by David Brin
With that wry thought, Saul slept again, and knew that he would be stronger when next he awakened.
CARL
Kepler’s Laws seemed almost biological now. Carl stared at the orbital display and sighed. Following a long ellipse out from the sun’s sting felt a lot like aging.
You start with a hot, fevered time when movement is rapid, life burgeons. Spring, a swelling heat, and ripe, quick summer. It passes. Things calm, raw reality seeps in, you slow and cool and come to terms with the fundamental hostility of the universe. Like growing old.
Simple Newtonian dynamics explained it all. The eccentric, moody Kepler had deduced the basic laws governing elliptical motion in a classic, brute-force manner: staring at the data until order seemed to ooze out, the eye bringing forth structure where another’s would see only a hash of numbers. Carl respected that ability far more now, after years of dealing with mountains of data, faithfully delivered by the interlocking systems of Halley Core.
He stepped Halley’s orbit forward on the big screen, watching the long ellipse advance, the scale swelling as the warm realm of the inner planets dwindled, circles sucked into the vortex of the sun. They were far past Saturn now, turning with an aching lethargy toward aphelion, beyond Neptune. Gravity’s weakening tug nudged the ice mountain feebly, the sun’s gossamer apronstrings.
He still came to Central every few days to check, to touch the consoles and renew his faith that this long night must have an end.
Like growing old.
How old am I,anyway? Two years serving under Ould-Harrad, after Saul and Virginia went into the slots. I was damned glad to slide into that chilly sleep myself. Worn out and depressed.
Then another shift under Lieutenant Morgan a decade later. Less harrowing, sure, but boring. I got heavily into the sense-stim, just to blot out the monotony of ice and dark. Must’ve run through every tape in the library a dozen times. JonVon was a help, rearranging and blending sensations and dramas. Some odd, delightful effects there… Still, much more than two years and I would’ve been ready for the rubber room.
Now it’s been—what? four more years? seems longer! —since Calciano woke me to take his place. The guy was pretty damned near gone, too.
He examined his reflection in a nearby blank screen, the gray flecks at the temples. Well, Virginia liked ’em older… Maybe now I can compete. I was a little hard to take, I guess. Brash and idealistic and pretty abrasive, I’m sure. Now, though…
He shook his head. Whatever he was becoming as a man… well, it was secondary. His main focus was on being a commander, or what passed for one these days. Plugging away, keeping the factions working together with minimal friction. He’d love to slip back into that dreamy cold sleep, let go, ride home free…
But there was no one left in the slots he would trust with the important aphelion maneuvers ahead. On the display they were a mere finger’s width from the turnaround, a lonely blue pinprick.
He’d had the time to bone up on Halley’s Comet, something he had skipped when applying for this mission. It had seemed irrelevant: Halley was another iceball, bound for the outer system and zones of space nobody had ever seen. That was enough for an ambitious youngster of twenty-five.
He had been chagrined to find he was even pronouncing the name wrong. Astronomers and space workers called it Halley with a short a; ground-huggers of his native North America used a long a, as if it were “Hailey.” But the discoverer had pronounced it with a w in the middle, so it should sound like “Hawley.” Carl imagined a haughty Englishman enunciating the name with one eyebrow arched, his lips turned into an amused, condescending smile.
They were riding the comet on its thirty-first passage since an ancient Chinese first recorded seeing the splash of shimmering light in the sky—a span that dwarfed the long years Carl had spent, and humbled the empires of Man. The fourth recorded apparition, in 11 B.C., came close to the birthdate of Jesus of Nazareth, and some said it must have been the Star of Bethlehem.
We could use some salvation now, Carl thought, and thumbed off the display. Andwhere’s that goddamn Jeffers?
As if called, the hatch creaked and Jeffers appeared, his long rusty beard flowing over his skinsuit neck yoke like a lurid moss. The man had argued that letting body hair grow was only sensible, providing much-needed natural insulation. Carl had countered that it got in the way of suit fixtures and fouled the helmet placements, but he knew why Jeffers liked it: the image of Methuselah, of wisdom, of the old hermit in the woods.
