Magsaysay lowered his eyes, his voice barely audible as he turned to the rear door of the chamber. He avoided looking at Ramis. “For now, I wish to be alone. The special Council meeting is adjourned.”
Chapter 14
CLAVIUS BASE—Day 11
His slippers scritched on the polished rock floor as he made his way from the infirmary. McLaris had decided not to don a Clavius Base uniform. He still wore his robe, still brandished his bandages, hoping to divert some of the anger of the other base inhabitants.
Sharp pains stabbed his side from the cracked ribs. His eyes were puffed red, and his beard had grown to a rough stubble. All of him ached, but that was a sign of healing.
Dr. Berenger had declared McLaris fit enough to walk about, and McLaris had decided it was best not to avoid the issue any longer. He had to face the chief administrator of Clavius Base.
McLaris knew virtually nothing about Philip Tomkins, except that he’d been running the lunar base for several years. He had contacted Tomkins, who had said he’d be delighted to chat and had given him directions to the communications center.
McLaris decided he’d make no mention of his injuries, try not to show that he was aware of them at all. He didn’t want to come across as looking for sympathy. But neither did he want to appear completely unscathed by the crash.
Fluorescent lights glinted off the lumpy fused rock of the walls. The air smelled damp and dusty, cavelike. He saw no windows, only occasional narrow slits at eye level. He thought the lunar tunnels would get oppressive after a while.
He didn’t know what Tomkins and the others would do. Would they sentence him? Punish him? Would Tomkins himself be the judge and jury? Had the chief administrator already made up his mind? Everyone else on Clavius Base seemed convinced of McLaris’s worthlessness.
But he walked straight, keeping his face set. He had spent days wallowing in guilt, reliving what he should have done and what he had done. He’d passed through that now, though. He felt tempered, stronger.
McLaris regretted his actions. He was guilty—no question about it. But he couldn’t take it back, couldn’t return the Miranda. He could only move forward, changed, and hope that he could work his way back to acceptance.
McLaris paused at the communications center doorway, took a deep breath, then entered the room without announcing himself. Three large holotanks protruded from the white tile walls. A pair of technicians argued over data flashing in the units; another lounged back and spoke to her computer with her eyes closed. A long, narrow window ran at eye level along the far wall.
Beside the window stood a big-boned black man with his back to the door, staring out onto the lunar surface. Philip Tomkins: McLaris recognized him from a picture he’d seen.
“Excuse me, Dr. Tomkins. I’m Duncan McLaris—” He tried to speak calmly, businesslike, but his vocal cords clenched so that no sound came out until the third syllable. He forced himself not to clear his throat—that would seem a nervous gesture.
Tomkins turned around. The chief administrator was heavily built, a massive man. He looked as if he had been well-muscled once but had slacked off his exercise routine in the Moon’s low gravity, allowing himself to soften. His skin was a warm chocolate brown, smooth, with wrinkles around his eyes and throat. His tight, woolly hair was thinning, scattered with white and trimmed close to his head. He looked to be in his early sixties.
Tomkins nodded toward the technicians, who had stopped when McLaris spoke. “Why don’t you three take a break? Thanks.”
McLaris felt the technicians staring as they left the room, but he refused to look at them. Tomkins was the one who mattered here.
Now he was alone with Tomkins, but he could not guess what the chief administrator intended to do. He felt tense, wary, expecting something terrible. Go on, get it over with!
He pictured Tomkins pronouncing sentence, condemning him to be executed for crimes against humanity. They would take him outside in a suit, march him across the flatlands to the middle of the crater, tell him to kneel down. He would bend to his knees in the loose rock and powder, not feeling it in his padded suit. He would look up at the deep pool of stars one last time, and then someone would ritually bash open his faceplate with a club.…
“So, Mr. McLaris—” Tomkins stared at him, “about this business of stealing the Miranda. That was rather a selfish and ill-advised thing for you to do, don’t you think? On a par with one man in a lifeboat drinking all the water when everyone else is asleep.” His voice was rich and well controlled, as if from a lifetime of speaking in large auditoriums.
McLaris tried to keep his expression from changing. He wanted to cringe, confess his guilt, beg for forgiveness. He forced himself to count to five before he answered, to make his voice steady.
“My daughter has already paid the price for my selfishness. So has Stephanie Garland.” He swallowed, but found he couldn’t wait any longer to ask. “What are you going to do to me? Saying I’m sorry just won’t—”
“You’re going to be punished, of course,” Tomkins interrupted. McLaris felt cold.
“You are not going to get a free ride—no lounging around some padded cell, wasting your time watching the holos. I’m going to make you pay, put you to work.” He paused. “From now on, you are going to do some of my tedious administrative duties. Input the daily logs, study workforce and resource allocation sheets. Deathly boring stuff. Worse than working on an assembly line.”
McLaris blinked at the administrator. It all seemed so absurd. “That’s it?”
“It’s been punishment for me—I can’t stand doing those things.”
The chief administrator turned back to stare out the narrow window at the tread-marked lunar dust. He sounded tired. “Mr. McLaris, if I ordered your death, what would that accomplish? What good would it do? The difference between human beings and machines is that we learn from our mistakes.”
Tomkins extended a large hand toward McLaris. “Welcome to Clavius Base.”
McLaris walked carefully forward and gripped the administrator’s hand, feeling as if his own would be swallowed up in the other man’s broad palm. His first impulse was to be intimidated, but as he watched Tomkins move and talk, he picked up subtle hints. The chief administrator looked massive but gentle, and he was not as comfortable as he tried to appear.
“Besides, I’m afraid you’ve been vindicated. You can now say ‘I told you so’ and have people believe you.”
McLaris felt an ice ball forming in the pit of his stomach. “What do you mean?”
Tomkins closed his eyes and spoke without looking at anything. “On Orbitech 1 your director, Roha Ombalal, just ejected a hundred and fifty people out of the airlock. Ten percent of the population. He called it a reduction in force.”
McLaris sat down, blinking hot tears from his eyes. “Ombalal doesn’t have the spine to do something like that. Brahms was behind it.” He hung his head. “Now do you see why I had to get my daughter out of there?”
“I didn’t ask you for any explanations, Mr. McLaris. Our official response was outrage. We broadcast a direct communiqué to Orbitech 1, breaking off all contact.”
McLaris couldn’t seem to focus on what Tomkins was saying, or why it mattered. “What good is that going to do?”
Tomkins looked flustered. “Since we’re completely cut off from each other anyway, there aren’t a lot of things we can do. Think of it as a symbolic gesture.”
Tomkins motioned for McLaris to join him at one of the tables. He walked to a wall unit and came back carrying two steaming cups, then shoved equipment aside to make room on the tabletop. “Tea,” he explained. “No nutritional value, but we can manufacture the water and synthesize the flavoring. More substantial food is in shorter supply, I’m afraid.” He took a sip, slurping on the edge of the cup.