The Cold Solution Read online

  Diane nodded. “I'll make sure it gets there safely."

  Tony lowered his eyes. “I-If I go now, you'll have a little extra fuel. Just in case something happens."

  She didn't know how to answer him.

  “I ... I want to say thank you. You've been good to me. I know that there's no other way, and I know you'd do something to help me if you could.” He raised his chin and stepped toward the airlock. “I'd like to do it now, please."

  “Tony.” He kept his back to her, didn't see her outstretched hand. He faced the airlock, and the cold bitterness of space beyond, with his head high and his shoulders square.

  And the gods of space, she thought, would have one more sacrificial victim, one more life to prove that their word was law. They weren't cruel or vindictive, they weren't even gods at all—just impassionate Nature, her will expressed in the frozen lattice of her cold equations.

  Damn it, Diane thought, It isn't Mankind's way to give up and yield to impossibilities. There was something within the human animal, something which wanted to fight back. She'd known that ever since she'd read that oh-so-prophetic story, had known it when her heart protested, there has to be a way.

  “Will you open the door, please?"

  “Tony,” she repeated, “I want you to know that I wish I could do something to save you. I don't like this any more than you do.” Except you won't have to live with the guilt for the rest of your life. “I'd give anything to stop this from happening. I'd give ... anything."

  In that moment, her mind was made up, and she knew what she must do. Just as good that he had his back to her, for if she saw his eyes, she would never be able to act.

  Quickly, silently, she raised her laser knife, dialed the beam to maximum, and thumbed the button home. A ruby-red beam lanced forth, filling the cabin with an eerie, bloody light.

  * * * *

  “Pilot DelMinna? Pilot, can you hear me?"

  Diane opened her eyes on a hospital room. She was in bed, wired to a dozen instruments, and a bearded face was looking down at her. She'd seen him before ... yes, the Lethe Base Commander. “Are you awake?"

  “Yes,” she croaked. “But I wish I wasn't."

  “I can understand. You've been under sedation ... and hypnotherapy ... for six days.” He touched her shoulder. “The Space Force top brass want to speak to you on the hyperwave. There are commendations to be given and medals to be awarded, and I'm sure they want to put you through the worst debriefing in history. I told them they can't have you until you feel up to it."

  “Thank you.” Something rumbled in her gut, and she turned her head away. When the feeling passed, she looked back at the Commander. “The serum...?"

  “The serum survived your landing beautifully, and it's been distributed throughout the colony. MedCorps says the plague is under control. You're a hero, DelMinna. In more ways than one."

  “Yeah.” She sighed. “What about Tony?"

  “The boy is safe and sound, not three doors down from here.” He smiled. “You can see him, if you wish."

  “I don't know. He might not want to see me."

  “He's asked for you."

  Diane shivered. “How will he be?"

  “I should let his doctor answer that—but I can give you an outline. They say that he's young enough for regeneration treatments to take. In another year or two, he'll grow back that arm, and both legs. In two years, they swear he'll never even know they were gone."

  Before her mind's eye flashed the memory of that horrible instant when the laser beam connected, the awful smell and Tony's scream.

  “You did the right thing, Pilot.” The Commander gripped her shoulder firmly. “Your laser cauterized the wound instantly. The computer records that you started approach to Lethe a good two kilos under maximum mass. Good thinking."

  She was afraid to lift her sheet, afraid to look ... but she had to know. “And me...?"

  The Commander's face clouded. “Regeneration isn't an exact science. After a certain age, the cells lose their ability to ... that is, the medical team tried everything they could think of..."

  She covered his hand with her own. “Don't worry,” she said, nodding. “I'm not sorry for what I did. I can live with it.” She forced a smile. “After all, it's not like I live and work under gravity.” She shrugged. “What does a Pilot need legs for, after all?” If she said it enough times, she thought, she'd even start to believe it.

  “In your case, they came in handy,” he grunted. Then, under the pretense of covering a nervous cough, he took his hand away from hers. “DelMinna, you're going to be the talk of the Space Force for this little trick. You're the only Pilot who's ever figured out how to beat the Cold Equations scenario. What made you think of it?"

  “Something I almost said to Tony, at the last minute.” In imagination, she was back in the cabin, and she knew that a part of her would always be there. “I told him that I'd give anything to avoid throwing him out the airlock.” She gave a chuckle that wasn't entirely forced. “I almost said: I'd give my right arm to stop this from happening.” She shrugged. “After that, it was simple."

  Simple. So why would it haunt her for the rest of her life?

  Because Nature doesn't suffer her defeats gladly, she thought. And there's always a price to be paid.

  “Would you like to see the lad now?” The Commander stepped back. “Orderlies are ready to help you."

  Diane closed her eyes, and looked again on her moment of truth. I'll pay the price, she thought, And gladly. That's part of being human.

  She opened her eyes and nodded. “I'd like that very much."

  End

  —

  Author's Note:

  Like everyone else, I cried at the end of Tom Godwin's story “The Cold Equations.” Godwin's story is deservedly a classic, and the unforgettable point it makes—that natural laws have no respect for emotion, and that sometimes the little girl has to go out the airlock—was well-needed as a counter to the school of SF that said it was always possible to come up with a new force, ray, or vibration that could save the day. (Kipling was probably making a similar point when he wrote “The Gods of the Copybook Headings,” but that's a discussion for another day.)

  Godwin's point was also quite consistent with the mechanistic, male-based, rigorous-logic science of the day. Ultimately, the universe was a cold and heartless place, and unless you obeyed its rules, it would kill you as soon as look at you.

  While I grasped the point, I didn't buy it for a second.

  By the time I was writing, the world was a different place. Newtonian mechanics was replaced by quantum mechanics. The Uncertainty Principle was well-understood. And male engineers no longer dominated the field of SF.

  The old logic said that there was no escape from the Cold Equations scenario. There were only two choices: either the girl died, or the colonists perished. Either way, someone was dead. All that remained was to do the math and pick the option with the fewest corpses.

  That's one way to look at the world. It's a hierarchical, rules-based, binary-logic way ... without getting into too many labels, a stereotypically-male way.

  Another way of looking at the world is a networked, exceptions-based, fuzzy-logic way ... if you will, a stereotypically-female way. And that way said that there had to be a solution that saved everyone.

  [I don't really believe that all women think that way, nor that all men think the other way. But as a fiction writer I deal in symbolism, and here the symbolism is vital. Let's say that there's the M way and the F way, and each of us has some degree of M and F inside, and leave discussions of gender to another venue.]

  After that, it was just a matter of finding a solution—in this case, remembering that you didn't have to put the whole stowaway out the airlock, just the same mass in body parts. There are other solutions to the Cold Equations scenario. I leave it as an exercise to the student to find them (although if anyone wants to do an anthology of such stories, let me know!)

  Once I start
ed on the story, I realized that I had to make the pilot a woman. Look, I was saying to the SF world, when you make the pilot a woman, it changes everything. I considered leaving the stowaway a little girl, but decided to make him a boy in the interest of symmetry.

  The important point is not any given solution to this particular scenario ... it's something larger, just as Godwin's point was something larger. Just as SF once needed to hear that there were times when the girl had to go out of the airlock, in 1991 SF needed to hear that the girl didn't always have to go out the airlock. That there are two ways of looking at the world, and both of them are valid and necessary.

  This story was a favorite of the Analog readership. It won the award for Best Short Story in the year it was published.

  * * *

  Visit www.Fictionwise.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.