David Brin - The Heart of the Comet

She wandered down a lane, glad to delay. Stalks rose nearly a hundred meters, slender and white, yielding impossibly broad, meaty leaves. Spindly gardener mechs prowled down tight lanes. Circulation patterns spun streamers of wobbly droplets among the lofty spiral stems. Beneath these vertical protein farms lay cows of fat vegetables, lush and curling in the soft ultraviolet that filtered through shimmering banks of moisture above. Rich humus lapped at the feet of the giants, like a sea’s ever-grinding at the shore. A tracery of ponds used the gently falling debris from the spires, and modified fish darted among ropy roots. She recalled a poem she had never finished, and found fresh lines popping into her mind.

Virginia coughed in the heavy, musky air. She never seemed to finish poems anymore. Instead she took them out to examine, turning them to the light like pretty pebbles found on last summer’s vacation beach. Well, poems acquire a certain deadness when they’re done… not finishing them gives them indefinite life. She smiled to herself.

When she returned down a narrow lane, Carl was through talking to the hydro crew. She liked the way the silvered inner surface of the dome reflected a warped, surreal vision of Carl immersed in a riot of plantlife, as if it were an ocean in which he was afloat. When he turned toward her she held up a hand. “Conference?”

“Sure.” He stood waiting, the old caution still far back in his eyes. I’ve hurt him so many times…

“I… wanted to tell you…”

“Yes?”

“I know you felt that there was… some chance of Saul and me…”

He smiled wanly. “There’s always hope.”

“You’ve never given up:”

“No.”

“You might as well,” she said gently.

“It’s that certain between you?”

Virginia recalled her own thoughts about that, only minutes ago. “Out here, nothing is certain, you know that. No, it’s just that… you have such, well, such traditional goals.”

“Dreams, I’d say.” Carl smiled with a warm, rueful humor, as if aware of his own foibles. He would keep this polite and graceful, she saw. Time had given him a veneer, a sense of self. He had changed greatly in these years, almost without her noticing. I’ve been so wrapped up in Saul…

She struggled to find the right words, but before she could he said, “Admittedly, out here the idea of love and family, that whole snug picture, doesn’t work. We haven’t figured out how to protect the children from Halleyforms yet.”

“You’ll never have a family with me.”

“I’m resigned to that. Saul won’t either, of course.”

“No, but not because of his sterility. It’s me. I—I can’t have children.”

His lips parted but he said nothing. The veneer was gone in an instant and she saw again the old Carl, filled with longing and need.

“I… could never tell anyone. It was years before I could say anything, even to Saul.”

“God… I’m sorry.”

She blinked back tears. “I’ve come to terms with it.” Then why am I crying, idiot?

“All this time…” He shook his head, his face open and somehow fresher, younger. All these years he’s sheltered a dream, and now it’s gone.

“I knew about it well before we left Earth.”

“I… see,” he said numbly.

“Carl—”

“What about, uh, fixing whatever’s wrong? Saul’s done wonders—” He stopped.

She thought sharply, Was it me you wanted, or your dream of sweet little Percell children, genetic miracles among the stars? But the suggestion was wrong, unkind.

She blinked rapidly. “This is a… special case. Not even genetic surgery… He did try cloning. without my permission. It was a disaster.” She shrugged.

“You… knew… all along.”

She nodded. “I suppose it influenced me, made me come on the mission in the first place. I wasn’t going to have a conventional life, no matter how I played it.”

“You could’ve adopted.”

“You know the odds against a Percell getting children to bring up. Even in Hawaii.”

He said savagely, “Yeah, they sealed off everything from us, didn’t they?” The memory could still draw bitterness.

“I could’ve stayed…fought with the others…”

“You saw what happened.”

She nodded, sniffing, surprised at her own emotion. If I stay here I’ll cry . “We…really made the right choice, didn’t we? Coming?”

His voice was leaden, his face a mask. “I… I don’t know.”

She was shocked. Have I taken away his last fantasy? And with it gone, the tide of despair rushes in?

“Carl, you can’t think that. We’ve survived, we’ve managed to—”

“Look, I’d… I’d rather not talk right now. Okay? Just… want to be alone.” He visibly pulled himself together, struggled to regain some of the confident manner of leadership that had become like a second skin to him… however easily it had peeled away, just now. “I appreciate your telling me. I can understand you better now, and at least that’s something.”

“Carl, I.”

“I’ve got plenty more to do here,” he said bluntly. “Maybe later.”

Speechless, Virginia held out her hands, then let them drift to her sides. “All… all right.”

She left quickly, her mind aswirl with conflicting emotions. Somehow she had had to tell him, and yet if it stripped away too much, damaged him…

She had been fooled by his public face of assurance and control. Beneath that, Carl had really changed very little. He had grown as the situation demanded, but not the inner Carl. That Carl had nursed a fantasy, and now she had toppled it.

She loped across the ice, putting her confusion into exercise, a coasting mote moving across a plain the color of a blank television screen.

— Virginia, —JonVon’s well-modulated voice came when she was halfway to the lock. — There are coded transmissions from near your present location. —

“Coded?” She stopped and looked around. Nobody in sight, except a few hydro workers trudging off after their shift. On the horizon one of Jim Vidor’s faery towers spiked at the stars. Farther away a launcher thrummed, driving them gradually, imperceptibly, toward the encounter with Mars. “What do you mean?”

— I broke the code, a juvenile little algorithm. The messages are quite excited and not altogether intelligible. They mention your name and Carl Osborn s.—

“Look, monitor it and try to track the source. I’ve got other things on my mind right now”

She glanced back at the dome and saw through its smudged translucence two figures confronting each other under the brilliant lights.

Carl, suited and gesturing. The second, in a simple robe…she was sure it was Saul.