by MadMaxAU
He had hoped to put off showing people his own “kids,” though, until the Nudge was fully under way and people were filing back into the slots. It might go over better when there were fewer people around.
I hope I can catch Paul in time. Strangers might upset him.
In the soft light given off by the glow ball, the crevice in the ice was a sparkling wonderworks of jagged crystals and puffy clathrate snow. It was easy to follow the path the youngster had taken by the handholds he had used. A smudge here, there a thread ripped from the floppy old lab coat Paul liked to wear. Saul followed the trail through a small crystal chamber that had not been charted before, now exposed in all its agate glory by recent tremors in the ancient ice.
He hurried onward. The passage narrowed until it was little more than a man’s width across. A thin man’s width, Saul thought, as he squeezed through, stretching ahead with his hands to pull himself along the narrow stricture.
He couldn’t help comparing it to a birth canal. Something in the tunnel—perhaps a new Halleyform his immune system had not yet come to terms with—was causing a burning, itching reaction in his sinuses and throat. His nose twitched and tingled.
Aw hell . . . he thought, closing his eyes, squinting.
“A a a chblthooh!”
The echo of his sneeze reverberated from an open chamber just ahead. Saul shook his head to clear it, and crawled on as he heard the distinct sound of a child crying.
His hand pushed through snow and met open space letting. more light in. High pitched shrieks greeted its appearance.
“Old Hard Man! It’s Old Hard Man!”
“Shush, kids. Quiet,” a deeper voice soothed. “See? The skin is white, not green. You know that Old Hard Man is part black, part green.”
The whimpers softened. Saul felt a hard grip on his wrist and kicked to help his benefactor drag him through the crumbling snow. He popped free into one of the beam cut, Halleyvirid lined colony tunnels. Saul had to swivel to cushion his impact on the opposite wall.
“Thanks,” he said, waving away a cloud of sublimed vapor that had followed him. “I…”
An elderly man—an Ortho named Hans Pestle, Saul recalled—held the hands of two skinny children dressed in ragged fibercloth. Four other small, scrawny figures clung to the walls nearby. The old man stared at him.
“What’s the matter, Hans?”
Pestle shook his head. “Nothin’ Dr. Lintz. I was just . . . No, I must’ve been mistaken, is all.”
Two of the older children edged forward. “Got goobers for me?” one asked shyly.
“Sorry, Ahmed.” Saul smiled and stroked the little boy’s sparse hair, keeping his hand away from the long, floppy, ferretlike creature the child wore, stolelike, over his shoulders. The gene-crafted animal watched Saul with gleaming eyes.
“Sorry. No goobers this time.” Usually, the children got their medication in candy form—sweet flavors were common in the mutated food plants, but sourballs were one of his widely treasured specialties. “I promise, next time you come to the clinic.”
“Aw, gee.” But the child took the disappointment well. It had been some time since he had had any of the fits of temper that used to drive him into uncontrollable tantrums.
Actually, Ahmed had made a lot of progress. He was talking more, and had put on weight. Still, to look at him, seventy pounds and barely five feet tall, you wouldn’t think he was sixteen years old, Earth measure.
Unfortunately, there were limits to what Saul could accomplish with damage so advanced. And some of his best methods had turned out to be applicable only to a narrow range of genetic types. He found it terribly frustrating.
Saul shook his head, fighting down the ringing in his eats brought on by a fit of allergy symbiosis reaction. He sneezed, and the children clapped their hands laughing at the explosive report.
“What are you and these kids doing down here, Hans?” Saul recognized the nearby intersection by its incised markings. They were deep, far below these Orthos’ clan territory.
Pestle looked at the floor. “Just strollin’ . . . you said the kids should get more exercise . . . .”
Clearly, Hans was concealing something. But Saul didn’t have time to probe.
“Did you see someone else come this way?” he asked the old man—a once-famous astrophysicist, now reduced by frailty to tending crippled children while the clear-minded and able-bodied labored on the surface.
“Minute or so ago.” Pestle jerked his head toward the nearby shaft and gestured upward. He seemed about to ask a question, then shook his head and was quiet.
“Thanks,” Saul said, and started off toward the shaft.
“Wouldn’t, if I were you.”
The voice of the old man stopped him abruptly. Saul turned. “Why not?”
Pestle looked away again, bit his lip nervously. One eye was still cloudy from damage done long ago. Saul had managed to eliminate the lingering disease, but not the harm already done.
“You’re our doctor,” the old man mumbled. “Can’t afford t’ lose you.”
“Lose me?” Saul felt a sudden sinking feeling. “What are you talking about? Is there danger above?”
Virginia’s gone up there, was his chilled thought.
Pestle shook his head. “Heard tales. May be more fightin’ soon. Took the youngsters down here to be safe. That’s all.”
Saul frowned. This was not good.
“Thanks for the warning, Hans. I’ll be careful.”
He kicked off and started climbing the shaft, grabbing tufts of tamed, hybrid Halleyvirid covering and using his toe spikes to speed upward almost at a run.
