David Brin - The Heart of the Comet

“I know,” Ould-Harrad said abruptly.

Carl nodded, relieved. Ould-Harrad hadn’t been out of the slots for long. He had been called up for service when Major Lopez had sickened in hours and been slotted. Ould-Harrad wasn’t working in the tunnels all day; he would have time to keep on top of this political crap. Carl could turn all this over to him.

But then Ould-Harrad looked uncomfortable, his broad face converging on an unwelcome topic by lowering the thick eyebrows and pulling the wide mouth up into an expression of sorrowful, vexed concern. “I believe you people should pay attention to what Linbarger says. He points out difficult facts.”

“But he’s warping them, making.”

“The source hardly matters. Consider the implications.”

Carl was stunned. “What… what implications?”

“We need more protection against the diseases.”

Carl said, “Well, of course we do, but—”

“No. You do not understand. We do—we normal people. Especially.”

“Oh… So it’s going to be that way?”

Ould-Harrad looked at Carl grimly, ignoring Linbarger’s eager nodding. “Heaven forfend, it already is that way. Unless normal people feel they are protected against these diseases by isolation, by more care—then they can see only one outcome.”

“What?”

“You Percells will come to run the entire expedition. There will not be enough other people alive to oppose you.” The African spoke with a calm earnestness, free of aggression and all the more striking because of his powerful frame. He had the impressive calm of those whose strong religious convictions inform their every word.

“That…we don’t intend that,” Carl finished lamely.

“No matter.” The brown eyes held sadness. “Many believe that is what will happen.”

“Look, I called you over to quiet down this guy, this Linbarger. I—”

“It’s not for the likes of you to shut me up,” Linbarger said hotly. “If you think you can, I’d be glad to—”

“No, no,” Ould-Harrad said sternly, raising a hand toward Linbarger. “Please be quiet now.”

“But he—”

“Please.” Ould-Harrad silenced Linbarger with his ministerial presence.

Carl thought hotly, It might be fun to bash Linbarger around a little. Bad for him, but good therapy for me. Better than all this talk, anyway.

He said, “I certainly didn’t think you’d back up Linbarger! These guys are using hypochondria to get back into the slots. And all this Ortho nonsense.”

“You see?” Ould-Harrad said. “You have your own name for us.”

“So? You call us Percells.”

“We need no special name. We are the normal people—the human race.”

“And we’re not ?”

“I… I did not say that.”

“You intended it! You probably think we don’t have souls.”

The black man shook his head mournfully. “That issue is in the hands of the omnipotent. The point remains that we are different.”

“Yeah, and you’ve got renegade Arcists and worn-out Zionists and Salawites—” Carl noticed Ould-Harrad wince. “But you all stick up for each other around us , huh?”

Ould-Harrad said mildly, “We must struggle to balance the viewpoints of all.”

Carl had never been good with words, did not have the easy, oily skills of an administrator, and he had no magic way to get through to Linbarger, or to Ould-Harrad. All this endless talk! He gritted his teeth in irritation, stood, and left without another word.

Not paying attention , Saul thought. That was our basic mistake, these last few centuries. Nature flowering and bursting with life all around us, and we never paid enough respectful attention .

He was waiting for the others to arrive in sleep slot 1, trying to rest in these few free moments. Avoiding thinking about the daily slot meeting, about to start.

You’d think we’d have caught on with the limestone business. He smiled wanly. Only blue-green Earth burgeoned with life. And Earth had proved to be the only planet with an oxygen atmosphere, thick, yet transparent enough to let excess heat escape. It had taken generations to realize that the latter fact did not cause the former. No, it was the other way around. Life…trillions of tiny cells in the early days of Earth, had pulled the carbon out of the primordial atmosphere and stored it in their bodies, which silted to the ocean floor and became limestone beds… changing the air itself in the process.

Science was still fumbling with the notion that life might be driver in the evolution of worlds, rather than a simple passive passenger, shoved about by the rude winds of astronomical fate. After the bleak vistas of Venus and Mars, scientists still assumed that minute changes in planetary mass or distance from the sun made life impossible. Like all the others, he had ignored the possibility that life had spawned in comets. It had tailored this ice mote, too, carving caverns and spreading seeds.

A tiny Gaea… a self-regulating ecosphere scaled in ice, revived when the sun’s licking warmth came to briefly banish the long night… and perhaps trillions of others, too, swooping in from the far dark… He would have to mull that one over, if he ever got a spare second…

“My, how serene.” Virginia’s lilting, affectionate sarcasm cut through his musing.

“Um? No, just my ritual worrying.” He sat up, feeling dull aches rearrange themselves in his legs and back, even in the faint gravity.

Virginia sat beside him on the narrow bench that was the only furniture in sleep slot 1’s observing room. In the pale enameled light he studied her with wonder. She was trim and sure, her milky green pullover covering but not concealing a flat stomach, breasts hard and high, a muscular calm. The septic certainty of the room numbed his senses, but she redeemed that with a soft warming presence, calling up memories of humid, spice-laden Hawaiian air. Yet she likens herself to her machines, cool and cyborg-certain. How wrong!

The quiet comfort of being with her reminded him of other days, of cramped apartments, gas flames licking the dark as friends talked far into the night, meals of peppery meats and crisp onions, an enfolding sense of an enduring natural order—

He cut off the thought. Nostalgia clutched him sweetly with hollow, fuzzy fingers whenever he let it, and this was most certainly not the time.

Virginia said lightly, “You look like something the cat dragged in.” She scratched the back of his neck.

“You can’t turn my head with mere compliments.” He rubbed his eyes. “Besides, we have no cat.”

“Lucky we didn’t thaw the pets right away. Or would they be susceptible?”

“Of course. These viroids love lung tissue—I suspect some spread through the air.”

“So Spot and Fluffy would buy the farm, too.”

“Definitely.”

He did not mention that he and Matsudo had thawed some rabbits and monkeys already—had to, for tests of new treatments. Of course the poor creatures had to be sacrificed. He had never been able to do that without a twinge of guilt. Yet you chose to be a biologist.

She looked out through the transparent wall, to where several suited figures labored over pale, waxy bodies. “If we could just stop the stuff from spreading! Particularly that green gunk climbing the walls—it gives me the shivers.”

“I suspect the algoids and lichenoids aren’t the true danger.”

“They’re spreading so fast!”

“There are so many variants, it’s difficult to control them even with the microwaves. But we’re making progress.”

She wrinkled her nose. “The stuff smells .”