Abyss Deep (9 page)

“What the fuck?” he asked when he saw our embrace. “Hey, E-­Car, if you're on restriction you're not supposed to
enjoy
it!”

“Do you mind?” I asked. “We're saying good-­bye.”

“Nope,” he said, grinning as he dropped into the chair at the compartment's small desk. “I don't mind at all!”

Privacy was always tough to come by on board a Navy vessel, but we did have an answer. The compartment's rack-­tube hatches occupied the bulkhead to the left of the door, four circular openings that cold be sealed shut with a thoughtclick. At just a meter wide, they were a bit on the claustrophobic side for two, but it could be done. I helped Joy into mine, gave the leering Tomacek a dirty look, then skinnied in next to her. I thoughtclicked the hatch shut, and we were alone.

Each rack-­tube had internal lighting, Net connection pads, environment controls, and a flow of fresh air from hidden vents. The padding was warm and soft, as was Joy. I took her in my arms and we snuggled close.

“Just like the
hoteru
,” she said, smiling into my face.

“Well, except for the gravity, yeah.”

Rabu Hoteru was the Japanese honeymoon hotel in Geosynch. Joy and I had spent a ­couple of nights there on liberty once, just after we'd come back from Bloodworld. Zero-­gravity sex is a lot of fun, but it helps if you and your partner are . . .
restrained
, somewhat. In microgravity, every movement has an equal and opposite reaction, and what is euphemistically called “the docking maneuver”—­and
staying
docked—­can be a bit tricky.

The answer was softly padded tubes in the honeymoon suites, where you and your partner could get plenty of purchase for your more energetic acrobatics. The ends were left open, so you could look toward the head end of your tube and see the endlessly wondrous spectacle of Earth hanging in star-­clotted space.

I pulled up my in-­head menu, made a selection, and clicked it; a view of the shrunken Earth, taken by external cams on the Earth-­side of the Starport asteroid, appeared on the head-­end of the tube.

“I can't do anything about the gravity,” I said. Well, not without convincing the ship's skipper to shut down the hab module rotation—­like
that
was ever going to happen. “But I can provide us with a room with a view.”

“I think the best view was that time at Yellowstone,” she told me. That had been last fall. We'd taken a few days of leave, rented an ­e-Car at San Antonio, and driven up to Montana. The weather had been bitter cold and snowy—­we'd been way too close to the Canadian ice sheet for my peace of mind—­but the view from the hotel in Jackson had been spectacular.

“The best view,” I told her, “is you.”

I was having some trouble with the docking maneuver. Damn it, thinking about ice always did that to me. I'd been ready enough a few moments ago, but having Tomacek barge in, and then remembering the ice sheet . . .

This time, I
did
switch on my CC-­PDE5 inhibitors. Phosphodiesterase type 5 is a natural enzyme found within the corpus cavernosum, the smooth muscle responsible for the guy's part in the proceedings. Certain drugs and appropriately programmed nanobots can act as PDE5 inhibitors, which relax the smooth muscles
preventing
erection.

No good. The ice was winning.

Well, not the ice, specifically . . . but the thoughts of Paula that I associated with glaciers, with sailboats, with cold, with loneliness . . . with
anything
that took me back to that afternoon off the chill coast of ice-­locked Maine when Paula had died in my arms—­those were circling in my brain, now, relentless and anxious. Damn it, why couldn't I put that crap away?

“It's okay,” Joy whispered. “Just hold me.”

And that only made it worse, somehow.

At some point during the night, however, ice and loneliness gave way to soft warmth and caresses, and thoughts of Paula were submerged in rising passion.

At least for a time.

I
reported aboard the USRS
J. B. S. Haldane
late the next day, along with the rest of the Marine Special Expeditionary Platoon, now dubbed MSEP-­Alpha. One of the Commonwealth's Scientist-­class research ships, the
Haldane
was a no-­frills ride, a minnow to the
Clymer
's whale when she docked alongside for the payload transfer. She was named for the twentieth-­century British geneticist and evolutionary biologist who'd famously said, “[T]he universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we
can
suppose.”

