Bios

by Robert Charles Wilson

  Hayes moved up next to the shuttle’s reserve pilot, who nodded curtly. “Not much in the way of details so far, Dr. Hayes. They’re pretty busy with this. I gather Mac Feya was outside the station doing maintenance and he suffered some kind of suit breach . . . not a full breach, but they’re hung up on decon, plus he’s stuck in place with an armor malfunction.”

  “Just get me there,” Hayes said.

  “Doing our best.”

  Yambuku’s docking bay was the largest structure associated with the station. A domed vault rising above the station’s sterile core, it opened for the shuttle’s vertical landing and closed, agonizingly slowly, over the landing pad. The Isian atmosphere was evacuated and flushed with sterile air from the exchange stacks; then the chamber was triple-washed with aerosol sterilants, ultraviolet light, and radiant heat not much less searing than the reentry burn had been. During the interminable washdown, Hayes spoke with Cai Connor, ops chief while Hayes was absent and Mac was incapacitated.

  Connor, an organic chemist, was almost as seasoned a hand as Mac Feya. Hayes didn’t doubt she was handling the emergency at least as well as he would have, but he heard the catch of anxiety in her voice. “Contact with Mac is sporadic. We have remote tractibles with him, but he’s noncooperative. The decon is going to be tricky at best, and we don’t want to force a joint and open another breach—”

  “Take a breath, Cai. From the beginning, please. All I know is that Mac was out on a maintenance excursion.”

  “It was another seal failure, this one on the south tractible bay. You know how these ring faults have been driving Mac crazy. Frankly, he shouldn’t have gone out. The alpha excursion suit was hung up in maintenance, so he took the beta unit even though it hasn’t been through a refit since the last walkabout. I guess it needed it. He was at the bay door taking samples from the bad seal and laying down a caulk bead when a servo in his right leg overheated. Suit homeostasis went crazy, then that system locked too. Big, big cascade failure. The servomotor fused a hole through the exterior armor, and the inner seal may or may not have been breached—we have contradictory telemetry on that. But it for sure cooked Mac’s leg above the knee. He’s in pain even with the suit feeding him analgesics, and the analgesics are about to run out. Plus, he’s incoherent, so we can’t count on him cooperating with any rescue effort.”

  Hayes winced. God help Mac, riveted to the ground by a bad motor, seared and in pain, not knowing—and this must be the worst of it—whether his bioperimeter was intact or whether he was already, in effect, a dead man. “Cai, how deep in maintenance is the alpha suit?”

  “Hang on.” She consulted someone away from the transducer. “I fast-tracked it as soon as Mac’s alarms sounded. It’s been through preliminary diagnostics and looks okay, but none of the deep testing has gone ahead.”

  “Pull it out and prep it.”

  “That might not be wise.”

  “Prep it, Cai, thank you. And get the tunnel out here.”

  “Okay, it’s happening.” She sounded relieved to have him back in charge, despite her misgivings. “You’re about twenty minutes away from confirmation.”

  “I want the armor prepped as soon as I’m through the tunnel. In the meantime, do whatever you were doing—keep Mac as calm as possible and have the tractibles handy with a chordal brace. And relay his telemetry, let me see if I can make sense of it.”

  “Yes,” she said promptly. Station rank was informal. Cai, a Kuiper freewoman of the purest sort, would never call him “Sir,” the way Terrestrial scientists inevitably did. But he heard the deference in her voice.

  And felt the burden of responsibility shift squarely onto his own shoulders.

  The new hand—Zoe Fisher, the bottle baby whose novel excursion suit was still deep in stowage, unfortunately—came forward from the passenger cabin. She was solemn, frowning. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “You can keep out of the way.” It was the first thing that came to mind.

  She nodded once and left the cabin.

  Hang on, Mac, Hayes thought.

  Yambuku didn’t need another tutelary death. Isis had claimed too many lives already.

