Longer

by Michael Blumlein

  Or not. Maybe not. Maybe there was no such thing as separation. Maybe there was cosmic unity, and he’d be one with the universe.

  Which would it be?

  It seemed worth finding out.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll monitor you.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  “Fact is, I hate these suits. Too hard getting in and out.”

  “Your own damn fault.”

  He held her helmet while she suited up.

  “I know you’d love to be the one doing this,” she said.

  “Next time. How do you feel? Ready to take on the universe?”

  “Pretty much.”

  He didn’t want to let her go. He feared for her safety. Pressed the helmet to his chest possessively, protectively, as though it were her.

  “Cav?”

  “Please be careful.” Reluctantly, he handed it to her.

  Instead of taking it, she leaned forward and kissed him on the lips.

  He tasted fruity and a little sour. A little tangy. A pleasantly familiar taste, save for the hint of dryness and decay, like the decomposing leaves of an old book.

  Hoping to banish this, she kissed him harder, lacing her fingers around his neck, pulling him toward her. A primitive impulse, inarguable and good. Pure chemistry.

  The force lifted him, and together they became airborne. Pure physics. They were halted by the module’s wall. Cav, who’d been taken by surprise, was jarred into action.

  He took her in his arms, or tried to. Their bulky suits made it impossible. It was like hugging dough. They began to somersault, until they hit the opposite wall.

  Cav was no gymnast. The tumbling made him dizzy and nauseous. Gunjita was in hysterics. She couldn’t keep from laughing. The chemistry, so strong a minute before, was gone.

  “Sorry, old man,” she said, goosing him tenderly, then donning her helmet.

  Cav, meanwhile, had started to get hard. His disappointment was sharp, but fleeting. Age had made him philosophic. Sex required staying powers he didn’t always—even often—possess. Sometimes his mind wandered, and he forgot what he was doing. Sometimes his eye fell, not on his beloved Gunjita, where it belonged, but between his own legs, and he was filled with nostalgia. At other times he was grateful. Things could be better, but they could be so much worse. He could still get it up on occasion. If the fates were kind (the drugs no longer helped), it would stay up. From time to time he still thundered like a stallion when he pissed.

  “There’s no hurry,” he said. “You have plenty of time. One foot in front of the other. Nothing sudden. I’ll be watching. We’ll be in constant communication.”

  She nodded, and mentally rehearsed their plan. It was straightforward enough. Basically, wrap a cord around the asteroid and bring it aboard. Like roping a horse, which was on her résumé.

  She’d ridden and lassoed ponies with Ruby in Iceland, Ruby’s adopted home, and where she gave birth to Dashaud. Gunjita had been present at the birth, and as often as she could throughout his childhood. She’d pushed him on the swing, carried him in her arms, fed him, put him to bed. For his fifth birthday she’d bought him a pair of leather boots, to wear while riding the horse that Ruby and Bjorn, his father, had surprised him with. She could still remember the look on his face as they trotted it out. Stunned, disbelieving, reverent. A dream he’d not dared to dream, standing there in the flesh.

  She was sixty at the time, and had allowed herself to be coaxed atop a horse of her own.

  Through the eyes of babes: it was love at first sight. For the next two weeks she rode every day. Ruby rode with her. Icelandic horses were prized for their sturdiness and longevity, and she learned to prize other qualities: their temperament, their beauty, and their exhilarating, extra gait.

  She’d learned a few basic knots during that and subsequent visits. Hadn’t used them in ages, not since Ruby had slammed the door in her face and shut her out. Hadn’t ridden a horse since then. Fifty long years. Too painful a reminder.

  She could tie a bowline, square, clove-hitch, jerk, figure of eight. Almost any of them would do. The asteroid wasn’t going anywhere. It was massive, but weightless.

  She got it hog-tied easily enough. What she hadn’t counted on was Eurydice itself, which refused to relinquish its prize. Held onto it with a tenacious, possessive, no-you-don’t grip. From the beginning Cav had argued strongly and persuasively against trying to forcibly detach the object of interest from the asteroid, which could: one, damage it; and two, damage it irreparably.

