Ben Bova: Leviathans of Jupiter

“Thank you,” Dorn said at last.

She blinked at him. “For what?”

“For not asking about my past. For not probing into my life story.”

“It’s painful to you.”

“Painful. Yes.”

Very softly, she said, “Everybody has pain in their lives, Dorn.”

“I suppose that’s true,” he said, without much conviction.

Even more unsure of herself, Deirdre said, “Well, if you ever want to talk about it, I’ll listen.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

“Good night, then.”

“Good night.”

This was the moment when guys made their move, Deirdre knew, but the cyborg merely bowed stiffly a few centimeters, then turned and started walking up the passageway.

But after a few steps he stopped and said over his shoulder, “My dossier is on file at Ceres. Look under the name ‘Dorik Harbin.’ ”

Then he proceeded up the passageway, the overhead lights glinting off the etched metal of his skullcap. Deirdre watched him for several moments, then touched the fingerprint-coded lock that opened her door.

Dorik Harbin, she thought. He is the man who wiped out the original Chrysalis, slaughtered all those people! He’s the man Dad wanted to execute. Yet he doesn’t seem like a murderer now. He’s … She searched for a word, decided at last to give it up. Then she remembered that Yeager said Dorn was a priest of some sort.

A priest?

It’s been a strange first night, Deirdre thought as she stepped into her stateroom. And we have two more weeks to go.

She closed the door behind her and leaned against it. She felt that it would be good to get into bed and stop fighting this heavy gravity that was pulling on her.

Then she looked around the spacious compartment for the first time. Deirdre’s stateroom was considerably more splendid than the quarters she was accustomed to at home. All this space for one person! she marveled. Of course, she realized, it’s designed for a couple. Eying the wide, low bed, she giggled at the thought that it was big enough for a team of acrobats.

Her one travel bag was sitting on a luggage rack at the foot of the bed. She unpacked, then undressed, did her ablutions in the handsomely appointed lavatory, and avoided the temptation to try out the deep tub of the spa. Pulling on a shapeless old pullover shirt that reached to her hips, Deirdre sat on the bed and tried not to look at the blank wall screen.

Go to sleep, she told herself. Don’t pry into the man’s past.

Yet it was Dorn himself who told her that the rock rats’ settlement at Ceres held a dossier on him, under the name Dorik Harbin. She wondered why he no longer called himself that.

Yeager seemed to know something about him, Deirdre thought. All through dinner the engineer behaved as if he knew all about Dorn’s past. But then Yeager acted as if he knew everything about everything, she told herself.

Forget about it, she told herself. Let sleeping cyborgs lie. She stretched out on the bed and pulled the thin sheet up to her chin. But in her mind’s eye she kept seeing Dorn, half human, half machine. Why? How?

She remembered a line she’d read at school about a famous financier who had faced an ethical problem of some importance. “Bernard Baruch sat on his favorite park bench, struggling with his conscience,” the author had written. Then he added, “He won.”

Smiling to herself, Deirdre decided that she would override her conscience, too.

She sat up and called, “Computer, what’s the time lag between here and Ceres?”

The wall screen glowed softly and the computer’s synthesized voice answered, “Four seconds, one way.”

I can get the information in less than eight seconds, Deirdre realized.

“Computer, query the Chrysalis II habitat for the personnel dossier of Dorik Harbin.”

“Acknowledged.”

Deirdre lay back on the bed again and commanded the lights to switch off. I’ll read his file in the morning, she said to herself. After a good night’s sleep.

But she found that she could not sleep. Tired from the heavy gravity though she was, she was too curious to fall asleep. She got up and went to the tiny swivel chair at the compartment’s built-in desk and switched on the computer again.

And there it was: Dossier, Dorik Harbin. Born in Montenegro, Earth. Parents, two sisters killed in ethnic cleansing. Joined local militia at age twelve. Recruited by International Peacekeeping Force. Quit IPF to join Humphries Space Systems as mercenary soldier. Convicted of destroying original Chrysalis habitat, killing one thousand seventeen men, women, and children. Sentenced to permanent exile from Chrysalis II and all other Asteroid Belt communities.

Deirdre stared at the words on the wall screen. Her blood ran cold. He’s been involved in death and murder since he was a child!

She watched the video of Dorik Harbin’s trial. He offered no defense. He seemed to expect to be executed, seemed to want to be killed. But then an elderly woman in a powerchair rolled herself up to the cyborg and pled for mercy, saying that he had completely changed his personality, begging the inhabitants of Chrysalis II to exile Dorik Harbin, not kill him.

The dossier stopped with the rock rats’ decision to exile Dorik Harbin. They had no further interest in Dorik Harbin. But Deirdre did. She was riding out to Jupiter with a mass murderer. He may say he’s a priest now but he has blood on his hands. She wanted to know a lot more about this Dorik Harbin, or Dorn, as he now called himself. A lot more.

Katherine Westfall’s three-room suite was up near the top of Australia ’s long, slim body, one level down from the captain’s quarters. The staff people she had brought with her were ensconced two levels lower, separated from Mrs. Westfall by “officer’s territory,” the compartments where the ship’s officers were quartered. Still, even her staff’s accommodations were much more spacious and sumptuously decorated than the compartments for ordinary passengers and the ship’s crew.

Katherine was reclining against a mound of pillows on her bed, gazing out through the glassteel port set into the bulkhead of her bedroom. Countless stars hung out there, brilliant jewels against the eternal darkness, steady and unblinking. Earth and its bleak, sad-faced Moon were far behind the ship as it hurtled through space toward distant Jupiter.

Her personal communicator lay on the bed beside her, its palm-sized screen displaying a star chart. Katherine was teaching herself astronomy, or trying to. The chart didn’t seem to match what she was seeing outside, though.

Her slim brows knitting in frustration, she thought she understood where the problem was. The stupid tutorial on the screen was displaying how the stars would look from the surface of Earth. The ship was in space, and many, many more stars were visible. Thousands of stars too dim to be seen through Earth’s thick atmosphere now glowed at Katherine, blanketing the outlines of the constellations that she should be finding.

Her frustration gave way to understanding. Too many stars, she told herself. God’s overwhelming me with more information than I need. It was a trick she had used herself, from time to time. Drown an investigator in data. Give them what they want, but bury it in so much information that they’ll never be able to find the pattern they’re looking for.

Katherine Westfall smiled at the stars. And she thought that an astronomy display that showed all the myriad of stars one sees in space, but highlights the stars that one would see from Earth, might make a decent profit for an entrepreneur who knew how to bring a new product to market. She filed the idea away in her mind, alongside other ideas that she had stored there. It’s never too late to make a profit, she reminded herself. I may be retired from the corporate world, but that doesn’t mean I have to stick entirely to philanthropy.