the speakers for Delia’s location, keeping track of his own, and closing in.
And then, “Virgil-she has removed a wedgecutter from one of the emergency sealant cabinets in One-One- Twelve. Get there fast.”
“Send a robot!”
“None in the vicinity. Hurry.”
“I’m almost there!” he shouted, speeding through a passageway.
“Hurry. She has severed her aorta and superior vena cava. Respiration zero. Brain death in six minutes-”
He propelled through the hatch into the compartment and looked above him. She hung suspended in a carnelian haze. The wedgecutter stuck out of her chest, the jagged, meat-raw wound still voiding blood.
He moved through the floating droplets of blood to take her body in his arms.
“Get her to the medical bay,” the computer said. “We might be able to revive her prior to brain death.”
Virgil ran along the curving corridors in his own version of artificial gravity, then he sailed through the straightaways, taking the fastest path back. Her body drifted limply in his grasp, the wedgecutter grating against a rib. A red line flowed behind him, droplets of blood breaking loose and drifting until air resistance slowed them.
“Put her in the boxdoc.”
Virgil pushed her into the unit. Sealing the lid, he watched as mechanical hands and tools immediately dug into her chest. One hand withdrew the wedgecutter while a pair of heavy clippers crunched into flesh just above her left breast. After three powerful cuts, the clippers withdrew, pulling back the broken sections of rib.
The boxdoc continued its efforts. A series of tubes plunged into the exposed arteries and veins. Pure oxygen pumped into the container. Two small extensions covered with a farrago of stainless-steel instruments performed the operation.
“Can you bring her back?”
“She has entered only the first stage of brain death. The medical parameters indicate that we can save her. Her heart will have to be replaced temporarily until a new one can be cloned. Ceramic braces will be cast to replace her ribs. She will probably suffer from diminished mental capacity-”
“Shut up!” He leaned over the unit, watching a thick red fluid pump into her chest. The blood on his arms and chest had dried into brown freckles and streaks that flaked when he moved.
Her eyes fluttered open for a moment and her gaze met his. Her mouth opened as though to speak and her head shook weakly before she lapsed back into anesthesia.
He pulled out the boxdoc operations manual and signaled the first page. Scanning the table of contents, he asked, “Has her memory RNA degenerated?”
“Not to any significant degree, in all probability. Her electrochemical matrix, though, has been disrupted by the cerebral swelling.”
“Have the picotechs had time to copy her matrix?”
“Yes.”
Virgil signaled the page he wanted and watched it appear on the scrim. “Initiate leeching process See-One- Two-Oh-Four, and prepare the cloning unit to be cast off.”
“Please explain your requests.”
Virgil laughed and shook his head. “Don’t you see? Just like you did this”-he waved his left hand at the vidcam-“you’re going to do her.”
“Clone her?”
“Yes! Clone all of her! I know you can’t force grow her because the brain has to develop normally, so if we set the unit adrift and transfer out and back a dozen light years each way…”
“Full clones grown at normal rates are very difficult to maintain correctly. Add to that the unit’s being run on automatic-”
“If it doesn’t work the first time, we try again and again.
With the transfer, we could do it a hundred times in a day.”
“If none of them take, or if we lose the cloning tank, you will have lost Delia forever.”
Like a child scolded, he looked up at the vid and softly said, “All right. I won’t have her leeched until we get a good clone.”
“Do you consider it necessary?” the computer asked.
“Yes. Do you consider it possible?”
“There is a probability of success.”
Virgil smiled.
Virgil conveyed the cloning tank once more to the lifeship and secured it. He worked quickly, his hands and muscles straining with effort.
“When have you eaten last?” the computer asked.
He tightened the last strap and leaned against the humming machine. “I don’t recall. Don’t you have a record in your memory?”
“My last record shows that you have gone fourteen hours, twelve minutes subjective, not counting dextrose supplements. You did not dine while on Mercury?”
Virgil smiled. “Not that I know of.”
“Food is being prepared in the galley. You should eat and rest before we transfer. You will probably have a lot to do when we recover the tank.”
Taking one last look at the shuttle, he said, “Straight. Can you add on the spare generator yourself?’’
“I will have a robot do it.”
“Straight.”
When he pushed the last piece of meat into his mouth, the computer buzzed once and said, “Lifeship cast off. All systems functioning. Beacon set to activate in twenty-four years. Photosynth accumulator locked on Tau Ceti, recycler on standby. All lab units show green.”
Virgil wiped his mouth on his arm and picked some of the larger crumbs and debris out of the air. “Find the emptiest piece of space twelve light years from here and let’s go.” He thought for a moment, then said, “How are you able to handle the transfer effect? You don’t seem to be bothered anymore.”
“If you had several hours, I could explain the method of selectively re-routing neural paths and delaying the firing of certain neurons by thousandths of a nanosecond to compensate for transfer lag.”
“Don’t bother on my account.”
“I believe I could duplicate the process on an organic entity such as you by the removal of the pineal gland and a rebundling of synaptic-”
“Forget it. I can handle death. Let’s… just go.”
Inside the prow ellipsoid, Virgil sat staring out while the computer plotted coordinates. It suddenly spoke.
“According to estimates from orbital data, the cloning tank will be on the opposite side of Tau Ceti in twenty- four years. One hundred sixty-eight degrees. We shall have to match velocities with it to-”
“Just do it.” Virgil strapped in and chewed at his thumbnail. The transfer button glowed. He pushed it and watched.
