Swanwick, Michael - The Very Pulse Of The Machine

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The Very Pulse of the Machine by Michael Swanwick This story first appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, February 1998

The Very Pulse of the Machine by Michael Swanwick This story first

appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, February 1998. Nominated for Best

Short Story.

Click.

The radio came on.

"Hell."

Martha kept her eyes forward, concentrated on walking. Jupiter to one shoulder,

Daedalus's plume to the other. Nothing to it. Just trudge, drag, trudge, drag. Piece

of cake.

"Oh."

She chinned the radio off.

Click.

"Hell. Oh. Kiv. El. Sen."

"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Martha gave the rope an angry jerk, making the

sledge carrying Burton's body jump and bounce on the sulfur hardpan. "You're

dead, Burton, I've checked, there's a hole in your faceplate big enough to stick a

fist through, and I really don't want to crack up. I'm in kind of a tight spot here

and I can't afford it, okay? So be nice and just shut the fuck up."

"Not. Bur. Ton."

"Do it anyway."

She chinned the radio off again.

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The Very Pulse of the Machine by Michael Swanwick This story first appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, February 1998

Jupiter loomed low on the western horizon, big and bright and beautiful and, after

two weeks on Io, easy to ignore. To her left, Daedalus was spewing sulfur and

sulfur dioxide in a fan two hundred kilometers high. The plume caught the chill

light from an unseen sun and her visor rendered it a pale and lovely blue. Most

spectacular view in the universe, and she was in no mood to enjoy it.

Click.

Before the voice could speak again, Martha said, "I am not going crazy, you're

just the voice of my subconscious, I don't have the time to waste trying to figure

out what unresolved psychological conflicts gave rise to all this, and I am not

going to listen to anything you have to say."

Silence.

The moonrover had flipped over at least five times before crashing sideways

against a boulder the size of the Sydney Opera House. Martha Kivelsen, timid

groundling that she was, was strapped into her seat so tightly that when the

universe stopped tumbling, she'd had a hard time unlatching the restraints. Juliet

Burton, tall and athletic, so sure of her own luck and agility that she hadn't

bothered, had been thrown into a strut.

The vent-blizzard of sulfur dioxide snow was blinding, though. It was only when

Martha had finally crawled out from under its raging whiteness that she was able

to look at the suited body she'd dragged free of the wreckage.

She immediately turned away.

Whatever knob or flange had punched the hole in Burton's helmet had been

equally ruthless with her head.

Where a fraction of the vent-blizzard–"lateral plumes" the planetary geologists

called them–had been deflected by the boulder, a bank of sulfur dioxide snow had

built up. Automatically, without thinking, Martha scooped up double-handfuls

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The Very Pulse of the Machine by Michael Swanwick This story first appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, February 1998

and packed them into the helmet. Really, it was a nonsensical thing to do; in a

vacuum, the body wasn't about to rot. On the other hand, it hid that face.

Then Martha did some serious thinking.

For all the fury of the blizzard, there was no turbulence. Because there was no

atmosphere to have turbulence in. The sulfur dioxide gushed out straight from the

sudden crack that had opened in the rock, falling to the surface miles away in

strict obedience to the laws of ballistics. Most of what struck the boulder they'd

crashed against would simply stick to it, and the rest would be bounced down to

the ground at its feet. So that–this was how she'd gotten out in the first place–it

was possible to crawl under the near-horizontal spray and back to the ruins of the

moonrover. If she went slowly, the helmet light and her sense of feel ought to be

sufficient for a little judicious salvage.

Martha got down on her hands and knees. And as she did, just as quickly as the

blizzard had begun–it stopped.

She stood, feeling strangely foolish.

Still, she couldn't rely on the blizzard staying quiescent. Better hurry, she

admonished herself. It might be an intermittent.

Quickly, almost fearfully, picking through the rich litter of wreckage, Martha

discovered that the mother tank they used to replenish their airpacks had ruptured.

Terrific. That left her own pack, which was one-third empty, two fully charged

backup packs, and Burton's, also one-third empty. It was a ghoulish thing to strip

Burton's suit of her airpack, but it had to be done. Sorry, Julie. That gave her

enough oxygen to last, let's see, almost forty hours.

Then she took a curved section of what had been the moonrover's hull and a coil

of nylon rope, and with two pieces of scrap for makeshift hammer and punch,

fashioned a sledge for Burton's body.

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