Dark as Day

7

You couldn’t prowl in zero-gee. If you could, Janeed would have been doing it. She was alone in the twenty-meter emergency room of the big orbital platform, with nothing to do but wait and worry.

The platform was designed to handle arrivals with space-sickness, everything from food poisoning to pure-oxy flash fires to cerebral edemas caused by too-low pressures or vacuum blow-out. Today, however, there had been no emergencies. The center was busy with routine physical examinations, for Janeed and Sebastian and a score of other people preparing themselves for a high-acceleration run from Earth to Ganymede.

Janeed’s physical exam had seemed like no physical at all. A battery of machines had clicked and clucked at her while she stood in front of them. That took maybe ten minutes. Then there was the pill. It was round and the size of her thumbnail, and she had swallowed it only on her third try. Even then she needed the assistance of a gulp of water.

The technician, a cheerful blond man whose delicate bones suggested that he spent most of his days in micro-gee environments, had apologized. “The PO used to be quite a bit smaller.”

“PO?”

“Peristaltic Observer — the pill. It used to be only as big as a pea, but they just put in a whole new suite of sensors to monitor liver enzymes and perform real-time blood chemistry. I’ve complained about the size, and they’ve promised a version half as big in maybe a month. But for now…”

But for now, the natural peristalsis of Jan’s alimentary canal was transporting the marble-sized pill, with its formidable suite of sensors, along the length of her digestive tract. Tomorrow the PO would be naturally excreted, bearing a complete record (including color images) of every inch of her from throat to anus.

Even with the pill, the physical was quicker and simpler than Jan had expected. She was in and out in less than half an hour. So were the others. They had emerged from the medical center and headed off to their own quarters to prepare for the flight out.

All except Sebastian. He had gone into the medical center at the same time as Janeed, two and a half hours ago. He had not, to her certain knowledge, come out.

Where was he? Should she go back to their own quarters, and wait? But if she did, all she would do was sit and worry.

Finally she went back in, through the sliding door from which she had come out. It was marked no entrance, but not locked.

The blond technician who had tested Jan was standing by what looked like an ultra-centrifuge, peering into a binocular microscope. He glanced up as the door closed behind Jan, and said, “The place where you go for the tests — oh, it’s you.” He grinned at her. “Have you been waiting around all this time? I’m sorry, I thought you knew that you were done for the day. You just come in tomorrow, so we can recover the PO if that hasn’t happened naturally.”

“It’s not me. I’m worried about somebody else who came in at the same time as I did, and he hasn’t come out.”

“Is he your—”

“He’s a close friend. We’re flying out together.”

“I’m sorry, if he isn’t a relative or partner we’re not supposed to give out medical information.”

“I just want to be sure that there’s no problem.”

He looked at Jan, hesitated, and said, “Oh, all right. You know what they say, rules are made to be broken. Wait here for a minute.”

“I really appreciate this.”

“But don’t follow me in, or I’ll get into real trouble.”

He vanished through another door, again labeled NO ENTRANCE. Jan was left waiting again, but not for long. The blond man reappeared, together with a woman in a blue uniform.

The woman said, “I’m Christa Matloff, and I’m the director of this facility. Fritz says that you are a close friend of Mr. Sebastian Birch?”

“Yes. Is he all right?”

“He’s fine, so far as we can tell, but we’re still doing tests on him. How long have you known Mr. Birch?”

“Just about all my life.”

“Good. Do you have a few minutes?”

“As much time as you want.”

“Wonderful. If you would just come with me.” Christa Matloff led the way through the NO ENTRANCE door. Jan followed, wondering why they bothered to put up signs if everyone ignored them. She had rather expected to see Sebastian, but once through the door the other woman turned left and led the way to a private office whose walls carried an odd mixture of pre-war artwork and detailed color diagrams of the human anatomy. She gestured to Jan to take a seat.

“Let me repeat what I said earlier. Mr. Birch is all right. In fact, unless the Peristaltic Observer finds a problem, I’d say he’s in excellent health.”

“But we came in this morning. I was finished ages ago.”

“I’m sure. Normally, the tests take less than half an hour. In Mr. Birch’s case, we discovered something rather odd — not an illness, let me reassure you of that. But something. That’s why I want to ask you about Mr. Birch’s background. Where did you first meet, and how often have you seen him since then?”

Something, but not an illness? Then what? Something to do with Sebastian’s ability to imagine cloud patterns that bad not yet happened?

Christa Matloff seemed like a down-to-earth type, not somebody who enjoyed mystery for its own sake. Jan did her best to give a concise but full answer. She suspected that it would not be enough.

Jan and Sebastian were probably not the same age, but in a sense they had been born on the same day. There must have been years of life that preceded that, two or three of them before Jan’s first memory. But for her, life began with a ride in a low-flying aircraft, cradled by a dark-skinned woman who stroked her hair and told her that everything was all right now. Sebastian was on the woman’s other side, snuggled close.

The aircraft flew in long, slow circles. Jan, staring out of the window, saw dark, cindered land and still waters. Once she caught sight of something moving, a brown-and-white form that slithered and lurched toward a rounded heap of earth. The aircraft banked, Jan saw a flash of flame, and the mottled object was gone. On the ground where the creature had been lay a black outline of ash. The woman hugged her closer. She said, to herself or to Jan or to someone else in the aircraft — Jan would never know which — “Another damned teratoma. How many of them can they be?”

Teratoma. The word meant nothing. It was not until years later that Jan understood the term and realized what must have happened. The aircraft that had rescued her and Sebastian was based at Husvik, on South Georgia Island. It had flown many thousands of kilometers, up across the equator from latitude 55 degrees south, to take part in the first post-war survey of Earth’s northern hemisphere. At the time no one in the south expected to find humans alive beyond the equator. What they feared and what they sought were the teratomas, genetically modified and monstrous forms created in the Belt and seeded on Earth by Belt ships during the final days of the Great War. Whatever they found, the survey craft were to destroy.

