Artifacts

by Greg Egan

  She nods agreement, but looks away with an air of frustration, as if I’d somehow missed the point. I’m puzzled; she’s ten times the physicist I am, she should have thought of every objection I raised before she even spoke.

  Jenny says, “What about the air filters. Wasn’t there a Mars flight in the ’50s—”

  Thomas is indignant. “The air filters are clean!”

  “The air filters are clean,” I agree, “and in any case, I wouldn’t be able to miss a bacterial infection.”

  Thomas says, “That Mars flight was a passenger liner with some guy on board who’d caught Legionnella Six back on Earth. The ship’s life-support system had nothing to do with it. Why don’t you get your facts straight before you open your mouth?”

  The, discussion takes us nowhere, and Salih soon breaks it up and sends us back to our posts.

  I check my patients via the infirmary’s video cameras. The robot orderly is trying to feed Nordstrom, and with infinite dumb patience it offers her spoonful after spoonful of mush that she spits back onto its ceramic arm. Callaghan was the same at first, and I thought I’d have to put him on a drip, but after less than a day he gave in.

  I review the recent data stream from Earth, but there’s been no progress. The French and Australian delegates to the latest teleconference on the “Cyclops Syndrome” both claim to have brilliant new theories—but are refusing to divulge them until the question of patent rights on any potential spin-offs has been settled. I know enough technodiplomacy-speak to realize that they have no “theories”; it’s their convoluted way of restating their protest at having had no citizens included in the crew. I slump against the desk, wondering: When the ship full of corpses is recovered, will each government jealously claim the body of their own nation’s crew member? Will they race each other to the dissecting tables for the honor of being first to announce the cause of death?

  This first manned test of the Cyclops design—to an unspectacular patch of vacuum a mere five light-days from Earth—was trumpeted as the miracle of international cooperation, in an era of increasing tension on every other front. The truth is, it’s been abused all along, treated as the conduit for a thousand petty diplomatic paybacks. Well, better that than war—although now, with the mission a failure, what kind of safety valve will it be? The newest weapons—nanomachines, molecular “robots” the size of a virus—carry no risk of fall-out or nuclear winter, and have a respect for property that puts the neutron bomb to shame. Already, governments around the world are painting their enemies as “less than human.” I stare at the newscasts in disbelief, and think: After all those decades it took to get rid of the fucking bomb, it’s happening again. Genocide is becoming thinkable again.

  There’s a knock on the door. It’s Lidia.

  “David? Can I talk to you?”

  “Sure.”

  She sits, with an involuntary sigh of bliss at the pleasure of taking the weight off her feet.

  “What I said back there …,” she waves her hands dismissively. “… you’re right, of course; radiation makes no sense—but that wasn’t really what I was getting at.”

  “Then what—?”

  “The point is, nobody has ever been this far out before.” I can’t help a puzzled scowl, and she quickly adds, “What difference should that make? I don’t know. Of course I don’t know! Twenty thousand people spent fifteen years planning this mission—I don’t expect to be able to outguess them in a couple of hours. Some exotic form of radiation was the only tangible thing I could think of, off the top of my head, but the real point is that we just don’t know what’s out here.”

  I’m about to make a sarcastic remark about ethereal alien lifeforms, slipping through the hull and feeding on our brains, but I stop myself in time. If Lidia is becoming mildly paranoid, the worst thing I can do is mock her. I say, reasonably, “We know as much about what’s out here as people ever knew about interplanetary space. More. Probes have been leaving the solar system for a hundred and fifty years. The interstellar medium has been sampled all the way to Alpha Centauri. There are no surprises, there’s nothing strange out here. And even if there were … what astrophysical phenomenon could possibly explain what’s happened to Callaghan and Nordstrom?”

