Between the Strokes of Night Page 5

  A turn of the head brought Eleanora back into view, far above. Down on Earth the arcologies seemed remote, the daydream of one man. But once you were up here, watching the ferry ships swarming between the Station and the distant, twinkling sphere of Eleanora…

  “Interested in taking that trip?” said Hans Gibbs’ voice from behind her. “There’s plenty of space available for qualified people, and you’d be a prime candidate for a colonist.”

  The spell was broken. Judith realized that she had been staring out mindlessly, more fascinated than she had ever expected. She looked around at him questioningly.

  “It’s yes,” he said at once. He shook his head in a puzzled way. “I’d have bet my liver that he wouldn’t even consider seeing you — I told you, Salter Wherry never meets with anybody except a few aides these days. So what does he do? He agrees to see you.”

  “Thank you.”

  Hans Gibbs laughed. “For Christ’s sake, don’t thank me. All I did was ask — and I didn’t expect anything except a quick refusal. He agreed so quickly, I wasn’t ready for it. I started to give him arguments why he should make an exception in this case, then my brain caught up with my mouth. I suppose that proves how little I know him, even after all these years. If you’re ready we can go over right now. His suite is on the other side of Spindletop, directly across from here. Come on, before he changes his mind.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Salter Station was built on the general double-wheel plan defined thirty years earlier for a permanent space station.

  The upper wheel, Spindletop, was reserved for communications, living, and recreational quarters. It rotated about the fixed spindle that jutted up to it from the lower wheel. With a diameter of four hundred meters, Spindletop had an effective gravity that ran from near-zero at the hub to almost a quarter-gee at the outer circumference. The thicker under-section turned much more slowly, needing close to two hours for a full revolution compared with Spindletop’s one-minute rotation period. All the maintenance, construction, power, and agriculture systems resided on the lower wheel.

  “And some of the people, too,” said Hans Gibbs as they rode the moving cable in toward the hub of Spindletop. “Once they become used to zero gee, it’s a devil of a job to get them up here again. There’s a compulsory exercise program, but you wouldn’t believe the ways they find to get around it. We have engineers here who couldn’t go back down to Earth without a year’s conditioning — they spend all their time loafing around Workwheel. They even take their meals down there.” He pointed along a metal corridor, twenty meters across, that went away at right angles from their inward passage. “That’s the main route between Workwheel and Spindletop. See, we’re at the hub now. If we wanted to we could just hang here and drift.”

  They paused for a few seconds so that Judith could take a good look around her. The central section was a labyrinth of cables, passages, and airlocks. “It’s all pressurized,” he said in answer to her question about the need for interior airlocks. “But different sections have different pressure levels. And of course the locks are there for safety, too. We’ve never had a blow-out or a bad air loss but it could happen anytime — we can’t track all the meteors.” He took her arm as they caught the cable out along another radial passageway of Spindletop. Her muscles tensed slightly beneath his fingers, but she made no comment.

  “Have you spent much time in freefall?” he said after a few moments. He turned so that they were facing each other, dropping outward steadily down the spiralling circular tunnel that led to the edge of Spindletop.

  She shook her head. “Enough so that it doesn’t trouble me in the stomach any more, but that’s about all. I’ve sometimes thought it might be nice to take a vacation up on Waterway and see how freefall swimming is done; but I’m told it’s expensive and I’ve always been too busy.”

  “If you come up here to work, you can do it free. The big fish tanks down on Workwheel are open to swimmers all the time.”

  He turned his face so that he was no longer looking directly at her before he spoke again. His voice was completely neutral. “There are some other experiences in freefall that you ought to try — really interesting ones. Maybe you can sample them before you go back down to the Institute and tell the others what it’s like here.”

  He felt her arm muscles tighten again in his grasp. “Let’s see what happens first with Salter Wherry, shall we?” she said. Her voice was noncommittal, but she sounded slightly amused. “Maybe I’ll have to tell them it didn’t work out. Or maybe we’ll have something to celebrate.”

  The area they were entering looked substantially different from the parts of Salter Station that Judith had already seen. Instead of metal walls and bulkheads they now passed over soft carpeted floors flanked by elaborate murals. At the door of an antechamber they were met by a young man dressed in a skintight electric-blue uniform. To Judith he looked like a pretty child, no more than thirteen years old. His complexion was soft, without a sign of facial hair.

  “He has decided that he will see her alone,” he said, in a voice that was not yet fully broken.

  Hans Gibbs shrugged, looked at the youth, then at Judith. “I’ll wait for you right here. Good luck — and remember, you’re holding a card that he wants very badly.”

  Judith managed a wry smile. “And what he wants, he gets, right? Thanks anyway, and I’ll see you later.”

  She followed the young boy in through the curtained entrance. In the reduced gravity his walk lent an elegant, undulating sway to his hips.

