Dark Ararat - Brian Stableford [58]
The various kinds of physiological assistance his previous smartsuits rendered had always seemed valuable but peripheral, essentially subsidiary to matters of display and appearance, fashion and style. The smartsuits he had worn on the moon and in L-5 had been “heavy duty” suits that might have become vital to his survival had there ever been a serious mishap, but he had not lingered long in either location, and had never fallen victim to a life-threatening accident. There was nothing in his experience that had even begun to bring about a fundamental change of attitude. He was, therefore, quite unprepared for the kind of suit he would need to wear on the surface of the new world.
As a biologist, Matthew had always known that everyday notions of what was “inside” and “outside” his body were not very precise, and that there was a significant sense in which the long and tangled tube constituting his gut was “outside” rather than “inside.” His new smartsuit, unlike the ones he had worn at home, really would have to cover and protect his entire body, which meant that it would have to line his gut from mouth to anus, forming an extra layer over every nook and cranny of his intestines. Strictly speaking, he would not be able to “feel” the growth-process that would extend the new layer of surface once he had swallowed the initial bolus, but he was conscious of its progress nevertheless, and his imagination readily supplied the slight unease that his stomach and bowel refused to generate.
It would have been even worse, he thought, as he lay on his bed while the application was completed, if the new membrane had had to descend all the way into his lungs, to coat every single alveolus, but the air filter did not need to be quite as sensitive or capable as the food filter, and the crucial barrier was established in his bronchii. Nita Brownell assured him that he had no need to be anxious that it might leave him short of breath in crisis—quite the reverse, given that it maintained an emergency supply of oxygen—but his imagination was not yet ready to take that on trust. He was able to see, quite literally, that the extra layer added to his conjunctiva did not threaten his eyesight in the least, but he was unable to extend the analogy as easily as the doctor could have wished. She too was an ex-corpsicle, but she had been awake for three long years and had spent far longer in various low-gee environments before being frozen down.
“Just take it easy for a few hours,” Dr. Brownell instructed him, severely. “If you can lie still, the process will proceed with maximum efficiency.” She was still annoyed with him for the shame that he had allegedly brought on the entire population of sleepers by virtue of his vicious attack on Riddell and Lamartine.
“How useful is the suit, really?” Matthew wanted to know. “According to Vince, the stings and fangs with which most of the local wildlife seem to be equipped go through it almost as easily as they’d go through bare skin. Even if Lityansky’s right about the unlikelihood of any biological infection, anything that gets injected that way is likely to be toxic.”
“Very few of the organisms you’ll meet on a day-to-day basis have stings or fangs,” the doctor assured him, “and they seem to be as reluctant to use them as Earthly organisms. They’re last-resort defenses, not means of aggression. Even the most poisonous ones haven’t killed anyone yet. Not that we’re complacent—we’re working flat-out to produce more effective defenses, but we’re only partway there. The main problem is the sheer profusion of likely reactions. So, no matter how good your IT is it’ll hurt like hell if you get stung by anything bigger than my thumb, and it might take as much as a week to clear all the poisonous debris out of the affected tissues.
“The suits are far from perfect, as yet—but they’re no less vital for that. If you didn’t have an artificial gut lining and air filter you’d be in deep trouble the moment you stepped down on to the surface.