James Hogan - Giant's Star

Norman Pacey held up his hand in a warning gesture and closed the door to cut off the room from the secretary giving directions to two UNSA privates who were loading boxes onto a cart in the outer office. Janet watched from a chair that she had cleared of a stack of papers and document holders waiting to be packed in preparation for the delegation’s departure from Bruno. "Now start again," he told her, turning away from the door.

"It was last night, maybe early this morning . . . I’m not sure what time." Janet fiddled awkwardly with a button on her lab coat. "Niels got a call from somebody-I think it was the U.S. European, Daldanier-about something they needed to discuss right away. He started saying something about somebody called Verikoff, it sounded like, but Niels stopped him and said he’d go and talk to him at his place. I pretended I was still asleep. He got dressed and slipped out. . . . kind of creepily, as if he were being careful not to wake me up."

"Okay," Pacey said with a nod. "Then what?"

"Well . . . I remembered he’d been looking at some papers earlier when I came in. He put them away in a holder, but I was sure he hadn’t locked it. So I decided to take a chance and see what they were about."

Pacey clenched his teeth in the effort not to let his feelings show. That was exactly the kind of thing he had told her not to do. But the outcome sounded interesting. "And," he prompted.

Janet’s face took on a mystified look. "There was a folder among the things inside. It was bright red around the edges and pink inside. What made me notice it was that it had your name on the front."

Pacey’s brow creased as he listened. What Janet had described sounded like a standard UN-format document wallet that was used for highly confidential memoranda. "Did you look inside it?"

Janet nodded. "It was weird. . . . the report criticized the way you’d been obstructing the meeting here and stated in a Conclusions section that the delegation would have made more progress if the U.S. had shown a more cooperative attitude. It didn’t sound like you at all, which was why I thought it was weird." Pacey was staring at her speechlessly. Before he could find words to reply, she shook her head as if feeling a need to disclaim responsibility for what she was going to say next. "And there was this part about you and-Karen Heller. It said that you two were . . ."

Janet hesitated, then raised a hand with her index and second fingers intertwined, ". . . like that, and that such-how was it put?-such ‘blatant and indiscreet conduct was not becoming to a mission of this nature, and possibly had some connection with the counterproductive contribution of the United States to the proceedings’." Janet sat back and shook her head again. "I knew the report simply wasn’t true. . . . And coming from him, well. . ."

She let the sentence trail away and left it at that.

Pacey sat down on the edge of a half-filled packing case and stared at her incredulously. A few seconds went by before he found his voice. "You actually saw all this?" he asked at last.

"Yes. . . . I can’t give you all of it word for word, but that was what it said." She hesitated. "I know it’s crazy, if that helps. . . ."

"Does Sverenssen know you saw this report?"

"I don’t see how he could. I put everything back exactly the way it was. I guess I could have got you more of it, but I didn’t know how long he’d be away. As it turned out, he was gone quite a while."

"That’s okay. You did the right thing not risking it." Pacey stared down at the floor for a while, feeling totally bewildered. Then he looked up again and asked, "How about you? Has he been acting strange now that we’re leaving? Anything . . . ominous, maybe?"

"You mean sinister warnings to keep my mouth shut about the computer?"

"Mmm . . . yes, maybe." Pacey looked at her curiously.

She shook her head and smiled faintly. "Quite the opposite as a matter of fact. He’s been very gentlemanly and said what a shame it is. He even hinted that we could get together again sometime back on Earth-he could fix me up with a job that pays real money, all kinds of interesting people to meet. . . stuff like that."

A smarter move, Pacey thought to himself. High hopes and treachery had never gone together. "Do you believe him?" he asked, cocking an eyebrow.

"No."

Pacey nodded in approval. "You are growing up fast." He looked around the office and massaged his forehead wearily. "I’m going to have to do some thinking now. I’m glad you told me about it. But you’ve got your coat on, which says you probably have to get back to work. Let’s not start upsetting Malliusk again."

"He’s off today," Janet said. "But you’re right-I do have to get back." She stood up and moved toward the door, then turned back as she was about to open it. "I hope it was okay. I know you said to keep this away from the delegation offices, but it seemed important. And with everybody leaving. . ."

"Don’t worry about it. It’s okay. I’ll see you again later."

Janet departed, leaving the door open in response to Pacey’s wave request. Pacey sat for a while and began turning what she had told him over again in his mind, but was interrupted by the UNSA privates coming in to sort out the boxes ready for moving. He decided to go and think about it over a coffee in the common room.

The only people in the common room when Pacey entered a few minutes later were Sverenssen, Daldanier, and two of the other delegates, who were all together at the bar. They acknowledged his arrival with a few not overfriendly nods of their heads and continued talking among themselves. Pacey collected a coffee from the dispenser on one side of the room and sat down at a table in the far corner, wishing inwardly that he had picked somewhere else. As he studied them surreptitiously over his cup, he listed in his mind the unanswered questions that he had collected concerning the tall, immaculately groomed Swede who was standing in the center of the vassals gathered around him at the bar.

Perhaps Pacey’s fears about the Shapieron had been misplaced. Could what Janet had overheard have been connected with the communications from Gistar ceasing so abruptly? It had happened suspiciously soon afterward. If so, how could Sverenssen and at least one other member of the delegation have known about it? And how were Sverenssen and Daldanier connected with Verikoff, whom Pacey knew from CIA reports to be a Soviet expert in space communications? If there were some conspiracy between Moscow and an inner clique of the UN, why had Sobroskin cooperated with Pacey? Perhaps that had been part of some even more elaborate ruse. He had been wrong to trust the Russian, he admitted to himself bitterly. He should have used Janet and kept Sobroskin and Malliusk out of it.

And last of all, what was the motive behind the attempt to character-assassinate him personally, compromise Karen Heller, and misrepresent the role they had played at Bruno? It seemed strange that Sverenssen had expected the plan to work, because the document Janet had described would not be substantiated by the official minutes of all the delegation’s meetings, a copy of which would also be forwarded to UN Headquarters in New York. Furthermore, Sverenssen knew that as well as anybody; and whatever his other faults, he was not naive. Then a sick feeling formed slowly in his stomach as the truth dawned on him-he had no way of being certain that the minutes which he had read and approved, which had recorded the debates verbatim, would be the versions that would go to New York at all. From what Pacey had glimpsed of whatever strange machinations were in progress behind the scenes, anything was possible.