The place smelled of rank, unwashed man.
Virginia's nose wrinkled when she entered the workout gym for her mandatory exercise period.
We're strange creatures. Mammals evolve odors that make males aggressive, and all of us nervous around one another, and then we pack a whole crowd of people together into a tin crate for a year or more, and ask them to make nice.
Actually, Virginia did not mind the smell all that much. She did not even mind men.
They just aren't the reason I accepted exile into the twenty-second century, riding a speck of stardust and ice out into the Big Night.
Virginia had her own motives. For her, volunteering for Project Halley had little to do with herding comets for harvest.
She stripped down to her shorts and mounted a bicycle ergometer, attaching the bio-monitor straps. Virginia pushed the pedals, accelerating until the readout showed she was fulfilling Dr. van Zoon's orders.
The workout gym was located in the Edmund Halley's gravity wheel, where most of the crew snoozed through their sleep periods under weight. Virginia understood the need to let blood and bones feel the Old Pull now and then to keep them in shape. But these thrice-weekly sessions with straps, pulleys, and ergometers struck her as truly burnt logic.
She had considered monkeying with the med center's data flow, inserting simulated feedback from all these exercise machines. She could do it, too. Virginia wasn't modest about her competence in Data Intelligence. Lefty d'Amaria might be head of the department, but she was the best.
Oh, well, I guess I need this, she thought as she pushed down on the pedals. Sweat began popping out, glistening on her olive skin.
Normally, she took pride in keeping a taut physique. Back home in Hawaii, she had surfed nearly every other day. But now it seemed she had to shake off a lassitude that still hung over her after a year's chilled sleep. Until three weeks ago she had been suspended, life functions barely ticking over at just above freezing. Perhaps it was a lingering laziness from the slot drugs that had made her so reluctant to come down to the gym.
Well, as long as I'm here, let's do it right.
She bore down hard and pretended she was pedaling across the Lanai-Maui bridge. The omnipresent rumble of the gravity wheel faded into an imagined background of roaring wind and water. Virginia pictured that the door in front of her might let her out, blinking, into yellow sunshine and the rich scent of pineapple.
Her muscles felt warm and stretched after the workout. And it was good to spend some time after showering just brushing her long black hair. Stepping back into her drab pullover was reminder enough, though. Maui lay a hundred million miles from here.
You made your choice, girl. There are things to accomplish out here... things more important to you even than remaining in the Land of the Golden People.
She decided to take a brisk walk around the gravity wheel before returning to the freefall portion of the ship. Virginia strode long-legged in the direction opposite to the wheel's spin.
It seemed nobody was about. Dr. Marguerite van Zoon wasn't chivying the spacers to visit the gym these days. Those poor folk were sweating quite enough right now, and were exempt from the Walloon physician's obsession with exercise.
Virginia's journey around the rim hallway took her past one of the spoke ladders and beyond, to the part of the wheel dedicated to laboratories. The doors were all closed, so she couldn't tell if the Biological Sciences section was being used right now. She paused by the door, her hand hesitating, half-raised toward the buzzer.
Oh come on, Ginnie. It's not as if Saul Lintz will bite you. Why all these little-girl heart palpitations?
All she knew was that the man held a fascination for her, more than she had felt toward anyone in years. Was it his worldly experience? Or the expression in his eyes -- perseverance and quiet strength?
Since she had been unslotted, she had hoped he would say something, make some first move. It was frustrating to realize, at last, that he simply assumed she saw him as a father figure. That left Virginia wondering if she should attempt an overture herself.
Her hesitation over the buzzer lasted until she felt ridiculous.
It would seem so contrived to barge in on him now. What would I say?
Later there'll be opportunity to arrange something more casual. After all, what we have plenty of is time.
At least that would do for an excuse. Oh, if only she understood people half as well as she did machines! She swiveled and left without disturbing the buzzer.
