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Copyright (C) 1991 by John Varley.
For the personal use of those who have
purchased the ESF 1993 Award anthology only.
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STEEL BEACH
by John Varley
"In five years, the penis will be obsolete," said the
salesman.
He paused to let this planet-shattering information sink
into our amazed brains. Personally, I didn't know how many more
wonders I could absorb before lunch.
"With the right promotional campaign," he went on,
breathlessly, "it might take as little as two years.
He might even have been right. Stranger things have
happened in my lifetime. But I decided to hold off on calling
my broker with frantic orders to sell all my jock-strap stock.
The press conference was being held in a large auditorium
belonging to United Bioengineers. It could seat about a
thousand; it presently held about a fifth that number, most of
us huddled together in the front rows.
The UniBio salesman was non-nondescript as a game-show
host. He had one of those voices, too. A Generic person. One of
these days they'll standardize every profession by face and
body type. Like uniforms.
He went on:
"Sex as we know it is awkward, inflexible, unimaginative.
By the time you're forty, you've done everything you possibly
could with our present, 'natural' sexual system. In fact, if
you're even moderately active, you've done everything a dozen
times. It's become boring. And if it's boring at forty, what
will it be like at eighty, or a hundred and forty? Have you
ever thought about that? About what you'll be doing for a sex
life when you're eighty? Do you really want to be repeating the
same old acts?"
"Whatever I'm doing, it won't be with him," Cricket
whispered in my ear.
"How about with me?" I whispered back. "Right after the
show."
"How about after I'm eighty?" She gave me a sharp little
jab in the ribs, but she was smiling. Which is more than I
could say for the hulk sitting in front of us. He worked for
Perfect Body, weighed about two hundred kilos--none of it
fat--and was glaring over the slope of one massive trapezius,
flexing the muscles in his eyebrows. I wouldn't have believed
he could even turn his head, much less look over his shoulder.
You could hear the gristle popping.
We took the hint and shut up.
"At United Bioengineers," the pitch went on, "we have no
doubt that, given twenty or thirty million years, Mother Nature
would have remedied some of these drawbacks. In fact," and here
he gave a smile that managed to be sly and aw-shucks at the
same time, "we wonder if the grand old lady might have settled
on this very System . . . that's how good we think it is.
"And how good is that? I hear you saying. There have been
a lot of improvements since the days of Christine Jorgensen.
What makes this one so special?"
"Christine who?" Cricket whispered, typing rapidly with
the fingers of her right hand on her left forearm.
"Jorgensen. First male-to-female sex change, not counting
opera singers. What are they teaching you in journalism school
these days?"
"Get the spin right, and the factoids will follow. Hell,
Hildy, I didn't realize you dated the lady."
"I've done worse since. If she hadn't kept trying to lead
on the dance floor . . . "
This time an arm--it had to be an arm, it grew out of his
shoulder, though I could have put both my legs into one of his
sleeves--hooked itself over the back of the chair in front of
me, and I was treated to the whole elephantine display, from
the crew-cut yellow hair to the jaw you could have used to plow
the south forty, to the neck wider than Cricket's hips. I held
up my hands placatingly, pantomimed locking up my lips and
throwing away the key. His brow beetled even more-- god help me
if he thought I was making fun of him-- then he turned back
around. I was left wondering where he got the tiny barbells he
must have used to get those forehead muscles properly pumped
up.
In a word, I was bored.
I'd seen the Sexual Millennium announced before. As
recently as the previous March, in fact, and quite regularly
before that. It was like end-of-the-world stories, or perpetual
motion machines. A journalist figured to encounter them every
few weeks as long as his career lasted. I suspect it was the
same when headlines were chiseled into stone tablets and the
Sunday Edition was tossed from the back of a woolly mammoth. I
had lost track of how many times I'd sat in audiences just like
this, listening to a glib young man/woman with more teeth than
God intended proclaim the Breakthrough of the Age. It was the
price a feature reporter had to pay.
It could have been worse. I could have had the political
beat.
" . . . tested on over two thousand volunteer subjects . .
. random sampling error of plus or minus one percent . . . "
I was having a bad feeling. That the story would not be
one hundredth as revolutionary as the guy was promising was a
given. The only question was, would there be enough substance
to hack out a story I could sell to Walter?
" . . . registered a sixty-three percent increase in
orgasmic sensation, a two to one rise in the satisfaction
index, and a complete lack of post-coital depression."
And as my old uncle J. Walter Thompson used to say, makes
your wash fifty percent whiter, cleans your teeth, and leaves
your breath alone.
I reached down to the floor and recovered the faxpad each
of us had been given as we came through the door. I called up
the survey questions and scanned through them quickly. My
bullshit detector started beeping so loudly I was afraid Mister
Dynamic Tension would turn around again.
The questions were garbage. There are firms whose purpose
is to work with pollsters and guard against the so-called
"brown-nose effect," that entirely human tendency to tell
people what they want to hear. Ask folks if they like your new
soda pop, they'll tend to say yes, then spit it out when your
back is turned. UniBio had not hired one of these firms.
Sometimes that in itself indicates a lack of confidence in the
product.
"And now, the moment you've been waiting for." There was a
flourish of trumpets. The lights dimmed. Spotlights swirled
over the blue velvet drapes behind the podium, which began to
crawl toward the wings with the salesman aboard.
"United Bioengineers presents--"
"Drum roll," Cricket whispered, a fraction of a second
early. I hit her with my elbow.
"--the future of sex . . . ULTRA-Tingle!"
There was polite applause and the curtains parted to
reveal a nude couple standing, embracing, beneath a violet
spot. Both were hairless. They turned to face us, heads high,
shoulders back. Neither seemed to be male or female. The only
real distinction between them was the hint of breasts and a
touch of eye shadow on the smaller one. There was flat, smooth
skin between each pair of legs.
"Another touchie-feelie," Cricket said. "I thought this
was going to be all new. Didn't they introduce the Tingle
system three years ago?"
"They sure did. Paid a fortune to get half a dozen celebs
to convert, and they still didn't get more than ten, twenty
thousand subscribers. I doubt there's a hundred of them left."
What can you do? They hold a press conference, we have to
send somebody. They throw chum in the water, we start to feed.
Five minutes into the ULTRA-Tingle presentations (that's
how they insisted it be spelled, with caps) I could see this
turkey would be of interest only to the trades. I'm sure my
beefy buddy up front was tickled down to the tips of his
muscle-bound toes.
There were a dozen nude, genderless dancers on stage now,
caressing each others' bodies and posing artistically. Blue
sparks flew from their fingertips.
"That's it for me," I said to Cricket. "You sticking
around?"
"There's a drawing later. Three free conversions--"
"--to the fabulous ULTRA-Tingle System," the salesman
said, finishing her sentence for her.
"Win free sex," I said.
"What's that?"
"Walter says it's the ultimate padloid headline."
"Shouldn't it have something about UFO's in it?"
"Okay. 'Win Free Sex Aboard a UFO to Old Earth.'"
