David Brin - The Heart of the Comet

As if in reply, a lancing ache ran through his stuffy head. He reached out for the light and instead touched a soft thigh.

Oh yes. All at once she had seemed maddeningly attractive, witty, sympathetic …

“Umm?” Lani murmured. “Carl?”

He tried to speak, had to clear his throat. He swallowed painfully and croaked, “Ah, yeah. G’ morning.”

She switched on a dim nightlight, throwing their shadows against the walls of her snug little room. “You… look awful.”

He tried a grin. It felt like a crack had split his face. “Better than I feel.”

Lani’s broad, frowning face seemed none the worse for wear. “Can I get you something?”

“No, I’ll just sweat it out.”

“I have some B-complex and Soberall. They can dampen the effects.”

“Well… okay, let’s see what science can do. He knew the line sounded hollow, but he felt instinctively that he should keep things light. He could only dimly recall how he’d ended up here, what was said. My subconscious has gotten me into trouble again , he thought ruefully.

She flipped the covers aside and glided nude across the room, lithe and unembarrassed. Lani fished in a medical compartment and returned with five pills and a bag of water. He took his time swallowing, trying to figure out how to handle this.

He remembered being suddenly angry with Virginia —that’s what had started it. He’d had some of the deadly mai-tais Langsthan had brewed up and the Saul Lintz came on a screen nearby, just tuning in to see what was going on. Yeah, that must had done it. I’d been making sense until then, but ol’ smug Saul looked skyward and gave us that indulgent look of his and I got damned mad. At him, at Virginia …

“Better?” Lani asked quietly.

“Uh. Marginal.” He lay back on the sheets, dimly aware that he was naked.

She hung in the air over the bed, folded into lotus position, slowly descending. “You should get more sleep.”

“Uh, I…What time is it?”

She smiled slightly, as if she guessed his intentions. “It’s nearly ten.”

“Oh…I’m on watch soon.”

“You have to return to the living first.”

“I’ll… be okay.” Actually, he felt even worse. He couldn’t think straight. He had never been in a situation where he honestly didn’t know whether they had made love or not. Damned unlikely. I’ve never been much good with a skinful in me.

“You’re wondering,” Lani said, the faint smile playing on her lips.

“Ah… yeah.” She was always one move ahead of him.

“Let’s say your motives were pure.”

“Huh?”

“We talked for a long time and you said you wanted to see my wallworld.”

“Your…”

She uncurled and tapped a command plate on the bedpad. The room immediately leaped into being around them.

“Ow!”

“Oh, sorry. I’ll tune down the light.”

It was the crystal cavern. She had gone back there, carefully shot the many angles, captured the myriad facets. Brilliance refracted and glinted everywhere. Miraculously, she had managed to assemble views without any reflection of herself or her equipment, so the shining cavern was a vision no one could ever see in person. It was better than reality. Then she had arranged her room so that furniture and appliances occupied dark areas of the cavern, enhancing the effect.

“It’s great. Everybody else uses Earth scenes.”

She shrugged. “I can get that National Geographic tourist stuff anytime.”

Even through his logy blur he was impressed. And slowly he remembered their conversation, how she had seemed witty, warm, bristling with ideas. He had never noticed that before, never given her a chance, really…

“So I came to see it…”

She nodded, eyebrows arched in amusement. “And passed out.”

“Oh.”

“I thought you might not appreciate having people see you being hauled unconscious through the tunnels, back to your bunk.”

“I guess not.”

She blinked, bit at her lip, and then said carefully, “I… liked the way we talked last night, Carl. We’ve never really had a chance to say very much to each other. Not since the first weeks.”

“Yeah,” he said uncomfortably. “Been busy.”

She said firmly, “I know you won’t let go of Virginia right away.”

“Let go? I haven’t got her.”

“Let go of the hope, then.”

He nodded sourly. “Right.”

“Not immediately, I know that.”

He looked at Lani as if seeing her for the first time. She was different than he had thought. Maybe…

But Virginia…

“There’s no rush,” she said, seeming to know exactly what he thought. All my emotions must be written across my face , he realized uneasily.

“I… Maybe you’re right. I’m so damned confused.”

She leaned forward and kissed him daintily on the lips. “Don’t be. Just do the work and leave little things like love and life for later.”

He had to smile. “You’re making this a lot easier for me than I deserve.”

“I want to.”

“I…”

She put a silencing finger to his lips. “Shush. You don’t have to be civil, not with a hangover like that.”

He showered—she had installed her own equipment, even arranged a projection of the crystal cavern inside the stall—and dressed. She kissed him goodbye, and before he had fully registered their conversation he was making his way to the suit-up room, shaky but ready for duty.

He was already at work before the hangover cleared and he felt the sudden weight of depression descend again. Ever since leaving Earth, he had worked with single-minded determination, never questioning. But now he couldn’t keep his mind oft bigger issues, problems he could see coming in the days ahead. There was nobody tie could trust to take care of that, not any longer.

Carl felt a yawning emptiness, a foreboding.

Captain Cruz is gone. It just doesn’t seem possible. What in the frozen hell are we going to do?

It should not have been possible.

Saul stared at the patch of green and brown in the petri dish. It didn’t take a lab regimen to know he was looking at something that just shouldn’t exist.

Standing in a relaxed, low-G crouch, Spacer Tech Jim Vidor peered over Saul’s shoulder. Strictly speaking, the man wasn’t even supposed to be here. The decon mask over his mouth and nose were sops to the official quarantine Saul was under.

Saul took a fresh handkerchief from the sterilizer and wiped his nose. After two days, when it seemed his body was in no great hurry to flop over and die from this tsuris of a cold, the isolation order had lost some of its original urgency. To spacers, disease was an abstract threat, anyway. Far more real to them was the trouble they were having with gunk getting into everything from air circulators to mechs, threatening the machinery that kept them all alive.

Nevertheless, Saul motioned for Vidor to stand back—for the same reason he had kept Virginia away, in spite of her mutinous entreaties.

Nick Malenkov might be right, after all. Anything could happen, when Halley was able to come up with things like this on the dish before him.

“The stuff was growing in the main dehumidifier, way up where Shaft One intersects A Level, Dr. Lintz. I showed it to Dr. Malenkov when I got back down here to Complex, but he’s busy full time in sick bay now that Peltier’s keeled over. He said you were the grand keeper of native animals on this iceberg, anyway, so I brought it to you.”

No doubt Nick assumed you’d use a mech messenger , Saul thought. Every few hours a mechanical knocked on his door, carrying a thermos of soup and a tiny note from Virginia. Maybe those little packets were the real reason his dammed bug hadn’t gotten any worse.