Before They Were Giants (41 page)

Arms windmilling, she fell.

The rock slide carried her downhill in a panicky flurry of dust and motion, tearing her flesh and splintering her bones. But before she could feel pain, her suit shot her full of a nerve synesthetic, translating sensation into colors—reds, russets, and browns, with staccato yellow spikes when a rock smashed into her ribs. So that she fell in a whirling rainbow of glorious light.

She came to rest in a burst of orange. The rocks were settling about her. A spume of dust drifted away, out toward the distant red horizon. A large, jagged slab of stone slid by, gently shearing off her backpack. Tools, supplies, airpacks flew up and softly rained down.

A spanner as long as her arm slammed down inches from Abigail’s helmet. She flinched, and suddenly events became real. She kicked her legs and sand and dust fountained up. Drawing her feet under her body—the one ankle bright gold-—she started to stand.

And was jerked to the ground by a sudden tug on one arm. Even as she turned her head, she became aware of a deep purple sensation in her left hand. It was pinioned to a rock not quite large enough to stake a claim to. There was no color in the fingers.

“Cute,” she muttered. She tugged at the arm, pushed at the rock. Nothing budged.

Abigail nudged the radio switch with her chin. “Grounder to Lip Station,” she said. She hesitated, feeling foolish, then said, “Mayday. Repeat, Mayday. Could you guys send a rescue party down for me?”

There was no reply. With a sick green feeling in the pit of her stomach, Abigail reached a gloved hand around the back of her helmet. She touched something jagged, a sensation of mottled rust, the broken remains of her radio, “I think I’m in trouble.” She said it aloud and listened to the sound of it. Flat, unemotional—probably true. But nothing to get panicky about.

She took quick stock of what she had to work with. One intact suit and helmet. One spanner. A worldful of rocks, many close at hand. Enough air for—she checked the helmet readout—almost an hour. Assuming the Up station ran its checks on schedule and was fast on the uptake, she had almost half the air she needed.

Most of the backpack’s contents were scattered too far away to reach. One rectangular gaspack, however, had landed nearby. She reached for it but could not touch it, squinted but could not read the label on its nozzle. It was almost certainly liquid gas—either nitrogen or oxygen—for the robot lab. There was a slim chance it was the spare airpack. If it was, she might live to be rescued. Abigail studied the landscape carefully, but there was nothing more. “Okay, then, it’s an airpack.” She reached as far as her tethered arm would allow. The gaspack remained a tantalizing centimeter out of reach.

For an instant she was stymied. Then, feeling like an idiot, she grabbed the spanner. She hooked it over the gas-pack. Felt the gaspack move grudgingly. Slowly nudged it toward herself.

By the time Abigail could drop the spanner and draw in the gaspack, her good arm was blue with fatigue. Sweat running down her face, she juggled the gaspack to read its nozzle markings.

It was liquid oxygen—useless. She could hook it to her suit and feed in the contents, but the first breath would freeze her lungs. She released the gaspack and lay back, staring vacantly at the sky.

Up there was civilization: tens of thousands of human stations strung together by webs of communication and transportation. Messages flowed endlessly on laser cables. Translators borrowed and lent momentum, moving streams of travelers and cargo at almost (but not quite) the speed of light. A starship was being readied to carry a third load of colonists to Proxima. Up there, free from gravity’s relentless clutch, people lived in luxury and ease. Here, however . . .

“I’m going to die.” She said it softly and was filled with wondering awe. Because it was true. She was going to die.

Death was a black wall. It lay before her, extending to infinity in all directions, smooth and featureless and mysterious. She could almost reach out an arm and touch it. Soon she would come up against it and, if anything lay beyond, pass through. Soon, very soon, she would
know.

She touched the seal to her helmet. It felt gray— smooth and inviting. Her fingers moved absently, tracing the seal about her neck. With sudden horror, Abigail realized that she was thinking about undoing it, releasing her air, throwing away the little time she had left. . . .

She shuddered. With sudden resolve, she reached out and unsealed the shoulder seam of her captive arm.

The seal clamped down, automatically cutting off air loss. The flesh of her damaged arm was exposed to the raw Martian atmosphere. Abigail took up the gaspack and cradled it in the pit of her good arm. Awkwardly, she opened the nozzle with the spanner.

She sprayed the exposed arm with liquid oxygen for over a minute before she was certain it had frozen solid. Then she dropped the gaspack, picked up the spanner, and swung.

Her arm shattered into a thousand fragments.

She stood up.

~ * ~

Abigail awoke, tense and sweaty. She blue-shifted the walls up to normal light, and sat up. After a few minutes of clearing her head, she set the walls to cycle from red to blue in a rhythm matching her normal pulse. Eventually the womb-cycle lulled her back to sleep.

~ * ~

“Not even close,” Paul said. He ran the tape backward, froze it on a still shot of the spider twisting two legs about each other. “That’s the morpheme for ‘extreme disgust,’ remember. It’s easy to pick out, and the language kids say that any statement with this gesture should be reversed in meaning. Irony, see? So when the spider says that the strong should protect the weak, it means—”

“How long have we been doing this?”

“Practically forever,” Paul said cheerfully. “You want to call it a day?”

“Only if it won’t hurt my standing.”

“Hah! Very good.” He switched off the keyout. “Nicely thought out. You’re absolutely right; it would have. However, as reward for realizing this, you can take off early
without
it being noted on your record.”

