Dark Ararat - Brian Stableford [155]
“Not yet,” Matthew was quick to say. “We can’t go in without the cameras. We should be able to get a fix on Dulcie’s phone ourselves, but we can’t go any further in without a reliable means of getting information out.”
Matthew’s phone beeped. The person on the other end was Godert Kriefmann. The news was already spreading, and the doctor obviously wasn’t content to wait for Tang to relay everything.
“You’ll know as much as we do when you’ve played the recording,” Matthew told Kriefmann. “Call Nita Brownell, and any crew member who can grasp its import. Tell them we need TV cameras. We need a rig that one man can carry, but it has to have enough clout to transmit loud and clear to Milyukov’s comsats. They have to drop it on the next overhead pass, because every second counts. Any delay might cost Dulcie her life and ruin our best chance of making a healthy contact.”
He closed the connection without leaving space for a reply. Then he switched off his phone. “You stay on the line, Lynn,” he said. “Ike and I have things to do.”
“They might not play ball,” Ike said, anxiously. “Milyukov might be spaceborn, but he’s got access to the library. He knows Earth history, and understands it well enough to have done his best to keep a tight stranglehold on the information passing between surface and orbit. He didn’t want you here in the first place—he won’t want to let you spin the story.”
“He doesn’t have a choice,” Matthew said. “His authority over his own people is going to vanish overnight if he tells them that they can’t hear this news because he doesn’t trust the messenger. The story’s too big, and he’s already been sitting on it for too long. He’s been able to deflect attention away from the ruins, and he was able to dismiss the weapon that killed Bernal as a malicious hoax, but all that’s going to rebound on him now. The shit will be hitting the fan all over the microworld. From now on, I’m in charge.”
“You?” Ike queried. “What happened to us? Don’t Lynn and I get a say in anything?”
“I’m the one who knows how to play the game,” Matthew told him, bluntly. “No matter what you used to think of my TV prophet act, it’s the only way we can turn this whole business around. It has to be me. Maybe it should have been Bernal, but he’s not here, so it has to be me.”
“You’re an arrogant son of a bitch, aren’t you?” Ike said—but he didn’t say it like a man who intended to put up a fight.
“Yes I am,” Matthew said. “But you have to take charge of putting the boat together, because you know how and I can only follow orders. We have to reassemble it so that Lynn can stay safe. She can’t come with us because she’d slow us down—and somebody has to stay here to feed those basketball things to the robots, so that they can start letting us in on the secrets of esoteric chimerization.”
Having said that, Matthew became aware of the fact that Lynn Gwyer was also looking at him with an expression of profound annoyance.
He shrugged his shoulders, and said: “Sorry, Lynn. Luck of the draw. What did Milyukov have to say?”
“He said he’d do his best,” she told him.
“He’s a lying bastard,” Matthew opined, “but he’ll have to make good on the promise anyway. He really will do his best, up to and including targeting the drop to within a hundred meters. As soon as the dandelion seed settles, Ike and I will be on our way. It won’t be so bad—if I’m right, the wreckage of this little population explosion really will help us figure out how emortal chimeras cope with the arithmetic of the sex-death equation, and how they keep evolution going in spite of the unhelpful frame in which they have to operate. It won’t be as big a story as the first contact, but Dulcie’s already pocketed that one. The best Ike and I can hope for is to be heroes of the rescue dash.”
Had the situation not been so tense, Matthew thought, Lynn might have allowed herself a wry laugh. As things were, her voice remained level and earnest. “Do you have any idea