David Brin - The Heart of the Comet

“Hnmimm,” she mumbled. He could sense her drifting off into slumber.

…COMET-OSE… came her suggestion.

He had been so offended by the horrible pun that it didn’t even occur to him until later that she must have already been asleep when he heard it.

Whatever its name, the sugar compound was the key… the sweetness he had used to forge a gingerbread cannon.

The missing madman, Ingersoll—by now a legend of the lower caverns—had given him the idea. Not long after he had glimpsed the man grazing on Halley lifeforms in the outer hallways, he had done something admittedly foolish; he had tasted some of the wall growth himself.

The stuff had been sweet, tangy, like lemon drops.

Saul played a hunch. Began some experiments. And here they were, the new cyanutes. They were still good at their old jobs, but now they were also voracious for anything with the special sugar complex… for any invader wearing clothes saying “Halley.”

On the screen the tiny creatures clustered where cometary-viroid-coat factors flowed from the tip of a needle. Instruments showed them gobbling contentedly and multiplying with abandon.

We were due for some good news.

Oh, the Halleyforms would adapt, evolve. This was not the end by a long shot. But it was starting to look as if the acute panic period might be over at last.

What have I missed? Saul wondered anxiously, perplexed. How was it possible to do it at all?

A chime sounded. Everything checked out. Saul pulled out the tube of fully tested cyanutes. From his lab it was a short glide to sick bay, where two lines of people waited along opposite walls to be served by the two med-techs on duty.

One of the queues was shorter than the other, but Saul did not see any Orthos moving over to stand in the Percell line. Ould-Harrad should never have let this system of segregation develop.

People did not stand any closer together than they had to. No one was sure how the cometary diseases were transmitted. Fights had broken out over a cough…or over one man using another’s space helmet without permission.

And every sick call turned up several who were faking symptoms, trying to escape the backbreaking work and drop-dead sicknesses by fleeing into the slots.

Well, at least the lines are shorter than they were a few months back . First, anger over the mutiny took their minds off things for a while. And Carl Osborn’s heroics had suppressed the Ortho-Percell squabbling. The “norms” all knew they owed their lives to a Percell.

Now, if only these new cyanutes work as well as the first tests indicate…

A booth at the back of sick bay opened, and out stepped a woman who smiled and waved at Saul. Marguerite von Zoon looked almost like a different person. Gone were the ravages that were tearing her skin apart two months ago. She had resumed her medical duties, releasing Saul for research.

Saul’s smile dropped when he saw Marguerite’s patient—a younger woman in a gray ship’s suit—who edged past the Walloon physician and hurried away toward the exit holding a cloth to one side of her face. Even turning her head away, she could not completely hide a shimmering, pink rash.

“Lani!” Saul whispered in dismay.

He had hoped that Marguerite’s diagnosis might turn out to be wrong, but there was no mistaking the symptoms of Zipper Pox.

“Lani?” he said, but she hurried by without looking up. These in both lines edged away as she passed.

Oh, Lani.

It was one of those diseases that seemed impervious, so far, to any of the tricks to come out of the lab. Even with his recent string of incredible luck.

It was ironic. While others were fighting to get back into the slots, Lani had begged to stay awake. But the decision was made. Her cooling had already been scheduled for day after tomorrow.

Carl has been a real rat to her , Saul thought. If he isn’t there for Lani’s slotting, I’m going to punch him in the nose.

“Dr. Lintz!”

Keoki Anuenue, the med-tech handling the shorter Percell line, stood up as Saul crossed the waiting room. The Hawaiian momentarily left the side of a dull-eyed man whose ears were packed with cotton, who slapped the side of his head every few minutes as in vain effort to stop the sound of bells.

Anuenue was exceptional even for a Hawaiian—one of the rare Orthos who seemed completely oblivious to both sickness and despair. He seemed never to sleep. Whenever Saul came in, Keoki was already on duty.

He grinned broadly, gesturing down at the vial in Saul’s hand, anticipation in his voice as he asked, “Is that the latest cyanute varietal, Dr. Lintz?”

He thinks I can do anything. So does Virginia . Saul shrugged. And after the luck I’ve been having, who am I to disagree? It was a sardonic thought. He knew something mysterious was going on, and it had little to do with skill.

He held out the vial.

“Here you are, Keoki. Find volunteers the usual way. Only desperate cases, at first. These ought to be useful against the Node Lodes, as well as Sinus Whinus and the Red Clap.”

Anuenue eagerly took the flask. He started to speak, then somebody in the line along the left wall cut loose in a loud, sudden sneeze.

All around the room, people looked up accusingly. It wasn’t me, this time , Saul felt like disclaiming.

As if it were a trigger, more sneezes erupted from the Ortho side of the chamber. The line lengthened as people put more room between themselves and the miscreants.

Saul glanced at the genetically enhanced group. Percells hardly ever sneezed.

They caught the same diseases as everyone else. Saul had tried to explain this over and over to resentful Orthos. If a viroid or other comet microbe was going to kill outfight, it didn’t matter much which group you belonged to.

But Percells’ bodies did not overreact. Their lymph nodes and membranes might swell while the body’s immune system waged war on invaders, but the process was self-limiting. They didn’t balloon up and die of their own overeager defenses.

Simon , he thought. This was the gift of which you were proudest, even though it mystified you, too… that every child you worked on somehow benefited from the same augmentation, whatever genetic disease you had started out working on.

It had surprised everyone, back in Berkeley. They had used DNA strip-readers and molecular surgery to edit harmful genes from sperm and ova of couples desperate to have children. But few had expected the babies who came forth out of those microrepaired cells to emerge so enhanced.

It’s a gift we gave them. A gift with the terrible price of making them different.

“Saul!”

A voice from across sick bay—he looked up and saw Akio Matsudo waving at him from his office door.

Saul glanced at Keoki Anuenue, who grinned. “Go on, Doctor. I’ll find those volunteers, and I’ll let you know before the tests begin.”

Saul nodded, concealing deep within the dread of what he knew had to come, sooner or later. Eventually, his bizarre string of luck would run out. One of his tailor-made symbionts would kill, rather than save its host. And then, no matter how much good he had done before, they would turn on him. All of them.

As they had turned on Simon Percell.

As the mob had burned a university on a mountaintop, so long ago and so very far away.

“ Mai kii aku i kauka hupo ,” he told Keoki.

Don’t get an ignorant doctor.

The big Hawaiian blinked in surprise, then rocked back laughing. The sound was so rich, so infectious, that several of those standing in line smiled without quite knowing why.

“Coming, ’Kio,” he called to Matsudo. “I’ll be right there.”