“There’s a certain amount of peripheral cell-failure in most of your tissues,” she told them both, when they collapsed back on to their beds, their tiredness transformed to utter exhaustion, “but you’ve both been lucky. Because the vitrification and cooling processes proceeded unevenly, and there was a similar unevenness in their undoing, there’s always a slight problem at every tissue-boundary, especially where the cells are unalike, but neither of you has suffered unusually heavy losses anywhere. Vincent’s worst problems are in the dermal layers, while Matthew’s are the shrouds of the long bones, but both deficits should be fully remedied in a matter of days.
“Your alimentary canals and kidneys will take longer to make up the shortfall and flush out the debris, so you might both have some slight trouble with your digestive systems. I won’t program your IT to blot out the discomfort because I may need all the warning signs I can get. Don’t get paranoid about slight bellyaches, but if there’s any sign of allergic reactions of any kind let me know immediately. The tailors are already at work on your surface suits. We won’t be fitting them today but they’ll have to be well grown-in before you’re ready to shuttle down. This part of the ship is supposedly an ultrasafe environment, so we won’t be issuing you with specialized ship suits at all—but when I say supposedlyI mean that we can’t be absolutely certain, so it might not be wise to go wandering around, and certainly not without a guide.”
“What’s wrong with the other parts of the ship?” Solari wanted to know.
Again, it was Leitz who answered what appeared to be a ticklish question. “We’ve suffered some systems failures,” he said. “Their effects are variable, but we’ve been forced to close some sections temporarily. Even the sections over which we have full control can be hazardous to non-crew members, though. The ship isn’t a homogenous environment, of course, even within the inner shell. When you came aboard it was probably no more than a glorified steel box, but once we’d hitched a ride in the comet core the hybrid began to evolve, and it’s been evolving ever since. Seven hundred years is a long time in the history of a world as small as this one, and we’ve been making progress all the while. It’s not just a matter of needing suits to go out into the ice—there are a dozen intermediary regions, and only a couple are exclusively AI territory. You’ll find the surface very strange, Inspector Solari, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that Hopeis a little slice of home. In its own fashion, it’s a good deal stranger. If the people below understood that better, none of them would be laboring under the delusion that they’d be better off aborting the colony.”
“Okay,” Matthew said, blandly, when it became obvious that the sermon was over. “Message understood. We won’t take any long walks without a guide. These surface suits you mentioned, Dr. Brownell. How thickly do we need to be insulated down there?”
“They’re not much bulkier than ordinary clothing,” she assured him. The air filters are unobtrusive, although you’ll be aware of them in the sinuses and throat until they settle in, and they’ll modify your voice slightly. It hasn’t been necessary to take them all the way down into the lungs, although the whole of your gut will have to be resurfaced. You won’t be consciously aware of the gutskin at all, although its extension is the most difficult part of the fitting. We’re operating on a precautionary principle, of course—everything’s assumed to be biohazardous until it’s proved otherwise.
“Once you’ve been briefed by the crew’s genomicists you’ll probably be better able to assess the risk factors than I am, but so far as we can tell the local bacs aren’t at all enthusiastic to set up home in Earthly flesh, and mammalian immune systems are perfectly capable of forming antibodies against native proteins. They’re so competent, in fact, that the main difficulty is over-response. Animals exposed to the whole chemical symphony of the surface environment tend to go into reaction-overdrive; those that don’t collapse with anaphylactic shock develop high fevers and lapse into comas when their blood is glutted with defensive factors. More gradual exposure allows them to adapt, but it’s a slow process. It could take generations to produce Earthly domestic animals that can operate naked on the surface and feed themselves adequately on local produce. It’s the same for people—except, of course, that human generation times are a lot longer. The colonists and their crop-plants will be living in bubbles for a long time yet—but they will make progress. Slowly but surely, they’ll make themselves at home.” She said it stoutly, but she didn’t sound entirely convinced of the last assertion.
“But theydon’t think so, do they?” Solari said. “They don’t think this is an Earth-clone world at all. They think they’re in greater danger here than they were on Earth. They think they’ve jumped out of the frying pan into the fire.”
“No,” said Leitz, firmly. “They don’t. All those who aren’t cowards know full well that they can live here, if they’re prepared to make the effort. The greater part of the surface community is in full agreement with the crew that the colony hasto go ahead.”
“And how big is the majority?” the policeman countered, scornfully. “Not so big, apparently, that a few votes couldn’t swing a demand for withdrawal.”
“Votes don’t matter, inspector,” the boy said, rattled to the point of recklessness. “The people on the surface aren’t in a position to make demands. The only way they’ll get back up here is if we take them in—and we won’t. The colony has to stay, and it has to succeed. We wouldn’t have woken the two of you up if we didn’t think that you would both work toward that end.”
“Was Bernal Delgado working toward that end?” Matthew asked, keeping his own voice scrupulously level.
“Yes, he was,” Leitz replied, flatly—but Vince Solari was on to that inconsistency as fast as he’d taken hold of the other.
“And maybethat’s why he was killed,” the policeman said. “Or maybe not. Maybe he was killed because he was about to switch to the other side.”
“What end is Shen Chin Che working toward?” Matthew asked—but that was one question the boy wasn’t about to answer. Had Matthew and Solari still been hooked up to all the life-support apparatus, Nita Brownell would probably have sent them off to sleep again, but she couldn’t. All she and Leitz could do was beat a retreat, and they didn’t manage that until Solari had lodged an insistent request for a suit of clothes, of whatever kind might be available, and the personal possessions—including his notepad and beltphone—that had been put into store for him.
Nita Brownell promised to see what she could do, but Matthew got the impression that she might not be able to do very much.
When they’d gone, Solari said: “This isn’t quite the awakening I envisaged. The party atmosphere isn’t up to much, is it?”
“It was always a danger,” Matthew reminded him, soberly. “There was no shortage of prophets to tell the people of my generation that we couldn’t escape Earth’s problems by running away, because we’d only freeze them down along with us: all the festering conflicts; all the innate self-destructive tendencies. Those who fail to learn from prophecies are doomed to enact them. I can understand the differences of opinion—what I can’t understand is how they’ve become so bitter. We were all supposed to be on the same side—that was the heart and soul of the whole enterprise. How can it have soured so badly? What are they still not telling us?”
“The crew have had seven hundred years to develop their own ideas and their own internal conflicts,” Solari said, pensively. “It’s not just their feet that they’ve modified. The ship is theirterritory, the kid said. They have plans of their own—perhaps more than one, maybe with a few undecided votes holding the balance up here too. One of the things they’re not telling us is what’s happened to Shen Chin Che. Did you know him personally?”
“Yes, I did,” Matthew said, wondering how much the people who must be presumed to be listening in on the conversation knew about his relationship with the Ark’s owner, “and I’d certainly like to know where he is.”