"—but it's dead certain to come out in twenty-four hours," Jay finished for her.
"Maybe less," Joy added.
"Shut up," Galloway said, without heat. "Anna-Louise, you were about to tell me your feeling on the matter."
Bach finished her drink as the waiter arrived with more. She caught herself staring as the twins took theirs. The metal hands were marvels of complexity. They moved just as cleverly as real hands.
"I was considering leaking the story myself. It looked like things were going against Charlie. I thought they might just let the station crash and then swear us all to secrecy."
"It strikes me," Galloway said, slowly, "that today's developments give her an edge."
"Yeah. But I don't envy her."
"Me, either. But it's not going to be easy to neglect a girl whose body may hold the secret of eternal life. If you do, somebody's bound to ask awkward questions later."
"It may not be eternal life," Bach said.
"What do you call it, then?" Jay asked.
"Why do you say that?" Joy wanted to know.
"All we know is she's lived thirty years without growing any older—externally. They'd have to examine her a lot closer to find out what's actually happening."
"And there's pressure to do so."
"Exactly. It might be the biggest medical breakthrough in a thousand years. What I think has happened to her is not eternal life, but extended youth."
Galloway looked thoughtful. "You know, of the two, I think extended youth would be more popular."
"I think you're right."
They brooded over that in silence for a while. Bach signaled the waiter for another drink.
"Anyway," she went on, "Charlie doesn't seem to need protection just now. But she may, and quickly."
"So you aren't in favor of letting her die."
Bach looked up, surprised and beginning to be offended, then she remembered Doctor Wilhelm. The good Doctor was not a monster, and Galloway's question was a reasonable one, given the nature of Neuro-X.
"There has to be a way to save her, and protect ourselves from her. That's what I'm working toward, anyway."
"Let me get this straight, then. You were thinking of leaking the story so the public outcry would force the police to save her?"
"Sure, I thought..." Bach trailed off, suddenly realizing what Galloway was saying. "You mean you think—"
Galloway waved her hand impatiently.
"It depends on a lot of things, but mostly on how the story is handled. If you start off with the plague story, there could be pressure to blast her out of the skies and have done with it." She looked at Jay and Joy, who went into a trance-like state.
"Sure, sure," Jay said. "The plague got big play. Almost everybody remembers it. Use horror show tapes of the casualties..."
"...line up the big brains to start the scare," Joy said.
"You can even add sob stuff, after it gets rolling."
"What a tragedy, this little girl has to die for the good of us all."
"Somber commentary, the world watches as she cashes in."
"You could make it play. No problem."
Bach's head had been ping-ponging between the two of them. When Galloway spoke, it was hard to swing around and look at her.
"Or you could start off with the little girl," Galloway prompted.
"Much better," Joy said. "Twice the story there. Indignant expose stuff: 'Did you know, fellow citizens...' "
" '...there's this little girl, this innocent child, swinging around up there in space and she's going to die!' "
"A rich little girl, too, and her dying mother."
"Later, get the immortality angle."
"Not too soon," Joy cautioned. "At first, she's ordinary. Second lead is, she's got money."
"Third lead, she holds the key to eternal youth."
"Immortality."
"Youth, honey, youth. Who the fuck knows what living forever is like? Youth you can sell. It's the only thing you can sell."
"Megan, this is the biggest story since Jesus."
"Or at least we'll make it the biggest story."
"See why they're so valuable?" Galloway said. Bach hardly heard her. She was re-assessing what she had thought she knew about the situation.
"I don't know what to do," she finally confessed. "I don't know what to ask you to do, either. I guess you ought to go with what you think is best."
Galloway frowned.
"Both for professional and personal reasons, I'd rather try to help her. I'm not sure why. She is dangerous, you know."
"I realize that. But I can't believe she can't be handled."
"Neither can I." She glanced at her watch. "Tell you what, you come with us on a little trip."
Bach protested at first, but Galloway would not be denied, and Bach's resistance was at a low ebb.
By speedboat, trolley, and airplane they quickly made their way on the top of Mozartplatz, where Bach found herself in a four-seat PTP—or point-to-point—ballistic vehicle.
She had never ridden in a PTP. They were rare, mostly because they wasted a lot of energy for only a few minutes' gain in travel time. Most people took the tubes, which reached speeds of three thousand miles per hour, hovering inches above their induction rails in Luna's excellent vacuum.
But for a celebrity like Galloway, the PTP made sense. She had trouble going places in public without getting mobbed. And she certainly had the money to spare.
There was a heavy initial acceleration, then weightlessness. Bach had never liked it, and enjoyed it even less with a few drinks in her.
Little was said during the short journey. Bach had not asked where they were going, and Galloway did not volunteer it. Bach looked out one of the wide windows at the fleeting moonscape.
As she counted the valleys, rilles, and craters flowing past beneath her, she soon realized her destination. It was a distant valley, in the sense that no tube track ran through it. In a little over an hour. Tango Charlie would come speeding through, no more than a hundred meters from the surface.
The PTP landed itself in a cluster of transparent, temporary domes. There were over a hundred of them, and more PTP's than Bach had ever seen before. She decided most of the people in and around the domes fell into three categories. There were the very wealthy, owners of private spacecraft, who had erected most of these portable Xanadus and filled them with their friends. There were civic dignitaries in city-owned domes. And there were the news media.
This last category was there in its teeming hundreds. It was not what they would call a big story, but it was a very visual one. It should yield spectacular pictures for the evening news.
A long, wide black stripe had been created across the sundrenched plain, indicating the path Tango Charlie would take. Many cameras and quite a few knots of pressure-suited spectators were situated smack in the middle of that line, with many more off to one side, to get an angle on the approach.
Beyond it were about a hundred large glass-roofed touring buses and a motley assortment of private crawlers, sunskimmers, jetsleds, and even some hikers: the common people, come to see the event.
Bach followed along behind the uncommon people: Galloway, thin and somehow spectral in the translucent suit, leaning on her crystal cane; the Myers twins, whose amparolee arms would not fit in the suits, so that the empty sleeves stuck out, bloated, like crucified ghosts; and most singular of all, the wire-sculpture arm units themselves, walking independently, on their fingertips, looking like some demented, disjointed mechanical camel as they lurched through the dust.
They entered the largest of the domes, set on the edge of the gathering nearest the black line, which put it no more than a hundred meters from the expected passage.
The first person Bach saw, as she was removing her helmet, was Hoeffer.