as if it were contrived or pretended. They put him in mind of extras on a TV set, whose function was to fade into the background—but he was too curious about them to accept that kind of bid for invisibility.

  The crewpeople varied as much as might be expected of people whose ancestors had been plucked from half a hundred different Earthly nations, but they were all lean of limb, they all moved with a graceful athleticism, and they all had somatically modified feet. They all went seemingly barefoot, the smartsuit overlays on their long-toed feet as transparent as those on their hands, and their gait was peculiar. Living in half-gravity, they had not the same need as Earthpeople for stout, supportive legs. They were still walkers, clinging to a pedestrian way of life in their curving corridors, but many of them would have to spend at least part of their lives closer to Hope’s central axis, where they weighed much less—and even those who did not have to do so had the option. At the heart of the planetoid legs would be virtually useless—but an extra pair of gripping limbs would not.

  Matthew could not help comparing Hope’s “native population” to the lean and lithe mammal-analogues of the as-yet-nameless Ararat at which the ship had recently arrived. Matthew wondered whether his own thick thighs seemed ugly as well as clumsy to the crewpeople, and whether his lightly shod and stub-toed feet seemed lumpen and deformed. The somatic modifications adopted by the crew—and there must be others, he realized, in addition to the long toes—were essentially discreet, but their subtlety did not make them any less unsettling. The surface gravity of the new world was 0.92 of Earth’s, he had been told—but he had also been told that the remaining 8 percent made more difference than one might imagine. In much the same way, the slight alterations to human form that the crew had adopted made more difference than Matthew could have imagined on the basis of his acquaintance with Earthly “cosmetic engineering.” The same principle must apply in reverse; his stouter legs, stubby toes, and sturdier frame must seem alien as well as ugly to the crew.

  Solari and I must be stronger by far than they are, Matthew said to himself. We’re still adapted to Earthly gravity, whereas they’re born and bred for half-weight. They may be the gymnasts and long-jumpers of the interplanetary Olympics, but we’re the weightlifters and shot-putters.

  Within a moment of framing the thought he pulled back from it, regretting the competitive impulse that had framed it, and wondering whether that same instinct might be partly responsible for the tensions that existed between crew and “cargo.”

  He would have followed the line of thought further had he not been interrupted by the sudden clamor of someone shouting his surname. At first, because of the curvature of the corridor, he could not tell from what direction the shout came, but as he looked around he realized that it must have come from a side-branch which he, Riddell, and Solari had just passed. Already, however, the extras on the set had ceased to be mere background and had made a busy crowd of themselves. The space behind him was filled in with remarkable rapidity by passers-by intent on forming a queue—and when he tried to turn around, the queue would not even stop, let alone open its ranks to let him retrace his steps. The crewmen were light, and far from powerful, but they could occupy space as insistently as anyone, and Matthew could not thrust a way through without resorting to actual violence.

  “We’re nearly there, Professor Fleury,” Riddell called back to him—but Matthew suspected that the loudness of the call was intended as much to drown out the continued appeals of whoever had tried to speak to him as to give him information.

  Matthew overcame his automatic hesitation quickly enough, and tried to thrust a way through the suddenly gathered crowd. Mere rudeness made no impact, and he actually had to throw his weight at the people blocking his way. Had it been a straightforward barging contest he would have won with ease, but they were far too clever for that. They moved so that his arms met empty air—but his clumsy feet had nowhere to go.

  In effect, they meekly allowed him to trip over their clever feet—but they were far from careless of the damage he might do to their toes. Even as he stumbled they began a litany of complaint that really did drown out the voice of whoever had called out.

  Matthew could not see what was going on in the side-corridor because he could not force a way back to it, but the person who had tried to attract his attention had obviously made as little headway as he.

  When Riddell helped him back to his feet, Matthew had to admire the slickness with which the operation had been accomplished. No one else in the corridor was carrying a sidearm, and no one else was an obvious member of an escort party, but everyone there had been ready to act in concert as soon as anyone unauthorized to do so attempted to make contact with the two defrosters.

  “What’s going on?” Solari demanded of Riddell, his detective instincts immediately coming into play. “Who was the man who called out? Why was he not allowed to talk to Dr. Fleury?”

