Containment (15 page)

Arik nodded. He was following what Cadie was telling him, but still not entirely comprehending the implications.

"Arik," Cadie said, "the baby started out as Cam's, but it's as much yours now as if we conceived it ourselves."

She waited for Arik's reaction, but he was completely still. He didn't know what to feel. It occurred to him that human emotion had not evolved quickly enough to keep up with what mankind's scientific capabilities demand of it. Sometimes the tiny components that make up an experience just didn't fit in to existing emotional receptors, and the result was simply numbness.

"Arik," Cadie said, "the baby is
yours
. It's
ours
."

"Did you test the DNA Priyanka gave you?"

"No, because I didn't use it," Cadie said. "I used your DNA from ODSTAR instead. It was the only way I could be sure it was yours. I had to destroy the project, but it worked. She's a perfectly healthy baby girl. She's
our
baby girl."

Cadie's tearful smile was all Arik needed to tell him how to feel. For the first time, he reached out and touched his child. Cadie took his fingers away, pulled up her gown, and held his hand firmly against her flesh.

Arik looked up from Cadie's belly. "She's going to have that image of Earth inside her forever. Blue Marble. Like a genetic tattoo."

"I know," Cadie said. "I think it's beautiful. Wherever she ends up, whatever ends up happening to her, she'll always have something inside of her that no one can take away."

A
rik looked into his own eyes in his workspace and began recording.

"Connect to me as soon as you can," he said to himself. He had just verified the results of the tests he ran on the last soil sample Cam brought him. "I'll be here all day. And make sure you're alone."

Arik added the message to Cam's queue. Cam usually only opened his workspace a few times a day, so Arik wanted to get the message out to him as early as possible.

Cam responded sooner than Arik expected. Arik had just laser sealed several chloroplast cultures inside of borosilicate tubes and was about to go leave them in the dome when he heard the incoming connection request. He touched the wall and accepted the video stream.

"That was fast."

"What are you doing leaving me messages so early?" Cam said. "Don't you sleep?"

"I have to get in early to work on my side projects," Arik said. He noticed movement behind Cam. "You're not alone."

"You know what this place is like. There's no such thing as privacy here. No one can hear you, though." He tapped his ear indicating that he was using audio drops. The Infrastructure Department preferred audio drops to mechanical transmitters and receivers since the drops freed them from having to worry about additional power supplies and maintenance. One or two drops allowed you to receive and transmit wireless audio for between three and six hours, depending on the size of your eustachian tubes. The nanotubes in audio drops weren't sophisticated enough to encrypt or decrypt signals, however, which meant that technically, their conversation still wasn't secure. But the chances of someone listening in at just the right time on just the right frequency were negligible.

"I'll do all the talking, then," Arik said. "It turns out Venusian dirt isn't as sterile as I expected. Every sample you've given me so far contained organic molecules."

"Organic molecules?" Cam repeated. "You mean
life
?"

"No, not organic in that sense. I mean the building blocks of life. Carbon-based compounds. There's definitely nothing alive in the soil, but that doesn't mean it can't be made to support life. Or, more accurately, that life and the soil couldn't be made to support each other."

"That's good news, right? That's what you were hoping for?"

"That's significantly
more
than I was hoping for, though I still don't have any concrete results."

"What's stopping you?"

"Actually, that's what I need to talk to you about. I need more dirt."

Cam looked around him, then leaned in close to the polymeth. "Arik, I don't think I can get you any more."

"Why?"

"I can't explain now. Can you meet me tonight?"

"What time?"

"I'll let you know later."

"Is everything ok? Did I get you in trouble?"

"We'll talk tonight," Cam said. "I have to go."

Before Arik could respond, the video stream dropped.

That afternoon, Cam sent Arik a text message: "2100. The dock."

Arik sent Cam a confirmation, and let Cadie know that he'd be working late.

