Lifeline

Chapter 13

AGUINALDO—Day 11

The orbits displayed on the holoscreen made no sense to Luis Sandovaal, but he wasn’t going to admit that to anybody. He cracked his knuckles and leaned back in his seat. He understood little about celestial mechanics, but enough not to believe it when something was supposedly “impossible.” Besides, once he knew even a little about a subject, it was easy to convince others that he was an expert.

Plodding along and optimizing its own parameters, Sandovaal’s computer model had found a way to send his wall-kelp to the other colonies, using only the magic of gravity. His kelp would save the lives of thousands. President Magsaysay would like that. But Sandovaal had to understand the orbital principles enough so that he’d seem knowledgeable when he made the proposal to the Council. The next meeting would be within the hour.

Orbits, ellipses, perturbations, a slow-moving tug-of-war with gravity … he had difficulty conceptualizing the rules. He wondered if this was how other people felt about biology and genetics. But then, everybody had genetics inside them. Sandovaal’s distinctive pale hair and blue eyes set in a round Filipino face had caused his own fascination with the subject.

The son of a Danish diplomat and a Filipino woman, Luis Sandovaal had grown up in the expansive diplomatic household of his grandfather. They had found a special exemption to get Luis into the embassy schools, where he studied voraciously—especially the natural sciences. Later, the old Danish ambassador had arranged for his grandson to study at Cambridge.

Luis’s mother had pulled him aside the day before he had boarded the Philippine Airways flight from Manila to London, begging him not to desert the Islands forever, to come back with what he had learned.

Sandovaal logged off the computer and made his way out of the lab complex, onto the Aguinaldo’s main floor level. Sandovaal pressed a taxicall by the stairs and waited for one of the electric carts to find him. His thumbprint would trigger a priority call and ensure a speedy dispatch.

Above him, children played in the zero-G core, squirting compressed air out of cans to maneuver themselves. A sail-creature nymph and an older boy played a game of crack-the-whip. Sandovaal squinted, then snorted to himself. The Barrera boy—Ramis, he thought. Always up to something dangerous. Ramis flew past the nymph until the rope grew taut, then snapped them both about. With the colony’s crisis, President Magsaysay had been far too busy to keep a close watch on his foster son.

The taxi’s arrival startled Sandovaal from his thoughts. He climbed in, directed it to the main Council chambers, then craned his neck to look out the taxi’s wire-mesh window. Ramis and the sail-creature nymph still frolicked in the core. An old woman slowly made her way along the axis on a pedal-kite. Other nymphs guarded the children playing in the core, as they had been conditioned to do.

Like sheepdogs.…

Years ago the colony animals had accepted the wall-kelp as a substitute feed, once it had been dried and processed. Sandovaal and Dobo Daeng, along with the technicians who had replaced Agpalo and Panay Barrera, worked on the next step in their experiments. Sandovaal had been stifled on Earth, unable to get permission to do some of his research because it was too unorthodox, and therefore considered “risky.” Here on the Aguinaldo, the Filipinos trusted his judgment.

Sandovaal expanded on the technique of gene grafting he had developed for the wall-kelp. At times he felt like a Filipino Frankenstein; at other times he conceived of himself as a chromosomal gourmet chef.

Most of the time the recipe failed. The failures usually died immediately, but some survived into the embryonic stage. Only rarely did a hideously distorted patchwork “thing” manage to grow to maturity.

Then they succeeded in creating the first proto-creature—robust and strong, featureless. The creature had both mitochondria and chloroplasts within its cell walls—it was plant and animal. Somehow, everything had worked exactly right—everything fit together, everything functioned as it should.

Sandovaal would never admit that it had been an accident.

Dobo kept staring at the proto-creature with wide eyes, astonished. The other assistants crowded around.

“It is still a plant, so it functions as a plant. It needs nutrients, sunlight, water.” Sandovaal felt smug. “We grew its lungs and digestive system, but they were superfluous. Like our appendix: everyone has one, but it serves no purpose. A baby can be perfectly happy in the womb, unaware of its lungs, until we take it away from the mother and force it to breathe the open air.”

“Mother Marie, it is a miracle, I think,” Dobo whispered.

Sandovaal made a rude sound. “Since when does a thousand trials, breaking your back for months and months, qualify as a miracle? We did not create life, Dobo, we just rearranged it.”

Sandovaal thought of what Magsaysay had said a year before, and smiled to himself.

Sheepdogs!

The twenty senators were settling into their seats in the Council chamber when Sandovaal strode in. He knew they did not expect him, which would heighten the effect. The senator from Leyte—a thin woman who needed the simplest things explained to her several times—scowled at his intrusion.

