David Brin - The Heart of the Comet

The other corpse was clothed only in insulstat coveralls. Saul and Lani had found him in the embrace of a lifeform Virginia had called a hall anemone . Bits of flesh had torn off as they tried to tug the body free. They’d had to readjust the beamer and blast the writhing colony creature to bits in order to recover and bag the poor fellow’s remains.

Who could tell why a man had died out here, so far from Central and all alone? Until they could do tissue analysis, nobody would even know who the unrecognizable jumble had been.

It was a troubling pattern. Other parties had found dead men and women in outlying tunnels. More seemed to be dying in solitary, during their off-duty hours, than suffered casualties during the hall fighting.

At first I thought it was like the way a wounded animal will sometimes drag itself away from the pack, seeking a hole in which to die. l wondered if, maybe, sick, feverish people just crawled off to be alone.

But that wasn’t it at all.

He drew his sheath knife and picked away at a mosslike growth next to the intersection code sign. The gunk was hiding something else.

Green stuff floated away from his vibrating blade, and there it was… a circle with an arrow coming off to the upper right-the symbol of maleness-with a stylized flower within.

It was the third type of graffito they had found. In this quadrant the most common had been the Arc of the Living Sun—symbol of radical Orthos from equatorial-belt countries. But there had been others as well, including the P and infinity cartouche…

… the Sigil of Simon Percell.

—Finished with that tunnel, —Lani announced. —Good thing we checked. The pressure release was stuck. Could’ve caused problems.—

“What do you make of this one?” he asked Lani, pointing to the uncovered circle-and-arrow symbol.

There was a long silence. Her face seemed pale under the helmet highlights.

—Every variety of crank was sent on this mission, Saul. Even we spacers have ours, I guess. That’s the sign of the Martian Way.—

Saul nodded. His suspicion was growing more firm.

“Clan marks. People really have taken to living out here. At first I couldn’t believe it.”

Lani explained, —It’s picked up since people have grown a little less spooked by the purples. Those guys we met down on Level K… from Madagascar and Fiji… they do their jobs at Central but they’re terrified of Percells. Refuse to sleep in the same chamber with ’em.—

“Terrified,” Saul repeated. He found it amazing that modern men and women would behave this way. He had been astonished by it all his life.

It wasn’t the Percells’ fault that they seemed more resistant to the comet diseases than unmodified humans…or at least showed fewer superficial signs of illness. But that didn’t stop the irrational myth.

During the Middle Ages the same thing happened to the Jews of Europe. Because they killed rats on sight and washed their hands, they tended to suffer less from the Plague. In the end, though, their clean habits made little difference. Enough died at the hands of enraged mobs to more than balance the toll.

Never underestimate the potential for human stupidity . It seemed that more and more crew were taking to sleeping in their spacesuits, in outlying tunnels. And sometimes, out there, the sicknesses got them and they died, horribly and alone.

—I’ve asked people in the different faction territories to try to report if somebody’s missing. I don’t know what good it’ll do.—

Faction territories , Saul mused. “Everyone still talks to you, don’t they, Lani?”

She looked back at Saul, perhaps a little nervously.

—Well, I guess nobody feels threatened by me. I’m a pretty innocuous type. People tend to tell me things.—

Saul smiled. The Amerasian girl had depth, perhaps more than she realized.

“No. That’s only part of it. You’re a bridge of sorts, Lani, an Ortho, but one who likes Percells. A… what’s it called?”

—A Percephile , Saul?

Her laughter had a dry, nervous edge to it.

He nodded. “You’re the only one of us survivors from First Watch that most of the wakers seem to trust.”

—Mostly ’cause they know I was just a grunt. Had nothing to do with deciding who to thaw. That’s what they blame poor Carl for…—

She shook her head.

—Anyway, you’re wrong about that, Saul. Folks are pissed off right now, but if they had to pick three indispensable people out of the whole expedition, it’d have to be you and Carl and Virginia.—

Saul laughed. What a sweet child! She reminded him of what little Rachel might have been like, had she grown up. But with deep almond eyes.

He almost asked her how things were going with Carl. Rumor had it they were getting together at times… though obviously on less of a committed level than Lani would prefer. Too bad. It would be good to see something going between them, if for no other reason than because it might ease Carl’s stubborn anger over Virginia.

Saul decided against bringing up the subject. Probably I’d just put ol’ foot squarely into mouth.

“Heigh-ho,” he said, lifting his portable beamer carefully to compensate for inertia. “Back to work, kiddo.”

Lani smiled and started up the mech. He hung on in front as they moved down a long stretch of tunnel, watching the close, green-tinged walls warily.

Up at A Level the chamber scheduled to be the launcher factory gaped like an antediluvian tomb. The aft end of the sail tug Delsemme lay in the center, amid a scattering of unopened crates and machinery. Colored threads festooned the sides of the cargo vessel, giving it a faintly fuzzy outline. The cavern looked as if it had been abandoned for years. It was hard to imagine it humming with bright lights and activity—as it would have to if they were ever to get home again.

Carl’s friend, Jeffers… he’s been too busy to come up and look at this. I wonder if it would be a kindness not to tell him.

“Let’s give the place a zap on disruptor frequencies three, five, and ten,” he told Lani. “Then we’ll hurry through that inventory Betty wanted us to do up here.”

—Right, Saul.—Lani’s mech moved out under her delicate control. Soon a tiny series of clicks was accompanied by rising clouds from all over the chamber as the Hallivirens algoid blew apart under microwave disruption.

Saul pondered. If only treating the diseases were as simple . He took out a light pen and began scanning boxes, letting his Portable computer take inventory of the contents of the chamber.

—Saul,—Lani whispered. He turned from a scraping he had been taking, and saw that she was at the other end of the chamber pointing down one of the side passages. When he arrived where she was standing, his first reaction was one of quick combat adrenaline. For there was a telltale squirming ripple that told of purples, grazing on the gunk-lined fibersheath.

Then he saw something else. A hundred meters or so down, near one of the fungus-dimmed glow bulbs, an indistinct figure floated.

“Another deader?”

She shook her head.

—No. I… I think it’s Ingersoll!—

Saul cursed the scratchy, intermittent blurriness caused by the antihistamines. He peered down the tunnel. The dim figure was moving .

Ingersoll. Everyone simply assumed he was dead, by now . At first he thought the missing madman wore a green spacesuit tinted to match the growth-lined hallway. But then…

“What on Earth?” Stunned, he realized that the figure was not wearing clothing.

—That’s dried gunk he’s covered himself with! What’s he picking of the walls, Saul? What’s he doing ?—