The Gates of Eden: A Science Fiction Novel

The Gates of Eden: A Science Fiction Novel by Brian Stableford Page B

Book: The Gates of Eden: A Science Fiction Novel by Brian Stableford Read Free Book Online
Authors: Brian Stableford
Tags: Science-Fiction, adventure, Sci-Fi, Alien, space program
Ads: Link
to step aside.
    I was pleased to be assigned a cabin again, if only for a couple of days before we set off on the next stage of the journey (straight down). I felt tired after the long trip on the Earth Spirit , where I’d spent a lot of time in my bunk but had slept very badly, almost afraid to dream. To have four walls around me, separating my space from the rest of the universe, was a needful luxury. I didn’t particularly want to retreat into it, to spend hours glorying in my own company—I just wanted to know that I had it, and that it was there if I needed it.
    There was no conducted tour of the Ariadne ; we were called instead to a conference with the shipboard’s ecosystemic analysts, to make sure that every idea and item of data had its full exposure. It didn’t solve much: the hypotheses that came out were the ones we’d already looked at; the new information relating to the nature of Naxos’ life-system merely served to emphasize still further how closely related it was to Earth or Calicos. There are remarkably few biochemical options open to an evolving water-based life-system, and Naxos had found all the easy answers to all the difficult problems. The non-conclusion which the conference reached was that we didn’t know, and weren’t likely to find out except by continuing our investigations on the surface.
    By the time I retired to my lonely cell, the exhaustion was really eating into my spirit and I was beginning to feel depressed. I knew that I was probably building up to a nightmare, but the knowledge didn’t help. If anything, it only increased the probability. I wanted to get to bed, but circumstances conspired to find delays in the shape of visitors. I wasn’t the only one, it seemed, who was looking for new opportunities in the luxury of temporary privacy.
    The first person to come knocking at my door was Jason Harmall.
    He closed the door behind him, carefully, and waited for me to invite him to sit down. There was nowhere to sit except the bed. I took the top end and let him have the other.
    He produced from his pocket a small device that looked rather like the seed-case of a poppy, broken off with three inches of stem—except, of course, that it was made of metal.
    “What’s that?” I asked, meekly, as he handed it to me.
    “A transmitter,” he said. “It won’t work directly. You record a message into it, and then switch functions. It scrambles the message and fires it out as a kind of beep.”
    “You, I take it, have the receiver to match?”
    He nodded.
    “I’m not a secret agent,” I pointed out.
    “I am,” he replied evenly.
    I looked down at the thing I was holding for a few moments, then said, “Why me?”
    “Don’t feel privileged,” he said. “Dr. Hesse has one too.”
    “The idea is that anything I may find out is privileged information, I suppose? If we figure it out first, we forget to inform Vesenkov.”
    “I’m not particularly worried about Vesenkov,” he said. “I’m not a fool. I know that you’ll have to work together, and that you’ll be pooling your resources. Vesenkov can be told everything he needs to know—and Zeno too, of course. But Juhasz insists on sending one of his own people down with you—he argued for half a dozen, but I persuaded him that one is enough. It will be Captain d’Orsay, not a scientist. You shouldn’t have any trouble keeping her on the outside of your investigation. And when you know the answer, you tell me, not her—and not Juhasz.”
    “I don’t understand,” I said.
    “You don’t have to.”
    “I don’t have to cooperate.”
    His blue eyes didn’t waver. “Dr. Caretta,” he said gently, “I presume that you do intend to return to the solar system when this is over. You weren’t considering staying here forever?”
    I thought it over. “All right,” I said. “I do have to cooperate. But I cooperate better when I understand what I’m doing.”
    “It’s simple enough,” he said. “The Ariadne

Similar Books

The Burning Sky

Jack Ludlow

Slammed #3

Claire Adams

Face

Benjamin Zephaniah

Beast

Paul Kingsnorth

Archetype

M. D. Waters