Across the Sea of Suns

by Gregory Benford

  FOUR

  Nigel shivered. The drama had been intense, close, more intimate than anything artificial he had ever experienced. They had obviously selected a drama tuned to his age, his sex—and then pulled the rug from under him, jolted his expectations.

  He wasn’t that rather tired, dulled man, and yet, yet—there was something … Even the man’s dialogue was slightly British, like one who had lived abroad for decades, just as Nigel had. Yes, it was a damned finely tuned bit of business. And not at all amusing.

  But amusement was not the aim. With a blurring sense of movement everything shifted, melted, reformed—

  And he was the gaunt little man, spotting his mark on the dingy Berkeley street. Nigel felt himself swept along as he approached the heavyset, distracted figure and said, “Something?”

  From there the drama proceeded as before, giving Nigel a rather distant view of the events, letting emotions seep away—

  Another swirling, blurred transition. Nigel became Helen.

  “We’re not doing anything,” he said, and felt the rising waspish irritation. He knew what was coming and yet the emotions that came through from the fictional Helen moved him. Events carried him forward. Robert simmered in his tight-faced anger, the senso started, Helen’s shock lanced through him—

  And he saw that it was like his own, with Carlos. But worse. It hit deeply. There was betrayal with it, a hollow feeling of the ground opening under Helen. She had struggled to see her own past clearly. Everything she had felt, each day, now meant something different. This taciturn stranger next to her in the slick chair knew everything about her but had been hiding himself—herself—every day of their lives. Helen had stroked him, receive him into herself, accepted and savored his male-ness, all without a thought—

  Helen struggled bleakly, trying to find a hold. She would have to begin again, learn to accept Robert as something both more and less than she had ever thought, make herself—

  Nigel tore himself away from the churn of emotions. He thumbed ESCAPE and the tangled world dropped away.

  They peeled the pod back and crisp light flooded in. He wriggled out. The attendants smiled professionally. He ignored their warm, well-modulated voices, their polite questions. He wrapped himself snugly in a blue terry-cloth robe and started toward the dressing room.

  “Wait! Your consultation—”

  “Not having any.”

  “It’s part of the—”

  “Not mandatory, is it?”

  “No, but we—”

  “Thought so. I don’t have to talk to you sods and I frigging well don’t intend to.”

  “It will go on the record,” the woman said as a warning.

  “Dear me. Pity.”

  “Isn’t it a little obvious to be so hostile to analysis?”

  Nigel hesitated, knowing he should be civil to this person, even if he was shaken. He teetered on the brink, feeling the weight of her expectations, how the society of the ship would evaluate this, and in the long gliding moment felt a sureness come into himself that had been there before, but that he had lost years before. “Fuck off,” he said precisely.

  “How did it go?” Nikka asked.

  He lay back, letting their jury-rigged machine minister to him. It burbled and sucked and the pumps rattled, but it worked. He had actually come to feel a certain affection for the damned thing. “Hated it.”

  She sighed. “That will not put you further into the good graces of—”

  “I know, I know.”

  “You saw the maps of that moon? Craters everywhere. They’re calling it Pocks. No official name yet.”

  “Appropriate. Think you can wangle some surface duty?”

  “What surface duty?” She sat up. “The net hasn’t even discussed—”

  “I found a system interface into the engine section. They’re lower than they thought on plain old deuterium inventory. Before we ignite the drive again, they’ll need to store up some.”

  “From the moon, uh, Pocks.”

  “Right.”

