The Heart of the Comet

by David Brin

  A figure appeared beside Virginia’s mech and reached up to tug on the machine’s arm. Virginia felt it at her own elbow and looked down.

  “Oh. Hi Carl!” She felt like a little girl, and it was good to see him smile again, under the glossy faceplate of his grimy suit. “How did you know which mech was me?”

  —Osborn to Herbert, channel AF. How did I know, Virginia? It was easy. I just watched the way each mech walked, and picked the one with the sexiest moves.—

  She felt herself blush, and was glad that out on the surface none of it would show. “You always did have a gift for bullsh.”

  Suddenly, Virginia was interrupted by an awful sound. It was the blood-chilling wail of a suit-rupture alarm, interrupting every channel, cutting through the celebration, and stopping all chatter in mid-breath.

  “Oh my gosh. Where… ?” She whirled her mech to look. Already several of the most sophisticated models were charging toward a crowd of spectators, drawn now into a cluster near one of the agro domes.

  “I can’t tell,” she started to say to Carl. But then she realized that he was already gone-launched in a propellant spray toward the site of the commotion.

  The alarm cut off abruptly, dropping to a low, mournful drone that denoted cessation of life functions.

  Somebody had died.

  Virginia started moving toward the crowd, then stopped, feeling foolish. Of course she did not have to take this particular mech over there to get a closer look. With a tongue click and a pulsed subvocal command, she transferred her point of view to a tall, spidery drone standing over the cluster of muttering humans.

  She was looking down, then. Carl and Jeffers bent over a spacesuited figure sprawled prone on the ground. The suit was slit open down to bone. Red foam still spread from the gaping opening like a gruesome fog.

  Keoki Anuenue and some of his big Hawaiians arrived. They started pushing the crowd back, ordering unnecessary mechs away. The suddenly subdued crowd drifted off, all of the festival mood taken out of them like a noisy stream turned to rock-hard ice.

  “He Kiai,” she sent to the dark-faced Polynesian who tried to usher off her observer mech. The man blinked in surprise. Then he shrugged.

  —Ua make oia, wahine.—

  Virginia did not need to be told that the figure on the ice was dead. Obviously, it was pointless even to think of slotting.

  Her mouth went dry as she saw the slim-bladed vibro-knife lying next to the corpse. Whoever had done this—taking advantage of the confusion and excitement she and Jeffers had brought about—had left his calling card alongside his handiwork.

  She sorted through the comm automatically, searching for the channel and encryption Carl and Jeff were using. At last she found the right combination.

  —… going to be hell to pay for this. Quiverian and Ould-Harrad are sure to capitalize on it.—

  —Shit. Malcolm might have been an officious bastard, and an Ortho chauvinist. But at least he wasn’t an Arcist. I could work with him. You know who’s gonna get blamed for this, of course…—

  They turned the victim over. The face of poor Malcolm stared up at her, bloated and bug-eyed from decompression.

  Virginia shut down quickly and pulled out of the mech. She opened her real eyes and found herself back in her own small, safe realm deep under the ice. She removed her neural tap and groaned as she sat up, rubbing the raw area at the back of her head.

  Oh yes, she thought. There will be hell to pay over this.

  Virginia got up and went to the tiny, hooded water tap to dampen a towel and wipe her face.

  Her scalp still hurt. She lifted her hair and bent over between the mirrored surfaces of two holo tanks to examine the neural-tap-contact area. An angry red rash was spreading, and the standard treatments didn’t seem to be working, this time. Saul had told her that he felt he might be able to come up with a new approach, but he had not been able to hide from her his anxious uncertainty.

  It didn’t take a genius to see that they were all dying.

  She thought of the giddy celebration above, so brief, so quickly shattered.

  It was nice to feel hope, for a few minutes, at least.

  Color flashed above her. She looked up as letters coalesced in the computer’s main display tank. Ohno. It was another of JonVon’s eerie, spontaneous attempts at versification… another sign that decay had not limited itself to men and moving machines.

  Lost amid the struggles,

  Cached in canted rhythms,

  Beneficence still dwells,

  Cast from forgotten Home.

