Nemesis

25. Surface

Eugenia Insigna was apprehensive. More than that.

‘I tell you, Siever, I haven't had a good night's sleep since you took her out in the aircraft.’ Her voice degenerated into what, in a woman of less firm character, might almost have been described as a whine. ‘Wasn't the flight through air - off to the ocean and back, and coming back after nightfall, too - wasn't that enough for her? Why don't you stop her?’

‘Why don't I stop her?’ said Siever Genarr slowly, as though he were tasting the question. ‘Why don't I stop her? Eugenia, we have gotten past the stage of being able to stop Marlene.’

‘That's ridiculous, Siever. It's almost cowardly. You're hiding behind her, pretending she's all-powerful.’

‘Isn't she? You're her mother. Order her to stay in the Dome.’

Insigna's lips compressed. ‘She's fifteen. I don't like to be tyrannical.’

‘On the contrary. You would love to be tyrannical. But if you try, she'll look at you out of those clear extraordinary eyes of hers and say something like, “Mother, you feel guilty of having deprived me of my father, so you feel that the Universe is conspiring to deprive you of me as punishment, and that's a silly superstition.” ’

Insigna frowned. ‘Siever, that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I don't feel any such thing, and couldn't possibly.’

‘Of course you don't. I was just making something up. But Marlene won't be. She'll know, from the twitching of your thumb or the movement of your shoulder blade or something, just what is bothering you, and she'll tell you, and it will be so true, and so shameful, I suppose, that you will be too busy looking for ways to defend yourself, and you'll give in to her rather than have her keep peeling away the outer layers of your psyche.’

‘Don't tell me that's what's happened to you.’

‘Not much because she's fond of me, and I've tried to be very diplomatic with her. But if I cross her, I shudder to think what a shambles she'll make of me. Look, I've managed to delay her. Give me credit for that. She wanted to go out immediately after the plane trip. And I held her off to the end of the month.’

‘How did you do that?’

‘Pure sophistry, I assure you. It's December. I told her that, in three weeks, the New Year would begin, at least if we go by Earth Standard time, and how best to celebrate the beginning of 2237, I asked her, than to begin the new era of the exploration and settlement of Erythro? You know, she views her own penetration of the planet in that light - as the beginning of a new age. Which makes it worse.’

‘Why worse?’

‘Because she doesn't view it as a personal caprice, but as something of vital importance to Rotor, or even to humanity, perhaps. There's nothing like satisfying your personal pleasure and calling it a noble contribution to the general welfare. It excuses everything. I've done it myself, so have you, so has everyone. Pitt, more than anyone else whom I know, does it. He has probably convinced himself that he breathes only to contribute carbon dioxide to the plant life of Rotor.’

‘So, by playing on her megalomania, you had her wait.’

‘Yes, and it still gives us one more week to see if anything will stop her. I might say, though, that my plea didn't fool her. She agreed to wait, but she said, “You think that if you delay me, you will win your way at least a little bit into the affections of my mother, don't you, Uncle Siever? There's nothing about you that indicates you consider the coming of the new year of the slightest importance.” ’

‘How unbearably rude, Siever.’

‘Merely unbearably correct, Eugenia. Same thing, perhaps.’

Insigna looked away. ‘My affections? What can I say-’

Genarr said quickly, ‘Why say anything? I've told you I loved you in the past, and I find that getting old - or getting older - hasn't much changed it. But that's my problem. You've never treated me unfairly. You never gave me reason to hope. And if I'm fool enough not to be able to take no for an answer, what concern is that of yours?’

‘It concerns me that you're unhappy for any reason.’

‘That counts for a lot right there.’ Genarr managed a smile. ‘It's infinitely better than nothing.’

Insigna looked away and, with obvious deliberation, returned to the topic of Marlene. ‘But, Siever, if Marlene saw your motivation, why did she agree to the delay?’

‘You won't like this, but I'd better tell you the truth. Marlene said, “I'll wait till the New Year, Uncle Siever, because perhaps that will please Mother, and I'm on your side.” ’

‘She said that?’

‘Please don't hold it against her. I have obviously fascinated her with my wit and charm and she thinks she's doing you a favor.’

‘She's a matchmaker,’ said Insigna, obviously caught between annoyance and amusement.

‘It did occur to me that if you could bring yourself to show an interest in me, we could use that to persuade her into all sorts of things that she would think would further encourage the interest - except that it would have to be real or she would see through it. And if it were real, she wouldn't feel it necessary to make sacrifices to bring about what was already so. Do you understand?’

