FOUR
Shevket leaned over the green baize and carefully plotted his shot. His right hand swung in a brief, precise arc. The stick slid between the gloved fingers of his right hand, and the leather tip struck the cueball on its outer surface in a perfect line with its center of mass. The white ball rebounded from two cushions and struck another white ball, this one with two black spots. The spotted ball caromed off another rail and clicked elegantly into a red ball. He stood back and lightly stroked the leather tip of the stick with a cube of blue chalk while he planned his next shot.
Larsen stood patiently, awaiting his turn. He had no interest in the game and did not play it well. Shevket was a man of action and preferred to speak while moving about and performing some function, preferably competitive. Larsen was willing to put up with it, if in the meantime the Turk would speak his mind.
"Carstairs," Shevket said, sighting along the cue stick. "He has to go. The man has stayed around too long. He is in our way."
"Carstairs did not reach his present eminence by being soft," Larsen said. "He has not stayed there by being foolish. He has dealt with attempted coups in the past, always successfully." He flicked imaginary lint from his impeccably tailored Saville Row sleeve. He detested Shevket, who was an uncultured beast from a part of the world not distinguished for its devotion to humanitarian behavior. However, the Turk was invaluable as an enforcer.
"Carstairs now is not the man he once was. In any case, he came to power in an easier world, when people still believed in a better future. He is accustomed to gaining his ends through political maneuvering, and that's a thing of the past. Only force counts now." He made another perfect three-cushion shot. "He was never a military man. He never understood the needs of the military."
"Yet he used the military quite efficiently," Larsen pointed out. "He had no difficulty in bending the generals to his will."
Shevket's next shot was a bit too forceful and he missed the red ball by a fraction of an inch. "The military system of four decades ago was weak and corrupt." He placed his stick on a rack, apparently no longer interested in the game. "In those days, the upper ranks were held by political officers—old cronies of whatever Secretary General was in power. That was why he could manipulate them. It is also why they were so easily defeated in the First Space War."
"The First?" Larsen's dark eyebrows arched. "Since it was the only space war, why this numerical distinction?"
"Don't be obtuse," Shevket said. From a shelf in the billiard room he took his riding whip and slipped his hand through its wrist thong. With infinite care, he placed his hat at exactly the proper angle. His gloved fingers left no mark on its gleaming obsidian bill. "It was Space War One because there will be another, and soon. I've completely reformed the military. My officers are superbly trained. They hate the offworlders with intense passion. They are also perfectly loyal and willing to undertake any mission of conquest upon which I order them."
"In other words, they are fanatics?"
"Exactly. But they cannot be kept waiting forever. I have forged an army of conquest, and such an army will disintegrate from sheer boredom without worlds to conquer. Come, our luncheon guests await."
As they left the billiard room, their bodyguards fell in behind them at a discreet distance. Shevket's wore the black uniform of his elite guard. Larsen's were anonymous men and women in civilian clothing.
The Great Palace of the United Nations overlooked Lake Geneva. It was a grandiose structure, architectural propaganda designed to impress the citizenry with the majesty and power of the state. Every wall, pillar and decoration was outsized, scaled to inflict the viewer with a sense of awe and of the insignificance of the individual.
Larsen considered it to be garish and horrid, but he had to admit that it served its intended purpose well. The corridor they now occupied was floored with a single Bokhara carpet more than one hundred meters long and ten meters wide. The walls were of sea-green marble, covered with famous paintings. Many of the world's great masterpieces had been removed to the Palace for "safekeeping."
Larsen paused before one of his favorites, a Picasso from the artist's Blue Period, depicting an old man playing a guitar. "So, is policy to be formulated for the happiness and well being of the military?"
"Naturally," Shevket said, ignoring the painting. "At this moment, there are only two power structures of any consequence: the Party and the military. Over the years, all other organizations claiming rival power have been demolished. On this planet, the only power that can destroy the Party is the military. The Party cannot threaten the military at all. Therefore, the military wields the whip. Logical, is it not?"
