I’ll say
Very well Ted I’ll do that but
Good now I want a touchdown to begin excavations within forty-eight hours Sheila get those submersibles in the surface landers I want backup crews all down the line too
Good-bye you lot
SIX
He had never meant for him and Nikka and Carlotta to choose up and play Nuclear Family, but the old times between them had called up a blood-rush swelling, as each slid over the others’ love-slicked skin, gasping at the dazzling slides of fingers, seeking the sag of aging muscles without judgment, yielding to the jut of bone. He dimly recalled how furious it had been between them. Then came the cooling, time leaching away the weight of each other. Now the past ambitions unspoken surfaced, and Carlotta was smothered in apparatus.
Nigel gingerly unhooked himself from the machine. He sealed the cap on his leg vein input. The memories surfaced often now. He had regained a good deal of his old mental equilibrium, enough to permit the old hurts and joys to resurface. Whatever in him had learned to repress was now itself in retreat.
Nikka moved to help him up but he waved her away. “I’m feeling a lot better. Stronger.”
“I’d still like you to rest more. You’ve been working in the gardens too much.”
“No, just barely enough. I’m beginning to think this whole blood imbalance thing, the buildup of ruddy rogue cells and that rot—quite literally, rot—it’s all been due to something from that injury in the damned fluxlife-cleaning job.” He stretched, enjoying the delicious pop of his joints.
Nikka smiled tolerantly. As she opened her mouth to speak he saw in an instant her fatigue, pushed back beyond notice, silted up inside her by the currents of despair she must have suffered in these years of watching him slowly go dull and listless. The fretwork of lines near her eyes had deepened and turned downward. Her laugh was blunted now, seldom heard, weighted.
“Things are going to be better now,” he said impulsively. “I’m sure I’ve beaten it.”
“Yes,” she said, and put her arms around him. “Yes.”
He saw that she did not believe. She thought his words meant no more than the compulsive optimism of a man who knew deeply that he would die. “No, I want you to see it … see better. I am getting—”
A knock at the door. They went into the living room, closing the bedroom door to hide the medical machines. Nigel opened the door. He kept his face blank when he saw it was Carlos and Ted Landon. Carlos had been coming by regularly, but Nigel had decided it was best for the moment to be neither friendly nor hostile. Simple distance might be the best.
Carlos was nervous, sweating. He said abruptly, “Nigel, I told you it wouldn’t last, that medmon dodge. While I was in the Slots a systems inventory turned up a glitch, where I’d covered for you. They just now unraveled it and—”
“I thought it was a good idea to bring along Carlos, so he could explain,” Ted broke in smoothly. “He didn’t rat on you.”
Nigel shrugged.
“I don’t blame Carlos for this at all,” Ted said with heavy seriousness. “He’s been under pressure, as we all know. I do blame you, though.” He tapped Nigel’s chest. “You’re going in for a full check. Now.”
Nigel shrugged again. “Fair enough.” He glanced at Nikka and saw she was thinking the same: With his blood newly filtered, he might pass.
Carlos said, “I’m sorry, but it had to …”
Nigel felt a surge of sympathy for the man. He patted Carlos tentatively on the shoulder. “Never mind. Forget all this old stuff, from before you went to the Slots.” He wanted to suggest that it would be best to make a whole new life, forgetting himself and Nikka, but he saw that would be the wrong note to sound so soon.
He was naked, so Ted saw nothing unusual about his retiring to pull on some clothes, in the bathroom he drank a solution of antioxidants and other control agents, to mask the clear signature effects of the blood processing. When he returned Carlos was out of his mood and was explaining to Nikka that he had successfully applied for a job on the ground team on Pocks.
“Grunt work, sure, but it’ll get me down on a planet again.” He shifted heavily, still unused to the feel of the bulk of muscle, but eager to use it. Nikka seemed pleased. Nigel marveled at how she covered her anxiety so well. If they treated this all very matter-of-factly, and the tests weren’t too probing, they might just bring it off.
“Come on,” he said mildly, “I’ve got work to do. Bring on your needles.”
Ted walked with him to the medical center. There was going to be a shipwide meeting later that day, over the net. Ted was distracted. He grudgingly gave up the information that the latest transmission from Earth was full of news. The gravitational telescope had surveyed two more planetary systems. Each had a terrestrial-type world, and around each a Watcher orbited. That brought the count to nineteen terrestrial-type worlds discovered, fourteen with Watchers, out of thirty-seven star systems.
“Life turns up everywhere, I guess,” Ted said. “But it commits suicide just as fast.”
“Ummmm.”
“They’ve got their hands full back there, with the ocean thing. Everything happens at once. They’re not processing the planetary data fast, ’cause this Swarmer stuff is—”
“What stuff?”
“I’ll announce it today. They’re coming ashore. Killing people, somehow.”
Nigel nodded, silent.
They put him into a kind of fuzzy sleepstate for the tests. He ignored them and focused on Ted’s news. It was important to understand this event, there was a clue buried somewhere. But the sleep dragged him down.
SEVEN
When he woke up he was dead.
Utter blackness, total silence. Nothing.
No smells. There should be the clean, efficient scent of a medical center.
No background rustle of steps. No drone of air conditioning, no distant murmur of conversations, no jangle of a telephone.
He could not feel any press of his own weight. No cold table or starched sheets rubbed his skin.
They had disconnected all his external nerves.