Cam didn't meet Arik on the maglev platform this time. Arik thought about pinging him from outside the Wrench Pod, but decided to go in on his own, instead. He knew his way around by now. He'd been in enough times to pick up soil samples from Cam that he was almost always greeted by heavily gloved waves and deep nods of welding helmets as he walked through the shop on his way back to the dock.

But the shop was dark and almost empty tonight. Arik could hear a drill press on the far side, and could see a single masked figure bent over a piece of steel in an isolated pool of light, but otherwise the Wrench Pod was as empty has Arik had ever seen it. He instinctively followed his normal unobtrusive route along the perimeter of the room.

Cam was alone in the dock. He was clamping down the rovers' power cords when he heard Arik step on to the hollow metal floor.

"Hey," Cam said. "Is there anyone left out there?"

"Just one person. I couldn't tell who it was."

"Ok, good."

"What's with all the secrecy? What's going on?"

"The situation has changed," Cam said. He secured the last plug and sidestepped his way out from between the rovers. He spoke as he crossed the metal grate floor to the lockers. "I can't get you any more dirt, Arik. From now on—" He opened a locker and removed an environment suit. "— you're going to have to get it yourself."

Arik stood still for a moment watching his friend, then smiled. "Are you serious?"

Cam was pleased with the drama he'd created. Although Arik had never actually said it, Cam knew how curious Arik was about the outside. When you grow up in a fully contained environment like V1, taking even a single step outside was the equivalent of crossing an ocean.

"Remember how I told you any idiot could operate an e-suit?" Cam said. "That includes you."

"Are we allowed to do this? Did you ask anyone?"

"Why would I do that? If I asked, they might say no. How does the saying go? It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission?"

"Do you think anyone will find out?"

"People come in and out of here all day long," Cam said. "Nobody's going to notice, and even if they did, nobody would care. What's the worst that could happen?"

"I guess it's not like we can get fired."

"Exactly. And if we did, we could just play cricket and ping pong all day."

"So show me how to use this thing."

"It's incredibly simple," Cam said. "The hardest part is the stirrups." Cam reached into a box in the locker and grabbed a fist full of short elastic straps with alligator clips at either end. "Sit down and take your shoes off."

Cam showed Arik how to attach the straps to keep his pant legs and shirt sleeves in place. Once you started sweating, he explained, it was possible for loose cuffs to bunch up and restrict blood flow to your arms and legs increasing the risk of painful and debilitating muscle cramps. He then told Arik to tilt his head to the side and put two audio drops in each ear.

"And now to make you an official member of the Wrench Pod," Cam said. He stood behind Arik, reached over his head, and tied something tight against Arik's forehead. Arik turned to the mirror in the locker and saw that it was a clean white
hachimaki
, complete with the traditional rising sun on the forehead. "It shows that you're determined and focused," Cam told him, "and also helps keep the sweat out of your eyes."

"This feels like a rite of passage."

"It is. You're one of us now." Cam held the dingy environment suit up against Arik to judge the size. "You're lucky. This should fit perfectly. I'm at least six centimeters too big for the biggest one. One day I'm just going to split it open and die of an embolism on the spot."

Arik started working his feet into the boots. "Let's not talk about dying right now."

"Seriously, this is all perfectly safe. You know I wouldn't let you do it if it wasn't, right? Zaire and I do this all the time."

"Well I don't. The closest I've ever been to outside is the dome."

Cam was helping to shove one of the suit's boots onto Arik's foot, but he stopped. "Are you sure you're ok with this? I didn't mean what I said about the dirt. I can get you more."

"No way," Arik said. "I'm doing this. I just wasn't expecting it."

"Well, it wouldn't have been much of a surprise if you were, would it?"

"I just hope I don't turn out to be agoraphobic."

"Trust me, you won't have to worry about that. You can't see far enough out there to feel like you're in an open space. I'd be more concerned about being claustrophobic."

"Living here would have cured that a long time ago."

Arik put his arms through the suit's sleeves and Cam started sealing up the front.