They had found and killed teratomas by the thousands. They had also found, and rescued, a fair number of people. The adults were left with their memories intact. Small children found alone were treated as soon as they were picked up, to obliterate their earlier memories.

It was done as an act of kindness. The months before rescue were of terror and of deadly raids from the sky. That was followed by the agonizing death of parents and siblings from drinking poisoned water, or by near-starvation and sometimes by cannibalism. Before their memories were wiped, the woman on the aircraft had asked Jan and Sebastian their names. She wrote them on tags and placed them around their wrists; then she touched the Lethe spray to their temples.

That was all they had, all they kept from the past. They were logged in upon arrival at the displaced persons’ camp in Husvik as Janeed Jannex and Sebastian Birch. It took a month to learn to respond to them.

“After that we spent just about every day together.” Jan felt cold and clammy as she recalled the time of rescue and rebirth. It was a relief to move on to the normal days of schooling and training and planning a future. She had always taken the lead in that. Sebastian seemed happy to sit and dream. If he went along with her plans, it was only because she coaxed and persuaded him.

“No long periods of separation?” Christa Matloff had listened in sympathetic silence. “What you’ve described was more than thirty years ago. You had no individual training since then,- or different schools? I’m thinking of art courses, say, that he took and you didn’t.”

“None.” That last comment sounded as though Sebastian’s cloud drawings must be involved. Jan glanced at the clock. She had talked for close to a quarter of an hour, and there was still no sign of him. “If you think that he might have picked up a disease, I’m sure I would have been exposed to it, too.”

She was really asking a question, and the other woman was smart enough to see it that way.

“It’s not a disease. In fact, I’ll be honest with you, and admit we don’t know quite what it is. I don’t want you to feel we’re making a big mystery out of nothing. Come on, and I’ll show you.”

She led Jan back the way they had come, through another door and into a room filled with CAT and PET scanners and SQUID sensors, flanked by rows of monitors. Jan, to her great relief, saw Sebastian sitting down at the far end. He was fully dressed and — typical Sebastian — quite relaxed. He caught sight of Jan and gave her a nonchalant wave.

“You’re feeling all right?” she called.

He frowned. “All right? Yeah. Getting hungry, is all. We about done?”

He addressed his question to a blue-uniformed man who was fine-tuning an image on a monitor.

“Done as we’re likely to get.” The man turned to Christa Matloff. “We’ve scanned, analyzed, recorded, and tagged. What now?”

“Did you perform the search?”

“Long ago. I can show you the structures, and I can assure you that there’s nothing like it in the data banks.”

“Did you search the full Seine?”

“No. We’d have to get special authorization, and I didn’t think I needed to.” The man turned to Sebastian. “You said you’ve never been off-Earth before?”

“Nah.”

“So it’s down on Earth, if it’s anywhere. And it’s definitely not in the Earth data banks. Do you want me to set up a full Seine search?”

“I don’t think so, not at the moment.” Christa Matloff stepped toward the monitor. “Let’s have another look at it.”

It! They kept saying “it,” but what was it?

Uninvited, Jan followed the other woman. Sebastian, uninhibited as ever, crowded forward and pushed his moon face close to the display.

“Something in the white cells,” the man said. “This is at one to a hundred thousand. See the little round structure, a tiny nodule in with the other organelles? There’s one or two of ’em in every couple of thousand white blood cells.”

The screen showed a single irregular oval. Within it, close to the cell wall, two dark spherical objects were clearly visible.

Christa Matloff stared in silence for a few seconds. “In other types of cells, too?”

“I haven’t found any.”

“Did you do DNA and RNA checks?”

“Sure. Not a sign of either one. We’re not dealing with anything bacterial or viral. There’s also no sign of interaction with the rest of the cell. They just sit there.”

“Chemical analysis?”

“Yes. That’s another reason I’m sure they’re not alive. An ultimate analysis showed eight elements present: hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, magnesium, silicon, potassium, manganese, and zinc. But no you-know-what.”

“No carbon?”

“Not a trace. They’re inorganic.”

“So what are they?” Christa Matloff addressed the question to everyone, but it was clear that she was not expecting an answer.

“Beats me.” The blue-uniformed man shrugged. “But we have plenty of samples, and we’ll go on looking. I can tell you one thing, nothing I’ve seen could possibly be interpreted as a carrier of disease. That’s my job, to make sure that we’re not sending dangerous pathogens to the Outer System. And of course, we had to confirm that Mr. Birch is in good health. He is. Remarkable health, considering his age is thirty-five and he says he never takes any exercise. Dr. Matloff, as far as I’m concerned he’s cleared to go.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Valnia Bloom would never have forgiven me if I’d said he couldn’t go. She’s itching to get at him. But I just hate to leave dangling mysteries.” She turned to Sebastian. “There’s something peculiar inside your white blood cells, and your brain functions and scans are also quite unusual — did you know you have variable neurotransmitter take-up rates?”

“Never knew I had them. Is that good?”

“Not good, not bad. Do you ever feel inexplicable fits of weariness, or rage?”

Jan laughed. “Sebastian never gets mad at anything, ever.”

“Then I wouldn’t worry about the neurotransmitter variations, because they’re not doing any harm. We’ll put all this into the official report, of course. Meanwhile, there’s nothing to stop you leaving.”

“Leaving the lab?”

“Leaving the Earth-Moon system.” Christa Matloff turned, to include Jan as well as Sebastian. “Congratulations, both of you. Pretty soon you’ll be on your way to Ganymede, then I gather you’ll be heading for Saturn.”