  The figures moved single file across the pitted landscape, linked together by knotted ropes. They stepped carefully, slowly, as they pushed and dragged their burdens over hummocks and crater rims.

  It was a silent exodus—shapes in grimy, patched spacesuits, struggling with massive bundles, nearly weightless but cumbersome with inertia—helping each other through fields of fine, black dust, probing to avoid places where it was several meters thick. Elsewhere, they had to brave slick, icy patches and even a few dangerous fields of explosive, amorphous ice.

  From Virginia’s vantage point, atop one of Halley’s highest equatorial prominences, the horizon of their tiny world was an arc only a mile or so away… close enough almost to touch. Those below would have to cover only twenty kilometers or so, between the northern base and the caves on the comet’s other pole. And yet, watching the Arcist migration, she felt as if she were witnessing something biblical. The self-styled refugees scrambled, heaved, and turned to help one another as they carried their possessions toward the new homes that their leaders had promised them.

  They had been offered mechs to help, but it was widely known that the sophisticated roboids had been rebuilt by Jeffers and reprogrammed by Virginia… both Percells. The Arcists’ suspicious natures won over convenience, so they refused all but the simplest machines.

  Three spacesuited men stood on the prominence alongside Virginia’s new mech, also watching the Arcists depart. Carl and Jeffers touched helmets and spoke to each other in private, gesturing at the line of shuffling figures. On her other side, Saul leaned against her mech’s flank, humming an absent tune, low and atonal.

  The biblical flavor of the scene was heightened by the figure leading the single-file caravan. There, in front, using a staff as he strode in long, slow steps, was Suleiman Ould-Harrad—once Lieutenant Colonel in the Space Service, now a mystic and spiritual adviser to the Arcist clans. The tall black man had dyed his suit deep midnight blue, and his tabard was white with a single black star.

  Behind him, carrying huge burdens or drawing giant, floating sledges, followed scores—from oldsters too long out of the slots to wide-eyed children, spindly and staring from inside plastic survival bubbles.

  —At lest thirty more Orthos joined then after Malcolm’s assassination, —Carl muttered, perhaps unaware that Virginia could pick up his words through vibrations in the ice. —We have no way of knowing who actually did it, but I can tell you who profited.—

  Jeffers nodded.

  —I wish I knew how Quiverian did it.—

  They fell silent as the caravan drew past them.

  On Virginia’s other side, Saul held the tactile pads of her mech, and occasionally squeezed. She felt it deep underground, lying on her web-couch.

  A trio of suited shapes detached themselves from the migration and skim-floated upslope toward Carl. The one in the lead wore a tabard showing the gold splash of the Arc of the Living Sun. Joao Quiverian spoke on the preagreed channel and code.

  —We will expect to continue participating in the vegetable hydro domes, and take our per capita share of power from the fusion pile.—

  Carl shrugged. —If you work on the Nudge motors, as you’ve promised, we have no reason to deny you your rights. Go ahead and live at the south pole, if being near the rest of us makes you feel unclean.—

  Obviously Carl felt more relieved to have Quiverian’s fanatics out of his hair than anything else.


  —Unclean and dangerous.—Quiverian nodded as if he had completely missed Carl’s sarcasm. —We shall be better able to work on the Nudge Launchers, since they are to be situated at the south pole, anyway. All that is required is that we are given materials and supplies, and left alone.—

  —My crews remain in charge of the launchers themselves,—Jeffers insisted. Quiverian merely shrugged.

  —Just do not come into our homes.—

  Virginia noted the mood of all the participants. None of them think any of it really matters, or there’d be more yelling going on.

  Jeffers shrugged. —We’re all welcome to outfit our own tombs however we want.—The others all seemed to agree with his somber assessment.

  Except for Saul, who suddenly barked in laughter. They all turned to look at him.

  —Excuse me. Don’t mind me,—he said, waving with one hand. But everyone could see, through his faceplate, that he was fighting down a fit of hilarity.