Shevket strolled across the corridor and stood before a gigantic painting of lurid color and furious action. "That is my favorite," he said. "The French of the First Empire had spirit, unlike your bloodless Picasso and his whining post-World War One generation."
The painting was Delacroix's Death of Sardanapalus. From atop his funeral pyre, the monarch whose city was about to be overwhelmed calmly surveyed the spectacle below him. On the slopes of the gigantic pyre, his wives, concubines, horses, dogs, slaves and treasure were being slaughtered or placed for immolation. It would be impossible, Larsen thought, to find a painting that more accurately expressed the personality of Mehmet Shevket.
Shevket pointed with the handle of his whip at the most prominent group in the foreground. A savage-looking warrior held a beautiful, naked odalisque by her pinioned wrists. The painting froze him in the action of plunging a serpentine dagger into her breast as she struggled futilely for her life. "This is a wonderful detail. Do you notice how the curve of the soldier's yataghan precisely echoes the curvature of the woman's body? A nice touch, the yataghan: It's a Turkish blade."
The idea of Shevket as an art critic was mind-numbing. "Your plans of military supremacy are a bit premature, aren't they? Carstairs is still there, and neither of us truly knows the extent of his power."
"His power is a myth," Shevket insisted, slapping the knotted thongs of his whip against the side of his boot. "Now is the time to prove it!"
"No," Larsen said coolly. "Now is the time to find out what the Rhea Object represents. A few weeks ago, I might have agreed that this was a good time for a test of power. Now, I do not. The heads of the Academy tell me that this could be one of those rare discoveries that changes everything. To act, one must have the greatest possible certainty of the situation. A situation of such fluidity, with so many unknown factors—" He shrugged his narrow shoulders. "It is not a good time to take irrevocable action."
"You think too much, Aage. If you think too much, you never take quick, decisive action. But then, that is probably why we make a good team, you and I. Rest assured, though; when I know that the time is ripe for action, I will act without consulting your overcautious advice." He whirled on a chrome-spurred heel and strode down the corridor. Larsen hurried to catch up, cursing this sudden loss of initiative.
"I agree, though," the Turk went on, "that this alien artifact business is of great importance. It could be a powerful new weapon. I've assigned some of our best teams to the task."
"I know," Larsen said. "I've gone over the reports from Intelligence. Who is your personal operative on this?"
"I've given it to Daniko Vladyka. The other teams may foil, but not Vladyka. I've also given him orders to kill the Kornfeld woman. She was our most dangerous adversary in the last war. I do not want her on the other side in the next."
Larsen stopped and faced Shevket. "You didn't consult with me about that."
"It isn't your department," said the Turk. "You are forbidden by law to order an assassination unless you have assumed your wartime powers, and that must be voted upon by the Security Council, remember? It's an old custom among military men to save their superiors embarrassment by acting unilaterally. Deniability is a wonderful thing. "
Larsen was still fuming as they entered the dining room. It was not one of the State dining rooms, where the scale was as lavish as the decor, but one of the more intimate chambers, with small tables and few distractions, as befitted a room where serious discussions and decisions took place.
Still, this was a facility for the Party elite, so a complete absence of luxury was unthinkable. The waiters were human rather than the cheaper robots, and these were all Caucasian North Europeans. This was flattering to people from the former Third World and earned the Party cheap points for respecting the sensitivity of the poorer brethren. Even in a world with an enormous and idle surplus population, human domestics were hard to find. The Party solved the servant problem by the simple expedient of using military recruits.
Four men already sat at the table, waiting for Larsen and Shevket. As two of the most highly placed Party members, it was their privilege to be late. Three of the others were also important Party members: Hua, a deputy welfare minister; Chalmers, Chairman of the Council for Military Affairs; and Ghose, secretary to the Minister for Finance. The fourth man was a nonentity—the President of Tanzania, one of the beggar nations that made up the majority of the U.N. Such persons were included at luncheons where no significant business was to be discussed in order to stifle complaints that the leaders of small nations were denied access to the inner sanctums of the mighty.
