They squeezed through the thick, oily flaps of a lock-leaf plant… vegetation that acted much like an airlock, for it would react to a leak by plastering leaf atop leaf until air was sealed in on the uncracked side. It was an effective technique, but Saul still found it uncomfortable as they wormed through the sticky mass. The gibbons shuddered, but bore it uncomplainingly.
Here, energy from the fusion piles was rationed, scantily used. In the pale light of his glow-bulb, the passages glittered as he remembered them from the earliest days, with the dark, speckled beauty of native carbonaceous rock and clathrate snow. Saul’s nose twitched at the almondlike scent of cyanide and nitrous oxides… made pleasant by the gene-crafted symbionts in his blood, but stronger than he ever remembered.
He stopped to take samples at a few places along the way. Each time his guide waited patiently, unperturbed.
The traces are getting richer the deeper we go… as I’ve suspected for years now.
It made little sense, of course. Why should the protolife forms pervade the primitive material more and more thickly down here, where the periodic waves of warmth from successive sun passages never penetrated? It was a mystery, but there it was. True, the more complex forms had developed higher up, but the basic stuff was thickest toward the core.
He sighed. Questions. Always questions. How could life be so kind—and so cruel—as to offer up wonders to solve, and give so little time, so few clues?
Their journey resumed, passing narrow clefts where an occasional, green-coated figure could be seen tending a garden of giant mushrooms, or sitting before a small, glowing console, working for the colony, but where she or he chose.
Saul felt enclosed. The ice was heavy, massive all around him. It was oppressive, dank, dark. We’re close, very close to the center, he felt.
“We have arrived.” Barkley swam to one side. Saul looked dubiously at narrow tunnel, barely a man’s width cross. He cleared his throat.
“Stay here, Simon, Shulamit.”
The midget gibbons blinked unhappily. He had to peel them off and plant them on the wall. They watched him wide-eyed as he stooped and crawled into the musty passage.
The claustrophobic feeling grew as he crept. The walls and floor had been rubbed icy and smooth by countless pilgrimages. Somehow, the tunnel felt much colder even than the passages outside. It was only a few meters, but by the time a soft light appeared ahead, Saul was feeling a sharp tension.
When he reached the opening, he simply stared for a few moments.
Four tiny glow-phosphors glimmered above the corners of a carved stone bier. Upon this lay a man-shaped figure. Suleiman Ould-Harrad.
Saul floated out into the chamber. No gravity tugged at him. He was completely weightless.
He grasped one horn of the altarlike bier. The symbiotic Halleyforms had dropped away, leaving Ould-Harrad looking like an old, old man who had gone to his rest after more years than he would have chosen. The eyes, closed in final sleep, nevertheless gave an impression of severe dedication—to his people and to the deity who had so disappointed, yet nurtured him.
Saul paid his respects, remembering.
At last. he looked around. Virginia had spoken of a “bequest.” And yet the chamber wasbare empty save the Blow-bulbs, the corpse, and the carved bier.
“Wait a minute…” Saul muttered. He swiveled upside down and peered closer at the stone. “I… I don’t believe it.”
He fumbled at his belt and pulled forth his rarely used flashlight. Its sharp beam momentarily blinded him and he turned it down while blinking away spots.
Then Saul touched the stone in wonder, his hand bright under the narrow light, stroking faint but clearly symmetrical outlines. His voice was hushed.
“This is what Suleiman found, when he sought his Truth at the heart of the comet. This…”
This was a scientific discovery, and more.
This was astonishment.
He traced the ribs of an ancient sea creature, fossilized n sedimentary rock. Saul stared at the patterned ribcage, at the rough-edged, half-opened mouth, gaping as if caught in mid-chase, frozen in hungry pursuit…and at once he knew that the form he was touching had to be older, vastly older, than even the sun itself.
All around him, the close press of trillions of tons of rock and snow was as nothing to the sudden weight of years.
CARL
Lani’s breath sighed like the soft brush of stone against rough fiber. A weary warrior on the soft battlefield, Carl thought lazily. He snuggled against her, spoon fashion, and she wormed backward in her sleep, seeking him. It was in such seemingly slight, unconscious gestures that people truly knew each other, he thought. Much could be disguised between people, but not the elemental seeking of flesh for comfort and closeness. A delicate sheen of sweat glistened on Lani’s forehead and her legs stirred, fanned, finding him. Then she settled with a small shiver, her breath slipped back into a regular sighing, and she descended into sleep again.
He pushed off gently and drifted out of bed. It was time to make his rounds, but there was no need for her to stir.
His legs and arms reminded him of yesterday’s labors with a sweet tingling pain. Even in barely perceptible gravity, he now felt a hitch there, a tightening there … I’ve lost track, but I must be well past forty, he thought as he brushed his teeth. The mirror agreed: delicate crow’s feet spreading from the eyes, jowly lines, more lightening at the temples. All badges for tours of duty.
In the last thirty years he had been awake about a third of the time. The crises had come and gone, though none that matched the troubles on the outbound orbit. Each time of Lazarus Carl made things right again. He stuck out his tongue at himself in the mirror. And they, gave you the credit. Nobody noticed that you just got them to think out loud until the answers were obvious.
He pulled on a fresh blue coverall, relishing the crisp feel of the soft, native-grown fabric. He had always been messy before, seldom noticing that clothes were dirty until a chance breath informed his nose. It was through such seeming details that Lani transformed his world. They resolutely and precisely divided household chores, so there was no less work for him to do over-all…yet somehow everything seemed in order now, neat and clean.
Yeah, she’s civilized me. He bent and gave her soft kiss. She murmured and burrowed farther into her pillow as he left.
The tunnels were more crowded now than anytime he could remember since the beginning of the Nudge. All through the long dark years a skeleton watch had remained—more crew awake than originally planned, of course, because the Nudge was never finished. There were flinger tubes to polish and realign, launchers to outfit with new shocks and focusers. A steady hail of maintenance, as parts broke or simply wore out. The north-pole launchers had fired right up to the last minute, when the outgassing ice and flying dust made operations impossible. They had to. The outbound Jupiter flyby demanded a large velocity change.
Now the launchers lay snug in their pits, buried thirty meters down, awaiting revival. For they had more bullets to spit at the stars, more momentum to impart… if anyone survived the next few months.
As if we’ll ever really see Jupiter.
Carl sped down Shaft 3, checking every detail along the way. It was an old habit from the days before gene-crafted animals patrolled to eat unwanted Halleyforms. He stopped to pet a pair of hybrid mongoose-ferrets. Saul had tailored for Halleyform policing. They crawled over him, nuzzled at his hand, discovered it was not suitable foodstuff, and lost interest.