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BOOK II: SECOND TO ONE

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED to Rob and Laura Arbury, Dave Blackmon, Ken Flurchick, Michael Szeszny, and Kitty Woldow, for reasons that will be obvious to each of them when they recall the summer of '88.

TWENTY-FIVE Cold Fusion

"Enter, Comrade Admiral! Sit! Have some vodka!"

Nikola Deshovich lifted a hairy hand, the stub of a cigar protruding between its first and second fingers. Inboard the USSR Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria he alone smoked, for who had the power to forbid it? Known as "the Banker"—for his habit of settling old political debts "with interest"—he was the absolute, undisputed master of the Soviet Union and, more recently, of the United World Soviet, as well. The air in the little room was blue and foul.

To hear Deshovich speak, thought Admiral Ghasil Mubakkir, was a sensual delight. He had a way of spacing words, pausing at unexpected intervals, that compelled. His voice was deep, with a hint of velvet which massaged and reassured, although it could turn cold and toneless when that served. Now he indicated the opposite bulkhead where a chair could be unfolded. He occupied another which would have been hideously uncomfortable beneath his great mass under ordinary circumstances. With an inward sigh, Mubakkir reflected that these were hardly ordinary circumstances. He dropped an unreturned salute and attempted to relax from the reflexive military posture he'd assumed on knocking at the door of the one real passenger accommodation inboard the Beria, the cabin which, by rights, should have been his own.

"No vodka, thank you, sir."

The cabin wasn't spacious, nor particularly cramped. Deshovich appeared to fill it (the admiral didn't have to guess his mass at two hundred kilos, it was on the manifest), leaving room for two chairs, a small table on which a bottle stood with two glasses, and the cot, covered by a rumpled quilt, which had served as an acceleration couch during a liftoff that must have seemed unendurable to the man.

Mubakkir conspicuously kept his gaze from lingering over a curvaceous form the bedclothes failed to conceal, apparently still fast asleep. He unfolded a chair because it was easier than refusing and sat, trying not to crease his snow-white uniform trousers. He was known throughout the services for remaining crisp and spotless even in the heat of maneuvers where others found themselves soot-blackened, oil-stained, and streaked with sweat. It set an example for subordinates who whispered that if the Old Man were ever wounded in battle, he'd somehow manage to bleed neatly.

"I'm on duty."

The fact was that he never availed himself of luxuries within easy reach of his rank. As a rising young Third World officer in the corrupt navy of a decaying world power, it had given him an edge on the competition. It had nothing to do with his religious background. Mubakkir had one God, Marx, and at the moment Deshovich was His prophet. The admiral was no saint; he merely felt he was lucky that his one vice, in which he indulged himself fully, was also his solemn obligation: command.

"Don't mind if I do," Deshovich laughed heartily. Despite his great size, he conveyed an impression of fastidious dexterity. His thick hair and gray-shot beard were trimmed. His black silk pajama suit was cut as nicely as the admiral's uniform. "Until my own duty recommences, I'm simply cargo," he laid a hand across his middle, "bereft that I won't experience the weightlessness I was rather looking forward to. Well, leaving nine tenths of Earth's gravity behind represents considerable relief in itself. It also serves to keep things—bottles, glasses, one's skeletal calcium—in their places. I'm grateful to our Bureau of Suppressed Technologies that, instead of the better part of a year, the voyage will last only days. To think that America might have had cold fusion decades ago!"

"It gored too many well-fed oxen," Mubakkir agreed, "petrol cartels and power collectives, so they buried it and discredited its discoverers."

"So much for free enterprise!" The Banker laughed again. "Is this what gravity will be like when we arrive? Tell me, Comrade Admiral, what have you learned of events at our destination?"

Mubakkir watched him pour four fingers of Stolichnaya, sprinkling black pepper over the liquid surface. The gesture was pure affectation, he was too young to have lived through the harsh times when it was needed to counter the poisons of inept distillery, but it served a purpose, just like the admiral's sparkling uniforms, warning underlings and rivals that, despite generations of détente, glasnost, and perestroika, Deshovich's guiding spirit, summonable at need, was that of a Djugashvili.

"We lack detail, sir. According to reports from the mission commander, an Aerospace brigadier named Gutierrez, the interplanetary expedition of the American Soviet Socialist Republic arrived at the asteroid 5023 Eris less than a week ago and has already suffered five fatalities in an original complement of only forty-two. A Russian national on loan from Moscow University appears to have been murdered."

Deshovich took a sip of vodka, puffed his cigar only to find that it had gone out, relit it, and took another drink. "Careless of Gutierrez. Still, I suppose these things are to be expected under the circumstances . . ."

"Yes, sir: humans in space for the first time in half a century, in three refitted eighty-year-old NASA shuttles . . ."

"Honorable John McCain, Honorable Orrin Hatch, and Honorable Robert Dole, for three pioneers of the American Sovietization." He shook his head. "No, Admiral, I meant the property claim being made by these aliens—"

"Not aliens, sir." Mubakkir shifted on his chair uneasily. "Molluscs, referred to politely as `the Elders,' from another version of Earth, who came to the asteroid across lines of alternative probability. Imagine a long-tentacled squid in an automobile-sized snail shell—"

"You imagine it!" Deshovich raised a hand, palm out. "I haven't had breakfast yet."

Mubakkir blinked. "5023 Eris is carbonaceous chondrite, sir, promising for settlement. The Elders have equipped it with an atmosphere under a sort of canopy supported by giant treelike plants. The reports mention thick vegetation and abundant moisture."

"The sort of thing giant snails might like," Deshovich grunted.

"Yes, sir. In any case, one of them was killed, too, on illegal orders from the American KGB, by a Marine major later breveted to full colonel in our KGB, to investigate the very murder she'd committed!"

Deshovich shook his head, half amused, half disgusted. "I've spoken with Intelligence about that. Some of them are now searching the Tunguska region of Siberia for pieces of an alien spacecraft which may have exploded there in 1908."

Mubakkir suppressed a rueful grin. Elsewhere, he knew, heads had rolled rather more dramatically for issuing that illegal order. One purpose of this mission was to mend fences with these living fossils who, despite a quaint, incomprehensible ethical philosophy, had brought along thermonuclear matter-energy converters like kerosene lanterns to a picnic. An economically crippled United World Soviet needed technology like that—and anything else its leader could pry loose.

Sensing the admiral's distraction, Deshovich cleared his throat. "You've taken over from American Mission Control?"

Mubakkir nodded. "We're timing our replies so the expedition will think we're transmitting from Earth."

"Excellent. By the way, Admiral, if you wished to dispose of something aboard this vessel, how would you go about it?"

"Sir?" Mubakkir tried not to look surprised at the change of subject. "An air lock, I suppose. At this acceleration, it would—"

"Air lock, you say?" With a broad hand, Deshovich reached to flip back a corner of the duvet. Beneath it, her features obscured by a fall of dark, silky, waist-length hair, lay the naked body of a young girl, flesh white with the pallor of death. Between her hips and knees, the sheet was soaked with blood. "My secretary seems to have had an accident during dictation. Get her out quietly and have this cleaned up."

The admiral swallowed hard, but said nothing.

"And summon me another girl from the pool. A blonde this time, I think."

 

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