“Why me?” Rigo says.
The smile lapses, a slow fade. “I think you know.”
Pressure builds in Rigo’s chest. “Because I’m expendable . . . along with the rest of my team.”
“And because you wouldn’t ask questions. Not when you’d just been given the opportunity of a lifetime to better your career.”
“Bottom line”—Rigo sucks his teeth to keep from spitting—“he used me. Took advantage of all my hard work and dedication.” All his hopes and dreams.
“Don’t take it personally,” Dorit says. “It’s the same kind of cold logic that went into creating clades in the first place. Treating people like viruses.”
“Viruses?”
Dorit tents one eyebrow in mild surprise. “I assumed you knew. Since you work directly with gengineered biosystems.”
“I must not have got the memo.”
“The meaning of the term has changed somewhat over the last seventy-five or so years. Originally, ‘clade’ referred solely to a group of species consisting of a common ancestor and all its descendents. Today, however, ‘species’ has been unofficially redefined to include social, economic, cultural, and religious differences rather than just genetic variation. To complicate matters, the term has expanded to include the different pherion patterns of the group. On a virus, the arrangement of glycoproteins on the outer protective shell is referred to as a host range. Viruses within the same family have a similar protein pattern. Viruses outside the family have a different pattern.”
“You’re saying different clades have different pherion patterns the way different viruses have different arrangements of glycoproteins.”
“Yes. The arrangement of glycoproteins determines how the virus biochemically interacts with its environment.”
“The same way pherions control how different clades relate,” Rigo says. “Where people can go and who they can interact with.”
“Tiresias is the beginning of a completely new posthuman species,” Dorit says. “It doesn’t have to be the only one. New beginnings can happen anytime. The key is wanting something enough to make it happen.”
He shakes his head, uncertain what she wants or expects from him. “How come you’re confiding all this?”
She lets out an indulgent sigh. Gets to the point. “We’re not going to wait to leave. We’re going to exit stage left while we still have the chance, and start our own show, as far off Broadway as we can get.”
Too bad he’s never been to New York City, doesn’t have the social capital to appreciate her theatrics.
“Rigo,” Antoine says, cutting in. “I’m picking up increased metabolic activity in the plants.”
“That’s just the beginning,” Rana tells him. “The comlink to the research station just dropped offline. The local link is still up, but don’t ask me for how long.”
Rigo switches back to Dorit. “Is this part of the exodus? Or is there some other explanation for what’s going on?”
“I’m showing an internal temperature rise inside the plants,” TomE informs Rigo. “Two degrees in the last minute.”
“Where’s the power coming from?” he asks. The orbiting solar array isn’t transmitting yet. Last he checked, there wasn’t enough stored energy to generate that sharp a temperature gradient.
“The thrusters,” Varda says. “They’re uplifting.”
“Time to say
au revoir
,” Dorit tells Rigo. “Get back to your lander as quickly as you can.” Earnest.
“I’m not going anywhere.” Not until he gets some answers.
“Don’t be stubborn, dear. Just do as I say. Please. We can’t have you missing any important engagements.”
“Are you getting married?” Varda asks.
“You have less than five minutes,” Dorit says. “If you don’t leave now, there’s a very good chance you never will. That goes for your team, as well.”
“What about Whipplebaum?”
“Don’t worry about dear Arnez. He’s the least of your concerns at the moment. Now, I suggest you leave while you can.” A spike of urgency in her voice. “Go. Get out of here!” She terminates the link. End of discussion.
Rigo doesn’t waste any time. Heeds her advice and orders his team to haul ass back to the lander like there’s no tomorrow.
Whipplebaum messages him. “What the hell’s going on?”
Before Rigo can answer, the comet shudders. He pitches to one side, floats half a meter above the surface, arms and legs flailing in a haze of ice crystals and dust as he tries to reorient himself.
“There’s been an accident,” Varda informs him. “An explosion in the rift where the geology team was working.”
This is the kind of news that can lead to a loss of faith. When Rigo finally rights himself and gets his bearings, he finds that Tiresias has split in two along the fissure.
