by MadMaxAU
The pause lasted. Saul waited until the other man’s breathing had settled— until Carl had slipped back into the webbing on his side of the desk, glaring at him.
“I already told you, but you weren’t listening,” he said softly. “There is one person on this planetoid who’s in no danger at all. Someone with attributes that make him safe in a totally new way.
“That person is me, Carl.”
For the first time, the full point of the conversation seemed to hit the spacer. He stood up.
“You?”
“Me.” Saul nodded. “My sneezing, my perpetual dripping are only surface features of that ‘negotiation process’ we spoke of. And it seams my immune system is a perfect diplomat. Except for the damage to my reproductive cells, my body has taken all comers almost without trouble. It accepts or rejects every new lifeform in short order, and each one soon finds its own niche.”
There was another silence.
“I am quite serious, Carl.”
“But . . . how?”
“How?” Saul shook his head. “I only know part of it, as yet. For one thing, I’ve inherited a rare enzyme that some have called N Complex. A dozen or so others on Halley have it too.”
“And are they…”
“More disease resistant? Seems so. But also, there’s something else, something in my blood that got there back when I worked with Simon Percell.”
“Yes?” Carl’s voice was flat now, his expression guarded.
“It’s called a reading unit. We only used the things for a couple of years, until we found better ways to strip and analyze DNA in vivo. Nearly forgot completely about the little things . . . until I saw them floating around down there, where they’d taken over my spermetic cells.”
Saul shook his head. “Don’t know how they got into me, really. Must’ve stuck myself one day while doing a gene analysis. But however they got there, my body’s using them, somehow.
“Now I think I know why I was so lucky, three decades ago, when I developed the new cyanutes. I didn’t really develop them. My body did.”
The longest silence of them all followed this.
At last Carl spoke.
“I’ve also read psychology, Saul. You know, of course, that claims of invulnerability are symptoms of paranoia?”
Saul shrugged. “I am, in almost every basic sense, completely healthy. Completely. The only one in the colony. You don’t believe me?”
“Of course not! What do you take me for?”
Saul held out his hand. “Take it,” he said casually. After a moment’s hesitation, Carl’s callused fingers wrapped around Saul’s, still soft from so long in the slots.
Carl’s grim smile faded into intense concentration as Saul squeezed, talking on, casually.
“Diseases, microgravity deconditioning, slot fatigue…they’ve pounded all of you down until a drugged Cub Scout could beat any of you with one hand tied.”
Carl’s brow beaded. Obstinately, grunting, he tried to match Saul’s grip.
‘You know you can’t t knish the Nudge Launchers in time, even with all of Virginia’s mechs to help. You need people, and you don’t have ‘em, Carl. Two hundred slotted for good, another hundred feeble as kittens—“
He let go and Carl sagged back with a ragged sigh, his eyes wide.
“I didn’t show you this to rub your nose in your weakness, Carl. I only want you to believe it when I say there may be a way. A way to give similar immunity to many, maybe even most of the members of this expedition.
“Carl, we just may not be doomed, after all.”
He said no more. There was no point in talking any longer. When the other man had questions, he would ask them. Let it have time to sink in, he thought.
Right now, Carl’s face was like a statue’s. He stood up— rocky, unsteady— staring at Saul even as he backed away, shaking his head. With one hand he touched the doorplate, spilling phosphor light into the darkened room.
From the hallway, Carl kept staring at him until the door had shut again, cutting off the view, but not the image.
After a moment Saul looked up at the ceiling.
Oh, I know you, Ado shem, he thought at the bearded, fierce-eyed God of Abraham. This morning I opened your gift, tore off the wrapping paper, and looked inside. And just now I showed its frightening beauty to a man who was once a friend.
It looks, at just, like a fine gift. Like the rock that flowed with water for the Hebrew children in the desert. But you and t know that inside the box is another box and another, and more ad infinitum.