Larsen greeted the others with professional warmth, Shevket with barely concealed contempt. The waiters began bringing drinks and hors d'oeuvres and the men talked of inconsequentialities. Larsen was relaxed and charming in the familiar milieu. Shevket was bored and restless, and he drank heavily.
The Tanzanian fidgeted and sweated for the better part of an hour, then worked up his courage to break into a conversation about the upcoming Party convention.
"Sirs," said the African, "I have come here to Geneva to discuss matters of great importance, but I can find no one who will listen!"
The others were startled at this rudeness, but Hua smiled broadly. "Mr. President, you are among friends here. Speak freely. How may we be of assistance?"
"Sirs, my people are starving! I do not exaggerate here. There is real starvation in the cities and the countryside. This year, the rice harvest in China has been exceptionally abundant. The wheat harvest in North America has also been excellent. Why has there been no distribution of this grain to my nation?"
"Ah, Mr. President," Hua said, spreading his hands in an appeal to reason, "there are many needy people among whom this largesse must be divided. Some are suffering far more hardship than your people."
"Dead is dead," the president insisted. "You cannot suffer more. If you will not aid us, then you must let me open the Serengeti to farming and grazing."
"That is out of the question, Mr. President," Ghose said. "The Serengeti is an irreplaceable natural resource. It belongs to all humanity." In truth, environmentalism was a dead issue. The Serengeti was a game park available only to party VIPs and their favored guests.
"My people must have food or I shall not be able to control them!"
"Then perhaps," said Shevket, leaning over the table, "it is time your people felt the whip! Do not be so sure they have reached the limit of their capacity to suffer. I can teach them what those limits are."
He sat back and drained a wine glass, holding it out to a waiter to refill. The others stared at him in stunned silence. Such talk was simply not heard within the Palace. Hesitantly, conversation picked up and Larsen exerted his best skills to smooth over the breach. Shevket said no more for the rest of the meal.
After the luncheon broke up, Chalmers and Hua walked with Larsen on the terrace with its spectacular view of the lake.
"Bit of a shock, wasn't it?" said Chalmers, a thin man with perfect military bearing and an Oxford accent. "Shevket speaking out like that, I mean."
Inwardly, Larsen cursed the Turk's premature assertion of power. "I think the general had a bit too much to drink this afternoon. I am sure he would not—"
"Oh, not at all," Chalmers interrupted. "I think it's high time such talk was heard."
"Exactly my thought," Hua said. "It is time we curbed these petty potentates of worthless nations. We are all tired of this quagmire of sub-Saharan Africa. General Shevket is just the man to settle them."
"Oh, I don't think military action is really called for, old boy," Chalmers said. "Just cut them loose and let them starve."
"I agree," Hua said, as Larsen's mind worked furiously. "There are more important enemies to consider than the African primitives. Australia, for instance." The Australians had stubbornly resisted U.N. confiscation of their resources. The population was hard-working, independent and notoriously reluctant to part with their hard-earned wealth.
"Am I to assume, then, " said Larsen, "that you two would support the general, should he advocate, shall we say, a harder line with the member nations? Not just the rebel movements, but with the nations themselves?"
"You may," said Chalmers. "And we are not alone in this. Quite a few of us would like to see a bit of discipline thrashed into the surplus population of this planet. They've come to take too seriously all the rhetoric about freedom and equality."
"Yes," said Hua. "We have grown decadent. We need to return to the original principles of the Party. It is time for a long-needed purge as well. You may tell the general that."
Later, back in his office, Larsen thought over what he had heard. Chalmers and Hua must have been looking for an opportunity to speak as they had. Shevket's outburst had provided the excuse. They would never have spoken so, had there not been many others in the Party elite who were like-minded. Shevket was right. The time was growing ripe for a coup. If only it were not for the great unknown factor: the Rhea Object. Just what did it represent? He pounded a fist on his desk top in sheer frustration. Just what was the damned thing?
