The Spheres of Heaven Read online

  "Being bought is much worse the first time it happens. But that's not my point. My point is, Indigo bought you, too."

  "Never. I'm a free man."

  "Then what are you doing, working while he's sleeping? What are you doing here at all, lost in the Geyser Swirl?"

  Bony had a good answer to the last question, but he was not willing to give it. He stood up. "Come on. Let's go and work on the airlock while he's still asleep."

  "You're trying to change the subject." Liddy followed him down the ladder. "Let me explain something to you. When you're born rich, like Friday Indigo, you don't do things. You buy things. And those things include more than material objects. You buy people. You buy services. You buy reassurance. Friday Indigo is using his money now to buy peace of mind. He bought your services, so he expects you to save the ship and him and find a way home. Why shouldn't he sleep easy?"

  "He's crazy." Bony was in the airlock, moving to one side of the small compartment so that Liddy could join him. There was barely space for two people. "I don't even know if we can get outside this ship."

  "Maybe he is crazy. But you know what?" Liddy stopped right in front of him, their faces six inches apart and eye to eye. "I agree with him. I expect you to save me, too."

  Bony felt a curious heat and pressure in his belly, as though the inside was being cooked in a microwave oven at high setting. He stepped hurriedly backward, and a faucet for the delivery of air to the lock poked him hard in the small of his back. He exclaimed in pain.

  Liddy laughed. "What are you doing? I'm not infectious."

  "If Indigo comes down here, and sees us together like this . . ."

  "Like what? You haven't touched me. And he was the one who told me to go with you and try to be useful for a change."

  "He's an absolute bastard."

  "Everything's relative. I saw a lot worse when I was growing up."

  "Where was that?" Bony turned away, partly to study the hatch design and partly to escape Liddy's eyes. "I know you said you lived down on Earth."

  "I did, but I'm not sure it would mean anything to you. Did you ever hear of a place called the Shambles?"

  Bony couldn't help staring at her. "No."

  "Yes, you did." She cocked her head to one side. "Your face gives you away. Why won't you tell me the truth?"

  "I've heard bad things about the Shambles. It's supposed to be the worst of the Terran basement warrens."

  "It's like most places, some parts better than others. I was lucky. I was educated at one of the better schools."

  "Which one was that?" Bony knew more about the Shambles than he was willing to admit, and schools were not what came first to mind.

  "The Leah Rainbow Academy for the Daughters of Gentlefolk."

  "My God." It didn't need his face to give him away this time, the words popped right out.

  "Uh-oh." Liddy grimaced. "You've heard of that, too. Then I've said too much. I'm sorry."

  "It's not your fault."

  "I had no idea, not one in a million off-Earthers has heard of it."

  "I have, because—" Bony was on the point of telling the truth, but he caught himself just in time "—because I've read a lot about Earth."

  "That's even more peculiar. I didn't think anybody wrote about the Academy. Customers normally came through a personal recommendation."

  "How did you come to be living there? At the Leah Rainbow Academy, I mean." Bony sank down on his knees, studying the geometry of the lock. The internal air pressure was the same as in the rest of the ship, one standard atmosphere. The hatch was facing almost directly downward. When they closed the inner hatch, sealing themselves off from the ship, and opened the outer hatch just a crack, one of two things would happen. If the outside water pressure was less than the internal air pressure, some air would bubble out. If the outside pressure was greater, water would enter until the pressures equalized.

  Were there any other possibilities? Well, there was always the improbable case where the inside and outside pressures were exactly equal, but chances were strongly against that. And there was the case where Bony had forgotten to take account of some crucial variable, and as the hatch was cracked open something totally unforeseen happened.

  He was willing to take that risk. But he didn't see why Liddy should be exposed to it, too. He stood up, suddenly aware that he had asked her a question whose answer he was very much interested in hearing; but he had no idea of how she had replied.

  "I'm sorry. You were saying?"