As she walked down the rim corridor, she noticed all the ways in which the Edmund Halley had aged over the past year. The corridors no longer shone. Buff, color-coordinated wall panels had warped and even buckled in places. The old girl had not started this mission exactly in the blush of youth, and no space vessel of her size had ever been required to accelerate so far, for so long. The strain showed.
Virginia thought she was past surprise, but as she approached another of the spoke ladders, she stopped and stared.
Oh, it can't be this bad!
An air vent dripped onto the gently curved hallway. Patchy, dark green growth discolored the floor where Coriolis effects had pushed a small puddle against the wall.
Virginia's generous lips pursed in disgust as she stepped gingerly past the moldy infestation and climbed a damp ladder toward the hub, making a mental note to report this to maintenance. It was hard to believe she was the first to discover it.
The rungs pressed against her body as she surrendered angular momentum to the rotating wheel. The spoke passageway was dim and dank and all too smelly. Only half the phosphor panels in this tunnel were working, making the ascent seem a bit like a trip through a city sewer.
It's a good thing the Halley habitats will be ready soon, she thought. This creaky barge needs a long overhaul.
There would be little enough for the four hundred members of the expedition to do during three-quarters of a century... investigating the mysteries of a major cometary nucleus... testing the sublimation control panels and the big Nudge Flingers... another busy time in thirty years or so as Halley neared its farthest reach from the sun, when Virginia would help calculate parameters for the all important Grand Maneuver... then the long fall toward Jupiter and finally, home.
For most of the intervening time, nearly everybody would be asleep, accumulating Earthside pay in nearly dreamless slot state. That was when the small, rotating watch shifts would slowly refurbish poor Edmund.
Seven decades ought to be time enough. It had better be. Come Halley's next fiery plunge into the inner solar system, this old bucket has to be in good enough shape to take us home again.
Climbing hand over hand, Virginia felt her weight seep away into the ladder as she approached the grumbling bearings, where the null gravity of space resumed. The four spoke tunnels came together in a small, rotating, octagonal room.
Just before reaching the hub, however, she blinked in stunned surprise at a small lubricant leak, spraying fine, greasy vapor into the passage.
I knew most of Edmund's spacers have been called away to work on Halley Core. Still, there's no excuse for this! We're going to need the wheel for a long time to come!
"Disgusting," she muttered aloud. "Simply disgusting."
That was when a voice spoke from beyond the faint, oily jet.
"I agree, Virginia."
She glanced up quickly. A slightly paunchy man in a gray shipsuit floated by one of the two exits, his broad, Slavic mouth pouting in a sour expression. A wool cap was pulled down over sparse brown hair flecked with gray. His arms were long and powerful-looking, all the more so since he had no legs.
Spacer Second Class Otis Sergeov had never appeared particularly disabled by his handicap. In fact, it seemed to make him quicker in microgravity. She had heard that Sergeov was now assigned to helping Joao Quiverian and the other astronomers studying Comet Halley.
He was the oldest Percell Virginia had ever met.
Being one of the first had its drawbacks. Simon Percell's famous early work in genetic surgery had made it possible for Sergeov's parents to have children at all. But a mosaic flaw had left him with only small nubs below his shorts.
"Oh, hello, Otis," she greeted him. "Something has to be done about this. Has anyone reported it yet?"
The Russian spacer shrugged. "Is doing what the hell good, reporting thing like this? Nobody does nothing about it, for sure," he groused bitterly in mixed Russian and English. "The Stchakai cretins!"
Virginia blinked at the apparent nonsequitur. Of course Captain Cruz would order repairs at once, when someone told him...
Then she noticed that Sergeov wasn't even looking at the lubricant leak. Virginia rode the slowly rotating hub until she was even with the man, then edged past the intermittent spray and pushed off hard.
The octagonal room seemed to spin around her. She had to grab twice in order to grip a rubberized handhold, and still her body collided with the padded wall. I'll never get this right! she thought as she fought to orient herself.