Vladyka decoded the microburst message in his ship, Ivo the Black. It had been months since he had been given an assignment, and his smile widened as he read this one. It was more than he could have hoped. And the implications were enormous. It meant, for one thing, that Shevket was ready to take power, and that his most valuable followers would rise with him.
It would be difficult, and by far the most deadly and dangerous operation he had ever undertaken. But, he thought with satisfaction, that was why he had been chosen for the job: Daniko Vladyka was the best. He would have to crack Aeaea's legendary security, and he would have to get close to the equally legendary Sieglinde Kornfeld-Taggart. His mind whirled with ideas. He would have to contact his various agents and team members, scattered as they were throughout the Belt. Fortunately, most of them were concentrated in the vicinity of Avalon.
He would set up a careful operation. The message had given him no time frame, so he was free to set his own schedule. From all reports, the Aeaeans were no closer to solving the puzzle of the Rhea Object than they had been when they had first seen the thing. As for the Kornfeld woman, she would not be far from the alien artifact. Come to think of it, it seemed strange that she wasn't on the thing the minute it showed up. It probably meant that she was secretly on Aeaea, studying the problem. Everyone knew about her fetish for secrecy.
Vladyka was a burly man in his mid-thirties. He told people his muscle mass was due to treatment and training for planetary environments. A generation before, few except the Earthborn carried so much redundant muscularity. The prospect of convenient interstellar flight caused a demand for treatment to ready the pioneers for exploration of planets with real gravity.
Once he had been dark, with dense, coarse black hair and a drooping mustache. For life in space, his head had been depilated and his skin lightened. He especially missed his mustache. In his homeland it was all but synonymous with manhood. Well, when he pulled off this feat, he could return to Earth and look as a man should look once more. Surely, Shevket would reward him with a high position, perhaps even Chief of Intelligence.
After allowing himself a few moments to revel in the prospect, Vladyka dismissed all such fantasies from his mind. From now on, he would allow only the job at hand to concern him. In sequence, he brought up the faces of his team. As each appeared before his mind's eye, he weighed their merits and faults for the plan that was already beginning to take shape within his mind. Which should he contact first?
When he had his plan roughed out, he ordered Ivo's computer to take him to Avalon.
Valentina watched through a small port as the transport docked at Avalon's North Polar terminal. The trip out had been tedious, but she had used the opportunity to study recent Confederate history. From London she had traveled to Luna, and there she had arranged for a clandestine outbound passage to the Belt. It was not difficult, using her contacts. Once among the Island Worlds, her mobility was all but unrestricted because the Confederacy did not use internal passports.
Personal suspicion was another matter, and she had carefully built up a believable personality, and the physiognomy to go with it. Her hair was now dark, parted in the middle and drawn back tightly. Her skin was pale and she appeared to be wearing no cosmetics whatever. Her beautiful features were unchanged, but she managed to radiate plainness by her expression and bearing.
"We have arrived at North Pole Dock on Avalon," said the captain's voice over the intercom. "Docking is complete. Passengers may now disembark."
Valentina unclipped her landing harness and floated toward the exit hatch. Around her, twenty or so other travelers did the same. Experienced spacers, they managed to make the transit without jostling or kicking each other's faces. Very few people who were not spaceborn could manage the feat, but Valentina did it effortlessly. Had she wished, she could have adopted the distinct zero-gee body language of one raised on Luna or Mars. It was failure to master such subtleties of body language that exposed far more agents than verbal slipups or inconvenient physical evidence.
At the end of the umbilicus connecting ship and port, she followed a flashing stripe color-coded for baggage claim and Transit Authority. She collected her single bag and towed it toward an official who was speaking with the passengers and checking off something on a belt unit.
"Your name?" the official asked.
"Valerie Amber." It was a persona she had established several years before, complete with records. It would stand up to a fairly rigorous investigation.
"And your occupation?"
"Student." It was the most plausible of covers. Students were everywhere, enrolling in courses for a term, then moving on to another school or instructor, working when they ran out of funds. For many, it was just an excuse to travel, which was an education in itself.