  “I’ve told you, I don’t know. All I’m suggesting is that you keep an open mind.” She hesitates, frowning, clearly embarrassed by the vagueness of her argument, but nevertheless unwilling to abandon it. “Humans spent millions of years evolving on the Earth’s surface, adapting to a very specific set of environments. We think we’re aware of all the restrictions that places on us, but we can’t be sure. I mean, suppose they’d sent people into orbit before they’d discovered the Van Allen radiation belts. Or suppose they’d sent a free-fall expedition to Saturn, before any research had been done on the effects of long-term weightlessness.” I start to protest, but she cuts me off. “I know, that sounds ludicrous, but only because both those problems were obvious in advance. That doesn’t mean it always has to be that way. Isn’t it possible that we’ve come across something that couldn’t be anticipated, something utterly new?”

  I say, begrudgingly, “I know what you’re getting at. People have been acting for a hundred years like they knew all the problems of interstellar flight, and that once we came up with the technical solutions, those flights would be almost … trivial. The usual hubris. You’re saying, perhaps there’s something qualitatively different about interstellar space, something that all the unmanned probes couldn’t detect, something that a century of planetary exploration couldn’t prepare us for. Okay, it’s an interesting theoretical point, but where does it actually get us? Even if you’re right, all it means is that we have no idea at all how to protect ourselves. Intellectual humility may be a virtue, but frankly, I’d rather be optimistic and keep on believing that it has to be a virus.”

  She looks away, again with that air of frustration, and I suddenly feel ashamed of my sensible, insipid response. “You should speak to Kay, not me. She’s the particle physicist, the genius, the great theoretician. I’m just a second-rate doctor who failed Lateral Thinking 100. I can’t have radical scientific ideas; I’d be struck off the list for unprofessional conduct.”

  Lidia smiles ruefully. “I talked to Kay half an hour ago. She said I was full of crap.” She shrugs. “She’s probably right. And I hope that it is a virus, as much as you do. Keep looking for it, David. Forget everything I’ve said. You have work to do, I shouldn’t have distracted you.”

  The robot orderly feeds and cleans my robustly healthy idiot patients, the computerized scanner probes their bodies with magnetic fields and microwave pulses for the signature of a molecule that has no right to be there—and fails. I send all the data back to Earth—NMR spectra, PET scans, EEGs, video recordings—along with my own observations and speculations, for what they’re worth. In return, Earth spews back a torrent of case studies from the literature; all make fascinating reading, but none come close to matching the pattern of symptoms—and lack of symptoms—of the Cyclops Syndrome.

  Then come the signs that Earth is getting worried: an interminable series of messages from heads-of-state, each one full of the same emetic platitudes about their deep concern for our safety, their people’s good wishes, and our own inspirational courage. Each one setting up the right credentials, carving out a share of the PR catharsis, just in case we don’t make it back alive.

  Worse are the broadcasts from our families—scripted just as tightly, but delivered with less skill. I sit in my cabin and listen to my parents being forced to declare their love for me in the vocabulary of prime time human interest. After a few seconds. I turn down the sound, but the travesty is still too painful to watch. I close my eyes and press my fingers to the glass, shaking with anger.

  I check everyone for symptoms of neurological deterioration. I analyze their visual tracking patterns, measure their reaction times, test their language and cognitive skills. Nobody’s results betray the slightest signs of impairment�
��but then, except for those tests that require the subject’s understanding or cooperation, the same can be said of Callaghan and Nordstrom.

  For a few paranoid hours, I wonder if some spiteful government has infected us with a tailored virus, or perhaps even killer nanomachines. It’s not unlikely, per se, but the details make no sense; surely a saboteur would have chosen to mimic a known disease, rather than risk arousing suspicion with a novel set of symptoms.

  Unless, of course, the whole point was to arouse suspicion, to inflame tensions, to start the hunt for someone to blame. But that doesn’t bear thinking about.

  Salih asks me to ask each member of the crew to help in some way, for the sake of morale. Jenny writes new software for the protein synthesizer, in preparation for churning out artificial antibodies, should we actually find something to make antibodies against. Lidia and Kay check and recheck, calibrate and recalibrate, all the imaging and analytical equipment. I’ve already been showing Thomas every report and chart cranked out by the computer, in the hope that he’ll identify some subtle clue that I’ve overlooked. Salih himself insists on feeding both Callaghan and Nordstrom for one meal a day, expressing the hope that this human contact might make a difference to their condition—a gesture which I find touching, but also irritating, because it seems like an implied criticism of the way I’m looking after them. Or perhaps I’m just hypersensitive.

