Ben Bova - The Sam Gunn Omnibus

The three of them walked slowly around the gleaming statue.

“Look at the rainbows it makes where the sun hits it,” said Jade. “It’s marvelous.”

“But if he was so smart,” the hoist operator said, “why’d he pick this spot way out here for his grave? It’s kilometers from Selene City. You can’t even see the statue from the City.”

“Imbecile ,” Jade said. “This is the place where Base Gamma was located. Isn’t that right?”

“Nope,” the supervisor said. “Gamma was all the way over on the other side of Nubium. It’s still there. Abandoned, but still there. Even the blasted return module is still sitting there, dumb as ever.”

“Then why put the statue here?”

The supervisor chuckled. “Sam was a pretty shrewd guy. In his will he set up a tourist agency that’ll guide people to the important sites on the Moon. They’ll start at Selene and go along the surface in those big cruisers they’ve got back at the city. Sam’s tomb is going to be a major tourist attraction, and he wanted it to be far enough out on the mare so that people won’t be able to see it from Selene; they have to buy tickets and take the bus.”

Both the young people laughed tolerantly.

“I guess he was pretty smart, at that,” the hoist operator admitted.

“And he had a long memory, too,” said the supervisor. “He left this tourist agency to me and the other guys from Artemis IV, in his will. We own it. I figure it’ll keep us comfortable for the rest of our lives.”

“Why did he do that?”

The supervisor shrugged inside his cumbersome suit. “Why did he build that still? Sam always did what he darned well felt like doing. And no matter what you think of him, he always remembered his friends.”

The three of them gave the crystal statue a final admiring glance, then clumped back to the truck and started the hour-long drive to Selene City.

But as she drove across the empty pitted plain, Jade thought of Sam Gunn. She could not escape the feeling that somehow, in some unexplainable way, her future was intimately tied to Sam Gunn’s past.

Jade’s first memories were not of people, but of the bare-walled rooms and wards of the hospital. The hushed voices. The faintly tangy smell of disinfectant. The hospital had seemed so snug and safe when she had been a child. Even though she had never had a room of her own, and had spent most of her childhood nights sleeping in the main ward, the hospital was the closest thing to a home that Jade had ever had.

She was an adult now, with a job and an apartment of her own. A single room carved deep into the lunar rock, two levels below the hospital, four levels below Selene City’s main plaza and the surface. Still, returning to the hospital was like returning to the warmth of home. Almost.

“It would be a really good thing to do,” said Dr. Dinant. She was a Belgian, and even though her native language was French, between her Walloon accent and Jade’s fragmentary Quebecois, they found it easier to converse in English.

“You mean it would be good for science,” Jade replied softly.

“Yes. Of course. For science. And for yourself, as well.”

Dr. Dinant was quite young, almost Jade’s own age. Yet she reminded Jade of the blurry memory of her adoptive mother. She felt as if she wanted this woman to love her, to take her to her heart as no one ever had since her mother had gone away from her.

But what Dr. Dinant was asking was more than Jade could give.

“All you have to do is donate a few of your egg cells. It’s quite a simple procedure. I can do it for you right here in the clinic in just a few minutes.”

Dinant’s skin was deeply tanned. She must spend hours under the sun lamps, Jade thought. The physician was not a particularly handsome woman: her mousy hair was clipped quite short and her clothes showed that she paid scant attention to her appearance. But she had an air of self-assurance that Jade sorely envied.

“Let me explain it again,” Dr. Dinant said gently. Even though the chairs they were sitting in were close enough to touch one another, she kept a distinct separation from the younger woman.

“I understand what you want,” Jade said. “You want to make a baby from my eggs so that you can test it for the bone disease I carry in my genes.”

“Osteopetrosis,” said Dr. Dinant, “is not a disease….”

“It prevents me from living on Earth.”

The doctor smiled at her kindly. “We would like to be able to see to it that your children will not be so afflicted.”

“You can cure it?”

Dr. Dinant nodded. “We believe so. With gene therapy. We can remove the defective gene from your egg cell and replace it with a healthy one, then fertilize the cell, implant it in a host mother, and bring the fetus to term.”

“My—the baby won’t have the disease?”

“We believe we can eliminate the condition, yes.”

“But not for me,” Jade said.

“No, I’m afraid it must be done in the fetal or pre-fetal stage.”

“It’s too late for me. It was too late when I was born.”

“Yes, but your children needn’t be so afflicted.”

My children? Jade pulled her gaze away from the eager-eyed doctor and glanced around the room. A bare little cell, like all the other offices in the hospital. Like all of Selene City. Buried underground, gray and lifeless, like living in a crypt.

“You must make a decision,” insisted the doctor.

“Why? Why now? I’ll marry some day. Why shouldn’t I have my own children myself?”

An uncomfortable expression crossed Dr. Dinant’s face. “Your job, up on the surface. I know they keep the radiation exposure down to acceptable levels, but…”

Jade nodded, understanding. She had heard tales about what long-term exposure to the radiation levels up on the surface could do. Even inside the armored space suits the radiation effects built up, over time. That’s why they paid a bonus for working up on the surface. She wondered if that was how she had acquired the bone disease in the first place. Was her father a worker on the surface? Her mother?

Osteopetrosis. Marble bones, it was called. Jade remembered pictures of marble statues from ancient Greece and Rome, arms broken off, fingers gone, noses missing. That’s what my bones are like; too brittle for Earth’s gravity. That’s what would happen to me.

Dr. Dinant forced a smile. “I realize that this is a difficult decision for you to make.” “Yes.”

“But you must decide, and soon. Otherwise …”

Otherwise, Jade told herself, the radiation buildup would end her chances of ever becoming a mother.

“Perhaps you should discuss the matter with your family,” the doctor suggested.

“I have no family.”

“Your mother—the woman who adopted you, she is still alive, is she not?”

Jade felt a block of ice congealing around her. “I have not spoken to my mother in many years. She doesn’t call me and I don’t call her.”

“Oh.” Dr. Dinant looked pained, defeated. “I see.”

A long silence stretched between the two women. Finally Dr. Dinant shifted uncomfortably in her chair and said, “You needn’t make your decision at just this moment. Go home, think about it. Sleep on it. Call me in a few days.”

Slowly, carefully, Jade got to her feet. “Yes. Thank you. I’ll call you in a few days.”

“Good,” said the doctor, without moving from her chair. She seemed relieved to see Jade leave her office.

Jade walked blindly down the corridors of the underground city. Men and women passed her, some nodding or smiling a hello, most staring blankly ahead. Children were still rare in Selene and if she saw any, she paid them no mind. It was too painful. The whole subject tore at her heart, reminding her again of the mother that had abandoned her, of the cold and empty life she was leading.