And that had been long before we started meeting extraterrestrial species, or visiting the worlds they lived on.

The
Haldane
was only eighty-­one meters long and thirty broad, and the trip out to GJ 1214 was going to be a bit on the cramped side. Technically, she was a civilian research vessel, but Commander Janice Summerlee was a Navy officer, and most of her crew personnel were Navy as well.
Haldane
was listed on the rolls as a research ship, which meant she served a wide range of roles. One of her most important missions, though, was transporting personnel and supplies to the far-­flung science colonies across near interstellar space.

I floated out of the boarding tube and into her quarterdeck compartment, where I saluted the officer of the deck. “Permission to come aboard, sir.”

“Granted,” the man growled. You don't go through the military formalities on a civilian vessel, but if the
Haldane
was being pressed into military duties, the niceties of tradition were maintained. “Pre-­screen records?”

I thoughtclicked the appropriate icon in my in-­head, giving him access to the results of the med scan I'd gone through a few hours earlier. Purely routine stuff, that.
Haldane
would be out and on its own for at least a ­couple of months, and it wouldn't do for anyone on board to come down with something nasty while we were in deep space . . .
especially
something that might contaminate the entire crew.

That sort of screening is anything but simple, and it takes a pretty powerful AI to carry it out. The human body is host to thousands of species of bacteria, but in terms of sheer numbers, our bacterial hangers-­on are overwhelming. The typical person has about 10 trillion cells in his or her body . . . and
ten times
that number of bacteria in their gut alone. Something like 3 percent of our body mass consists of microbiota: bacteria, archaea, and fungi. All of these actively help us and keep us healthy, in a symbiotic relationship with their human host. We couldn't digest stuff like carbohydrates without them, and for that reason they're known as the “forgotten organ.”

Generally, when we get sick it's because our immune system has been compromised in some way—­generally by stress of one sort or another—­and that allows some other­wise innocuous organism that was there all along to get out of hand. So a screening for pathogens doesn't mean spotting
Eschericia coli
in the colon, for example, but determining whether the population of
E. Coli
is out of balance with all the rest, whether the patient's immune system is functioning properly, and whether normal body cells in the area are showing signs of inflammation are all part of the process. Picking up problems caused by viruses can be even tougher.

So the screening process concentrates on whether or not the person is showing an immunological response or not. It doesn't rule out the possibility of an infection breaking out later, but it helps spot trouble before it gets out of hand.

My scans had come up clean.

The OOD downloaded the scan results, then recorded my ID data on his e-­pad. “Carlyle,” he said. “Welcome aboard. I'm Lieutenant Walthers, the ship's exec.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Says here somebody wants to see you. Mess bay.”

Curious, I followed the thumb down a short passageway, swimming through the corridor in microgravity. There was technically a faint echo of spin gravity here. Starport was on the out-­most end of the space elevator, and as the asteroid whirled about Earth on the end of its 70,000-­kilometer tether, it created a six-­hundredth of a gravity . . . scarcely enough to feel. Drop something, and it would “fall” a bit less than a centimeter in the first second.

The mess bay was the
Haldane
's common area, which served as mess deck, recreation lounge, briefing room, and social space for the small ship. Three Brocs were floating in front of the big viewall, which was set to look past the swell of the
Clymer
close alongside, and off along the line of other naval vessels entangled within a forest of docking ramps, boarding gantries, and connector cables, the business end of Starport.

My personal ID was pinged, checking my name and rank. Obviously, the M'nangat had as much trouble telling humans apart as we had with them.

Y
OU ARE
D
OCTO
R
C
ARLYLE.
The translation flowed across my in-­head. I could only tell which one was speaking by the almost spastic twitch of its tentacles.
Y
OU SAVED
D
'DNAH.
Y
OU SAVED O
UR BUDS.

“Not ‘Doctor,' ” I said. “I'm a Navy Corpsman. They just call me Doc.”

