by David Brin
Carl Osborn and me. We’re the latest sensations, back there.
DOC HALLEY-DAY AND WYATT PERCELL… BATTLING CREEPY
BUGS AND BUGGY CREW…
Could it be that the powers back home can’t afford to have this popular image last too long? Both an augmented person and a former collaborator of Simon Percell in the headlines?
Oh, what a laugh! I sought obscurity and safety out in space—and find neither!
Matsudo looked away again. Saul knew, then, that this was a matter decided far above, and there would be no use inflicting protests on his uncomfortable friend.
He had seen simulations better than Matsudo’s—prepared in stochastic logic by JonVon to his own models. Matsudo was right. Things were indeed getting better…or at lest they would slip downhill more slowly for the foreseeable future. Saul had hoped that it would mean more time to study—to really study—what was going on here.
There was more to all of this than a life-or-death struggle between colonists and native organisms. Much, much more, and he wanted to find out about it.
But how does one fight city hall?
Maybe I could persuade Virginia to desert with me, into the tunnels. We’ll graze on green stuff; like Ingersoll. Raid the animal lockers and thaw some sheep to raise. Maybe plant sorghum down on the south forty and tell the universe to go to hell.
The ridiculous image made him smile, in spite of himself.
“I must have three months.” He began the inevitable bargaining. “There are experiments to finish, and I’ve got to brief Svatuto. Also, Keoki and Marguerite need more training before I hand the lab over to them.”
Matsudo shook his head. “Two weeks. It is all I am willing to… all I can risk you further.”
Saul smiled. “I’ll have to write a training manual for future shifts—on handling the cyanutes and using the microwave disruptor… Eight weeks, minimum.”
After a long silence, Matsudo sighed in acquiescence. “I fear for you, Saul. But I am also selfish. I admit that it will be good to have you here for that much longer.”
The black-haired immunologist looked out over the slopes of Mount Asahi. Sunset faded into a purpling night. Lowering clouds flickered with hints of thunder.
“Flesh is weak,” Akio Matsudo said softly, removing his glasses to polish them one more time. “And it is lonely without friends, where only the snow falls.”
VIRGINIA
June 2062
As she approached the sleep-slot prep room one of her own poems—if indeed they deserve such a highfalutin’ name!—came rushing into her head.
Your musky hollows
Sand-colored, rutted skin
neatly fitted bones, calcium cage
to house a heart I enter,
and would devour
if only we had icy slow days.
I could rhyme
the tick of time,
frame elegant meals.
No springtime in Gehanna.
The long cold orbit out
could not cut the years
we have left.
Time’s fair gamble,
days not yet done.
Perhaps they’ll dwindle down
to none. But they will
see us entwining
together in the sun.
Okay, you’re brave enough to say it to JonVon. Now do it.
She slipped into the prep room. Saul already lay in the carrier beneath cool pale light, surrounded by cylinders and spheres of gleaming steel. Carl Osborn was helping Keoki Anuenue, the med-tech, work over him. The red nutrient webbing resembled a net of blood vessels projected through the skin, like a demonstration in school. Saul was still awake, though drowsy. His eyes followed her as she walked to his side. Fog curled in chilly fingers around her.
Carl glanced up. “Where the hell have you been! I’ve been listening to the comm. Just as I started, all the mechs went dead.”
“I know.”
“Oh, is it already fixed?”
“It will be, if I give the order,” she said precisely.
Carl blinked. “What’s that mean?”
“I shut them all down. And I won’t bring them back on line unless you and Ould-Harrad honor my request.”
Anuenue kept attaching leads to Saul, oblivious, but Carl stopped and carefully put down his needle-nose pliers. He stepped away, where the tech couldn’t hear. “You’re… threatening us?”
“Let’s call it a promise.”
“Promise! What the—?”
“Either let me slot now, or you won’t get any useful work out of me or the mechs.”
“That’s disobedience! Blackmail!”
“Call it anything you like. Just do it.” Virginia compressed her lips into a thin, pale line.
“We need you.”
“There are other programmers available—unslot one. And JonVon can take over a lot of functions. I’ve upgraded his capabilities.”
“No computer is as good as you.”
Good. Get him to argue rationally. “JonVon’s general organizing structures are better than mine. He also does higher-order selfprogramming. That makes him very adaptable.”
“But your experience.”
“Listen, I’m not negotiating here. I’m demanding.”
Carl sighed and she saw that he was worn down. Not physically—his solid jaw and strong cheeks were ruddy with health, a welcome sight in these days—but mentally. Ould-Harrad is a frustrating commander. Carl was the natural choice for exec officer, but it’s a relentless task being number two to a man like that. And I’m not making it any easier on him.
“You honestly think JonVon will work with another computer wizard? He’s your baby, after all.”
“I’ve instructed him to. I mandated it, using the old mission mainframe. Just as I’ve told him to keep the mechs dead until I give him the word.”
Carl said angrily, “So it is blackmail.”
“Call it a negotiating position.”
“You said you were demanding, not negotiating.”
A shrug. “Skip it. Slot me or else nothing gets done.”