  FIVE

  Look man Pocks is riddled jess same as Europa an’ Callisto an’ the resta the Jovian moons, dozens like this, seen one you seen ’em all

  Some interestin’ ice flows see there that escaprment methane ice maybe

  Might as well send down some scientific personnel with the mining crew

  Could take some deep borings, even find a vent for access to deeper, get a good metal abundance measurement, make the ExoGeo boys Earthside happy

  Trouble is the ice is all carbon dioxide, methane, ammonia, not much water

  We’d do better to send down that submersible gear

  What’re you sayin’ use that subsurface stuff

  Sure it works on Ganymede we brought it along for just exactly this kind of case

  That ice skin is, what, fifteen klicks thick

  There’s cracks and vents we already spotted them on recon

  Sure, work your way down those, subs will take that pressure easy remember the gravity’s less than a fifth g

  Penetrate the ice surface Christ

  I dunno strip mining is safer and you can lift off if anything goes wrong

  Sure but it takes three times the work crew and you have to hunt around for veins of water

  Yeah the submarines are better, they can scoop up lots, and it’s pure water, no impurities from meteorites

  Ted I’ll recommend that if you want somethin’ official

  I have no problem with that no need to be so formal Bob we’ll be sending a pretty big team I want that deuterium out fast

  No reason to wait aroun’ with that Watcher close by

  If I might butt in I must say I still don’t like mining Pocks with that Watcher in range, bloody risky

  No easy alternative as we decided yesterday, where’ve you been Nigel, there’s no other moon here that has the right topography—rest of ’em are rocks

  Whole system’s bone-dry must have all the light elements locked up in the gas giants

  Pocks is a typical snowball moon, fraction over two thousand klicks radius, ninety percent slush inside with an ice crust

  Lot like Ganymede only more craters lot of crustal movement too

  Nigel you been out of the loop too long shoot him the recap on that probe we sent to the Watcher

  What! You poked your nose into—

  Don’t get all fluffed up now look at it this way we were testing Walmsley’s Rule, giving it a last chance

  It failed too you’ll notice

  Lookit the robot probe walked all over the Watcher, banged on the hull, took a sample—nothing special, gamma-hardened alloy—tried radio and IR and

  Found bunch of old sensors and stuff on the surface dead as can be

  Burrowed inside maybe twenty meters all the circuits inactive, no acoustic pattern, no sign of anything working

  Funny equipment pretty simpleminded circuits looked to me all crapped out it’s old as hell too

  Still that doesn’t mean you sods didn’t awaken something—

  Nigel this is Ted, we’ve got work to do here and you can get all this on recap I’d advise you drop off the net and come back when you

  Sounds to me like he’s pissed his Rule didn’t work out

  No, that’s not it at all, I merely meant

  Well hell Walmsley first place we try it your theory isn’t worth a fart that moon’s never had any life on it lookit those surveys no bioproducts on the surface no atmosphere just lots of ice and rock that’s been pounded for billions of years

  So that Watcher’s not waiting for life there hell the thing probably ran out of gas explorin’ this system an’ went dead looks like a kinda crude low-velocity ship burning its own rock for reaction mass

  Yeah a ham-fisted piece of tech you ask me

  Take forever to get to the next star

  Well if you’ve got sodding forever—

  Face it Walmsley the Watchers aren’t all the same they’re leftover weapons or explorers no rea
son to think they’re related to each other

  Stuff in orbit lasts long time is all

  There’s too much evidence to ignore, my damned Rule aside—

  No Nigel this is Ted now I’d like you to drop out of the net take a rest maybe look over the recon stuff file a report with us later if you want to say your-piece but we can’t be squabbling over theory when we have to do a big minimax calculation on the mining operation

  I’ll say

  Very well Ted I’ll do that but

  Good now I want a touchdown to begin excavations within forty-eight hours Sheila get those submersibles in the surface landers I want backup crews all down the line too

  Good-bye you lot

  SIX

  He had never meant for him and Nikka and Carlotta to choose up and play Nuclear Family, but the old times between them had called up a blood-rush swelling, as each slid over the others’ love-slicked skin, gasping at the dazzling slides of fingers, seeking the sag of aging muscles without judgment, yielding to the jut of bone. He dimly recalled how furious it had been between them. Then came the cooling, time leaching away the weight of each other. Now the past ambitions unspoken surfaced, and Carlotta was smothered in apparatus.