“How’d it go?” Jeffers asked. If anything, his southern drawl had thickened with the years. They were all trying to keep alive whatever links they had to distant, vibrant Earth.
Carl shrugged. “I sent the weekly transmission yesterday. Got the usual short response today, thirteen hours twelve minutes later.”
“Any shows?”
“Here.” Carl hit a key and an index scrolled forward. He stopped at a NEWS entry and shifted to realtime. “Feast your eyes.”
A woman announcer grinned at them, her torso paint aswirl with technicolor curves. Her nipple ornaments glittered as she took a deep breath and said enthusiastically. “Arrested on two counts of public foreplay today were Starlet Angela Xeno and Compassatino Rilke, line player for the Visigoths.” A 3D picture of a smiling couple, half-nude. “Insiders say the incident was publicity for the Visigoths’ upcoming tube match against the Wasters. Tuning to.”
Carl snapped it off. “There’re three new porno sestinas, too, if you want them.”
Jeffers made a face. “Naw, gettin’ so I can’t take that stuff anymore.”
“Me neither.” He never had, but it was a good idea not to disparage the tastes of people you had to work with; another small fact he had learned.
“When’s Malcolm comin’?”
“Any minute now.”
Central was one of two common meeting grounds between the factions. They all had to run into each other in the harvesting bins of Hydroponics, but Central was the obvious spot for real negotiations.
Jeffers slid into a webbing, stretching. “Just got back from the surface. A man can hardly move anything out there. Lotsa mechs are down for repairs and the rest drag around like they’s drugged.”
Carl nodded. Every month it got slightly worse. The persistent cold, the malfs, the difficulty of making new parts or repairs… “I wonder if there’ll be some of those titanium-cylinder manifolds in the Care Package.”
“Hope so.” Jeffers frowned. “I still wonder how they got all those parts and supplies into such a small package.”
“They’ve gotten better at high-boost, I suppose. It’s been over Thirty years, after all.”
Earth had undoubtedly made great progress in propulsion of high-quality loads for the Mars and asteroid bases. Still, it had been a surprise to be told, three years ago, that Control was sending a cargo of much-needed parts and supplies, boosting them out under enormous acceleration. They would arrive before aphelion, and could help crucially in the Nudge. Even with three decades of Earthside’s improvements, a package like that was expensive—but nothing, of course, compared with the investment already sunk into the Halley Mission.
“I ran that optical sighting through JonVon, got a measurement,” Jeffers said. “The Care Package is riding a fusion torch. Big orange plume behind it.”
“Already decelerating?”
“Yeah, but not much. Guess they’re going to slam on the brakes right at the end.”
With rendezvous two years away, the Care Package still had to shed four kilometers per second to come alongside Halley. News of it had been a real morale boost. Carl hoped its arrival would lift them all, bring back some of the spirit the mission had enjoyed in its first days.
“Major Clay—our new contact guy—said he had included a bottle of 1986 Malescot St. Exupery Margaux.”
“Hot damn! I can’t pronounce it, but I’ll sure as hell help drink it.”
“A bottle of the best from Halley’s twen-cen apparition
, he…”
“Great. Just fine.”
Jeffers was plainly pleased at this fragment of news. Carl had saved details of the Care Package, dealt them out one at a time to keep enthusiasm up. An extravagant gesture, shipping old grape juice across the solar system—but Earth, despite its madnesses, did understand something of the psychology out here. It was a masterful touch.
One hell of an improvement over the hysteria under Ould-Harrad—one month I’m a hero, the next I’m a Percell freak. And under Criswell they didn’t answer at all. If it weren’t for Phobos Base relaying newslink on the sly, we couldn’t have proved Earth was even inhabited Sounds like things are settling down now though.
He rubbed his face, massaging some of the ache away. He tapped in instructions and the walls lit. Best to put on something pretty, calm, warm. Ah, here. Sunny day breaking over Hong Kong Free State.
The swarming masses of junks and flyers always pleased him. A baking sun had just lifted free of green, artificial hills to the east. A rainbow grinned, upside down beneath the vapor fall of a floating luxury home. Heat shimmer made the distant alabaster spires dance.