‘I understand,’ said Insigna, ‘that if it weren't for Marlene's perceptiveness, you would be positively Machiavellian in your approach to me.’

‘You've got me dead to rights, Eugenia.’

‘Well, why not do the obvious thing? Lock her up and, eventually, carry her on to the rocket back to Rotor.’

‘Bound hand and foot, I suppose. Aside from not thinking we could do such a thing, I've managed to catch Marlene's vision. I'm beginning to think of colonizing Erythro - a whole world for the taking.’

‘And breathing their alien bacteria, getting them into our food and water.’ Insigna's face curled into a grimace.

‘What of it? We breathe, drink, and eat them - to an extent - right here. We can't keep them out of the Dome altogether. For that matter, there are bacteria on Rotor that we breathe, drink, and eat, too.’

‘Yes, but we're adapted to Rotor's life. These are alien bits of life.’

‘All the safer. If we're not adapted to them, neither are they to us. There are no signs they can possibly parasitize us. They would simply be so many innocuous dust particles.’

‘And the Plague.’

‘That's the real difficulty, of course, even in the case of something as simple as letting Marlene go outside the Dome. We will, of course, take precautions.’

‘What kind of precautions?’

‘She would wear a protective suit, for one thing. For another, I'll go out with her. I'll serve as her canary.’

‘What do you mean, “canary”?’

‘It was a device they had on Earth some centuries back. Miners carried canaries - you know, little yellow birds - into mines. If the air went bad, the canary died before the men were affected, but the men, knowing there was a problem, would get out of the mine. In other words, if I begin to act queerly, we'll both be brought in at once.’

‘But what if it affects her before it affects you?’

‘I don't think it will. Marlene feels immune. She's said that so many times that I have begun to believe her.’

Eugenia Insigna had never before watched the New Year approaching with such a painful concentration on the calendar. There had never been reason before. For that matter, the calendar was a vestigial hangover, twice removed.

On Earth, the year had begun by marking the seasons, and the holidays that related to the seasons - midsummer, midwinter, sowing, harvest - by whatever names they were called.

Crile (Insigna remembered) had explained the intricacies of the calendar to her, and had reveled in them in his dark and solemn way, as he did in everything that reminded him of Earth. She had listened to him with a mixture of ardor and apprehension; ardently because she wished to share his interest, as that might draw them closer together; apprehensively because she feared his interest in Earth might drive him away from her, as eventually it did.

Strange that she still felt the pang - but was it dimmer now? It seemed to her that she could not actually remember Crile's face, that she remembered only the remembering now. Was it only the memory of a memory that stood between her and Siever Genarr now?

And yet it was the memory of a memory that held Rotor to the calendar now. Rotor had never had seasons. It had the year, of course, for it (and all the Settlements in the Earth-Moon system, which left out only those few that circled Mars or that were being built in the asteroid belt) accompanied Earth on its path around the Sun. Still, without seasons, the year was meaningless. Yet it was kept together with months and weeks.

Rotor had the day, too, fixed artificially at twenty-four hours during which sunlight was allowed to enter for half the time and blocked off for the other half. It could have been fixed for any length of time, but it was fixed at the length of an Earth day and divided into twenty-four hours of sixty minutes each, with each minute consisting of sixty seconds. (The days and nights were at least uniformly twelve hours long.)

There had been occasional movements among the Settlements to adopt a system of merely numbering days and grouping them into tens and multiples of tens; into dekadays, hectodays, kilodays, and, in the other direction, decidays, centidays, millidays; but that was really impossible.

The Settlements could not set up each their own system for that would have reduced trade and communications to chaos. Nor was any unified system possible save that of Earth, where 99 per cent of the human population still lived, and to which ties of tradition still held the remaining 1 per cent. Memory held Rotor and all the Settlements to a calendar that was intrinsically meaningless for them.

But now Rotor had left the Solar System and was a world that was isolated and alone. No day, or month, or year in the Earthly sense existed. It was not even sunlight that marked day from night, for Rotor gleamed with artificial daylight and darkened to a light whisper twelve hours on and twelve hours off. The harsh precision was not even broken by the gradual dimming and brightening at the boundaries that might simulate twilight and dawn. There seemed to be no need. And within this all-Settlement division, individual homes kept their illumination on and off to suit their whims or needs, but counted the days by Settlement time - which was Earth time.

Even here at the Erythro Dome, where there was a natural day and night that was casually used as such by those in occupation, it was the not-quite-matching Settlement day length, still tied to that of Earth (the memory of a memory), that was used in official calculations.

