Cibola Burn

Only he wasn’t going to do that. The release started in his chest and spread out to his fingers and toes in less than a heartbeat. He pushed himself over to her and thumbed his code into the keypad. The cage clicked open.

“Come on, then,” he said.

Chapter Forty-One: Elvi

Scientific nomenclature was always difficult. Naming a new organism on Earth and even in the greater Sol system had a lengthy, tedious process, and the sudden massive influx of samples from New Terra would probably clog the scientific literature for decades. It wasn’t just the mimic lizards or the insectlike fliers. Every bacterial analog would be new. Every single-celled organism would be unfamiliar. Earth alone had managed five kingdoms of life. Six, if you agreed with the Fityani hypothesis. She couldn’t imagine that the ecosphere of New Terra would turn out to be much simpler.

But in the meantime, the thing living in her eyes – in all their eyes, except Holden’s – wouldn’t even officially be a known organism for years. Maybe decades. It would be officially nameless until it was placed within the larger context of life.

Until then, she’d decided to call it Skippy. Somehow it seemed less frightening when it had a silly nickname. Not that she’d be any less dead if she bumbled into a death-slug, but at this point anything helped. And she was getting a little punchy.

The interesting thing – one of the interesting things – about the organism was that it didn’t have chlorophyll or apparently anything like it. The green color came from a prismatic effect analogous to butterfly wings. The actual tissue growing in her eyes would have been a light brown that was almost clear if its structure had been even a little bit different. The scattering effect wouldn’t happen. It also meant that her blindness was a flooding of color and a loss of detail, but it wasn’t particularly dark. She could still close her eyes and see the world go black, and open them to the bright, vibrant green.

Anything else was beyond her now. Gone. She navigated her hand terminal by voice commands, touch, and memory. The reports she would have skimmed through, she listened to now: voices from the labs at Luna and Earth and Ganymede. They didn’t offer her much hope.

“While your immune subject does have a couple rare alleles in the genes regulating his sodium pumps, I’m not seeing anything in the final protein structure that’s changed. The ion concentrations are stable and within the standard error bars. I’ll keep looking, but I’ve got the feeling that we’re barking up the wrong tree here. Sorry to say it.”

Elvi nodded as if there were anyone there who could see her. The headache was still with her. It varied during the day, but she didn’t know if that was part of the infection or just her experience.

“Hey,” Fayez said. And then, “Elvi? Are you here?”

“I am,” she said.

“Well, keep talking a little. I’ve got food on both hands.”

Elvi hummed a pop melody from when she’d been a child and listened for Fayez’s shuffling feet, reaching out to touch his calf when he was near. He folded himself down beside with a soft grunt. Her hand found his, and he gave her the rations packet.

“My next assignment,” he said, “I’m working somewhere with maybe half Earth gravity. Weight. Who needs it?”

Elvi chuckled. He wanted her to, and she even meant it a little. The foil was slick under her fingertips. She felt like she was a little girl sneaking snacks under the covers when she was supposed to be asleep, doing everything by touch. The wrapping of Fayez’s bar crinkled brightly.

“How much more food do we have?” she asked.

“Not much. I think they’re trying for one more drop, though. There are a couple people who can still make out some shapes.”

“And Holden.”

“The one-eyed king,” Fayez said. “We should poke out one of his eyes just to make that fit better, don’t you think? Him having two eyes is a real missed opportunity.”

“Hush,” she said, and the foil gave way under her fingers. The emergency bar was crumbly and smelled like rat food from her days at the labs. It tasted unpleasant and nutritious. She tried to savor it. It wouldn’t be long before she missed this.

“Any luck?” he asked. She shook her head by reflex. She knew he couldn’t see it.

“The best theory we had was that it was related to the plural parentage. He’s got something like eight mothers and fathers, and the techniques to manage that can leave some systemic traces. But nothing so far.”

“Well, that’s a shame. Maybe all the exposure to the protomolecule changed him into a space mutant.”

She took another bite and talked around it. “You can laugh, but Luna’s looking at that too. And they’re trying to grow a fresh sample of the organism based on the sample data we sent. The early trials are showing some real self-organization.”

“Kicking off another five hundred years of graduate theses,” Fayez said. “I don’t think you have to worry about your legacy.”