Dark as Day

by Charles Sheffield

  “So have I. So have we all.” Valnia Bloom sat down uninvited next to Jan. “I didn’t mean to startle you, or interrupt what you were doing. But you and I need to talk.”

  Jan’s heart raced again, with a different emotion. “Is Sebastian all right?”

  “It depends what you mean by all right. Physically, he is fine—in better shape than either one of us. But I foresee problems.”

  Today Valnia Bloom was wearing her tight blood-red head scarf, which emphasized her sharp cheekbones and the pallor of her complexion.

  “While we’ve been busy in the lab here,” she went on, “the Jovian security staff have done a minute-by-minute reconstruction of what happened onboard the OSL Achilles during our Jupiter close approach and atmospheric fly-through.

  “It’s pretty scary. They estimate that if Sebastian had been free to work on the third safety catch for ten more seconds—and they’ve seen no reason to believe that he was likely to stop—he would have had the hatch open. Normally, a hatch failure can’t destroy a whole ship. Bulkheads seal automatically when they sense a loss of pressure, and most of the hull remains airtight. But normally a ship is flying in vacuum. We were skimming through the upper levels of Jupiter’s atmosphere, and that is mainly hydrogen. The static charge on the Achilles would have set off a hydrogen-oxygen explosion, big enough to cause a hull fracture. After that the whole ship would have exploded and fallen to Jupiter’s deep layers. It’s doubtful that anyone up here would ever have known what happened. The Achilles would be gone too quickly for any kind of emergency signal.”

  Jan knew that she had come close to death, but this was the first time she realized how near the whole ship had approached disaster. Dreading the answer, she asked, “Have they officially charged Sebastian?”

  “They have not.” Valnia Bloom was biting color into her thin lips. “Nor will they. The official conclusion is that Sebastian cannot be charged with anything, because he is of diminished mental capacity and therefore not responsible for his actions.”

  “He’s not! I mean, he’s not stupid. If they are saying he is retarded, that’s just not true.”

  “I agree. Remember, I did the tests on both of you, back on Earth. At the same time, I find myself in an impossible position. I have been unable to explain to the investigating team why Sebastian apparently attempted suicide. Also, I have been obliged to tell them of the peculiarities of brain structure that were discovered by Dr. Christa Matloff, before you ever left Earth orbit.”

  “They don’t mean anything. I’ve known Sebastian since we were small children. He thinks as well as anyone else, just differently from most people.”

  “Differently, and in some ways better. His intuitive grasp of the behavior of complex hydrodynamic systems is astonishing. That intrigued me from the outset, and provided my original impetus to approve both your transfers to the Outer System. However, I still have a problem. There is another step that I would like to take with Sebastian, one which he has agreed to. Actually, he seems indifferent to the whole thing, which is worrying.”

  “He’s like that. He doesn’t get excited.”

  “Apparently not. However, in view of the official conclusion that he is not responsible for his own actions, I cannot proceed with anything based on his assent alone, or on my own feeling that it may benefit him. You are regarded by everyone as the person closest to him.”

  “I am. I always have been.”

  “So it was agreed that I should ask your permission.”

  “To do what?”

  Valnia Bloom gestured toward the microscope. “You have examined the small inorganic spheres scattered within Sebastian’s body?”

  “I was looking at them when you came in. I also read your report. I don’t know what they are—but neither do you.”

  “More accurately, we know exactly what they are, but we have no idea what they do. However, because they remain chemically inert they play no part in his general body metabolism. I would like to explore the possibility of sluicing him.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry, it’s the usual medical term. I would like you to consider removing these mysterious nodules from his body entirely. Every last one of them.”

  “But why, if they’re not doing any harm?”

  “I’m not sure that’s true. What I said was, they don’t play a part in his general metabolism. But the brain is a delicate organ, and its operation depends on tiny electric currents within it. The nodules are present there, too, and they certainly possess electrical and magnetic properties.”

