by David Brin
Carl’s eyes closed briefly. “There are factions back home, too. There were… tradeoffs. We had to make agreements in order to get the Care Packages.”
“So that we can smash into planet in forty years?” Virginia couldn’t help laughing bitterly.
“Forty long years, Virginia. Even with Saul’s serums, we’ll have to keep so many people awake that we’ll all be old by that time.’
“There are children, Carl.”
“Those poor babies the Orthos have been having? They hardly even merit calling human, Virginia. You know that. Anyway, they and all of us will live better and more comfortably with the goods we’ll be getting in these rockets from Earth.”
“Comfort!”
“Yes, that counts for something. But there’s a more important reason.”
“What’s that?”
“Honestly, Virginia, can’t you see that this is the only way anything good can emerge out of this entire fiasco?”
She shook her head. “What good will come of all of us dying?”
“Well, from Earth’s point of view, the end of a threat. And in that I can see the Arcists’ point of view.”
“You can?”
“Yes. Of course. They’ll do anything to protect the homeworld from Halleyforms, and you can’t blame them for that.”
“And from our point of view?”
He shrugged. “We spark life anew on a dead world, perhaps. With our deaths we can begin the long process of bringing Mars alive.”
Virginia couldn’t help sneering. “You’re beginning to sound like Jeffers.”
“Maybe I am at that.” He looked away. His voice dropped. “I might have tried to think of something else, no matter how unlikely, if…” His voice trailed off.
“If what, Carl?”
“Never mind. It’s not important.”
“Carl! You have to talk to me.”
He shook his head. “Saul told me, a while back, that he was working on a cloning system. In ten years or so, we might be able to produce a generation of healthy children, slightly modified to be healthy and breed true in low gravity. There may actually be something to that idea some Sergeov’s Ubers talk about, of telling Earth to go to hell and trying to colonize Triton.”
Virginia blinked, realizing what might bring him over to accepting such a plan. “You mean… me, in particular, don’t you?”
“Yes. You, me, the children only you and I could have together. I…I might be persuaded to see another point of view, if that seemed possible.”
Inside Virginia’s mind and heart, winter blew. It was a numb incapacity, n unwillingness to understand this. Dimly, she knew that this was Carl’s own unique version of the neuroses they all had, by now— no worse than normal, but highly unusual. It was a curse of hypertrophied romanticism. The wistful teenager in him had, in one respect, been frozen in time.
She knew that a simple confession might solve this… a frank admission that, no matter how great the technical miracles science made available, she would never have children by any man. The universe had decided that long ago.
The numbness was too great, though, Too much like a weight of ice she could not lift, even to be kind to a dear friend.
“I won’t tell anybody about Mars, Carl.”
“You won’t?” He blinked. “But I.”
“You’ve convinced me that you’re right. It will be better this way… to die bringing life to a dead world. Better than a pointless extinction, the way we’re headed.”
She backed away and turned her transmitter back on. “Tell me when and where you want to meet the first Care Package, and give me a support team. I’ll begin running simulations for a rendezvous right away.
“I’ll be seeing you, Carl.”
She tried not to look at his eyes as she turned away, but she felt his gaze on her back as she picked a narrow, solitary path back down into her crypt, far below the cold stars.
SAUL
It was a sophisticated beast, the vehicle that had traveled so far to bring them gifts from distant Earth, and it had blazed a daring path to reach them here in only five years. Swooping three times past the sun, it had gained terrific speed, until now it streaked outward into the black depths below and beyond the solar-system plain.
During each whipping solar passage it had ridden the blazing sunlight on giant gossamer sails. Then, when distance had dimmed the fires behind it, the great sheets folded away and the machine’s own flame burst forth. Bits of antimatter met in a tiny combustion chamber, releasing energy that was an early collimated light, propelling the craft faster still.
Only three passes were needed to bring its orbit into the plane of Halley’s— but much faster than the fleeing comet. Technology made it possible, and the hot flux of reawakened public opinion demanded speed. To the popular press of a new generation, this was an errand of mercy that would brook no delay.
To others it was something else altogether— a down payment on a bribe to persuade the strange, time-cast, and infected colonists to keep to their agreement, an agreement to stay away.
Did some hope, in this way, to assuage their guilt over the burning of the Edmund Halley? Or to slake their shame over the years of silence and neglect?
Saul watched the screens, along with selected representatives of all the clans, in the cavernous Central Control Room. For once the chamber was actually full, though he would have wagered that the architects had never imagined such a crowd… glowering figures wearing tattoos and clothing woven of Halleyform lichen fiber, bearing scars from illnesses never seen on Earth and muttering to one another in strange dialects.
Even Joao Quiverian was here, frowning with arms folded in a corner, with three bodyguards and a recently cloned weasel watching ferally from his shoulder.
Representatives of all the clans were here to observe while Virginia Herbert guided the colonists’ mechanical envoy into a matching orbit with the still-decelerating Care Package.
“They’ve sure made advances. That torch is fierce,” Andy Carroll said from the ballistics console. “But it’s still not slowing down fast enough to suit me.”
