David Brin - The Heart of the Comet

The mech’s vision system adjusted to the shadows. Through the other woman’s faceplate she saw Lani’s head shake.

—Probably too late for me, though. I’ll have to go live on Earth to have my babies, and no male spacer will give up the Black to stay dirtside with me.—

There it was, laid out like an open wound. Virginia ’s palms felt clammy on her waldo controls. If there was any subject she would prefer not to discuss, this was it.

She said with feigned lightness, “Isn’t that an exaggeration?”

Lani looked up. Her dark eyes were sad.

—Look at the figures, Virginia. All spacers store sperm or ova in banks on Earth. Most breed by proxy… except those who are Percells, and can’t find surrogate parents for their offspring. They’re even worse off than us Orthos.—

Virginia felt a wash of savage irony. At least the girl had something to store away. She had a ticket into the future.

What have I, but my machines? Virginia thought.

“The radiation levels you live in make that necessary, don’t they, Lani?” A truism, of course.

Lani shrugged.

—If they’d let us build real space colonies, instead of just factories and life-support huts in orbit, we spacers could marry and raise families together. As it is, those women spacers who go home and reclaim their plasm have to stay there with their children. Nearly all of us have to marry Earthers, since no man like Car… since hardly any man of space would give up the Black without a fight.—

Virginia tried to pull the conversation back into the abstract, where she was much more comfortable. “That’s a tough situation, Lani. But the laws themselves…:”

—The Birth and Childhood Laws are a crock! You know they’re just reactionary measures against anything new and frightening to the masses! They don’t want to lose control of us out here! They’re terrified of change!—

Virginia quashed her first reaction—to tell the girl not to teach her grandmother to suck eggs. What, in all the world, had a healthy Ortho girl to teach her about life? About bitterness and the dark shadow of persecution? There was only one man out here Virginia cared to listen to, or who had the right to say anything on those matters.

Something of this must have been conveyed in the host mech’s six-legged stance. The spacesuited woman straightened up and shook her head.

—I’m sorry I shouted, Virginia.—

“That’s all right, Lani. Come on, let’s get that last crate. You know that hell hath no fury like a petty officer confronted with a job undone. We want to be finished before His Nibs, Spacer First Class Carl Osborn, arrives.”

Lani laughed, but finished with a sniff and a shake of her head. Virginia reached out delicately with one manipulator arm and touched the spacesuit’s insulated sleeve. The other woman nodded and they moved pack tent under the stars to fetch the last crate.

They had tugged the hulking container halfway back to the airlock structure when a light fanned forth from the lift doors following a spurting ivory cloud of released gas.

A tall, bulky, spacesuited figure emerged. Virginia recognise Carl Osborn from his languid, graceful movement along the guide cable even before she could make out the name-chop on his suit’s tabard.

—Hello, Carl, —Lani sent.

“Right on time, I see,” Virginia added.

Carl stopped abruptly.

—Virginia ! Are you up here? Well, well, just couldn’t keep away from me, could you?—

He bowed to her mech. —Nice day for a stroll on the surface. You should tell me, next time you plan to come up.—

At last Carl turned and nodded to his teammate.

—Hi, Lani. Careful with that end, it’s drooping.—

—Oh. Sorry, Carl. I’ll get it.—

Actually, Carl should have addressed the living person before speaking to the one who was present only in waldo. Lani Nguyen’s helmet had opaqued under the bright glare of the sun, so Virginia could not make out the girl’s reaction. But she had her suspicions.

“I’ll leave you here with Heaven’s Gift to spacedrift women, Lani,” Virginia sent. “I’m sure he’s capable of doing good work, if watched carefully.”

Carl’s back was to the sun, so his faceplate was clear. Virginia saw him blink and hurry to speak.

—Why don’t you come along, Virginia ? We’ve been running into some interesting sintered and recrystallized formations as we dig deeper into the core. They’re unlike anything we’ve encountered until now.—

Virginia had to admit that, even as she found them overeager and embarrassing, Carl’s attentions nonetheless pleased her. The man was so damned attractive… in the movie hero sort of way.

If that type of hero had been what she was looking for… but no, it wasn’t. Not in this life. Not right now.

She made the mech execute an imitation of a curtsy. “That sounds exciting, Carl. I’ll inform Saul Lintz. He and Joao Quiverian are the cometologists on duty, this watch. I’m sure they’ll be eager to see your pix and get your samples.”

Carl frowned sourly. That obviously wasn’t what he’d had in mind.

“See you around, Carl. Good luck, Lani.”

She engaged the release procedure, allowing the mech’s onboard systems to take over as her own teleoperated presence flowed back into the deeply buried laboratory where her body lay. The images faded, but before they departed completely and the lights came on, she saw that Carl still watched “her”… and Lani Nguyen watched Carl.

Their torches were blue blades of light cutting the seething fog.

“Hold steady. It’ll clear in a minute,” Carl sent.

Lani Nguyen sank a spike into a crusty chunk of water ice for stability. —What an eruption! It must have been bottled up in there a billion years.—

They had been finishing off a fresh tunnel. Mechs had done the initial work a week before, roughing it out, but it was better for humans to do the mop-up; mechs had an odd way of leaving dangerous knife-edged ruts.

The two of them had been using their lasers on low fan mode, trimming and scouring away jutting ice. The occasional boulder they had to chip around, or boil loose with lasers on tightbeam. Then they would nudge it back to the nearest tunnel intersection, where a mech would add it to the dumpster.

Lani had been prying at a chair-sized rock when Carl said laconically, “Remember Umolanda.” She had nodded, moving carefully, tugging—and suddenly it had sprung free, under pressure from behind. Pearly fog spurted forth.

Lani fruitlessly fanned at the vapor. —You figure it’s another aluminum-melt vault?

So far the expedition had found fourteen pockets, each containing vapor and even a little liquid. Carl peered through the hole.

A bubbling pool simmered at the bottom of a wide, spherical room. Fog rose from it in gouts and gusts. Multicolored steam still poured out frothing. “Damn! Looks like soup’s on.”

Lani frowned prettily. —Primordial soup, yeah. Lintz and Malenkov are all ga-ga over it.—

“Keeps em out of, our hair”

—I’ll bet Quiverian’s having nightmares over those two finding all sorts of juicy stuff about his comet.—

As he watched, she brushed at a splotch of gooey purple on her sleeve. —Eccch. God knows what this stuff is.—

Carl grinned. Lani preferred the austere simplicity of space work, the Newtonian mechanics of straight lines and known vectors; of sun-scoured steel and bare, clean surfaces. Not the murk and splatter of tunnel work.

“Isn’t it wonderful, what creation can do with just a few simple molecules?” He kept a poker face. He had been feeling a bit odd ever since meeting Virginia ’s mech on the surface hours ago. The mech and Lani had seemed engrossed in a heart-to-heart and had clammed up right away on his arrival. Maybe he could tease Lani into telling him what was bothering Virginia.