The movement was now stronger to leave the day as the only basic measure of time. Insigna knew for a fact that Pitt favored the decimalization of time measure, and yet even he hesitated to suggest it officially, for fear of rousing wild opposition.

But perhaps not for ever. The traditional disorderly units of weeks and months seemed less important. The traditional holidays were more frequently ignored. Insigna, in her astronomical work, used days as the only significant units. Someday the old calendar would die, and, in the far unseen future, new methods of agreed-upon time marking would surely arise - a Galactic Standard calendar, perhaps.

But now she found herself marking off the time to a New Year that began arbitrarily. On Earth, at least the New Year began at the time of a solstice - winter in the northern hemisphere, summer in the southern. It had a relationship to Earth's orbit around the Sun that only the astronomers on Rotor remembered clearly.

But now - even though Insigna was an astronomer - the New Year had to do only with Marlene's venture on to the surface of Erythro - a time chosen by Siever Genarr only because it involved a plausible delay, and accepted by Insigna only because she was officiously concerning herself with a teenager's notion of romance.

Insigna came out of her roaming through the depths of thought to find Marlene regarding her solemnly. (When had she entered the room so silently, or was Insigna so tied into an inner knot as to be unaware of footsteps?)

Insigna said in half a whisper, ‘Hello, Marlene.’

Marlene said solemnly, ‘You're not happy, Mother.’

‘You don't have to be superperceptive to see that, Marlene. Are you still determined to step out on Erythro?’

‘Yes. Entirely. Completely.’

‘Why, Marlene, why? Can you explain it so I can understand?’

‘No, because you don't want to understand. It's calling me.’

‘What's calling you?’

‘Erythro is. It wants me out there.’ Marlene's ordinarily glum face seemed suffused with a furtive happiness.

Insigna snapped, ‘When you talk like that, Marlene, you simply give me the impression that you are already infected by the - the-’

‘The Plague? I'm not. Uncle Siever has just had another brain scan taken of me. I told him he didn't have to, but he said we had to have it for the record before we left. I'm perfectly normal.’

‘Brain scans can't tell you everything,’ said Insigna, frowning.

Marlene said, ‘Neither can a mother's fears.’ Then, more softly, ‘Mother, please, I know you want to delay this, but I won't accept a delay. Uncle Siever has promised. Even if it rains, even if it's bad weather, I'm going out. At this time of the year, there are never real storms or temperature extremes. There are almost never at any time of the year. It's a wonderful world.’

‘But it's barren - dead. Except for germs,’ Insigna said spitefully.

‘But someday we'll put life of our own upon it.’ Marlene looked away, her eyes lost in dreaming. ‘I'm sure of it,’ she said.

‘The E-suit is a simple suit,’ said Siever Genarr. ‘It doesn't have to withstand pressure. It's not a diving suit or a a spacesuit. It has a helmet, and it has a compressed air supply that can be regenerated, and a small heat-exchange unit that keeps the temperature comfortable. And it's airtight, obviously.’

‘Will it fit me?’ asked Marlene, looking at the display of thickish pseudo-textile material with distaste.

‘Not fashionably so,’ said Genarr, his eyes twinkling. ‘It isn't made for beauty, but for use.’

Marlene said in a slightly exasperated tone, ‘I'm not interested in looking beautiful, Uncle Siever, but I don't want to be slopping around in it. If it makes walking hard, it won't be worth it.’

Eugenia Insigna interrupted. She had been watching, a little white-faced and pinch-lipped. ‘The suit is necessary to protect you, Marlene. I don't care how sloppy it is.’

‘But it doesn't have to be uncomfortable, Mother, does it? If it happens to fit, it would protect me just the same.’

‘This will fit fairly well, actually,’ said Genarr. ‘It's the best we could find. After all, we only have them in adult sizes.’ He turned his head toward Insigna. ‘We don't use them much these days. There was a time after the Plague died down that we did some exploring, but by now we know the immediate surroundings quite well, and on the rare occasions we do go out, we tend to use enclosed E-cars.’

‘I wish you'd use an enclosed E-car now.’

‘No,’ said Marlene, obviously pained at the suggestion, ‘I've been out in a vehicle. I want to walk. I want to - feel the ground.’

‘You're mad,’ said Insigna discontentedly.

Marlene fired back, ‘Will you stop implying-’

‘Where's your perceptivity? I wasn't referring to the Plague. I mean just plain mad, just mad in the ordinary sense. I mean- Please, Marlene, you're driving me mad, as well.’

She then said, ‘Siever, if these are old E-suits, how do you know they don't leak?’