  Carl frowned until Saul’s expression had settled down to a mere controlled smirk. Then he turned back to Quiverian. —Go on, then. Go south in peace.—

  The three Artists swiveled and departed. In turn, Carl and Jeffers strode off toward the nearby tunnel lock.

  Saul brought the mech’s hand to his faceplate, pantomiming a kiss. —I must go too, darling. Don’t wait up for me.—

  “But, but… I thought you’d come down now. We could spend some time together. Saul, you’ve been away for nearly a week.”

  —Oh, now, Virginia. We talk several times a day.—

  “Through one of my mechs!” A robot foot kicked up dark dust near his leg. “It’s not the same!”

  He nodded, grinning infuriatingly.

  —I know. I miss you too. Terribly. It’s just…—

  He shook his head.

  —It’s just that I have to verify something. It’s too damn important to wait. And I can’t tell anybody yet… not even you… not until I know for sure if…—

  His voice trailed off as he backed away toward the airlock. Virginia knew the look on his face, that faraway, scientific look. He was already somewhere else.

  “Until you know what?” she asked. “What is all this, Saul?”

  He shrugged.

  —Until I know for sure if I’m crazy… or if I’m…—

  The last word was a mumble, something in one of Saul’s foreign languages.

  “What?”

  But he only blew her a kiss then, and spun about to lope toward the tunnel entrance.

  The part of her that was above the surface, linked to a machine of metal and ceramic, watched him until the doors closed, leaving her locked out in the chilly night.

  Deep under the ice, the rest of her was no less in darkness.

  SAUL

  He found Lieutenant Commander Osborn up at Greenhouse 3. Carl stood before a forty-meter dome window, wearing stained, patched spacesuit without tabard. The spacer held a battered helmet in the crook of his arm and looked out onto the garbage-strewn plain of dirty ice.

  What a mess, Saul thought, looking over the tattered warehouse tents, the broken mooring mast where that unlucky ship Edmund Halley had once been tethered. At last Saul realized what was bothering him most. It was too dim here in the greenhouse.

  He looked up at the spider-thin towers holding one of the huge concentrator mirrors-salvaged from the space tug Delsemme’s great solar sail. Two guy wires had snapped. A whole quadrant of the big collector drooped.

  Out on the surface, a single figure picked desultorily through the debris, presumably looking for material from which to make repairs. He seemed not to be in any hurry.

  Within, things weren’t much better. The four men and three women on this shift tended the slowly moving belts of drip-irrigated sweet potatoes, clearing debris from the plastic tracks and cleaning the nutrient-spray jets. It was vital duty, but they moved without apparent enthusiasm.

  Three of the newly reprogrammed mechs followed the workers around, but nobody seemed even interested in training them in the new hydroponics procedures. The belts ground on; plants drooped in the dim illumination.

  Saul was shaken when he recognized the sigil on the workers’ clothes—the staircase and star that stood for Plateau Three.

  Spacers!. They’re the last people I’d expect to give up.

  Saul saw the expression on Carl Osborn’s face as the man gazedout over the icefield. Isuppose you can’t blame him if he’s lost hope, too, Saul thought. He’s obstinate, and made of strong stuff. But everyone has a limit.

  He’s run the same simulations I have. He knows what’ll happen if things go on this way.

  Even if everyone pitched in and cooperated, with all the mechs in the world, there would still be nowhere near enough manpower to set up the Nudge Launchers properly, let alone do all the work needed to keep things from going to hell. I’m surprised he even goes through the motions, believing that.

  Saul smiled. He planned on changing Carl’s mind about the future.

  This time, I swear, we won’t misunderstand each other. Saul hoped that his good news would make Carl forgive even Virginia’s poor choice in men.

  I never thought of it before, but with that touch of gray at the sides, and that cool gaze, he sort of resembles Simon Percell!

  “Yes?” Carl said as he approached. “You told me you were going to do a bioinventory of the colony. You’ve got a report already?”

  “That’s right.” Saul nodded. “But I don’t think you’re going to be very ready to believe it.”

  Carl lifted his shoulders. “Bad news doesn’t frighten me anymore.”