  “Do you think they are the reason why Sebastian’s neurological tests are unusual?”

  “I would not make so strong a statement. What I will say is that breakdown and removal of the nodules—assuming that it can be done—removes one possible source of variability. I see no way that it can harm Sebastian, and it may help him.”

  It sounded good, but Jan had learned to be wary. Too many times, in the past, people had suggested “treatments” for Sebastian to “make him more normal.” Some had been performed, over Jan’s protests. Not one had made a scrap of difference.

  “How would you do this, and how long would it take?”

  “I can answer your first question, but not your second. Breaking down the nodules within his body in order to remove them will be a delicate operation. We will have to inject a set of bespoke nanos into him. They will be designed to find the nodules, encapsulate each one, and break it down. Then the nanos will transfer each capsule through the cell wall, into the blood stream, and to the kidneys.”

  “Would that be safe?”

  “Completely. Since each of the enclosing capsules is tiny and chemically inert at body temperatures, Sebastian will simply excrete them—pee them out.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “That’s the part I can’t answer yet. First, we need a set of tailor-made nanos, designed for this specific task. Nothing quite like them exists, but I have already spoken to a top nano designer. Harold Launius believes that the task is comfortably within present capabilities. His best estimate is three or four weeks to design and test.”

  “And while that is being done?”

  “Sebastian will remain here. You will be free to come and go as you wish, and I will work with him and for him as much as possible.”

  Valnia Bloom, for her own reasons, valued Sebastian’s health and sanity. Jan said, “If the tests go well, Dr. Bloom, what then?”

  “Hal Launius will inject a batch of the bespoke nanos into Sebastian. The nanos will be self-replicating, and designed to cease operation after copying themselves a sufficient number of times. They will perform the task of encapsulating, breaking down, and excreting until every nodule has gone. At that point the nanos become non-functional, and will themselves be excreted by normal bodily functions. The whole thing, according to Launius, will take no more than a week from initial injection to final excretion. Naturally, we will perform final scans and biopsies, to make sure that the nodules are indeed all gone. Then we will again perform the entire suite of brain scans and tests, hoping that this time the results prove to be more like those of other people.”

  Jan still didn’t like the idea of injecting foreign bodies into Sebastian, and allowing them to run riot through his body. “What about Fishel’s Law? How smart would these nanos be?”

  “Not smart at all. You don’t need to worry about them getting out of control. They will be designed for a single function, and they will be unable to perform any other.”

  “Suppose that I don’t agree to go along with this? What other options do we have?”

  Valnia Bloom avoided Jan’s eyes. “I was rather hoping that you would not ask me that question. But I can answer it. We have no real options. Unless something like full-body sluicing is done, and we are able to demonstrate its effectiveness, Jovian security will never permit Sebastian to go free. He will remain here or in some similar closed establishment, under guard, for the rest of his life.”

>   “Then I have no choice, do I? For Sebastian’s sake, I must permit you to go ahead.”

  “Very good. Since this meeting is being recorded, there is no need for any other action on your part. However, I have one more thing to say. This pertains not to Sebastian’s welfare, but to your own.”

  “Yes?” Jan was instantly wary. People only did things for you to further their own agendas.

  “You have cared for Sebastian, by your own admission, since childhood. I’m sure that you meant well, but your actions have had an unfortunate side-effect. He has never developed the ability to make his own decisions.”

  “No! You’ve got everything backwards. I cared for him because he couldn’t look after himself.”

  “That’s what you believe. I remain unconvinced. Earlier, I said that while the nanos are being developed and tested, you would be free to come and go as you chose. I stick by that statement. However, I strongly urge you to stay away from Sebastian. Let us find out what he does without your constant guidance.”

  Jan felt a surge of anger, strong and irrational. “You mean, let’s find out what Sebastian does with your constant guidance. You think he’s yours now—you have, ever since we left Earth.”