  Isis’s day averaged three hours longer than Earth’s, and its axial tilt was less acute, the seasons milder. The sun hovered above the Copper Mountains as Hayes, encased in an impossibly bulky mass of bioarmor, left Yambuku. The surrounding forest was already dense with shadow; the long Isian nightfall was about an hour away.

  A vast swath of vegetation had been cleared around the ground station, the soil burned and salted with long-lasting herbicides. Yambuku, its core and its four coaxial rings, sat embedded in this blackened wasteland like a lost pearl. The burn zone prevented native plants from overgrowing the station’s pressed-aggregate walls, fouling the exits and weakening the seals. But it reminded Hayes of something else: the empty space between a fortress and a bailey; a field of fire.

  It did nothing to deter airborne microorganisms—probable cause of the continuing seal failures—and already the weeds were beginning to make advances, green creepers twining out of the forest canopy like tentative fingers.

  Hayes, sweating inside his isolation suit, felt the familiar sensation of being in the landscape but not of it. Every sensation—the crackle of scorched soil under his feet, the whisper of wind-tossed leaves—was relayed by suit sensors. His touch was blunted by the armor’s fat gloves, sensitive and versatile though they were; his field of vision was blinkered, his sense of smell nonexistent. This river valley was as lush and wild as a summer garden, but he could never enter it except as proxy, robot, half-man.

  It would, of course, kill him at the first opportunity.

  He passed the curved wall of the station, rising like a limestone cliff in the slanting sunlight, and reached the area outside the tractible port where Macabie Feya was trapped in his malfunctioning armor.

  The problem was instantly obvious. Mac’s right leg had burned out below the hip, leaving a flaring, blackened gap in the outer shield. Primary and secondary hydraulics were hopelessly damaged below the waist. He was locked in place, frozen in an awkward crouch.

  The accident had happened almost eight hours ago. The suit itself had tourniqueted the leg and would even, if necessary, provide CPR and cardiostimulants; it was a good machine, even with its torso systems terminally cooked. But eight hours was a long time to be injured and alone. And the suit’s modest reservoir of analgesics and narcotics was close to exhaustion.

  Hayes approached his injured friend cautiously. The suit’s legs might be locked down, but the powerful arms remained mobile. If Mac panicked, he could inflict serious damage.

  Two land-duty tractibles rolled out of the way as Hayes came closer, cams glancing between Hayes and Macabie. Their eyes, of course, were Yambuku’s eyes. Elam’s eyes, in fact: Elam Mather was working the remotes. And how calm it all seemed in the late afternoon quiet, aviants chattering high in the trees, a black noonbug ambling across the ash-dark clearance like some tiny Victorian banker. Hayes cleared his throat. “Mac? Can you hear me?”

  His voice was relayed by radio to Mac’s headset. We hear the insects more clearly than we hear each other, Hayes thought. Two solitudes, semaphores across a microbiotic ocean.

  There was no answer beyond the low hum of the carrier. Mac must have slipped back into unconsciousness.

  Hayes was close enough now to examine the suit breach. The suit was multilayered, its hydraulics and motors normally operating in isolation from both their moist human cargo and the abrasive Isian biosphere. The overheat had peeled back the outer layer of flexarmor like foil, exposing a tangle of burned insulation and leaking blue fluids—a robot’s wound. The soft nugget of Mac Feya lay deeper inside, hidden but horribly endangered.

  Hayes needed Mac’s cooperation—or else he needed Mac safely unconscious. He queried Elam about the telemetry.

  “Far as I can tell, Tam, his vitals are as stable as we can expect. You want me to tell the suit to lighten his n
arcs?”

  “Take his drip down just a notch, please, Elam.”

  “Sure you don’t want to splint him first?”

  “I’m already on it.”

  He unhooked a body brace from the nearest tractible and began Unking it to Mac’s upper-body armor. The tractibles could have done this themselves if they had been larger or more flexible. But this was Isis, and some Terrestrial kacho had written weight and size limitations into the robot inventory without thinking much about the practical consequences. Hayes worked from behind Mac, socketing the brace into chordal ports, the brace exchanging protocols with the suit’s surviving electronics.

  The link was almost complete when Mac woke up.

