The Heart of the Comet

by David Brin

  Why not be optimistic? It couldn’t hurt, after all that’s happened. At worst Saul Lintz is proven as a fool. At best… well, at best we may even finish the Nudge Launchers, move Halley, actually get on with the mission.

  But Carl knew that even miracles have their unwelcome consequences. What will hope do to the tribes? he wondered.

  That’s when real infighting is going to come, over where we target this old iceball to fall thirty years from now.

  VIRGINIA

  Virginia wiped at her eyes. Without any gravity to speak of, tears upwelled and clung in quivering beads held together by surface tension. You had to shake your head or blot them. It was that or wear little saltwater lenses and watch the world refracted through your pain.

  “Is he going to be all right?” she asked. Her voice trembled like a little girl’s, but Virginia wasn’t ashamed. Lots of people cared as much for certain objects as for human beings. And JonVon was a lot more than a Raggedy Ann doll.

  “I think…” Saul’s voice faded in and out. His head was immersed in the holo tank, a cubic meter of neatly squared simulation that looked like an aquarium filled with some bizarre concoction, a chef’s nightmare of bright bits and pieces. It was a color-coded depiction of the intricate chemistry of a colloidal-stochastic computer, and on this deep level all of her expertise was useless. Virginia might be a fair programmer, but she knew next to nothing about molecules, or what made pseudoliving things ill.

  Saul mumbled. She could not follow what he was doing with his hands, deep inside the holo, but whatever he discovered seemed to satisfy him. He sat back. “Display off;” he told the diagnostic computer.

  “Well?” Virginia’s legs tensed nervously and she had to grip the carpeting with her toes to prevent being cast free of the floor. “Well? Tell me. I can take it.”

  Saul took her hand and his blue eyes seemed to shine. She gasped as she read the answer in them. “He’s going to be all right!” She yipped, whirled around, and threw herself into his arms. “You fixed him!”

  Oh, what an understanding man, she thought, to hold her close and laugh while her teary eyes perforce left trails on his cheek and she snuffled happily on his neck. Oh, how warm and strong and kind.

  His hand stroked her hair, near the dressing on the back of her neck where his new medications had fought down her rash. A week ago anyone brushing her near there would have sent her quailing in pain. But it didn’t hurt anymore at all. The infection was nearly gone.

  It was nice to be touched again.

  “You must think I’m an idiot,” she said at last as she took his handkerchief and sat up on his lap to blow her nose.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Well, that shows how much you know. I am one. Carrying on like this over a machine.”

  He brushed her loose black hair back into place. “Then. I’m an idiot too. I was nervous as hell about this. So was Carl.”

  Virginia sniffed. “Carl’s worried because JonVon’s far and away the best computer we have left. Carl can’t run the Nudge without him.”

  “So? That’s plenty enough reason.”

  “I suppose so. But still, he didn’t really care.” Virginia’s fists tightened. Actually, what made her mad at Carl was something else. She was still seething, a bit, over what he had said about Saul.

  I’ve always like Carl, she thought. A lot. But he can be so damned pigheaded. It’s been weeks since Saul started sharing serums made from his own blood, and only now, after one incredible cure after another, is Carl finally admitting that a miracle has really happened.

  Of course that was unfair. Carl had lived for so long with the eroding despair, with the assumption that all was lost, that hope would take some getting used to.

  They would all have to do some adjusting.

  Much had changed since the Arcist exodus. Now, thanks to Saul’s cures, more and more people were being pulled from the sleep slots, treated, and put to work building and testing the devices that would be needed when Halley’s Comet was to be turned from drifting iceball into spaceship.

  Of course, Saul’s methods couldn’t repair impossible damage, or raise the irreversibly dead. But they hoped to bring the colony’s active population up to two hundred or so, more than half the number originally planned when the Edmund and four sail tugs were cast forth from Earth.

  Already the moribund launcher sites down south were humming. The Arcists seemed to be working with Jeffers’s technicians— and even with Sergeov’s Uber Percells— in a new atmosphere of cooperation.

