2312

Swan and Mqaret

Back at the spaceport between Schubert and Bramante Craters, Swan sat in a corner, filled with a regret for something she couldn’t name. Surely it was impossible that it should be regret for the utilidor; already she was forgetting that. Let Pauline remember that. Never look back, why should she? Although there had been something there—as if she had been on the border of something important. What had he said? That the tunnel was no different from anywhere else? She would never concede that, never.

When she was about to leave with Genette and the Interplan team, Mqaret came to see her again. “You’re so tough,” he told her, patting her head as if she were a child. But he took her seriously, she knew. So she shook her head.

“No,” she said flatly. “I fell apart. I couldn’t handle it.”

He defended her fondly. “It’s not really what you’re good at, of course. Enforced confinement. Don’t ever get put in prison, or shoot off in a spacesuit on a tangent somewhere. It wouldn’t suit you. Yet here you did very well, I think.”

“I don’t see how.”

“Well, this solar flare that struck you before you got to shelter; your suit dosimeters show that somehow you got hit much harder than the others down there with you. In fact, I don’t mean to scare you, because you’re going to be fine—I’ve already got your renovation well in hand, and you are responding superbly—but really, that was quite a hit.”

“Ten sieverts,” she said dismissively. “That’s not so bad.”

“Quite bad, actually. Did you look at the sun longer than the others? Did you stand in front of your friend?”

“Yes, I did, but I’m only half as wide as him. I’m sure I didn’t protect him much.”

“He only got three sieverts. So you’re only a bit thinner than he is, really. You saved him from the full shot.”

“And then he saved me. He had to carry me for a few days.”

“Fair’s fair. But look, this ten sieverts—that’s enough to kill, and you should have been debilitated. But you will be fine, as I said. So I’m interested to see if we can find out why you did so well. I’ve been wondering if your Enceladan symbiote had anything to do with it. It tolerates radiation well, and as a detrivore it may have bloomed in you to eat all the new food provided for it by all your killed cells. It may have joined your own T cells in clearing your body.”

Swan was startled by this. “You hated me doing that,” she said. “You told me I was a stupid fool.”

Mqaret nodded. “I was right, too. Look, Swan; if you love life, as you profess to do, as your excuse for all your wildness, then you should protect your life the best you can. Some actions are simply unknown risks, and that was one of them. Indeed it still is. But it was a risk only, not a certain thing. Presumably that’s why you did it. You’re not suicidal, right?”

“Right,” she said uncertainly.

“So you’re a fool, then, when you do things that you can’t be sure won’t kill you in ten or even a hundred years.”

“Then we’re all fools.”

“True. True enough. But there’s no need to be a stupid fool.”

“There’s a difference?”

“There is. You think about that and see if you can figure out the difference. Hopefully before you do something like this again. If anything like this is even possible.”

He had been poking a pad and looking at her numbers as they spoke, and now he shrugged. “With your permission, I’ll take some of your samples back to the lab for study. Maybe it will lead to something.”

“Of course,” she said. “It would be nice if something good came from my stupid foolishness.”

He kissed her on the head. “Something more than what you already give, you mean.”

After Mqaret was gone, Swan was left to think about her stupid foolishness. Her body, emaciated on the bed, swimming under her gaze like someone else, a thing she manipulated like a waldo—it was resilient. It still held her. Was hungry. She buzzed the nurse to ask for food.

“Pauline, please transmit my medical history to this tabletop.”

“Would you like the long version or the summary?”

“The summary,” Swan said, knowing that the long version ran to hundreds of pages.

She looked at the print glowing in the table, but could not force herself to read it. Phrases jumped out from all over it: Born 2177, a difficult birth, she had been told, with moments of low oxygen. Seizures age 2. Fungal and bacterial infections in farm school. Wetland syndrome. ADHD, age 4–10

That had been countered with a drug treatment later discredited. Her later schooling had been conducted in the farm, and she had done much better out there. Except there were more words glowing in the table: Dyscalculia. prefrontal cortex electrostimulation. First sabbatical inoculation for Xinjiang, China, age 15, full array including helminths

—meaning parasitic worms, in this case Trichuris suis, a pig whipworm, ingested in a therapy that seesawed in and out of favor.

ODD, age 15–24

Oppositional defiant disorder, related to anxiety disorder, both hippocampal, but anxiety avoided while ODD attacked.

One-g syndrome, second sabbatical in Montpellier, France, age 25. Venusian flu. Genital modification, age 25. Hormone drip implanted, age 35, hormone therapies to present. Oxytocin addiction, age 37–86. Lark and warbler song cluster implant, age 26. Feline purr vocal cords, age 27. Implant of subdural quantum computer in 2222, age 45. Cognitive therapy, age 9–99.

Fathered one female at age 28. Daughter deceased, 2296. Mothered one female at age 63. Natural birth.

There was a line entered in her records by Mqaret: Ingestion of the Enceladan life-form—foolish girl, age 79.

Longevity treatments, age 40–present.

Factitious disorder, never treated—this must have been inserted by either Mqaret or Pauline, making fun of her.

“What about Designed a hundred terraria?” Swan complained. “What about three years spent in the Oort cloud putting mass drivers on ice balls? Or five years on Venus?”

“Those were not medical events,” Pauline said.

“They were, believe me.”

“If you want your curriculum vitae, just ask for it.”

“Be quiet. Go away. You are too good at simulating an irritating person.”

“Did you say ‘simulating’ or ‘stimulating’?”