  His scream rang through Hayes’ helmet, a sound he did not immediately identify with his friend Macabie Feya. It was an inhuman roar, overwhelming the audio transducers. Elam shouted over it: “His vitals are spiking! He’s not stable—you have to override his armor now!”

  Grimly, Hayes forced the last brace connector into its socket on Mac’s thrashing armor.

  He was still trying to latch the device when Mac’s elbow butted into him.

  Hayes staggered backward, hurt and breathless. His armor was bulky but in its own way fragile, designed to protect him from the biosphere, not from physical attack. His ribs hurt, the breath was knocked out of him, and he heard the suit alarm clamoring for his attention.

  “Tam, you have an outer-layer breach! Get back in the airlock, stat!”

  “Mac,” Hayes said.

  The engineer’s wordless keening dropped to a lower note.

  “Mac, you can hear me, can’t you?”

  Elam: “Don’t do this, Tam!”

  “Mac, listen. You’re doing fine. I know you’re worried, and I know you’ve been out here too long, and I know you’re in pain. We’re about ready to haul you inside. But you have to relax, keep still a little longer.”

  There was a response this time, something about being “fucking trapped.”

  “Listen to me,” Hayes said. He took a cautious step forward, keeping himself within Mac’s visual range, gloves forward and open. “There’s a brace on you, but it’s not socketed up. I have to make the connection before we can take you inside.”

  Elam, still hammering him: “I cannot guarantee your suit integrity unless you get back here now!”

  He took another step closer.

  “I think you broke one of my ribs, Mac. Take it easy, all right? I know it hurts. But we’re almost home, buddy.”

  Mac croaked something repetitive, choking on the words.

  “You understand me, Mac?”

  There was a silence he took for assent. Hayes grasped the brace jack in one glove, taking advantage of what he hoped was a moment of lucidity.

  Mac reared back as the connection was made. Then the brace electronics overrode his voluntary functions, clamping his arms at his sides in full static lockdown. The motion must have been painful. Mac howled at his sudden new helplessness, an awful sound.

  Two small tractibles approached, clasped the wings of the brace, and tilted it neatly backward. Now Mac was a wheeled vehicle, already rolling toward the tractible bay’s outer decon chamber. Hayes kept pace, ignoring Elam’s voice in his ear, staying where Mac could see him, keeping the injured man company until the bay doors rolled down on the deepening blue of the Isian dusk.

  Hayes put his helmet against Mac’s as the harsh station lights came up.

  Mac whispered. The words—as nearly as Hayes could make out—were, “Too late.”

  He kept his helmet against Mac’s as the decon began, caustic antiseptics misting from the ceiling in a pale green rain. Mac stared back at him through moist glass.

  Hayes gave him a thumbs-up, hoping the insincerity of it wasn’t ridiculously obvious.

  Mac’s eyes were blank and bloodshot. His pores leaked blood in ruby teardrops. Tissue deliquescence and bleedout had already begun.

  Macabie Feya was dying, and there was nothing Hayes could do about it.

  ON TOP OF everything else, there was the question of how to spin this unfortunate death.

  The problem preoccupied Kenyon Degrandpre as he reported for his monthly medical evaluation. He was eager to speak to the doctor. Not that he was ill. But the senior medical manager—Corbus Nefford, a Boston-born physician with a long career in the Trusts—was also the closest thing to a friend Degrandpre had found aboard the IOS. Nefford, unlike the cold-world barbarians who dominated the scientific crew, understood the rules of civil discourse. He was friendly but mindful of the subdeties of rank, deferential but seldom distastefully toadying. Nefford possessed a chubby, aristocratic face that must have served him well in the professional sweepstakes back home; he looked like a Family cousin even in his modest physician’s smock.

  Degrandpre stepped into the small medical station and stripped unselfconsciously. Like his uniform, his body was an expression of rank and class. He was nearly hairless, his excess body fat chelated away, his musculature defined but not boastful. He wore a Works Trust tattoo on his left shoulder. His slender penis dangled over the faint scar of his orchidectomy, another badge of rank. He stepped quickly into the diagnostic nook.

