Copyright © 1986, by David Brin and Gregory Benford. All rights reserved. No duplication or resale without permission.

CARL (continued)

     Carl was stunned. Virginia gasped and said, "You did? I'd heard rumors, but... I didn't believe them."
     "Merely as a postdoc." Saul shrugged. "Our last project together studied deviations in the activation level of lupus erythematosus. You may remember that was one of the principal diseases Percell freed you people from. That awful, untreatable thing that attacked skin, connective tissue, spleen, kidneys."
     Virginia nodded. "My mother died from it."
     "Yes," Saul said. "And your grandmother as well."
     Virginia's lips pursed in surprise, Saul shrugged. "I remember your case. Simon carried out the necessary alterations of your mother's DNA while I was first learning the techniques."
     Virginia leaned forward. "Did you..."
     "Do the actual work? I cannot remember, honestly. I performed as assistant for many gene-tailoring methods, some experimental, some fairly straightforward."
     "Then you... could be..."
     Saul blinked, sitting back in his chair, avoiding her rapt gaze. "It was a purely mechanical task by that time. Very little research to it, other than my part. I did studies of how the resulting... cells... responded to chemical incursions which, for normal lupus would cause a spontaneous rise in the disease."
     Virginia said slowly, "And mine... did not?"
     "Obviously, you were one of our successes. You have no trace of lupus, I trust?"
     She shook her head. "Because of you."
     "No; Simon Percell. I merely went to him to learn his techniques. It was during those few years when he enjoyed full support, when all things were possible. Or so we thought."
     Carl said, "Still... I didn't know you'd worked with Percell." He felt chagrined. Saul had probably been present when Carl's mother's genes were delicately trimmed, freed of the microscopic molecular constellation that carried heritable leukemia. Then the gene wizards had added expert snippets of DNA to give him the suite of physical improvements that now marked every Percell. To Carl, that small, brave band of genetic engineers was legendary. He had never met one before.
     Saul crossed his legs, smoothed his pants leg, visibly uncomfortable. Carl realized that the man must have been through similar meetings often, and was wary of the pent-up emotion that might burst forth from any Percell.
     "I... I'm sorry about what I said," Carl murmured.
     Saul nodded silently. He, too, was holding feelings behind a tight-lipped dam.
     Virginia's eyes brimmed. "You... could be..."
     Carl saw that she wanted to say You are my father, too but could find no way to state the complex blend of emotions she felt. Saul had helped give life to thousands who would have been blighted, killed, maimed. Those years could not be forgotten -- except by the braying, suspicious, hate-filled majority Earthside.
     That kind had killed Percell, as surely as if they had pressed the muzzle of the .32 revolver to his temple. Simon Percell himself had pulled the trigger, driven into a depression over what was now obviously an unavoidable mistake.
     One gene-editing error in a treatment to eliminate an inheritable kidney disease had killed an entire year's program of children. Worse, they had not died until the age of three. Then it struck suddenly.
     The sight of so many writhing in agony, yellow-skinned and gnarled, their kidney and liver functions stopped abruptly -- it had been torture. Media bigots flashed the images around the globe. Coupled with the growing public chorus against him, the threats of prosecution, and the sudden cuts in his research support, it had been too much for a man who held himself to the very highest standards.
     Carl shook himself. It was still so easy to touch off the memories. His own mother dying miserably. The years of waiting to see if he, too, would begin to show the signs. The final liberation when he knew it was all right, that he could go into space with a clean genetic record. Those memories cut deeply in him still.
     "I... Look, let me buy you another drink," Carl said lamely.
     "Why, sure," Saul said with a wobbly smile.
     "Maybe a chess game later?"
     "Certainly!" Saul said heartily. "This time, no quarter. I'm defending the honor of normal people." Then Saul paused, quickly turned aside, and sneezed. Both Carl and Virginia jumped slightly. Then they all laughed, the tension relieved.
     "Well now," Saul said expansively as he put away his handkerchief, "that's one Percell modification I will take credit for. Tailoring in a suppression of the histamic response. Doesn't do me any good, but you people don't suffer as I do from pesky colds. I'll be envying you every time Akio Matsudo releases one of his damn challenge viruses!"
     But years afterward, Carl would well remember that convulsive, startling eruption, the first -- but certainly not the last -- time he had heard Saul's explosive sneeze.

