by David Brin
Nearer, now. Halley seemed to fill the sky. Momentary blue brilliances lit its scarred face. The shaft mouths were clogged with ice, sealed to prevent crew inside from entering the battle. Small lasers commanded the agro domes, keeping them isolated.
Would so many people have joined Sergeov’s conspiracy if they had figured out all the implications of his plan?
Carl had had a lot of time to think, on the way back. Sure, using Earth as a target made better sense than Mars, dynamically. Earth’s greater gravity would be more useful and the thicker atmosphere would be better for aerobraking. But it would still take many passes before the returnees had shed enough velocity to match orbits or land.
And would Earth sit still while they kept swinging around again and again, pass after pass? Oh, they might be intimidated once—by thethreat of plague bombs—but that wouldn’t last.
Some joined Sergeov, because they think it’s the only way to live. No matter what the price.
The price, in this case, would be high.
In order to keep Earth from interfering, from taking revenge, Sergeov had to destroy her.
The way the dinosaurs had been destroyed…by a storm from heaven. Sergeov planned to bring Halley home, dead centre.
So? Carl thought bitterly. Earth declared war on us, didn’t they?
It was a sophistry to which Carl was fortunately immune.
I’m not at war with six billion people, no matter what their leaders do to me.
After Halley smacked into the Earth, there would be no civilization left to speak of. Sergeov’s Ubers could maneuver back slowly, casually, without interference.
Perhaps they plan to become gods.
Over my dead body.
He would fight them, of course, useless as it seemed. But that was distant from his mind as the surface rushed up at him. He cared only about one thing—finding a fueled lifter mech as quickly as possible and getting spaceborne again.
She tricked me, he declared again to the stars. Please, oh please, keep her alive until I can get to her!
As he began his long delayed braking, he saw that several launcher pits were blackened. Debris lay all about them, the ruined sleeves of flinger tubes, cores of electromagnetic assemblies, induction coils…
Vast damage. Carl felt sickened at the lost work. Loving craftsmanship destroyed.
And in his ears rang shouts of victory from the Ubers. Two Uber pincers converged on the line of microwave borers. Their Arcist defenders crouched low, trying to cover the attackers with the cumbersome trumpet-shaped horns. Carl could hear the quick bursts from them as sssttuuppp sssttuuppp sssttuuppp over the comm. Blue-white plumes flowered where the microwaves caught the ice. They were putting up a fierce last stand, but it seemed to be all over.
Suddenly, Carl caught a new clicker of movement out the corner of his eye. Fanning out behind the Uber main force came a motley gaggle, moving swiftly. A smaller group swarmed toward the equatorial line, now only lightly held by the Ubers. He turned up his telescopic power. Who were these?
They did not come from the tightly guarded shafts, but rather from fresh cracks in nearby depressions. New tunnels, Carl thought. They’re organized.
They spread across the grainy ice. He counted a dozen figures in sleek black suits—of a type he had never seen before—and over twenty others dressed in strange, filmy green. They lacked tabards, so he could not tell what faction they were with, if any at all.
The newcomers fought with a fine-edged ferocity, using small, potent handguns. They took the Uber line from the rear, inflicting damage on weapons rather than pinpointing people. Carl coasted closer, watching with mounting impatience. What was happening? His comm gave only shouts, incomprehensible orders, and crackling static.
Who are these guys?
The odd figures in green and in black outflanked one launcher, attacking from its vulnerable side. Someone had trained them. Instead of a milling rush, they used covering fire to maneuver, keeping the Ubers’ heads down while each figure moved forward. Then they pounced into the pits as the launcher crew tried vainly to swivel its awkward muzzle to meet a fresh, unexpected attack.
It didn’t work perfectly. Laser pulses caught some attackers and blew gouts of blood into the vacuum. Distant launchers pelted the ice with machinegun bursts, striking a few figures and propelling them off the ice into a permanent, solitary orbit about the sun. In the frigid gripping silence their ends were impersonal, an intersection of certain vectors and momenta, the dynamics of death a matter of mere mathematics.
