Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

knife and
slit it open. The liquid pulsed out in a zero-G straight-line jet,
bubbling slightly. Jarn thrust a finger into the flow, and read a
sensor embedded in her cloaked wrist. She grinned. ’Sea water.
Earth-like, salty sea water. And this green glop is blue-green algae,
I think. We found what we came for.’ She lengthened the slit. ’Each
of you pick a sac. Just climb in and immerse yourself; the cloaks
will take what they need.’ She showed them how to work nipples in
their cloaks that would provide them with desalinated water, even a
mushy food based on the algae.
    Mari helped Kapur, then clambered inside a sac of her own. She
didn’t lose much water when she slit the sac; surface tension kept it
contained in big floating globules that she was able to gather up in
her hands. She folded the sac like a blanket, holding it closed over
her chest. The water was warm, and her cloak, drinking in nutrients,
began to glow more brightly.
    ’Blue-green algae,’ she murmured. ’From a human world.’
    ’Obviously,’ Kapur said.
    ’Maybe this is one of the ways you pay a Spline,’ Jarn said. ’I
always wondered about that.’ She moved around the chamber, handing
out vials of an amber fluid that she passed through the sac walls. ’I
think we deserve this. Pass it through your cloak.’
    Kapur asked, ’What is it?’
    Mari grinned. ’Poole’s Blood.’ For Michael Poole, the legendary
pre-Extirpation explorer of Earth.
    ’Call it a stimulant,’ Jarn said dryly. ’An old Navy tradition,
Academician.’
    Mari sucked down her tot. ’How long should we stay here?’
    ’As long as the cloaks need,’ Jarn said. ’Try to sleep.’
    That seemed impossible. But the rocking motion of the water and
its swaddling warmth seemed to soothe the tension out of her sore
muscles. She thought about her starbreaker station: the smooth feel
of the machinery as she disassembled it for servicing, the sense of
its clean power when she worked it.
    Mari closed her eyes, just for a moment.
    When she opened her eyes, three hours had passed. And Kueht had
gone.
     
    ’He must have gone back,’ Jarn said. ’Back to where we left his
sibling.’
    ’That was hours ago,’ Mari said. She looked from one to the other.
’We can’t leave him.’ Without waiting for Jarn’s reaction she plunged
back into the tunnel they had come from.
    Jarn hurried after Mari, calling her back. But Mari wasn’t about
to listen. After a time, Jarn seemed to give up trying to stop her,
and just followed.
    Through the factory-like chamber they went, then back along the
twisting length of muscle-walled tunnel.
    … Why am I doing this?
    Kueht was fat, useless and weak; before the disaster Mari wouldn’t
have made room for him in the corridor. All her training and drill,
and the Expansion’s Druz Doctrines that underpinned them, taught that
people were not of equal worth. It was an individual’s value to the
species as a whole that counted: nothing more, nothing less. And it
was the duty of the weak to lay down their lives for the strong, the
worthless for the valuable.
    But it wasn’t working out like that. When it came down to it Mari
just couldn’t abandon even a helpless, useless creature like Kueht;
she couldn’t be the one to leave him behind, just as Kapur had said.
Humanity will assert itself.
    She was thinking too much again.
    At last they reached the place where Mari had jammed Tsedi’s
burned body. Kueht was here, sprawled over his sibling. They pulled
at Kueht’s shoulders, turning him on his back. His cloak flapped
open. His face was swollen, his tongue protruding and blackened.
    Mari said, ’Kapur talked about opening our cloaks. Maybe that gave
him the idea.’
    ’It must have been hard,’ Jarn said. ’The cloak would have
resisted being opened; it is smart enough to know that it would kill
its occupant if it did. And asphyxiation is a bad way to die.’ She
shrugged. ’He told us he didn’t want to go on without Tsedi. I guess
we just didn’t believe it.’
    Mari shook her head, unfamiliar emotions churning inside her. Here
were two comical little fat men, products of some flawed cadre
somewhere, helpless and friendless save for each other. And yet Kueht
had been prepared to die rather than live without the other.
’Why?’
    Jarn put her hand on Mari’s arm; it was small over Mari’s bunched
bicep. ’Don’t think about it.’
    They paused to strip Kueht of his cloak. Even now, Mari realised,
Jarn was thinking