"Well, there is that." She crossed her arms. "The professor doesn't see that."
"He sees more than you might think."
"Whatever. Have you found out anything more about these things?" She gestured at the open hatch next to her.
"Yeah. They really are alive— and the DNA is derived from human DNA. Somehow we got sampled after arriving here and this place," the mesobot tilted toward the inner sphere, "has been making variations on the theme of human biology ever since. All these life-forms share the basic organic composition of humans, but put together in different ways. The one you're sitting next to is probably the one we'd consider most edible; a couple of the others are really off-putting, like that bone thing four hatches over from you."
"So what next?"
"Herat thinks these things are a gold mine. He wants to study them all."
"Damn him! Can't you make him see reason?"
"He thinks if we select one of these chambers, the others will close and he'll lose his chance to examine them."
"Yeah? So?"
"Rue, you have to face the possibility that this whole process isn't going to lead us to the information you need."
Rue reached out and grabbed the mesobot. It let out a surprised beep. She whirled her arm and flung it away in the general direction of the horizon.
"Hey…" Mike's voice faded away as the bot receded. She watched it stop itself just short of the outer sphere's skin, then jet away indignantly.
Rue caught herself on the edge of the hatch and settled again. Mike might well be right that exploring these hatches wouldn't get her anywhere; but that was no excuse for not trying.
IT WAS OBVIOUSLY prudent to leave Rue alone when she was in this kind of mood. Michael returned the mesobot to its inspection duty, opening more and more inscape windows around himself until he was almost boxed in by them. The other scientists crowded around, starting their own analyses and soon the whole space near the main airlock was full of windows.
It was good to lose himself in work. Michael had awoken from their rest period feeling the accustomed lightness of freefall and another lightness he hadn't felt in years. He knew a part of his life was over, had ended yesterday when he failed to summon the kami of the Lasa. For months, he had agonized over this coming loss, which he could foresee but not divert. Now that it had happened, he felt… nothing. At least, no despair. Just a kind of expectancy. As he worked now, he turned that feeling over in the back of his mind, trying to figure out what it meant.
The kami had been his anchor to a meaning in life. He'd thought he would be lost without them— and he was; it was just that being lost didn't seem to mean so much all of a sudden.
There was more to it… but understanding eluded him, for now.
Crisler drifted into the constellation, eyeing the microscopic views and spectral analyses with some irony. "In your element, I see, Dr. Bequith."
"Yes, Admiral." Michael kept his tone neutral.
"I've been watching you," said Crisler. "I'm aware that you've been doing a good job with this investigation. I just wanted you to know that this information is going into my report. If it should turn out that you are not the saboteur, you'll be receiving the highest commendation for your work here."
Michael appraised the admiral; for once Crisler wasn't showing his usual hail-fellow-well-met face. He looked serious and sincere. Michael had to restrain himself from punching the man in the face.
"Thank you, Admiral," said Michael as cooly as he could. "I hope you realize that I took asylum on Rue Cassels's ship so that I would be able to continue my work unhampered by… politics."
"I reserve my judgment on that. Carry on." Crisler glided through some windows and vanished behind them.
Well, I wonder what that was all about? Michael returned to work, but his halfhearted concentration was quite broken now.
What an unbelievably clumsy attempt to be chummy! Crisler's little pep-talk had doubtless been meant to be reassuring, but to Michael it just seemed forced. How could he think that Michael would ever trust him? Which reminded him of how Rue mistrusted Crisler; that, in turn, brought his mind back to Rue and her present dilemma. Would she end up at this man's mercy, if she was unable to find a way to control the Envy?
He needed a bathroom break. Michael left the open windows where they were and headed for the cylindrical, man-sized portapot they'd set up last night. He hated performing bodily functions in freefall, so tended to wait until the last minute. As usual his need was fairly urgent by the time he got to the can.
As he was buckling up his jumpsuit again, something tumbled out of one of the pockets. It was the little camera he'd borrowed from Blair and used to photograph the outside of this habitat. The pictures were still in the camera— presumably useless since they appeared to show nothing new.
The camera had its own little preview screen. On a whim, he turned it on and brought up the first photo.
There was the black of the Lasa sphere and the writing…
The writing was different.
Michael gaped at the image in astonishment. His mind was a complete blank. He was jerked rudely out of that state when somebody knocked on the door to the can. "Hey, what are you, dying in there?" It was one of the marines.
"Hold on." He hid the camera again, finished zipping up and left the portapot.
A few meters away, the science team was poring over the results from the mesobot. They were all quite absorbed in their work, especially Herat. Even the marines were interested, since some of the inscape pictures showed the squishier parts of the life-forms under analysis.
Michael drifted off to the horizon and settled down with his back to the camp. Then he brought out the camera again and looked at the pictures.
Somehow, the camera had seen something completely different from what he— and the others— had seen as they approached the habitat. Where Michael had seen spidery Lasa writing, the camera had recorded something different, right at the spot where Linda Ophir's annotations suggested a deception in Blair's originals.
There was writing there, all right, but only one of the large paragraphs was Lasa. The other paragraph, Michael recognized as the dense, multilayered and multicolored lines of Chicxulub script.
And now he remembered how, on board the Spirit of Luna, he had been literally unable to see any part of the ship that he was not authorized to visit. Doors had been invisible; stairs had looked like walls, all due to an override on his inscape. What if… Michael called up an inscape search interface and tried to connect to the camera through it. He got no reply. Like most simple mechanisms manufactured in the halo worlds, this camera was not connected to the inscape network.
The only way that he and the others could have had the complete sensory experience of seeing Lasa writing instead of what was really there was if inscape had overridden their senses whenever they looked at the outside of the habitat.
The thought was disturbing. How could he know what was real about this place and what fake? No— everything couldn't be faked, that would place too great a burden on the inscape system. Even on the Spirit of Luna, only key items had been disguised. Nothing so magnificent as this space he was now in could be completely constructed for everyone's senses without some signs that it was unreal. But strategic information could be hidden, essentially in the open, if everything else was left alone.
Nobody could mess with inscape without massive computing power and direct control of the inscape system. Only Crisler had that control. So Crisler knew about the Chicxulub writing. Crisler— and how many of his people?
Michael quickly replaced the camera in his pocket and turned toward the camp.
As he did there was a great splashing sound and the steady light that had been ever-present in the habitat since yesterday, went out.