And I’m still no closer to an answer to the basic questions, am I!? Where did Halley Life come from? Did comets seed the Earth, long ago? Or are we only the latest invaders of this little worldlet? How could all of this have happened in the first place?
There was no reply, of course.
He smiled upward, through half a mile of rocky ice, at the stars.
Oh, yes. You will have your joke.
CARL
Carl and Virginia sat stiffly in nearby web chairs. The G wheel had broken down years ago and subtle side effects of constant low-gravity were showing. The lounge was deserted except for them, its vivid wall weather running unnoticed. A drowsy camel slowly bobbed along the brow of a distant sand dune.
“What I mean is, do you think he’s got all his marbles?” Carl asked flatly.
“Of course Saul is perfectly all right,” she answered indignantly, tension visible in her body language.
I’ve got to remember, she really loves the jerk, Carl thought. Okay, be diplomatic. “I’m worried about his . . . health.”
Virginia wasn’t having any of it. “You mean you think his discovery is a delusion.”
“Well, it is extreme.” Carl threw his hands into the air and boomed out, “I, Saul Lintz, am a godlike immortal. Immune! Impervious! Kneel, mere mortals!”
“That’s not his attitude.”
“Well, let’s say he comes over as a quiet megalomaniac.”
“He was describing a theory.”
“With himself as prime evidence.”
“Well, yes. Who else aboard has the N constellation?”
“Good question. You could check the DNA log for the corpsicles.”
Virginia’s eyes shifted a fraction sideways for just an instant, but by now he could read her pretty well. “You already have, right?”
She nodded, knitting her fingers together and staring into them. “There are three others.”
“Good. Easy way to test his theory, right’? Unslot ‘em and see if they catch a bug.”
“Saul said the same thing when I told him yesterday.”
“Hmmmm. I wonder why he didn’t mention that little fact to me.”
“He’s been busy. I suppose he wants to think things through a little more before . . . experimenting.”
“Or maybe— just maybe— he wants to do everything himself. Big Saul saves all.”
Virginia flared. “You have no right to say that!”
He held up his hands. “Okay, maybe so. Let’s say I’ve been dealing with a lot of crazies these years. I’ve gotten used to doubting everything.”
She bit her lip. Containing her anger? Or keeping in the suspicion that maybe I’m right?
“If Saul’s inoculations work,” she said in measured tones, “we will be able to save ourselves. The expedition will succeed. You must put your faith in him. You are going to okay his initial test treatments of volunteers, aren’t you?”
Carl shrugged. “My authority is limited. The ‘tribes’ contribute their labor. I handle routine management and make up a maintenance roster. Cap’n Bligh I’m not. I don’t see where I could stop him from recruiting . . . volunteers.” He had almost said suckers.
“Good. You’ll see, Carl. This is our hope.”
Hope? He was tempted to tell Virginia about the side effect of Saul’s wondrous symbiosis— Saul’s sterility. But if Saul had already told her, it would make him look mean.
Carl paus
ed. Above her shoulder a caravan of scruffy tan camels plodded tirelessly across a vast sandy waste, heading for a green dab of palms halfway to the hard edged horizon. Red garbed traders swayed atop each, peering directly toward Carl with unveiled suspicion. Their images wavered with the heat, making the ponderous caravan ripple like a dream. Psychologically effective, no doubt, but Carl’s feet still felt cold.
“Something bothering you, Virginia?”
“JonVon’s . . . sick.”
“I’d heard. Is it— he— malfing?”
“He’s an organic matrix, remember. Saul thinks he’s got some infestation of Halleyforms. I hope Saul can find a cure.”
She started outlining the problem, the analogy between JonVon’s nonliving organics versus ordinary flesh and blood, and how JonVon could “catch a cold” in a more than metaphorical fashion. Carl listened, looking into her eyes for a long time. He still felt the old tug, that slow warm yearning that would come swelling up in him if he let it. Her pensive, expectant mouth, the regal cast to the high cheekbones . . .