Magsaysay sat up straight and blinked his large eyes, then smiled. “Welcome, Luis. Feel free to join us.”

“I have learned something important. As your chief scientist I am required to point it out—” He stopped. Sitting cross-legged in a chair against the back wall was the Barrera boy.

Sandovaal blinked in surprise. Only minutes before, Ramis had been playing with the sail-creature nymph up in the core. Sandovaal’s taxi had encountered only the typical delays—how could the boy have gotten here so fast? Had he somehow directed the nymph where he wanted to go?

“Yes, Luis?” Magsaysay said, raising his eyebrows.

Sandovaal turned back to the Council members, trying to mesmerize them with his bright blue eyes. They would survive, thanks to him. And he was about to pull another rabbit out of his hat.

“You asked me to see if we could somehow help the other colonies—get wall-kelp to the lunar base and to the American Orbitechnology colony. You must decide if we should assist the Soviet Kibalchich as well. If they had a nexus of the wall-kelp, the other colonies would be able to grow their own supply. They would survive. But we have no rockets, no shuttles. How will we launch these packages to them?”

Sandovaal went to the display holotank in the center of the chamber, activated it, then logged on. He accessed the files he had just been viewing in his laboratory, and displayed the results. The Moon, the Earth, and the Lagrange points appeared on the screen.

“The concept is simple, and the celestial mechanics models say it will work. You will have to discuss details with one of our orbital specialists, but I am confident we have the ability among our distinguished engineers and physicists to implement my idea.” He scanned the senators’ faces again. Ramis stared at the tank, fascinated.

Sandovaal tapped his fingernail on the glass in front of the display. “Reaching the Moon is relatively simple. We can, in effect, just toss the wall-kelp there. We can sling a package there by attaching it to the end of a tether. According to the diagram, if we make the tether long enough and reel the package away from the Aguinaldo, then the package and our colony will be in different orbits.”

He worked with the keyboard on the podium and animated the display. “If you think about it, the concept is clear.” He flashed a glance at the thin senator from Leyte. “The length of the tether determines the package’s orbit. We can calculate an orbit that will intersect the Moon’s and adjust the tether’s length to match it. Once we release the tether, the package will travel in the new orbit until it impacts the Moon. Think of children slinging themselves across the core, playing crack-the-whip. It is the same principle.

“It is possible to impact the Moon with a velocity less than one kilometer a second. If we package the wall-kelp properly, it should be able to survive the shock.”

Sandovaal smiled at them, satisfied. “My results are open to confirmation, of course.”

Magsaysay stood and clapped his hands. “That is wonderful, Luis! My confidence in you was not misplaced.”

“Of course not.”

The senator from Leyte stood up. “Why all these complications, Dr. Sandovaal? Can we not simply launch the package at the Moon?”

Sandovaal raised his eyebrows and gave her a withering look. “Madam, we are trying to deliver a fragile package, not shoot a missile that will strike the ground like a bullet!”

The dato seated himself again. The other senators nodded and smiled. The senator from Leyte muttered something and sat down as well.

“Reaching L-5 will be much more difficult.” He didn’t want them to get complacent.

Ramis spoke from his seat. He studied the curves on the holotank, taking no notice of the others in the chamber. “How will you get there?”

Sandovaal raised his eyebrows at the interruption. Magsaysay waved Ramis into silence, but waited for Sandovaal to answer the question.

He turned to the group. “Conceptually, we could use the same technique, I suppose. But with the Moon we have an entire planetary body as a target. Given the right parameters, it is not a challenge to get there. The Lagrange well is more subtle, though, and the colony itself is so small we cannot expect to hit it. The uncertainties are too great.”

Magsaysay pressed his fingertips together, overlapping his long nails. “And your solution?”

“We will have to guide the package, of course—deliver it ourselves.”

The other senators muttered. The senator from Cebu raised his hand. “How do you propose this, Luis?” Magsaysay said, ignoring the senator’s question.

Sandovaal smiled. Now it was time for his gamble.

“Given an optimum orbit, which I am certain our mathematicians can provide, ten days should be enough for a sail-creature to travel from here to Orbitech 1.” He changed the image in the holotank to recordings taken years ago of the first sail-creatures, their gossamer wings stretching kilometers across as they were slowly swept away by the solar wind.

Ramis sat up abruptly. The other senators fell silent as they watched the pictures; the senator from Cebu put his head down on the table. Magsaysay opened and closed his mouth several times, but no words came out.