"Passing through, or do you wish to settle here permanently?"
"Passing through."
"Enjoy your stay." That was it. No customs search or stamping of passports. Her baggage had been searched when she had left Lunar orbit, not for contraband but for explosives or toxic chemicals that might endanger the ship and its inhabitants. Other than that, nobody cared a great deal what a traveler might be carrying. At an office labeled Inprocessing she paid a minuscule facilities deposit to cover the air, water and public restroom facilities she would be using. Payment would be deducted according to length of stay. Anything else she required, she would be charged for.
Along with a crowd of other new arrivals, she pondered a three-dimensional chart of Avalon. It was color-coded, with blue for open chambers, yellow for tunnels, green for tube-car passages and so forth. It was confusing, because Avalon had never been planned as a habitat. It had been one of the earliest mining operations in the Belt, and the tunnels and chambers were long-abandoned mine galleries. People had moved into the larger chambers, and access tunnels had been cut to connect them. It was a bewildering labyrinth, so Valentina purchased a small holographic facsimile and earset to keep from getting lost. When she activated the holo, a flashing white dot would show her where she was.
The Hall of the Mountain King seemed as good a place as any to start, so she caught a tube car. It was crammed with workers headed for their jobs, spacers just off their ships and students doing whatever it was students did. The Belt settlements had nothing like the luxurious space of the Lunar or Martian colonies. An old, established habitat like Avalon could be as crowded as an Earth city, not because of population but because of limited space.
As they moved toward the asteroid's outer periphery, the car swung on its gimbals in response to the growing, spin-induced artificial gravity. Some of the travelers took anti-nausea pills from belt dispensers. To those unused to gravity, its effects could be distressing. As she stepped from the car, Valentina affected the slightly wobbly gait of one to whom even the Lunar gravity of HMK was an unaccustomed experience.
She passed through a low, rough, stone arch into the main chamber. The access tunnel opened onto a wide terrace about midway up the layers of tiers surrounding the major open area. The plan was amorphous, with many smaller canyons opening off the major gallery. Most of it was crammed with commercial establishments. She keyed her holographic guide for a quick orientation. Near her, many others were doing the same. The flicker of holos was the trademark of new visitors. To Valentina, the place was only mildly bewildering. Some of her fellow travelers had never before seen an indoor space so large.
"The Hall of the Mountain King," said the voice from her earset, "has grown over the years into the largest man-made, non-Lunar habitat space in existence. At any given time, several hundred businesses are located here. There are travelers' accommodations and entertainment facilities, eating establishments, places of worship and a few private residences. Besides the main chamber, there are side galleries such as the Grotto, the Bat Cave, the—"
Valentina let it drone on until she was sure she had the layout of the place firmly fixed in her mind. Then she shut off the holo and stepped out onto one of the spindly catwalks that connected adjacent tiers and other catwalks in no particular order. The term seemed especially appropriate since a good many cats shared the walks with the humans.
Few people spared her a glance. Even young men, after a flicker of interest, looked elsewhere. Her drab clothing, severe hair style and lack of cosmetics suggested that she was from one of the more severe religious settlements, possibly the neo-puritans. The prim, humorless set of her mouth reinforced the impression. She did not move with undue speed. She had definite plans and goals, but her persona required a certain aimless quality—that of a student who was not quite committed to a certain course.
Sometimes Valentina wondered whether her meticulous planning was worth the trouble. Chances were, nobody would notice her anyway, if she merely took the trouble to disguise her beauty. However, the urge to stay in persona had been drilled into her early, at a time when the Intelligence schools had hired the finest acting coaches to instruct the pupils. Now it was all but impossible for her to drop the character she had constructed. She could switch from one to another with facility, but acting naturally was all but unthinkable.
She stopped at a booth that offered shrimp tempura. From the earliest days of self-sustaining life off-Earth, shrimp had been a principal source of protein. They grew in pestiferous abundance in the salt-water tanks throughout the Belt. Everywhere around her vegetation grew. In the tunnels, on the tiers, even on the catwalks, vines, bushes and dwarf trees grew from planters. They aided in atmosphere production, produced food and softened the harsh functionality of asteroid life.
