Yet she heard herself ask, “Can I see the record of your examination?”

Yañez said, “It’s a lot of medical jargon. Plus photos of the body.”

“I don’t have any pictures of Don Diego,” Holly realized aloud. “No mementoes at all.”

“The images of a dead man are rather grisly.”

“I don’t care. I’d like to see them.”

The doctor sighed heavily. “Very well. I’ll give you the access code and you can call up the complete record at your convenience.”

“Thank you,” said Holly.

“De nada,”replied Yañez automatically.

Eberly could barely control his fury. He stood behind the desk in his apartment, red-faced, almost snarling at Vyborg and Kananga.

“Murder!” Eberly raged. “You couldn’t wait for me to remove the old man, so you went ahead and murdered him.”

“No one knows about it,” Vyborg said, whispered actually. “He’s been buried and forgotten.”

“Iknow about it!” Eberly snapped. “It’s my duty to report this crime to Wilmot. What will you do if I try to do so? Murder me, too?”

Kananga said, “No, never.”

“Murderers. My closest friends and supporters are a pair of murderers.”

“He wasn’t a Believer,” Vyborg said. “Just a lapsed Catholic.”

“And that excuses murder?”

Kananga said, “I thought it was your desire to get rid of the old man. That’s what Sammi told me.”

“You agreed that he was to be removed,” Vyborg pleaded. “I thought that—”

“You thought! You decided to act on your own, without consulting me. Without asking how your actions might impact on my master plan. I don’t want you to think! I want you to follow my orders! To obey!”

“Yes, we understand,” said Vyborg, “but—”

“No buts!” Eberly shouted. “Either you are part of my team or you are not. There is no third possibility. Either you follow my orders explicitly or you leave me once and for all.”

Kananga glanced down at Vyborg as Eberly thought, I don’t have to tell them that if they leave me I will immediately report them to Wilmot. They understand that well enough.

“Well?” he demanded. “Make your choice.”

“I will stay with you, of course,” Vyborg said. “I’m sorry that I acted so… precipitously.”

“And you, Colonel?”

It was obviously harder for Kananga to kowtow, but he visibly swallowed once, then said quietly, “I am at your service, sir, now and forever.”

Eberly allowed himself a small smile. “Very well then. The incident is forgotten. Vyborg, I want you to be patient enough to allow me to remove Berkowitz in my own way.”

“I will.”

“Once that is accomplished, you will take over total control of the Communications Department.” Turning to Kananga, he said, “And you, my dear Colonel, will be my chief of security once we form the new government.”

Kananga began to reply, but Eberly added, “Providing, of course, that you follow my orders and don’t go striking off on your own.”

Kananga bit back a reply and nodded dumbly.

Eberly dismissed them and they walked glumly to the door and left his apartment. Then he sank back into his chair, his mind — and his insides — churning. It’s not so bad, he thought. Everyone accepts the old man’s death as an accident. And I have something to hold over Vyborg and Kananga, something to tie them more tightly to me. Total loyalty, based on fear. He rubbed at the ache in his stomach. And Morgenthau has me the same way. I’m riding on a tiger, on a team of tigers, and the only way to keep from being eaten alive is to get them what they want.

He leaned back in the desk chair and tried to will the pain in his innards to go away. How to get rid of Berkowitz? he asked himself. Without another murder, preferably.

Who can I talk to? Holly asked herself, over and over. And the answer always came back: Malcolm. Talk to Malcolm about this.

But I can’t see Malcolm without Morgenthau getting in the way. She guards my access to him like a bulldog. Holly had sent several phone messages to Eberly, asking for a private chat, only to have Morgenthau inform her that Eberly was too busy to talk to her at the moment.

“Anything you want to discuss with Eberly you can tell to me,” Morgenthau said.

“It’s… uh, personal,” Holly temporized.

A flash of displeasure glinted in Morgenthau’s eyes, quickly replaced by a sly look, almost a leer. “My dear, he’s much too busy for personal entanglements. And much too important to allow himself to be distracted.”

“But I’m not—”

“Perhaps after the new government is set up, perhaps then he’ll have some time for a personal life. But not until then.”

Holly said numbly, “Kay. I click.”

“Now then,” Morgenthau said briskly, “how are the contests coming along? When do we move to phase two?”

Surprised that Morgenthau hadn’t asked about Cardenas’s dossier, pleased that her brief and incomplete addition to Cardenas’s file apparently satisfied her boss, Holly began to explain the progress she’d made on the contests for naming the habitat’s features.

Professor Wilmot studied the graphs hovering before his eyes.

“Astounding,” he muttered. “Absolutely astounding.”

Despite all the efforts he and his staff had put in to keep the habitat under the protocol that had been designed before they left Earth, the people were breaking away from it more and more. The changes were minor, he saw, most of them merely cosmetic. Some of the women had taken to adorning their clothes with homemade patches and press-on insignias, many of them of a blatantly sexual nature; it was a fad that seemed to be growing in popularity, despite Eberly’s suggested dress code. A few of the men were following suit. Wilmot grunted: Youth will be served, even if some of the “youths” are the calendar age of grandparents.

Then there was this contest business, naming every building and bush in the habitat. Incredible how much time and energy everyone seemed to be spending on it. There were reports of scuffles and even actual fistfights in the cafeteria over the naming contests. Perhaps I should cut off their liquor supplies, Wilmot mused. Then he shook his head. They’d simply cook up their own in the labs, one way or another.

At least the use of narcotics seems to be low, unless the hospital staff isn’t reporting drug abuse. Perhaps they’re the worst offenders. He sighed. As long as it doesn’t interfere with their work there’s no sense trying to sniff out every recreational drug these people cook up.

There were personnel changes, Wilmot observed. People shifted from one job to another, even moved from one department to another. This Eberly chap in human resources is approving far too many changes, Wilmot thought. But he decided against interfering. Let the experiment play itself out. Don’t meddle with it. The lab rats are performing some interesting tricks. I wonder what they’ll do once we reach Saturn.

Then a new question formed in his mind. I wonder what they think in Atlanta about all this. Should I even report these details to them? He nodded to himself. I’ll have to. I’m certain they’re getting reports from other sources. For the kind of money they’ve invested, the New Morality must have seeded this habitat with plenty of snoops.