Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  She nodded, her face all but obscured behind her biohazard mask. She must be exhausted, or she would have reacted to that “love that had just slipped out. Ordinarily Serena hated endearments.

  We went through DeCon, me first at her insistence. When I emerged, Carin Dziwalski sat slumped on the deck outside the DeCon door.

  “Carin! Is anything wrong?”

  She raised her face and I was shocked. She looked a wreck, as if she hadn’t slept all night. Neither had Serena, but Serena was strong as a rock. Carin’s thin, pinched face sagged and she seemed about to faint. She seldom ate much, but now she had the hollowcheeked look of a naturally thin person who had starved for days.

  “No, Paul, nothing’s wrong. I just want to know what you found.”

  “What we found? But, Carin, you had access to all the data as we recorded it, plus the visuals from the lab.”

  “I know. But I wanted to hear it from you. Are the spores alive?”

  I peered down at her. It’s always hard to tell just how much biology physicists actually know. Still, Serena and I had been chattering for the entire expedition. Carin should already know the answer to her question. Something wasn’t right here.

  I said gently, “Spores aren’t ever alive. Nor dead. They’re more like viruses—potential life. These contain a string of thirty-two molecules, a sort of peptide, that might well be able to self-replicate. We’re germinating the spores and we’ll see what happens.”

  She said, almost musingly, “Neither dead nor alive. Like Schrodinger’s cat.”

  “Well, no,” I said. The famous physics parable about quantum mechanics had nothing to do with spores, which depended on nutrients and energy rather than on the Uncertainty Principle.

  “Well, yes,” Carin said. And then, “Do you know what day it is?”

  She seemed stranger and stranger. I said, “It’s, urn, Day 803, 2287.”

  “It’s Ash Wednesday.” She dragged herself to her feet and started, slumped from her thin shoulders, toward the bridge.

  I didn’t know what she meant, and I didn’t care. I staggered the other way, to my bunk. Ail sit once I was so tired I could barely lift each foot off the floor. I didn’t even wait for Serena to emerge from DeCon, and a man who wouldn’t wait for Serena was halfway to being dead.

  I slept for ten hours. When I woke, my first thought was of the spores. Scrambling from my bunk, I reached for my pants, but before I’d so much as pulled them on, Serena burst in. Instead of her usual flowing robe she wore neat dark-red tunic and pants, but her hair was an uncombed mass of wild ropes and her face radiated panic.

  “Paul! I just woke up and—”

  “Did you check the spores?”

  “No, McAuliffe woke me, he called to say we’re leaving orbit!”

  “Leaving orbit? Why? We can’t!”

  “I know, I know, but he says”-her face moved from panic to anger—“that since we’re not going downstairs and we have plenty of spores, the mission here is done. Done!”

  I sank back onto my bunk, pants failing to the floor. And yet, I could see the captain’s point of view To his knowledge, the scientists had done everything possible, and chances are he had never wanted to captain this minor, non military expedition in the first place, It was a tiny detour on his own career path; he had fulfilled his assignment; he wanted to move on. Nor had Serena s disdain moved him toward being helpful.

  “This is my fault,” I said. “I counseled you to wait a day before explaining everything to him. Maybe if I had sat down with him yesterday—”

  “Yes, it is your fault. So you fix it—go sit down with him right now. Convince him, Paul! We need to go down there!”

  I gazed at her helplessly, loving her fire, disliking her complete inability to see her own part in McAuliffe’s decision. And someone like McAuliffe was not going to listen to someone like me.

  Maybe Serena thought the same thing. Her attention focused on me, me as a physical object, and I realized once again how I must look to her: scrawny, pale body slumped on my bunk, my trousers puddled around my ankles.

  I said, “I’ll take Carin with me to talk to McAuliffe.”

  “Well, all right . . . but Carin’s been acting pretty weird lately.” So I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. “Serena,—what’s ‘Ash Wednesday’ ?”

  “I haven’t any idea. Are you going to talk to the Tin Soldier or not? He’s preparing to leave orbit!” She said to the small screen on my bulkhead, “On. Priority One call to Captain McAuliffe.”

