David Brin - The Heart of the Comet

—Pack those Orthos in tight,— Jeffers sent on short-range comm. —Don’t want ’em feelin’ lonely.—

Jeffers was fitting hoses into place nearby, his transmission shielded from the others. Carl triggered a self-closing clamp, finishing off his own job, and kicked clear.

“Give it a rest. There’re are Percells in here. too.”

—Not very damn many.— This came from Sergeov, who drifted into view from behind a silvery heat-exchange sphere. The Russian spacer was quick, deft; as Carl watched, he flipped, caught a cable from a spaghetti tangle, and inserted it into a control cabinet.

The agility almost made you envy him. Almost. The Percell treatment had eliminated the blood disease Sergeov would have inherited from his parents… but it also took away his legs.

Unforeseen side effects.

Carl wondered how many times that cool, analytic phrase had made him bristle, his face flush, his hands knot into fists.

Sergeov had been one of the early, lucky failures—still alive. Such survivors stirred the first misgivings The great unwashed see Sergeov’s lost legs. A dirty little question wormed its way into their minds: What couldn’t you see? What about his mind? Was he normal? Was he even human?

If it was normal to be able to drink a full bottle of vodka and still easily balance the empty glasses on top of each other, five high—yes, Sergeov was normal.

Better than normal. He had gone directly into space, where legs were, in fact, a drawback. All that bulky muscle and bone were useless in freefall, demanding food and oxygen and time to exercise them. Leftovers from the struggle against gravity. Sergeov had lived in orbit from the age of ten, making top wages as an assembler. His arms looked like tree trunks; Carl had seen him juggle a hapless Ortho inspector like a helpless doll, back in Earth orbit. The man had mumbled an insult, and paid with five minutes of humiliation. Yet, Sergeov was not a Plateau Three advocate; he expended his energies in blanket, burning dislike of all Earthsiders.

“Stop yammering,” Carl said. “Come help me with these thermobuffers.”

—Is true, however,— Sergeov said. —All for good reasons, for sure. Percells work good, so they get into space. Deepa! Orthos think we’re garbage, so we stay in space.—

Jeffers put in, —An’ end up chauffeurin’ Orthos out beyond Neptune.—

Sergeov grinned. His hands-noticeably large, even through vac gloves—worked swiftly among the cables, deftly quick, free of the levered counterweight of dangling legs. — Da . Not prefer serving as workboy for Orthos.—

Jeffers said, —Damn right. When we could be doing our own work.—

Carl asked, “Such as?”

Jeffers whirled himself about with one arm, while the other fished free a short-bore laser. He thumbed it. A blue-white bolt lanced into the ice meters away.

—Hey!— Sergeov cried.

White fog exploded past them. It boiled away into the vault, thinning, but Ould-Harrad saw. —Hey! I ordered no quick-solder work in here!—

—Sorry.— Sergeov winked at Jeffers and called, —Was just a small one. Needed to refuse a socket joint.—

—These are people.—

—Am sorry.—

Sergeov grinned as he said it. Ould-Harrad was hundreds of meters away and couldn’t see the design Jeffers had drawn with instant, practiced ease in the ice.

“I didn’t know you were a Mars-boy, Jeff,” Carl sent.

A female flower enclosed by the Mars symbol—a graphic depiction of a dream. Once comets could be steered into the inner solar system, they could be harvested. Even easier, an artful nudge far out beyond Neptune could smack iceballs into the Martian plains.

Hammering Mars with cometary nuclei would build up an atmosphere, perhaps even get the volcanoes spouting again. Nature’s slow sucking would still. The parching march of aeons put to rout—a Promethean dream. Splitting a hard blue sky, flame-cloaked ice mountains would gouge the lands, rip the permafrost, and release more ancient ice below. Clouds, fog, then rain—weather unknown since the sun’s wan warming had boiled away the last mudflats in the spare Martian river valleys, billions of years back, during that false spring.

In a century or so, a suitably adapted human might be able to breathe on the surface. The idea was old, but some Percells had seized on it. They saw Mars as the one plausible location where genetically altered humans might truly have a place. Even though still dry and cold and roiling with strange storms, Mars could become a world where their descendants, genetically engineered still further, would be the norm, while Orthos would cough out their lungs in minutes.

—What do you think I work for?— Jeffers answered.

“That’s crazy,” Carl sent. “Terraforming’ll take centuries. No solution to our problems.”

—A Percell, he can expect to live in space—what? a hundred years? two hundred?— Sergeov’s broad, sweaty face beamed again with his inevitable smile.

Jeffers sent, —Throw in couple slot sleeps, we could all see it.—

“We’re not here to do that,” Carl said.

—Jeffers is just looking ahead,— Sergeov said simply.

“Too damn far ahead.”

—Don’t be so sure,— Jeffers said evenly.

Sergeov nudged Jeffers.—You be an Uber too? Two ideas not contradict, I think.—

Jeffers eyed Sergeov cautiously.—Maybe. Maybe not.—

Carl frowned. This was all going over short-range close comm, and he was glad of it. Ubers stood for ubernrenschen. Nietzsche’s supermen, evolution’s ordained next step. Planned. Designed. There would now be no slow blind stumbling upward, driven by nature red in tooth and claw. Many Percells thought they were the first step along a long, inevitable road.

Carl had known of Sergeov’s opinions, but it shocked him to see Jeffers flirting with them.

Sergeov persisted. —If Orthos say no to Mars terraforming, I say yes. Simple.—

—It’s right there in the physics and chem simulations, clear as anything,—Jeffers added.—Put mechs to harvestin’ comets out past Neptune, it’ll take a century. We could sleep right through it.—

Carl sent, “Sometimes a man can see clearer if he has his mouth shut.” He gestured at Ould-Harrad, who was jetting their way.

—Okay, let’s break off,— Jeffers sent.

—Is true, though. Think it over. First step to much more, maybe,—Sergeov concluded, launching himself away with a muscular shrug.

Ould-Harrad inspected the layout plans for the mechs, then left. Carl took advantage of the chance to get off and work by himself. He had never liked politics. And their wild talk had been disturbing.

He immersed himself in the sweet gliding grace of Beethoven. Moving through inky shadow and glaring yellow floodlight. pushing and towing, smelling the sour suit air, feeling the rrrrrrtttt of the countertorqued wrench vibrate up his arm, the sweaty pinch of his suit at shoulders and knees—Carl thought of California.

His parents had been driving him up the coast when he told them.

The four years at Caltech had gone by in a blur of golden sunlight and nights of study, weekend pranks and unending problem sets, labs and lectures and precious little love. He’d had no time for it. Sergeov was so sure that Percells were special—well, okay, Sergeov probably had to think that, compensating for what he’d never have. But Carl knew differently.

He had done well because he’d worked, dammit , not because he was smarter. At Caltech he had felt a growing kinship with all the men and women who had ever put in long hours in lonely rooms. Unlike soured drudges or inexperienced kids, he did not believe for a moment that creative people idled away their time and then, when the mystical spirit moved them, knocked out brilliant ideas in bouts of furious, fevered bursts of easy inspiration.