  The color that came to Valnia Bloom’s cheeks transformed her to a vulnerable human. “I think of him as a research subject.” Her voice shook, and she stood up. “Sebastian Birch is no more to me than that, nor has he ever been. I’m afraid that I cannot say the same for you. Sebastian Birch is your obsession. Let me offer a suggestion: get a life! It’s very clear that at the moment you do not have one.”

  She was gone before Jan could reply. After a few moments Jan realized that she in any case had nothing to say. The other woman’s get a life merely restated Paul’s comment. Don’t forget that you are entitled to a life, too.

  Jan stared at the microscope, and at the baffling array of brain scans and reports on the table next to it. She should not be here in the lab at all. She was not qualified to be here. Her presence had been tolerated, sure—but everyone knew she had nothing to contribute. She was no scientist or medical specialist. Any treatment she proposed for Sebastian would be as likely to kill him as cure him.

  She stood up. What was the name of the restaurant that Paul had mentioned? The Belly of the Whale. Almost certainly, it was already too late. There was only a tiny chance that she would find him there. But she didn’t have to find him there. He was still on Ganymede. Someone on the Achilles would be able to tell her how to find him.

  And then?

  And then Jan was going to make a fool of herself. Maybe that’s what getting a life was all about.

  26

  Bat’s decision had been made weeks ago. Now, as the time for Ganymede departure grew closer, his reluctance to leave the Bat Cave on Pandora increased.

  He wandered the length of the main chamber, seeing not so much the Great War artifacts that were collected there as the ones that were missing. Here was a cleared space for a life-support pod from the freighter Pelagic. Bat was convinced from fragmentary and scattered records that half a dozen of those pods still existed, floating somewhere deep in space with their human cargo. He, at least, was not persuaded that the cargo was dead. In any case, a pod itself would be a rare treasure.

  The next space was more questionable, its existence supported on a gossamer net of indirect evidence. If the rumored BEC sentience had been created, that event must have taken place only in the last few days of the war.

  And where would it have gone? The continued existence of a Bose-Einstein Condensate of the required magnitude, sentient or not, called for temperatures sustained within a few billionths of a degree of absolute zero. No natural environment in the universe offered anything colder than the 2.7 Kelvin microwave background radiation. A BEC sentience would require its own artificially cooled setting, maintained perhaps deep within one of the natural bodies that floated beyond the orbit of Neptune. The Belt weapons-makers, Bat knew, had established at least two research labs far off in that outer darkness. One day, as the boundaries of civilization steadily widened, those facilities would be discovered. And then, if they contained a sentient BEC, its find would set off an unprecedented bidding battle among Great War collectors—unless the sentience was able to argue its own case for continuing independence.

  The third shrine-in-anticipation was reserved for Nadeen Selassie’s unknown master weapon, existence unproven and nature unknown. Bat was staring at the empty space and seeking to imagine its contents when Mord’s individual signal sounded through the chamber.

  “I will be with you shortly.” Bat could communicate orally with outside callers from anywhere in the Bat Cave, but visual displays required his presence in one of the two communications centers. “This is fortunate timing. In eight hours I leave Pandora for a trip to Ganymede.”

  “Which you swore you’d never be going back to.” Mord’s single sniff was the equivalent of a dozen cynical comments.

  “A certain flexibility of outlook distinguishes the superior mind.”

  “Right. Didn’t you tell me a few weeks ago that genius is distinguished by the power to focus on a single idea for months or years?”

  “The superior mind is one able to encompass simultaneously a number of inconsistent facts and theories.” Bat had reached the big padded seat. He settled into it with a grunt of contentment. This answered one question. Whatever else was left behind on Pandora, the seat at least went with him. “Is this a social visit, or do you report progress?”

  “Anybody who paid you a social visit would take vacations on the Vulcan Nexus.” Mord’s squint-eyed glower filled the display in front of Bat. “I’ve found out some stuff—and it wasn’t easy. I had to wriggle through fancy firewalls and data security systems. Want to know about the secret sex life of Earth’s head of economic planning?”

