David Brin - The Heart of the Comet

Enough. Leave his poor body alone.

Saul rocked back from the treatment table and put down his implements.

“Cease code blue. Halt resuscitation procedures,” he said to the spidery med-mechs clustered around the pale, waxy figure that had been Nicholas Malenkov. “Maintain type-six tissue oxygenation, and begin precooling glycogen infusion for term storage.”

It was too late to “sick slot” the Russian. His dying had penetrated too deeply. Saul’s only recourse was to prepare the corpse as well as he could and actually freeze it against a hoped-for day when both thaw and cure might be available.

The master unit beeped twice. Saul, who had been looking sadly at his dead friend, glanced up.

“Yes? What’s the problem?”

“Clarification request, Doctor;”the med-mech announced. “Please select infusion and cooling profile. Also, term-slotting requires a death certification.”

He nodded. With clinical skills as rusty as his, it was a wonder he remembered the right general procedure at all.

“All right, then. Voice-ident:. Dr Saul Lintz citizen of the Diasporic Confederacy, seventh physician on Halley Expedition. Code number…” He pressed fingers at his temples. “I forget. Fill it in from the records.”

“Yes Doctor,”the machine assented quickly.

“I hereby certify Dr. Nicholas Malenkov, citizen of Greater Russia, expedition second physician, to be deceased beyond recall by available means. Cause: massive peripheral neural, damage brought on by undiagnosed, raging infection which crossed the blood-brain barrier three hours ago. Details and tissue analysis to follow in addendum.

“Patient term-slotted on this date…”

Saul looked up at his reflection in the side of the gleaming mech…pale, yes, tired. More tired than he looked, apparently.

What is the date? Was it still November 2061? Or already December?

Have I missed Miriam’s birthday? Only ten years since she died at Gan Illana. And yet it seems like another century.

Sometimes it felt as if he was fighting on for one reason only—so that Virginia could get to see age twenty-nine. If they were still alive, in six months, to put another candle on her cake, then he would find a new priority. One thing at a time.

“Fill in the date. And select the most commonly used slotting procedure for neural-damage cases,” he told the mech.

“Yes Doctor.”The machine would consult the mission mainframe, aboard the Edmund Halley , and take care of the details.

There was little likelihood that medical science would have learned to reverse such massive trauma in eighty years—as well as how to thaw bodies frozen solid as ice. Still, he owed it to Nick to offer him that chance.

In any event, term-slotting did not call for human supervision. Let the mechs do it. If— when —we go home, it’d be best if the procedures used to cool and store the body were as standard as possible.

Saul turned to leave the treatment room, leaving behind him the whirr of automatic processing. As the door hissed shut he rested his shoulder against the fibercloth wall. His arms felt heavy, even in the thin gravity. His sinuses throbbed.

Well? he asked inwardly. What’re you planning to do? Develop into a real sickness and kill me? Or quit bugging me and go away!

The damn cold had been hanging on for eight weeks! In all of a life plagued by little, dripping bouts with one virus after another, he had never, ever suffered anything really serious. But now this lingering, dull ache was really getting to him.

He shook his head to clear it. Make up your damn minds! he told the bugs, at the moment not caring if they were cometary scourges or more banal imports from a warm and fecund Earth. Right now Saul didn’t see anything unscientific in personifying his parasites. He hated them.

Poor Nick Malenkov, survived by the man he nearly slotted . He tried to remember the big, brilliant bear of a Russian the way he had known him in life, but it was hopeless. All he could see was the pale slackness of cheeks unanimated by emotion… the emptiness of eyes unbacked by mind.

Oh, Lord, he prayed. Don’t let anything like this happen to Virginia.

She had used an override to get into his room, two days ago, and by some definitions committed a completely shameless act of rape. His weak protests had been smothered under her warm body, her blazing mouth—as she shred in a moment any microfauna he had, and thereby ended any further argument over protecting her from contagion.

A decisive woman. She had hardly left his side since, except for the fourteen-hour shifts, of course. And although he worried, Saul could not say he was anything but glad.

It’s her choice, he thought. And Carl Osborn will just have to learn to live with it.

For as long as the three of them lasted, at least.

Yesterday he had helped slot Jim Vidor, feverish and raving. At least that time they were able to get the poor fellow in in time. Lani Nguyen had watched raggedly. For lack of any real attention from Carl, she had taken up briefly with Jim. Now she was as alone as before.

His wrist beeper pulsed. The mechs in the recuperation chamber were signaling him.

Enough loafing , he thought. Somebody must have wakened, at last. One of the first six.

Put on a happy face , he reminded himself as he started stepping into isolation garments. While slipping on antiseptic booties he touched the bandage covering his left ankle.

The scar was almost healed now. He still wasn’t sure how he had been cut, during that frantic struggle with the purples in sleep slot 1. At first he had been certain it was a bite from one of the horrible native worms, but after what happened to Peltier, and Ustinov, and Conti, he figured it couldn’t have been. There had been a swelling and soreness, then it had gone away.

Just a scrape, I suppose. A man like me won’t die of a purple bite, anyway. And there’s too little gravity here to be hanged.

His nose itched.

I’ll probably die in a sneezing fit.

Saul finished dressing. He put on an isolation helmet and passed into the booth with a flashing green light over the entrance.

Someone had indeed awakened. It was Bethany Oakes, the first person decanted after Captain Cruz’s death. The assistant expedition leader had been a tough case. Her thawing had not been easy.

Hibernation wasn’t a natural human function. Inducing it involved complex, massive doses of drugs that dropped the body into a slumbering, near-death state—reducing metabolism an pH, cooling tissues down to a bare degree above freezing. The process was anything but routine, even after decades of use in space flight. To prove it for interstellar travel times had been one dream of Miguel Cruz-Mendoza. It was supposed to be another gift from the Halley Expedition to the people of Earth.

Working alone, with equipment that might or might not still be polluted with Halleyforms, Malenkov had chosen the slow-thaw method, allowing the patient to throw off sleep-center suppression naturally. The decision had been questionable. It might be safer, but it left the possibility that the decanted would awaken with no one left alive to greet them.

Bethany Oakes was still an ample woman. Three weeks’ hibernation under an IV drip wouldn’t change that much. But her eyelids were already dark with the blue heaviness of slot stupor. As Saul approached, they fluttered open. Her pupils contracted unevenly in the light.

He dimmed the wall panels and picked up a squeeze tube of electrolyte-balance fluid to wet her lips. Her tongue flicked out, drawing in the sweetness.