  Nigel gingerly unhooked himself from the machine. He sealed the cap on his leg vein input. The memories surfaced often now. He had regained a good deal of his old mental equilibrium, enough to permit the old hurts and joys to resurface. Whatever in him had learned to repress was now itself in retreat.

  Nikka moved to help him up but he waved her away. “I’m feeling a lot better. Stronger.”

  “I’d still like you to rest more. You’ve been working in the gardens too much.”

  “No, just barely enough. I’m beginning to think this whole blood imbalance thing, the buildup of ruddy rogue cells and that rot—quite literally, rot—it’s all been due to something from that injury in the damned fluxlife-cleaning job.” He stretched, enjoying the delicious pop of his joints.

  Nikka smiled tolerantly. As she opened her mouth to speak he saw in an instant her fatigue, pushed back beyond notice, silted up inside her by the currents of despair she must have suffered in these years of watching him slowly go dull and listless. The fretwork of lines near her eyes had deepened and turned downward. Her laugh was blunted now, seldom heard, weighted.

  “Things are going to be better now,” he said impulsively. “I’m sure I’ve beaten it.”

  “Yes,” she said, and put her arms around him. “Yes.”

  He saw that she did not believe. She thought his words meant no more than the compulsive optimism of a man who knew deeply that he would die. “No, I want you to see it … see better. I am getting—”

  A knock at the door. They went into the living room, closing the bedroom door to hide the medical machines. Nigel opened the door. He kept his face blank when he saw it was Carlos and Ted Landon. Carlos had been coming by regularly, but Nigel had decided it was best for the moment to be neither friendly nor hostile. Simple distance might be the best.

  Carlos was nervous, sweating. He said abruptly, “Nigel, I told you it wouldn’t last, that medmon dodge. While I was in the Slots a systems inventory turned up a glitch, where I’d covered for you. They just now unraveled it and—”

  “I thought it was a good idea to bring along Carlos, so he could explain,” Ted broke in smoothly. “He didn’t rat on you.”

  Nigel shrugged.

  “I don’t blame Carlos for this at all,” Ted said with heavy seriousness. “He’s been under pressure, as we all know. I do blame you, though.” He tapped Nigel’s chest. “You’re going in for a full check. Now.”

  Nigel shrugged again. “Fair enough.” He glanced at Nikka and saw she was thinking the same: With his blood newly filtered, he might pass.

  Carlos said, “I’m sorry, but it had to …”

  Nigel felt a surge of sympathy for the man. He patted Carlos tentatively on the shoulder. “Never mind. Forget all this old stuff, from before you went to the Slots.” He wanted to suggest that it would be best to make a whole new life, forgetting himself and Nikka, but he saw that would be the wrong note to sound so soon.

  He was naked, so Ted saw nothing unusual about his retiring to pull on some clothes, in the bathroom he drank a solution of antioxidants and other control agents, to mask the clear signature effects of the blood processing. When he returned Carlos was out of his mood and was explaining to Nikka that he had successfully applied for a job on the ground team on Pocks.

  “Grunt work, sure, but it’ll get me down on a planet again.” He shifted heavily, still unused to the feel of the bulk of muscle, but eager to use it. Nikka seemed pleased. Nigel marveled at how she covered her anxiety so well. If they treated this all very matter-of-factly, and the tests weren’t too probing, they might just bring it off.

  “Come on,” he said mildly, “I’ve got work to do. Bring on your needles.”

  Ted walked with him to the medical center. There was going to be a shipwide meeting later that day, over the net. Ted was distracted. He grudgingly gave up the information that the latest transmission from Earth was full of news. The gravitational telescope had surveyed two more planetary systems. Each had a terrestrial-type world, and around each a Watcher orbited. That brought the count to nineteen terrestrial-type worlds discovered, fourteen with Watchers, out of thirty-seven star systems.