  If only it can last, she wished. Somehow, though I want it to, I can’t believe it will.

  “Let me see your arm,” she insisted. When Saul held it out she traced the tracks of numerous healing punctures. “Which one was from when you drew blood for JonVon’s serum?”

  He laughed. “How should I know, Ginnie? I’ll tell you, though. I admit that this was my hardest case, so far. I never knew bio-organics processors were so complicated.” His expression turned thoughtful. “Actually, the infection agent was subtle, a prionlike, self-replicating molecule that somehow got inside JonVon’s cool-case during the years we were asleep. If it had been allowed to go on much longer…” He shrugged.

  “But you caught it in time.” Virginia was still nervous enough that it came out as a question, in spite of her confidence in Saul.

  He smiled. “Oh, our surrogate son will be fine. Using symbiosis methods, I turned the molecule into a variant JonVon can use in his self-correcting systems. It actually seems to make him a little faster. You’ll have to evaluate the effects yourself, of course.”

  Virginia had blinked when Saul referred to JonVon as their “surrogate son.” Of course now Saul was just like her, unable to have any more children of his own. She realized a little guiltily that this made her feel even closer to him. They would comfort each other, now.

  Oh, we’ll have our problems. As time passes, our relationship will never be perfect. That only happens in storybooks.

  But a line of verse came to her, quite suddenly, as some of her poems had more and more often, lately. It was haiku.

  Under winter’s tent,

  Our children— seeds under snow,

  I grasp your warm scent…

  Saul’s gaze was distant. “Actually, some of the techniques for working with colloidal organics seem applicable to biological cloning. Working on JonVon gave me some ideas.”

  She laughed and tousled his hair, now turning astonishingly brown at the roots— though Saul had told her he wasn’t actually getting “younger,” only “perfect for a middle-aged man.”

  “You’re always getting ideas. Come on, Saul. I want to talk to JonVon.”

  She pushed off toward the webbing by her control station and gathered up her hair with one hand. She peeled back the dressing, uncovering her neural tap.

  “Uh, you might want to wait.”

  Her eyes flashed. “Is that an order, Doctor?”

  He shrugged, smiling. “I guess you’d only do it the moment my back was turned, anyway.”

  She grinned. “It’s been weeks. Much too long for an unrepentant dataline junkie like me.”

  She lay back on the webbing. Her little assistant mech, Wendy, whirred up and presented the well-worn tapline, which locked into place with a soft snicking sound. She felt Saul slip alongside her as she settled back and closed her eves to the familiar throbbing along the direct line to her brain.

  How are you, Johnny? she queried, shaping the subvocal words carefully, as one spoke to a child who has been ill.

  HELLO, VIRGINIA. I HAVE SOME POETRY FOR YOU.

  The words shimmered in space above their heads, as well as echoing along her acoustic nerve. She could tell, just from the clarity of the tones, that things were much, much better.

  Not yet, Johnny. First I want to run a complete diagnostic on you.

  ALL RIGHT, VIRGINIA. INITIATING “MR FIXIT” SUBPERSONA.

  Saul had never seen this simulated personality before He
laughed as a crystal-clear image formed, of a man in grimy overalls, wiping his hands on a cloth. Behind the workman scurried assistants, dashing about carrying stethoscopes and voltmeters and giant wrenches over a great scaffolding. Within, a huge, cumbersome machine clanked and throbbed. Steam hissed and a low humming permeated everything.

  A clipboard appeared out of nowhere. The master mechanic smiled as he put on a pair of bifocals and scanned the list.

  WE’RE CHECKIN’ IT OUT, MISS. PRELIMINARY RESULTS LOOK PRETTY GOOD.

  OVER-ALL SYSTEMS STATUS HAS RETURNED TO NOMINAL. SELF-CORRECTION ROUTINES NOW OPERATING ON “TELL-ME-THRICE” BASIS, RELAXED FROM QUINTUPLE CHECKING REQUIRED DURING THE EMERGENCY. SOFTWARE MAINTENANCE REPORTS THAT PROGRAMS ARE RUNNING AT NORMAL OR BETTER EFFICIENCY.

