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It had been two days since Raphaela reversed the spacecraft and started it decelerating. Except for the brief period of weightlessness while the shuttle traded end for end, nothing really changed. One gravity of deceleration felt the same as one G of acceleration.
They’d kept their conversations on safer ground. Skull told her of the days when the whole Eden Plague thing started, with Zeke and Markis and the Watts Island raid.
She listened, fascinated, but reserved her judgments; she knew he wasn’t in the mood for critique or commentary. In return, she told him the story of Raphael’s “childhood.” She watched Skull’s eyes watch her; they revealed nothing of his thoughts as she recited. She almost despaired of finding that spark of humanity in him again, but she resolved not to give up.
A dirty snowball now filled the viewscreen, rotating slowly against the black-velvet backdrop, a faint mist streaming off antisunward. “Where’s your base?” Skull asked as he studied it. “Is that maximum magnification?”
“Yes it is, and the base is only a hundred yards across so you won’t be able to see it until we get closer. The comet is over a mile in diameter.”
“And you – they – put the base on a comet because?”
“Because water was the most important resource. When it’s close to the sun, the biomachines use photosynthesis to make food and solar electricity to crack the water into hydrogen and oxygen. They store everything they make for the part of the orbit when it’s far from the sun. That’s when it uses hydrogen and oxygen in the fuel cells. It recycles everything. Nothing needed but periodic inputs of solar energy.”
“Very efficient.”
“Yes, the Meme are nothing if not efficient.” There was an undertone of irony in her words. “The most efficient way to colonize a planet and spread the race is to use its own biology against it. But that presupposes the targets don’t have the technology to fight back.”
Skull sighed, “And we did. Barely. Without the Eden Plague and the way it drove biotech and nanotech in the last decade...”
“We’d have nearly all been reduced to animals. Maybe a few thousand people living in isolated places would have escaped...but without the vaccines, we’d have been meat for the Meme.”
“So we owe everything to Markis. That’s irony for you.” He coughed, a harsh chuckle.
“Really? That’s what you think?”
“What else is there to think?”
Raphaela shook her head and grimaced, as if spitting out a bad taste. “Alan, causality is lost in chaos. What if that IED hadn’t wounded Markis? What if he’d never retired, never met Elise, never gotten the Eden Plague, never called Zeke for help? What if you hadn’t gone to help Zeke? What if you hadn’t rescued Elise from the island, or Markis from that Company prison? There are a thousand what-ifs.”
“Almost makes you believe someone’s watching out for us.” He thought about what the nuns had taught back in grade school, then pushed the thought away again.
Raphaela dropped her chin to her chest, pensive. “The Meme have a religion. They believe their god watches out for them. That it’s on their side. That it’s their manifest destiny to take the planets away from useless savages who are too primitive to develop them properly. That only the Meme are truly worthy.”
“Huh. My Apache grandfather would have recognized that thinking. But this time the injuns got some surprises for the white-eyes.”
She nodded, solemn. “Let’s hope they do better than the last bunch.”
