“That’s what they call the person who stays awake during a voyage when everyone else is hibernating. After a guy named Bowman in some old movie, apparently.”
“Ah, right,” I said; I knew which one. “But something went wrong?”
“Crap, yeah. The bowman went crazy. He thawed out passengers one at a time and terrorized them—abused them sexually. By the time one of the people he’d awoken managed to get word out—a radio message to Lunaport—there was nothing anyone could do. Orbital mechanics make it really hard to intercept a ship that’s several months into its interplanetary journey. The whole thing was quite a sensation at the time, but—how old are you?”
“Forty-one.”
“You’d have been just a kid.”
“The name of the ship didn’t seem to ring a bell with Dougal McCrae at the NKPD, either.” I said it to defend my ignorance; I probably should have known about this. But maybe we’d studied it in school on a Friday. Memo to all boards of education everywhere: never schedule crucial lessons for a Friday.
“Yeah, well, Mac’s about your age,” Bertha said, exonerating him, too.
“Anyway, that explains why a guy lunged at me when I brought it up. He’d been on that ship.”
“Ah,” said Bertha. “But what’s your interest? I mean, if this is news to you, you can’t be like the other person who was asking about it.”
Needless to say, my ears perked up. “What other person?”
“A couple of weeks ago. The writer-in-residence.”
I blinked. “We have a writer-in-residence?”
“Hey, there’s more to New Klondike culture than The Bent Chisel and Diamond Tooth Gertie’s.”
“And Gully’s Gym,” I said. “Don’t forget Gully’s Gym.”
Bertha made a harrumphing sound, then: “You know who Stavros Shopatsky is?”
“One of the first guys to make a fortune from fossils here. After Weingarten and O’Reilly, I mean.”
“Exactly. He bought a ton of land under the dome from Howard Slapcoff. But he was also a writer—adventure novels; my dad used to read him. And so he donated one of the homes he built here to be a writer’s retreat. Authors from Earth apply to get an all-expenses-paid round trip to Mars, so they can come and write whatever they want. They usually stay six months or so, then head back.”
“Okay,” I said.
“And the current writer is doing a book about the B. Traven.”
“I understand it’s still in service, but under a different name,” I said.
“Really?” replied Bertha. “What name?”
“The Kathryn Denning.”
“Oh, is that the Traven? Interesting. Yeah, she’s still active.” Bertha looked at a monitor. “In fact, she’s on her way here. She’s due to arrive on Friday.”
“Can you let me know when she touches down? I’d like to give her a once-over.”
“You didn’t tell me why you were interested in this.”
She said it in a way that conveyed if I expected her to help satisfy my curiosity, I had to satisfy hers. And so I did: “I’m tracking down what became of some cargo she brought here, back when she was called the Traven.”
“It’s been thirty years since she last sailed under that name. Surely you don’t expect to find a clue aboard her at this late date?”
I smiled. “Can’t hurt to have a look.”
* * *
My office was on the second of two floors. Instead of the rickety elevator, I always took the two half flights of stairs up. As I came out of the stairwell, I spotted a man at the end of the corridor. He could have been there to see anyone on this floor, but—
Jesus.
Well, not exactly. This guy was better-looking than Jesus. But he had the same longish hair, short beard, and lean face you saw in stained-glass windows.
It was Stuart Berling—unless the real Krikor Ajemian had come to Mars for some reason. I figured he was either here to beat the crap out of me for bringing up the B. Traven, or to beat the crap out of me for sleeping with his wife. Either way, discretion seemed the better part of valor, and I turned around and headed back to the stairwell. But—damn it!—he’d spotted me. I heard a shout of “Lomax!” coming from down the corridor.
I leapt, going down the whole flight at once. The thud of my landing echoed in the stairwell. I turned around and took the second set of stairs in a single go, too—but Berling could run like the wind, his transfer legs pumping up and down. Looking up the open stairwell from the ground floor, I saw him appear at the second-floor doorway. I hightailed it through the