  WE SEEM TO HAVE SERIOUS PROBLEMS IN ONLY ONE AREA, NOW.

  Well? What is it? she inquired.

  Mr. Fixit looked at her over the rims of his glasses.

  I HAVE SOME POETRY FOR YOU VIRGINIA

  Her head jerked in surprise. The same exact words…

  Something was going on here.

  “What is it, Ginnie?” Saul asked, feeling some of her concern over his own link.

  “Nothing, probably…” Virginia muttered. She concentrated on sending probes down several avenues at once to find out for herself what was behind this.

  It felt so smooth! Was it just in comparison with JonVon’s former, wounded state? Or did it seem easier than ever to cruise these channels in the data streams? It was almost as if she could enter in true thought, instead of using simulations the computer provided to mimic the experience. Blocs of memory were represented by metaphors-card catalogs, filing cabinets, mile-long bookshelves-and rows of wizened storytellers…

  There. She came upon a barrier. Something guarded behind a high abates and tightly locked gate. A blockage. A big accumulation of data, hidden away, inaccessible.

  “I think he’s just a little constipated,” she said. Saul barked a sudden laugh, and cut it off just as quickly when he sensed her seriousness.

  It’s big. What has JonVon got stuffed up in here?

  She poked away at the jam with metaphorical levers that were actually carefully crafted mathematical subroutines.

  Try a Kleinfeldt Transform… a rotation mapping… yes.

  A resorting routine manifested itself as a key that kept changing shape until it slipped into the lock, and turned. Light streamed forth.

  Well I’ll be a blue-nosed mongoose!

  “Five hundred terabytes of poetry!” She gasped aloud. “And half of it is flashed as triple-A-priority data!”

  “Poetry? Priority data?” Saul asked. “I don’t get it.”

  “Neither do I.” Then Virginia stopped. “Oh!”

  Amazed, she turned toward Saul and opened her eyes. He looked back at her.

  “JonVon knew he was sick! And so he isolated part of himself, in order to save important information for me. He used a sub-cache I’d already double-guarded… my poetry!”

  She looked back up at the ceiling, staring. “Five hundred terabytes… the overflow spilled into everything JonVon did. No wonder Carl kept stumbling over apparently random poems while he was doing routine calculations.”

  Saul’s voice was bemused. “But poetry!”

  She nodded. “Let’s see what this urgent scribbling is all about.”

  Presentus with a sample selection of triple-A-priority poetry, please, she asked Mr. Fixit.

  The dungareed figure shrugged.

  THANKS, MISS. IT WAS GETTIN’ CROWDED IN HERE.

  He vanished, and suddenly words flowed.

  United States Patent Office

  Tr series— 87239345-56241

  Where is springtime,

  Here on the borderlands of Sol?

  Where…

  Miniaturized Robotic Power Supply

  Where stars, unwinking,

  Rule a dark…

  Issued May 8, 2089

  Rule a dark domain—

  To Virginia it was one of the weirdest versifications she had ever seen. It was as if the machine had interweaved poetry with some sort of document. She was beginning to be concerned that this was a sign of yet another, until now hidden, illness. But then she heard Saul laugh out loud and clap his hands.

  “Of course!” he cried. “The urgent data has been shuffled in among the poems in order to protect it.”

  “Yessss.” She nodded, seeing what he meant. “But… but what is the data? What was so important that it had to be hidden away in my special file for safety”

  “Look at the date, dear. Only seven years ago. This stuff was sent from home! And at a glance there seem to be volumes, libraries of the stuff!”

  She was confused. “Carl said nothing about this.”

  “He didn’t know. Ould-Harrad was in charge then, and Carl was still in the slots. Ould-Harrad must’ve just ignored it. He was starting to get all mystical even then.”

  “But Earth Control has been so stingy with help—-”

  “Who said anything about Earth Control?” Saul laughed again. “Here, I’ll bet I can sift through and find the cover letter.”

  “The cover letter?”