  “Life turns up everywhere, I guess,” Ted said. “But it commits suicide just as fast.”

  “Ummmm.”

  “They’ve got their hands full back there, with the ocean thing. Everything happens at once. They’re not processing the planetary data fast, ’cause this Swarmer stuff is—”

  “What stuff?”

  “I’ll announce it today. They’re coming ashore. Killing people, somehow.”

  Nigel nodded, silent.

  They put him into a kind of fuzzy sleepstate for the tests. He ignored them and focused on Ted’s news. It was important to understand this event, there was a clue buried somewhere. But the sleep dragged him down.

  SEVEN

  When he woke up he was dead.

  Utter blackness, total silence. Nothing.

  No smells. There should be the clean, efficient scent of a medical center.

  No background rustle of steps. No drone of air conditioning, no distant murmur of conversations, no jangle of a telephone.

  He could not feel any press of his own weight. No cold table or starched sheets rubbed his skin.

  They had disconnected all his external nerves.

  He felt a rush of fear. Loss of senses. To do that required finding the major nerves as they wound up through the spine. Then a medical tech had to splice them out of the tangled knot at the back of the neck. Delicate work.

  They were preparing him for the Sleepslots. Shutting him down this far meant he was going into semipermanent storage. Which meant he had failed the medmon exam, and badly.

  But they never slotted you without telling you. Even critically ill people got to say good-bye, finish up details, prepare themselves if at all possible.

  Which meant Ted had lied. The smooth casual manner, bringing Carlos along to deflect Nigel’s attention onto the other man—yes, that was his style. Avoid confrontation, then act decisively. With Walmsley’s Rule disproved, his medical deception uncovered … a good time to swat Nigel’s gadfly, bothersome buzzing.

  The medmon had probably turned up some incriminating information, but that was certainly not enough to slot him without warning. No, it had to be a pretext— one he could contest only years later, Earthside.

  He fought the rising confusion in his mind. He had to explore this, think.

  Was he fully dead? He waited, letting his fear wash away.

  Concentrate. Think of quietness, stillness …

  Yes. There.

  He felt a weak, regular thump that might be his heart.

  Behind that, as though far away, came a slow, faint fluttering of lungs.

  That was all.
The body’s internal nerves were thinly spread, he knew. They gave only vague, blunt senses. But there was enough to tell him that the basic functions were still plodding on.

  There was a dim pressure that might be his bladder. He could pick up nothing specific from legs or arms.

  He tried to move his head. Nothing. No feedback.

  Open an eye? Only blackness.

  Legs—he tried both, hoping that only the sensations were gone. He might be able to detect a leg moving by the change in pressure somewhere in his body.

  No response. But if he could sense his bladder, he should have gotten something back from the shifting weight of a leg.

  That meant his lower motor control was shut off.

  Panic rose in him. It was a cold, brittle sensation. Normally this strong an emotion would bring deeper breathing, a heavier heartbeat, flexing muscles, a tingling urgency. He felt none of that. There was only a swirl of conflicting thoughts, a jittery forking in his mind like summer lightning. This was what it was like to be an analytical thing, a machine, a moving matrix of calculation, without chemical or glandular ties.

  They weren’t finished, or else he’d never have come awake again. Some technician had screwed up. Shut off a nerve center somewhere, using pinpoint interrupters, perhaps pinching one filament too many.

  They worked at the big junction between brain and spinal cord, down at the base of the skull. It was like a big cable back there, and the techs found their way by feedback analysis. It was easy to get the microscopic nerve fibers mixed up. If the tech was working fast, looking forward to coffee break, he could reactivate the conscious cerebral functions and not notice it on the scope until later.

  He had to do something.

  The strange, cold panic seized him again. Adrenaline, left over from some earlier, deep physiological response? He was afraid now, but there was no answering chemical symphony of the body. His gland subsystems were shut down.

  There was no way to tell how rapidly time passed. He counted heartbeats, but his pulse rate depended on so many factors—