D
OC
C
ARLYL
E, THEN.
W
E WISHED T
O THANK YOU FOR SAVI
NG OUR BUDS.

“All in the line of duty,” I said. The Broc in the middle of the three was D'dnah. I could tell by the patch of skinseal still glistening on herm's side. “How are you feeling, D'dnah?” I asked.

I
AM W
ELL,
the M'nangat said.
Y
OUR ­PEOPLE TR
ANSPORTED ME TO THE
NAVAL HOSPITAL IN
S
A
N
A
NTONIO.
W
E WERE TOLD THAT YOU HAD DONE EVERYTHIN
G NECESSARY, THAT NO
FURTHER TREATMENT,
SURGERY, OR NANOTECH
NIC INTERVENTION WAS NECESSARY.

“Sometimes we get lucky,” I said. “I'm glad to hear you're okay.”

I'd not done anything for the M'nangat life carrier beyond pretty basic emergency first aid. Sure, I'd pulled the unexploded nano-­D bullet out of herm's torso, which was something usually best left to well-­equipped operating rooms, but there'd not been a lot of choice, there, and no leeway if I'd guessed wrong. Apparently, the nanobots I'd put into D'dnah's body had managed to seal off all of the internal bleeding, and the skinseal had taken care of surface bleeding. The M'nangat, evidently, had fairly robust biological repair and recovery systems. I'd slapped the equivalent of a bandage on D'dnah's wound, and the M'nangat's physiology had taken care of the rest.

Even so, it had only been three days since the battle on board Capricorn Zeta. “I'm surprised they released you so soon,” I added. “I would have thought that they'd want to keep an eye on you for a few days, just to make sure you were healing okay.”

T
HEY DID,
the Broc on the right said.
T
HEY STATE
D A DESIRE TO KEEP H
ERM UNDER OBSERVATIO
N.
O
UR CONSULATE MIS
SION WAS ABLE TO CON
VINCE THEM THAT THER
E WAS NO NEED.

Well, the M'nangat would understand their own emergency medical needs better than we did.

I felt a bit awkward. Two of the M'nangat I'd met on Capricorn Zeta, of course, but the third had been on Earth during the attack. I recognized D'Dnah, but I had no idea which of the other two was which. I wondered how to ask for an introduction.

“So, D'dnah,” I said. “I take it this is your triad?” It was a lame ploy, but it worked.

I
AM
D
'DREVAH,
the one on the left said.
I
AM EGG
BEARER.

I
AM
D
'DEEN
,
said the one on the right.
I
AM LIFE DONOR.
F
ORGIVE US IF WE MIS
USE YOUR PROTOCOLS O
F SOCIAL INTERACTION.
T
HEY ARE . . .
AS YET UNFAMILIAR TO
US.

“Not at all,” I said. “You're doing great.”

W
E WERE DIRECT
ED TO COME TO
E
ARTH
AS POLITICAL LIAISON
S,
D'drevah told me,
AND TO ASSIST YO
UR ­PEOPLE WITH YOUR
ACCESS TO THE
D
EEP
T
IME
E
PHEMERIS—­WHAT
YOU CALL THE
E
NCYCL
OPEDIA
G
ALACTICA.
I
WAS, UNFORTUNATELY,
INVOLVED IN WORK AT
OUR CONSULATE ON
E
AR
TH WHEN OUR LIFE BEA
RER WAS INJURED.
B
UT
D
'DEEN TOLD ME WHAT
YOU DID ON THE MINI
NG STATION, ABOUT HOW YOU SAVED OUR BUDS.

“I was glad to be able to help,” I told them. If I'd felt awkward before, I was downright uncomfortable now. The introduction seemed to have released an avalanche of personal information, as if we'd passed some sort of privacy threshold to enter a new level of intimacy. More than that, I was increasingly aware that the male and female of the triad, D'drevah and D'deen, seemed
much
more concerned about the safety of their offspring than they were about their bearer, D'dnah.