  “I’m very sorry, professor,” Riddell said, ignoring Solari and addressing himself solely to Matthew. “These corridors are
always busy, and we’ve had to cultivate skills and etiquette for coping with that. You’re not used to it, so you can’t help being clumsy. These people really should have got used to giving colonists more leeway.”

  There was an immediate clamor of apology as the people who had tripped him up assured him that it was entirely their fault—but the wall of flesh remained quite impregnable. No one moved a centimeter to make way for him. There was no way for him to go but forward.

  “It’s okay,” Matthew said to Solari. “An accident.” But while he said it he was looking into the green eyes of their guide, observing the reflexive hostility of the adamantine stare that met his own half-contemptuous glare. He really does think he’s at war, Matthew thought. However this conflict first arose, it’s infected each and every one of them.

  “No harm done,” Riddell said, tugging gently on Matthew’s arm to urge him forward again.

  “None at all,” Matthew assured him, deciding that from now on, he had to exercise all possible caution in his dealings with the crew. He allowed himself to be urged into action again, and only glanced back once to marvel at the way in which the sudden queue had melted away.

  As they resumed their progress through the curved corridors, Matthew followed the train of thought. These people presumably no longer had the commitment to the mission that had carried their forefathers out of the solar system. It had only required five lifetimes of isolation, and maybe twice as many generations, to turn them into a new species with their own ideas and objectives. Whatever else they wanted, they probably wanted rid of every sleeper in their vaults. They wanted rid of the past, of the pressure of inherited obligations. They wanted their freedom. But how far were they prepared to go to get it? And how fast would their remaining inhibitions decay if the awakened sleepers remained obdurate in their insistence that Hope belonged to them and had no reason for being except to serve their purposes and answer their demands?

  That, Matthew realized, must be the true cause of the rebellious attitude simmering on the planet’s surface. There was a matter of principle at stake. The would-be colonists were trying to recover and assert the authority that was, in their eyes, their right. But where was Shen Chin Che, the owner of the Ark and guarantor of that right?

  “This is worse than I thought,” Solari whispered in his ear.

  “Whispering is probably futile,” Matthew whispered back. “They can hear everything, if they want to—and they’re probably interested enough to listen hard.”

  Their guide paused before a door that seemed no grander than the rest. It opened when he brushed the keypad with his fingers, but he did not follow them through. Presumably, he remained on guard just as he had while they were in their temporary quarters.

  EIGHT

  The room to which they had been brought was luxurious, after a fashion, and reassuringly personalized in its decoration. Captain Milyukov was a family man, and his walls proudly proclaimed the fact. He appeared to have at least four children, and perhaps as many as six, although three of the faces smiling from the photographic ensembles were so physically distinct from him and from one another that they seemed highly unlikely to be biologically related. It did not seem inconceivable to Matthew, however, that Milyukov might have been biologically related to his ultimate predecessor as captain. Although the cast of his features was not as flamboyantly Oriental as Shen Chin Che’s, and the color of his skin was the same verdigrised parchment hue as Frans Leitz’s, he looked more typical of Hope’s first cadre of masters than his name had suggested.

  For some reason, Matthew took heart from that—but he was still anxious to know exactly what had become of Shen Chin Che, and glad that he now had an opportunity to find out.

  “My name is Konstantin Milyukov,” the captain told them, as he stood up to greet them. “You are Professor Fleury, of course, and you are Inspector Solari.” He ushered them to high-backed armchairs clad in some kind of cultured leather. Milyukov’s gestures seemed strangely grandiose to Matthew’s Earth-educated eyes—more so than Frans Leitz’s, even though the medical orderly had also been adapted by long habit to the low gravity. The captain took a third chair, which had been positioned to form an isosceles triangle with those set for his visitors, with Milyukov at the peak. He didn’t offer them food or drink.

  “I wish that I could welcome you both to better circumstances,” the captain went on, “but you will already have gathered that this is something of an emergency. I wish that it had not been necessary to awaken you until the colony was on a much firmer footing, but our plans have been overtaken by events. We all need to know exactly how Bernal Delgado died, and why the people at Base Three are refusing to reveal the identity of his murderer.”

  “Refusing?” Solari echoed. “Are you sure they’re refusing? Perhaps they don’t know who killed him, or why.”

