"So! We are poking away at our pets again, Saul? You just cannot leave them alone?"
He didn't have to look up to know the voice of Akio Matsudo. "Hello 'Kio." He waved without turning around. "Just double-checking. And everything looks fine, thanks. Aren't they lovely critters?"
He smiled as the spry, tall Japanese physician came alongside and made a sour look. The chief of Mission Life Sciences had never disguised his opinion of Saul's "critters." They were necessary -- utterly vital to the success of their seventy-eight-year voyage. But poor Akio had never come to see their more aesthetic side.
"Ugh," Matsudo commented. "Please do not remind me of the infestation even now swarming in my bodily fluids. Next time you wish to inject me with alien parasites --"
"Symbionts," Saul corrected quickly.
"-- against which my body has no immune capability whatsoever -- next time I will make the incision myself -- from crotch to sternum!"
Saul could only grin as Matsudo's serious mug broke and the man actually giggled. It was a "kee-kee-kee" sound that spacers had already mimicked into a sort of clarion call below decks. Akio frequently made such light jests about the traditions of ancient Japan.
Perhaps it was similar to the way Saul dropped Yiddishisms into his speech now and then, although he had learned the language only a decade ago. It's a proper dialect for exiles, he thought.
"What have you got there, 'Kio?" He pointed at a flimsy sheet in the other's hand.
"Ah. Yess." Matsudo tended to slur his sibilants. "Even as we are speaking of immune systems, I have come to ask you to go through the stimulants inventory with me, Saul. I believe that it is time to release an attenuated disease into the life-support system."
Saul winced. He never looked forward to this.
"So soon? Are you sure? Four-fifths of the expedition is still frozen aboard the Sekanina and the other freighter tugs. All we have awake now are the Edmund crew and support staff."
"Al! the more reason" Matsudo nodded. "Thirty spacers have been living together on this cramped ship for more than a year. Another forty have been out of the slots for two or more months, as we got closer to the comet. All of the colds and minor viruses they brought with them when they departed Earth have run their course by now.
"I've done a parasite inventory, and have found that more than three-quarters of the ambient pathogenic organisms have already gone extinct! It is time to release a new challenge."
Saul sighed. "You're the boss." Actually, the entire bio committee was supposed to pass on immune challenges. But reminding Akio would only offend him. The procedure was routine, anyway.
Still, Saul's nose already itched in unhappy anticipation.
He reached over to the bio-library console and punched out a rapid code. A page of data appeared in space before a black backdrop.
Saul nodded at the glowing green lettering. "There is a lovely array of nasty bugs at your disposal, Doctor. With what plague do you wish to infect your patients? We have chicken pox. fox pox, attenuated measles...."
"Nothing so drastic." Matsudo waved. "At least not so soon."
"No? Well, then there's impetigo, athlete's foot..."
"Amaterasu! Heaven forfend, Saul! In this dampness? Before the comet-tunnel habitats have been set up and the big dehumidifiers are working? You know how the navy feels about fungus aboard a spaceship. Cruz would have our --"
He stopped abruptly and grinned lopsidedly. "Ha ha. Very funny, Saul. You are pulling my leg, of course."
Saul had known Matsudo casually, from scientific conferences and by reputation, for many years. But the man was still somewhat of an enigma to him. For instance, why had he volunteered to come on this mission? Of all the types who would sign up to leave Earth, spend seventy-three years of a seventy-eight-year mission in slot sleep, and return to a world grown alien and strange, which category applied to Akio? Was he an idealist, following Captain Miguel Cruz's dream of what the mission might mean to mankind? Or was he an exile, like so many on this expedition?
Perhaps, like me, he's a little of both.
Matsudo ran a hand through his lustrous black hair, as thick as any youth's. "Just pick me out a head-cold virus, will you be so kind, Saul? Something that will challenge the crew enough to keep up their antibody production and T cell counts. They needn't even notice it, for all I care."
Saul spoke a chain of letters aloud, and a new page appeared. "The customer's always right," he ruminated aloud. "And you're in luck! We seem to have eighty varieties of head cold on sale."
"Surprise me," Matsudo said. But then he frowned and held up both hands. "No! On second thought, let me choose! I don't want any of your experimental monsters loose right now, no matter what you say about the wonders of symbiosis!"
Saul pushed off to one side as Akio bent forward to peer at the list of available diseases, muttering softly to himself. Obviously, Matsudo had left his contact lenses out again.
He's about three decimeters taller than his grandfather, Saul thought. And yet he's suspicious of change. A scientist, and yet he's too conservative to get a corneal implant that would let him see without aid.
What ever happened to the innovative, future-hungry Japanese of so long ago?
For that matter, what had happened to Israel, his own homeland? How could the descendants of the Negev pioneers, the most potent warriors in two centuries, slowly decline into superstition and cultism? What had turned clear-eyed Sabras into cowed sheep who let the Levite and Salawite fanatics just walk in and take over?
The mysteries were part of a greater one that still amazed Saul, how courage seemed to be leaking away from humanity, even as the Hell Century was ending and better times appeared near at last.
It wasn't a calming train of thought. Biological science was in just as bad shape. The bright hopes offered by Simon Percell and the genetic engineers of the early part of the century had nearly collapsed in a series of scandals more than a decade ago, leaving only a stolid pharmaceutical industry and a few mavericks such as Saul to carry on.