"I'd better stick around for the drawing. My boss would
kill me if I won and wasn't around to collect."
"If I win, they can bring it around to the office." I got
up, put my hand on a massive shoulder, leaned down.
"Those pecs could use some more work," I told the gorilla
hybrid, and got out in a hurry.
#
The foyer had been transformed since my arrival. Huge blue
holos of ULTRA-Tingle convertees entwined erotically in the
corners, and long banquet tables had been wheeled in. Men in
traditional English butler uniforms stood behind the tables
polishing silver and glassware.
It's known as perks. I seldom turn down a free trip in the
course of my profession, and I never turn down free food.
I went to the nearest table and stuck a knife into a pÂte'
sculpture of Sigmund Freud and spread the thick brown goo over
a slice of black bread. One of the butlers looked worried and
started toward me, but I glared him back into his place. I put
two thick slices of smoked ham on top of the pÂte', spread a
layer of cream cheese, a few sheets of lox sliced so thin you
could read newsprint through it, and topped it all off with
three spoonfuls of black Beluga caviar. The butler watched the
whole operation in increasing disbelief.
It was one of the all-time great Hildy sandwiches.
I was about to bite into it when Cricket appeared at my
elbow and offered me a tulip glass of blue champagne. The
crystal made an icy clear musical note when I touched it to the
rim of her glass.
"Freedom of the press," I suggested.
"The fourth estate," Cricket agreed.
#
The UniBio labs were at the far end of a new suburb nearly
seventy kilometers from the middle of King City. Most of the
slides and escalators were not working yet. There was only one
functioning tube terminal and it was two kilometers away. We'd
come in a fleet of twenty hoverlimos. They were still there,
lined up outside the entrance to the corporate offices, ready
to take us back to the tube station. Or so I thought. Cricket
and I climbed aboard.
"It distresses me greatly to tell you this," the hoverlimo
said, "but I am unable to depart until the demonstration inside
is over, or until I have a passenger load of seven
individuals."
"Make an exception," I told it. "We have deadlines to
meet."
"Are you perhaps declaring an emergency situation?"
I started to do just that, then bit my tongue. I'd get
back to the office, all right, then have a lot of explaining to
do and a big fine to pay.
"When I write this story," I said, trying another tack,
"and when I mention this foolish delay, portraying UniBio in an
unfavorable light, your bosses will be extremely upset."
"This information disturbs and alarms me," said the
hoverlimo. "I, being only a sub-program of an
incompletely-activated routine of the UniBio building computer,
wish only to please my human passengers. Be assured I would go
to the greatest lengths to satisfy your desires, as my only
purpose is to provide satisfaction and speedy transportation.
However," it added, after a short pause, "I can't move."
"Come on," Cricket said. "You ought to know better than to
argue with a machine." She was already getting out. I knew she
was right, but there is a part of me that has never been able
to resist it, even if they don't talk to me.
"Your mother was a garbage truck," I said, and kicked it
in the rubber skirt.
"Undoubtedly, sir. Thank you, sir. Please come back soon,
sir."
#
"Who programmed that toadying thing?" I wondered, later.
"Somebody with a lot of lipstick on his ass," Cricket
said. "What are you so sour about? It's just a short walk. Take
in the scenery."
It was a rather pleasant place, I had to admit. There were
very few people around. You grow up with the odor of people all
around you, all the time, and you really notice it when the
scent is gone. I took a deep breath and smelled freshlypoured
concrete. I drank the sights and sounds and scents of a
new-born world: the sharp primary colors of wire bundles
sprouting from unfinished walls like the first buds on a bare
bough, the untarnished gleam of copper, silver, gold, aluminum,
titanium; the whistle of air through virgin ducts, undeflected,
unmuffled, bringing with it the crisp sharpness of the light
machine oil that for centuries has coated new machinery, fresh
from the factory . . . all these things had an effect on me.
They meant warmth, security, safety from the eternal vacuum,
the victory of humanity over the hostile forces that never
slept. In a word, progress.
I began to relax a little. We picked our way through
jumbles of stainless steel and aluminum and plastic and glass
building components and I felt a peace as profound as I suspect
a Kansas farmer of yesteryear might have felt, looking out over
his rippling fields of wheat.
"Says here they've got an option where you can have sex
over the telephone."
Cricket had gotten a few paces ahead of me, and she was
reading from the UniBio faxpad handout.
"That's nothing new. People started having sex over the
telephone about ten minutes after Alexander Graham Bell
invented it."
"You're pulling my leg. Nobody invented sex."
I liked Cricket, though we were rivals. She works for The
Straight Shit, Luna's second largest padloid, and has already
made a name for herself even though she's not quite thirty
years old. We cover many of the same stories so we see a lot of
each other, professionally.
She'd been female all the time I'd known her, but she'd
never shown any interest in the tentative offers I had made. No
accounting for taste. I'd about decided it was a matter of
sexual orientation--one doesn't ask. It had to be that. If not,
it meant she just wasn't interested in me. Altogether unlikely.
Which was a shame, either way, because I'd harbored a
low-grade lust for her for three years.
"'Simply attach the Tinglemodem (sold separately) to the
primary sensory cluster,'" she read, "'and it's as if your
lover were in the room with you.' I'll bet Mr. Bell didn't
figure on that."
Cricket had a child-like face with an upturned nose and a
brow that tended to wrinkle appealingly when she was
thinking--all carefully calculated, I have no doubt, but no
less exciting because of that. She had a short upper lip and a
long lower one. I guess that doesn't sound so great, but
Cricket made it work. She had one green, normal eye, and the
other one was red, without a pupil. My eyes were the same
except the normal one was brown. The visible red eyes of the
press never sleep.
She was wearing a frilly red blouse that went well with
her silver-blonde hair, and the second badge of our profession:
a battered gray fedora with a card reading PRESS stuck into the
brim. She had recently had herself heeled. It was coming back
into fashion. Personally, I tried it and didn't like it much.
It's a simple operation. The tendons in the soles of the feet
are shortened, forcing your heels up in the air and shifting
the weight to the balls of the feet. In extreme cases it put
you right up on your toes, like a ballerina. Like I said, a
rather silly fad, but I had to admit it produced attractive
lines in the calf, thigh, and buttock muscles.
It could have been worse. Women used to cram their feet
into pointed horrors with tencentimeter heels and hobble around
in a one-gee field to get more or less the same effect. It must
have been crippling.
"Says there's a security interlock available, to insure
fidelity."
"What? Where's that?"
She gave me the faxpad reference. I couldn't believe what
I was reading.
"Is that legal?" I asked her.
"Sure. It's a contract between two people, isn't it?
Nobody's forced to use it."
"It's an electronic chastity belt, that's what it is."
"Worn by both husband and wife. Not like the brave knight
off to the Crusades, getting laid every night while his wife
looks for a good locksmith. Good for the goose, good for the
gander."
"Good for nobody, if you ask me."