As she ate, Valentina watched the people around her. The Earth origins of spacers could be tricky to read, but most of those on Avalon seemed to be Caucasian or Asiatic in about equal numbers, with a sprinkling of people from everywhere else and innumerable mixtures. There were a few eccentrics who had chosen cosmetic treatments that gave them the appearance of no known race. Clothing was mostly functional, although there were some who wore very little of it. There seemed to be a fad for garish jewelry among the young.
There was a lot of exuberant advertising in every possible medium. Most of it was holographic, but some used archaic lettering, a rarity on near-illiterate Earth. Chinese banners of scarlet cloth bearing gold calligraphy were stretched on the fronts of some shops, and one establishment had revived flashing neon in glass tubes. From what Valentina could make out, the lower levels of tiers were devoted to selling necessities and equipment, the middle range to luxuries and services, and the upper tiers to entertainment.
It was nothing particularly enthralling to her, but she reminded herself to rubberneck. In her current persona, she was the Belt's equivalent of a hick in the big city. The brief preliminary scan told her that she should modify her persona to something more worldly. It had served its purpose.
At intervals along the tiers, small side-tunnels led to public restroom facilities. Valentina located one and paid a small fee for a private booth. She maneuvered herself and her bag into it and found that it had sparse shower facilities and a holographic mirror. She switched on the mirror, undressed and went to work on her appearance. She unbound her hair and, with a few deft cosmetic touches, altered her appearance into something far more alluring. She did not bother with a full-strength vamp treatment, but now her eyes and lips were highlighted. The coverall she took from her bag was as functional as the other had been, but it had a shiny finish and was tailored to emphasize her figure rather than disguise it. When she left, she was the object of a good many appraising looks, not all of them from males.
On the thirty-fourth tier, amid the entertainment section, she found a hotel in the middle price range. She chose it primarily because its hand-lettered sign listed the symbol for infonet services among its facilities. Instead of having a front wall, the tiny lobby was separated from the tier terrace by a living fence of close-planted bamboo. A tiny woman in a kimono came around the reception desk and bowed. In the primarily zero-gee Island Worlds, the custom of bowing had fallen out of use, so someone in this place was a traditionalist.
"May I help you?" she asked, straightening.
"I need a room with infonent services," Valentina said.
"Of course. Please come this way." Behind the desk was a corridor. Sliding partitions lined the walls at intervals and the woman opened one. The room was small, about three meters square. To Valentina's surprise, it was floored with tatami. On an impulse, she took off her boots before entering. At this level the gravity was somewhat less than one-third Earth normal, but she could feel the pleasant texture of the weave.
"We have a tatami craftsman here on Avalon," the woman said. "He contracts with one of the grain firms to grow the reeds. I know of no other settlement that has them."
"They're exquisite," Valentina said. "I've never seen reed mats before."
"This is your first visit to Avalon? Welcome, then. I hope you enjoy your stay. All four walls and the ceiling have holo display." She indicated a plate with pressure points marked in symbols. "These are your service and infonet controls. The folding spa unit has bath, steam and sauna capability. For an extra charge, we have masseuse service."
"I'll take it. I'm still on ship's time and exhausted. This will be perfect."
"Then I'll let you get some rest." The woman took a small exchange unit from her obi and Valentina thrust her credit crystal carrier into its slot. The woman bowed her way out and Valentina found herself alone for the first time in weeks. The ship had not been luxurious and she felt the urgent need of a bath. She hit the spa control and undressed as the unit inflated.
At full inflation, the spa was a transparent capsule shaped like an oversized shoe. She stretched its top opening and stepped in. With only her head exposed, she alternated sauna and steam until she streamed with sweat. Then she let the unit fill with water. She thrust her shoulders and arms out of the unit and while she soaked she ran through the series of holographic wall displays. The room disappeared and she was in the midst of an ocean, then in rapid succession a desert and a forest, then a long series of terrains, landscapes and seascapes. Last of all were starscapes with various moons and planets. They were all familiar, artificial environments designed to relieve the claustrophobic conditions of life in space.