  "I wasn't. I can tell when somebody isn't listening." Liddy sounded more amused than annoyed. "I thought I was here to help? All I've done so far is stand around."

  "You can help right now. You go back in the ship and stand next to the inner hatch. I'm going to stay here, close the inner hatch, and then open the outer one."

  "Shouldn't you put a suit on? Suppose the fizziness in the water is something poisonous?"

  "The tests say that's it's just oxygen, and lots of it. But I'm going to wear a suit anyway. And so are you."

  "Why do I need a suit, if I'm going to stay in the ship?"

  "In case you have to do a rescue operation. We will be in radio communication, and I will make sure I keep talking. If I stop, or if I start to sound or act peculiar, don't wait. Close the outer hatch most of the way—I'll show you how to do it from inside the ship—then pump air from the ship into the lock until the water is driven out. You may find there's still a little bit that won't leave, because the hatch isn't exactly horizontal. Don't worry about that. Close the outer hatch completely when it's as water-free as it will go. Then open the inner hatch, go into the lock in your suit, and drag me into the ship. Seal the inner hatch again. Until all that is done, don't waste a moment finding out what happened to me. Did you follow all that, and remember it?"

  "Yes." Calm, quiet, and trusting. That made Bony feel good.

  "Let's do it, then. Quickly, Liddy, so I don't have time to think of anything that might go wrong."

  "Nothing will. I told you, you're going to save us all." Liddy didn't seem capable of a graceless movement. She stripped off her outer clothes and slipped into the suit as though it was something she did every day. Bony, aware that his extra pounds showed a lot more when he was undressed, did the same thing slowly and awkwardly.

  Then he was standing in the lock, and Liddy was in the ship. The inner hatch, like the outer one, had a small, round port in it about six inches across. Bony closed the hatch and peered through. He could see Liddy, less than two feet away but with three layers of toughened transparent plastic between them. She raised her eyebrows at him in dumb show, then said over the radio, "All right?"

  Bony nodded. "Everything is fine." He had promised to talk to her nonstop, but that might be more demanding than it sounded. What was there to say? He glanced down at the outer hatch, right beneath his feet. He had to be careful to avoid standing on it as the plate slid to one side to admit whatever it was that lay outside the Mood Indigo, but that was the only thing he had to do; the only thing he could do. When the hatch opened, the rest of it would be out of his hands.

  Bony glanced again at the inner hatch. Liddy was still there. She pursed her lips in a kiss and said, "Good luck!"

  Bony gave the signal and the outer hatch began to slide open. He watched closely, then said, "External liquid pressure seems to be more than pressure in the ship, but not much more. I think it won't rise much farther than my knees. So far, things are just the way I expected. When the hatch is fully open, if everything still seems all right I may try a short trip outside."

  "That wasn't on your original plan." Liddy sounded alarmed.

  "I know, but we can't stay inside the ship forever. We'll have to go outside sometime."

  "Don't take chances, Bony."

  "I won't." No one had ever worried on Bony's behalf before. He decided that he liked it—even if Liddy's concern was partly for herself. I expect you to save me, too. That was nice. Let's hope he could justify her confidence. "The ou
ter hatch is fully open now. The liquid level has stopped rising."

  All he had to do was take a step forward, and he would sink down. In another five seconds he could be standing on the seabed of—what?

  This was a world with no name. Bony was nowhere, about to take a step into nothingness. Think of a name. Swirlworld. Not precise enough. Heavy-water-world. That was ugly. The world of the deuteron? That would be Deuteronomy—but at the moment he was more interested in Exodus.

  "Are you all right?" said Liddy's anxious voice. "You've stopped talking."

  "Sorry. Just playing around with stupid names for this place. Everything still looks good, so I'm going to take a look outside. Here goes."

  Bony took a deep breath, added, "I hereby name this planet—Limbo," and stepped into the pale green unknown beyond the open hatch.

  6: RECRUITING ON MARS

  Ten days. Ten days, to find and recruit five people.