  But Saul was already at work. He sent commands so quickly, so deftly, that Virginia felt a strange contradiction, a touch of jealousy at someone else being so familiar with her domain, combined with pride that he had learned so well. Pages, sheaves, volumes, flickered past in an automatic sort that pulled the data from reams and reams of poetry.

  A few flickering lines of verse caught her eye. Not half bad, she thought. JonVon improved, even when he was sick. If it were sent Earthside, some of it might get published… yet another fallen Turing test.

  “Here! Here it is,” Saul announced. “It’s a letter in video form.”

  There was a multicolored blur, and then a new image flickered before them. She knew t once that it was not another JonVon simulation. This was a real, recorded transmission.

  A woman with close-cropped hair sat at a console, wearing a tight skinsuit. Her face had that high-cheeked puffiness that came from a long time spent living in low gravity. She was made up in an odd manner, lightninglike strokes of color streaking her forehead from her temples in a fashion that must have been current when the message was sent.

  Behind the woman there was a broad window-wall showing a scene of vast, reddish deserts, observed from high altitude. Puffy clouds of sand blew in storms across immense wastelands. Somehow, Virginia knew that this was not a weather-wall depiction, but the real thing.

  “Halley Colony,” the woman intoned. Her accent was one Virginia could not quite place, but the tension in her voice was unmistakable. “Halley, this is Phobos Base calling. We have listened to your story, heard the agony of your lost hopes, which are ours as well. We note the callous treatment you have received, and are ashamed.

  “To a few of us, this crime has gone beyond forbearance. We take this risk, in transmitting to you these tokens of our good will, because not to do so would be to join the soullessness of a generation too smug and comfortable to care about past promises. Too lost in their pleasures to remember.”

  The woman paused. Her anxiety was apparent in the whiteness of her knuckles as her hands held the edges of the console.

  “If you love us, do not answer or bother to thank us in any way. Do not mention this to Earth Control. These gifts are evidence that a few, on Earth and in space, have not forgotten our kinfolk, those who voyage through the cold reaches and down the river of despair.

  “May the Almighty guide you to your destinies, people of the Comet… people of deepest space.”

  The image flickered and was gone. There followed a steady flow of indexes, texts, designs, patents, music. Saul scanned the lists, excitedly, but for a few moments Virginia could only blink, again looking out through tears. She seemed still to hear the Phobos woman’s voice, echoing within her mind.

  “JonVon was right,” Virginia whispered, though at the moment
Saul was too involved, shouting over one title after another pouring forth from the broken logjam of the computer’s memory, to pay close attention.

  “JonVon was right. This belonged under poetry. There was no other place for it.”

  PART 5

  WITH THE BRUSH OF A FEATHER

  You only live twice:

  Once when you are born,

  And once when you look death in the face.

  —Bassho

  Japanese poet,

  1643–94

  SAUL

  Existence. Life. Awareness.

  The words were often used as synonyms, but he knew that actually they were all three very different things. Three stages in Creation.

  Did the proverbial tree falling in an empty forest make a sound?

  Could that question even have been asked before all three stages had come about?

  Existence supposedly began nearly twenty thousand million years ago—in a hot flux of quarks and leptons when time itself whirled, as if blindfolded, and stabbed out at something that it thereby named the Future. The universe could have taken a myriad of other forms by happenstance—by tiny variations in chance and dimension. Had even one of the basic physical constants been a fraction off, life would never have erupted out of clay-catalyzed chemistry, billions of arbitrary intervals later.

  But Life did erupt… self-organizing, self-replicating, and other-organizing. Life had a tendency, from the very beginning, to alter its surroundings, its environment.

  But that was not the end of it. Then there came the third creation. There came awareness…

  The midget gibbons flew down the tunnel ahead of Saul, chirping at each other and swinging lithely from cables stapled to the moss-covered ice. At an intersection they pivoted and regarded Saul, wide brown eyes blinking in question.

  “Patience, children,” he told them. “Let Papa read the tunnel signs. We’re supposed to meet a Ginnie at Blue Stone Cave.”