Carl bristled and pointed a finger at Saul. “He put you up to this.”
“No. I never talked to him about it. I… decided on my own.”
Carl’s voice seemed squeezed, diminished. “You… love him that much?”
This was no time to care about anything except results. Carl’s face was reddening, his breathing getting faster. If he saw how unsteady she was, how much nerve it took to do this— “Of course. You’ve known that all along.”
Somehow this simple declaration blunted Carl’s building anger. “You… want to spend the same time in the slots?”
“We belong together.”
Carl shrugged again. “Damned nasty, shutting down the mechs this way.”
“I had to show I mean it. I don’t intend to live without Saul. Particularly since nobody really knows how much longer things will hold together here anyway.”
“We’ve got the diseases licked, Saul says.”
“Yes, for now. But what about long-term effects? We’ve got to be sure we have able bodies for service decades from now. People who can come out of the slots in good condition, ready to work. Saul and I fit that description. You know we can survive.”
She played out the arguments just as she had rehearsed them. There were holes in them, of course, but she saw now that Carl in his disoriented state was vulnerable to her, unable to muster a coherent objection. Perhaps he would, in fact, be glad to be rid of both her and Saul; their love was a continual irritant to him, she guessed.
Carl asked, “Keoki, could you get some more KleinTex solution from stock?” The tech nodded and left.
Carl seemed pensive, almost dazed.
“Carl… I know this is a hard time…”
He blinked, obviously struggling with inner conflicts. “You know, I never pay attention to the people around me… never know what they’re thinking… feeling.”
“No, that’s not true, you.”
“Lani, I never saw her,” he said bitterly. “I was so wrapped up in dreams about you. To see her going into the slots, that damned disease eating her up… I could’ve had some time with.”
“If you’d been a superman, yes,” she said patiently. “We’ve all been run ragged, Carl. You can’t blame yourself for not being all things to all people.”
He didn’t reply, just picked absently at the weave of nutrient tubes and sensor wires that covered Saul. Virginia watched his expression settle into one of sad reflection. He sighed, then looked into Saul’s relaxed face and asked, “You can understand?”
A nod.
“She’s coming with you.”
A slow smile. The lined skin around his eyes crinkled with unmistakable happiness.
She asked Carl, “His speech centers?”
“I can reconnect them if you want. Or call Matsudo, if you don’t trust my fumbling.”
She covered Carl’s hand tenderly, sorry that it had come to this. “No…don’t. I think we understand without speaking.”
Saul nodded.
Carl’s face was blank, numb. He looked from one to the other. Virginia felt pity for him, a man thrust too quickly into the center of events. She was sorry that she had been forced to do things this way. But there was no turning back.
“We’ll slot you within a few weeks,” Carl said evenly, clearly summoning up strength from some reservoir. “First we thaw your replacement, so you can brief her. We’ll have to square it with the sleep-slot committee, argue over whether the replacement should be a Percell or an Ortho—the usual. Should take less than a month. We’ll start as soon as you get JonVon and the mechs in shape.”
She didn’t take her eyes away from Saul. “I’ll assign my personal mech, Wendy, to give JonVon permanent manual function.”
“The details don’t matter. You’ve won. That’s what counts.”
She nodded, unable to speak.
He stood silently in the curling moist fog and cold for a long time. “The people I most cared about, they’re all slipping away…” Then he shrugged. “Y’know… I’m going to miss you two.”
PART 4
THE ROCK IN THE DESERT
What nature doesn’t do to us,
Is done by our fellow man.
—Tom Lehrer
Positions of Planets and Comet Halley
2092
SAUL
2092
The world came back slowly, and not too pleasantly. It tingled, deep down at the roots of his nerves, and then everything began to itch.
He could not scratch.
Later, as the tickling finally began to fade, there came his first real sensation of deep cold.
It was a fevery chill, this slow returning to awareness. Like a sickness—a bad one in which the mind is disabled, scattered, and yet some core part of a man knows that it wants to think—to figure out what is wrong and how to fix it.
It was also like a nightmare, with blurred images, fragments of voices murmuring and fading, beyond recall or meaning. Only he dreamer knew that this time there would be no quick, relieved awakening.
There was one way out of this dream—a long, slow ride to the end.
The first time Saul felt certain that he wasn’t imagining things came as a blank whiteness overhead slowly swam into focus. His eyelids fluttered with hesitant feedback—actually responding to his will.
Shut, he commanded. The light closed off to a muted, rosy hue.
Open! he ordered desperately, afraid the world had gone away again. But nerves flashed and muscles fired on cue. A torrent of light poured in again.
It’s cold… Cold as the High Priest’s heart.
And Saul remembered a dry, freezing morning in the Judean hills, the scent of century-old cedars and the chill of a hope dying.
Flames licked the sky in the direction of Gan Illana. There was more burning on Mount Herzl. But in Jerusalem the Armies of The Lord advanced in song, led on one side by a swarm of golden crosses, on another by the Mahdi and all of the Salawite mullahs. And in the center, chanting Hebrew psalms and carrying the Rebuilt Ark, the Kahanim priests of the new Sanhedrin. The faithful surged around the ruins of smashed buses, chanting in joy and carrying bricks and mortar.