  Gunjita suggested decommissioning the arms.

  “How?” he asked.

  “Demolition?”

  “Frowned upon by Gleem, I’m guessing. Plus, risky.”

  “We could cut them off.”

  Also risky. And difficult. “Any other ideas?”

  She was floating beside the asteroid, the nose of Eurydice above her, cone in socket, firmly docked. “I can try loosening the bolts.”

  He was surprised she hadn’t mentioned this first. “Are there bolts?”

  She showed him on camera. He located them on a schematic of the probe. Thought it might work.

  She got busy. It wasn’t long before the asteroid was freed and in motion, she alongside it, guiding it through the cargo doors into the cargo bay, where she secured it, careful to steer well clear of the thing on its surface, which at close range looked slightly larger than they first thought, also slightly thicker, with a hard, shiny surface that concealed what appeared to be a lumpy interior. She reported all this to Cav, whom she eventually joined at the window overlooking the bay.

  His nose was pressed against the glass. First contact? Could this be it? He was jelly inside.

  Forced himself to calm down and think logically.

  He assumed that it was, or had been, living. An improbable assumption, but open to scientific verification. His null hypothesis: it was no different, essentially, from other living things.

  Beside him, Gunjita was lost in her own thoughts. Her first impression hadn’t changed. The thing was not alive. Not now, or ever. Her null, quite simply, was the opposite.

  1 From “The Valley,” by Los Lobos.

  2 Actually, a constellation of genes involved in the regulation of neural and neuroendocrine systems, principally the oxytocin system, that contribute to altruistic behavior. CrB in honor of Hamilton’s groundbreaking formula: C < r x B, describing the evolutionary advantage of social behavior, where C represents the costs to the acting individual, B the benefits to the recipient, and r the relatedness between actor and recipient.

  –THREE–

  Nature first, then theory. Or, better, Nature and theory closely intertwined while you throw all your intellectual capital at the subject. Love the organisms for themselves first, then strain for general explanations, and, with good fortune, discoveries will follow.1

  They watched it for two days, keeping their distance, observing through the window. This was Cav’s way of doing things. Watch. Listen. Smell. Use your senses. Interfere as little as possible. Let nature take its course. Wait.

  To watch, they had eyes, and cameras. To listen, ears and mics. Eventually, they’d touch it. What they couldn’t do was smell. Too dangerous to smell it directly, and the odorometer only told them so much. Not having smell left a hole in the experience. A question mark. Gunjita liked to say it was tantamount to walking on one leg.

  She’d said this very thing the first time Cav had laid eyes on her, in a lecture hall. She was a rising star, and he’d come to check her out. He assumed she was being dramatic, though she didn’t seem the type. The longer he listened, the more convinced he became she not only meant what she said, but knew exactly what she was talking about.

  Smell began when life began. At the very earliest stages. Smell was basic, primitive, the bedrock of communication. Smell was truthful. Smell was blind. Smell made you fall in love. Smell made you take to the hills. Smell was a rocket, a red flag, an invitation, an alarm.

  Cav
learned all this and more at that first lecture. He remembered nearly every word, spellbound by the lesson and the teacher. Impossible to say which bound him first, and whether in fact there was a first, his recollection more of a growing, interdependent, virtually simultaneous seduction by speaker and speech.

  She’d opened his mind, or rather, closer to say, his mind was blown, which made him all the more aware, now, of what, without the sense of smell, he was missing.

  Two days they watched and listened. Cav rarely left the window. He was a scientist, which translated into a Peeping Tom. Living things were meant to be observed. They were meant to attract attention. Not always, but sooner or later. Being noticed at the wrong time was potentially a death sentence. But at the right time: voilà! Connection. Mutual interest. If the stars lined up, a compatible, coordinated, and, who knew, concupiscent future.