Frankly, I was shocked, and not much shocks me. To each
his or her own, that's basic to our society. But ULTRA-Tingle
was offering a coded security system whereby each partner had a
password, unknown to the other, to lock or unlock his or her
partner's sexual response. Without the password, the sexual
center of the brain would not be activated, and sex would be
about as exciting as long division.
To use it would require giving someone veto power over my
own mind. I can't imagine trusting anyone that much. But people
are crazy. That's what my job's all about.
"How about over there?" Cricket said.
"Over where? I mean, what about it?" She was headed toward
a patch of green, an area that, when completed, would be a
pocket park. Trees stood around in pots. There were great rolls
of turf stacked against one wall, like a carpet shop.
"It's probably the best spot we'll find."
"For what?"
"Have you forgotten your offer already?" she asked.
To tell the truth, I had. After this many years, it had
been made more in jest than anything else. She took my hand and
led me onto an unrolled section of turf. It was soft and
springy and cool. She reclined and looked up at me.
"Maybe I shouldn't say it, but I'm surprised."
"Well, Hildy, you never really asked, you know?"
I felt sure I had, but maybe she was right. My style is
more to kid around, make what used to be known as a pass. Some
women don't like that. They'd rather have a direct question.
I stretched out on top of her and we kissed.
We disarranged some of my clothes. She wasn't wearing
enough to worry about. Soon we were moving to rhythms it had
taken Mother Nature well over a billion years to compose. It
was awkward, messy, it lacked flexibility and probably didn't
show much imagination. It sure wasn't ULTRATingle. That didn't
prevent it from being wonderful.
"Wow," she whispered, as I rolled off her and we lay side
by side on the grass. "That was really . . . obsolete."
"Not nearly as obsolete as it was for me."
We looked at each other and burst out laughing.
After a while, she sat up and glanced at the figures
displayed on her wrist.
"Deadline in three hours," she said.
"Me, too." We heard a low hum, looked up, and saw our old
friend the hoverlimo headed in our direction. We ran to catch
it, leaped over the rubber skirt and landed with seven others,
who grumbled and groused and eventually made room for us.
"I am overjoyed to transport you," said the hoverlimo.
"I take that back about the garbage truck," I said.
"Thank you, sir."
=*= =*= =*= =*=
This is not a mystery story. The people you will meet
along the way are not suspects. The things that happen to them
are not clues. I promise not to gather everyone together at the
end and dramatically denounce a culprit.
This is not an adventure story. The survival of the
universe will not be thrown into jeopardy during the course of
it. Some momentous events will occur, and I was present at some
of them but, like most of us, I was simply picked up by the
tornado of history and deposited, like Judy Garland, in a place
I never expected to be. I had little or no hand in the outcome.
In fact, this being real life and not an adventure story, it
can be said there has been no outcome. Some things will change,
and some will remain the same, and most things will simply go
on as they were. If I were a writer of adventure fiction, if I
were manufacturing myself as the adventure's protagonist, I
would certainly have placed myself in the center of more of the
plot's turning points. I would have had myself plunging into
peril, fighting mighty battles, and saving humanity, or
something like that. Instead, many of the most important things
I'm going to tell you about happened far from my sight. I just
tried to stay alive . . .
Don't expect me to draw my sword and set things aright.
Even if I had a sword and knew how to use it, I seldom saw an
unambiguous target, and when I thought I did it was too large
and too far away for my puny swordsmanship to have any effect.
This is not a nuts-and-bolts story. Here you will
find--among many other howlers--the Hildy Johnson Explanation
of Nanobots, their uses, functions, and methods of working. I'm
sure much of it is wildly inaccurate, and all of it is surely
written about fifty I.Q. points below the layman's level . . .
and so what? If you want a nuts-and-bolts story, there have
been many written about the events I will describe. Or you
could always read the instruction manual.
Maybe the nanobot stuff could have come out, but I will
also deal with the central technological conundrum of our time:
that undeniably sentient, great big spooky pile of crystalline
gray matter, wonderful humanitarian, your friend and mine, the
Central Computer. That was unavoidable, but I will say it once
and you'd do well to remember it: I am not a tech. The things I
have to say about matters cybernetic should be taken with an
asteroid-sized tablet of sodium chloride. Literally thousands
of texts have been written concerning how what happened
happened, and why it can't happen again, to any degree of
complexity you're capable of handling, so I refer the
interested reader to them, and good riddance. But I will
divulge to you a secret, because if you've come this far with
me I can't help but like you: take what those techs say with a
grain of salt, too. Nobody knows what's going on with the CC.
So I've told you what kind of story this isn't. Well, what
is it?
That's always harder to say. I thought of calling it How I
Spent the Bicentennial Year, but where's the sex in that?
Where's the headline appeal? I could have called it To The
Stars! That remains to be seen, and it will be my intention
throughout not to lie to you.
What I was afraid it was when I began was the world's
longest suicide note. It's not: I survived. Damn! I just gave
away the ending. But I would hope the more astute of you had
already figured that one out.
All I can promise you is that it's a story. Things do
happen. But people will behave in unrepentantly illogical ways.
Mammoth events will remain resolutely off-stage. Dramatic
climaxes will fizzle like wet firecrackers. Questions will go
unanswered. An outline of this story would be a sorry thing to
behold; any script doctor in the world could instantly suggest
dozens of ways to spruce it up. Hey, have you tried outlining
your own life lately?
I will be the most illogical character of them all. I will
miss opportunities where I could have made a difference, do the
wrong thing, and just generally sleepwalk through some critical
events in my life. I'm sorry, and I hope you all do better than
I have, but I wonder if you will. I will ramble and digress. If
Walter couldn't get me to stop doing that, no one could. I will
inject bits of my rag-tag personal philosophy; I am an
opinionated son of a bitch, or bitch, as the case may be, but
when things threaten to get too heavy I will inject some
inappropriate humor. Though anything one writes will have a
message, I will not try too hard to sell mine to you, partly
because I'm far from sure what it is.
But you can relax on one account: this is not a
metaphorical story. I will not turn into a giant cockroach, nor
will I perish in existential despair. There's even some rock
'em sock 'em action, for those of you who wandered in from the
Saturday Matinee. What more could you ask?
So you've been warned. From here on in, you're on your
own.
#
The tube capsule back to King City was a quarter full. I
used the time to try to salvage something from the wasted
afternoon. Looking around me, I saw that all my colleagues were
busy at the same task. Eyes were rolled up, mouths hung open,
here and there a finger twitched. It had to be either a day
trip from the Catatonic Academy, or the modern press at work.
Call me old-fashioned. I'm the only reporter I know who
still uses his handwriter except to take notes. Cricket was
young enough I doubted she'd ever had one installed. As for the
rest of them, over the last twenty years I'd watched as one
after the other surrendered to the seductions of Direct
Interface, until only I was left, plodding along with antique
technology that happened to suit me just fine.
Okay, so I lied about the open mouths. Not all D.I. users
look like retarded zombies when they interface. But they look
asleep, and I've never been comfortable sleeping in public
places.
