Dark Ararat Read Online Free PDF Page B

though. The ship isn’t a homogenous environment, of course, even within the inner shell. When you came aboard it was probably no more than a glorified steel box, but once we’d hitched a ride in the comet core the hybrid began to evolve, and it’s been evolving ever since. Seven hundred years is a long time in the history of a world as small as this one, and we’ve been making progress all the while. It’s not just a matter of needing suits to go out into the ice—there are a dozen intermediary regions, and only a couple are exclusively AI territory. You’ll find the surface very strange, Inspector Solari, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that Hope is a little slice of home. In its own fashion, it’s a good deal stranger. If the people below understood that better, none of them would be laboring under the delusion that they’d be better off aborting the colony.”
    “Okay,” Matthew said, blandly, when it became obvious that the sermon was over. “Message understood. We won’t take any long walks without a guide. These surface suits you mentioned, Dr. Brownell. How thickly do we need to be insulated down there?”
    “They’re not much bulkier than ordinary clothing,” she assured him. The air filters are unobtrusive, although you’ll be aware of them in the sinuses and throat until they settle in, and they’ll modify your voice slightly. It hasn’t been necessary to take them all the way down into the lungs, although the whole of your gut will have to be resurfaced. You won’t be consciously aware of the gutskin at all, although its extension is the most difficult part of the fitting. We’re operating on a precautionary principle, of course—everything’s assumed to be biohazardous until it’s proved otherwise.
    “Once you’ve been briefed by the crew’s genomicists you’ll probably be better able to assess the risk factors than I am, but so far as we can tell the local bacs aren’t at all enthusiastic to set up home in Earthly flesh, and mammalian immune systems are perfectly capable of forming antibodies against native proteins. They’re so competent, in fact, that the main difficulty is over-response. Animals exposed to the whole chemical symphony of the surface environment tend to go into reaction-overdrive; those that don’t collapse with anaphylactic shock develop high fevers and lapse into comas when their blood is glutted with defensive factors. More gradual exposure allows them to adapt, but it’s a slow process. It could take generations to produce Earthly domestic animals that can operate naked on the surface and feed themselves adequately on local produce. It’s the same for people—except, of course, that human generation times are a lot longer. The colonists and their crop-plants will be living in bubbles for a long time yet—but they will make progress. Slowly but surely, they’ll make themselves at home.” She said it stoutly, but she didn’t sound entirely convinced of the last assertion.
    “But they don’t think so, do they?” Solari said. “They don’t think this is an Earth-clone world at all. They think they’re in greater danger here than they were on Earth. They think they’ve jumped out of the frying pan into the fire.”
    “No,” said Leitz, firmly. “They don’t. All those who aren’t cowards know full well that they can live here, if they’re prepared to make the effort. The greater part of the surface community is in full agreement with the crew that the colony has to go ahead.”
    “And how big is the majority?” the policeman countered, scornfully. “Not so big, apparently, that a few votes couldn’t swing a demand for withdrawal.”
    “Votes don’t matter, inspector,” the boy said, rattled to the point of recklessness. “The people on the surface aren’t in a position to make demands. The only way they’ll get back up here is if we take them in—and we won’t. The colony has to stay, and it has to succeed. We wouldn’t have