Still, that evening he entered the rec-lounge bar troubled, looking for Virginia. She was a reasonable Percell and might understand what he only slowly admitted to himself this afternoon -- that he halfway agreed with some of Jeffers's accusations. It was the man's tone, his black-and-white way of putting everything, that got Carl's back up.
He collected a drink, turned to go, and saw the sign, DUCK OR GROUSE just in time to remind him. He stooped and entered the lounge. The first week aboard, he and other Percells had slammed their foreheads into the doorjamb a dozen times; the Edmund's designers had apparently believed only Orthos socialized.
Lani Nguyen intercepted him near the smiling tungsten bust of Edmond Halley himself. "Ah, at last you appear."
She gave an immediate impression of slim, efficient design, every inch a spacer. Lean muscles bunched in her bare almond-colored arms, but otherwise she was covered in a draping, cool blue dress that moved in light pseudo-gravity with a graceful, modest independence. Carl liked the effect of shimmering cloth lagging behind her precise, delicate movements.
"Uh, yeah, we had some trouble with the tunnel articulation." He smiled cordially but tried to scan the lounge without seeming to do so.
Dr. Akio Matsudo was talking earnestly to Lieutenant Colonel Ould-Harrad, the head of Manual Ops. Through the viewport Halley Core glimmered and swam as the G-wheel turned. Captain Cruz stood ramrod-straight against the starry background, easily dominating the room, surrounded by the usual mesmerized pack of ladies.
Where was Virginia?
"Oh?" Lani asked with a distant smile, similar to the Buddha-grin of the sculpture over her shoulder. "That should be automatic."
Carl blinked. "Uh... we ran into a patch of boulders."
"I usually send a forward mech ahead to slice those off with a cutter. Then --"
Jeffers appeared out of nowhere and Carl snagged him. "Better tell this guy, he's the point man in our team. I'll just run a little errand...." And he was away, free, before Lani's pert surprise could turn to protest. Let Jeffers have an opening, Carl thought. He deserves it. A bit unfair to Lani, maybe, but first things first. Let's see, her shift should be up by now....
He passed the group surrounding Captain Cruz and on impulse slowed. He insinuated himself into the cluster. Cruz always spoke to the whole group, never leaving anyone out, and he smiled at Carl. "How's it going down there, Osborn?"
Carl was startled at being addressed personally. He had intended simply to listen in. "Uh, pretty tough, sir, but we can handle it."
"I saw that neat trick at Shaft Three." Cruz raised his eyebrows slightly and his gaze swept over the circle. Although an Ortho -- a natural human being -- he was as tall as most Percells.
Carl felt his face getting hot. He had to say something, but what? "Well, I guess I kinda --"
"Marvelous! A bull's-eye! I felt like applauding." The commander chuckled.
Carl was dumbfounded. "Well... I..."
"It's good to see a little audacity," Cruz said warmly.
Carl grinned self-consciously. Does he know it was a mistake? "Well, we got a schedule to keep."
"So we do. I only wish other sub-sections were moving as crisply as yours."
Carl wondered if that was a veiled joke. But Cruz raised his bulb of bourbon in salute and, to Carl's surprise, the crowd did too. Carl covered his confusion by taking a sip, watching the crowd for signs of mirth. No, they meant it. He felt a sudden delight. He had hobbled the maneuver, sure, but recovered well. That was what mattered to the captain.
Cruz caught Carl's eye and there passed between them the barest moment of understanding. He knows I screwed up. But he's rewarding initiative over timidity. Why? Carl had tried to perform well all during the Edmund's flight out, but until this moment Cruz had never paid him more than polite, distant attention.
That's it -- Kato and Umolanda. He doesn't want people getting spooked. He knows it was faulty equipment and plain bad luck that killed them, much more than carelessness.
"We'll make our deadlines, sir," Carl said firmly.
Cruz nodded. "Good." With practiced smoothness, the captain turned his attention to a woman communications officer standing nearby. "The new microwave antennas are up on schedule aren't they? Having trouble getting signals through the plasma tail?" Cruz asked.
"A little, yes."
"How soon can we deploy a microwave radar to search for the Newburn?"
"I'll have an estimate for you by tomorrow, sir."
Carl listened to the friendly, open way Cruz drew information out of the woman, commented on it, made a little joke that set the crowd to laughing. Now that's how to lead, Carl thought. He's in touch with everything, and never looks worried. I wonder if I'll ever learn the knack.
He would have liked to stay longer, but he wanted to find Virginia. He discovered her in a laughing group of varicolored Hawaiians, her dress a blue shimmer that suggested without revealing. The semiautonomous state of Hawaii had financed twenty percent of the expedition's cost. As the true capital of the pan-Pacific economic community, they invested heavily in space. Their representatives lent a cheery air to most ship functions.