I snapped the fingers of my left hand. I had to do it
twice more before the handwriter came on. That worried me; it
was getting harder to find people who still knew how to work on
handwriters.
Three rows of four colored dots appeared on the heel of my
left hand.
By pressing the dots in different combinations with my
fingertips I was able to write the story in shorthand, and
watch the loops and lines scrawl themselves on a strip of
readout skin on my wrist, just where a suicide would slash
himself.
There couldn't be that many of us left who knew Gregg. I
wondered if I ought to apply for a grant under the Preservation
of Vanishing Skills act. Shorthand was certainly useless enough
to qualify. It was at least as obsolete as yodeling, and I'd
once covered a meeting of the Yodeling Society. While I was at
it, maybe I could drum up some interest in the Preservation of
the Penis.
#
(File #Hildy*next avail.*)(code Unitingle)
(headline to come)
#
How far do you trust your spouse? Or better yet, how much
does your spouse trust you!
That's the question you'll be asking yourself if you
subscribe to United Bioengineers' new sex system known as
ULTRA-Tingle.
ULTRA-Tingle is the new, improved, up-dated version of
UniBio's mega-flop of a few years back, known simple as Tingle.
Remember Tingle? Well, don't feel bad. Nobody else does,
either. Somewhere, in some remote cavern in this great dusty
globe we feel sure there must be someone who converted and
stayed that way. Maybe even two of them. Maybe tonight they're
Tingling each other. Or maybe one of them has a tingle-ache.
If you are a bona fide Tingler, call this padloid
immediately, because you've won a prize! Ten percent off on the
cost of your conversion to ULTRA-Tingle. Second prize: a
discount on two conversions!
What does ULTRA-Tingle offer the dedicated sexual
adventurer? In a word: Security!
Maybe you thought sex was between your legs. It's not.
It's in your head, like everything. And that is the miracle of
ULTRA-Tingle. Merely by saying the word you can have the great
thrill of caponizing your mate. You, too, can be a grinning
gelding. Imagine the joys of cerebral castration! Be the first
in your sector to rediscover the art of psychic infibulation!
Who but UniBio could raise impotence into the realm of
integrated circuits, elevate frigidity from aberration to
abnegation?
You don't believe me? Here's how it works:
(to come: *insert UniBio faxpad #4985 ref. 6-
13.*)
You may ask yourself: Whatever happened to oldfashioned
trust? Well, folks, it's obsolete. Just like the penis, which
UniBio assures us will soon go the way of the Do-do bird. So
those of you who still own and operate a trouser-snake, better
start thinking of a place to put it.
No, not there, you fool! That's obsolete, too!
(no thirty)
#
The vocabulary warning light was blinking wildly on the
nail of my index finger. It turned on around paragraph seven,
as I had known it would. But it's fun to write that sort of
thing, even if you know it'll never make it into print. When I
first started this job I would have gone back and worked on it,
but now I know it's better to leave something obvious for
Walter to mess with, in the hope he'll leave the rest alone.
Okay, so the Pulitzer Prize was safe for another year.
#
King City grew the way many of the older Lunar settlements
had: one bang at a time.
The original enclave had been in a large volcanic bubble
several hundred meters below the surface. An artificial sun had
been hung near the top, and engineers drilled tunnels in all
directions, heaping the rubble on the floor, pulverizing it
into soil, turning the bubble into a city park with residential
corridors radiating away from it.
Eventually there were too many people for that park, so
they drilled a hole and dropped in a medium-sized nuclear bomb.
When it cooled, the resulting bubble became Mall Two.
The city fathers were up to Mall Seventeen before new
construction methods and changing public tastes halted the
string. The first ten malls had been blasted in a line, which
meant a long commute from the Old Mall to Mall Ten. They
started curving the line, aiming to complete a big oval. Now a
King City map had seventeen circles tracing out the letter J,
woven together by a thousand tunnels.
My office was in Mall Twelve, level thirty-six, 120
degrees. It's in the editorial offices of The News Nipple, the
padloid with the largest circulation in Luna. The door at 120
opens on what is barely more than an elevator lobby wedged
between a travel agency and a florist. There's a receptionist,
a small waiting room, and a security desk. Behind that are four
elevators that go to actual offices, on the Lunar surface.
Location, location, and location, says my cousin Arnie,
the real estate broker. The way I figure it, time plays a part
in land values, too. The Nipple offices were topside because,
when the rag was founded, topside meant cheap. Walter had had
money even way back then, but he'd been a cheap son of a bitch
since the dawn of time. He got a deal on the seven-story
surface structure, and who cared if it leaked? He liked the
view.
Now everybody likes views, and the fine old homes in
Bedrock are the worst slums in King City. But I suspect one big
blow-out could turn the whole city topsy-turvy again.
I had a corner office on the sixth floor. I hadn't done
much with it other than to put in a cot and a coffeemaker. I
tossed my hat on the cot, slapped the desk terminal until it
lighted up, and pressed my palm against a read-out plate. My
story was downloaded into the main computer in just under a
second. In another second, the printer started to chatter.
Walter prefers hard copy. He likes to make big blue marks on
it. While I waited I looked out over the city. My home town.
The News Nipple Tower is near the bottom of the J of King
City. From it you can see the clusters of other buildings that
mark the sub-surface Malls. The sun was still three days from
rising. The lights of the city dwindled in the distance and
blended in with the hard, unblinking stars overhead.
Almost on the horizon are the huge, pearly domes of King
City farms.
It's pretty by night, not so lovely by day. When the sun
came up it would bathe every exposed pipe and trash pile and
abandoned rover in unsympathetic light; night pulled a curtain
over the shameful clutter.
Even the parts that aren't junk aren't all that
attractive. Vacuum is useful in many manufacturing processes
and walls are of no use for most of them. If something needed
to be sheltered from sunlight, a roof was enough.
Loonies don't care about the surface. There's no ecology
to preserve, no reason at all to treat it as other than a huge
and handy dumping ground. In some places the garbage was heaped
to the third story of the exterior buildings. Give us another
thousand years and we'll pile the garbage a hundred meters deep
from pole to pole.
There was very little movement. King City, on the surface,
looked bombed out, abandoned.
The printer finished its job and I handed the copy to a
passing messenger. Walter would call me about it when it suited
him. I thought of several things I could do in the meantime,
failed to find any enthusiasm for any of them. So I just sat
there and stared out over the surface, and presently I was
called into the master's presence.
#
Walter Editor is what is known as a natural.
Not that he's a fanatic about it. He doesn't subscribe to
one of those cults that refuse all medical treatment developed
since 1860, or 1945, or 2020. He's not impressed with faith
healing. He's not a member of Lifespan, those folks who believe
it's a sin to live beyond the Biblical threescore and ten, or
the Centenarians, who set the number at one hundred. He's just
like most of the rest of us, prepared to live forever if
medical science can maintain a quality life for him. He'll
accept any treatment that will keep him healthy despite a
monstrously dissolute life style.