But human verve counted, too, and the black and green tide washed over the pit-punctuated equator. In his ears rang hoarse jubilation, incoherent cries. Ubers died in burrows where they had crawled for shelter.
He was coming in close now. Two figures below him donned tabards, apparently so their troops could form up about them—the heraldry popped into his head acid he blinked in amazement. Ould-Harrad and Ingersoll? At the same moment he saw that they were not wearing green suits, but rather no suits at all! The green was some airtight layer. Halleyform!
The black-suited ones stayed together. Their suits were little more than glossy helmets plus some thin film covering the rest of their muscled bodies, showing detail so clearly that he could tell they were all male, all remarkably similar. They moved with grace and speed that stunned the eye.
Carl expended the last of his fuel braking toward a clump of transport mechs tethered near Shaft 4. He rolled to a halt in a storm of dirty ice. He had no time to appeal for help, knew that the crew in black and green—whoever they were—would be too busy and excited to be of any use anyway. He was tired, but the mech would do most of the piloting—if he could get control of it. If one were fueled and ready If…
The comm was overloaded with a raucous rolling celebration, oblivious.
—Carl! That you? —It was Jeffers.
“Yeah. Got to get mech, fast!”
—Sergeov’s dead. Ould-Harrad’s guys got him with two laser bolts. Blew him apart and pushed him right off into space.—
“Come here! These mechs—”
—Don’t seem anybody’s interested in retrievin’ him, either. —Jeffers was rejoicing. Then the urgency in Carl’s voice registered. —Okay, I’m comin’.—
Got to get one with enough fuel… Not this one…
—Carl.—A female voice. He turned to see Lani approaching from the north with Keoki Anuenue and a score of the big Hawaiian’s people. —The Ubers had the Blue Rock Clan bottled up, but we found a way out with the weirders, Ingersoll’s guys.—
They helped? The crazies? It was slowly sinking in. “Great. I… Look, help me find a mech that’s fueled.”
—Where’s Virginia? I looked—
“Find a mech!”
—Okay, check the inventory.—
“What?”
—We’ve got mech control up and running again. See?—
She transferred the manifest readout directly to his viewplate and he instantly saw the code numbers of two standby transports flashing green. —Here,—Lani said, coasting over to one of them. Her face was drawn but determined behind a spattered helmet. —I’ll bootit up.—
Carl joined her, punched up the mech’s status readout.
—Those black guys, who’re they?—Lani asked.
“I dunno.”
—You don’t? We all thought you and Virginia must havebrought them. The mech purred to life. Carl shook off questions and got oxygen. Nothing else mattered. The madness of men was now only a backdrop. The goddamned politics could wait.
One step at a time… time is running… dunno how much oxy she had… think it through… each step…
Carl programmed the transport for high boost, stubby fingers punching in commands with a deliberate slowness. Lani insisted on going along and he wasted no time arguing. They lifted off with Lani in the side-rider pod.
Virginia had left their centre of mass with the same speed as Carl—slightly less than four kilometers per minute—bu
t in the opposite direction. Their separation lay over three hours in the past. That meant he had to recoup nearly a thousand kilometers at high thrust, then search the space for a weak, steady vector-finding signal…
Speed. Speed was all that mattered now.
Hours later Carl brought the mech in for a rough landing at the glassy entrance to Shaft 3. He was ragged with fatigue, but he had Virginia. The world tilted blearily as he dismounted, unsteady from the varying accelerations of the past hours.
Almost there. Just get her inside…
He slipped clumsily on the ice and dropped her. Lani helped. Everything was foggy, slow-motion.
Only when gloves caught her, pulled the limp, space-suited form away from him, did he see the others. They wore black suits and no tabards, with tight helmets that showed only eyes through narrow slits. He switched among comm channels but they did not respond.
