EXCERPT of 'The Clarity of Ice' by Carmelo Rafalà ZamaShort #4
EXCERPT
THE CLARITY OF ICE
CARMELO RAFALÀ
I.
I
gripped the interface with heated disgust. Synapses were breaking down,
some were shifting their pulse rhythms, others were stuck in flux;
millions upon millions of nanos were running around, clueless, as if
zapped by a heavy dose of the stupids.
I couldn’t understand it:
the rooting into the surrounding ecosystem had been flawless, the
bio-programmers for Beta habitat integrated into the surroundings and
coaxed by their artificial programmers to grow perfect, natural
habitats, enclosed and self-sufficient. It had been a textbook
performance.
Then why are you collapsing? I chided the static-ridden threshold. Why?
I
writhed in my seat in the control bubble of the landing bug and seethed
at the decay of my systems control ganglia. My program buoy shuddered.
Algorithms manifested themselves and scattered past me like so many dead
leaves on a Veronian wind. The massive tangle of information before me
struck a discordant note.
From the command shuttle in orbit, Cruz
des-Manas, senior bio-farmer and planetfall coordinator on this seeding
run, was overseeing cross-checks on the System Platform’s induction flow
and stabilisation subroutines. I saw her in the digiscape distance. She
appeared as an octopus whose many tentacles flickered about at what
looked like a swarm of large black flies. Beta was collapsing in upon
itself.
‘Systems are shutting down all over,’ I said.
‘Yeah, so tell me something new,’ she shot back.
‘Bitch!’ I muttered between my teeth; ears loaded with the system’s incoherent babbling.
‘Keep your eyes open, Karlyn. I suspect this may cause the nodules’ systems to panic and self-isolate.’
‘Shit,
now my program buoy is sinking.’ I had sent out for a pattern trace to
find the culprit but all I got was a whole lot of nothing.
‘Organiform
supports are dying,’ Cruz announced, an edge in her voice. ‘Just as I
suspected, the system’s grids for the nodules have locked themselves
tight. The seeding protocol has shut down. At least the final coding
sequence for the nodules hasn’t started.’
‘I’m cutting contact with Beta. The feedback is damaging our own systems.’
As
I prepared to invoke the nanocrobe buffers to coat and isolate the
undamaged programmers, a lightning crack ruptured the digisky. Beta
Platform, whose garbled doublespeak dominated most of my channels,
howled and discharged a static burst.
With quick efficiency, my
biolastic suit’s response mode kicked in. A silver screen went up,
caught the burst, amplified it, and sent it right back at the Platform.
There was a shower of blue-white particles, a wrenching noise that
threatened to shatter my ears, and I was thrown clear. The digivisor on
my interface pulled back like melting plastic and withered.
I sat in my organiform chair, head aching, and cursed Beta’s bloody haemoglobular flow.
‘Total systems shutdown,’ said Cruz. ‘We’re dead here.’
I
noticed my suit was peeling; the heat from the breakdown burning my
skin. I managed to pull it off. It crinkled up on the floor and turned
from metallic grey to deep black.
‘The overload burst got through to my buoy, Cruz, and disintegrated my interface suit. I got fucking fried.’
‘We need a full systems check,’ she said.
‘I’m
fine, thanks for asking.’ I sat back down, careful of my burns. Not
exactly the response I was looking for. But then, what did I expect? I
grunted (intolerable little shit!) and wondered what the hell I ever saw
in her.
‘Any damage to the bug?’ she said. ‘I can’t get a full connection to the lander. A few of my ancillary systems are down.’
I
checked the lander’s readouts. ‘Affected systems have automatically
rerouted themselves, except aspects of my life support. I got air and
pressure, but the heating is minimal, so it’ll get cold in here tonight.
At least this thing can still fly.’ I grabbed a tube of gel from the
first aid kit under the seat and rubbed it on my burns. ‘But it’s not
the bug I’m worried about.’
Were the colonists for the drop
unharmed? It had taken over sixteen system fly-bys to find a suitable
host-planet this time, one with enough of a vibrant eco-system from
which our nanos could grow the living habitats, like the reconstruction
couch reinforces my body’s bone structure for work, groundside. It was
the longest gap between seeding runs we had experienced for years.
Naturally, when the sample drone returned with a positive result, we
were all eager to get to work.
How had I ended up with Cruz on
this assignment? We didn’t get to choose who we worked with, of course.
The rota was the rota.
‘The organiform nodules could be
undamaged,’ she said. ‘No way of telling unless you can re-open their
control grids. We won’t get authorisation to save the stock if we can’t
verify its authenticity.’
Cruz had never lost human stock before.
Not ever. Never lost a Platform, for that matter. She had an innate
ability for biotech, a natural talent. She had even improved upon some
of the coding for the Platforms. She was the best, a shining star among
those like us, the few who made it Above.