He waited for a lull in conversation, caught Virginia's eye, and drew her away to an alcove. He quickly described Jeffers's complaints. "Do you think he might be right?" he asked.
"You mean, will the Orthos try to rake off whatever they can?" She smiled speculatively. "Sure. This isn't a charity operation."
"I didn't come just to make money." Carl drew back, folding his arms. He knew it would probably be smarter to appear urbane, even a shade cynical -- or at least that's what he thought attracted most Earthside women. But somehow his real self always came out.
"Offended?" Virginia smiled, her full lips drawing back to reveal startlingly brilliant teeth." Don't be so straitlaced. Even idealists have to eat."
"Did you sign any quiet little agreements Earthside?"
Virginia frowned. "Of course not. Look, there're always going to be rumors that so-and-so has a sweet extra deal to leak expertise. Who knows, maybe somebody'11 tightbeam stuff back before we return, have a bundle waiting for him in a Swedish account."
"It wouldn't surprise me. With four hundred people taking turns standing watch over seventy years, there'll be plenty of chances to cheat."
Virginia moodily stirred her bulb goblet of pina colada with a pink straw. To Carl the festive colors of the lounge seemed out of place when cold steel and vacuum lay only meters away. The psychologists probably thought tropical splashes of amber, green, and gold would take people away from raw reality, but for him it didn't work.
Virginia said slowly, "There's an old saying: Ordinary men choose their friends, but a genius chooses his enemies."
Carl grimaced. "Meaning?"
"The Orthos run this expedition, granted. If we create friction, they can do a whole lot more to make it hot for us."
He thought for a moment. "Okay. Conceded. That doesn't change my aims, though."
Virginia nodded. "Ah yes. Plateau Three."
Carl knew she thought his opinions were too simplistic, too much a rubber stamp of the NearEarth colonies' doctrine. Still, he honestly didn't see how she could disagree.
A century of struggle had finally given mankind the technology to exploit the solar system -- efficient transport, mech'd mining and assembly, integrated artificial biospheres of any size needed.
Now was the moment, the colonists argued, to move out.
Unmanned satellites had been the first level of space exploitation -- Plateau One. As far back as the 1980s people had made billions with communications satellites. Saved lives with weather sats.
Automated space factories using lunar materials had been the next rung up -- Plateau Two.
Each Plateau had been climbed by a few who saw the benefits well in advance and took huge risks for that vision. Plateau Two had nearly failed, then became a roaring economic miracle -- helping to pull the world out of the Hell Century.
Each ascent seemed to provoke an Earth-centered apprehension -- first, that the investment might go bust, then that the birthplace of mankind was being relegated to a mere backwater. This was aggravated by Earth's never-ending social problems -- malaises that the space colonies, by design, did not share. The Birth and Childhood Rules, which commanded that each space-born child must spend at least its first five years on the ground were a legal expression of an underlying fear.
Plateau Three was a dream, a political issue, an economic sore point, a faith -- all rolled into one. But big rotating colonies were possible now. The colonists now looked on the Birth and Childhood Rules as symbols of apronstrings they had long outgrown. They wanted to exploit the rocky asteroids and moons, but needed volatiles as well, for propellants and for biospheres. They'd even funded a small Ganymede ice mine, but that hadn't worked out well.
Some saw comets as the key, and fervently believed that humans could scatter through the solar system like dandelion seeds, if they could only learn to herd the ancient snowballs to orbits where they were usable.
Virginia leaned back languidly in her web-chair. "You can't expect Mother Earth to let go so easily."
"They have everything to gain! We'll bring them asteroids galore, raw materials, provide new markets --"
She held up her palm. "Please, I know the litany." An amused expression of feigned, longsuffering patience flitted across her face, instantly disarming him. Perhaps it wasn't intended that way, but with a single gesture she could make him see himself as gawky, thick-witted, too obvious. Well, maybe I am. I've lived in space over half my adult life."Just 'cause it's familiar doesn't mean it's wrong."
"Carl, do you really think mining comets for volatiles is going to ring in the millennium?"
"Where else can we get cheap fluids?" To him this was the trump card, a cold economic fact. At the very beginning of the solar system, the hot young sun had blown most of the light elements outward, away from the inner solar system. Only Earth had retained enough volatile elements to clothe its rocky mantle with a thin skin of air and water. When humans ventured into space to exploit the resources there, -- asteroids, the moon, Mars -- they had to haul their liquids up from Earth.