They were eerie, silent. And identical. The one carrying Virginia swiveled and sped quickly for a shaft entrance, now cleared of ice. Carl stumbled after, slipping.
Down the shaft. Walls slid by like sheets of rain descending as he watched, impassive, numb a creeping slackness stealing into his arms and legs. He was well past the point of caring about himself, and concentrated only on the body that a black-suited figure carried before him. Everything moved with ghostlike speed and silence.
They cycled into a lock, Carl leaning groggily against the bulkhead as pressure popped in his ears and the world of sound came flooding back, the rustle and murmur of talk swirling around him once more, after many hours of an embalmed isolation. He staggered through the portal, brushing aside hands that tried to steer him.
Scores of moaning casualties. Medics with blood-soaked gloves.
Virginia. Got to see… she needs… got to…
The man carrying her set her gently down on a med couch. A team had been waiting. They attached oxy-prep hoses, leads for diagnostics stripped off her suit, all beneath the pale enameled light that showed her bloodless face in terrifying detail, seamed and rutted like a collapsed landscape.
A torrent of voices, liquid words flowing past him in vortices, without trace…
Carl shambled forward, ignoring the restraining hands. Got to be with her…got to…
The man next to him put a steadying grip on his shoulder. Carl turned slowly. Then the figure in black loosened his glossy helmet, started to lift it, gasped, and, in an old familiar way, sneezed.
SAUL
Another rocking sneeze resounded before the ebony helm was off. Saul blinked away spots before his eyes. He had to clamp down with biofeedback to stop another tickle that threatened to get him started again. Now was not the time for his confounded allergy-symbiosis system to rear up. He’d had enough troubles since the cave-in—what seemed like days ago-and right now every second counted.
Carl Osborn was blinking at him, his dented, grimy, old-fashioned spacer helmet dangling from one hand. “But… but… you were dead!”
Saul shrugged. “I was, in a sense. But like an old weed, I keep popping back.” Carl deserved an explanation, but right now there wasn’t time to give him one. Saul bent over Virginia’s waxy, pale form and read the paten diagnostic attached to her blue-tinged throat. An oxygen infuser hissed as it worked directly over her carotid artery.
No good, he realized, sickly. Oh, Virginia—
In spite of his stopped-up nose, he clearly caught the scent of burning. For an instant, flames once again licked the century-old cedars on Mount Zion.
No! Not this time!
He knew in an instant that there was only one hope. It’s come to this, my love. I must experiment even with you.
One thing was certain. He had to get rid of Osborn, for the man would surely interfere with what Saul had to do now.
“Don’t just stand there, Carl. Get topside, quick! Keoki and Jeffers need you. Tell Ould-Harrad I’m holding him to his word not to destroy any equipment, just the launcher foundations, as we agreed.”
“Destroy…Ould-Harrad…” Carl shook his head, obviously exhausted and confused. Out of the muddle he seized a priority and held on to it obstinately. “No. I’m staying with Virginia.”
Desperately, Saul felt the seconds passing. “Ishmael! Job!” he called. “Get Commander Osborn topside, now. He’s needed up there. Get him to work!”
Carl turned and braced, as if to fight to stay. But the force went out of his limbs when he saw the two strong-limbed youths bearing down on him—identical and smiling with a grin he knew all too well. “I don’t believe it,” Carl whispered. “They… they’re clones… ofyou! But how…”
The hissing of the hall door cut off the rest of Carl’s words. Saul ran down the hallway, carrying Virginia in his arms, gripping the green Halleyvirid carpet with his toes and speeding toward the one place there might be a chance to save her life.
Carl would never have allowed this, he thought, knowing that the man loved her—in his own way—as much as Saul himself did. He’s needed above, and what I am about to try would get me barred from the AMA.
He whistled the code that opened the door to Virginia’s lab and dived inside.
* * *
While JonVon’s diagnostic program probed the fringes of Virginia’s slowly dying brain, he stripped off his surface gear.