“Is JonVon immortal, same as Saul is supposed to be?” Carl asked.
“Saul might make him so. If a cure is found. If Saul is right about himself . . .”
“I still think it’s all baloney.”
She said primly, “We must test those three from the slots immediately.”
She seems so sure. Could Lintz be right?
Virginia was too honest to let love blind her totally. She would have given some sign if she doubted Saul…
“Okay, assuming a real miracle, we’ll need to activate more farm area. We’ll want to pull nearly everybody out of the slots. Maybe— who knows? — Saul can cure some of those with black borders.”
“Even Commander Cruz?”
The thought struck Carl hard. “Could be,” he said to cover his confusion. Reviving senior officers . . . I won’t be such a big cheese around here. But it would be great to work with the captain again, with somebody who really knew how to get things done . . . .
“It’ll be a hell of a rush, with only a few years to go to aphelion.”
Virginia brightened. “We can do it. I know we can.”
“Damn right.” And Carl forced a hopeful smile.
Why not be optimistic? It couldn’t hurt, after all that’s happened. At worst Saul Lintz is proven as a fool. At best . . . well, at best we may even finish the Nudge Launchers, move Halley, actually get on with the mission.
But Carl knew that even miracles have their unwelcome consequences. What will hope do to the tribes? he wondered.
That’s when real infighting is going to come, over where we target this old iceball to fall thirty years from now.
VIRGINIA
Virginia wiped at her eyes. Without any gravity to speak of, tears upwelled and clung in quivering beads held together by surface tension. You had to shake your head or blot them. It was that or wear little saltwater lenses and watch the world refracted through your pain.
“Is he going to be all right?” she asked. Her voice trembled like a little girl’s, but Virginia wasn’t ashamed. Lots of people cared as much for certain objects as for human beings. And JonVon was a lot more than a Raggedy Ann doll.
“I think . . .” Saul’s voice faded in and out. His head was immersed in the holo tank, a cubic meter of neatly squared simulation that looked like an aquarium filled with some bizarre concoction, a chef’s nightmare of bright bits and pieces. It was a color-coded depiction of the intricate chemistry of a colloidal-stochastic computer, and on this deep level all of her expertise was useless. Virginia might be a fair programmer, but she knew next to nothing about molecules, or what made pseudoliving things ill.
Saul mumbled. She could not follow what he was doing with his hands, deep inside the holo, but whatever he discovered seemed to satisfy him. He sat back. “Display off;” he told the diagnostic computer.
“Well?” Virginia’s legs tensed nervously and she had to grip the carpeting with her toes to prevent being cast free of the floor. “Well? Tell me. I can take it.”
Saul took her hand and his blue eyes seemed to shine. She gasped as she read the answer in them. “He’s going to be all right!” She yipped, whirled around, and threw herself into his arms. “You fixed him!”
Oh, what an understanding man, she thought, to hold her close and laugh while her teary eyes perforce left trails on his cheek and she snuffled happily on his neck. Oh, how warm and strong and kind.
His hand stroked her hair, near the dressing on the back of her neck where his new medications had fought down her rash. A week ago anyone brushing her near there would have sent her quailing in pain. But it didn’t hurt anymore at all. The infection was nearly gone.
It was nice to be touched again.
“You must think I’m an idiot,” she said at last as she took his handkerchief and sat up on his lap to blow her nose.
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, that shows how much you know. I am one. Carrying on like this over a machine.”
He brushed her loose black hair back into place. “Then. I’m an idiot too. I was nervous as hell about this. So was Carl.”
Virginia sniffed. “Carl’s worried because JonVon’s far and away the best computer we have left. Carl can’t run the Nudge without him.”
“So? That’s plenty enough reason.”
“I suppose so. But still, he didn’t really care.” Virginia’s fists tightened. Actually, what made her mad at Carl was something else. She was still seething, a bit, over what he had said about Saul.