“I’ll match it,” Virginia muttered drowsily. “Don’t fret, Andy. We’ve made some advances of our own.”
A black cloth covered her eyes as she lay back on the webbing by the waldo controls. The neural-tap cable snaked out from the back of her skull, and her fingers gently touched a set of knurled knobs.
Saul noticed Quiverian’s mouth purse in disapproval. To have Percells in charge of the recovery operation was obviously hard for the man to bear. But he was here on sufferance, and could hardly complain.
By rights Carl could have kept the man away, in retaliation for the mutiny he had led down south. Even though Quiverian had disclaimed any responsibility for the renegades who had attacked the equatorial launchers—had denounced them publicly—he and his Arcists were hardly trusted. As long as they were in Central they were watched constantly by a tem of Keoki Anuenue’s neural and adopted Hawaiians.
Still, with the negotiating power the contents of the Care Package were about to give him, Carl could afford to be generous.
No one was even certain what the thing contained. Saul pondered. I could list a thousand items I’d give a finger or a bicuspid for, or more. And there are hundreds of other lists, each as long as mine.
Alas, there probably isn’t even an ounce of good pipe tobacco aboard.
He smiled in faint irony. I’llsettle for the cell-differentiation tuner in that cloning system they developed on Earth ten years ago.
It had started logically enough, his program with monkeys and gibbons and subtly altered strains of wheat… searching for new elements to add to a growing synergism— a meshing of Earthborn and Halleyform life to take the place of perpetual war. But in recent months it had become something more complicated. There were aspects, now, that he was certain Carl Osborn would not approve, and that Virginia probably would never understand.
That was why he had moved
his laboratory down into a secret chamber under a quadrant of Halley far from rockets and clans, and prevented even Virginia’s bodyguard mechs from following him there. It had contributed to the growing breach between them, but he had paid that price.
It had been months since he last connected with her the way they had grown accustomed, meshing their emotions— and even an occasional, machine-amplified thought— while holding each other under the faint glow of JonVon’s status lamps. He had not dared For she would surely catch traces… suspect the liberties he had taken, and their tragic results.
A squirming, horrible little thing in a glass incubator… gills and fur and swishing tail… a face—faintly human— contorted in agony and then, mercifully still at last…
“It’s a beauty,” Carl Osborn whispered. And Saul blinked, shaking himself back to the present. It was a memory he preferred not to dwell on, anyway. He looked up to see the faery craft now clearly depicted on the screens.
Spires as wispy as spider’s silk spread like the winter-bared stems of a flower—the spinnerets from which great sails had billowed during the cargo vessel’s three swooping sun-passes—arrayed round a globe that shimmered with impossible mirror brightness.
“I’m scanning that container capsule in the center,” Lani Nguyen said from the instrumentation console. “I’d wondered how they dealt with dust impacts at those speeds. It looks like their shield isn’t even material at all! It’s some sort of gravitic field, or I’m my own maiden aunt.”
“No!” Carroll muttered, and shared a glance with Carl. “A real force field? No wonder they were able to build it so light.”
Otis Sergeov, leader of the Ubermensch party of Percells, hung from the edge of a holistank to the left, with several of his tattooed comrades. “The purple-zippered thingy’s still too meppeed light. What good will two tons of Earth-shit do anyway?”
Jeffers laughed. “What would I do for a few pounds of the right machine dies, or a mile or two of warm superconducting wire? Hell, for those I’d even be willing to paint my skin blue and gibber NewTalk like an Uber, Otis.”
Sergeov’s eyes glinted, and Saul knew that being a fellow Percell would not save Jeffers, if the legless ex-Russian ever had the other man’s fate in his hands.
“Bezmoodiy govnocheest!” he muttered in his native tongue. Jeffers only laughed.
Susan Ikeda, their Earthcomm chief, reported on the latest word over the long-range radio.
“Earth Control says their four-hour estimate is on target. Probe is in the proper deceleration track.”
“Can’t be,” Carroll muttered.
“But they say…”
“Their info is four hours old! Speed o’ light, I tell you. Something’s—”
“Can it, Andy,” Carl said. For a time there was quiet in the room. Only the soft hum of the air fans and faint clicking each time somebody threw a switch. Then Lani spoke.
“It’s turning its torch, Virginia.”
“Check. About time. I’m extending the tether.”
Virginia betrayed no sign of tension, but those in the room hung in suspense. The overhead displays showed the colonists’ two-piece envoy craft, the parts connected by a taut cable less than a finger’s width in thickness and more than fifty kilometers long. Rockets flared, and the connected body began to whirl, like a slow, great bola in the starry blackness.
“Section B’s propellant now depleted,” Andy Carroll announced. “Section A is ready to receive transferred momentum in three hundred ten seconds.”
Lani turned and explained to those observing, “Our probe was a two-stage rocket. Part B provided the initial boost. Part A has saved its fuel for the final match with the Care Package.”
“Then why is part B still attached?” one of Quiverian’s people asked.
Lani moved her two fists around each other, imitating a bola. “We’re using a whirling tether to steal even more momentum from the booster stage. By flinging part B back toward Halley, we give its share of energy to the other piece, our envoy.”
