David Brin - The Heart of the Comet

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.