The hatch clanked again and Malcolm appeared. He was lean, and his face was set in a perpetual dark glower, black eyes peering out distrustfully. Without a word Malcolm settled into a webbing and nodded. “We want more from Hydro.”
Carl sighed. “You know the terms.”
“It’s not enough. We’re all losing body weight.”
For a nasty instant Carl was tempted to say, Try eating some of your kids. The ones you insisted you had a “right” to have. But he kept his face impassive and said, “We’re getting as much out of Hydro as we can, you know that. Look over the numbers.”
“But we’re growing, and the agreement doesn’t allow for that.”
“Those kids were your choice.”
“Look, we been over this,” Malcolm said evenly. “Normal people get sick easier. We got to keep a larger population in case there’s another plague.”
Jeffers, who had been chewing his lip all this time, burst out, “You just want to take over, is all. Couple decades, you’ll outnumber us Percells.”
Malcolm said stiffly, “The normal people will keep to our own zone.”
“We see you guys around in Three C—you movin’ m there? Jeffers asked.
“No.” Malcolm sniffed derisively. “We can’t stand the smell.”
“Delicate li’1 bastards, aren’t you?”
Carl said mildly, “Stop trading insults. We’ve got things to negotiate.”
“Those kids are bastards, y’know—you’ve got some kinda mass breeding program going, don’t you?” Jeffers asked sharply.
Malcolm reddened. “That’s no business of you Percells.”
“You treat women like breeding stock.”
“Cut it,” Carl said firmly. Malcolm was sensitive about the fact that their children were stunted, victims of Halleyform intrusions into the womb and development problems in low-G. They seldom lived long. Reproducing in such a hostile biological environment was simply a bad gamble, and the Orthos had lost.
He let the men stare sourly at each other for a moment and then went on, “We’ve got to do something about the slot problem. The medical inventory is even worse than I’d thought. There aren’t enough fresh crew left. Nowhere near enough to do the remaining work of setting up the Nudge.”
Jeffers asked, “How’s that possible? There’re hundreds.”
“Were hundreds.” In the first ten years they had cycled most of the mission crew through, before they got the green gunk and viroids really under control. If the thawed-out ones got sick—and a lot did—they were popped back into the slots. For replacements they pulled fresh sleepers.
“Killing off normal people, that’s what you were doing,” Malcolm said.
Carl sighed. “Forget that crap. We did what we had to. Orthos got sick fast, that’s all.”
“Not the way I heard it. We.”
Jeffers spat out, “You unfroze twenty years after rendezvous! You know nothin’ about the hard time.”
“I can read records! And the oldsters tell us. I know you unfroze normal people more often than you had to.”
“Because the Ortho faction wanted to keep their numbers up. It was their idea,” Carl explained. “Look, I was there, you weren’t. Until Calciano handed things over to me, every commander was an Ortho. I’m not going to try to crack through that bonehead bias of yours anymore. Just listen, okay?”
Malcolm nodded reluctantly. The man kept a certain tattered dignity about him, despite his grimy uniform and matted hair. Usually he made some show of being clean and neat. The Orthos must be having a hard time of it lately.
There were internal disputes, too. The Ortho-run tunnels had as wide a range of fanatics as the Percell zones, maybe more. Malcolm was hard to take sometimes, but he was the only one all Orthos trusted to speak for them—much the same position Jeffers served among Percells.
Carl could respect Malcolm’s position, but could only pity the stupidity of the people he had to represent. Many Orthos would never compromise with Percells now, after all that had happened, the wasted blood and bile. Very well—but cooperation on some tasks was essential.
We need more help to Hydro, Carl said. “Equipment keeps breaking down and the only way to make up is with labor.”
“You want more work from us?” Malcolm said resentfully.
“Right. But it can’t eat into the Nudge program.”
“Impossible. We’re stretched too far as it is.”
“Orbits wait for nobody,” Jeffers said. “We got to have the launchers ready by aphelion or else there’ll none of us see Earth again.”