The lander is drifting up from the surface, slowly rising . . . though maybe it’s the other way around— the ground falling, dropping out from under it. At the same time, the two halves of the comet are tumbling away from each other and rotating. Spinning like mad. The sun, plummeting to the horizon, sends a guillotine edge of blackness racing toward him over the ice. Behind him, the earth fills the sky.
An X blinks on the inside of his faceplate, neon yellow against a background of stars just to the left of the retreating lander.
“Jump in the direction of the X,” Varda tells him.
Rigo hesitates. “Where’s everyone else?” He’s lost visual contact with his team in the dust and sudden reorientation of the comet. Can’t get a lock on them.
“Fret about them later,” Varda says. “After you make it to the lander.” The X shifts onto a curvaceous dusty brown patch of water and clouds in the vicinity of India or Australia.
“What if I miss?” He’ll burn up in the atmosphere, that’s what. Come down as a pile of precremated ash.
“Hurry,” the IA says. “You don’t have much time. If you wait, you’ll forfeit your window of opportunity.”
“Why can’t you just datalink with the lander?” Rigo asks. “Have it come pick us up?”
“The autopilot needs to be manually reengaged.”
“Is that a feature?”
“Just gopher it,” Varda tells him. “Don’t be a wimp.” It’s the kind of thing Beto would say. This is the perfect time to prove himself.
“Three seconds,” Varda says, counting down. “Two. One . . .”
Rigo jumps, launches himself off the ice—and keeps going about the time it feels like he should start coming down again. There’s no stopping, no turning back to reconsider what he’s just gotten himself into.
“You’re almost at the end of your rope,” Varda says.
Rigo peeks down between his feet. The tether is uncoiling rapidly. Another few meters and it will tighten, pull him up short. He fumbles with the metal clip—almost loses his hand as a loop in the safety line snares his wrist—and finally gets the hasp to release just as the safety line straightens. The motion rotates him, catapults him upside down so that Tiresias is overhead, earth below. He has the feeling of falling. . . .
“Where’s the lander?” he asks, panicked that maybe he didn’t jump hard enough or in the right direction. He glances wildly around. Starts to hyper-ventilate.
“Get chill,” Varda says.
“Easy for you to say. You’re not about to die.”
“You can survive for up to three days. As long as you keep moving, the piezoelectrics in your suit will generate enough power to keep you warm while recycling your air and waste products.”
Great. He can do zero-g jumping jacks. Run in place. Literally eat his own shit and twiddle his thumbs while he waits to be rescued. Assuming he’s still in orbit and not on some path that will incinerate him, or send him out into deep space, never to be seen or heard from again.
“The lander is at two P.M.,” the IA says.
Rigo cranes his head. Spots the scarab-bright gleam of the hull. “Now what?” He doesn’t appear to be gaining on the lander—or even keeping pace. If anything, it’s pulling away.
“Use your emergency propulsion unit,” Varda says.
Rigo detaches the canister, aims it in a direction he judges to be directly away from the lander, and fires a short burst of compressed CO
2
. It doesn’t seem to move him so he squeezes off a second, more sustained burn.
“The canister only contains a minute of propellant,” Varda cautions him, as if he ought to save some for a rainy day.
According to the digital readout, he’s used up about three-quarters of his supply. Meaning he only has enough gas left for one or two minor course corrections at best.
“Turn around,” Varda says. “I can’t see where you’re going.”
The problem is there’s nothing to push against. He squirms, flails his arms about like an amateur contortionist.
“Flip out,” Varda tells him. “Bring your arms and knees to your chest, look back, and extend your feet.”
Rigo follows the IA’s instructions. Ends up tumbling head over heels, sick to his stomach.
“Okay. Now straighten your legs all the way out, and raise your hands over your head as high as you can.”
That helps . . . slows his rotation to the point where it doesn’t feel like he’s going to spill his guts.
“You’re on target,” Varda says. “But now you have another problem.”
“Only one?”
“There’s an unidentified object headed your way.”
“You mean like a UFO?”
“Ejaculate from the explosion. Swivel your head to the right and shine your head light down.”
It takes him a couple of seconds to find the object, which is tumbling toward him on what appears to be an intercept course. In the diffuse beam it looks like a rock or a chunk of ice the size and shape of a watermelon, large enough and fast-moving enough to inflict some serious damage.