He had nearly reached B Level when a shrieking noise, like giant stones rubbing against each other, echoed shrilly in the passage. Another damn quake, he thought. Or was it something else? Something more sinister? The vegetation up ahead started swaying, like a wave rolling down the dimly lit shaft. The ripples arrived and suddenly it was as if he were trying to ride a furry snake, one that bucked and slithered and threw him back and forth.
Saul’s grip tore loose and he was flung across the shaft, landing inside a tunnel mouth just as pieces dislodged from the ceiling. He rolled to one side to avoid a jagged boulder that dropped slowly, but irresistibly. Another one popped free of the left wall and proceeded with terrible inertia to collide crushingly with the right side.
So busy was he dodging those, he did not see the third and smallest rock. A sudden, crushing blow to his head sent him reeling against the floor. He slumped over an icy boulder and moaned.
Consciousness never completely vanished, but neither did it quite remain. To Saul, the next few minutes, or hour, or several hours, were a confusion of rumbling sounds, of icy dust settling slowly, of blinking and not being quite sure what it was he was supposed to remember.
Finally, it came to him.
Get to Carl…warn him…
He couldn’t quite recall what it was he was supposed to warn him about, or why. Perhaps it would come to him when he arrived. He knew only that he had to go back into the shaft and start climbing again.
Find Paul . . . he reminded himself. Hurry . . . find Virginia…
He repeated the instructions over and over again, pushing aside the ringing and the pain in his head.
Hurry...
VIRGINIA
As she stepped onto the surface she felt again the chilly majesty of the ice, the void, the swallowing darkness they all swam in. Earth is the sultry Hawaii in a solar system of perpetual Siberias, she thought. Will we ever feel true warmth again?
As she took long, loping strides across the speckled gray ice Virginia resolutely banished the thought. She had had quite enough experience with the onset of depression, thank you, in the last several years. It was an occupational hazard. Even her love for Saul had not proved an adequate shield against it . . . just as the psychology people Earthside had predicted, decades ago. They had warned the crew not to put too much weight on any relationship, that no human bond
could take the full pressure of their isolation, the unremitting hostility of the hard empty world.
People weren’t made to take the full brunt of the world, she thought. Particularly not one as barren as this. Anthropologists had found that even the simplest societies had quickly invented alcohol—usually beer—probably as a shelter against the storm of naked, incessant reality. Intelligence able to deal flexibly and subtly with its environment was also inescapably vulnerable to it. Halley’s crew had tried the predictable escapes—alcohol, drugs, senstim, torrid and fleeting affairs—and weathered the years. But no victory was permanent, and Virginia knew she had to steer herself through shoals of depression, avoid the triggering thoughts and moods.
She felt a faint tremor through her boots and glanced nervously around. Nothing unusual, apparently. A few teams working at distant launchers. No shouts over comm, nothing awry. Good. I don’t want. to be up here when something goes ka boom. Not my strong suit, crises, nossir. Not without waldo gloves, JonVon, and a hundred mechs at my beck and call.
The new, huge hydro domes loomed nearby, erected by Jeffers and his crews when the quakes had started. It was risky to keep farms and factories running beneath the ice near the launchers, in case a stress line opened under the relentless pounding of the flingers. Carl had ordered a lot of agro moved to the surface, set up near the shafts.
Amid all the work, there were the usual rumors. That the defeated Arcists had struck some kind of deal with the Ubers. That the Ubers were going to make trouble again over the choice of the Mars trajectory. That the P Threes were building a space ship in secret. She thought it was idle talk, but you never knew.
Everything’s so rushed these days, so exciting. A million jobs, nearly the whole crew revived . . . so why am I depressed?
The answer was obvious. She really didn’t want to come up here and confront Carl.
She glide walked for Dome 3, where she knew he was looking at some new agro results. As she came through the hissing lock she saw Carl studying some canisters, running his hands through rich kernels of wheat. He was wearing his spacesuit; these days he was in and out so often, checking the launchers, he seldom shed it. Agro workers floated above ripe fields of rye and wheat and spires of coiling vegetables. Gene crafted to thrive here in low G among the pervasive Halleyforms, they had odd, asymmetric forms.
“Great stuff, huh?” He grinned at her as she approached.
“You’re a thorough man. Checking the breakfast cereal, too?”
His face clouded. “I like to see good work praised, and these people have done—“
“Hey, I was just kidding.” She gave him a playful punch in the arm, and then immediately felt the gesture was forced, awkward. Calm down. This is going to be hard enough without trying to pretend it’s a Shriners’ convention.
Carl shrugged. “I’ll be with you in a minute, Virginia.” He turned back to a crewwoman standing nearby. “The new hybrid is excellent. Tastes great, too.”
Virginia watched as Carl and the agro tech discussed variants on the growing cycles. Halley’s gentle but drumming acceleration was affecting the mirrors that lit the greenhouses, and there were adjustments to be made.