She dried with an airblast and deflated the spa. She contemplated getting into the infonet to begin organizing her operation, but gave it up when she realized how weary she really was. She pushed the bed control and it unrolled from its niche in the wall. The bed was a thin foam mat, all that was needed in the light gravity. She collapsed onto it face down and signaled for a masseuse. A few minutes later the masseuse arrived. She was of Scandinavian coloration, seemed to be barely out of her teens and was strong as a horse. Valentina gradually relaxed under the girl's expert ministrations. As the tension was kneaded out of each muscle, her eyelids grew heavier. She was asleep before the girl left her room.
She awoke thoroughly refreshed, but uneasy at how much she had let down her guard. It had been years since she had simply gone to sleep in the presence of a total stranger, without setting up the most elementary security. Why should this place lull her into such a trusting state? She vowed not to repeat the error.
She left the hotel to find breakfast. In the absence of day and night, Avalon operated around the clock. For the sake of convenience and thousands of years of human conditioning, there was a twenty-four-hour "day" divided into three shifts. Which shift was used for what was entirely the choice of the individual. Roughly one-third of the population was sleeping at any given time.
After breakfast, she returned to her room to begin serious work. She keyed the infonet and requested information on the alien artifact. Of hard data there was dauntingly little. She ran over the news stories and found nothing she did not already know. The object had been found on Rhea during an exploration expedition conducted by McNaughton & Co. The discoverer was one Derek Kuroda. It was duly delivered to the immense scientific station of Aeaea, where it still resided.
Periodically, Aeaea released reports of its experiments on the ellipsoid, but so far the scientists had accomplished nothing, save finding negative results almost as exciting as the positive kind. There was a long list of experiments that had turned up nothing. Valentina could understand little of that part.
From the announcement of the discovery, scholars throughout the solar system had clamored to be allowed onto the study team. Aeaea was a private company, though, and allowed only a few supremely prestigious scientists who were not among its personnel to examine the object. There was no mention of Sieglinde Kornfeld. That in itself meant nothing. Her passion for secrecy was notorious and she might be working on Aeaea under a news blackout.
Popular response to the discovery had been, predictably, mixed. Many decried the right of Aeaea to sole access. Others declared that the thing was some sort of holy relic and should not be studied at all. Another school considered it dangerous and favored putting it on a ship and firing it out of the system.
There had been a brief flurry of interest in the popular media with all the usual wild extrapolations and pseudo-scientific explanations. Astrologers had had a field day. Interest had quickly subsided, largely because the Rhea Object was so prosaic. Had it had some bizarre shape, or been very large, or covered with alien writing, it might have been more interesting. Best of all might have been a pyramidal shape, or Mayan glyphs or some discernible connection with Stonehenge. It was difficult to work up much enthusiasm over something that resembled a glass paperweight. It seemed to be utterly inert. No voices came from it; it performed no miracles. Its major distinction was its fantastic density, and that was a quality that came across poorly on holographic reproduction.
Valentina switched off the set. So much for public information. Now it was time to extrapolate. She keyed the walls for a star display sans planets. In an instant, she was sitting on tatami adrift in deep space, in total silence. Holographic display had reached such perfection that it was in no way discernible from reality except to the touch. If she reached out a few feet, her fingers would touch the solid wall. She knew that intellectually, but to all the senses, she was in space. She had always preferred this holo environment for meditation.
The available information had contained nothing new. She had little interest in the object itself. That was not her task. To get her hands on it, and on all the information, public or otherwise, that had been gleaned, required access to it. She began at the first, with the discovery. What interested her now were the anomalies. What was not being said? What was being left out, sidestepped, glossed over? There she might find the key.
