She imagined she could feel her toes tingling from the cold—if she still had toes. Soon they would emerge from the fungus flesh in which they were buried. She felt she was shedding.
What did they have that made anything seem possible? Jordan, the sometimes wonderful gadgeteer. Docchi, a competent engineer but no more than that. Unsure of himself personally he had a passion for correcting inequalities. And then there was Cameron, a good doctor who was trying to realign his principles. He wouldn't have made it except that he had a powerful attraction ahead of him. Lord knows what he saw in Nona or she in him.
And lastly there was Nona herself, to whom big miracles came easier than small ones. There was a fragile grandeur about her but she knew nothing at all of the human body, especially her own.
And this is what they relied on. It was strikingly little to balance against the forces of Earth, which had failed them. And yet it was enough; the accidentals would not fail.
It didn't matter what the resources were as long as they weren't aimed in the right direction. She didn't have figures on the conquest of cancer but the one-time scourge of mankind could have vanished far sooner if the cost of one insignificant political gesture had been spent instead to wipe out the disease.
Perhaps this was one answer. They were struggling not to make beautiful men and women still more beautiful but to restore those who were less than perfect to some sort of usefulness, especially in their own evaluation.
The lights in the dome dimmed appreciably. It was the lengthening shadows which made the needle on the dial that Anti was watching quiver and seem to turn downward.
Jordan rode the repair robot away from the tank. It was more than had ever been done for Anti but it wasn't enough. A fifty per cent reduction and she still wouldn't be able to walk. He'd have to check with anyone who had ideas of what to do. He didn't have much hope there; nobody but himself had given much thought to Anti recently.
The machine he was on wasn't functioning properly. Nothing definite, it just wasn't. He was sensitive enough to notice this through his preoccupation with other problems. It was sluggish to his touch. It was not unexpected; there was a lot of equipment that was supposed to be foolproof and wasn't, any number of machines built to last forever which didn't.