     Saul finished reading the printout and looked up at the man who had thrust it upon him.
     "For this you waste paper in a printout, Joao? You could have fast-faxed it to my console just as easily."
     Joao Quiverian was a slender, sallow-faced man with an untamable shock of black hair and a Roman, almost hawklike ornament of a nose. The man was not distracted by Saul's banter. He insisted on an answer.
     "You'd just ignore a fast-fax. I want to know right away what you think of this vote, Saul."
     "Where does my opinion matter?" Saul shrugged. "I'm disappointed the Diaspora only abstained. A worldwide federation of refugee peoples ought to take a stand on something like this. But they're trying so hard to win acceptance that it's really no surprise." He handed back the sheet. "Other than that, I'd say the world is acting true to form."
     The answer obviously did not satisfy Joao, who had made chief planetologist only three weeks ago when a freak accident killed Professor Lehman. Saul knew this had to be a frustrating time for the Brazilian, anyway. Here he was, only a few kilometers from a truly great comet, and orders were that science would have to give way to engineering for weeks to come.
     Quiverian had to rely on part-time help from Saul and a few other "amateur cometologists" who had been trained in the field as a second specialty. No doubt he looked forward to the awakening of some of the sleepers from the slot tugs and discussing cometary arcana with fully accredited peers.
     Saul generally got along with the man, as long as they were discussing the primordial matter of the ancient solar system. This time, however, Quiverian was in a political mood.
     "Come now, Saul. This news from Earth is important, a milestone! I had expected more out of you. An indignant protest. Perhaps a declaration that Percells are actually human beings."
     Saul was here in the planetology lab to help analyze the delicate ice cores the spacers were bringing back from Halley -- the "second hat" he had been assigned because of his laboratory skills. He had not come to be goaded by Quiverian. He looped his left foot under the chair stanchion. "Come on, Joao, you wanted me to examine some organic inclusions for you. Let's look at the sample."
     He held out his hand for the slender, sealed, eight-foot tube the Brazilian had laid on the table behind him.
     But Quiverian was insistent. "Nobody's saying that these poor mutants are unhuman. Only that they were a horrible mistake. You cannot blame the people of Earth -- with the nations of the Arc of the Sun in the vanguard -- for calling for controls."
     "I see" Saul nodded. "Controls like banning Percells from the Olympics. What's next, Joao? Segregated restrooms? Special drinking fountains? Ghettoes?"
     Quiverian smiled. "Oh, Saul. It wasn't just those athletic records a few Percells had broken -- freakish performances that raised the ire of millions. Those were only the last straw. Your creations --"
     "Not my creations." Saul shook his head insistently.
     Quiverian held up a hand. "Very well, Simon Percell's creatures -- his monsters -- these people are living reminders of the arrogance of twentieth-century northern science, which nearly destroyed the world!"
     Saul sighed. "Come on, Joao. You can't blame science and the Old North for everything. True, they used up more than their share of resources, but you talk as if the nations of the Arc were completely guiltless for the Hell Century. After all, who cut down the tropical forests in spite of all the warnings? Who raised the carbon dioxide levels --"
     Quiverian interrupted him, red-faced: "You think I am unaware of that, Saul? Look at my homeland, Brazil. Only now, after massive struggle, are we beginning to recover from an environmental holocaust which wiped out a third of the Earth's species... all sacrificed at the altar of thoughtless greed."
     "Very well, then the guilt is distributed --"
     "Yes, certainly. But technology itself was partly at fault! We simply barged ahead with the best of intentions" -- Quiverian arched his eyebrows sardonically -- "doing good to the detriment of Nature herself!"
     Obviously, the man believed this, passionately. Saul found it ironic. Back before the turn of the century, the nations of the Old North had preached environmentalism to an unheeding Third World -- after already reaping most of the planet's accessible wealth. Now, the pendulum had swung. The equatorial peoples in the Arc of the Sun seemed obsessed with a mystic passion for nature that would have astonished their land-hungry grandparents.
     Why must conversions always come so late? Why do people apologize to corpses?
     He was spared having to reply as a thickly accented voice rose from beyond a table stacked high with core samples.
     "Hey! Did I miss something? Eh? Exactly what crimes was do-gooder science responsible for? I'll tell you which! Maybe our Brazilian friend refers to foreign doctors who came in to reduce infant mortality in countries such as his. Boom! Overpopulation. To your modern Arcist, that must have been the worst horror of them all!"