  Nefford sat attentively at his monitor, never so gauche as to speak before he was addressed.

  Machinery hummed behind Degrandpre’s back, a whisper of hummingbird wings. He said, “Of course you’ve heard about the death.”

  The physician nodded. “A suit breach, I gather. Tragic for the Yambuku staff. I suppose they’ll have to replace the armor.”

  “Not to mention the engineer.”

  “Macabie Feya. Arrived thirty months ago. Healthy as a horse, but they all are, at least when they first set foot on the IOS. He caused the accident himself, I hear.”

  “He was in open air in poorly prepped protective gear. In that sense, yes, he brought it on himself. But fault has a way of rising up the ranks.”

  “Surely no one could blame you, Manager.”

  “Thank you for the unconvincing show of support. Of course we both know better.”

  “It’s not an ideal world.”

  “We’ve lost two assets that will be expensive to replace. There’s no way to finesse that. However, Yambuku is far from crippled. They can still make vehicular excursions, most of their tractibles are in decent shape, and they have at least one suit of bioarmor that can be brought up to specification fairly quickly. Basic research won’t be interrupted.”

  “And,” Nefford said, “they have the new gear that Fisher woman brought with her.”

  “Is that common knowledge?”

  “For better or worse. The IOS is a village. People talk.”

  “Too much and too often.” But Degrandpre expected a certain amount of gossip from Corbus Nefford. Because he was a physician and a section manager, Nefford’s rice bowl was virtually ensured. He could risk saying things others might keep to themselves. “What Zoe Fisher brought with her is an unproven technology foisted on us by a rogue branch of the Trusts. The Fisher woman comes with a vade mecum from Personnel and Devices, and she’s putting herself directly in harm’s way. That worries me. One death is attrition; two would look like incompetence—on someone’s part.”

  The doctor nodded absently, whispering into his scroll. “The diagnostic’s finished. Step down, please.”

  Degrandpre dressed himself, still thinking aloud. “Personnel and Devices act like they can shuffle our priorities at will. I doubt the Works commissioners will put up with this kind of arrogance much longer. In the meantime, I’d like Zoe Fisher to survive at least until I’m safely back in Beijing. It’s not my battle, frankly.” Had he overstepped? “This is privileged, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Not galley gossip, in other words.”

  “You know you can trust me, Kenyon.” He used the given name not as an impertinence but with downcast eyes, to ingratiate.

  “Thank you, Corbus.” A gentle rebuke. “So? Am I healthy?”


  Nefford turned with visible relief to his desktop. “Your bone calcium is excellent, your musculature is stable, and your accumulated radiation exposure is well within tolerance. But next time, I want a blood sample.”

  “Next time, you may have one.”

  Once every calendar month, Degrandpre walked the circumference of the orbital station, from docking bays to sun garden, his left hand on the holster of his quirt.

  He thought of the walkthrough as a way of staying in touch with the IOS. Keeping the maintenance crew on their toes, citing Works staff for uniform violations—in general, making his presence felt. (In the case of dress-code infringements, he had long ago given up on the Kuiper and Martian scientists; he considered himself lucky if they remembered to dress at all.) Problems that seemed distant from his chambers loomed larger from the deckplates. And he liked the exercise.

  Invariably, he started his inspection at the dimly lit cargostorage spaces of Ten Module and finished back at Nine, the garden. He liked to linger in the garden. If he had been asked, he might have said he enjoyed the filtered sunlight, pumped from fixed collectors in the IOS’s hub, or the moist air, or the earthy smell of the aeroponic suspensions. And all that was true. But not all of the truth.

  To Kenyon Degrandpre, the garden was a kind of pocket paradise.

  He had loved gardens even as a child. For the first twelve years of his life he had lived with his father, a senior manager at the Cultivar Collection in southern France. The Collection’s greenhouses ranged over thousands of acres of rolling pastureland, foundations tilted to the southern sky, a city of damp glass walls and hissing aerators.