Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [49]
"There was quartz here," Paolo said. "Silicon dioxide. We mined it for oxygen, then Kleo forgot about it. So we drilled this room ourselves. Right, Fazil?"
Fazil spoke eagerly. "That's right, Mr. Secretary. We used hand drills and expansion plastic. See where the rock shattered and came loose? We hid the chunks in the debris for launch, so that no one knew. We worked for days and saved the biggest chunk."
"Look," Paolo said. He touched the wall, and the stone wrinkled in his hand and came away. In a broken-out rough cavity the size of a closet, an oblong boulder floated, kept from falling by a thread. Paolo snapped the thread and pulled the boulder out. It moved sluggishly; Fazil helped him stop its inertia.
It was a two-ton sculpture of Paolo's head.
"Very fine work," Lindsay said. "May I?" He ran his fingertips across the slickly polished cheekbone. The eyes, wide and alert, cored out for pupils, were as big as his outstretched hands. There was a faint smile on the enormous lips.
"When they sent us out here, we knew we weren't coming back," Paolo said. "We'll die here, and why? Not because our genetics are bad. We're a good line. Mavrides rule." He was talking faster now, falling into the cadences of Ring Council slang.
Fazil nodded silently.
"It's just bad percentages. Chance. We were burned by chance before we were twenty years old. You can't edit out chance. Some of the gene-line are bound to fall so the rest can live. If it weren't me and Fazil, it would be our crechemates."
"I understand," Lindsay said.
"We're young and cheap. They throw us into the enemy's teeth so the ink is black not red. But we're alive, me and Fazil. There's something inside us. We'll never see ten percent of the life the others back home will see. But we were here. We're real."
"Living is better," Lindsay said.
"You're a traitor," Paolo said without resentment. "Without a gene-line you're bloodless, you're just a system."
"There are more important things than living," Fazil said.
"If you had enough time you'd outlive this war," Lindsay said. Paolo smiled. "This is no war. This is evolution in action. You think you'll outlive that?"
Lindsay shrugged. "Maybe. What if aliens come?"
Paolo looked at him wide-eyed. "You believe in that? The aliens?"
"Maybe."
"You're all right," Paolo said.
"How can I help you?" Lindsay said.
"It's the launch ring. We plan to launch this head. An oblique launch, top velocity, full power, off the plane of the ecliptic. Maybe somebody sees it someday. Maybe some thing, five hundred million years, no trace of human life, picks it up, my face. There's no debris off the plane, no collisions, just dead-space vacuum, perfect. And it's good hard rock. Out this far the sun could go red giant and barely warm it. It could orbit till white dwarf stage, maybe till black cinder, till the galaxy bursts or the Kosmos eats its own tail. My image forever."
"Only first we have to launch it," said Fazil.
"The President won't like it," Lindsay said. "The first treaty we signed said no more launches for the duration. Maybe later, when our trust is stronger."
Paolo and Fazil traded glances. Lindsay knew at once that things were out of hand.
"Look," he said. "You two are talented. You have a lot of time on your hands since the launch ring's down. You could do heads of all of us."
"No!" Paolo shouted. "It's between us two, that's it."
"What about you, Fazil? Don't you want one?"
"We're dead," Fazil said. "This took us two years. There was only time for one. Chance burned us both. One of us had to give everything for nothing. So we decided. Show him, Paolo."
"He shouldn't look," Paolo said sullenly. "He doesn't understand."
"I want him to know, Paolo." Fazil was stern. "Why I have to follow, and you get to lead. Show him, Paolo."
Paolo reached under his poncho and pulled