“His technique involves holothetics, as you should expect,” she cautioned. `We’ll have to modify a unit for him to use. The way was developed on Beta, and between us we remember fairly well what it is. But you realize a Side 112
Anderson, Poul – Avatar, The certain amount of cut-and-try is necessary. Furthermore, our equipment is crude by his standards.”
“Could we build him the right kind?” Weisenberg asked.
“If you were thrown back in time to Galileo, could you build him a hundred-meter orbiting reflector?” she gibed. “Oh, I daresay a few minor improvements here and there will be possible for us in due course, especially in software. At present, though, we must get what data we can. You go do the obvious things, determine masses, take spectrograms, et cetera. You have to do them anyway. After Fidelio’s linkage is ready, he can tell you what kind of additional information he and I will need, particularly information fed into us directly and continuously.
“Let us alone to consult. Go about your business. I’ll tell you what else to do and when.”
Brodersen lifted a brow without saying anything. She recognized his “My, isn’t the air kind of thin on top of that high horse?” expression from of old.
He never used it on me before! went through her like ice. He was always too respectful of my mind. What’s changed him? The stress of this expedition? Thai Caitlin adventuress?
The question persisted in her through the days that followed. Not that she was obsessed: except by work, like everybody else. Nevertheless it came back into her awareness again and again, most sharply when she was trying to sleep.
This was often difficult. She had never taken naturally to weightlessness. To her, the pleasure of floating and flying was slight compared to the tedium of long daily times at the exercise machines lest her blood go stale and her very bones dwindle. (The rest talked or sang or watched shows, that kind of thing. She cared for none of it. Theoretically she could have retreated into her head, where mathematics and the memory of the Noumenon dwelt, as she frequently did at leisure. But the dull, sweaty exertions were too nagging.) Worse, just as she was on the edge of dreams, more and more she would rouse with a gasp from a sense of falling into a fathomless pit. Then she must drift in the dark at the end of her leash and try for calm. Thoughts roiled forth which she did not want.
Why do I care that Dan no longer cares? He was never more to me than an animal, smarter and stronger than most, excellent in bed, yet only an animal to fill some of those hours when I was being only an animal. If my body wants use, he intimated he’d oblige – probably not now, he’s probably too harassed and uncertain, but eventually. Or I could turn to… – Rueda, I suppose. A man of the world like him would see past my post-menopausal gray hair, and doubtless be quite an artist. Never mind dignity. Sex is a mere bodily need, like defecation.
Is it? Eric, Eric!
Hold. Wait. It isn’t even a need. I’ve gone close to nine years without and hankered little and seldom.
Is the fear of death making me feel lonely? We are going to die out here. The odds against us finding our way back are… no, not incalculable…
ridiculous… – But if we take reasonable care, given reasonable luck, we ought to have, oh, ten years until the food is gone. With no geriatrician aboard, I could be dead of bodily failure earlier than that.
Besides, I learned long ago not to fear death. Having looked straight into Reality- There is no “I” to dread the loss of. There is a temporary association of mitochondria, eukaryotic cells, intestinal flora, and the like, the whole symbiosis shading off into the world around it that begot it, serving no end except the perpetuation of the genes within. Were the immortality of my
“person” offered me, I would not want it. Too petty, amidst atoms, eons, and galaxies.
Indeed, I should welcome this unparalleled chance to explore, experience, learn. That I cannot report my findings to my colleagues is regrettable. However, from my viewpoint it is the loss of a very trivial satisfaction compared to what awaits me in the next decade.