And then, like an idiot, he managed to lose his way in the blowing snow several times, and while hypothermia was not a risk—not in his high-end wellcloth bodysuit—by the time he found his way back he had become rather seriously dehydrated. He spent his first ten minutes sitting in a chair drinking warm water, and then spent his next ten minutes peeing it back out again. Only then did he feel fit enough to approach the hut's communication gear and raise his neighbors.
Two of them arrived by tractor before the shift had ended and saw to his injuries as best they could, but what he really needed was evacuation to the Domesville hospital or, in a pinch, the one in Bupsville. What he got instead was a ten-day tractor ride to the southern outpost of Aurora, where they had to rebreak his bones and then set them the old-fashioned way, by sealing his shoulder in piezoelectric foam while a pair of robots pulled his arms out straight. He spent four surly weeks in a convalescent ward, and when he was finally fit to travel again, he did not return to the Polar Well, but instead caught a tractor north to the print plate factory on the southern outskirts of Bupsville.
He had had it—had it—with this fax shortage, and he was bloody well going to do something about it, though he couldn't imagine exactly what. Not then, anyway.
Chapter nineteen.
Faxworks
With the obvious exception of the Orbital Tower, buildings on P2 tended not to be more than two or three stories tall, and in fact one story was by far the norm. This was partly because the stronger materials were very expensive, making it cheaper to build out rather than up, but mostly it had to do with the hugeness and emptiness of the planet itself. Instinctively, people seemed to want to cover it with human things to whatever extent they could. With more than five times the land area of Earth and a millionth the population, they were in little danger of overurbanizing it, or even leaving much of a mark. But they did what they could.
Even the unstoppable blackberry infestation, and the plagues of mice and “indigenous” pool beetles which followed along with it, covered barely more than a tenth of the surface, clinging mainly to the coastlines and the humid equator. Which of course were the planet's most desirable places; the rest was mainly featureless desert, flat plains, and low, careworn mountains. By some estimates, it would take ten thousand years to fill up all the nooks and crannies of this world with macroscopic life-forms. And even then, the low levels of metal in the crust—especially iron—meant that the soil was basically sand, and would support jungles and farmland only where carefully constructed soils were laid on top. And that required fax machines and elements from the asteroid mines, both of which were in decidedly short supply.
At any rate, the Faxworks—which Conrad had never seen up close—was architecturally consistent with the rest of the world: broad and flat and sprawling. The complex was surprisingly large—twenty buildings covering nearly a square kilometer altogether—and the whole area bustled with activity: people and robots scurrying along, automated tractors and forklifts rolling on paved lanes between the buildings, and loudspeakers blaring with voices, and with the chirps and screeches of acoustically broadcast data.
As Conrad approached, he saw another traveler walking up toward the facility from the other side. Or rather, waddling up, for it was a dwarf angel, with gigantic wings and pectoral muscles and a tiny, misshapen head atop a skin-and-bones body dressed in dingy feathers. The expression on the angel's face was both vacuous and sad, as well it should be, for it had one of the worst-designed body forms Conrad had ever seen. P2's air was thick, but not that thick, and no matter how sorely the dream of flight might burn in the souls of human beings, in biological practice it remained elusive.
You could stick wings on a human body, sure, but if you wanted it to fly you had to build up the chest muscles and lose a lot of weight everywhere else. With proper materials the wings themselves could be tough and nearly weightless, but “tissues” of this sort were rigid and fundamentally dead, like insect wings. There had been some experiments in piezoelectric deformation to allow the membranes to curl and flex, but integrating that with the human nervous system was an enormous challenge, and who on P2 had the time?
Anyway, the sort of people who wanted to fly were also the sort who wanted to feel the wind beneath their wings. They wanted something like flesh, covered by something like feathers or leather or scales. And that took more muscle still. The sad result was a creature that couldn't really fly or walk. Turkeys, some people called them, and what a stinging truth it must be for the angels that heard it! The most pathetic cases came when would-be angels—perhaps inspired by that old poem of Bascal's—sought in desperation to reduce the mass of their brains. In the end, most of them still couldn't fly, and lacked the capacity to understand why. You saw them out on the street sometimes, forlornly flapping their wings, their eyes on the distant, unattainable sky.
The body form was reversible, of course—you could always be human again—but you had to ask for it. You had to want it, to be smart enough to formulate the question. Conrad remembered a case, years ago, when a young angel's family, intent on restoring his humanity, had kidnapped him and shoved him forcibly through a hospital fax. They were promptly arrested for it, and in their absence the kid, like any addict, had gone right back to his old body form. “I have to keep trying,” he'd told a news channel before stepping through the plate. “‘Impossible' isn't in my vocabulary.”
Ah, overreach: that most basic of human sins. How could you blame an angel for trying? For wanting heaven itself? Maybe when we die, Conrad sometimes wanted to tell them. Maybe we'll all be whole someday. Or perhaps the angels could become miners, and spend their off hours flapping through the open spaces of Element Pit.
This particular individual paused at the edge of the compound, in confusion or uncertainty or fear.
“H-h-help?” it said to Conrad.
And Conrad, not wanting to be rude, tried to look at the thing without pity. “Yes?”
“H-h-help me. I . . . need something. I miss . . . something.”
Conrad shrugged. “I'll . . .” Try? Do my best for you? Leave you here in despair? “I'll send someone out for you.”
There were no gates, no guards, and Conrad was free to walk right up to the premises and in between the buildings with no one paying him a second glance. Which was all well and good, but what he really wanted was to find Brenda. She ran this place, and if he wanted answers she was the first and most obvious person to talk to.
He tried a passerby. “Excuse me, where can I find Brenda Bohobe?”
“Everywhere, fool!” the woman said, hurrying along with her business.
Conrad tried two others with similar results, but then he managed to grab a slender, humanoid robot by the wrist. It stopped walking and turned its blank metal face toward him expectantly.
“Assist me,” he instructed. “Lead me to the director of this place.”
The robot paused, whirring and clicking as its neck swiveled slightly, then said in a self-consciously mechanical voice, “Please release me. I am on assignment.”