  Days pass without another victim, and I begin to feel less pessimistic. Dramatic as the behavioral changes Callaghan and Nordstrom have suffered might be, the lack of detectable physical damage implies that the virus is capable of infecting only a very specific class of neurons—and perhaps even that is contingent upon some genetic quirk that no other crew member happens to share.

  Earth is still weeks away, though; the maser lag is still growing longer, and I can’t suppress a sense of frustration—at times, verging on panic—at the slowness of our return. It’s not as if our homecoming held out the promise of a guaranteed, instant cure; perhaps it’s more a wish to be rid of the burden of responsibility than fear of the virus itself.

  And every night, I dream the same dream: that I’m spinning, alone, in the void, trying in vain to find the way home.

  I’m shaken roughly from sleep, and it takes me several seconds to recall where I am. Squinting against the ceiling panels switched to daylight strength, I make out Thomas leaning over me.

  “Oh shit, shit, shit.”

  He laughs drily. “Well, you’re all right then.”

  I stagger out of bed. “Who is it this time?”

  “Salih. Kay. Jenny.”

  “Oh, no.” I hesitate in the doorway. I want to fall apart, I want to climb back under the blankets and hide, I want to be home, but Thomas just stands there, puzzled, impatient, and I realize that I lack the courage to betray my weakness to him. I think, that’s all that’s kept me going: propping up my fears, one against the other.

  Salih is sitting on the floor in a corner of the dining room. He eyes me warily as I approach, but looks more lost and confused than aggressive. I want to say something to him before I fire the tranquilizer dart—I feel I owe him some kind of apology or explanation—but then I smother the absurd impulse and just do it.

  Jenny is in her cabin, hitting fistfuls of keys on her terminal, like an infant or a monkey pretending to type, peering at the screen with intense concentration. When she hears me, she turns and bellows angrily, then picks up a memory cartridge and throws it straight at my head. I duck. She scrambles under the bed. I lie on my stomach awkwardly, muscles still stiff from sleep. She screams at me. I fire.

  Kay is in bed, shivering and sobbing. Lidia sits beside her, murmuring comforting nonsense.

  “Kay?” I crouch near the foot of the bed. She ignores me. Lidia says dully, “I can’t get her to speak. I’ve tried, David, but I can’t.” As if the whole phenomenon might simply be a failure on our part to trick or bully the victims back to normality.

  After we’ve moved the three new patients to the infirmary, and Lidia has broadcast a terse report to Earth, we sit in the dining room, drinking coffee, making plans for our own presumably inevitable decline.

  Lidia says, “The drive and navigation software will just keep on running. There are stages when human confirmation is requested, but if no input is received within five minutes, the computer goes ahead as per the flight plan. Once we’re close enough for remote reprogramming, ISUSAT will take over for the boarding rendezvous. Short of something drastic and highly improbable, like a meteor through the fuel rings, we’ll make it back.”

  Thomas says, “Ditto for life-support. After all the hours I’ve spent monitoring and fine-tuning, unless there’s a massive equipment failure—and there’s no reason there should be—the whole system can take care of itself.”

  It’s easier than I thought it would be, to mimic their calm, pragmatic tones. “The orderly should be able to cope with feeding all eight of us, so long as we’re properly restrained. The beds have an ultrasonic system to maintain peripheral circulation; we can expect a certain amount of muscle wastage, that’s inevitable, but no pressure sores, no gaping ulcers. The fecal and urinary disposal system has its own lubricant and disinfectant supplies; of course, nobody’s ever been on one for weeks without human supervision, but so long as we’re unable to get our hands free to break the seals, I can’t see any problems.”

  Lidia says, “Well, then.”