  Was he accentuating it intentionally? Jan de Vries was probably right about Salter Wherry’s personal tastes — it was the sort of detail that he would know. Judith tried to make her own movements as economical and functional as possible as she followed her guide around the curved floor of the chamber and on to another large room, this one with no viewports. The boy in front of her halted. Apparently they had arrived. Judith looked around her in surprise. Opulence would have been understandable. These were the private living quarters of a man whose fortune exceeded that of most Earth nations — perhaps all. But this?

  The room they had entered was bare and ugly. Instead of the drapes and murals of the outer chamber, she was looking at dark walls and simple, plastic-coated floor and ceiling. The furniture was hard upright chairs, a single narrow couch, and an old wooden desk. And there was something else, stranger yet… Judith had to think for a few seconds before she could pin it down. Something was missing. The room lacked any signs of data terminals or display screens; she could not even see a telephone or television outlet.

  But Salter Wherry had System-wide influence and interests. One word from him could bankrupt whole States. He must find the most modern and elaborate communications equipment absolutely essential.…

  Judith walked over to the desk, ignoring the youth who had brought her in. There was nothing. No terminal, no data links, no modems; not even data cube holders. She was looking at a flat desk top with two buff file folders upon it, and a black book set neatly between them. A Bible.

  “Where does he keep all — “ she began.

  “Videos? Books? Electronic equipment?” It was a different voice behind her. “I have everything that I find necessary.”

  Salter Wherry had quietly entered through a sliding door to her left. The pictures that she had seen of him showed a man in vigorous middle age, substantial and strongly built, with a sensuous, fleshy face and prominent nose. But they had been taken thirty years ago, before Salter Wherry became reclusive. Now the man standing in front of Judith Niles was frighteningly frail, with a thin, lined face. Judith looked at him closely as he held out his hands to take both of hers. The aquiline nose was all that had survived of the younger Salter Wherry. Judith found the new version much more impressive. All the softness had been burned away from the man standing in front of her, and what remained had been tempered in the same inner furnace. The eyes dominated the countenance, glowing bright-blue in deep sockets.

  “All
right, Edouard. You will leave us now,” said Wherry after a few moments. His voice was gruff and surprisingly deep, not at all an old man’s thin tones. The boy nodded deferentially, but as he turned to leave there was a pout, a condescending look at Judith, and an arrogant sway of his shoulders. Salter Wherry gestured to the narrow couch.

  “If it will not make you uncomfortable, I will stand. Long ago I learned that I think better this way.”

  Judith felt her stomach muscles tighten involuntarily as she sat on the couch. Wherry’s intuitive perception of motives was legendary. It might be hard to hide any secret from the probing intellect behind those steady eyes. She cleared her throat. “I appreciate your willingness to see me.”

  Salter Wherry nodded slowly. “I assume that your desire was not merely social. And I want you to be assured that the problem your Institute will be addressing is of prime importance to me. We have been obliged to introduce so many new precautions in space construction work that our rate of progress on the new arcologies has become pathetic.”

  He stood motionless in front of her, quietly waiting.

  “It’s certainly not social.” Judith cleared her throat again. “My staff are asking certain questions. I want to know the answers as much as they do. For example, you have a problem with narcolepsy. We are well qualified to tackle it.”

  And if I’m right, I may have already solved it. Go carefully now, that’s not the main point at issue.

  “But why not employ us simply as your consultants?” she went on. “Why go to the trouble and expense of hiring an entire Institute, at great cost — “ “At negligible cost, compared with a hundred other enterprises I have up here. You will find me generous with money and other resources. ‘Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn.’ “

  “All right, even without considering the cost. Why create an Institute, when you want to solve a single problem?”

  He was gently nodding. “Dr. Niles, you are logical. But permit me to suggest that you see this with the wrong perspective. The problem is too important to me to use you as consultants. I need a dedicated attention. If you were to remain on Earth, with your present responsibilities to the United Nations, how much of your time would be devoted to my problem? How much of Dr. Bloom’s time, or Dr. Cameron’s time, or Dr. de Vries’ time? Ten percent? Or twenty percent? — but not one hundred and twenty.”

  “So why not hire a team for the specific problem? The salaries that you offer would attract many of my staff.”

  “And you yourself?” He gave a curious little smile as she looked pensive. “I thought not. Yet I am told that if anyone will solve it, it will be Judith Niles.”

  Judith felt the hair on her arms and shoulders tingle into goosebumps. Salter Wherry was willing to move a multimillion dollar operation into space and make a long-term commitment, merely to ensure her own availability. Careful, said the inner voice. Remember, flattery is a tool that never fails.

  Did he suspect that she would be obliged to move some of the experiments into space, if her ideas on the processes of consciousness were correct? And if she knew already what was causing the narcolepsy problem in Salter Wherry’s space construction crews, then from his point of view the move of the Institute would be unnecessary. She would be manipulating the master manipulator. “You appear doubtful,” he went on. “Let me offer an additional argument. I know already of your personal indifference to money, and I will not offer it. But what about freedom to experiment?”

  He moved over to the desk and picked up one of the two buff folders. His hand was thin, with long, bony fingers. Judith watched warily as he flipped open the folder and held it out toward her.