  That was only one every two days. It didn't sound bad—until you realized that when last heard from the men and women you needed had been scattered all over the solar system, everywhere from the sun-skimming Hades of the Vulcan Nexus all the way to the Oort Harvester, rolling along in its multimillennial orbit half a lightyear from Sol.

  So you might as well tackle an "easy" one first. Chan cleared the final Link exit point, sited conveniently on an island close to the geometrical center of Marslake, and stood for a couple of minutes adjusting to the changed air and gravity. He reflected that before the Link system, even this undemanding destination would have been a challenge. During the first centuries of space exploration, travel times and access to moons or planets were decided less by distance than by relative orbital velocities and the strength of gravity wells. Earth was a major challenge. The old space traveller's complaint, "If you wanted to explore the Universe, you wouldn't start from here," had been coined for Earth. Venus, almost as massive, was little better. While as for Jupiter, you might fly down into the roiling clouds and eternal hurricane winds, but it would be a one-way trip. The planet's vast gravitational pull would prevent you ever getting out.

  Even now, fast journeys around the solar system or beyond it were not cheap. The Link would never be cheap. The power for a single trip between points of widely different gravity potential could eat up the savings of a lifetime. Linkage of materials from the Oort Cloud to the Inner System consumed the full energy of three kernels aboard the Oort Harvester. It was a measure of the importance of Chan's mission to the Geyser Swirl that no one had mentioned a budget when he said he needed to travel by Link in order to recruit.

  Actually, he needed a good deal more than a budget. He needed an argument powerful enough to convince some of humanity's most talented but skeptical individuals that they would like to be on board the Hero's Return when it linked out to the Swirl.

  What was the local time of day? Chan looked toward the Sun. Much of what you saw at Marslake was misleading. That blue sky above his head was an illusion, an artefact of the same anosmotic thermal field that held a hundred-meter layer of breathable air like a comfort blanket over the whole of Marslake and for forty kilometers beyond. That air was at a comfortable twenty degrees Celsius, while two hundred meters above Chan's head the near-vacuum hovered at a hundred below zero. The island on which he stood was real Mars soil, but it had been mined from ancient sedimentary layers far beneath the surface, where hid the once-and-future Martian life-forms. The serene blue lake itself was fifty kilometers across and listed as one of the Seven Wonders of the Solar System (low on the list, to be sure), but it was nowhere more than ten meters deep, and it held only a thousandth of the water of even the smallest of Earth's Great Lakes.

  However, that bright Sun was no illusion. It stood high in the sky, as high as it would ever get at Mars latitude thirty degrees. That meant it was close to noon, much too early for Danny Casement to be in his office and fully awake. Dapper Dan, unless he had changed beyond recognition, put most nocturnal animals to shame.

  Even a man in a hurry had to eat, and now was as good a time as any. Chan decided to have a meal before he went the rest of the way to Danny's office. He left Center Island and walked out along one of the many causeways that led in the right direction. The surface of Marslake was dotted with thousands of small islands, laid out on a regular grid and connected by roads wide enough for foot traffic or small wheeled vehicles.

  The walking people were few and far between, and the only cars that Chan saw were slow and creaking. They, like the outside cafe that he came to at the end of the causeway, had seen better days. The cafe, Inn Paradise, could not even afford robot servers. Chan, the only customer, ordered his simple meal of bread and fruit jellies from a human. While he ate—Chan was not picky, but the food was dreadful—he heard the familiar tale of woe from the owner/waiter.

  Marslake had been poised to take off as the solar system's greatest tourist attraction, ready to host multitudes of humans and Pipe-Rillas and Tinkers. Even the taciturn and mysterious Angels possessed plenty of negotiable materials, and they would be welcomed.

  The quarantine had ended everything. Aliens had ceased to arrive. Humans from all around the solar system were affected by the general economic collapse and could not afford to come. And now . . . The owner waved his hand gloomily around. Old holo-images, with their advertisement of wondrous coming attractions, hung dim and translucent in the air, predictors of a false future that would never be. The only cheerful thing in sight was the Sun, which apparently knew no better.

