“I’ll call you as soon as I’ve spoken with Mr. Waxman,” she said.
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
“Thank you!” Gomez said, as if she had just stepped in front of a bullet aimed at his heart. “Thank you!”
Once the screen went dark, Alicia asked, “Is he always so churned up?”
“His work means everything to him,” Raven replied.
“So he assumes it should mean everything to you, as well.”
Raven realized the truth of it. “I suppose he does.”
“Scientists.” Alicia made it sound like a curse. And suddenly Raven recognized that she was right. It is a curse, she told herself. Scientists like Tómas are truly cursed; they’ve cursed themselves with a curiosity that must be satisfied, if they’re ever to find peace.
Sitting herself down on the sofa next to Alicia, Raven asked, “So what are we going to do about Evan?”
Two hours later they still sat—at the tiny kitchen table—facing each other, the question totally unanswered.
PLAYING WITH FIRE
Raven slowly pulled herself to her feet and started taking the dinner dishes to the kitchen sink. Alicia got up too, as if she weighed ten tons, and cleared the narrow kitchen table of the rest of their dishes.
“This isn’t going to be easy,” she said as she stood beside Raven at the sink.
“We’ll figure it out,” Raven said. “There’s got to be a way.”
“We’re playing with fire.”
Raven almost smiled. “The lessons in anthropology that I’m studying in my sleep showed me that early humans who played with fire changed the course of history.”
Alicia nodded, but said, “Did your lessons show you how many of them got burned?”
They both returned to their jobs the next morning: Alicia to Waxman’s outer office and Raven to her cubbyhole down the hall. Once Alicia told her that Waxman had shown up, Raven strode to his office, stepped past Alicia at her desk, and rapped on the partially open door to Waxman’s private office. She stepped in before the man could respond.
“Raven!” he said, looking up from his desk. “What a delightful surprise.”
Ignoring his remark, Raven said, “Tómas Gomez called me last night. He was frantic—”
“I know,” Waxman said, his expression souring. “He left a message for me that was more than half an hour long.”
“He needs my help. He’s like a little boy who can’t find his toys.”
“Aptly put,” said Waxman. “How long do you think you’d be away from this office?”
She temporized, “A few days. Maybe a week or so.”
Waxman stared at her for a long, wordless moment. “And we were just starting to get along together so well.”
Standing there before his desk, Raven replied, “That’s finished, Evan. I won’t be taking Rust again.”
He smiled thinly. “That’s not for you to decide.”
“Yes it is. I ordered nose filters just like yours. They’ll be delivered to my quarters this afternoon.” Raven didn’t reveal that it was Alicia Polanyi who scoured through the habitat’s catalogues, found the filters, and ordered them. Plus a pair for herself.
Waxman’s narrow smile disappeared. “Did you now?”
“I did.”
Waving one hand carelessly in the air, Waxman said, “All right, go ahead and drudge for Gomez. I hope you enjoy the work.”
“Thank you, Evan,” said Raven. And she turned and left his office.
As she passed Alicia’s desk, she made the slightest of nods. Alicia smiled slightly.
Waxman’s voice came through the open doorway of his office, “You just make damned certain you’ve cleaned up all the tasks you’ve been working on here before you go start babysitting that astronomer.”
Without breaking her stride, Raven answered over her shoulder, “Of course, Mr. Waxman.”
Once Raven got back to her own cramped little office, she called Gomez.
Before she could say a word, he asked breathlessly, “Is it all right? Did he give you permission—”
“Yes, Tómas,” Raven interrupted, smiling. “I’ll start working with you tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow?” Crestfallen. “But I need you today! Now!”
With the slightest shake of her head, Raven replied, “I’ve got to clean up the work I’ve been doing here, Tómas. It’ll take me the rest of the day and well into the evening.”
“That long.”
“That long,” she confirmed. “But I’ll be at your laboratory first thing tomorrow morning. Without fail.”
He nodded ruefully. Without his expression changing in the slightest Gomez asked, “Can you have dinner with me tonight?”
Raven made herself smile. “I’m afraid not. Too much work to get through. I’ll probably just have a snack here in my office.”
“Oh. All right. Okay.” His face looked miserable. “I’ll see you first thing tomorrow.”
“Without fail,” Raven replied, trying to make it sound as cheerful and bright as possible.
Her desktop screen went blank.
Evan Waxman leaned back in his plush desk chair and drummed the fingers of both his hands against the thighs of his perfectly fitted trousers.
She thinks she’s getting away from me, he said to himself, his face clouding over. She thinks she can walk out on me.
There are plenty of other fish in the sea, a voice in his head reminded him. Yes, Waxman admitted, but once you let one get away the others will notice it. It will give them ideas.
Raven’s got to be brought under control, he concluded. I can’t let her walk away from me. She’s not leaving until I’m finished with her.
He sat up straight in his chair and called for Alicia.
She appeared almost instantly at his office door.
Eying her gaunt figure, Waxman said, “I want you to set up a surveillance watch on Raven Marchesi while she’s working with Gomez. I want to see everything she and that astronomer are doing together.”
Alicia Polanyi nodded obediently. “Right away, Mr. Waxman,” she said.
COUNTERMEASURES
Slightly bleary-eyed from having slept only a few hours, Raven got out of bed, showered, dressed, and grabbed a sweet bun for breakfast. She was still chewing its last remains as she left her apartment and headed for Tómas Gomez’s quarters, halfway across Haven’s main wheel.
She tapped at his apartment’s door once and it slid open immediately. Gomez was asleep at his desk, head resting on his arms amid a clutter of papers and fingernail-sized video chips.
Like her own quarters, Gomez’s place was not spacious. But he had turned it into his personal laboratory. The living room was filled with diagnostic devices, machines that could display and analyze the recordings that the submersible had made down at the bottom of Uranus’s globe-girdling ocean. Viewscreens covered the walls, all of them blank, silent.
Looking at Gomez’s slumbering form, Raven realized that he must have worked all night. Just as I did, she thought. Worked until he collapsed.
Suddenly Gomez snapped awake. His head popped up and his bloodshot eyes went wide as he focused on Raven.
“You’re here! Thank God!”
Raven smiled down at him and said, “I’m ready for work, Tómas.”
“Thank God,” he repeated.
Gomez was not nearly as disorganized as Raven had feared. It was just the sheer amount of data that his submersible had accumulated and sent to the surface during its mission into Uranus’s sea bottom that had overwhelmed him.