First, there was the discoverer. The find was being treated as a McNaughton discovery, because it had been found during one of that firm's explorations, and it had been a McNaughton ship that had delivered the object to Aeaea. Why was the discoverer, Derek Kuroda, being slighted?
A team of high-powered physicists and other scientists had been assembled to study the thing, most of them Aeaeans, but some from other places. Why was the most illustrious physicist of them all, Sieglinde Kornfeld-Taggart, not mentioned? It might be her passion for secrecy, but there might be other reasons. Was she dead? Was she conducting her part of the study from a distance? Was she in some part of the system so remote that she had not had time to reach Aeaea yet? It was not unthinkable. Even with the development of the Ciano-Kornfeld antimatter drive, there were parts of the system that could require months to reach. But she had reliable information that Sieglinde had been on or near Avalon just days before the discovery. Intuitively, Valentina felt that the key to her problem was here. She suppressed it and left it for her subconscious to work out.
Back to the discoverer. She called up all the information she could find on Derek. He was younger than she had expected. His resume listed excellent academic credentials. His background was in the sciences and he had requested a place on the first expedition to be put together upon development of the superluminal drive. He had had a great deal of physical preparation for planetary environments and was qualified to work for limited times at up to 1.5 Earth gravity.
With her professional skills, it was not difficult for Valentina to gain access to the Academy's restricted files on young Derek. Here his record was not so sterling—repeated absenteeism, a fondness for carousing and brawling, occasional insolence toward his superiors. It was not highly unusual among students in the rough-hewn Island Worlds society, but not to be expected from the scion of one of the most illustrious Founding Families.
McNaughton records showed that Derek had been employed by them only briefly. He had tendered his resignation immediately after delivering the Rhea Object. He had not even stayed for the few days left until payday. That seemed totally out of character. A quick search turned up information that his solo ship, Cyrano, was on a payment schedule. It was up-to-date, even since Derek had left his employment. There was no record of his securing further employment. This meant nothing in itself, since the Confederates were notorious for their cavalier attitude toward recordkeeping, especially if it might end up in government files and tax accounting.
As for Sieglinde, Valentina didn't bother to try. The woman had managed to erase nearly all traces of her former life and what could be learned since was restricted to what she chose to release to the popular media and her copious scientific publications, none of these being very useful in researching her private life. All that was known was that she had been born on Mars, her parents had died in the Barsoom City riots, and that she was probably the greatest genius of the age.
She had married into the Taggart family, part of the Kuroda-Sousa-Taggart-Ciano extended clan, and had four living children. Her husband, Thor Taggart, had died under mysterious circumstances while testing an experimental drive unit.
There were linkages and connections everywhere here and Valentina spent some time sorting a few of them out. Young Derek was a Kuroda, and apparently something of a black sheep. Sieglinde was related to that clan by marriage, although there were indications that she was not greatly loved by the Kurodas or Taggarts. As strange as she was, she was far more likely to be on good terms with the unbelievably eccentric Cianos. It was possible that the connection was coincidental. After all, the Island Worlders ran to large families and the older clans numbered many hundreds of members. But Valentina did not believe in coincidence.
So here she had young Derek, He had made a fabulous discovery but had handed it over to the McNaughtons. Granted, his contract stipulated that he had to do exactly that, but if she read him right, he was not the type to let such trivialities stand in his way. He ran off without collecting his pay. His debts were paid up. A thought occurred to her and she broke into the McNaughton files for Derek's mamaship. Cyrano had been low on fuel when he had left. A query turned up the information that he had had barely enough to reach Avalon.
She ran a scan of Avalon's docking records. He had arrived fully fueled. Where had he been in the interim? How had he paid for the fuel? A broad smile spread across her face as it came to her.
"You clever little bastard!" she said in reluctant admiration. "You found two of them, didn't you?" With such a find, where would he go? Where but to his relative, Sieglinde? So that was why she hadn't showed at the most exciting study in history. She had an egg of her own.
Valentina shut off the holo and infonet and sat back, satisfied. It had been a good morning's work. She was ready to act now, and the place to start was with Derek Kuroda.