Nodding vigorously, Molina replied, “Traces of PAHs have been found in some of the rock samples sent for analysis by the people building your base down there.”
“And you believe this indicates the presence of life?” Danvers challenged. “A trace of some chemicals?”
“PAHs are biomarkers,” Molina said firmly. “They’ve been found on Earth, on other planets, on comets—even in interstellar clouds.”
“And always in association with living creatures?” Yamagata asked.
Molina hesitated a fraction of a second. “Almost always. They can be created abiologically, under certain circumstances.”
Danvers shook his head. “I can’t believe anything could live on that godforsaken world.”
“How do you know god’s forsaken this planet?” Molina challenged.
“I didn’t mean it literally,” Danvers grumbled.
“How strong is this evidence?” Yamagata asked. “Does the presence of these compounds mean that life is certain to be found on Mercury?”
“Nothing’s certain,” Molina said. “As a matter of fact, the PAHs deteriorate very rapidly in the tremendous heat and totally arid conditions down there.”
“Ah,” said the bishop, smiling for the first time.
Molina’s answering smile was bigger, and fiercer. “But don’t you see? If the PAHs deteriorate quickly, yet we still find them present in the rocks, then something must be producing them constantly. Something down there must be continuously creating those complex, fragile compounds. Something that’s alive.”
The bishop’s face blanched. Yamagata suddenly foresaw his sun-power project being invaded by armies of earnest environmentalists, each eager to prevent any activity that might contaminate the native life-forms.
GOETHE BASE
Dante Alexios sat rigidly in his chair and tried not to let his satisfaction show on his face. The wall screen in his office clearly showed the earnest, intent expression on Molina’s face.
He wants to come down to the base, Alexios said to himself, delighted. He’s asking me for permission to come down here.
“My mission is sanctioned by the International Astronautical Authority,” Molina was saying, “as well as the International Consortium of Universities and the science foundations of—”
“Of course,” Alexios interrupted, “of course. I have no intention of interfering with your important research, Dr. Molina. I was merely trying to explain to you that conditions down here on the surface are rather difficult. Our base is still fairly rugged, you know.”
Molina’s intent expression softened into a smug smile. “I’ve been in rugged places before, Mr. Alexios. You should see the site on Europa, with all that radiation to protect against.”
“I can imagine,” Alexios replied dryly.
“Then you have no objection to my coming down to your base?”
“None whatsoever,” said Alexios. “Our facility is at your disposal.” Molina’s bright blue eyes sparkled. “Wonderful! I’ll start the preparations immediately.”
And with that, Molina ended the transmission. Alexios’s wall screen went suddenly blank. He didn’t bother to thank me, or even to say good-bye, Alexios thought. How like Victor, still as impetuous and self-centered as ever.
Alexios got up from his chair and stretched languidly, surprised at how tense his body had become during his brief conversation with the astrobiologist.
Victor didn’t recognize me, Alexios said to himself. Not the slightest flicker of recall. Of course, it’s been more than ten years and the nanosurgery has altered my face considerably. But he didn’t even remember my voice. I’m dead and gone, as far as he’s concerned.
All to the good, Alexios told himself. Now he’ll come down here on his fool’s errand and destroy himself.
I’ll hardly have to lift a finger. He’s eager to rush to his own annihilation.
Alexios dreamed troubling dreams that night. The steel-hard determination that had brought him to Mercury and lured Victor Molina to this hellhole of a world softened as he slept, thawed slightly as he sank into the uncontrollable world of his inner thoughts, the world that he kept hidden and firmly locked away during his waking hours.
In his dream he was standing once again at the base of the sky-tower, craning his neck to follow its rigidly straight line as it rose beyond the clouds, up, up, farther than the eye could follow, stretching up toward the stars.
Lara was standing beside him, her arm around his waist, her head resting on his strong shoulder. The diamond ring on her finger was his, not Victor’s. She had chosen him and rejected Molina. Alexios turned to her, took her in his arms, kissed her with all the tenderness and love his soul could contain.
But she pulled away from him, suddenly terrified. Her lovely face contorted into a scream as the proud tower began to slowly collapse, writhing like an immense snake of man-made fibers, coiling languidly, uncontrollably, unstoppably, as it slowly but inexorably crashed to the ground. All in silence. In utter silence, as if he had suddenly gone completely deaf. Alexios wanted to scream, too, but his throat was frozen. He wanted to stop the tower’s collapse with his bare hands, but he could not move, his feet were rooted to the spot.
The immense collapsing tower smashed into the workers’ village and beyond, crushing houses and cinderblock work buildings, smashing the bodies of men, women, and children as it thundered to the ground, pulverizing dreams and plans and hopes beyond repair. The whole mountainside shook as dust rose to cover all the work, all the sweat and labor that had raised the tower to its full height. Alexios’s mouth tasted of ashes and a bitterness that went beyond human endurance.
Lara had disappeared. All around him, as far as the eye could see, there was nothing but devastation and the mangled bodies of the dead.
My fault, he told himself. The sin of pride. My pride has ruined everything, killed all those millions of people. Covered with ashes, his soul crushed along with everything else, he screamed to the vacant sky, “My fault! It’s all my fault!”
He awoke with a start, covered with cold sweat. In the years since the skytower’s destruction, Alexios had learned that the catastrophe was not his fault, not at all. The soul-killing guilt he had once felt had long since evolved into an implacable, burning hatred. He thirsted not for forgiveness, nor even for the clearing of his name. He lived for vengeance.
THERMOPHILES
Victor Molina also dreamed that night as he slept on the airfoam bed in his stateroom aboard Himawari, in orbit around the planet Mercury.
He dreamed of the Nobel ceremony in Stockholm. He saw himself dressed in the severely formal attire of the ritual as the king of Sweden handed him the heavy gold award for biology. The discoverer of thermophiles on the planet Mercury, Molina heard the king announce. The courageous, intrepid man who found life where all others said it was impossible for life to exist. Lara sat in the front row of the vast audience, beaming happily. Victor reminded himself to add a line to his Nobel lecture, thanking his wife for her love and support through all the years of their marriage.
Then he began his lecture. The huge audience hall, crammed with the elite of every continent on Earth, fell into an expectant silence. Thermophiles are organisms that live at temperatures far beyond those in which human beings can survive, he told the rapt and glittering audience. On Earth, microscopic thermophiles were discovered in the latter part of the twentieth century, existing deep underground at temperatures and pressures that were, up until then, considered impossible as habitats for living organisms. Yet these bacterial forms not only exist, they are so numerous that they actually outweigh all the living matter on the surface of the Earth! What is more, they survive without sunlight, shattering the firmly held belief that all life depends on sunlight as its basic source of energy. The thermophiles use the heat of Earth’s hellish core to derive their metabolic energy.