David Brin - The Heart of the Comet

Keeping locks and ports from leaking heat to the nearby ice was tricky, tedious labor that Carl disliked. He belabored this point for several minutes, not because he liked to gripe, but because he couldn’t think of any other way to keep control of the conversation. At last he wound down. There was a long, uncomfortable silence.

—I was hoping we could find some time alone together, —Lani said simply, though she blinked several times.

“I… yeah, I got that.”

—You have felt it?—

“Well…”

—I have known you three years now. Long enough to learn how special you are.—Her eyes were large, black, and as deep as a pool. She was being direct and clear and it obviously took an effort of will not to look away. He could see that she had rehearsed this.

“There… there isn’t anything so great about me. I like space work. It’s my life, same as you.”

—We have much in common.—

“Yes, we do.”

—In the long times we will spend on watch together perhaps…—Her gaze faltered.

“Look, I think a great deal of you, Lani.”

—I am happy of that.—But her face had lost its pensive, focused look. Her certainty was fading. And there isn’t a dammed thing I can do about it, he thought. There’s no way I can give her the answer she wants.

“But, I mean, I don’t… really… think of you that way.”

She stiffened. —Oh.—

She isn’t any better at talk like this than I am. She misses my hints. So I have to say it straight out and that hurts her. Damn! “You’re… a great teammate, sure as hell you are.”

Her long eyelashes batted several times. The thin, broad mouth twisted ruefully. —Thank you.—

“God, I don’t mean to… to brush you off or anything.”

—There is no need to be concerned. You are speaking the truth, as you must.—

“You really are attractive, too, I don’t mean anything like that.”

Now that he thought about it, she was quite good-looking. Serving a sixteen-month watch, she’s thinking about pairing off. They all would be. Still, he simply had not thought of her as more than a co-worker. Why?

Somehow, she simply wasn’t his type. No instant attraction, no zip.

Or was that a habit he had picked up—rejecting nearly all women if he didn’t get a buzz off them immediately? Carl avoided Lani’s gaze, took a draw on his feed tube. Even on his Earthside holidays, he had always been careful to keep affairs sharply defined. Groundlings liked the pizzazz of space; there were plenty of groupies. It was easy to let them know he was interested in two weeks of sex and laughs and fun in the sun, period. Sometimes he’d been tempted to keep a woman’s number, give her a ring next time he was down… but once back in orbit cool ambition ruled. He never called.

Opportunity favored the prepared mind, as the old cliché had it, but opportunity in space also favored the uncommitted soul. If a long mission came around, those with family ties found it hard to go. And the Psychological Review Board took that into account, lowered your rating. They claimed otherwise, but everybody knew the truth. All that went into his calculations. And sure enough, the big chance—Halley—had come around, vindicating his strategy.

Then too, Lani was an Ortho. Likes should marry likes.

Virginia, now, she was smart, sexy, and a Percell. Plenty of zip there. Best to stick to your own kind . Except for holidays Earthside, he had followed that policy ever since his teenage randiness wore off and he had time to actually think. There were enough Percell women in space to keep him occupied.

As much as he tried to take a middle ground in the Ortho-Percell conflict, his personal life was something else. And while it was smart for a Percell to maintain that everybody was the same, that didn’t mean you could ignore human nature. He was sure that even after the stupidity of the Ortho governments Earthside had run its course, the human race would eventually have to split. The Orthos would always be edgy with Percells—that was natural. Better the two breeds kept their distance—by making space mostly a Percell domain. Cross-breeding wasn’t going to solve anything, just worsen it.

“There’s no reason we can’t work together, be friends.” He held out a gloved hand toward her.

She grasped it tightly. Through her bright blue skinsuit he could feel an intense, clutching desire in her. Her body gave away what her face had concealed. Gently, he released her hand.

—I… had hoped.—

“I, I can see…”

—There will not be many of us awake on each watch.—

He frowned. “Yeah. We’ll have to work out the rotation.”

—Yes. It will require… public discussion.—She sniffed, made to brush her nose with her hand, and stopped when her glove touched her helmet. She had to use the drip catcher behind the glassine plate. —I…—

Carl felt miserable. To have her weeping over him, when all this time he’d never even thought of her that way. He hated things like this, where you discovered you had been a callous deadhead without even knowing it. As though other people were tuned into frequencies you weren’t picking up.

Beneath this consternation there was also a small current of delighted pride. The old ways were still strong enough to make a man pleasantly surprised by an unexpected overture. He would never tell anyone, of course, but maybe, years from now, he might drop a hint to Virginia…

Lani sniffed again. Her eyes closed and she sneezed loudly, the outgoing choooh! booming almost painfully in his ears.

She recovered, blinked, and gazed bleary-eyed around her glittering crystal palace, indifferent now to its beauty.

Carl realized ruefully that she had not been weeping over him at all. She had already put aside her failed overture and was concentrating on more immediate matters.

Lani had a cold.

Saul blew his nose and quickly put away the handkerchief.

The hectic weeks of Base Establishment had diminished into the long, hollow quiet of the First Watch. And as this damned cold of his lingered on and on, he found himself more and more avoiding Nicholas Malenkov and the big Russian’s skeptical medical scrutiny. Saul knew it was only a matter of time until Malenkov said something about his perpetual sniffle.

He wasn’t sure what Nick would do if it didn’t get better soon, but Saul did not intend to be slotted. Not for a while, at least. There was simply too much to do.

He pinched the sinuses above his nose. The momser antihistamines had him in a perpetual state of half-dizziness these days, but that simply couldn’t be helped.

Saul blinked at the pastel walls of the weightless lounge—designed to supplement the cramped recreational facilities of the centrifugal wheel. It was a barren, empty scene. Except for a few chairs and cabinets, the only finished area was here, near the autobar. It would be years before the lounge looked anything like the schematics called for in the Grand Design.

Flimsy readouts lay scattered over the chart table in front of him, except where a portable holo unit projected a cutaway view of the nineteen-kilometer-long prolate spheroid that was Halley Core.

Only at the top of the display, near the north pole, was there a sparse, spaghetti tangle of tunnels where humans had made their inroads.

Too much real estate to ever really know. And yet far too little to make a home.

The man across the table from him coughed politely.

“I’m sorry, Joao,” Saul said.

The tall Brazilian comet expert resumed what he had been saying before being interrupted by Saul’s dizzy spell.

“It’s these caverns, Saul.” He inserted his hand into the computer-generated image and executed an intricate little finger flick. Although there was nothing more material in that space than air, the machine read his intent as if he were turning a page. Cutaway layers peeled back to show new tunnel traceries to the north and east, linking a number of oblong cavities.