  “In the past year, there have been seven requests to the U.N. from Dr. Judith Niles to conduct experiments on sleep research, using twelve new drugs that affect metabolic rate. The experiments would be done using human subjects — “ “ — all volunteers, as the applications made clear.”

  “I know. But all rejected. Perhaps because three years ago, you led an experiment that ended disastrously. The recorded statements are quite clear. Using a combination of Tryptophil and a technique of EEG reinforcement and feedback, you succeeded in keeping three volunteers awake, alert, and apparently healthy for more than thirty days. But then there were complications. First there was atrophy of emotional responses, then atrophy of intellect. To quote one critical review of the study, ‘Dr. Niles has succeeded not in abolishing the need for sleep, but only in inducing Alzheimer’s disease. We do not need more senile dementia.’ “

  “Damn it, if you know that much, you probably know who wrote that review. It was Dickson, whose application for identical research — under worse control conditions — was turned down in favor of mine.”

  “Indeed I know it.” Salter Wherry smiled again. “My point is not to goad you. It is to ask you how long it will be, for whatever reason, before you are allowed to resume experiments with human subjects — even, as you say, with eager volunteers.”

  Judith clenched her hands together hard. Her face was impassive. Just how much did he know? He was at the very brink of the new research.

  “It could be years before such experiments are permitted,” she said at last. “Or it could be forever. Recall that delay is the deadliest form of denial.” He was pressing hard, dominating the meeting, and they both knew it. “And recall Ecclesiastes, that to every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under Heaven. Your time is now, your purpose here on this station. You should seize the opportunity. On PSS-One you will not be bound by the rules that crippled your institute on Earth. Here, you will create the rules.” Judith looked up at him. She had regained her self-control.

  “You make all the rules here.”

  Salter Wherry smiled, and for a second the sensuous mouth of the younger man reappeared. “You are misinformed. Let us admit there are certain rules that I insist on. All the rest are negotiable. Tell me what experiments you wish to conduct. I will be amazed if I do not agree to all of them. In writing. If this is the case, will you come here?”

  He finally came to sit in a chair opposite.

  “Perhaps,” she said. “Your offer is more than generous.”

  “And if we are realistic, we will agree that things are not going well down on Earth? Very well. I will not press you. But I have one more question. You told Hans Gibbs that this meeting was an absolute essential: if there were no face-to-face encounter, there would be no agreement. Most unusual. He told me your reason, that your own credibility with the people who work for you would be diminished if you did not see me. But you and I know that is nonsensical. Your prestige and reputation carry enough weight with your staff to make a meeting with me neither necessary nor relevant. So. Why did you want to meet me?” Judith paused for a long time before she replied. Her next remark might anger Salter Wherry to the point where all his interest in relocating the Institute might vanish. But she needed to gain some psychological advantage. “I was told that you have certain personal tastes and preferences. That you would never, under any circumstances, deal directly with a woman. And that you had also become hopelessly reclusive. Your sexual habits are not my business, but I could not work for anyone with whom personal contact was denied. I could work with you only if we can meet to discuss problems.”

  “Because you need my inputs?” he said at last. “Let us be realistic. In your work, my contribution would be no more than noise and distraction.” “That is not the point. My relationships demand a certain logic, independent of gender and personality. Otherwise they become unworkable.”

  He was smiling again. “And you pretend there is logic in your present dealings with the impenetrable U.N. bureaucracy? It is better for your case if I do not pursue that.”

  He stood up. “You have my word. If you come here, you will have access to me. But as you grow older you will learn that logic is a luxury we must sometimes forego. Most of the human race struggles along without it. You are undeniably a woman — let me destroy anot
her rumor by saying that I find you to be an attractive woman. I am certainly meeting with you, face to face. So much for idle speculation. When you return to Earth, perhaps you will spread the word that many of the ‘known facts’ about me are simple invention. Though I know it will make no difference to the public’s perceptions.”

  He had paused in front of her, his manner clearly indicating that the meeting was over. Judith remained seated.

  “You asked me one last question,” she said. “Why did I insist on this meeting? I have given you an answer. Now I think I have the right to one more question, too.”

  He nodded. “That is fair.”

  “Why did you agree to see me? According to Hans Gibbs, you would certainly refuse. I believe that the narcolepsy problem is important to you — but is it that important? I think not.”

  Salter Wherry stooped a little, so that the lined face was directly in front of Judith’s. He looked very old, and very tired. She could sense the sadness in his eyes, far down beneath the fire and iron. When he at last smiled, those eyes looked dreamy.

  “You are an extraordinary person. Few people see a second level of purpose, except for themselves and their own objectives. I refuse to lie to you, and I feel sure that your own motives sit deeper than we have reached in this meeting. So you should believe me when I say this: Today, you and your staff would find my other motives difficult to accept. Therefore, I will not offer them. But someday you will know my reasons.”

  He paused for a long moment, then added softly: “And now that I have met you, I think that you will approve of them.”