  “Serena, don’t say it’s a Priority One because he—”

  “Dr. Cho? What’s wrong?” McAuliffe’s baritone, accompanied by his frowning image on the bridge.

  “Nothing’s wrong, Captain, I—”

  If nothing’s wrong, what the hell are you doing sending a Priority One?”

  “Pm sorry, I . . . Captain, I very much need to talk to you. Now, before we leave orbit Please. It’s essential to this expedition, and we’ve already come so far from . . . please.”

  Serena scowled, undoubtedly at the subservience in my tone. But the captain said, “Well. . . all right. Wardroom in five minutes, Dr. Cho.”

  Serena knelt by my bunk and threw her arms around me. Her warm, generous body pressed into mine. “Thank you, Paul, thank you . . . and don’t blow it.”

  Five minutes. I yanked up my pants, reached for my tunic, and said to the screen, “On. Priority One to Carin Dziwalski. Carin, we have to talk to McAuliffe in the wardroom now It’s our only chance. Meet me there immediately.”

  “All right.” Her tone was subdued. My screen showed her in the corridor outside the biolab. What was she doing there?

  No time to wonder I yanked on shoes. I wouldn’t have minded going barefoot, but nothing was more likely to disgust McAuliffe. For the same reason, I actually took twenty seconds to run a comb through my hair and to tie it back. Then I was running toward the wardroom, hoping to arrive before the captain.

  No such luck. He was already seated at one end of the table, his face impassive, his outsize masculine presence crowding the room. Carin slipped quietly in through another door and took a seat as far away from McAuliffe as possible.

  “Come sit there, Carin,” I said, trying to sound authoritative, pointing to a seat beside the captain. Slowly she moved along the huge, gleaming table, and sat on his other side. He showed no reaction to these probably pathetic maneuvers. The rich brown-and-green luxury of the Wardroom oppressed me, despite the colorful holoscapes. I felt dwarfed.

  McAuliffe said, “Please begin, Dr. Cho What is so ‘essential to this expedition’ ?”

  “That we not leave orbit just yet, and that you authorize a trip down toJQ211F. Please, Captain, hear me out. There’s additional information you need to make a completely informed decision.” Was this meeting being recorded? Of course it was. That would help, wouldn’t it? If anyone ever reviewed the records, McAuliffe would want his superiors to know his decision had been made with full understanding of all aspects of the situation.

  “Begin, Dr. Cho.”

  I clenched my fist in my lap, below the table, and plunged in. “If part of your decision to leave orbit is based on a belief that life cannot exist on the planet below, then I have to start with why I believe there is life downstairs, and life worth investigating. If I explain things you already understand, please forgive me. I’m not used to talking to non-biologists. Micro-organisms can exist under all kinds of conditions, including what we saw. Lithotrops can derive nutrients from rock—in fact, we already know of bacteria that flourish on just volcanic rock. We’ve found micros living at over 120 degrees Celsius. They’re enormously versatile chemical feeders, able to extract or fix carbon from methane, methanol, ether, formic acid, hydrogen sulfide, ammonia . . . There’s absolutely no reason to think there’s no life below.”

  “That belief was never part of my decision,” McAuliffe said. Did he look bored?

  I raced on. “The long-held theory of life’s beginnings on
Terra was that it started in a sort of primordial soup. That chemicals in the warm, shallow seas were stimulated by lightning to eventually form simple molecules that became proto-replicators. The problem was that in a few centuries of increasingly sophisticated lab experiments, nobody has ever been able to generate anything close to a self-replicating molecule. Not one. All you get when you try—no matter how you try, with what ingredients or with what energy sources—all you get is a kind of organic tar. Muck. Scum. Crud. Always.”

  “Ummmin,” McAuliffe said.

  “Proto-cells are just too complex to create that way, so eventually panspermia became the favored theory for the origin of life.” I could see from his face that I was losing him, but I didn’t know what else to do and so went on lecturing.