The helmet, hip-pack, and skin-paint combination were one of the gifts from Phobos that he had kept to himself. Months ago he had used a pretext to set the autofactory to produce a dozen sets—enough of the modern models to equip his ten “boys” and himself.
After the cave-in, when he had found his way to the surface blocked, he had returned and gathered his cloned replicas. Just before they set off, though, a message from Suleiman Ould-Harrad had arrived. The ex-spacer offered to lead Saul down secret tunnels known only to his weird clan, and to help strike where Sergeov least expected it.
For a price, that is.
We probably won partly, by scaring the Ubers half to death, Saul mused while he monitored the flow back and forth between JonVon and the machine’s mistress.
It had been a strange army that followed Ould-Harrad and Ingersoll—the “Old Man of the Caves” —down passages nobody else had ever discovered, emerging almost beneath the Uber command post and attacking like an army of ghosts.
Ten tall figures in eerie black body paint, and a lurid score of wild, living trees—once men, but now symbionts who don’t even need spacesuits, anymore…
Saul knew that he was furiously thinking about anything—anything at all—rather than contemplating the sad form on the webbing. There was nothing he could do until the machine reported. He found that he was squeezing the duraplast helmet between his palms in nervous tension, and had actually pressed a dent into the black globe.
Oh, Virginia. Hold on, darling. Please, hold on.
The holo main display flickered, above the console. An image appeared: a nurse in starched white with an old-fashioned stethoscope around her neck looked gravely at Saul.
You are right, Doctor. The patient is clinically beyond the point of no return. Synaptic rates are receding. Progressive brain damage has been slowed, but not completely arrested. Cortex loss will, within fifteen minutes, cause erasure of memory and personality. There are no known palliative measures.
She is dead, sir.
“No! She won’t die! If her brain won’t hold her anymore, we’ll find someplace else for her to go. What about those procedures she’d been working on, for complete recording and absorption of personality?”
The simulation frowned.
Do you wish construction of Virginia Herbert simulation?
He shook his head. “I’m talking about full transfer and absorption.”
There was a hiss behind Saul as the door slid open. “What’s going on here?” A hand on his shoulder pulled him around. Carl Osborn frowned and held a fist under Saul’s face.
“I got away from those boys of yours after they dumped me on the ice. Came down a garbage chute. Now I’m asking you
a question, Lintz. What’s happening here! Why isn’t Virginia in the hospital?”
The man looked exhausted, angry. His suit sleeves were zipped back to flap at his sides like some medieval garment, patched and grime-spalled. Muscles throbbed and Saul knew at a glance that Carl was on the ragged edge of violence.
“Here,” he said reasonably, in his best bedside manner. “Hold her arm while I give her this medication.”
Carl blinked. He swallowed and moved over to lift Virginia’s waxen, chilled limb. “You… you’ve got to save her, Saul. I couldn’t stand it if… if…” He wiped his eye with the back of his free wrist. “She tricked me into being the one flung back. I… got back to her too late.”
“You did your best, Carl.” He checked an ampoule of amber fluid.
Carl didn’t seem to hear. “You’ve… got… to save her.”
“We will,” Saul promised. And he pressed the ampoule against Carl’s hand. The spacer blinked up at him in surprise at the hiss of injected drug—a quick—acting hypnotic.
He shuddered, opened his mouth as if to speak, but nothing came out.
“Good,” Saul told him, leading him by the arm over to the wall. “Now you can stay awake if you want to, Carl. Even ask questions, when I’m not busy. But I want you to relax back here. Loosen your muscles. Let everything below your neck nap for an hour or so. You need it.”
Carl stared at him accusingly, but remained where he was put. Saul went back to the console and spoke aloud to the machine.
“JonVon, is it feasible? What about the program I used in transferring my own memories into my clones?”
The holo tank flickered, and to his surprise a face he had known long ago appeared. It was a simulacrum of Simon Percell—from shocked white hair to tiny, broken capillaries on the great biologist’s nose.
He looks like an elderly version of Carl Osborn.