“Thank you,” Abigail said sourly.

Like most large installations, the
Clarke
had a dozen or so smaller structures tagging along after it in minimum maintenance orbits. When Abigail discovered that these included a small wheel gymnasium, she had taken to putting in an hour’s exercise after each training shift. Today she put in two.

The first hour she spent shadowboxing and practicing
savate
in heavy-gee to work up a sweat. The second hour she spent in the axis room, performing free-fall gymnastics. After the first workout, it made her feel light and nimble and good about her body.

She returned from the wheel gym sweaty and cheerful to find Cheyney in her hammock again. “Cheyney,” she said, “this is not the first time I’ve had to kick you out of there. Or even the third, for that matter.”

Cheyney held his palms up in mock protest. “Hey, no,” he said. “Nothing like that today. I just came by to watch the raft debate with you.”

Abigail felt pleasantly weary, decidedly uncerebral. “Paul said something about it, but. ..”

“Turn it on, then. You don’t want to miss it.” Cheyney touched her wall, and a cluster of images sprang to life at the far end of the room.

“Just what is a raft debate anyway?” Abigail asked, giving in gracefully. She hoisted herself onto the hammock, sat beside him. They rocked gently for a moment.

“There’s this raft, see? It’s adrift and powerless and there’s only enough oxygen on board to keep one person alive until rescue. Only there are three on board— two humans and a spider.”

“Do spiders breathe oxygen?”

“It doesn’t matter. This is a hypothetical situation.” Two thirds of the image area was taken up by Dominguez and Paul, quietly waiting for the debate to begin. The remainder showed a flat spider image.

“Okay, what then?”

“They argue over who gets to survive. Dominguez argues that he should, since he’s human and human culture is superior to spider culture. The spider argues for itself and its culture.” He put an arm around her waist. “You smell nice.”

“Thank you.” She ignored the arm. “What does Paul argue?”

“He’s the devil’s advocate. He argues that no one deserves to live and they should dump the oxygen.”

“Paul would enjoy that role,” Abigail said. Then, “What’s the point to this debate?”

“It’s an entertainment. There isn’t supposed to be a point.”

Abigail doubted it was that simple. The debate could reveal a good deal about the spiders and how they thought, once the language types were done with it. Conversely, the spiders would doubtless be studying the human responses.
This could be interesting,
she thought. Cheyney was stroking her side now, lightly but with great authority. She postponed reaction, not sure whether she liked it or not.

Louise Chang, a vaguely high-placed administrator, blossomed in the center of the image cluster. “Welcome,” she said, and explained the rules of the debate. “The winner will be decided by acclaim,” she said, “with half the vote being human and half alien. Please remember not to base your vote on racial chauvinism, but on the strengths of the arguments and how well they are presented.” Cheyney’s hand brushed casually across her nipples; they stiffened. The hand lingered. “The debate will begin with the gentleman representing the aliens presenting his thesis.”

The image flickered as the spider waved several legs. “Thank you, Ms. Chairman. I argue that I should survive. My culture is superior because of our technological advancement. Three examples. Humans have used translation travel only briefly, yet we have used it for sixteens of garble. Our black hole technology is superior. And our garble has garble for the duration of our society.”

“Thank you. The gentleman representing humanity?”

“Thank you, Ms. Chairman.” Dominguez adjusted an armlet. Cheyney leaned back and let Abigail rest against him. Her head fit comfortably against his shoulder. “My argument is that technology is neither the sole nor the most important measure of a culture. By these standards dolphins would be considered brute animals. The aesthetic considerations—the arts, theology, and the tradition of philosophy—are of greater import. As I shall endeavor to prove.”

“He’s chosen the wrong tactic,” Cheyney whispered in Abigail’s ear. “That must have come across as pure garble to the spiders.”

“Thank you. Mr. Girard?”

Paul’s image expanded. He theatrically swigged from a small flask and hoisted it high in the air. “Alcohol! There’s the greatest achievement of the human race!” Abigail snorted. Cheyney laughed out loud. “But I hold that neither Mr. Dominguez nor the distinguished spider deserves to live, because of the disregard both cultures have for sentient life.” Abigail looked at Cheyney, who shrugged. “As I shall endeavor to prove.” His image dwindled.

Chang said, “The arguments will now proceed, beginning with the distinguished alien.”

The spider and then Dominguez ran through their arguments, and to Abigail they seemed markedly lackluster. She didn’t give them her full attention, because Cheyney’s hands were moving most interestingly across unexpected parts of her body. He might not be too bright, but he was certainly good at some things. She nuzzled her face into his neck, gave him a small peck, returned her attention to the debate.

Paul blossomed again. He juggled something in his palm, held his hand open to reveal three ball bearings. “When I was a kid I used to short out the school module and sneak up to the axis room to play marbles.” Abigail smiled, remembering similar stunts she had played. “For the sake of those of us who are spiders, I’ll explain that marbles is a game played in free-fall for the purpose of developing coordination and spatial perception. You make a six-armed star of marbles in the center . . .”

One of the bearings fell from his hand, bounced noisily, and disappeared as it rolled out of camera range. “Well, obviously it can’t be played here. But the point is that when you shoot the marble just right, it hits the end of one arm and its kinetic energy is transferred from marble to marble along that arm. So that the shooter stops and the marble at the far end of the arm flies away.” Cheyney was stroking her absently now, engrossed in the argument.