Earth was rapidly becoming unpleasant for mavericks -- one of the reasons he was on this mission. Exile through space and time certainly beat some of the alternatives he had seen coming.
"We will use rhinovirus TR-3-APZX-471," Matsudo announced, apparently satisfied with his selection. "Do you concur, Saul?"
Saul already felt a sneeze coming on. "A naïve little varietal, but I'm sure you'll be amused by its presumption."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Never mind," he grumped. "As official keeper of small animals, I'll have an incubated vial of the nasty buggers in your in-box by tomorrow morning." He touched a key and the glowing inventory disappeared.
Matsudo lifted himself easily in the one-eighth G of the Edmund's laboratory wheel, and sat on the counter. He sighed, and Saul could tell that his friend was about to go philosophical on him. Over the long journey from Earth they had exchanged countless chess games and views of the world, and never budged each other on any issue at all.
"It's not much like back when we were in medical school, is it, Saul? You in Haifa and me in Tokyo? We were brought up to hate pathogens -- the infectious viruses and bacteria and prions -- to want only to wipe them from the face of the Earth. Now, we culture and use them. They are our tools."
Saul nodded. Today half a physician's job involved careful application of those very horrors, serving them up judiciously to create challenges.
"Exercise the patient's immune system, and let him do the rest," Saul said, nodding. "It's a better way, Akio. I only wish you'd see that my cyanutes are part of the same progression."
Matsudo rolled his eyes. He and Saul had been over this many times.
"Again, I regret that I cannot agree. In one case we teach the body to be strong and reject that which is foreign. But you coax it to accept an interloper, forever!"
"Perhaps half of the cells in a human body are guest life forms, Akio... gut bacteria, follicle cleaners. They help us; we help them."
Matsudo waved his hand. "Yes, yes. Most of what you call you, is not! I have heard it before. I know you see us not as individuals, Saul, but as great, synergistic hives of cooperating species." There was a biting edge to Matsudo's voice that Saul did not remember having heard before. Exaggeration was not Matsudo's usual style.
"Akio..."
Matsudo hurried on, though. "And what if you 're right, Saul? All of those organisms that share our bodies with us grew into symbiosis over millions of years. That is entirely different from throwing gene-tailored monsters into such a delicate balance on purpose!"
Matsudo flushed slightly. Saul considered trying to explain one more time -- that the cyanutes were descended from creatures that had lived peacefully in man for aeons. But of course, he knew how Akio would answer. After all the changes that had been made, the 'nutes were a new species, as different from their natural cousins as men were from apes.
"Saul, the Movement to Restore and Reflect teaches us that we must think carefully before we interfere with nature. The Hell Century has shown how dangerous it can be to meddle where we don't understand."
Glancing up at the microscope screen, where his tiny test subject was still being run through its paces, Saul saw that the animal was still throbbing near the needle -- harried but well.
"I..."He shook his head and went silent. Saul had an idea what was bothering his friend.
"There's still no sign of the Newburn yet, is there?"
Matsudo shook his head, his gaze on the floor. "Captain Cruz and his officers are still looking. Perhaps when the comet has calmed down some more, when the coma and ion tail are less noisy... Fortunately, there were only forty people aboard that one. If it had been one of the other slot tugs, the Sekanina, or the Whipple, or the Delsemme --" He shrugged.
Saul nodded. No wonder Matsudo was irritable. More than three hundred men and women had been shipped from Earth five years ahead of Edmund -- along with most of the expedition's massive equipment -- chilled down to near freezing aboard four slender robot freighters, riding sunlight behind gossamer sails a thousand kilometers across.
Only the "founder" team took the fast, energetically expensive track aboard the old Edmund Halley. They exhausted almost the last of their propellant to match the comet's furious retrograde orbit. Whey they arrived the first task awaiting the torch ship's crew was to recover the huge cylinders containing the deep-sleeping majority of the mission crew.
There were disadvantages to each style of travel -- torch ship or slot tug. Much of the Edmund staff had to take long turns enduring the boredom and cramped living of more than a year in space. As well, they shared the recently evident dangers of setting up the base.
On the other hand, they had some control over their fate. It was not their lot to coast for years in near-frozen sleep, relying on someone else to catch up, capture their slim barge, and finally awaken them.
Would the men and women aboard Newburn drift forever? If Cruz and his team never found the tug, might they be picked up by someone else, in some faraway age? What might they awaken to after such a long trip down the river of time?
"It is going to be a long eighty years, Saul." Matsudo shook his head pensively, looking at the picture wall, vivid with Halley's Comet in its full glory against a backdrop of stars. The plasma and dust tails glittered like flapping banners, like plankton in a phosphorescent sea. "It is a long time until we see home again."
Saul smiled, hiding his own misgivings for his friend's sake. "We'll sleep through most of it, 'Kio. And when we do get home we'll be rich and famous."
Matsudo snorted at the thought, but he acknowledged Saul's intent with a smile. Irony was the common trait that made them friends, in spite of all their differences.
A bell chimed and Saul looked up as the probe's needle withdrew from the watery, saline bead. The subject cyanute floated gray and limp now. The last test had been to prove that the creatures could still easily be killed, if ever the need arose.
A creator's prerogative? he wondered. Or are my shoulders stooped imperceptibly under one more tiny guilt?
Scavengers were already nosing up to the microscopic corpse. Saul reached over and turned the microscope off.
Continue reading sample 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, or purchase Heart of the Comet.
The Real Culture War