Sergeov pointed, "You think Ortho bureaucrats will do anything about this thing, do you?" he snapped. "This?"Virginia blinked. He was glaring at a graffito scrawled on the bulkhead nearest the grumbling axis bearings.
"Arc of the Sun," he identified the symbol, bitingly. The Kakashkiia bastards have followed us, even out here."
"I've seen it before," Virginia said softly. She felt a littie short of breath over this unexpected sight. "Even in Hawaii..."
"So?" Sergeov interrupted snidely. "Even in Land of the Golden People? Even in your techno-humanistic paradise?"
Virginia's brow knotted. Back in mission training she had taken a dislike to Sergeov, fellow Percell or no. He had spent nearly all his life in space -- turning his physical drawbacks into assets in freefall -- and yet every time she encountered him she felt uncomfortable, as if the man radiated long-suppressed bitterness.
She promised herself she would use her own computer to worm her way into the personnel files. She would see to it that they never shared a shift out of the slots during the seven decades ahead.
"Goodbye, Otis. I have work to do." But he stopped her, seizing her arm.
"You know this is not first incident," he said. "Only most blatant. Some of Arcists," he sneered, "refuse to even talk to Percells aboard. They avoid us like we are xherobiy... unclean!"
Virginia shrugged. "Everybody's been under a lot of stress lately. That'll change when the habitats are completed, and once people have room to move around again. When we've unfrozen some folks from the slot tugs and get to look at some fresh faces for a change..."
Sergeov's grip was iron-strong from years of hauling space gear around. "Might help symptoms," he insisted. "But the disease goes on. You saw what Earth was like when we left. One after another of shlyoocha Hot Belt countries pass laws restricting our rights... rights of all genetically enhanced people!"
Virginia only wanted the man to let go of her arm. She tried reason.
"The nations of equatorial Africa and America have had a hellish century, Otis. I don't like the specious turn their ideology has taken in recent years either, but at least they're environmentalists, nowadays. If they've become a bit fanatical in that direction well, anyone will admit it's an improvement over the way their grandfathers behaved. The pendulum will swing back again."
Virginia did not like the expression on Sergeov's face. He looked at her as if she were pitiably, even criminally naïve.
"You think so? But no, my dear young Percell. Is only the beginning! They are already at war with us!"
His unshaven face drew closer. "And who can blame them? When Homo sapiens awakens to what is happening, more and more repression will come against us -- the Successor Race. Nothing less than future generations are at stake here!"
"Oh, come on, Otis." Virginia laughed dryly, trying to lighten the tone. "It's not like we few Percells are the next step in evol --"
"No, you listen, girl!" Sergeov's eyes narrowed. "This is the main reason for all such paranoia, such persecution! Is hard to blame Neanderthals for trying to protect their obsolete form, after all. Species protect selves."
He grinned severely. "But that does not mean we must let bastards squash us, either. Is up to us to act first, or perish!"
Even though they were clearly alone, Virginia quickly looked about. She did not want to be around if this seditious talk was overheard. With no wasted motion she used a judo grip-break to yank her arm away hard, sending the man spinning back. Sergeov bumped his head on the unpadded wall.
"Ow!" he protested in hurt surprise. "Yayatamiy! Govenka! What you do that for?"
"You Uber extremists don't have the answer," she breathed. "You only give Percells a bad name by talking like that. We aren't Nietzsche's supermen. We're misunderstood human beings. That's all!"
Sergeov grimaced, rubbing his head. "Ask the regular human beings, the Orthos, if they think us brothers," he grumped.
Pushing the walls with her hands, Virginia backed away like a fish from a shark, even though Sergeov showed no inclination to follow her. Once down the hall a few feet, she spun about and kicked off down the dimly lit corridor toward her sanctuary.
Continue reading sample 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, or purchase Heart of the Comet.
The Real Culture War