"Sure," Virginia said. "Get ice from comets! In eighty years we'll be back, Hail the conquering heroes! But by then somebody may've discovered frozen lakes deep in our own moon. Or even found a cheap way to chip iceteroids out of the Jovian moons -- who knows?"
Carl was startled. "That's crazy! No way you can pay the expense of dipping into Jupiter's grav well, just for water and ice. Jupiter Project is proving that."
She smiled impishly. "So? Chasing comets is easier?"
Her dark eyes teased, and Carl knew it, but he couldn't let go.
"It's worth a try, Virginia. Nobody'11 find a way to steer comets unless we make the outgassing method work. Nobody'11 find volatiles hiding on the moon or Venus because they've been baked out. You can't prospect and mine the asteroids with mechs alone -- because finding metals is still a craft, not a science. Dried-up comets like Encke can't be herded precisely because there's no way to use their outgassing to steer them. So --"
"I surrender, I surrender!" She held both hands high.
Carl blinked. Oh hell, he thought. Why do I always get carried away?
A deep male voice said from over Carl's shoulder, "Do not rush into defeat, Virginia. Ask for reinforcements first."
Carl turned as Saul Lintz settled into a soft green web-chair nearby and put his drink into a hold notch on their table. He was lean and weathered, his movements in low gravity deliberate.
"You're too late," Carl said, searching for something witty to say to redeem himself. "She's already conceded that I'm a bore."
"Then my help is unneeded." Saul chuckled as he said this, but Carl felt a quick jolt of irritation.
"I was arguing that we're all going to get rich out of this expedition, if we're patient," Carl said evenly. "And we should leave politics behind us."
Saul nodded, took a long pull at his drink. "Admirable sentiments."
"We've got to. Halley Core is too small for the kind of petty --"
"Insert coin for Lecture Twelve," Virginia said lightly.
"Well, it's true." Carl did not know how to take her, didn't like the way her attention had swerved to Saul Lintz the moment he joined them. She had turned halfway in her chair, nearly facing Saul, and barely glanced back as Carl finished. "And any hints that some people are going to profit more than the rest of us -- well, it'll cause trouble."
Saul lifted an inquiring eyebrow. He seemed to know how to comment on what you'd said with a minimal gesture or shrug, an economy of expression Carl envied.
"He refers to scuttlebutt below decks," Virginia explained. "The fact that, ah, non-Percells hold all the important slots."
"Non-Percells such as myself?"
"Now that you mention it," Carl said.
"Seniority. After all, none of you genetically preselected people are over forty."
"You sure that's all?" Carl leaned forward, hands knitted together, elbows on knees.
The older man frowned, sensing something in Carl's voice. "What else do you think it could be?"
"How about Earthside not wanting any of us where we could make trouble?"
Saul carefully put his drink down and sat back. "Exiles are ill powered to cause Pharaoh grief," he said as if to himself.
The remark seemed irritatingly opaque to Carl. "Why don't you just answer my question?"
"Was that a question? It sounded like an accusation."
Carl's voice had been more harsh than he had planned, but he'd be damned if he'd back down now. "Look at Life Support Installation, my group. Our section head is Suleiman Ould-Harrad, an..."
"Ortho?" Saul supplied quietly.
"Well, that's the slang, yeah."
"So he is. Genetically orthodox." Saul leaned back, making a steeple of his fingers. "Meaning an untampered zygotic mix from the sea of human genes -- no more. Genes do not carry opinions."
Carl shook his head. He disliked the pedantic manner the scientists always adopted, as if all that jargon made them better, smarter, wiser. "Look -- the outgassing work, the slot studies -- all in the hands of... you people."
"So you surmise that they will clutch these fruits to themselves? To sell their skills upon our return?"
Virginia said mildly, "It's not an impossible scenario, Saul."
Saul looked surprised to hear this coming from her. "I'm afraid for me it is. The direct implication that there is some conspiracy of the normal contingent --"
"See?" Carl pounced. "He calls his people 'normal' -- so we're not."
Saul said stiffly, "I did not mean it that way."
"That's the way it came out."
Virginia said, "Carl, you can't jump on every --"
"I'm not. I'm just looking to see if where there's smoke, there's fire." He felt warm, gulped his drink.
Saul paused, running his tongue meditatively over his lower lip. "Let me begin afresh. Carl, if you knew anything about me, you would understand that I am not hostile to you people. Precisely the opposite, in fact." He looked steadily at Carl. "I suppose you would find out sooner or later anyway... I worked for years with Simon Percell."
Continue reading sample 8 and 9, or purchase Heart of the Comet.
The Real Culture War
