“Manpower, pure and simple,” said Cardenas. “I’m all alone in the lab. I’ve tried to recruit assistants, but none of the younger scientific staff will come anywhere near nanotech.”
Glancing at Holly, Eberly asked, “Hasn’t the Human Resources Department been able to help?”
Cardenas looked surprised at the thought. “I’ve asked Urbain,” she said. “What I need is a couple of lab assistants. Youngsters who have basic scientific training. But the scientists run in the opposite direction when I ask them for help.”
“I see,” Eberly murmured.
Smiling, Cardenas said, “Back when I was on Earth, in the Stone Age, the professors ran their labs with grad students. Slave labor, cheap and plentiful.”
Eberly steepled his fingers. “We don’t have many grad students among us, or even undergraduates, I’m afraid. And everyone has a job slot; that was a requirement for being accepted aboard the habitat.”
“We don’t have any unemployed students,” Holly said.
“I figured that out right away,” said Cardenas. “But I thought I’d be able to talk a couple of the younger people on Urbain’s staff to come over and help me.”
“He won’t allow them to,” Eberly guessed.
Cardenas’s expression hardened. “He won’t let me talk to them anymore. And he’s got them frightened of even meeting me socially. I’m being frozen out.”
Eberly turned to Holly and placed a hand on her wrist. “Holly, we’ve got to do something to correct this.”
She glanced at Gaeta before replying, “If that’s what you want, Malcolm.”
He looked back at Cardenas as he answered, “That’s what I want.”
Dinner ended and the four of them went outside into the twilight atmosphere. Holly’s heart was thumping. What happens now?
Eberly said, “Holly, why don’t we go up to your office and see what we can do to help Dr. Cardenas?”
She nodded. “If I knew what skills you need, Kris, I could pull up a list of possible candidates for you.”
Cardenas said, “I’ll shoot the requirements to you as soon as I get home.”
Gaeta said, “I’ll walk you home, Kris. It’s on my way.”
Holly stood frozen to the spot as Gaeta and Cardenas said goodbye and started along the path that led to her quarters. Eberly had to touch her shoulder to break the spell.
“We have work to do, Holly,” he told her.
But she kept staring at Cardenas and Gaeta, walking side by side down the dimly lit path. Cardenas turned and looked over her shoulder at Holly, as if to say, Don’t worry, nothing’s going to happen. At least, Holly hoped that’s what she was signifying.
She’s my friend, Holly told herself. She knows Manny and I have made out together. She wouldn’t do anything with him. It was his idea to walk her home. She won’t let him do anything.
Still, Eberly had to tell her again, “Holly, come on. We have work to do.”
THE SECOND RALLY
Eberly prided himself on never making the same mistake twice. The first public speech he’d given, to announce the naming contests, had been good enough, as far as it went, but a miserable failure in the eyes of Morgenthau and Vyborg. The crowd at the cafeteria had been sparse, and despite their rousing response to his oratory they made it clear that they considered the whole affair as nothing better than a learning experience, at best.
He intended to profit from that.
With Phase One of the naming campaign finished, and categories for each type of feature in the habitat settled by the first round of voting, Eberly carefully prepared for his second public appearance.
It’s impossible to please everyone, he realized, but it is possible to split people up into small, distinct groups and then find out what each group desires and promise it to them. Divide and conquer: a concept as old as civilization, probably older. Eberly learned how to use it. He was pleased, almost surprised, at how easy it was to use the natural antipathy between the stuntman and Urbain’s scientific staff.
For weeks he had Vyborg build up the stuntman’s presence in the habitat with vids and news releases that showed how heroic, how exciting Gaeta was: the conqueror of Mt. Olympus on Mars, the man who trekked across Mare Imbrium on the Moon. Vyborg cleverly played up the scientific information that Gaeta had harvested during each of his feats. Now he wanted to be the first human being to set foot on the murky, forbidding surface of Titan. Will the scientists allow him to do it? Humans will land on Titan someday, sooner or later. Why not allow this intrepid hero to take the risks he is so willing to endure? At Eberly’s insistence, no mention was made of Dr. Cardenas and her effort to create nanobugs to attack the contamination problem. “There will be no publicity about nanotechnology,” he decided.
Kananga’s people helped to divide the general populace. It was pathetically simple to set individuals against one another. Eberly himself hit on the idea of using vids from Earthside sporting events to create organized fan clubs, clannish factions who placed bets on “their” teams and watched each game in boozy uproarious exuberance. When Wilmot and his administrators tried to control the distribution of alcoholic drinks, even beer, the fans spontaneously began meeting in private apartments. A lively commerce in home brew began, and it wasn’t unusual for fights to break out when one fan club clashed with another.
Morgenthau saw to it that Eberly was apprised of each group’s special interests. The machinists complained that their salary level was kept artificially lower than that of the lab technicians. One group of farmers wanted to expand their acreage and plant tropical fruits that Wilmot’s administrators had disallowed because they would require more water and an extensive hothouse to create a warmer, wetter environment than the rest of the habitat. A bitter rivalry was simmering between the fans of two soccer teams that were heading for the World Cup back on Earth. The brawls between them were getting so serious that even Kananga suggested they be toned down.
Through all this, Holly’s work was an invaluable asset to Eberly. She ran the Human Resources Department and faithfully brought to Eberly the statistics he needed to determine all the inner group dynamics. She was earnest, honest, and had no idea that the fractures within the habitat’s social structure were being eagerly fomented by Eberly’s clique.
“We need to do something to bring people together again,” she told Eberly, time and again. “We need some way of unifying everybody.”
Meanwhile, Wilmot watched the growing disharmony with a mixture of fascination and dread. The carefully knit society that had been created for this habitat was unraveling, coming apart at the seams. People were splitting up into tribes, no less. Clans, even. As an anthropologist he was enthralled by their behavior. As the leader of the expedition, however, he feared that the growing chaos would lead to mayhem, perhaps even murder. Yet he resisted the urge to interfere or clamp down with new regulations and enforcements. Let the experiment continue, he told himself. Let them play out their little games. The end result will be more important than any individual’s life; in the final analysis it could be more important than the success or failure of this mission.
Ultimately, Holly urged Eberly, “You’ve got to do something, Malcolm! You’re the only one who has the vision to bring everybody together again.”
He allowed Morgenthau to back Holly’s increasingly insistent pleading with similar suggestions of her own. At last he told them to organize a rally.
“I’ll speak to them,” he said. “I’ll do my best.”
Holly worked sixteen and eighteen hours a day to organize a rally that would bring out everyone in the habitat. She set it up in the open park along the lake outside Village A. She saw to it that the cafeterias and restaurants closed down at 18:00 hours that afternoon; no one was going to have dinner out until after Eberly’s speech was finished.