The onlookers barely listened. All eyes were on the center screen, where the Care Package began to turn. What had been a hot speck at the edge of the mirror dome brightened as it swung around to face the colonists’ spinning, two-piece messenger.
The image was too blurred. Their cameras aboard the swiftly rotating section A could not keep a steady bearing on the Earth ship. Processing the quick glimpses, JonVon could barely keep up a simulated point of view.
Saul wondered if he should be helping. He knew JonVon better than did anyone but Virginia herself. At least he could help the organic computer steady the image.
But he had not offered. Frankly, he was afraid Virginia might refuse, and so make explicit what had already become tacit them.
I miss her so. I’ve wronged her by staying away… by not confessing whatI1 have done …
So he had told himself over and over again. But that had not helped him find the courage to tell her of that little warped thing, growing in the clone tank in his secret lab, an attempt at a gift for her… but which had turned out, instead, to be a cruel reminder that God sets limits even on the powers given prophets, and enforces those boundaries severely.
I have been given, into my hands, the power to craft animals and even men… but am denied any way to give the woman I love the child she so desperately wants— a thing most men take for granted.
There had to be a reason. But as yet, the Infinite had not deigned to confide it to him.
“What the unholy clape is the thing tryin’ to do?” Saul heard Jeffers mutter.
“I think…” Carl Osborn glided a step forward, his voice suddenly stark. “I think it’s trying to hit our probe.”
“Impossible!” one of the Ortho moderates from Almondstone Cavern cried. “Why would it…”
But the fierce lance of the Earth craft’s drive suddenly flared in brilliance as its aspect came nearer the camera’s view. Andy Carroll cried out, “Maneuvering! Accelerating turn!” And then all was chaos.
“Tether separated!” Lani shouted.
“I’ve lost contact with section B!” another spacer called out.
“Keep back, all of you! Let them work. Give them room!” Carl cursed as he pushed people away from the controllers. Above their heads the screens were a blur of overloaded sensors.
Carl’s eyes met his as Saul edged past the shouting crowd, worming between the locked arms of Anuenue’s Hawaiians to approach the consoles. There was a silent flicker of emotion on Osborn’s face, then the spacer jerked his head. “All right,” he told Saul. “Help them. But if you get in their way, I’ll have your ass.”
Saul nodded and jumped forward to land lightly on the webbing beside Virginia. He pulled a neural helmet from the console and put it over well-rubbed spots on his skull.
The maelstrom was even worse down in the realm of images and data streams. Without years of practice under Virginia’s tutelage, he would have been instantly lost in the noise.
He sifted, looking only for the vision-processing centers. The really important stuff— vectors and mechanical status reports and course data— he did not even touch. Probably, he would do more harm than good if he tried to help there. But he could give Carl and the others a better view of what was happening. That much was within his ability, he figured.
He called up the section of JonVon’s memory that was reserved for his own work, reciting his secret access code.
Simon says, open Kelley.
The response actually seemed to take a few milliseconds, showing how busy the processor was.
Good afternoon, Dr. Lintz. I have news to report on the state of the newest experiments. The clone chambers are operating nominally. There is—
Not now, he interrupted. Override all but basic life-function maintenance. Transfer other resources to processing incoming data into clear images and displaying them according to following formats.
He to envisioned the console before him, and “dived” in with his mind,
tracing pathways and naming throbbing electronic blocks for JonVon to access. The data streams were almost total chaos to him, but working with JonVon seemed to open up possibilities. It gave him a glimpse— or so he often thought— at the wonders Virginia dealt in, as surrogates for the share of infinity that could never be hers.
Bad topic. Concentrate, you old fool!
The seared, tumbling cameras on probe A were still transmitting. If only he and JonVon could time and phase the tumble… access the probe and have it send views in quick pulses…
Yes! Clever machine. Mama taught you well.
Gradually, over the course of seconds, the blur resolved, flickered, steadied. He saw that the fiery torch of the Earth ship had been left behind, its flare no longer burning bright.
The breaking tether took it by surprise. He realized that the Earth vessel had not been able to track pieces flying in such suddenly altered directions. One of the sections was now streaking toward the Care Package at an oblique angle, even faster than before.
“It was only trying to defend itself!” someone cried out in the audience. “We must’ve activated a meteoroid defense!”
Another observer agreed. “We have to terminate this stupid interference. Let it come in as its designers planned. Anything we to will be like savages interfering in a complex machine they don’t understand. It’ll only bring disaster!”
There was a rumble of agreement, but Saul could sense, beyond current after current of settling data, the distinctive flavor of triumph from Virginia.
“Got you!” he heard her whisper, from not far away. Briefly, he turned his head and tried to look at her. But the pulsing neural tap and his natural vision system clashed, threatening him with a wave of vertigo. He closed his eyes again and concentrated on stabilizing the image for Carl.
“That’s it,” he heard the spacer mutter behind him. “Easy goes it, Andy, Virginia… try to lock gently at the base of those spinnerets. Then, Lani, help Virginia tap into the thing’s computer. Find out why it hasn’t initiated contact yet.”