Ben Bova: Leviathans of Jupiter

“Scooters?” Deirdre felt puzzled. “Bean counters?”

With a slightly lopsided grin, Corvus explained, “Scooters is a name for scientists. Don’t ask me where it comes from; that’s just what they call scientists at the research station. Bean counters are accountants, the people who handle the budgets and try to keep the scooters from spending too much.”

“And paper stuffers?”

“Paper shufflers ,” Corvus corrected. “Administrators. Department chiefs and such. Back a long time ago they actually kept records on paper, y’know.”

“I’ve heard,” said Deirdre.

“Well, let’s find a table. I’m hungry.”

“They all seem to be filled.”

Pointing, Corvus said, “There’s one over by the wall with only one guy sitting at it. Maybe he won’t mind some company.”

Deirdre followed Corvus as he threaded through the occupied tables toward the lone passenger sitting by the bulkhead, beneath the screen displaying the sad, cratered face of the Moon, half in harsh sunshine, half in cold shadow.

As the two of them made their way across the lounge, heads turned. Men and women alike stared openly at Deirdre. She was accustomed to being stared at and gave no sign of noticing their attention, keeping her face perfectly serious as she walked beside the gangling, grinning Corvus toward the table by the bulkhead.

As they approached, Deirdre saw why the man was sitting alone. Half of his head was metal. His left arm was a prosthetic; through the open collar of his short-sleeved shirt she could see that the left side of his chest was metal, as well.

A cyborg. She shuddered inwardly. How could anyone allow himself to have half his body turned into a machine? Then she remembered: The mercenary soldier who had destroyed the original Chrysalis habitat had turned himself into a cyborg. He had murdered more than a thousand rock rats, innocent men, women, and children. Her father had put the man on trial years later, once he’d been captured. Dad wanted to execute him, she knew. But the rock rats decided to exile him permanently, instead.

Could this be the same person? Deirdre wondered. It has to be, she told herself. A cyborg, half man, half machine. Even his face was half sculpted metal, etched with fine looping swirls, like those tattooed tribesmen from some primitive tropical island on Earth.

The cyborg noticed them approaching and got to his feet. Gracefully, Deirdre noticed. Not ponderous at all. Like an athlete or a dancer.

Andy didn’t seem bothered at all by the half-man’s appearance. “Okay if we sit here with you?” he asked.

“Yes, of course,” the cyborg answered in a deep baritone voice. “I welcome your company.”

A simmering suspicion pulsing along her veins, Deirdre sat beside Corvus, facing the cyborg. He remained standing until she was seated, then resumed his chair.

Before any of them could say anything a squat little robot waiter trundled up to the table, its flat top glowing with the bar menu. Andy tapped the image of a beer, then selected the brand he wanted from the list that instantly appeared on the screen. Deirdre chose a glass of Earthside chardonnay: expensive, but she figured it would be the last of her luxuries for a long while.

The cyborg already had a tall glass of something dark in front of him. Machine oil? Deirdre wondered, realizing it was a nonsensical thought, a stupid bit of prejudice.

“My name is Dorn,” the cyborg said. His right eye was gray and somehow mournful-looking, Deirdre thought. His left was a red-glowing camera lens.

Dorn. That wasn’t the name of the man who’d destroyed the old Chrysalis, she knew. His name was … she rummaged in her memory. Dorik Harbin. That was it.

Corvus, meanwhile, had stuck his hand across the table. “Andy Corvus,” he said amiably. Dorn grasped the offered hand in his human one.

Then the cyborg looked at her. Trying not to stare at the prosthetic arm, Deirdre mumbled, “Deirdre. My friends call me Dee.”

“Dee,” repeated the cyborg, almost solemnly.

The robot rolled back to their table with drinks on its flat top. Andy picked up the stemmed wineglass and handed it to Deirdre, then took his own tall, tapered pilsner glass of beer.

“What should we drink to?” Deirdre asked.

Dorn immediately replied, “To a pleasant trip to Jupiter.”

“To the leviathans,” Andy said.

Both men turned toward Deirdre. She gave them a tentative smile, then suggested, “To understanding.”

“Yes,” said Dorn. “To understanding.”

They clinked glasses. Then Andy asked, “Understanding what?”

“Ourselves,” said Dorn, in his slow, heavy voice. “I believe it was Socrates who said, ‘Know thyself.’ ”

“And Goethe,” Deirdre countered, “who said, ‘Know myself? If I knew myself I’d run away!’ ”

Dorn made a sound that might have been a chuckle, deep down in his half-metal chest. Andy looked puzzled.

“What’re you?” Corvus asked her, “some kind of a philosopher?”

Deirdre lowered her eyes and replied, “No, not at all. I just have an eidetic memory.”

“A photographic memory? Wow!” Corvus was obviously impressed.

“What is your technical specialty?” Dorn asked.

“Actually,” she answered, “I’m a microbiologist.”

“Microbiologist?” The human half of Dorn’s face looked incredulous.

She made an almost apologetic smile. “I know. It sounds strange, a microbiologist living at the habitat orbiting Ceres. But our health and safety people are very concerned with biofilms and other microbial threats. Chrysalis II is a pretty small community, and we live in a completely sealed environment. We have to be very careful about the microbes we carry around with us.”

Deirdre thought that Dorn’s human eye flickered momentarily when she mentioned Chrysalis II, but it was so brief that she couldn’t be sure.

“Don’t you have disinfectants?” Corvus asked. “Ultraviolet bug killers?”

Dierdre’s smile turned almost condescending. “Andy, our bodies are habitats for whole ecologies of microbes. If you took an ultrascan of your body, and removed all your own cells from the image, you’d still see your body and all your organs outlined in microbes. They’re everywhere.”

Dorn said, “It’s not Chrysalis II that surprised me. I’m wondering why a microbiologist is needed at Gold .”

“Yeah,” Corvus said. “Those whales are big, not little.”

With a slight shake of her head, Deirdre replied, “All I know is that the request for a microbiologist came from Grant Archer himself, the head of the whole Jupiter team.”

“He specifically asked for a microbiologist?” Dorn sounded incredulous.

“I suppose they want me for the same kind of thing I do at Chrysalis II : health protection.”

“It still sounds strange,” Dorn insisted. “ Gold must have its own medical staff.”

With a shrug, Deirdre said, “I suppose we’ll just have to wait until we arrive there to see why they asked for me.” Then she added, “But it doesn’t matter what they expect me to do there. They’ve promised me a scholarship to the Sorbonne. I’ll be going to Earth! I’ll be going to our home world.”

Grant Archer slid wearily into bed next to his wife. Marjorie smiled at him and murmured, “Two more weeks.”

Grant tried to smile back, but failed. All these years, he thought. All these years and it’s going to end in failure. Abject failure.

Grant Armstrong Archer III had originally come to research station Gold as a graduate student, doing his mandatory four years of public service. He had dreams of becoming an astrophysicist, of studying collapsed stars and black holes, of perhaps learning how to create space-time warps that could allow humans to span the mind-numbing distances between the stars. But once he saw the leviathans he forgot all that. He never left the Jupiter region again, brought his wife to the Thomas Gold station and had two children with her, eventually became director of the station.