  The newest patients are all still under the influence of the tranquilizer, and Callaghan and Nordstrom are mercifully asleep. I strap down Thomas and Lidia, then undress and slide into the surreal plastic contraption that will carry away my wastes. I’ve used something similar before, in a space suit when I was in training; it’s not pleasant, but it’s not that bad.

  The orderly isn’t programmed to manipulate the restraints, but with a long, tedious series of explicit voice commands, I manage to instruct it to strap me down.

  For several minutes, we lie in silence, then Thomas clears his throat and says, “They’ll find a cure. It might take a month, or a year, but they won’t give up on us.”

  Sure. If we live for a month, or a year. If we live long enough even to reach Earth.

  I keep my mouth shut.

  Lidia says, “What do you think it will be like?”

  Thomas says, “I don’t know. Maybe like a dream. Maybe like being a helpless child again, a baby. Maybe like nothing at all.”

  They talk for a while, and I listen in silence, a professional observer of The Patient’s response to a stressful prognosis, and I feel a warm glow of satisfaction at the admirable way that they’re handling their fears—but I can’t join in.

  A few hours later, Thomas succumbs. He screams with rage at finding himself bound, waking Callaghan and Nordstrom, who scream along with him.

  I say, “I can’t stand this. I’m getting up.”

  Lidia yells over the cacophony, “Don’t be stupid! What do you think, you’re immune? If you’re roaming around the ship when it happens to you, you’re going to hurt yourself, or damage something—”

  I start telling the orderly how to release me. Lidia shouts her own instructions, and the thing swings back and forth wildly. I give up, suddenly realizing that the robot is incapable of righting itself; if it falls over, we’re all dead.

  Eventually, the three of them shut up, presumably falling asleep; in the dim light, it’s hard to be certain.

  Lidia says softly, “You’ve never told us, David. Who’s waiting for you, back on Earth?”

  I laugh. “No one.”

  “Come on.”

  “It’s the truth.” I feel myself redden. It’s none of her business; why should I have to explain myself to her? “I just, I don’t have time. I prefer to be independent.”

  “Everybody needs someone.”

  “That sounds like a line from a bad song. And it happens not to be true. The truth is, I don’t much like people.” I wish I could drag my words back from out of the darkness. Then I thin
k: what does it matter, now?

  There’s an awkward silence, then she says, “So, what inspired you to become a doctor?”

  I laugh, with genuine mirth, because I’ve only just remembered. “Reading Camus’ The Plague.”

  There’s no reply.

  Morning is a nightmare. The ceiling panels slowly brighten, and everyone wakes, screaming protests at the presence of so many strangers. I’m tempted again to have the orderly release me, but I fight down the impulse. Instead, I instruct it to administer sedation. Callaghan and Nordstrom are fitted with control plates, but the others have to be injected. As silence descends, my relief turns sour; I feel more lonely and frightened than ever.

  I have the orderly move the infirmary’s terminal next to my bed, and with voice control I switch through the signal from Earth. They send to us constantly, they can always think of something to say. Weather reports for our home towns, snippets of news (but nothing too depressing), herds of primary school children around the world, praying to their various gods for our safe return. A response to Lidia’s final report isn’t due until tomorrow morning; I’m staring back into a cheerful past, when there were only two victims, and it looked like we had some hope.

  Around noon, I make a broadcast of my own. “This is Dreyfus,” I say, redundantly. “Bwalya developed symptoms at 0200 hours, Garcia at 0300 hours.” I’m guessing the times, I have no real idea. And who the fuck cares? I switch off the camera. Trembling, I vomit onto the bed and the floor. The orderly cleans it up.

  I grow calm again as the hours pass, and a little more rational. I don’t think about death—I can’t see any point in doing so—but I can’t help wondering how it will feel, finally to be like Callaghan and the others. Less than human? That might not be so bad. Feeling less, thinking less, might not be so bad at all.

  Night comes. Staring up at the faintly glowing ceiling, I wonder if I’ll even notice when it happens to me. I consider talking aloud, describing my state of mind for the sake of whoever gets their hands on the infirmary’s log, but introspection yields nothing worth reporting.