Then we’re sitting on the curved ‘floor’ of the Lander’s cabin wall. We’re looking up at a gaping rent in the fuselage; the terrible cold pouring in.
“Wow,’ said Beowulf calmly. “That’s what I call a hard error!”
The hood of my soft suit had closed over my face, and my emergency light had come on. I was breathing. Nothing seemed to be broken.
Troubles never come singly. We’d been hit by one of those Centaurs, the ice-and-rock cosmic debris scheduled to give Jupiter Moons Station a fancy lightshow. They’d been driven off course by the Mag Storm.
Not that I realised this at the time, and not that it mattered.
“Beowulf, if I can open a channel, will you get yourself into that quarantine chest now? You’ll be safe from Mag flares in there.”
“What about Tris?”
“She’s fine. Her safe room’s hardened.”
“What about you, Magistrate Davison?”
“I’m hardened too. Just get into the box, that’s a good kid.”
I clambered to the instruments. The virus chest had survived, and I could access it. I put Beowulf away. The cold was stunning, sinking south of -220. I needed to stop breathing soon, before my lungs froze. I used the internal panels that had been shaken loose to make a shelter, plus Trisnia’s bod (she wasn’t feeling anything): and crawled inside.
I’m not a believer, but I know how to pray when it will save my life. As I shut myself down: as my blood cooled, as my senses faded out, I sought and found the level of meditation I needed. I became a thread of contemplation, enfolded and protected, deep in the heart of the fabulous; the unending complexity of everything: all the worlds, and all possible worlds...
WHEN I OPENED my eyes Simon was looking down at me.
“How do you feel?”
“Terrific,” I joked. I stretched, flexing muscles in a practiced sequence. I was breathing normally, wearing a hospital gown, and the air was chill but tolerable. We weren’t in the crippled Lander.
“How long was I out?”
“A few days. The kids are fine, but we had to heat you up slowly –” He kept talking: I didn’t hear a word. I was staring in stunned horror at the side of my left hand, the stain of blackened flesh –
I couldn’t feel it yet, but there was frostbite all down my left side. I saw the sorrow in my housemate’s bright eyes. Hard error, the hardest: I’d lost hull integrity, I’d been blown wide open. And now I saw the signs. Now I read them as I should have read them; now I understood.
I HAD THE dream for the third time, and it was real. The doctor was my GP, her face was unfamiliar because we’d never met across a desk before; I was never ill. She gave me my options. Outer Reaches could do nothing for me, but there was a new treatment back on Earth. I said angrily I had no intention of returning. Then I went home and cried my eyes out.
Simon and Arc had been recovered without a glitch, thanks to that massive hardsuit. Cardew and his crew were getting treated for minor memory trauma. Death would have been more dangerous for Trisnia, because she was so young, but sentient AIs never ‘die’ for long. They always come back.
Not me. I had never been cloned, I couldn’t be cloned, I was far too old. There weren’t even any good partial copies of Romanz Jolie Davison on file. Uploaded or downloaded, the new Romy wouldn’t be me. And being me; being human, was my whole value, my unique identifier –
Of course I was going back. But I hated the idea, hated it!
“No you don’t,” said Arc, gently.
She pointed, and we three, locked in grief, looked up. My beloved stars shimmered above us; the hazy stars of the blue planet.
MY JOURNEY ‘HOME’ took six months. By the time I reached the Ewigen Schnee clinic, in Switzerland (the ancient federal republic, not a Space Hotel; and still a nice little enclave for rich people, after all these years), catastrophic systems failure was no longer an abstraction. I was very sick.
I faced a different doctor, in an office with views of alpine meadows and snowy peaks. She was youngish, human; I thought her name was Lena. But every detail was dulled and I still felt as if I was dreaming.
We exchanged the usual pleasantries.
“Romanz Jolie Davison... Date of birth...” My doctor blinked, clearing the display on her retinal super-computers to look at me directly, for the first time. “You’re almost three hundred years old!”
“Yes.”
“That’s incredible.”
“Thank you,” I said, somewhat ironically. I was not looking my best.
“Is there anything at all you’d like to ask me, at this point?”
I had no searching questions. What was the point? But I hadn’t glimpsed a single other patient so far, and this made me a little curious.
“I wonder if I could meet some of your other clients, your successes, in person, before the treatment? Would that be possible?”
“You’re looking at one.”
“Huh?”
My turn to be rather rude, but she didn’t look super-rich to me.
“I was terminally ill,” she said, simply. “When the Corporation was asking for volunteers. I trust my employers and I had nothing to lose.”
“You were terminally ill?” Constant nausea makes me cynical and badtempered. “Is that how your outfit runs its longevity trials? I’m amazed.”
“Ms Davison,” she said politely. “You too are dying. It’s a requirement.”
I’d forgotten that part.
I’D BEEN TOLD that though I’d be in a medically-induced coma throughout, I “might experience mental discomfort”. Medics never exaggerate about pain. Tiny irritant maggots filled the shell of my paralysed body, creeping through every crevice. I could not scream, I could not pray. I thought of Beowulf in his corrective captivity.
WHEN I SAW Dr Lena again I was weak, but very much better. She wanted to talk about convalescence, but I’d been looking at Ewigen Schnee’s records, I had a more important issue, a thrilling discovery. I asked her to put me in touch with a patient who’d taken the treatment when it was in trials.
“The person’s name’s Lei –”
Lena frowned, as if puzzled. I reached to check my cache, needing more detail. It wasn’t there. No cache, no cloud. It was a terrifying moment: I felt as if someone had cut off my air. I’d had months to get used to this situation but it could still throw me, completely. Thankfully, before I humiliated myself by bursting into tears, my human memory came to the rescue.
“Original name Thomas Leigh Garland; known as Lee. Lei means garland, she liked the connection. She was an early volunteer.”
“Ah, Lei!” Dr Lena read her display. “Thomas Garland, yes... Another veteran. You were married? You broke up, because of the sex change?”
“Certainly not! I’ve swopped around myself, just never made it meatpermanent. We had other differences.”
Having flustered me, she was shaking her head. “I’m sorry, Romy, it won’t be possible –”
To connect this call, I thought.
“Past patients of ours cannot be reached.”
I changed the subject and admired her foliage plants: a feature I hadn’t noticed on my last visit. I was a foliage fan myself. She was pleased that I recognised her favourites; rather scandalised when I told her about my bioengineering hobby, my knee-high teak forest –
The life support chair I no longer needed took me back to my room; a human attendant hovering by. All the staff at this clinic were human and all the machines were non-sentient, which was a relief, after the experiences of my journey. I walked about, testing my recovered strength, examined myself in the bathroom mirrors; and reviewed the moment when I’d distinctly seen green leaves, through my doctor’s hand and wrist, as she pointed out one of her rainforest beauties. Dr Lena was certainly not a bot, a data being like my Arc, taking ethereal human form. Not on Earth! Nor was she treating me remotely, using a virtual avatar: that would be breach of contract. There was a neurological component to the treatment, but I hadn’t been warned about minor hallucinations.