     Quiverian's face colored. "Malenkov, you fat Russian hypocrite! Come out here and argue face to face like a man. You don't have to hide; I am no Ukrainian sniper!"
     "Thank the saints for that much, at least." Nicholas Malenkov rounded the table holding a clipboard, smiling, a hulking giant of a man who moved with the grace of a wrestler, even in the awkward Coriolis tides of the gravity wheel.
     Rescued, Saul thought gratefully and seized the chance to change the subject. "Nicholas, I hear Cruz and the engineers have preliminary results from the gas-panel experiments. Were you there?"
     The stocky Slav grinned. "They wanted at least one of us ice-ball lovers around when they tried it out. You, Joao, and Otis were busy. So I sat in."
     Along with Saul and the legless spacer, Otis Sergeov, Dr. Malenkov wore a second hat as a cometologist... much to Joao Quiverian's frequent protests of dismay. The big Russian spread his hands. "My friends, the results are encouraging. With only a few of the panels in place we have already altered the orbit of Comet Halley! The effect is small, but we've proved that controlling the comet's outgassing can let us make orbital changes!"
     Saul nodded. "Of course, the method only works near perihelion, close to the sun."
     "True. This run of tests showed only a small, dilninishing effect. Soon surface sublimation will cease altogether. The panel project will shut down for seventy years. But next time," Malenkov grinned, "when we are diving once more inward, toward the Hot..."
     The Hot. It was the first time Saul had heard the sun referred to that way.
     "... then this work will prove its usefulness. With the big Nudge rockets having their maximum effect at aphelion, and the evaporation-control panels working at perihelion, we will have the means to herd this ancient iceball into almost any orbit we want!"
     Quiverian frowned darkly and shook his head. "Suppose all of this meddling works. Exactly what, Doctor, would you want to do with... with a herded comet?"
     Oh, no. Saul saw where the conversation was heading.
     "Who cares!" Malenkov said enthusiastically. "Ideas have bounced around for more than a century, about what people might do with comets."
     "Crackpot ideas, you mean."
     Malenkov shrugged. "Our present plan is to arrange a loop past Jupiter in seventy years, and use big planet's gravity to snare Halley into much more accessible orbit. Eventually, this iceball can supply cheap volatiles and help the NearEarth people create their Third Plateau in space."
     Quiverian shook his head. "Propaganda. I have heard it a thousand times."
     Malenkov went on unperturbed. "The possibilities are endless. When we have proven long-duration sleep slots, comets may make great space liners -- to cruise the solar system in safety."
     Saul saw that a small audience had begun to gather at the open door to the lab, attracted from nearby offices. Malenkov noticed them and waxed even more enthusiastic.
     "We might find more useful chemicals, maybe, like those Joao and Captain Cruz found on Encke. Why, there may even be some merit in that wild idea to use comets to terraform Venus or Mars! Eventually they might be made suitable for colonization."
     "Hah!" Quiverian snorted.
     "Gentlemen," Saul cut in. "I suggest we --"
     But Quiverian ignored him, shaking a slender, elastic-coated sample tube at Malenkov. "This is the attitude I cannot bear. The original idea was to study comets, the most pristine of all God's handiworks. But now knowledge for its own sake doesn't seem to matter anymore. Now you not only want to harvest this comet, but recklessly alter entire worlds before we even understand them!"
     Malenkov blinked in surprise at Quiverian's anger. Saul knev that Nicholas had few political opinions. He was one of the most brilliant people Saul had ever met, but the man never seemed to learn that to some people a disagreement was not a chess game, not a sport for gentlemen. In this respect, he was a most unRussian Russian.
     Saul tried once more to stop this. "Joao! Nick was only talking about possibilities. In thirty years Earth will have had time to decide...."
     But the angry Brazilian wasn't listening anymore. Quiverian's left hand clenched the core tube and his right formed a fist. "We have just emerged from the most terrible century in human history... the worst for our world since the holocaust of the Pleistocene... and now idiots want to send giant iceballs hurtling down onto planets?"
     "I never said --"
     Quiverian stepped menacingly toward Malenkov. "Tell me Doctor. How long before the target is not Mars, or Venus, but Earth?"

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