  Saul couldn’t help letting out a short, sharp laugh. The sound was abrupt, unexpected in this solemn place. Carl’s eyes narrowed.

  “You misunderstand me.” Saul grinned. “Either I have gone mad—in which case the news is neutral to good from your point of view—or I have made a discovery which bodes very well, indeed.”

  Carl stood quite still. His body remained in a spacer’s crouch, arms forward, knees bent. Only a twitch of his cheek betrayed a hint of feeling, but it was enough for Saul.

  Is hope, then, so very painful? He may hate me, but he knows I have pulled rabbits out of hats before.

  Saul reminded himself not to be too quick to judge. To a man who has seen the face of Death, and learned resignation, hope is often the most frightening thing of all.

  “Explain, please,” the younger man said softly.

  “Come with me to my lab,” Saul told him “Even with graphic displays, I’m not sure I can make it clear. But I have to share this. It may be the Infinite’s ultimate joke on a man who had the unrepentant gall to try to play God.”

  “I see,” Carl told him after half an hour. “You’ve found infestations of cometary flora and fauna in every single living crew member, in every clan, even in the few people we never unslotted at all.”

  Saul nodded. “Even Virginia’s bio-organic computer, JonVon, seems to be suffering from an infection. The thing’s not really alive, of course, but something’s gotten into it. I’m working to find a way to treat it.”

  Carl shrugged. “I’ve tried hard to get it through the Ubers’ and Arcists’ heads that their war hardly matters, anymore. Percell, Ortho, everybody isdying.”

  He started to get up. “You may have done us a service at that, Saul. Write me up a concise report for distribution. It may help us all make peace with each other, in the time we have left.’

  Saul stopped him with a gesture. “Sit down, please. I’m not finished yet.”

  Carl settled back into the webbing, reluctantly.

  “So what else is there?”

  “Remember that bioanalysis I performed on my own body?”

  “Sure.” Carl nodded. “Except for your reproductive system—and that perpetual sniffle of yours—you’re fairly healthy. I’m sorry you’re sterile, Saul. And I’m glad for you that the comet bugs seem to be killing you slower than most.”

  “Carl, they ar
en’t killing me at all.”

  The other man snapped a cold look at Saul. “Don’t be an ass! Your chart showed an asymptotically increasing.”

  “Increasing variety of infesting organisms, same as everybody else. By normal logic I can’t keep fighting all these infections much longer. Sooner or later one will wreck my immune system, opening me wide to all the others. Is that the pattern you’re thinking of?”

  Carl nodded. “I’ve studied a lot of medical biology, over my last five duration years.”

  “I guess you had to, since Svatuto quit as your doctor.”

  “Right. And since Earth stopped giving advice that was worth a tinker’s damn.” Carl grimaced, remembering bitterly. “During my shifts I’ve seen guys live for years with green-tinted skins and low fevers, fighting on like champions… only to fall to pieces—literally—when that last straw hit.”

  Saul shrugged. “That was them.”

  “And you’re different?” Carl sneered. “You’resomehow especially blessed?”

  Saul wanted to laugh. Blessed? Oh, Miriam, what has the almighty done to your simple Saul?

  He paused and took a breath. “I want to tell you about something. Let me talk to you about symbiosis.”

  Imagine a virus… a simple bundle of nucleic acid packaged inside a protein shell… a killer, a smart bomb with only one job—replication.

  Suppose this virus finds a vector, and penetrates the skin and outer membranes of a multicelled organism… perhaps a human being At that point, its job has only begun. From there it seeks its real prey, not the man so much as a single one of his trillion cells.

  Seeking might not be the proper word. For a virus is only a pseudo-lifeform. It doesn’t propel itself after vibrations or chemical traces, as protists and bacteria do. A virus only drifts, suspended in water or blood or lymph or mucus—until it strikes the surface of an unlucky cell.

  Now suppose one of these little bits of half-life is lucky. It has evaded the victim organism’s defenses. No antibodies manage to latch on to it and carry it away. It isn’t engulfed and destroyed by the immune system’s strike forces. The fortunate virus survives to bump against a likely cell in just the right way, triggering adherence.