“I ran the simulation you asked for,” she blurted.
“Good, good.” Saul seemed grateful to turn away from Ould-Harrad. “And?”
“I can disable most of their controls if I can get three mechs aboard Edmund. Then I’ll need five minutes to use them.”
Saul brightened. “Excellent! They’ll be paying attention to loading the sleep slots they demanded, being sure we aren’t slipping them inadequate supplies and so on. Preparations for the Newburn rescue weren’t complete when Ensign Kearns discovered their intentions. So they need more gear before they can leave.”
“Those bastards!” Virginia spat out. “Pushing poor Kearns out the lock—murder! If the mission mainframe hadn’t already been transferred Halleyside, I could get into their control systems and vac them all!”
Saul nodded. “Ferocious, but apt. Alas, they’re on manual controls, hard to override. Still, consider—they haven’t got enough food and air aboard for the entire return flight. They’ve got to be damned sure we give them enough slots to make it back. There are fourteen of them, they say. Now, if we can find a way to distract them, to give Virginia an opening—”
“No,” Ould-Harrad said flatly. “There is little chance of approaching for more than a few moments with mechs. You heard Linbarger.”
“They’ve got to allow mechs close to Edmund when we deliver those sleep slots,” she answered.
Ould-Harrad frowned. “They will watch the machines closely. Surely they will not miscount the number returning to Halley and let three remain.”
Virginia shook her head. “I can do it while they’re loading the sleep slots into the receiving bay. The cables we’ll cut are near that lock.”
Ould-Harrad pursed his lips. “Your numerical simulation—it was complete? You yourself attempted to guide the mechs to the cables and then destroy them?”
“Well… no, I don’t know the Edmund’s systems that well. I let JonVon do it. I’ve been upgrading his mech control and—”
“Then we cannot be sure, you see?” His eyebrows lifted into semicircles above dark eyes, the irises swimming in whites which showed a fine tracery of red veins. “JonVon is not practiced in the direct handling of mechs. Simulations are always easier than real operations. I.”
“Carl could do it,” she said rapidly. “Get him here, have him try my simulation.”
Ould-Harrad’s mouth puckered into an expression of polite disbelief. Then he sighed, nodded, and began speaking spacer quick-talk into a throat mike.
Virginia turned to Saul. “How much time?”
“They’ve given us two hours.”
“That’s crazy! They can’t expect us—”
“They know we can move the spare sleep slots if we start right away.”
“But that appeal to `fellow normals’ offering free passage Earthside. If anyone responds, Linbarger’ll have to wait for them to board.”
Saul smiled wanly, his eyes seeming to remember desperate situations long ago. “A fevered mind thinks all the world can turn on a dime. Besides, they are calling every one of us, ah, normals on thee comm. To demand that we go with them, drop everything, leave immediately—providing we are well, of course.”
“They called you?”
“Oh yes. I was among the first—a doctor, and therefore valuable. They have no shame. I wondered why they demanded to see me on camera—until they abruptly broke off, and I realized.” He chuckled and wiped his nose with a ratty handkerchief.
“Your… flu, or whatever it is.” Virginia felt an irrational irritation at this. “That doesn’t mean you’re really sick.”
Saul grinned sardonically. “To them it does. You know, it is like the plays of Elizabethan times, including Shakespeare. If a character coughs in the first act, you may be sure he has the pox and will die by the third.”
“They’re crazy!”
“Merely because they would not take me?” He laughed. “I must commend their taste, really. Despite my profession, I’ve never truly loved ill people, not in their gritty reality. All their crankiness, their tsuris. I preferred them as abstractions, as problems in genetic art.”
Virginia had to answer his smile. He was incredible—joking in his mild, self-rebuking, almost elfin way, in the middle of a crisis.
Ould-Harrad finished his checking with the tunnel and surface teams. “I doubt it will matter overly, but Carl is coming.”
“Good,” Virginia said. She felt soothed by Saul’s calm, ironic manner.
Well, at least this means he isn’t going to risk his neck going after the Newburn, she thought. Then she felt immediate shame. It also probably means the Newburn crew will drift on and die.
She struggled to think. “I… I still believe my simulation shows it can be done.”
“Can, perhaps,” Ould-Harrad said. “Should—that is another matter.”
“We must do something,” Saul said sharply. “Forget the Newburn for a moment, or that we’ll need the Edmund seventy years from now. Our immediate problem is that nearly all the hydroponics.”
“Yes, yes.” Ould-Harrad raised a hand tiredly. “But one wonders if perhaps giving fourteen people a chance at returning might be worth it.”
Saul rolled his eyes at the ceiling. “We can’t assume the diseases will win! Look.”
Virginia watched him launch into the same explanation he had given her last night, about promising approaches to curing the plagues.
He’s wonderful, and I really shouldn’t carp, she thought. But Saul can be pretty tedious when he switches over to pedant mode.
Feeling the warmth of the big room seep into her muscles, she let herself relax. The wall weather was impressive here, with so much area to use. It was a windswept beach, mid-morning. Beyond the scrolling data screens she watched a blast of wind sweep in from the north, whipping pennants on a distant bathhouse straight out from their staffs. The sky grew dense, purple. Cumulus clouds, moments ago mere puffballs, thickened and boiled, filmy edges haloing dark centers.
Purely by accident, the running program was providing a pathetic fallacy. A simulated storm in the midst of a real crisis. If this were an entertainment—such as they had had daily until the troubles started—there would be sound, even smell and pressure modulations. The choppy ocean rippled and rose, sweeping cloud shadows raced across it. Great icy drops battered the beach, as big as hailstones. A cliff of somber air rolled in, unraveling skeins like yarn, spitting yellow lightning. As if waiting for this signal, tiny speckled sand crabs scuttled from their holes and scurried toward the frothing sea. Lightning flashed again and again—as if God were taking photographs, she thought, bemused, transfixed by the silent rage that curled and spat and sped across the walls. She wished she could hear the mutter of departing thunder, the hiss of rain on dunes.
From the distance a large dog came running, gouging the sand, snapping at the crabs. Mist gathered in wispy pale knots. She yearned to feel the cleansing rain plaster her clothes to her skin, drench her, shape her hair into a tight slick cap. Even in my best sense-sim with JonVon, I can’t completely escape. I’d trade it all for a ticket home right now.
She recognized the longing: to be away from here. To breathe salty air, feel gritty sand, smell the lashing wind. And once she had felt it, she knew how to put it away, turn back to the present. If she had not been able to do that, she would never have made crew. But these Ortho fools are risking the mission for their fantasy of escape.