As far as my situation
was concerned, it was my final assignment before being promoted to
senior farmer and planetfall coordinator. I would be Cruz’s equal. I had
worked hard all my life, made sacrifices, done everything required of
me. I had made it to where I needed to be, done what Mother Moira had
failed to do.
Through the viewport the surroundings became hazy in
the winter’s evening light; frost formed quickly over the viewport, a
thin, crisp sheen of ice. The effect warped the view outside, and things
appeared milky, distant and unclear.
‘Whatever happened,’ she
added, ‘must be very specific if it can take down the entire Platform
and make the control grids go into lockdown. We’ll need to be meticulous
when going through the data. Luckily, all information up until the
incident is secured.’
‘Technical errors don’t cause the type of problems we’ve just experienced,’ I said. ‘Not to this degree. Not like this.’
‘Well, it seems we’ve got a new kind of technical problem. Unless you got any other ideas?’
I looked at Cruz through the vid-cam. She looked at me and furrowed her brows.
‘What?’ she said. ‘Sabotage?’
‘It’s
possible.’ I knew it was a long shot. The farming systems were under
such tight surveillance, and the programmers kept changing and rotating
and upgrading the fail-safes two, three times a day. It was harder to
sneak around, hitching rides on the many undercurrents of the Ring
Ship’s systems, than it used to be. But that was the only explanation I
could come up with at the time.
‘A contaminant?’
I shrugged. ‘Someone must’ve dropped a bomb on us. It’s the only thing that makes sense.’
She
scowled and shook her head. ‘If a person was good enough to get past
all the security and plant their poison to spoil the coding, then they’d
be good enough to cover their tracks.’
‘Possibly. Every system has a weakness, Cruz. Every movement leaves residue, somewhere.’
‘But
would it be enough to lead the Ring’s security programmers to the
source? Even if they managed to track someone down to a section within
the Ring, well, it’s a mighty big ship to not have precise coordinates
to zero in on a saboteur.’
Our ship was a massive, spinning ring,
nine-hundred and forty kilometres in diameter, connected by spokes to a
central hub and drive system. A lot of territory for the authorities to
comb over. Not impossible, just difficult.
‘If you’re right,’ she
said. ‘If it was a saboteur, our best bet from here is to focus on a
contaminant, which will leave traces behind.’
‘What if the
saboteur had insider assistance?’ I said, excited she would even
entertain my idea. ‘A contact on the security team. That’s an area to
pursue.’
An alarm howled and died.
‘Shit! Can’t pursue anything at the moment,’ Cruz said. ‘Long-range comms link just went down. We’re cut off from the Ring.’
‘Cut off?’
‘Yes, cut off,’ she barked. ‘That’s not so difficult to understand, is it?’
I could just make out a tinge of panic at the back of her throat. ‘How much do they know about what happened?’ I asked.
‘Enough to know we’re dead in the water.’
Another alarm. The image became grainy and then cleared.
‘A
few more systems are gone,’ she said. ‘Just lost the long-range data
beams and there’s a flutter in the main drive system.’
Shit was going from disaster to full-on nightmare.
<...>
“Carmelo Rafalà has deservedly made a name for himself in genre short-fiction over the last few years. ‘The Clarity of Ice’ paints in a few deft strokes a complex world, a fraught history, an unfair society, and a complicated friendship. The language of the story is at once lyrical and alien, and yet Rafalà is a benevolent teacher and guide, trusting us to follow and recognise what he asks us to see. This is skilful storytelling.” — Donna Scott.
“Carmelo
is a real talent. Here, he brings us a bleeding-edge story of biotech
in a gripping thriller of far-future planetary colonization. But, even
more than that, he explores the nature of society and what drives us. An
excellent story.” — Gustavo Bondoni.
“Intriguing and original,
this tale features a surprising amount of detail and world-building.
Despite being a short story, the window through which we glimpse the
world of the story is well realised. The prose is excellent, the
characters feel real and the challenges they face have modern day
parallels that make the story relatable and compelling. This is science
fiction that is heavy on the science but the details come across as
informed and believable. Overall, a very enjoyable read.” — Tej Turner.
Carmelo
Rafalà, a child of Sicilian immigrants, travelled the world and somehow
managed to finish his MA in Comparative English Literature at the
University of South Africa. His stories have been published in various
anthologies and cross genres, from science fiction to gothic horror. His
fiction has been praised by such outlets as The LA Review of Books, SF
Revu, and BlackNerdProblems. He is a 2024 SFFSA Nova Award winner for
his story, ‘The Stars Must Wait’. A collection of his fiction will be
released later in 2025. His novella, The Madness of Pursuit, was
published by Guardbridge Books. He currently resides on the south coast
of England.
Released: 1st August 2025.
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