Unable to move anything but his eyelids, Saul seemed to see it all again, played out against the pale white ceiling. It was a memory of smoke, and the acrid odor of superstition.
U.N. “peacekeepers” stood watch as the Architects planted the flags of three faiths on the Temple Mount and proclaimed the land holy in three tongues. The hover tanks had not moved to stop the riots. The world press hardly covered the slaughter of those resisting the new theocracy.
To the world it was a great day. “Peace” had come at last to the broiling navel of the world. Billions looked on it as a miracle as representatives of three great religions joined together in a holy cause.
To build a Temple to the Ultimate.
To fulfill prophecy.
To erect a place to speak to God.
Even after the fires had dimmed, after the Levites, Salawites, and Tribulationists had sealed the land, smoke still rose up to Mount Zion where he had watched. The pungent, sweet smell of roasting, sacrificial lambs.
The scent of Leviticus climbed once more into Heaven, curling under the nostrils of the Lord.
Saul closed his eyes again, and slept.
When next he awoke there was motion. A figure moved into view. He blinked, trying to focus.
It was an older face. Sterner. But he recognized it.
Saul felt his lips being moistened. He worked his mouth and managed to whisper one syllable.
“C… Carl?”
The visage overhead nodded. “Yes, Saul. It’s me. How are you feeling?”
Saul lifted his eyebrows. The lazy man’s shrug conveyed more than words could at this point. Carl Osborn responded with a smile, not a particularly friendly smile, but ironic. “Good. Your unslotting is proceeding normally. You should be up and about soon.”
Soul’s voice felt dry. Dusty. “Is… is there peace now?”
Carl blinked, then shook his head. “Most wakers ask what date it is. Or, if they’ve already been out, they ask if we’ve beaten the gunk. But not you. Not Saul Lintz.”
There was no antagonism in the remark. Saul managed to answer Carl’s wry smile with one of his own. “Okay, then. What… what’s the date?”
Carl nodded. “Eight years before the new century.”
So, Saul thought. Thirty years. That was a long nap.
“Aphelion…” he breathed.
“Not far from it,” Carl agreed. “We’re thirty a.u. out. You should see the sun. It’s not much brighter than the moon in a desert night.”
Where no person has gone before.
“The Nudge Launchers?” Saul asked. “Are they…”
Carl frowned. “We’ll get ’em built.”
Saul read a lot in that expression. It answered his first question. No peace. But we’re still here, so it can’t be all bad.
His body felt as if it were made of lead, but he managed to turn his head. “So who’s is charge now?… Kuyamato? Trugdorff?…Johannson?”
Carl shook his head. “They’re all dead, or dead-slotted.”
“Then who?”
Carl made a restless shrug. “I’m operations officer. If anyone’s in charge, I am.”
Saul settled back, slowly absorbing this.
He is older, harder. I wonder how many more years Carl has spent awake, while I slept.
“So do you need a doctor?” Frankly, he wouldn’t have expected to be revived, if it were up to Carl.
“Yeah, that’s right, Saul. We need a doctor. And Earth suggested it might be a good time to let you have another look at the diseases. Some seem to have mutated.”
Carl hovered over him for another moment. His lips pressed together. “I ought to be honest with you, Saul. The biggest reason I had you taken off ice was
because we need Virginia.”
“Virginia,” Saul breathed. Remembering.
Carl nodded, his mouth tight. “Rest, Saul. You won’t be called on to do much. Not right away. I’ll check in on you later.”
Saul said nothing as the tall man slipped out of his peripheral vision. The years still had to be unsorted. Dreams that he had not quite experienced felt like water behind an overfilled dam. Faces riffled like shuffling cards.
Faces of women—Miriam, Virginia, Lani Nguyen. Faces of comrades—Nicholas Malenkov, dying in his arms.
And the ghost of Simon Percell. Through the fibercloth walls, through the ice mountain that surrounded him, Saul felt he could almost hear a soft, ironic laughter. It stayed with him when he fell into a deep, natural sleep.
Twice more he stirred briefly. The first time when a tech he recognized from the crew of the Edmund—nowamiddle-aged woman with a strange, greenish stain on one side of her face—greeted him mildly and offered him a drink. He had to ask her to speak slowly because she seemed to have picked up a queer accent.
An oddly handsome man without any hair at all was his caretaker the next time. A burn on one cheek seemed more like a brand than anything an accident might produce. Saul thought it wise to forbear comment.
Wait. Absorb. Learn.
The slot tenders were not as busy as they once had been. The pace was casual, but under it all, the tension was still there. In the hushed conversations he overheard, there were words, phrases, that he could not follow. He was allowed to sit up, the next time the watch shift changed, and he saw that there was some sort of ceremony as new slot tenders took charge.
No. There is no peace.
He saw on the wallboard that two recuperation lights shone. One for him. One for Virginia. She had kept her promise, and followed him down the River of Time.
Clever girl, Saul thought. I knew you could do it.
I can’t wait to tell you how much I really love you… however old you are by now.
