“And the way you were looking at him. I could feel you two throwing knives at each other across the table.” She began to lead the way up the shaft, heading for the outer air lock. “Look, if you’re going to spend much time on Atlantis, you and Morel will have to learn to work with each other. I wanted to get away from the living quarters so that we could talk about this. I think Regulo must have guessed that, when he suggested we take a look outside. You don’t like Morel, and that’s fine. I don’t like him either. But he’s immensely useful to Regulo.”
“He’s a brilliant man,” said Rob. “I know that, but I don’t trust him. How dependent is Regulo on Morel for treatment?”
“He could get another doctor, but that’s not the point. Morel happens to be the top man in the System for treatment of Cancer crudelis and Cancer pertinax. He pioneered everything that’s worth trying for the diseases. Regulo would be insane to accept another doctor, when Morel is willing to stay here and work on Atlantis.”
Rob looked at her in surprise. Corrie seemed to assume that he knew all about Regulo’s disease, despite her earlier reluctance to mention it. Her face was invisible behind the reflecting plate of her suit. “Do you think that Morel is getting close to a cure?” he said.
“Not for Regulo’s disease. Morel has had complete success with crudelis, and he has been able to arrest pertinax and even reverse it with drugs, in lab tests. But when he tried it on Regulo, the side effects were so bad that he had to stop after a few weeks.”
“But he’s still trying?”
“Of course. Morel had plenty of tenacity and works tremendously hard. But it’s a terrible and difficult disease.” She shuddered. “Have you ever seen pictures of Regulo as a young man? He was handsome. You would never recognize him from the way he looks now.”
They had reached the outer surface of Atlantis. The asteroid was floating about five kilometers above their heads, glowing a bright orange-red against the star field. The slight difference between its orbit and that of Atlantis was slowly reducing the distance between the two bodies. On one polar axis of the spinning asteroid, Rob could see the black outline of the Spider. Its elongated proboscis formed a long, thin line against the orange glow. The powersat, photovoltaic receptors turned to face the sun, hung like a huge sail at the other pole of the asteroid. Spin-up was finished, and in a few more hours the whole interior would be molten.
Based on the color of the rotating mass, Rob judged that it had reached about twelve hundred degrees. The jagged outline of the rock was already blurring as the materials softened and flowed in the sustained heat.
Corrie was hovering close by him in the entrance of the shaft. “Who was it told you about Regulo’s sickness?” she asked softly.
“Senta,” Rob said, and at once regretted his answer. He saw Corrie’s body stiffen in her suit.
“You saw her again, then, after we met at Way Down?”
“Through Howard Anson.” Rob wished that he had told Corrie at once of his earlier meetings with Senta Plessey, though he was still reluctant to mention the subject of those discussions. “You know Anson runs an Information Service,” he went on. “I’ve been one of his customers for years, but I didn’t make the connection until he told me what he did. He and Senta live together. She told me that Regulo was handsome, back before his sickness became worse.”
“How often did you see them?” Corrie’s voice was grim, and she was not about to change the subject.
“Oh, just a couple of times.” Rob thought that it was time for desperate measures. “I was surprised by one of the things she told me. She said that Darius Regulo is your father — that you were conceived when she was living with him. I wondered why you hadn’t mentioned it to me.”
Corrie’s reaction astonished Rob. She bent forward and the upper part of her suit began to shake rapidly, as though she were suffering from some kind of seizure. After a second or two he realized that she was laughing, gripped by genuine or simulated amusement. Nothing that Rob had said ought to be so funny.
“That again!” she said finally. “I thought I’d heard the last of it. Rob, you just don’t understand Senta yet. It’s not good to say this about my own mother, I know, but Senta lives in a pure dream world. She always has, as long as I’ve known her. Darius Regulo’s my father, is he? What did he say when you told him that?”
Rob stared at the asteroid in front of him, seeking any sign of wobble in its rotation. “I never managed to ask him. We started to talk about Senta, then he changed the subject. It’s not easy to make conversation with Regulo when he wants to talk about something else.”
“You still ought to ask him. Do it when he’s tired. You know that Senta’s a taliza addict, half the time she’s happy to escape the real world.” Corrie had moved in very close to Rob. “It’s quite true that she lived with Regulo for a long time, and it’s true that she conceived a child soon after they split up — me. When I was small, she would tell me about Regulo and say that I was his child. But after a few more years I began to understand Senta better. She would never admit to having a child by an ordinary father. Can’t you see that? She would have to believe her baby came from the richest, most powerful, most mysterious man in the whole System.”
“Then who was your father?” After his earlier glimpse into the labs, and the narrow escape from Caliban, Rob was beginning to feel that his own grip on reality was slipping. There was a limit to the number of surprises a man could absorb in one day.
“I don’t know. It could have been Regulo, I admit that. More likely, it was some rich parasite, or one of her soulful-looking society hangers-on. Senta has a weakness for good-looking young men. Remember how she made up to you, when you first met her.”
“She was on a taliza high.” It occurred to Rob that Corrie had almost no understanding of her own mother’s hopes and fears. Howard Anson played the part of the social man-of-leisure, but there was iron under the soft surface. Had Senta changed, since Corrie’s childhood?
“I don’t think the taliza would make much difference.” Corrie placed her hand on the sleeve of Rob’s aquasuit. “Look, Rob, if I’m not worried who my father was, why should you be? I’m me. I’m not Senta, and I’m not Regulo, and I’m not owned by either of them. Can’t you accept me for what I am?” She turned, and began to head back along the shaft towards the central sphere of Atlantis. Rob hesitantly followed her.
“If you’re wondering why I came here to work for Regulo as soon as I could do it legally,” she went on. “Try thinking from my point of view. I’d heard Senta’s stories about him, ever since I was old enough to understand a sentence. I wanted to meet him, and I took the Space Aptitude Test before I was ten years old. When I got the chance to apply for a job here, I grabbed at it. And I got it — without special help from Regulo or anybody else. And I’ve done well.”
Corrie was diving ahead of Rob, a silver gleam of suit against the dark walls. Her voice, earnest and upset, came clearly over the suit radio, but she was outdistancing him easily. Rob didn’t have the same familiarity with the inside structure of Atlantis.
“Hey, Corrie, what’s the hurry?” he called, trying to speed up his progress along the shaft.
“I’m tired of talking about this, that’s all.” She was through the second lock and swinging on towards the living-sphere. “I’ll be in my rooms. Come there if you choose to. But you have to promise there won’t be more chat about Senta and Regulo.”
Rob followed slowly. Now he was more confused than ever. Someone was lying to him, but the big question wasn’t who — it was why. He wished that he could discuss the whole thing with Howard Anson, but Howard was back on Earth, millions of kilometers away. Rob didn’t trust the privacy of the comlinks on Atlantis. Until he could get back to L-4 he would have to wrestle with it on his own. As he made his way to Corrie’s rooms, he mentally reviewed the list of questions that had to be answered before he could take Corrie’s advice and ignore the past.