I’ve always like Carl, she thought. A lot. But he can be so damned pigheaded. It’s been weeks since Saul started sharing serums made from his own blood, and only now, after one incredible cure after another, is Carl finally admitting that a miracle has really happened.
Of course that was unfair. Carl had lived for so long with the eroding despair, with the assumption that all was lost, that hope would take some getting used to.
They would all have to do some adjusting.
Much had changed since the Arcist exodus. Now, thanks to Saul’s cures, more and more people were being pulled from the sleep slots, treated, and put to work building and testing the devices that would be needed when Halley’s Comet was to be turned from drifting iceball into spaceship.
Of course, Saul’s methods couldn’t repair impossible damage, or raise the irreversibly dead. But they hoped to bring the colony’s active population up to two hundred or so, more than half the number originally planned when the Edmund and four sail tugs were cast forth from Earth.
Already the moribund launcher sites down south were humming. The Arcists seemed to be working with Jeffers’s technicians— and even with Sergeov’s Uber Percells— in a new atmosphere of cooperation.
If only it can last, she wished. Somehow, though I want it to, I can’t believe it will.
“Let me see your arm,” she insisted. When Saul held it out she traced the tracks of numerous healing punctures. “Which one was from when you drew blood for JonVon’s serum?”
He laughed. “How should I know, Ginnie? I’ll tell you, though. I admit that this was my hardest case, so far. I never knew bio organics processors were so complicated.” His expression turned thoughtful. “Actually, the infection agent was subtle, a prionlike, self replicating molecule that somehow got inside JonVon’s cool case during the years we were asleep. If it had been allowed to go on much longer . . .” He shrugged.
“But you caught it in time.” Virginia was still nervous enough that it came out as a question, in spite of her confidence in Saul.
He smiled. “Oh, our surrogate son will be fine. Using symbiosis methods, I turned the molecule into a variant JonVon can use in his self correcting systems. It actually seems to make him a little faster. You’ll have to evaluate the effects yourself, of course.”
Virginia had blinked when Saul referred to JonVon as their “surrogate son.” Of course now Saul was just like her, unable to have any more children of h
is own. She realized a little guiltily that this made her feel even closer to him. They would comfort each other, now.
Oh, we’ll have our problems. As time passes, our relationship will never be perfect. That only happens in storybooks.
But a line of verse came to her, quite suddenly, as some of her poems had more and more often, lately. It was haiku.
Under winter’s tent,
Our children— seeds under snow,
I grasp your warm scent . . .
Saul’s gaze was distant. “Actually, some of the techniques for working with colloidal organics seem applicable to biological cloning. Working on JonVon gave me some ideas— “
She laughed and tousled his hair, now turning astonishingly brown at the roots— though Saul had told her he wasn’t actually getting “younger,” only “perfect for a middle aged man.”
“You’re always getting ideas. Come on, Saul. I want to talk to JonVon.”
She pushed off toward the webbing by her control station and gathered up her hair with one hand. She peeled back the dressing, uncovering her neural tap.
“Uh, you might want to wait— “
Her eyes flashed. “Is that an order, Doctor?”
He shrugged, smiling. “I guess you’d only do it the moment my back was turned, anyway.”
She grinned. “It’s been weeks. Much too long for an unrepentant dataline junkie like me.”
She lay back on the webbing. Her little assistant mech, Wendy, whirred up and presented the well-worn tapline, which locked into place with a soft snicking sound. She felt Saul slip alongside her as she settled back and closed her eves to the familiar throbbing along the direct line to her brain.
How are you, Johnny? she queried, shaping the subvocal words carefully, as one spoke to a child who has been ill.
HELLO, VIRGINIA. I HAVE SOME POETRY FOR YOU.
The words shimmered in space above their heads, as well as echoing along her acoustic nerve. She could tell, just from the clarity of the tones, that things were much, much better.