‘Because we've tested them, Eugenia. I assure you they're in good working order. Remember, I'm going out with her, and also in a suit.’

Insigna was clearly seeking objections. ‘And suppose you suddenly have to-’ She waved her hand meaning-lessly.

‘Urinate? Is that what you mean? That can be taken care of, though it's not comfortable. Still, it won't arise. We've emptied our bladders and we're good for several hours - or should be. And we're not venturing far off, so in case of emergency, we can come back to the Dome. We ought to leave now, Eugenia. Conditions are good outside and we should take advantage of that. Here, Marlene, let me help you with your suit.’

Insigna said sharply, ‘Don't sound so happy.’

‘Why not? To tell you the truth, I would like to step out myself. The Dome can easily start to feel like a prison, you know. Maybe if we all stepped out more, our people could endure longer shifts in the Dome. There you are, Marlene, we only have to fit on the helmet, now.’

Marlene hesitated. ‘Just a minute, Uncle Siever.’ She walked toward Insigna, holding out her arm, suited and bulky.

Insigna gazed at her mournfully.

‘Mother,’ said Marlene. ‘Once again, please be calm. I love you and I wouldn't do this and cause you such anxiety just to please myself. I do it only because I know I will be fine and that you need not be anxious. And I bet you want to get into an E-suit also, so you can come out and never lose sight of me, but you mustn't.’

‘Why mustn't I, Marlene? How will I forgive myself if something happens to you and I'm not there to help you?’

‘But nothing will happen to me. And even if something does, which it won't, what could you do about it? Besides, you're so afraid of Erythro that your mind is probably open to all kinds of abnormal effects. What if the Plague should strike you rather than me? How would you expect me to live with that?’

‘She's right, Eugenia,’ said Genarr. ‘I'll be out there with her, and the best thing you can do is stay here and remain calm. All E-suits are equipped with radios. Marlene and I will be able to hear each other, and we will be in communication with the Dome. I promise you, if she behaves queerly in any way at all, if there is even the suspicion of oddness, I'll have her inside the Dome at once. And if I feel in any way not quite my own normal self, I will come back at once, bringing Marlene with me.’

Insigna shook her head and did not look comforted as she watched the helmet being fitted first over Marlene's head, and then over Genarr's.

They were near the Dome's main airlock and Insigna watched its manipulation. She knew the lock procedure perfectly well - one could scarcely be a Settler otherwise.

There was the delicate control of air pressure to make sure that there would be a gentle transfer of air from the Dome outward, never from Erythro inward. There were computerized checks at every moment to make sure there were no leaks.

And then the inner door opened. Genarr stepped into the airlock and beckoned Marlene inward. She followed, and the door closed. The two were lost to immediate sight. Insigna distinctly felt her heart miss a beat.

She watched the controls and knew exactly when the outer door slid open and, then, when it closed again. The holoscreen sprang to life and she could see the two suited figures on it, standing on the barren soil of Erythro.

One of the engineers handed a small earplug to Insigna, who inserted it into her right ear. An equally small microphone was fitted over her head.

A voice in her ear said, ‘Radio contact,’ and at once, the familiar voice of Marlene sounded. ‘Can you hear me, Mother?’

‘Yes, dear,’ said Insigna. Her voice sounded dry and abnormal in her own ear.

‘We're out here and it's wonderful. It couldn't be nicer.’

‘Yes, dear,’ Insigna repeated, feeling hollow and lost and wondering whether she would see her daughter in her right mind again.

Siever Genarr felt almost lighthearted as he stepped out upon the surface of Erythro. The sloping wall of the Dome, behind him, reached upward, but he kept his back to it, for a sight so un-Erythronian would have spoiled the savor of the world.

Savor? It was a queer word to use for Erythro, for at the moment it had no meaning. He lived behind the protection of his helmet, breathing the air of the Dome, or at least the air that had been purified and conditioned within the Dome. He could not smell the planet, or taste it, within that shelter.

And yet there was a feel to it that made him oddly happy. His boots crunched slightly upon the ground. Although Erythro's surface was not rocky, it was rather gravelly and, between the bits of gravel, there was what he could only describe as soil. There was, of course, ample water and air to break up the primordial surface rock and, perhaps, the ubiquitous prokaryotes had, in their countless trillions, added their own work patiently over the billions of years.

The soil felt soft. It had rained the day before, the soft and steady misty rain of Erythro - or at least of this portion of Erythro. The soil still felt slightly damp as a result, and Genarr imagined the bits of soil, the tiny scraps of sand and loam and clay, each with its coat of water film that had been refreshed and renewed. In that film, prokaryotic cells lived happily, basking in the energy of Nemesis, building complex proteins out of simple ones, while other prokaryotes, indifferent to solar energy, made use, instead of the energy content of the remnants of those prokaryotes that, in their countless trillions, died during each moment of time.