He just doesn't care how he looks.
All the fads in body styling and facial arrangement pass
him by. In the twenty years I have known him he has never
changed so much as his hair style. He had been born male--or so
he once told me--one hundred and twenty-six years ago, and had
never Changed.
His somatic development had been frozen in his
mid-forties, a time he often described to all who would listen
as "the prime of life." As a result, he was paunchy and
balding. This suited Walter fine. He felt the editor of a major
planetary newspaper ought to be paunchy and balding.
An earlier age would have called Walter Editor a
voluptuary. He was a sensualist, a glutton, monstrously
self-indulgent. He went through stomachs in two or three years,
used up a pair of lungs every decade or so, and needed a new
heart more frequently than most people change gaskets on a
pressure suit. Every time he exceeded what he called his
"fighting weight" by fifty kilos, he'd have seventy kilos
removed. Other than that, with Walter what you saw was what he
was.
I found him in his usual position, leaning back in his
huge chair, big feet propped up on the antique mahogany desk
whose surface displayed not one item made after 1880. His face
was hidden behind my story. Puffs of lavender smoke rose from
behind the pages.
"Sit down, Hildy, sit down," he muttered, turning a page.
I sat, and looked out his windows, which had exactly the same
view I'd seen from my windows but five meters higher and three
hundred degrees wider. I knew there would be three of four
minutes while he kept me waiting. It was one of his managerial
techniques. He'd read in a book somewhere that an effective
boss should keep underlings waiting whenever possible. He
spoiled the effect by constantly glancing up at the clock on
the wall.
The clock had been made in 1860 and had once graced the
wall of a railway station somewhere in Iowa. The office could
be described as Dickensian. The furnishings were worth more
than I was likely to make in my lifetime. Very few genuine
antiquities had ever been brought to Luna. Most of those were
in museums. Walter owned much of the rest.
"Junk," he said. "Worthless." He scowled and tossed the
flimsy sheets across the room. Or he tried to. Flimsy sheets
resist attaining any great speed unless you wad them up first.
These fluttered to the floor at his feet.
"Sorry, Walter, but there just wasn't any other-- "
"You want to know why I can't use it?"
"No sex."
"There's no sex in it! I send you out to cover a new sex
system, and it turns out there's no sex in it. How can that
be?"
"Well, there's sex in it, naturally. Just not the right
kind. I mean, I could write a story about earthworm sex, or
jellyfish sex, but it wouldn't turn anybody on but earthworms
and jellyfish."
"Exactly. Why is that, Hildy? Why do they want to turn us
into jellyfish?"
I knew all about this particular hobbyhorse, but there was
nothing to do but ride it.
"It's like the search for the Holy Grail, or the
Philosopher's Stone," I said.
"What's the Philosopher's Stone?"
The question had not come from Walter, but from behind me.
I was pretty sure I knew who it was. I turned, and saw Brenda,
cub reporter, who for the past two weeks had been my
journalistic assistant--pronounced "copy girl."
"Sit down, Brenda," Walter said. "I'll get to you in a
minute."
I watched her dither around pulling up a chair, folding
herself into it like a collapsible ruler with bony joints
sticking out in all directions, surely too many joints for one
human being. She was very tall and very thin, like so many of
the younger generation. I had been told she was seventeen, out
on her first vocational education try-out. She was eager as a
puppy and not half as graceful.
She irritated the hell out of me. I'm not sure why.
There's the generational thing. You wonder how things can get
worse, you think that these kids have to be the rock bottom,
then they have children and you see how wrong you were.
At least she could read and write, I'll give her that. But
she was so damnably earnest, so horribly eager to please. She
made me tired just looking at her. She was a tabula rasa
waiting for someone to draw animated cartoons on. Her ignorance
of everything outside her particular upper-middle class social
stratum and of everything that had happened more than five
years ago was still un-plumbed.
She opened the huge purse she always carried around with
her and produced a cheroot identical to the one Walter was
smoking. She lit up and exhaled a cloud of lavender smoke. Her
smoking dated to the day after she met Walter Editor. Her name
dated to the day after she met me. Maybe it should have amused
or flattered me that she was so obviously trying to emulate her
elders; it just made me angry. Adopting the name of a famous
fictional reporter had been my idea.
Walter gestured for me to go on. I sighed, and did so.
"I really don't know when it started, or why. But the
basic idea was, since sex and reproduction no longer have much
to do with each other, why should we have sex with our
reproductive organs? The same organs we use for urination, too,
for that matter."
"'If it ain't broke, don't fix it,'" Walter said. "That's
my philosophy. The old-fashioned system worked for millions of
years. Why tamper with it?'
"Actually, Walter, we've already tampered with it quite a
bit."
"Not everybody."
"True. But well over eighty percent of females prefer
clitoral relocation. The natural arrangement didn't provide
enough stimulation during the regular sex act. And just about
that many men have had a testicle tuck. They were too damn
vulnerable hanging out there where nature put them."
"I haven't had one," he said. I made note of that, in case
I ever got into a fight with him.
"Then there's the question of stamina in males," I went
on. "Back on Earth, it was the rare male over thirty who could
consistently get an erection more than three or four times a
day. And it usually didn't last very long. And men didn't have
multiple orgasms. They just weren't as sexually capable as
women."
"That's horrible," Brenda said. I looked at her; she was
genuinely shocked.
"That's an improvement, I'll have to admit," Walter said.
"And there's the entire phenomenon of menstruation," I
added.
"What's menstruation?"
We both looked at her. She wasn't joking. Walter and I
looked at each other and I could read his thoughts.
"Anyway," I said, "you just pointed out the challenge.
Lots of people get altered in one way or another. Some, like
you, stay almost natural. Some of the alterations aren't
compatible with others. Not all of them involve penetration of
one person by another, for instance. What these newsex people
are saying is, if we're going to tamper, why not come up with a
system that is so much better than the others that everyone
will want to be that way? Why should the sensations we
associate with 'sexual pleasure' be always and forever the
result of friction between mucous membranes? It's the same sort
of urge people had about languages back on Earth, back when
there were hundreds of languages, or about weights and
measures. The metric system caught on, but Esperanto didn't.
Today we have a few dozen languages still in use, and more
types of sexual orientation than that."
I settled back in my chair, feeling foolish. But I'd done
my part. Now Walter could get on with whatever he had in mind.
I glanced at Brenda, and she was staring at me with the
wideeyed look of an acolyte to a guru.
Walter took another drag on his cheroot, exhaled, and
leaned back in his chair, fingers laced behind his head.
"You know what today is?" he asked.
"Thursday," Brenda supplied. Walter glanced at her, but
didn't bother to reply. He took another drag.
"It's the one hundred and ninety-ninth anniversary of the
Invasion and Occupation of the Planet Earth."
"Remind me to light a candle and say a novena."
"You think it's funny."
"Nothing funny about it," I said. "I just wonder what it
has to do with me."