  “Panspermia has never been supported by physical evidence. But now we have these spores. They came from the planet, proof of life down there, and all my data and calculations show that this planet was the starting point for all spores that fanned out to seed the galaxy. Or what we know of the galaxy, anyway. These spores are the most important scientific discovery in five hundred years.” Too much, too much—a non-biologist would certainly not see it that extravagantly. “Or one of the most important, anyway. Investigating their source is tremendously important. They may be the original source of all life in the galaxy.”

  “So I gathered,” McAuliffe said dryly.

  “And a trip downstairs to verify that, to take samples, would aid biology beyond what we can even imagine now. I know the planet looks dangerous, but xenobiologic expeditions have landed in volcanic environments before and everyone survived. The shuttle needn’t stay long, just time enough to grab samples, and of course the landing party would all be in s-suits and of course an s-suit can withstand those temperatures for as much as an hour and—” I had tipped over into babbling.

  McAuliffe shifted his massive shoulders in the plush chair. “Dr. Cho, the safety of this expedition is my responsibility. You haven’t convinced me that the benefits here outweigh the risk. What biological benefits would you obtain from these ‘samples’ ? Medicines? Life-prolonging drugs? Usable genes?”

  He didn’t see it, wasn’t touched by science for its own sake. I should have known, should have taken another approach. What other approach? There wasn’t any. Desperate, I began repeating myself. “The planet is unique, it’s the origin of life in this galaxy, it’s the start, the alpha, the genesis of—”

  “It’s Hell,” Carin said.

  “Carin, don’t—”

  “What did you say?” McAuliffe said.

  “Paul is right,” Carin said, so low she was almost inaudible. “The planet down there is not just another planet in the throes of early geological upheaval. That planet is the source of biological life, the Genesis.” From the way she said the word, I would swear it was capitalized. “And it’s Hell. Fire, brimstone-‘brimstone’ is the archaic word for sulfur, you know-burning on the water. Great burning mountains, scorching all with great heat, the smoke rising up from the pit for ever. Lakes of fire, tormenting the damned. The scarlet beast. Hell.”

  McAuliffe stared at her. I was about to protest when I saw something move behind his eyes, and I realized that I, Paul Cho, scientist who had spent ten years coordinating panspermic data, cross-checking meticulously, verifying and researching—I had not done my homework. Unlike Carin, I had never researched Robert McAuliffe, Lieutenant Commander in the Solidariat United Space Navy.

  McAuliffe was a Christian.

  That wasn’t, of course, the official source of his decision. It couldn’t be. He asked me to once more go over the scientific gains from going down to JQ211F, and he asked Carin for reams of data on planets of this particular type. She was a physicist, not a geologist, but she got him the information from ship’s deebees. He asked his first officer, Lieutenant Parker, to draw up a list of similar planetary expeditions over the last decade, with methods of contact, outcomes for personnel and equipment, and best practices. McAuliffe was thorough, complete, and Navy. But I knew he had made his decision at the moment Carin said, “Hell.”

  I sensed something else, too. Carin was holding back. After McAuliffe finally gave us permission to shuttle downstairs, I cornered her in the corridor outside her quarters.

  “What is it, Carin?”

  “What is what?”

  “Whatever you weren’t telling the captain.”

  “Nothing, Paul.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  She raised her eyes to mine, astonished at my tone. I was pretty surprised at it myself. But after a moment all Carin said was, “I have . . . reservations about what we might find below. But nothing that contradicts anything I said to the captain, and nothing that would in any way compromise the safety of the expedition downstairs.”

  “I believe you,” I said, because I did. But I grabbed her arm, hard. “But then why won’t you tell me what your reservations are? And why do you look like your best friend just died?”

  “None of your business!” She jerked her arm away from my grip. Appalled at my own bullying, I dropped my hand. But before I could even say, “Carin, Pm sorry,” Serena flew around the corner.

  “You did it! You did it! Oh, Paul—” She enveloped me in a hug. Her perfume filled my lungs. Had she been listening to the meeting with McAuliffe? Yes, of course, it was on the official record.

  A little embarrassed by her embrace in front of Carin, I gently loosened Serena’s arms and stepped back, “I thought you were in the lab.” I would have been.