  "Where are you from?" The owner ended his mournful discourse and asked his first question as he gave Chan the credit slip.

  "Earth."

  "Ah. You're lucky. Not like here, I bet."

  "No." Chan touched the payer ID unit and rose to leave. "Everything there is much, much worse."

  Except, possibly, the food and waiters and restaurant owners. But Chan was already on the way out and he did not bother to say it.

  He was able to pick out Danny's place long before he reached it. Unlike most other businesses scattered over the surface islands of Marslake, Danny felt a need for actual walls and a ceiling. Most enterprises found those to be unnecessary. With no wind and no weather, why waste time on structures? Only an occasional need for privacy demanded the use of enclosed space, and space for that could easily be rented.

  Chan halted when he was still a couple of hundred meters away. He had come prepared. Dag Korin had made the portable Remote Observer available to Chan without question. Apparently the General found it quite natural that Chan would wish to spy on his own friends, which was something to bear in mind on the trip to the Geyser Swirl. Chan didn't think of the use of the R/O as spying or intrusive in this case. It was a way to save everyone's time if things were obviously not going to work out.

  He took the R/O unit from his pocket and rested it on a railing at the side of the causeway. He adjusted the focus and inserted the tiny earphones. If this didn't produce the right result he would gain a working day but lose a team member.

  Visual information was a more demanding technical problem than aural. The sound from inside a building was usually sharp and clear, while the image tended to be variable and slightly grainy. Chan also had the feeling that today the colors were a little off. It didn't matter. That, surely, was Danny Casement with his back to the viewing unit.

  You could pick Danny out from his clothes alone. Today he was dressed, as in the old days, in a favorite combination of a high-necked shirt with fine green-and-white check and an ultraconservative business suit with a herringbone pattern of mixed brown and gray. As he turned, Chan made a confirmation. The R/O unit showed a small, neatly built man, with the brown face, wizened features, and wide mouth of a trustworthy ape. It was Danny all right, debonair as ever. He had a tall, elegant woman in his office with him, and he was shaking his head at her with a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger expression on his face.

  "It's a bad time to speculate?" Chan turned up the volume a fraction. "My dear, if your ex-
husband says that, I must say I agree with Andrew."

  "Arthur." The woman, hair piled high on top of her head, towered over Danny Casement.

  "With Arthur. It's always a bad time to speculate. What we are talking of here isn't speculation. It's investment."

  "But Hyperion is an awful long way from Mars."

  "And what does distance have to do with the value of an investment? We are talking of a proven resource that has already made thousands—tens of thousands—of people rich. Leonora, if distance is the only problem, I will personally take you there so you can see for yourself. Just the two of us." He touched her arm and quickly pulled back, as though he had acted on impulse.

  The woman gave him a nervous smile. "That would be lovely. But Arthur says that the Yang diamond was completely worked out, years and years ago."

  "As I already mentioned, this is not the original Yang diamond. It is a completely new formation, created by a different impact, which also happens to be on Hyperion. However, if your husband—"

  "Not my husband. My ex-husband."

  "My apologies. Your ex-husband. If Arthur is so reliable a source of information—"

  "He's a jerk and a louse."

  "Then perhaps his information—"

  "But he's a smart louse. That's how he made so much money—not that he was willing to give me much. I can't afford to throw what I have away."

  "Nor would I ask you to, or ever want you to." Danny reached out, and this time allowed his hand to stroke Leonora's forearm and remain there. "The final purchase price will be three hundred thousand, but I am certainly not proposing that you pay anything like that until we are absolutely sure that the return will be many times your investment. All that is necessary at the moment is that you make a small down payment, in order that your claim can be certified and your rights of ownership confirmed."

  "How much?"

  "Just twenty-five thousand. After that you will have a year of steady income from the mine before you need to pay out another penny."

  "I don't know. I'd like to." Leonora placed her hand on top of Danny's. "But Mr. Casement—"