"Once we get the cartridge in, the suit will finish sealing. It'll feel a little strange at first while it pressurizes, but you'll get used to it. I don't even notice it anymore."

Arik pulled on the gloves, and Cam threaded and latched them. Cam picked up Arik's helmet and stood in front of him.

"Ok, here's what I want you to do," Cam said seriously. "Once you leave the outer airlock door, take a right and follow the edge of the building. In about 40 meters, you'll come to a corner. Take a right and keep following the wall. In about another 40 or 50 meters, you'll see a curved wall on your left. That's the Public Pod. You can do anything you want over there. The electromagnetic shields on the windows interfere with the rovers, and most of us are too lazy to walk all that way, so nobody ever goes over there."

The Venera Auditorium was the only structure in V1 besides the dome that had windows, but they were sealed up from the outside just a month after it was originally built. Apparently the engineer who designed the twelve centimeter thick aluminum silicate glass panes didn't know enough about how the Venusian atmosphere filters sunlight, and requested the wrong coatings in the specification. The error was discovered after several of the Founders complained of irritated, bloodshot eyes, and even partial but temporary blindness.

"What does the electromagnetism do to the rovers?"

"It screws up their navigation systems and cameras."

"Why didn't they just bolt the shields over the windows?"

"The structure wasn't designed to have holes drilled in it, and they didn't have enough spare welding material to weld the plates on back then. They tried an adhesive, but the atmosphere broke it down after about a week, and all the plates fell off. Finally they decided to run wires through the insulation in the walls between the panes and use good old fashioned electromagnetism to make them stick."

"Clever solution, actually."

Cam held the helmet up close to Arik's head and judged the size. "Let's try a bigger one. You have an extra large brain." He placed the helmet on top of a locker, and started down the row looking for a more appropriate size. "By the way, that whole story about them using the wrong kinds of filters on the windows is all made up. You know that, right?"

"What do you mean?"

"You want to hear the Wrench Pod version of the story?"

"I don't know. Do I?"

Cam reached for a helmet. "What
really
happened was that the GSA never thought about how a 3,000 hour day would affect people psychologically. Back then, the Venera Auditorium was the only structure in V1, so people couldn't get away from the light. Eventually it drove them all insane, and they ended up ripping each other to pieces with their bare hands. The GSA had to send in a new crew to clean up the mess and start over again."

"You guys seriously believe that?"

"Cañada claims to have used that trailer right there to haul the bodies out and bury them."

"Great. So now I have to worry about zombies out there in addition to everything else."

"That's right. He says if you take one of the rovers out into the magnetic field and switch on the mic, you can hear the screams of the first wave of Founders being murdered in the static."

"You people are deranged."

"Now you're
really
an official Wrench Pod member," Cam said. "That story doesn't leave this room, by the way."

Cam looked surprisingly earnest. Apparently the Wrench Pod took their lore very seriously. "Don't worry. I can't really see myself retelling it."

"Here, try this on."

Arik slipped the helmet over his head. Cam put his hands on either side and moved it around to test the fit.

"Ok, this one works. Feel ok?"

Arik gave Cam a thumbs up, and Cam threaded and latched the helmet ring.

"All right. All you need now is your cartridge."

Cam pulled a hexagonal tube from the stack on the right side of the door.

"Turn around."

Arik turned his back to Cam, and a moment later, he felt a change in the suit. He could feel the glove and helmet joints stiffen, and the seam down the front of the suit contract. The pressure changed inside the helmet, and a heads-up display in the visor showed him his air supply, battery life, suit pressure, and comm status.

When Arik turned back, Cam was standing in front of the wall using his workspace. He signaled for Arik to wait a second, then tilted his head and filled his own ears with audio drops.

"Comm check. Can you hear me?"

"Loud and clear."

"Good. One last thing."

Cam took a bucket down from the equipment rack and handed it to Arik. Arik had to hold it out from his body and bend at the waste to see the tools inside.