Rigo readies his CO2 canister. Holds it out in front of him, unsure what direction to aim.
“Wait,” Varda says. “If you alter your current course and velocity by more than one thousandth of one percent, you’ll miss the transport.”
“Great.” This sounds like a die-if-he-does, die-if-he-doesn’t situation. The type of can’t-win-for-losing holding pattern he’s been stuck in most of his life. Can’t seem to break out of.
The chunk is getting bigger. As it gets closer it seems to move faster, almost as if it’s picking up speed, accelerating toward its rendezvous with him. He can make out details. One side is smoothly rounded, the other jagged, with what appears to be a single protruding icicle.
“Aim a little more to your left and up,” Varda says. “A little more. Stop. Back a little. Good.”
The object is close now, less than ten meters away. The round half is white, with a glassy gray patch, the icicle black and long enough to impale him or slice off a limb the way it’s spinning.
“Pull your arm back fifteen centimeters,” Varda says. “Get ready to shoot off for point oh-three-two seconds.”
The object is almost on him. Not a chunk of ice or rock, but a helmet that’s been neatly severed from a biosuit. And the icicle is no longer black. It’s dark red, the color of—
“Now,” Varda says.
Rigo squeezes off a CO2 burst. Sees Whipplebaum’s decapitated head hurtle by, its dagger of frozen blood coming within millimeters of his own throat. Whipplebaum is waxen behind the faceplate, his eyes the color of frozen milk, his dust-bunny hair furred with frost.
An hour later he makes a final course correction, grabs a handhold on the hull of the lander, opens the hatch, and drags his frazzled ass inside. He cycles through the air lock, glad to pop the helmet on his biosuit, which is beginning to smell like week-old gym socks. The deodorizers can’t seem to keep up with his armpits. He reengages the autopilot . . . breathes a sigh of relief as Varda coordinates with the lander, mapping out a plan of action.
On the console screen, Varda shows him a schematic of the situation as it stands. The two halves of Tiresias are moving farther apart. The half with the primary research station is heading directly for the sun in a drunken wobble. The half containing the engines and warm-blooded plants has been flung in the opposite direction. Helped by the explosion and a hellacious slingshot effect, it’s picked up speed and is hurtling at a breakneck pace for the outer solar system.
“It’s history,” Varda says. “Unless they can use the engines to turn around and slow down.”
“Can they do that?”
“Theoretically.”
“But? . . .” Rigo suspects a lurking caveat.
“There’s not enough fuel in the tanks to bring them back.”
“Can’t extra fuel be shuttled up to them?” It seems like an easy enough solution. No big deal.
“They’ve dropped offline,” Varda says. “Scissored all communications.”
Rigo knows now that the colonists have no intention of coming back—or being found. Dorit knew all along what was going to happen—and when. Probably even helped organize the bid for freedom, the way she was talking. Which explains why she was in such a hurry to make sure her parting gift didn’t die with him.
“What’s going on with my team?” he asks. “Where are they?”
“TomE and Naguib were unable to unclip their safety lines. They’re still on the comet.”
No way to reach them, Rigo thinks. Save them. He’s shaking, trembling with raw nerves, fear, and fatigue. “What about the others?”
“Everybody else is drifting in orbit.”
Their locations flash in red on his faceplate, widely scattered blips. “How’re they holding up?” Rigo asks.
Varda squirts him the biomed readouts. Rana is paralyzed, has a severe spine and neck injury. Hsi-Tang is suffering from a dislocated shoulder. “I can’t move my arm at all, dude.” Claribel has a concussion. “I’m gonna barf, I just know it.” Antoine’s got a suit puncture—“Slow leak. Air’s starting to get a little thin”—and Luis has a cracked faceplate. “I’m totally iced up. Can see my breath. Shit, man, it’s so cold even my farts are freezing.”
The rescue operation takes forever. By the time it’s over, three members of his team are dead: Antoine, Luis, and Rana.
They rattle around in the air lock, arms and legs rigid, mummified by the petrifying cold. Thank God he can’t see the final gasps of Antoine and Luis. Their faces are hidden behind the thick layer of frost coating their faceplates. Luminous ice crystals as pure and beautiful as the quartz inside a geode.