  “One or two of them may not know,” Milyukov admitted. “Perhaps as many as four—but if those innocent of any involvement had mounted their own investigation in a methodical manner, they would have been able to find out easily enough what happened. Perhaps negligence held them back, or perhaps they were unprepared to face up to what they might find. In any case, the situation requires a newcomer with a proper sense of duty. To tell you the truth, Inspector Solari, I do not expect this to be a particularly challenging case, even if you arrive at Base Three to find a solid conspiracy of liars—but we do need you to ensure that charges are brought and that the truth of this sad charade becomes clear.”

  “Who’s we?” Solari wanted to know.

  “Everybody,” Milyukov replied, without hesitation. “You will have gathered, of course, that there are disagreements aboard Hope as well as conflicts on the surface, but it is in everybody’s interests to know why Professor Delgado was killed, in order that the rumors that have begun to circulate can be quashed. It is in everyone’s interests to know the truth.”

  “Except the murderer,” Solari observed, “and anyone shielding the murderer. If, as you seem to think, there are at least seven people shielding the murderer, I’m inclined to wonder why they’re so conspicuously uninterested in the truth.”

  “Sometimes,” Milyukov said, “people intent on attaining a certain end become rather short-sighted. They sacrifice honesty to the cause of winning the argument—but in the long run, an argument won by dishonesty always leads to disaster.”

  “Can we cut the crap?” Solari said. “So far as I can tell, you want the colony to stay here, and you want all the people who were frozen down before the ship left the solar system down on the surface. You presumably have the power to attain that result regardless of what anyone else wants, simply by waking up the sleepers a few at a time and shuttling them down whether they like it or not, but I guess you haven’t yet resorted to that kind of solution because you still want to win the argument and you still think it’s winnable. You want me to find out who killed Delgado because you think it will help you win the argument. How?”

  Milyukov didn’t seem to be at all disturbed by the full-frontal assault. “It is in everyone’s best interests that the colony succeed,” he said, mildly. “If it were to fail, that would be a catastrophe from everyone’s point of view. There is a faction on the surface that claims that it is impossible for humans to remain on the surface without precipitating an ecocatastrophe more devastating than the one that was threatening Earth when you and your companions decided to leave it behind—and that the possibility that the planet is inhabited by intelligent humanoids makes that doubly unacceptable. It is my belief that Bernal Delgado was killed because he believed that he had discovered something vital to the settlement of this debate. I believe the crude pretense that he was killed by an alien was intended to favor the cause of those who want to abandon the colony—a cause that he did not support.”

  “Are you certain of that?” Solari asked.

  “I have no reason to think otherwise,” Milyukov said, blithely ignoring the fact that it was not at all the same thing. “Delgado certainly inte
nded to travel downriver, but he never gave any vocal support to those of his colleagues who looked on the expedition as a straightforward attempt to prove the continued existence of the humanoids. If they do exist, of course, I want to find them as badly as anyone—but I want the matter settled. I need you to put a stop to this ridiculous pretence that Delgado might have been killed by an alien, inspector.”

  “And why, exactly,” Matthew put in, “do you need me?”

  Milyukov’s eyes were not quite as green as Leitz’s or Riddell’s, but their relative dullness did not make their gaze seem less penetrative.

  “For exactly the same reason, professor,” the captain said. “To discover the truth—if you can. I’ve studied your background, just as I’ve studied the inspector’s, but I don’t hold your reputation against you. I’ve seen tapes of your TV performances, but I know that you began your career as an entirely reputable scientist.”

  Matthew had been damned with faint praise before, but this seemed a trifle unwarranted. He had always been an entirely reputable scientist, and his TV presence had never compromised his scientific integrity.

  “Bernal Delgado was my friend,” Matthew observed. “I’ll do my very best to take up where he left off.”

  “And you will also want to see justice done in the matter of your friend’s murder,” Milyukov said. There was no overt trace of sarcasm in the captain’s voice, but Matthew was reasonably sure that the man was completely insincere. Matthew could not believe that he had been brought back from frozen sleep because the captain believed that he was a potential ally. His acquaintance with Shen Chin Che was probably sufficient to make him a potential enemy, in the captain’s eyes. There was a diplomatic game in progress, and his awakening must surely have been a concession to the people on the ground who had demanded that Bernal must be replaced, in order that his work might continue.