Jan de Vries was waiting in her office, calmly reading a file marked Confidential — Director Only. He looked up as she came in.
“How is he?”
“Recovered. He was out several minutes, and he remembers nothing of the whole episode. So far as Wolfgang is concerned, he didn’t even begin the tests with the suit on video.” Judith Niles did not sit down, but instead paced back and forth in front of the chair where Jan de Vries was sitting. “No aftereffects now, and full alertness.”
“So your hypothesis is correct. You predicted what would happen, and the subject performed exactly as required.” De Vries slapped the file closed. “Everything can now proceed precisely as you planned. We will move the Institute to orbit, spend a month or two in supposed problem analysis, and then hand Salter Wherry the solution to his major problem; after which we will be in a position to pursue our own researches, as the Institute’s new contract explicitly permits. Wonderful. The manipulation is complete, exactly as designed.” His mouth twisted in a grimace. “So, my dear, where is the jubilation? You do not have the air of one whose plans approach fruition.”
“I’m not satisfied — not at all.” Judith Niles paused, looking quizzically down at the diminutive figure of de Vries in the depths of the big armchair. “Listen to this sequence, then tell me what you think. Item one: a year ago there was a slight change in the type of space suit worn in Salter Station for outside construction work. The new one uses a slightly different set of rings and seals in the neck portion.
“Item two.” She checked off on the fingers of her right hand. “For some positions of the head, the new suit causes increased pressure on the wearer’s carotid arteries.”
“Slight pressure?”
“Not that slight — big enough for the wearer to notice. Item three: increased pressure within the carotid arteries can cause momentary blackouts. “Item four: when a suit is on normal visual operation, the blackout is momentary, too brief to be noticed. But when the suit is on remote and using TV cameras instead of faceplate viewing, the scanning rates on the TV give a feedback to the brain that reinforces the blackout. Result: narcolepsy. The wearer will not break out of the cycle unless there is some external interruption. How does that sound to you?”
De Vries sat silent for a few moments, then nodded. “Plausible — more than plausible, almost certainly correct.”
“All right. I agree. So here’s item five.” She closed her fist. “All of this has been known for forty years. The increased pressure in the carotids is a classical cause of narcolepsy. The brain wave reinforcement is a standard positive feedback mechanism. What does all that say to you?”
De Vries leaned far back, gazing up at the ceiling. He shook his head. “Judith, put in those terms I see where you are heading — but I must admit that it would not have occurred to me if you had not waved it in front of my nose.” Judith Niles regarded him grimly. “Be specific, Jan. What’s wrong with it?” “It’s too simple. When you set the explanation out on a plate, as you just did, it’s clear that we should not be needed to solve the problem. Remember, you told me you thought you knew the answer when you first looked at the suits and the case histories. All the medics on Salter Station had to do was a minimal amount of background reading, and a few well-designed experiments. At the very least they would have noticed the correlation between the new suits and the onset of the problem.”
“Exactly. So why didn’t they?” Judith Niles stopped her pacing and stood in front of de Vries. “Even if they didn’t catch on as fast as we would here at the Institute, they should have deduced it after a while. Jan, I’m very worried. We have to go up to Salter Station. Our own experiments require it, and anyway I’ve burned too many bridges here in the past few days to stop now. But I feel that things are out of control.”
She suddenly lifted her left hand and began to rub gently at her eye, her forehead wrinkled.
Jan de Vries looked concerned. “What’s wrong, Judith? Headache?”
She shook her head. “Not any sort I’ve ever had before. But I’m getting blurring from this eye — very off-putting. Not quite seeing double, but not far from that. Odd feeling.”
De Vries frowned. “Don’t take chances. Even if it is no more than the strain of too much work, let a specialist take a look at it.” De Vries did not say it, but he was astonished. Never since he had known her had Judith Niles shown any sign of strain and fatigue, no matter what pressures she had worked under, no matter how she forced herself along.
“I’ll be all right,” she said. “Sorry, Jan, what were you saying?” “I agree with you that things may be out of control.” The little man wriggled forward in the armchair so that he could stand up. “And let me give you, as Salter Wherry quoted in his speech on the space colonies, ‘naught for your comfort.’ I’ve been doing the follow-up work you asked for on Salter Wherry. Did you know that most of his expenditures are not on development of the arcologies at all? They go into two other areas: efficient, spaceborne fusion drives, and robots. He is rumored to be many years ahead of anyone else in those areas. I believe it. But what do our projects have to do with either of those research endeavors? If you can see the connection, I beg enlightenment. And then there is the question of the breadth of Wherry’s influence, and his sources of wealth. Do you remember my telling you that insurance rates for Station personnel have gone up greatly in the past year?”
“Yes. Because of the increased accident rate.”
“So we had assumed. But this afternoon I obtained and examined the financial statements of Global Insurance — the organization which issues the policies for Salter Station personnel. It turns out that a single individual owns more than eighty percent of the stock of Global, and exercises complete control over corporate actions.” De Vries smiled grimly. “You are permitted one guess as to the identity of that individual. Then, my dear Judith, we should perhaps discuss who is manipulating whom.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The fish were nervous. Moving in regular array, they darted to and fro through the fronds of weed that curled across Workwheel’s great tanks. As the schools of fish turned in the cloudy water their silvery scales caught the green-tinged sunlight, filling the interior with flashes of brilliance.
The two human figures, naked except for light breathing masks, swam slowly around the perimeter of the tank, driving the fish along before them. The outer edge of the wheel was a filled lattice of transparent plastic, admitting perpetual day to the four hundred meter cylinder. Far above, near the hollow central axle, oxygenation pumps sent a faint thrumming through the sluggishly moving liquid.
The female figure swooped without warning down to the clear honeycombed plastic of the outer wall, kicked off hard from it, and surged upward toward Workwheel center. The other, taken by surprise, followed her a second later. He overtook her halfway to the axle and reached out to grasp her calf, but she wriggled away and headed off in a new direction, still slanting toward the surface. Again he pursued, and this time as he neared her he reached out to grasp both her ankles. His fingers closed, and at that instant the tableau suddenly froze. Two nude sculptures, their muscles tensed, hung in the water among the motionless fishes. Salter Wherry looked closely at the video display for a few seconds, then carefully moved it along several frames. It was difficult to see the expressions clearly in the recording, and he zoomed in on Judith Niles’ face for a high-mag close-up. Even with the mask on, her face contrasted with her taut muscles. She looked totally relaxed, though Hans Gibbs was gripping her firmly around the ankles. After a few moments of study Wherry skipped forward, a few frames at a time, watching the changing expressions as the nude bodies moved together, embraced, then slowly rose. Entwined, they moved to meet the broad concave meniscus of the water surface near the axle of the wheel.