Walter nodded, and put his feet down on the floor.
"How many stories have you seen on the Invasion in the
last week? The week leading up to this anniversary?"
I was willing to play along.
"Let's see. Counting the stuff in the Straight Shit, the
items in the Lunarian and the K.C. News, that incisive series
in Lunatime, and of course our own voluminous coverage . . .
none. Not a single story."
"That's right. I think it's time somebody did something
about that."
"While we're at it, let's do a big spread on the Battle of
Agincourt, and the first manned landing on Mars."
"You do think it's funny."
"I'm merely applying a lesson somebody taught me when I
started here. If it happened yesterday, it ain't news. And the
News Nipple reports the news."
"This isn't strictly for the Nipple," Walter admitted.
"Uh-oh."
He ignored my expression, which I hoped was sufficiently
sour, and plowed ahead.
"We'll use cuts from your stories in the Nipple. Most of
'em, anyway. You'll have Brenda to do most of the leg work."
"What are you talking about?" Brenda asked Walter. When
that didn't work, she turned to me. "What's he talking about?"
"I'm talking about the supplement."
"He's talking about the old reporters' graveyard."
"Just one story a week. Will you let me explain?"
I settled back in my chair and tried to turn off my brain.
Oh, I'd fight it hard enough, but I knew I didn't have much
choice when Walter got that look in his eye.
The News Nipple Corporation publishes three pads. The
first is the Nipple itself, updated hourly, full of what Walter
Editor liked to think of as "lively" stories: the celebrity
scandal, the pseudo-scientific breakthrough, psychic
predictions, lovingly bloody coverage of disasters. We covered
the rougher and more proletarian sports, and a certain amount
of politics, if the proposition involved could be expressed in
a short sentence. The Nipple had so many pictures you hardly
needed to read the words. Like the other padloids, it would not
have bothered with any copy but for the government literacy
grants that often provided the financial margin between success
and failure. A daily quota of words was needed to qualify for
the grants. That exact number of words appeared in each of our
issues, including "a," "an," "and," and "the."
The Daily Cream was the intellectual appendix to the
swollen intestine of the Nipple. It came free to every
subscriber of the pad--those government grants again--and was
read by about one in ten, according to our more optimistic
surveys. It published thousands of times more words per hour,
and included most of our political coverage.
Somewhere between those two was the electronic equivalent
of the Sunday supplement, published weekly, called Sundae.
"Here's what I want," Walter went on. "You'll go out and
cover your regular beats. But I want you to be thinking Sundae
while you do that. Whatever you're covering, think about how it
would have been different two hundred years ago, back on Earth.
It can be anything at all. Like today, sex. There's a topic for
you. Write about what sex was like back on Earth, and contrast
it to what it's like now. You could even throw in stuff about
what people think it's gonna be like in another twenty years,
or a century."
"Walter, I don't deserve this."
"Hildy, you're the only man for it. I want one article per
week for the entire year leading up to the bicentennial. I'm
giving you a free hand as to what they're about. You can
editorialize. You can personalize, make it like a column.
You've always wanted a column; here's your chance at a byline.
You want expensive consultants, advisors, research? You name
it, you got it. You need to travel? I'm good for the money. I
want only the best for this series."
I didn't know what to say to that. It was a good offer.
Nothing in life is ever exactly what you asked for, but I had
wanted a column, and this seemed like a reasonable shot at it.
"Hildy, during the twentieth century there was a time like
no other time humans have seen before or since. My
grandfather's great-grandfather was born in the year the Wright
brothers made the first powered flight. By the time he died,
there was a permanent base on Luna. My grandfather was ten when
the old man died, and he's told me many times how he used to
talk about the old days. It was amazing just how much change
that old man had seen in his lifetime.
"In that century they started talking about a 'generation
gap.' So much happened, so many things changed so fast, how was
a seventy-year-old supposed to talk to a fifteen-year-old in
terms they both could understand?
"Well, things don't change quite that fast anymore. I
wonder if they ever will again? But we've got something in
common with those people. We've got kids like Brenda here who
hardly remember anything beyond last year, and they're living
side by side with people who were born and grew up on the
Earth. People who remember what a one-gee gravity field was
like, what it was to walk around outside and breathe free,
un-metered air. Who were raised when people were born, grew up,
and died in the same sex. People who fought in wars. Our oldest
citizens are almost three hundred now. Surely there's fifty-two
stories in that.
"This is a story that's been waiting two hundred years to
be told. We've had our heads in the sand. We've been beaten,
humiliated, suffered a racial set-back that I'm afraid . . . "
It was as if he suddenly had heard what he was saying. He
sputtered to a stop, not looking me in the eye.
I was not used to speeches from Walter. It made me uneasy.
The assignment made me uneasy. I don't think about the Invasion
much--which was precisely his point, of course--and I think
that's just as well. But I could see his passion, and knew I'd
better not fight it. I was used to rage, to being chewed out
for this or that. Being appealed to was something brand new. I
felt it was time to lighten the atmosphere a little.
"So how big a raise are we talking about here?" I asked.
He settled back in his chair and smiled, back on familiar
ground.
"You know I never discuss that. It'll be in your next
paycheck. If you don't like it, gripe to me then."
"And I have to use the kid on all this stuff?"
"Hey! I'm right here," Brenda protested.
"The kid is vital to the whole thing. She's your sounding
board. If a fact from the old days sounds weird to her, you
know you're onto something. She's contemporary as your last
breath, she's eager to learn and fairly bright, and she knows
nothing. You'll be the middle man. You're about the right age
for it, and history's your hobby. You know more about old Earth
than any man your age I've ever met."
"If I'm in the middle . . . "
"You might want to interview my grandfather," Walter
suggested. "But there'll be a third member of your team.
Somebody Earth-born. I haven't decided yet who that'll be.
"Now get out of here, both of you."
I could see Brenda had a thousand questions she still
wanted to ask. I warned her off with my eyes, and followed her
to the door.
"And Hildy," Walter said. I looked back.
"If you put words like abnegation and infibulation in
these stories, I'll personally caponize you."
=*= =*= =*= =*=
I pulled the tarp off my pile of precious lumber and
watched the scorpions scuttle away in the sunlight. Say what
you want about the sanctity of life; I like to crush 'em.
Deeper in the pile I'd disturbed a rattlesnake. I didn't
see him, but could hear him warning me away. Handling them from
the ends, I selected a plank and pulled it out. I shouldered it
and carried it to my half-finished cabin. It was evening, the
best time to work in West Texas. The temperature had dropped to
ninety-five in the oldstyle scale they used there. During the
day it had been well over a hundred.
I positioned the plank on two sawhorses near what would be
the front porch when I was finished. I squatted and looked down
its length. This was a one-by-ten--inches, not
centimeters--which meant it actually measured about nine by
seven eighths, for reasons no one had ever explained to me.
Thinking in inches was difficult enough, without dealing in
those odd ratios called fractions. What was wrong with
decimals, and what was wrong with a one-by-ten actually being
one inch by ten inches? Why twelve inches in a foot? Maybe
there was a story in it for the bicentennial series.