  “I do not. As for your difficulties, nothing worthwhile is ever easy. Did you locate the medical records for the children rescued from Earth’s northern hemisphere, in the months or years following the end of the Great War?”

  “Patience, patience. If that’s all I had, I’d have sent it to you by regular mail. Yeah, I got the med records. A few hundred kids were in the right age group, but none of them was what you’d call normal. Most of ’em had seen their families burned or blown up or eaten, and they’d all been through hell. Standard therapy was to blank out those memories, and you can see why. But that, and the lack of records, makes it impossible to trace medical history back to before they were found. The medical records after they were found are not much help, either, because Earth was still coping with close to eight billion dead. Nobody had time for elaborate examinations of the living. The displaced persons’ camps counted arms and legs, made sure the kids were breathing, and that was about it.”

  “A dead end.”

  “I told you, if it stopped there I’d have sent a postcard. It doesn’t. Since I was inside the data banks, I decided to go the other way—forward in time. As you might expect, services on Earth got better over the years, and all the kids who’d been DP’s grew up and had regular exams and medical treatment. I can transfer full genomes on every one of them, if you want to download.”

  “I think so.” Bat slowly nodded. He was sitting motionless, eyes closed. “To the Seine terminal. I will arrange for their subsequent storage in the Keep. Please continue.”

  “A fair number grew up physically damaged or mentally freaky, and a few died from long-term after-effects of the war. But not one of them showed anything that linked them to the Heraldic asteroid, or to Nadeen Selassie. They merged into the rest of Earth’s population, and those that could took normal jobs. By the time I came within five years of the present I was convinced I was going nowhere, but what’s time when you’re having fun? I kept barreling along to the end. And guess what? In records less than three months old, I finally hit paydirt.”

  “Anomalies?”

  “Make that a singular. One anomaly—but a biggie, way out beyond your
four-sigma cutoff. A couple of DP kids, adults now, had been working as low-level helpers, nothing special, on a Global Minerals’ methane-mining platform. They’d been there ten years or more, but recently they took it into their heads to apply for jobs in the Outer System. The woman’s idea, I suspect, because the man shows up in the records as a little bit slow and more than a little bit strange. So they take the tests, and scrape through, and now the man starts to look more interesting. He can predict the outcome of hydrodynamic systems, particularly planetary atmospheres, that are complex enough to push computer models to their limits. Doesn’t know how he does it, says he dreams it—and he draws the results.”

  “Not unique.” Bat was unimpressed. “History records autistic children and adults with that same ability. Predicting the meteorological behavior of an atmosphere falls far short of Nadeen Selassie’s planet-destroying weapon. I doubt if it satisfies the four-sigma criterion.”

  “Hey, you asked for oddities. I’m giving oddities, now you want more. But I’m not done. Hear the rest before you talk sigma levels. The man’s name is Sebastian Birch, and I already sent his ID through to your data bank. After he and the woman pass the written tests—they operate as a team, by the way—they go up to Earth orbit for the physicals. She zips through easily, healthy and smart and perfectly normal. He seems healthy enough, but they run into a snag. His body cells are filled with tiny little balls, all identical and inorganic and apparently inert. They do nothing, but according to all the medics they shouldn’t be there. Nobody has ever seen anything like ’em. They removed a whole batch of them as samples for the files. Are we at four-sigma yet?”

  “There, and surpassing it.” Bat’s eyes were wide open. “Mord, this is exactly what I was hoping you might find. Can you send me full details of the tests performed, together with the complete set of results and comments?”

  “Doing it while we talk. The comments won’t do you much good, though. They all amount to, What the hell gives here? But I’m still not finished. The medics don’t know why Sebastian Birch is full of these gizmos, but since they don’t seem to be harming him or anyone else the medics give the okay: Birch and the woman, Janeed Jannex, are free to continue to Ganymede.”