  He tried not to think too far ahead. Tried not to get his hopes up. He’d once zoned out on a python coiled on a branch of a Mocambo tree. A magnificent creature, and a rare sighting. He was on a medical mission at the time, doing minor and not so minor surgery in what was left of the Amazon. A day later, after a morning of botfly extractions, he discovered to his chagrin that the snake was dead. A few hours after that he was shocked to find out that it wasn’t dead at all, but fake. A practical joke.

  He had learned not to pass judgment prematurely.

  Gunjita was a member of the same congregation. It rarely helped to jump to a conclusion in science or life, but especially in science. Spontaneity had its place, and occasionally yielded gold, but mostly it didn’t. Ninety percent of progress came from slow, methodical work. This suited her, as by nature she was patient and thorough. But after two days she was ready to start running some tests.

  Cav resisted: even passive tests ran the risk of altering it.

  “How long do you plan on waiting?” she asked.

  He didn’t have an answer.

  “There’s work to do,” she reminded him. “We’re here on business.”

  “This is more important.”

  “We have a contract to fulfill.”

  He grunted.

  “You may not care, but I do. You may be done with work. Retired.” He hated the word. She was prodding him, fishing. “I’m not. I’m looking forward to many more productive years. I’ll need funding. Gleem is a cash cow. It seems counterproductive to spit in their face.”

  “I see your point,” he replied carelessly. His eyes were fixed on the Ooi, the object of interest.

  “I’ll give you one more day,” she said.

  He nodded his agreement.

  She headed to the lab, where she could be herself without resistance. H82W8 had been acting strangely, flipping out of what should have been a stable shape, as though energized, then flipping back, as though not energized enough. Wanting to change but unable to quite do so. If she could discover the cause, she could eliminate it, and re-stabilize the compound. Then again, if she could discover the cause, she could possibly boost its energy, allowing the grav-sensitive drug to break free of its internal restraints and reassemble itself in a new conformation, maybe closer to what they were looking for, maybe far afield, maybe a dead end, but maybe not. A lab was a kitchen, and Gunjita was a master cook. In the days of the Hoax, when she had her own lab, and defense-related funding was off the charts, she followed her nose to her heart’s content, mixing, blending, altering recipes as she saw fit. Now she worked for someone else. And she was on the clock.

  She made a note of what she was seeing, intending to investigate it further if she had time. If not, someone else could run with it. She was willing to be the shoulders. Not too terribly invested in this particular study. Science was incremental, and she was incrementally content.

  She shot an update to Gleem, then spent some time thinking about biological alarms. Decided to focus on arterial plaque, the cause of most heart attacks, strokes, and related catastrophic events. Plaque was a complex mix of proteins, calcium, and lipids. Scents, on the whole, were much simpler. Could she engineer one to bind to plaque—putrescine, say, or putrescine-like—and as the plaque increased, the scent also increased, to a certain critical level, at which point it got released into the bloodstream, creating a new body odor, as distinctive as the fruitiness of ketosis, say, or the fishiness of uremia, but extra stinky?

  She saw no reason why she couldn’t. But who would agree to take it? That was the question.

  The answer: anyone who didn’t want to die suddenly and prematurely. Cav? Moot point. The lifesaving alarm she envisioned didn’t exist.

  She had no particular premonition that he was going to keel over suddenly and drop dead. His health was slowly declining, sure. She knew how this felt from firsthand experience. But it wasn’t as if he was on his last legs. Eighty-four wasn’t a hundred and four. Then again, it wasn’t twenty-four, or even sixty. Anything could happen at any time, until he juved.

  And if something did? She’d lived a whole life without him, so knew that she could. She’d also lived a whole life with, and wasn’t finished. Being with him the last two days reminded her of him as a young man, what a mind he had, how far he was willing to go, what a bulldog he could be, delighted with the world, obsessed, provocative, impossible to be with at times, impossible not to be with. She felt that way about him now.

  How would she get him to take her lifesaving alarm, if it did exist? She’d offer it, and he’d refuse. In his sleep then? Without his permission? She might as well strap him down and force him to be young.

