"You do, because of the gulf in yourself, and because sometimes you ask those questions that hurt you."
Rhodane hesitated with her hand poised over the cut-off switch. With an effort of will she drew the hand back but, almost concurrent with that motion, the blackness in her head expanded. "I can't… Orduval."
"No, you can't, because you are constrained. You have no choice but Brumal, Rhodane. Once you get there, will you do something for me?"
"What… I…"
"Look into your gulf and admit to yourself what you see there."
Rhodane's hand slapped down on the cut-off switch, and it seemed that same switch operated simultaneously inside her head.
Now, back to those offers from Combine and Fleet…
McCrooger
Viral slippage…
Down on its side the pod moved in a way I recognised at once. Water slopping through the hole where I'd removed the hatch below the nose cone, now down beside me, confirmed that this had been a splashdown rather than a dustdown. I felt horribly sick but could not throw up, and feverish, while pain rolled through my body, yet was not centred around my greatest injury. I damned Iffildus and Earth Central, wondering if this was enough to finally tip the balance, then decided I must just continue without any expectation of death.
Iffildus was a haiman—a human highly augmented with computer hardware—an Earth Central agent and brilliant biophysicist who went rogue. Though the Spatterjay virus makes us practically immortal, as well as very strong and dangerous, on Spatterjay itself there is a natural substance, extracted from the bile ducts of large oceanic leeches, which can kill the virus. It is called sprine and is our get-out clause, our easy way out should the prospect of endless life become unbearable. The investigators supposed Iffildus did what he did because he felt hoopers to be a danger to the Polity. He mutated the virus using advanced nanotech to create a strain he called IF21. I received it in a bite from one of the leeches in his laboratory when I went to find him. Call it a mirror of the Spatterjay virus: it unravels where the original binds, it deconstructs, it produces sprine to kill the original virus, and it grows irrevocably. It is not yet certain that it will kill me, but then it is not certain that walking through the fusion flame of an interplanetary shuttle will kill; it's just very very probable.
With great difficulty I wrapped safety straps, attached to a couch, about each hand, then placed my feet against the couch itself and pushed back. The broken bones in both my forearms crunched and grated, and already there came some resistance from the rapid healing that had already occurred, but I gritted my teeth and kept pushing with my legs until both forearms seemed relatively straightened. I held them in that position and began slowly counting down from five thousand, which was usually how long it took for the viral fibres to rebuild enough bone to stand up against the tension of my muscles. All the time I seemed to gaze into a long dark tunnel that was ready to snap shut at any moment. Finally reaching the end of my countdown, I paused for a moment, then dropped back to the floor and unwound the safety straps. With some relief I felt the nausea and pain receding, the tunnel opening and light shining in. Now I really needed something to eat, because already what was known on Spatterjay as 'injury hunger' began hitting me.
Even without the added complication of IF21, hooper physiology is a strange and dangerous thing. The Spatterjay virus sprouts as fibres from the cells of its host, not destroying them but linking them together in a steadily toughening network. It is in fact mutualistic in that it actually increases its host's survivability. Thus a hooper can live forever and recover from the most hideous injuries. The downside of this is that the virus can actually alter the DNA and physical structure of its host. An eclectic collector of the genomes of all sorts of other creatures, the virus will use that mishmash of coding to increase its host's survivability. So a man who has lost his legs might end up with the slimy foot of a mollusc, or one who has lost his head might end up with a leech mouth sprouting between his shoulders. Unchecked, the virus will make such changes even though its host remains uninjured. Earth foods and many others will provide nutrition for the human body but very little for the virus, and thus act as a check upon its meddling. The food here in this planetary system, being very little different from Earth food, therefore served the same purpose. Injury uses up resources and if the ensuing hunger is not sated the virus moves into survival mode and can rapidly start making those physical changes already mentioned. The result can be monstrous, and not entirely sane.
However, other things first. I picked up the ceiling panel from where it lay on an acceleration couch, glanced outside at the familiar heave of ocean, then banged the panel back into place over its protruding bolt stubs. I then found a tool compartment beside the entry hatch, which was now above my head, and from this removed a small hammer which I used to rivet over some of these stubs to hold the panel in place. Now, at least, our danger of sinking decreased. I finally turned to my companion.
Of course, being a hooper, I got off lightly. He was not so lucky. The impact had snapped his spine so violently that bone protruded from his skin and blood had sprayed round inside his survival suit. Quick, anyway: he was spasming into death within a minute of our splashdown. I stooped down to pick him up, and laid him on one of the couches, securing him in place with the safety straps. There seemed little else I could do for him. So pathetic, so wasteful and stupid. I didn't even know his name. It was with a feeling almost of guilt that I started opening food lockers so I could tend to my own needs.
Noting how things were beginning to get a bit stuffy inside my ship survival suit, I removed it completely, since in order to eat I would need to remove the head covering anyway. Beyond its now depleted air supply it served little purpose, being composed only of a lightly reinforced plastic.
First I noticed the cold—my breath huffing vapour clouds into the air—then a smell like strong bleach hit me, and my lungs tightened. I recognised chlorine gas, though it was not very strong inside the pod, which would still be scrubbing its own air and adding oxygen. But should I need to leave the pod, I would be in pain for a while before my body adapted. And of course there would be the risk of further viral slippage, of further gains by IF21, and of death.
I munched my way through several ration packs containing compressed blocks of some kind of meat or of a chewy cake-like substance highly flavoured with vitamins. My hunger slowly receded but, with the repair of my body still ongoing, I knew it would soon return. Washing the food down with a litre of water, I then turned to the central column, sat astride it and began checking the pod computer.
The screen was still showing the schematic of the escape-pod. Though familiar with the touch controls of my palm screen, and these being similar, it still took me a little while to figure out just what this computer encompassed. Within half an hour I discovered that the pod was not transmitting a distress signal and that the radio was 'Access Denied'. Of course, this could be due to damage caused by the impact, but I rather doubted it. I searched for my gifts from Yishna and Duras, hooked both the gun and knife on my belt, and dropped the spare ammo clips into pockets around the waist of my shirt, then turned on the small palm screen. It certainly powered up, but provided no communication link. The Sudorians did possess their own com network or Internet, but this device was not finding it. I quickly discovered that it would work anywhere on Sudoria itself—its range being hundreds of miles—but here on Brumal it lay many thousands of miles away from the nearest relay transmitters, which were all aboard Fleet ships in distant orbit. Time to take a look around outside then.