  “Not yet. We’ll go now, together. You did it!”

  Carin had disappeared into her own quarters.

  I followed Serena to the biolab. Eagerly we examined each of the sixty cultures designed to germinate the spores. Not one of the widely varying environments had worked. Every single spore remained dormant, suspended in the inert state between life and death.

  We didn’t tell McAuliffe about the spores, and he didn’t ask. I wouldn’t have known what to say, anyway. There was no explanation. Every spore I had ever heard of germinated as soon as favorable conditions existed, wasting no time in propagating life. And we had provided sixty different sets of possibly favorable conditions.

  The three of us attended another wardroom meeting, this time to plan the trip downstairs. I was coming to dislike the wardroom, that opulent sterile luxury that was the scene of so much strife.

  “The shuttle seats four,” Captain McAuliffe said. “My pilot and Gunner’s Mate Telin Eyer will go down. That’s a military decision. That leaves two scientists. Which scientists go is your decision. Dr. Wambugu.”

  Serena sand, “Paul and I will go.”

  McAuliffe frowned. “Does it make sense for both biologists to take the risk?”

  It didn’t, of course. But Serena set her lips. “Dr. Cho and I will go.”

  “No,” Carin said. “I’m going.”

  Everyone turned to look at her. And well they might. Carin wore an expression I had never before seen on her face, or on anyone’s. Her thin lips pulled back over her teeth; she almost seemed to be smarting. Yet her eyes darted around the wardroom in what struck me, viscerally, as the most abject fear. What was she afraid of? Serena? We were all a little afraid of Serena—but not like that.

  Serena said, each word distinct, “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’m going down to the planet,” Carin said, and now her voice was steadier, steelier, than I would have thought possible. “Look at our grant from the Academy, Serena. It says that unless circumstances warrant otherwise, a physicist shall accompany the expedition to assess planetary conditions.”

  “You have assessed planetary conditions,” Serena said, too levelly. “You just gave us your assessment of the probability of landing safely, of the physical characteristics of the planet, and of its energy parameters. You accompanied us here, you assessed, and no circumstances warrant otherwise than my choosing my scientific team. Paul and I are going down.”

  “There�
�s more down there than you think,” Carin said, and now her desperation began to break through her voice. “My assessment is not complete. I need to go down.”

  “If you have a theory about additional physics findings relevant to JQ211F, then tell us now Serena’s voice, if anything, had grown quieter, but I caught myself pulling away from her side.

  “I can’t,” Carin said.

  “Can’t? You have data that you are not sharing with this expedition?”

  “It’s not data. It’s not even a theory. It’s . . . you wouldn’t understand.”

  I could have told Carin how dangerous it was to say that to Serena. She never accepted that there was anything she couldn’t understand. Serena’s dark eyes snapped and I felt, rather than saw, her body tighten along its entire impressive length. But before she could rip Carin apart, Captain McAuliffe spoke.

  “Dr. Dziwalski will be one of the two scientists on the shuttle downstairs.”

  “That s not your decision!” With the air of pulling a sword from one enemy to turn on another, Serena swung her gaze to McAuliffe. Two dark splotches appeared high on her cheekbones.

  “Yes, it is my decision, if I have reason to think that the safety of the shuttle party is at risk,” McAuliffe said. “And I do. Dr. Dziwalski, as the expedition physicist, has stated that there are additional, unassessed characteristics of the environment below. These characteristics fill into the realm of the physical sciences, not the biological ones, making her the person most likely to gauge their impact on the shuttle. Therefore, I order Dr. Dziwalski to be included in the landing party.”

  “You can’t do that!” Serena cried.

  “I just did. Decide, Dr. Wambugu, who the other scientist will be, and I will have my crew begin preparations for shuttle launch.”

  I thought Serena’s gaze might bore a hole through McAuliffe. But he merely returned her look with a small smile, and I thought: He’s enjoying this.

  Evidently Serena decided to not give him that satisfaction. She rose to her full height and said with a good imitation of calm, “The other scientist will be me. When can you launch?”