Carl nodded. “And I doubt we could survive an extra ten years.”
Malcolm’s lean mouth set in a determined line. “I get it. You want to unslot a bunch of our people, then work them to death.”
“That’s not it at all.” Carl had anticipated this reaction, but not so soon. He’s edgy, suspicious. I don’t envy him, having to deal with Quiverian and Ould-Harrad and the Arcists. Of course, Jeffers doesn’t have it easy either, coping with Sergeov and the radical Percells.
Carl said calmly, “I think we’ll get by if you simply stop trying to produce children. That will free more women to work full time.
“Uh-uh. We got a right to reproduce.”
Carl thought bitterly, Now youunderstand how we felt about the EarthBirth Laws. He put the thought aside—a dim dispute from another life—and leaned forward earnestly. “Look, think this through. We have.”
The hatch clanged. Carl looked up in surprise to see Saul Lintz gingerly making his way into the center of the console banks. “Saul, this is a parley. You’re not invited. And frankly, I think you’re too weak to.”
“Nonsense. I heard where you were and decided to come have a look. You’re the, ah, Ortho leader?” Saul peered at Malcolm as if trying to place him from the past.
As the two made introductions, Carl thought. Could he use Saul to persuade Malcolm? Saul’s prestige in suppressing the Black Year plagues carried weight. How much did Lintz know of what had happened? He would have to step carefully here.
“Oh, I understand the problems,” Saul said to Malcolm. “I tapped into the running inventory, projections, the maintenance programs. What I want to know,” he said carefully, looking at Jeffers and Carl, “is why the Nudge Launchers have been reprogrammed.”
Damn. “It’s preliminary, since only a few of the launchers have been built yet. We’ve sharpened our analysis.”
“No, that’s not it. They’re set to bring us nowhere close to Earth, after the Jupiter slingshot.” Saul looked at Carl steadily.
“Look, I was going to sit down and go over this with you in detail as soon as you—” Carl sighed. “Okay. Here, I’ll play the squirt from Earth, same as we got it years ago. You might as well have the full story.”
It wasn’t hard to find. He had replayed it incessantly, and so had
many of the Orthos, he imagined.
The main screen glowed, fluttered. NEWS.
A burly announcer looked mirthful, shrugged comically, and said, “Remember that trag ex-ed on Halley’s Comet? How they went balloka and started checking out from the bugs they found? Well, here’s how they looked when Orbital got ’em in sights again.”
A dry chuckle. The screen showed a silvery profile swimming in blackness—the Edmund.
“Some of the nonbuggy ones jumped into their mother ship and flew home. Only nobody’s nonbuggy out there now, so Fed said—you know what Fed said, right?”
The leering, wide-eyed face of the announcer swelled, smiled broadly with impossibly white teeth, then dwindled as down-tonal sound effects rose and—the screen flared with brilliant blue light.
“Scintillatin’ sendoff, yes! All gone-free for you and me, to keep bugs out of the hurly-clime. Went up clean, too, one big fuse.”
Carl snapped it off. “Welcome to the coming new century,” he said sardonically.
“Good… Lord…” Saul was dazed. His gray pallor slowly reddened and he blinked rapidly. “They… they weren’t going to take any chances.”
Malcolm said bitingly, “Why should they? Even if Earth quarantined the Edmund, how could they be sure?”
Jeffers said levelly, “You sound like you’re agreein’ with what they did.”
“I can understand it.” Malcolm eyed Jeffers with open dislike.
“Only good thing,” Jeffers said cuttingly, “is that Linbarger and those Ortho assholes all bought it.”
Saul gritted his teeth, as if swimming up from some personal memory that had overwhelmed him. Carl suspected which one: the old Zionist associations were broad enough to be triggered by anything like this.
“I expected some strong measures…but to…”
Carl said flatly, “You wanted to know—okay, there it is. We can’t go back to Earth. Ever. They’ll never believe we’re not disease carriers, and they’ll be damned right, too.”
Saul’s eyes seemed to swell in his papery, pale face, sensing possibilities. “Then… where can we…”