Peter Hamilton - Manhattan in Reverse

After we landed, a bus drove me over to the administration centre in one of the large igloos. It was the Mayor, Ricardo Savill Caesar himself, who greeted me as I emerged from the airlock. He was a tall man, with the slightly flaccid flesh of all people who had been in a low-gravity environment for any length of time. He wore a simple grey and turquoise one-piece tunic with a mauve jacket, standard science mission staff uniform. But on him it had become a badge of office, bestowing that extra degree of authority. I could so easily imagine him as the direct descendant of some First Era Centurion commander.

‘Welcome,’ he said warmly. ‘And congratulations on your flight. From what we’ve heard, the Kuranda is an impressive ship.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’d be happy to take you round her later.’

‘And I’ll enjoy accepting that invitation. But first it’s my turn. I can’t wait to show off what we’ve done here.’

Thus my tour began; I believe there was no part of that igloo into which I didn’t venture at some time during the next two hours. From the life-support machinery in the lower levels to precarious walkways strung along the carbon reinforcement strands of the transparent dome. I saw it all. Quite deliberately, of course. Ricardo Savill Caesar was proving that they had no secrets, no sinister apparatus under construction. The family had built themselves a self-sustaining colony, capable of expanding to meet their growing population. Nothing more. What I was never shown nor told, was the reason why.

After waiting as long as politeness required before claiming I had seen enough we wound up in Ricardo Savill Caesar’s office. It was on the upper storey of the habitation section, over forty feet above the central arboretum’s lawn, yet the tops of the trees were already level with his window. I could recognize several varieties of pine and willow, but the low gravity had distorted their runaway growth, giving them peculiar swollen trunks and fat leaves.

Once I was sitting comfortably on his couch he offered me some coffee from a delicate china pot.

‘I have the beans flown up and grind them myself,’ he said. ‘They’re from the family’s estates in the Caribbean. Protein synthesis might have solved our food-supply problems, but there are some textures and tastes which elude the formulators.’

I took a sip, and pursed my lips in appreciation. ‘That’s good. Very good.’

‘I’m glad. You’re someone I think I’d like to have on my side.’

‘Oh?’

He sat back and grinned at me. ‘The other families are unhappy to say the least about our settlement claim on this system. And you are the person they send to test the waters. That’s quite a responsibility for any representative. I would have loved to sit in on your briefing sessions and hear what was said about us terrible Caesars.’

‘Your head would start spinning after the first five hours,’ I told him, dryly. ‘Mine certainly did.’

‘So what is it you’d like your redoubtable ship and crew to do while they’re here?’

‘It is a genuine scientific mission,’ I told him. ‘We’d like to study the bacterial life you’ve located in the moons here. Politics of settlement aside, it is tremendously important, especially after Mars turned out to be so barren.’

‘I certainly have no objection to that. Are we going to be shown the data?’

‘Of course.’ I managed to sound suitably shocked. ‘Actually, I was going to propose several joint expeditions. We did bring three long-duration science station vehicles with us that can be deployed on any of the lunar surfaces.’

Ricardo Savill Caesar tented his forefingers, and rested his chin on the point. ‘What kind of duration do these vehicles have?’

‘A couple of weeks without resupply. Basically they’re just large caravans we link up to a tractor unit. They’re fully mobile.’

‘And you envisage dispatching a mission to each moon?’

‘Yes. We’re also going to drop a number of probes into Jupiter to investigate its structural composition.’

‘Interesting. How far down do you believe they can reach?’

‘We want to examine the supercritical fluid level, the surface of it at least.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘I shall be most impressed if your probe design is good enough to reach that level. The furthest we’ve ever reached is seven hundred kilometres down.’

‘Our engineers seem quite confident it can be reached. The family has always given solid-state science a high priority.’

‘A kind of technological machismo.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Well, this is all very exciting. I’m very keen to offer you our fullest cooperation and assistance. My science team has been looking forward to your arrival for months. I don’t think they’ll be disappointed. Fresh angles are always so rewarding, I find.’

I showed him a satisfied nod. This stalemate was the outcome with the highest probability according to our council strategists. We’d established that our family was free to roam where it chose on any of the moons, but not to stay. Which meant the most popular, if somewhat whimsical, theory was unlikely. Several senior family councils had advanced the notion that the Caesars had discovered high-order life out here, and wanted to keep it for themselves. After all, since they found bacteria in the undersurface seas of both Ganymede and Europa, then more complex life was an ultra-remote possibility. Personally, I had always considered that just too far-fetched. More curiously, Ricardo Savill Caesar hadn’t objected to us probing Jupiter itself. The second most likely theory was that they’d found something of extraordinary value in its atmosphere. Again unlikely. There had been dozens of robot probes sent here in the decades before their flight. Which put me far enough down the list to start considering alien spaceships and survivors of Atlantis. Not an enjoyable prospect for any rational man. But as Ricardo Savill Caesar wasn’t giving anything away, my options were reducing. It was an annoying challenge. He knew that I knew the reason for the settlement claim had to be staring right at me. I simply couldn’t see it.

I told myself it didn’t matter. I never expected to catch it straight away, and we were due to stay at Jupiter for six months. There was plenty of time.

‘Then we’re all done bar the details,’ I said. ‘I’ll get my AI to link to your AI. I’m sure they can organize schedules and personnel rosters between them.’

He raised his cup in happy salute. ‘I’m sure they can. I’ll authorize a link to the Kuranda immediately.’

‘There is one other thing. A small matter.’

‘Oh?’

‘I’d like to see someone while I’m here. One of your deputies, in fact. It relates to an old investigation of mine. There are one or two points I need to clear up with her.’

‘Who are we talking about?’

‘Bethany Mary Caesar. I gather she’s on Io.’

‘Yes,’ he said cautiously. ‘She runs the science team there.’

His abrupt shift in attitude was fascinating. It was as though I’d suddenly won a point in our game of words and nuances. If only I could have worked out how I’d done that. All I’d said was her name. ‘You don’t object to me talking to her, do you?’

‘Not at all. If it isn’t confidential, what is this old investigation, exactly?’

‘A murder.’

‘Good Lady Mary. Really?’

‘As I say, it’s an old one. However, I have a new theory I’d like to run past her.’

The Io science outpost was nothing like New Milan. It consisted of two dozen cylindrical compartments resting on concrete cradles sunk deep into the carmine-coloured crust; they were all plugged into each other like some array of antique electronic components. For years they’d suffered from the exhalations of the volcano. Its furious sulphur emission clouds had gently drizzled down, staining their metallic-white casings with a thin film of dirty amber colloid which dribbled round the exterior to drip from the belly. But for all its functionalism, the Caesars had certainly chosen a location with a view. One of the compartments had an observation gallery, aligned so that its curving windows looked directly out at the distant sulphur volcano, which appeared as a dark conical silhouette rising out of the horizon.