  She’d never do that. She didn’t believe in that kind of coercion. Though the idea of straps and physical restraint—of a physical solution to the problem—got her thinking.

  She heard a series of beeps. Moments later, Laura Gleem was on-screen, the CGI version of her, which hadn’t changed in years.

  “Dr. Gharia.”

  “Director.”

  Laura’s face went through a series of transformations, commentaries and inside jokes on the power of money, imagination, and plasticity, in the process authenticating her identity.

  “I received your report.”

  “That was fast.”

  “Your work is important, Doctor. Correct me if I’m wrong, but things don’t look good.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “No? Our drug is unstable. It’s coming apart at the seams. Can’t make up its mind what to do.”

  “It’s reacting to something. Gravity, most likely.”

  “And the cells? How are they doing?”

  “They’re alive.”

  “How alive?”

  “They’re not dead.”

  “Not dead is good.”

  “I’ve made some adjustments. We’ll know more in a few days.”

  “Our fate is in your hands. H82W8 is useless to me as it is.”

  Be patient, Gunjita wanted to say. She knew not to.

  Laura Gleem smiled, as though reading her mind. “On another note, what do you think of pink?”

  “Pink?”

  “For the treatment center. And the personnel. The nurses and technicians.”

  She’d forgotten about this other plan for the station.

  “The doctors, too,” said Laura. “Pink with purple piping.”

  Gunjita was not a big fan of the color. “Sounds like a boutique.”

  “That’s exactly what it is. A medical boutique in outer space. Shuttle up, take the cure, shuttle home. If not this cure, then another. We’ll find something.”

  “A little holiday.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Expensive.”

  “More expensive not to, if your health’s at stake. Future job for you, Doctor. Get this drug to work, okay?”

  Not a job that particularly appealed to her, coddling and cosseting anyone, well-to-do or otherwise. As for her current job, less appealing with Laura Gleem breathing down her neck.

  “I have a question for you,” she said.

  “Fire away.”

&
nbsp; “Pink.”

  “What about it?”

  “Do you wear pink?”

  “Do I?”

  “I saw you once in person years ago. Now I just see you on-screen. I just see this . . . what everyone sees. Why’s that?”

  Laura stared at her. The corners of her mouth edged up. No warmth in the look, but plenty of chill.

  “This object. On the asteroid. What is it?”

  “I was just wondering. Maybe there’s something we can do to help.”

  “You can help by doing your job. Now: this object.”

  “We’re studying it.”

  “I’ve been advised to send someone. A team.”

  She knew what Cav would say to that. Kept her mouth shut.

  “It looks like vomit,” said Laura.

  “I’ve pointed that out.”

  “And Dr. Cavanaugh? What does he say?”

  “He has his own opinion.” Let her read between the lines. Gunjita had no doubt she could.

  “Of course. I look forward to hearing it.”

  “You will,” she replied brusquely.

  Laura was silent for a moment. Gunjita feared she had gone too far. Then Laura said, “It’s yours for now. Keep it to yourself. No reason to alarm anybody needlessly. Understood?”

  “Yes. Absolutely. I’m in full agreement.”

  “And don’t get too distracted by it. H82W8 comes first. Prioritize, Doctor. Stay in touch.”

  She ended the transmission, leaving Gunjita feeling tense and manipulated. She had the urge to retaliate, which surprised her. She tried deep breathing. Then padmasana, the lotus pose, the only one she knew. Old age had made it nearly impossible, but now it was easy. Levitation, too, which up to then had eluded her.

  But the knotted-up feeling persisted. Neck, shoulders, legs. Like coils of rope wound too tight, like springs about to snap. She wanted to throw something, do something. Run, punch, kick. Something physical . . . if she didn’t, she was going to explode.

  She and Cav used to wrestle, back in the day. A way to blow off steam after an argument, sometimes a prelude to sex. He pinned her nearly every time, his sheer size an insurmountable advantage. Now a mere shadow of himself, she could beat him easily. Turn the tables. Sit on his face.