The plank had been advertised as ten feet long, and that
measurement was accurate. It was also supposed to be straight,
but if it was they had used a noodle for a straightedge.
Texas was the second of what was to be three disneylands
devoted to the eighteenth century. Out here west of the Pecos
we reckoned it to be 1845, the last year of the Texas Republic,
though you could use technology as recent as 1899 without
running afoul of the anachronism regulations. Pennsylvania had
been the first of the triad, and my plank, complete with two
big bulges in the width and a depressing sag when held by one
end, had been milled there by "Amish" sawyers using the old
methods. A little oval stamp in a corner guaranteed this:
"Approved, Lunar Antiquities Reproduction Board." Either the
methods of the 1800's couldn't reliably produce straight and
true lumber, or those damn Dutchmen were still learning their
craft.
So I did what the carpenters of the Texas Republic had
done. I got out my plane (also certified by the L.A.R.B.),
removed the primitive blade, sharpened it against a home-made
whetstone, re-attached the blade, and began shaving away the
irregularities.
I'm not complaining. I was lucky to get the lumber. Most
of the cabin was made of rough-hewn logs notched together at
the ends, chinked with adobe.
The board had turned gray in the heat and sun, but after a
few strokes I was down to the yellow pine interior. The wood
curled up around the blade and the chips dropped around my bare
feet. It smelled fresh and new and I found myself smiling as
the sweat dripped off my nose. It would be good to be a
carpenter, I thought. Maybe I'd quit the newspaper business.
Then the blade broke and jammed into the wood. My palm
slipped off the knob in front and tried to skate across the
fresh-planed surface, driving long splinters into my skin. The
plane clattered off the board and went for my toe with the
hellish accuracy of a pain-guided missile.
I shouted a few words rarely heard in 1845, and some
uncommon even in the 23rd century. I hopped around on one foot.
Another lost art, hopping.
"It could have been worse," a voice said in my ear. It was
either incipient schizophrenia, or the Central Computer. I bet
on the CC.
"How? By hitting both feet?"
"Gravity. Consider the momentum such a massive object
could have attained, had this really been West Texas, which
lies at the bottom of a spacetime depression twenty-five
thousand miles per hour deep."
Definitely the CC.
I examined my hand. Blood was oozing from it, running down
my forearm and dripping from the elbow. But there was no
arterial pumping. The foot, though it still hurt like fire, was
not damaged.
"You see now why laborers in 1845 wore work boots."
"Is that why you called, CC? To give me a lecture about
safety in the work place?"
"No. I was going to announce a visitor. The colorful
language lesson was an unexpected bonus of my tuning in on--"
"Shut up, will you?"
The Central Computer did so.
The end of a splinter protruded from my palm, so I pulled
on it. I got some, but a lot was still buried in there. Others
had broken off below skin level. All in all, a wonderful day's
work.
A visitor? I looked around and saw no one, though a whole
tribe of Apaches could have been hiding in the clumps of
mesquite. I had not expected to see any sign of the CC. It uses
the circuitry in my own head to produce its voice.
And it wasn't supposed to manifest itself in Texas. As is
often the case, there was more to the CC than it was telling.
"CC, on-line, please."
"I hear and obey."
"Who's the visitor?"
"Tall, young, ignorant of tampons, with a certain
puppy-like charm--"
"Oh, Jesus."
"I know I'm not supposed to intrude on these antique
environments, but she was quite insistent on learning your
location, and I thought it better for you to have some
forewarning than to--"
"Okay. Now shut up."
I sat in the rickety chair which had been my first
carpentry project. Being careful of the injured hand, I pulled
on the work boots I should have been wearing all along. The
reason I hadn't was simple: I hated them.
There was another story for Walter. Shoes. If Lunarians
wear them, they tend to be the soft kind, like moccasins, or
socks. Reason: in a crowded urban environment of perfectly
smooth floors and carpets and a majority of bare-foot people,
hard shoes are anti-social. You could break someone else's
toes.
Once I had my feet jammed into the smelly things I had to
search for the buttonhook. Buttons, on shoes! It was
outrageous. How had people ever tolerated such things? To add
insult to inutility, the damn things had cost me a fortune.
I stood and was about to head into town when the CC spoke
again.
"If you leave those tools out and it rains, they will
combine with the oxygen in the air in a slow combustion
reaction."
"Rust is too poor a word for you, right? It rains out here
. . . what? Once every hundred days?"
But my heart wasn't in it. The CC was right. If button-up
torture devices were expensive, period tools were worth a
king's ransom. My plane, saw, hammer and chisel had cost a
year's salary. The good news was I could re-sell them for more
than I paid . . . if they weren't rusted.
I wrapped them in an oiled cloth and stowed them carefully
in my toolbox, then headed down the trail toward town.
#
I was in sight of New Austin before I spied Brenda,
looking like an albino flamingo. She was standing on one leg
while the other was turned around so the foot was at waist
level, sole upward. To do it she had twisted at hip and knee in
ways I hadn't thought humanly possible. She was nude, her skin
a uniform creamy white. She had no pubic hair.
"Hi, there, seven foot two, eyes of blue."
She glanced at me, then pointed at her foot, indignantly.
"They don't keep these paths very tidy. Look what it did
to my foot. There was a stone, with a sharp point on it."
"They specialize in sharp points around here," I said.
"It's a natural environment. You've probably never seen one
before."
"My class went to Amazon three years ago."
"Sure, on the moving walkway. While I'm at it, I'd better
tell you the plants have sharp points, too. That big thing
there is a prickly pear. Don't walk through it. That thing
behind you is a cactus, too. Don't step on it. This bush has
thorns. Over there is cenizo. It blooms after a rain; real
pretty."
She looked around, possibly realizing for the first time
that there was more than one kind of plant, and that they all
had names.
"You know what they're all called?"
"Not all. I know the big ones. Those spiky ones are yucca.
The tall ones, like whips, those are ocotillo. Most of those
short bushes are creosote. That tree is mesquite."
"Not much of a tree."
"It's not much of an environment. Things here have to
struggle to stay alive. Not like Amazon, where the plants fight
each other. Here they work too hard conserving water."
She looked around again, wincing as her injured foot
touched the ground.
"No animals?"
"They're all around you. Insects, reptiles, mostly. Some
antelope. Buffalo further east. I could show you a cougar
lair." I doubted she had any idea what a cougar was, or
antelope and buffalo, for that matter. This was a city girl
through and through. About like me before I moved to Texas,
three years ago. I relented and went down on one knee.
"Let me see that foot."
There was a ragged gash on the heel, painful but not
serious.
"Hey, your hand is hurt," she said. "What happened?"
"Just a stupid accident." I noticed as I said it that she
not only lacked pubic hair, she had no genitals. That used to
be popular sixty or seventy years ago, for children, as part of
a theory of the time concerning something called "delayed
adolescence." I hadn't seen it in at least twenty years, though
I'd heard there were religious sects that still practiced it. I
wondered if her family belonged to one, but it was much too
personal to ask about.