“And how will we steer the sail-creature as it rides the solar wind, you ask?” Sandovaal continued. “Our experiments showed that even after its drastic physical rearrangement, the creature’s body core is still responsive to stimuli. An irritation at the right spot will cause the creature to reorient its sails.”

Sandovaal closed his eyes and drew in a long breath. In his mind he could picture a sail-creature tacking from one Lagrange point to another.

The president finally found his words again. “A sail-creature? Steered by remote control? I am still trying to grasp the idea.”

“No, we do not have the proper equipment to achieve that.” Sandovaal averted his eyes, but he kept his face calm, confident. This was the part Magsaysay would object to the most.

“Someone must ride along. Inside.”

Sandovaal cringed at the Council’s outcry, but he shouted his explanation above their noise.

“You must listen! With the correct injection of hormones, we can create a cavity inside the sail-creature’s body core—a cyst or a blister, a place for someone to ride. This person can then irritate the sail-creature’s inner membrane and reorient the sails. The rider would have to be small. We could then fill most of the cavity with wall-kelp, perhaps even some sail-creature embryos.”

Magsaysay stood up, looking angry. The chamber quieted. “I am afraid we cannot accept this proposal, Luis.”

“Then you are condemning the Americans to death. You asked me to find a way. I have found one. It is up to you to implement it.”

The dato shook his head. “But who would volunteer for a mission that could only lead to certain death?”

“Myself! Who better—”

Magsaysay dismissed the idea with a wave. “Have you lost your mind, Luis? You are too valuable to us. Even if your sail-creature managed to get to the other colony, how would the rider ever return to the Aguinaldo?”

The Council members sat in silence as the reality sank in. Sandovaal kept his gaze locked on Magsaysay’s. “I cannot give you a solution without risks.”

The president nodded slowly to himself. “We will begin work on your tether idea. That sounds feasible. Perhaps we will not be able to help the American L-5 colony after all.”

A young voice rang out. “I volunteer.”

Magsaysay leaned forward, startled. Sandovaal grinned.

Ramis Barrera stood up straight and pushed away from his chair. He was small for his age, but his eyes held an intensity that Sandovaal had not noticed before.

“I volunteer to ride the sail-creature.”

Magsaysay motioned for the boy to sit down, as if in dismissal. Ramis remained standing, with his hands clenched at his side. The Council looked stunned. The dato frowned. “Ramis, this journey is not a game.”

“I am well aware of the consequences.” Ramis stared at his guardian defiantly. The senators stirred at his tone. “You must realize it, Father—I am the only person qualified to undertake this trip. Dr. Sandovaal just said that the rider must be small and light. An adult will be too large to go. And I know the creatures better than any of you. Including you, Dr. Sandovaal.”

Sandovaal growled.

Ramis looked at each of the Council members in turn. “You all know that I am best qualified for the trip.”

Magsaysay shook his head, stunned. “You are still just a boy—”

Sandovaal felt angry. He knew the boy was right. Besides, Ramis was always doing crazy stunts like this, especially since his parents had died. “You cannot call him a boy, Yoli. Ramis is of age—sixteen, I believe. By the Aguinaldo’s own laws he is old enough to vote, old enough to attend Council meetings.”

“Luis—” Magsaysay’s eyes seemed haunted.

“Look at him.” Sandovaal held out an arm to Ramis. “He is an expert in zero-G gymnastics. Everyone knows about his nighttime acrobatics in the core. Do you wish to deny the best-qualified person on the Aguinaldo his right to go? Think! It could be our only chance to save all those people.” He knew that tactic would work best against Magsaysay.

Sandovaal breathed heavily, his nostrils flaring. The Council members watched the two men. Ramis stood unflinching, as if in the eye of the storm.

Sandovaal spoke again in a quieter tone. “You must not allow your feelings for Ramis to keep thousands from living, Yoli. Agpalo and Panay Barrera would have wanted it this way. I knew them well. They would not have stopped their son. Your son.”

Magsaysay’s shoulders slumped. He looked suddenly older than the seventy-five years he carried. The colony’s low gravity had been kind to him, keeping age at arm’s length. But the thought of Ramis leaving seemed to bury him.

Seconds passed; no one spoke.

The dato straightened. “Dr. Sandovaal, I accept your conclusions and direct the following actions: your tether idea to send wall-kelp to Clavius Base will receive the utmost priority. Your research team will also prepare one of the sail-creatures for a journey to our sister Lagrange point. As chief scientist, you will have all the resources of the Aguinaldo at your disposal.”

Magsaysay lowered his eyes, his voice barely audible as he turned to the rear door of the chamber. He avoided looking at Ramis. “For now, I wish to be alone. The special Council meeting is adjourned.”