She wandered down a lane, glad to delay. Stalks rose nearly a hundred meters, slender and white, yielding impossibly broad, meaty leaves. Spindly gardener mechs prowled down tight lanes. Circulation patterns spun streamers of wobbly droplets among the lofty spiral stems. Beneath these vertical protein farms lay cows of fat vegetables, lush and curling in the soft ultraviolet that filtered through shimmering banks of moisture above. Rich humus lapped at the feet of the giants, like a sea’s ever grinding at the shore. A tracery of ponds used the gently falling debris from the spires, and modified fish darted among ropy roots. She recalled a poem she had never finished, and found fresh lines popping into her mind.
In all this glistening fine
steel and cool ceramic sureness
Rot rules
as surely as in ancient sea bed Earth.
Cool yet crackling flingers call up
lightning that once kindled organic clinging,
fevered molecules mad for union,
not knowing that growth means age
and then the chewing march begins.
We live from eating others
just as these chilled lands will gnaw us down,
ceaseless and unending digestion of
our hearts and dreams,
plots and schemes,
all passing clouds in an airless black
And yet we lack
a clear way back to youth,
or Earth, or slot sleep’s birth.
I’d rather be brought down
after the long summer’s chase,
belly torn out
(it’s no disgrace)
than seep like sludge into
the garden’s moss and hear the
polite such a loss
when I know all will be ground
down to make the soil where
new Caesars will march,
unknowing, on to their good humus, too.
Virginia coughed in the heavy, musky air. She never seemed to finish poems anymore. Instead she took them out to examine, turning them to the light like pretty pebbles found on last summer’s vacation beach. Well, poems acquire a certain deadness when they’re done . . . not finishing them gives them indefinite life. She smiled to herself.
When she returned down a narrow lane, Carl was through talking to the hydro crew. She liked the way the silvered inner surface of the dome reflected a warped, surreal vision of Carl immersed in a riot of plantlife, as if it were an ocean in which he was afloat. When he turned toward her she held up a hand. “Conference?”
“Sure.” He stood waiting, the old caution still far back in his eyes. I’ve hurt him so many times . . .
“I . . . wanted to tell you . . .”
“Yes?”
“I know you felt that there was . . . some chance of Saul and me...”
He smiled wanly. “There’s always hope.”
“You’ve never given up:”
“No.”
“You might as well,” she said gently.
“It’s that certain between you?”
Virginia recalled her own thoughts about that, only minutes ago. “Out here, nothing is certain, you know that. No, it’s just that . . . you have such, well, such traditional goals.”
“Dreams, I’d say.” Carl smiled with a warm, rueful humor, as if aware of his own foibles. He would keep this polite and graceful, she saw. Time had given him a veneer, a sense of self. He had changed greatly in these years, almost without her noticing. I’ve been so wrapped up in Saul…
She struggled to find the right words, but before she could he said, “Admittedly, out here the idea of love and family, that whole snug picture, doesn’t work. We haven’t figured out how to protect the children from Halleyforms yet.”
“You’ll never have a family with me.”
“I’m resigned to that. Saul won’t either, of course.”
“No, but not because of his sterility. It’s me. I—I can’t have children.”
His lips parted but he said nothing. The veneer was gone in an instant and she saw again the old Carl, filled with longing and need.
“I . . . could never tell anyone. It was years before I could say anything, even to Saul.”
“God . . . I’m sorry.”
She blinked back tears. “I’ve come to terms with it.” Then why am I crying, idiot?
“All this time . . . “ He shook his head, his face open and somehow fresher, younger. All these years he’s sheltered a dream, and now it’s gone.
“I knew about it well before we left Earth.”
“I . . . see,” he said numbly.
“Carl—“
“What about, uh, fixing whatever’s wrong? Saul’s done wonders— “ He stopped.
She thought sharply, Was it me you wanted, or your dream of sweet little Percell chil
dren, genetic miracles among the stars? But the suggestion was wrong, unkind
She blinked rapidly. “This is a . . . special case. Not even genetic surgery . . . He did try cloning. without my permission. It was a disaster.” She shrugged.
“You . . . knew . . . all along.”
She nodded. “I suppose it influenced me, made me come on the mission in the first place. I wasn’t going to have a conventional life, no matter how I played it.”
“You could’ve adopted.”
“You know the odds against a Percell getting children to bring up. Even in Hawaii.”
He said savagely, “Yeah, they sealed off everything from us, didn’t they?” The memory could still draw bitterness.
“I could’ve stayed…fought with the others…”
“You saw what happened.”
She nodded, sniffing, surprised at her own emotion. If I stay here I’ll cry. “We…really made the right choice, didn’t we? Coming?”
His voice was leaden, his face a mask. “I . . . I don’t know.”
She was shocked. Have I taken away his last fantasy? And with it gone, the tide of despair rushes in?
“Carl, you can’t think that. We’ve survived, we’ve managed to—“
“Look, I’d . . . I’d rather not talk right now. Okay? Just . . . want to be alone.” He visibly pulled himself together, struggled to regain some of the confident manner of leadership that had become like a second skin to him . . . however easily it had peeled away, just now. “I appreciate your telling me. I can understand you better now, and at least that’s something.”