The scent immediately reminded Bianco of the perfume worn by a waitress who worked in a Venetian cafe he had frequented as a young man. Imagine that, a part of his mind marveled. I have not even thought about her in fifty years, yet she returns to me. No matter how hot and crowded the cafe may have been, she always seemed as clean and as fresh as dew on a morning flower. Young Fabio would drink espresso until his nerve endings sizzled just for the pleasure of gazing at her.
Bianco breathed deeply, reveling in the memory from his youth. The edges of his vision purpled, then cleared. Thora Skillen’s marble-white skin had deepened to the color of mocha. Her sharp, angular features had softened into graceful curves. Her salt-and-pepper buzz cut had sprouted into long auburn tresses sparkling with a hint of Mediterranean sunlight.
“Bella,” he said, brushing her cheeks with his knuckles. “Molta bella.”
In Skillen’s eyes, Fabio Bianco was her father, the father she feared and hated, the father she loved beyond all others. Just as she had always longed for him to do, her father embraced her lovingly. Skillen took her father’s trembling hand and worked it beneath her lab smock.
Lance Muncie had taken almost half an hour to don his EMU. He wasn’t about to let the rock music that suddenly boomed outside his compartment destroy his concentration. With great care, he took the helmet in both his hands, gazing upon it for a solemn moment as he imagined a Crusader knight would have gazed on his armored headpiece.
A flowery smell filled the compartment. Lance coughed so hard the helmet popped out of his hands. He hated flowery perfumes, and this one made him feel light-headed. But he passed it off as excitement. This was the greatest day of his life, the day he would leave his mark. Carla Sue had been punished. And now the rest of these godless scientists would meet their deserved end.
He secured the helmet and activated the suit’s air supply. The rock music faded to a muffled drumbeat. After a few breaths, his light-headedness disappeared. He felt strong as a bull, keen as a knife.
He swept aside the accordion door of his compartment.
He felt worthy.
Chakra Ramsanjawi had waited inside the logistics module until he was certain that everyone on board was under the influence of the Lethe. He heard the distant echo of the Mars module erupting into a series of cheers led by Kurt Jaeckle and saw the two male Martians closing their hatch. Guessing what Jaeckle intended, he made certain that the connecting tunnel was properly sealed from his side before he moved on. There was no sense stealing the anticoca gene if he did not survive to profit by it.
As he swam down the connecting tunnel, he heard the blare of music from Stu Roberts’s portable CD player. Roberts himself twitched like a one-man band, and a pair of Japanese techs cavorted in something that resembled a piscine mating dance. Even Oyamo, so stoic and staid during their chess matches, cut loose. He accompanied Roberts’s performance by pounding his bare belly with his fists.
Ramsanjawi stopped in ELM to grab a small satchel from his office. The scene inside the module was as raucous as in the connecting tunnel. Finally, he pulled himself into The Bakery. The module was decorated with multicolored clouds as the techs and scientists, laughing uproariously, tossed broken vials between workstations. In the center of the aisle, Fabio Bianco and Thora Skillen had found each other.
Ramsanjawi hastily removed the hinges from the lab door. He had not been able to synthesize a great quantity of Lethe from available materials. The drug’s effects would begin to wear off soon after the ventilation system purged itself and everyone breathed clean air again.
He first concentrated on the coca plants. He noted those that flourished and those that ailed and the covered culture dishes of microbe colonies that O’Donnell had employed to deliver the genetic mechanism. The ailing plants were O’Donnell’s failures; the healthy ones were possible successes. He snipped a leaf and a portion of root from each healthy plant. He labelled the samples, bound them in plastic, and placed them in his satchel. Then he turned to the flat round culture dishes. From his review of O’Donnell’s computer data, he knew that only a dozen or so of the glass dishes contained promising genetic material. Using tiny pneumatic test tubes, he began taking samples of each. Since liquids did not pour in micro-gee, the task was far more tedious than simply lopping off a leaf or snipping a section of root.
He was nearly finished collecting his samples when a Canadian scientist banged into the lab.
“We’re havin’ a party, eh?” said the scientist. His lab smock was so splashed with colored liquids it looked like a tie-dyed shirt.
Ramsanjawi waved him away. The scientist stared at him oddly, as if confused by Ramsanjawi’s breathing apparatus.
“Some mask you have there, eh?”
Instinctively, Ramsanjawi moved to protect the flexible plastic tube that looped over his shoulder and connected with the air tank on his back. He picked a greenish vial from the wall rack and ceremoniously smashed it against the Canadian’s shoulder. Most of the liquid sailed in a flurry of tiny green balls, but some was absorbed into the cotton of the smock.
“Hey, that’s cool,” said the Canadian, gaping at his newest splash of color. He snatched a yellow vial from the wall. “This one is pretty.”
It also was one of the solutions Ramsanjawi wanted to steal. The Canadian held it up to the light with one eye closed like a stupid drunk. Ramsanjawi carefully extricated the vial from the Canadian’s fingers. The Canadian did not protest. He simply started to look for another pretty color.
Ramsanjawi had a brainstorm. Rather than close up the lab and feign ignorance about its missing contents, he would induce The Bakery’s revelers to destroy it. He scooped a handful of vials from the wall and tossed them out of the lab. The Canadian, laughing, sailed after them. Ramsanjawi heaved another batch. Then he returned to the task of collecting the last of the samples.
Lorraine had been talking with Stanley when the alarm sounded, indicating a problem with the life-support system. Stanley explained that the problem was undoubtedly minor—the computers were so sensitive they sounded alarms for virtually any reason—but he sailed off to investigate. It was then, as Lorraine watched the yellow light flashing within the computer-generated diagram of the logistics module, that the aroma of flowers enveloped her like a shower of rose petals.
Suddenly, Lorraine had the maddest, most uncontrollable urge to be with Dan. Her heart swelled in her chest. Soft laughter bubbled in her throat. This was utter nonsense. She was a doctor, a medical officer on a space station. She wasn’t a schoolgirl.
Nonsense aside, she sailed to Dan’s office door. Biting her lip to keep her laughter at bay, she peeled off her hairnet and opened the collar of her shirt enough to reveal a hint of cleavage. Steady now, she told herself, no time to be immature.
Poised to dive into his arms, she gracefully swept open the door. The office was empty except for the bonsai bird fluttering in the sudden breeze. Of course, she remembered, he had gone to the observatory for some silly reason. But she could reach him on Channel D. D for Dan. She undipped the headset from the comm console and called to him over the radio.