The Ganymede Club Read Online Free PDF Page A

they were visible they would not be concealed. He ushered her into his study and indicated a seat across from his. So long as she was sitting there, he could destroy her instantly in a dozen different ways.
    He sat down by the computer console and smiled at her. "Now, before you tell me just why you are here, satisfy my curiosity. How did you come to choose me, of all the actuaries in Oberth City? I feel sure that we have never met, for I would surely not have forgotten so beautiful a young woman."
    "No. We've never met. I just consulted the directory."
    "And picked my name? But how, Ms. Rinker? It could not have been alphabetical."
    "No. It wasn't. I used a different criterion." Neely Rinker cast another swift glance around the room. She licked her lips and leaned forward. "I consulted the directory, as I said, for actuaries. And I picked the one with a current active license who has done the least work as a consultant for the past five Mars years. That is you."
    After all his efforts to blend perfectly into the background, he had made himself conspicuous after all. Julius marveled at the irony of it, at the same time as he resolved to do something as soon as Neely Rinker was gone. He would change his society status from active member to associate member, on the grounds of increasing age.
    But she was continuing, with an earnest and pained intensity: "I didn't want someone with a busy practice, people wandering in and out of the office all the time. And I told you that money was not an issue. It is not. I will pay you well, and more than well. But I ask something in return. I need your promise that you will never talk about this meeting."
    "That will be no problem, Ms. Rinker." Except, why did she want such a promise? "Although actuaries are seldom the recipients of the system's most exciting secrets, it is our general practice to respect client confidentiality."
    "Good. I want you to tell me my life expectancy. Actually, I want to know two life expectancies. I assume you can calculate that."
    "Indeed, I can." Julius reached over to the computer and pulled the entry unit onto his knee. Neely Rinker's request suddenly made a lot more sense. She was planning some kind of long-term relationship, and she wanted to know if she was likely to outlive her partner.
    "A life expectancy," he went on, "is exactly what a mortality computer is designed to provide. However, I assume that you realize that what you will get is no more than a probability? It answers the question, given a very large number of individuals just like you: What is the average life of all those people? It promises nothing about you in particular, or indeed any specific person."
    "I understand that."
    "Very well. And a life expectancy depends on many more things than the age of a person." He rubbed at his nose—an old habit, damn it, that he somehow had to break—and went on, "So, Ms. Rinker, if you do not mind giving me the answers to a rather large number of questions—some of which, I'm afraid, must be quite personal . . ."
    When she nodded, he began. The first few variables were so standardized that he expected no problems: name, personal ID number— "No."
    Julius looked up. "I beg your pardon? All I need—"
    "No. I can't tell you my personal ID number."
    "But really, my dear Ms. Rinker, this is just to save you time and money. I need your ID number to pull from the data files the most general information about you. Nothing personal. Just things like your place of birth, age, height, weight—"
    "I will give all of those to you directly. Please go on."
    Julius shook his head in pretended bewilderment. Actually, he ought to be the last person to complain if Neely Rinker—surely an assumed name—chose to hide her true identity. That made two of them. But what was she hiding? He might find out in due course. He already had one piece of information that she had probably never intended to give him: that she was not from Mars. If she were, she would have said