Marlene was at his side. She was looking upward, and Genarr said gently, ‘Don't stare at Nemesis, Marlene.’

Marlene's voice sounded naturally in his ear. It contained no tension or apprehension. Rather, her voice was filled with quiet joy. She said, ‘I'm looking at the clouds, Uncle Siever.’

Genarr looked up into the dark sky where, by squinting for a while, one could detect a faint greenish-yellow gleam. Against it were the feathery fair-weather clouds that caught Nemesis' light and reflected it in orange splendor.

There was an eerie quiet about Erythro. There was nothing to make a sound. No form of life sang, roared, growled, bellowed, twittered, stridulated, or creaked. There were no leaves to rustle, no insects to hum. In the rare storms, there might be the rumble of thunder, or the wind might sigh against the occasional boulder - if it blew hard enough. On a peaceful, calm day, however, as this one was, it was silent.

Genarr spoke just to make sure that it was quiet and that he had not suddenly been struck deaf. (He couldn't have been, to be sure, for he heard the faint rasp of his own breath.)

‘Are you all right, Marlene?’

‘I feel wonderful. There's a brook up there.’ And she hastened her steps into an almost shambling run, hampered as she was by her E-suit.

He said, ‘Watch out, Marlene. You'll slip.’

‘I'll be careful.’ Her voice was not dimmed by increasing distance, of course, since it was a radio beam that carried it.

Eugenia Insigna's voice sounded suddenly in Genarr's ear. ‘Why is Marlene running, Siever?’ Then, almost at once, she added, ‘Why are you running, Marlene?’

Marlene did not bother to answer, but Genarr said, ‘She just wants to look at some creek or other up ahead, Eugenia.’

‘Is she all right?’

‘Of course she is. It's weirdly beautiful out here. After a while, it doesn't even seem barren - more like an abstract painting.’

‘Never mind the art criticism, Siever. Don't let her get away from you.’

‘Don't worry. I'm in constant contact with her. Right now, she hears what you and I are saying and if she doesn't answer, it's because she doesn't want to be bothered by irrelevancies. Eugenia, relax. Marlene is enjoying herself. Don't spoil it.’

Genarr was indeed convinced that Marlene was enjoying herself. Somehow he was, too.

Marlene was running upstream along the brook's edge. Genarr felt no great urgency to follow her. Let her enjoy herself, he thought.

The Dome itself was built on a rocky outcropping but the region in this direction was interlaced with small gently flowing brooks that all combined into a rather large river some thirty kilometers away that, in turn, flowed into the sea.

The brooks were welcome, of course. They supplied the Dome with its natural water supply, once the prokaryote content was removed (actually, ‘killed’ was the better word). There had been some biologists, in the early days of the Dome, who had objected to the killing of the prokaryotes, but that was ridiculous. The tiny specks of life were so incredibly numerous on the planet, and could proliferate so rapidly to replace any shrinkage of their numbers, that no amount of ordinary killing in the process of ensuring a water supply could hurt them, in any significant way. Then, once the Plague began, a vague but strong hostility to Erythro rose up, and, after that, no-one cared what one did to the prokaryotes.

Of course, now that the Plague did not seem to be much of a threat any longer, humanitarian feelings (Genarr privately felt that ‘biotarian’ was the better word) might rise again. Genarr sympathized with those feelings, but then what would the Dome do for a water supply?

Lost in thought, he was no longer looking at Marlene, and the shriek sounded deafeningly in his ear. ‘Marlene! Marlene! Siever, what is she doing?’

Now he looked up, and was about to answer with automatic reassurance that nothing was wrong, that all was well, when he caught sight of Marlene.

For a moment, he could not tell what she was doing. He just stared at her in the pink light of Nemesis.

Then he made it out. She was unhitching her helmet and was taking it off. Now she was working at removing the rest of her E-suit. He had to stop this!

Genarr tried to call out to her, but in the horror of the emergency, he couldn't find his voice. He tried to run to her, but his legs felt leaden, and barely responded to the urgency of his feelings.

It was as though he found himself in a nightmare where dreadful things were happening, and he could do nothing to prevent them. Or, perhaps, his mind, under the stress of events, was dissociating from his body.

Is this the Plague, striking at me? Genarr wondered in panic. And, if so, what will happen to Marlene now, as she is baring herself to the light of Nemesis and the air of Erythro?