"I don't like this place," she said "It's dangerous." She
made it sound like an obscenity. The whole idea offended her,
as well it should, coming as she did from the most benign
environment ever created by humans.
"It's not so bad. Can you walk on that?"
"Oh, sure." She put her foot down and walked along beside
me, on her toes. As if she weren't tall enough already. "What
was that remark about seven feet? I've got two feet, just like
everyone else."
"Actually, you're closer to seven-four, I'd guess." I had
to give her a brief explanation of the English system of
weights and measures as used in the West Texas disneyland. I'm
not sure she understood it, but I didn't hold it against her,
because I didn't, either.
We had arrived in the middle of New Austin. This was no
great feat of walking; the middle is about a hundred yards from
the edge. New Austin consists of two streets: Old Spanish Trail
and Congress Street. The intersection is defined by four
buildings: The Travis Hotel, the Alamo Saloon, a general store
and a livery stable. The hotel and saloon each have a second
story. At the far end of Congress is a white clapboard Baptist
church. That, and a few dozen other ramshackle buildings strung
out between the church and Four Corners, is New Austin.
"They took all my clothes," she said.
"Naturally."
"They were perfectly good clothes."
"I'm sure they were. But only contemporary things are
allowed in here."
"What for?"
"Think of it as a living museum."
I'd been headed for the doctor's office. Considering the
time of day, I thought better of it and mounted the steps to
the saloon. We entered through the swinging doors.
It was dark inside, and a little cooler. Behind me, Brenda
had to duck to get through the doorway. A player piano tinkled
in the background, just like an old western movie. I spotted
the doctor sitting at the far end of the bar.
"Say, young lady," the bartender shouted. "You can't come
in here dressed like that." I looked around, saw her looking
down at herself in complete confusion.
"What's the matter with you people?" she shouted. "The
lady outside made me leave all my clothes with her."
"Amanda," the bartender said, "you have anything she could
wear?" He turned to Brenda again. "I don't care what you wear
out in the bush. You come into my establishment, you'll be
decently dressed. What they told you outside is no concern of
mine."
One of the bar girls approached Brenda, holding a pink
robe. I turned away. Let them sort it out.
Ever since moving to Texas, I'd played their games of
authenticity. I didn't have an accent, but I'd picked up a
smattering of words. Now I groped for one, a particularly
colorful one, and came up with it.
"I hear tell you're the sawbones around these parts," I
said.
The doctor chuckled and extended his hand.
"Ned Pepper," he said, "at your service, sir."
When I didn't shake his hand he frowned, and noticed the
dirty bandage wrapped around it.
"Looks like you threw a shoe, son. Let me take a look at
that."
He carefully unwrapped the bandage, and winced when he saw
the splinters. I could smell the sourness of his breath, and
his clothes. Doc was one of the permanent residents, like the
bartender and the rest of the hotel staff. He was an alcoholic
who had found a perfect niche for himself. In Texas he had
status and could spend most of the day swilling whiskey at the
Alamo. The drunken physician was a cliche' from a thousand
horse operas of the twentieth century, but so what? All we have
in reconstructing these past environments is books and movies.
The movies are much more helpful, one picture being equal to a
kilo-word.
"Can you do anything with it?" I asked.
He looked up in surprise, and swallowed queasily.
"I guess I could dig 'em out. Couple quarts of rye--maybe
one for you, too--though I freely admit the idea makes me want
to puke." He squinted at my hand again, and shook his head.
"You really want me to do it?"
"I don't see why not. You're a doctor, aren't you?"
"Sure, by 1845 standards. The Board trained me. Took about
a week. I got a bag full of steel tools and a cabinet full of
patent elixirs. What I don't have is an anaesthetic. I suppose
those splinters hurt going in."
"They still hurt."
"It's nothing to how it'd hurt if I took the case. Let me
. . . Hildy? Is that your name? That's right, I remember now.
Newspaperman. Last time I talked to you you seemed to know a
few things about Texas. More than most weekenders."
"I'm not a weekender," I protested. "I've been building a
cabin."
"No offense meant, son, but it started out as an
investment, didn't it?"
I admitted it. The most valuable real estate in Luna is in
the less-developed disneylands. I'd quadrupled my money so far
and there were no signs the boom was slowing.
"It's funny how much people will pay for hardship," he
said. "They warn you up front but they don't spend a lot of
time talking about medical care. People come here to live, and
they tell themselves they'll live authentic. Then they get a
taste of my medicine and run to the real world. Pain ain't
funny, Hildy. Mostly I deliver babies, and any reasonably
competent woman could do that herself."
"Then what are you good for?" I regretted it as soon as I
said it, but he didn't seem to take offense.
"I'm mostly window dressing," he admitted. "I don't mind
it. There's worse ways of earning your daily oxygen."
Brenda had drifted over to catch the last of our
conversation. She was wrapped in a ridiculous pink robe, still
favoring one foot.
"You fixed up yet?" she asked me.
"I think I'll wait," I said.
"Another lame mare?" the doctor asked. "Toss that hoof up
here, little lady, and let me take a look at it." When he had
examined the cut he grinned and rubbed his hands together.
"Here's an injury within my realm of expertise," he said. "You
want me to treat it?"
"Sure, why not?"
The doctor opened his black bag and Brenda watched him
innocently. He removed several bottles, cotton swabs, bandages,
laid it all out carefully on the bar.
"A little tincture of iodine to cleanse the wound," he
muttered, and touched a purplish wad of cotton to Brenda's
foot. She howled, and jumped four feet straight up, using only
the un-injured foot. If I hadn't grabbed her ankle she would
have hit the ceiling.
"What the hell is he doing?" she yelled at me.
"Hush, now," I soothed her.
"But it hurts."
I gave her my best determined-reporter look, grabbing her
hand to intensify the effect.
"There's a story in here, Brenda. Medicine then and now.
Think how pleased Walter will be."
"Well, why doesn't he work on you, too?" she pouted.
"It would have involved amputation," I said. And it would
have, too; I'd have cut off his hand if he laid it on me.
"I don't know if I want to--"
"Just hold still and I'll be through in a minute."
She howled, she cried, but she held still enough for him
to finish cleaning the wound. She'd make a hell of a reporter
one day.
The doctor took out a needle and thread.
"What's that for?" she asked, suspiciously.
"I have to suture the wound now," he said.
"If suture means sew up, you can suture yourself, you
bastard."
He glared at her, but saw the determination in her eyes.
He put the needle and thread away and prepared a bandage.
"Yes sir, it was hard times, 1845," he said. "You know
what caused people the most trouble? Teeth. If a tooth goes bad
here, what you do is you go to the barber down the street, or
the one over in Lonesome Dove, who's said to be quicker.
Barbers used to handle it all; teeth, surgery, and hair
cutting. But the thing about teeth, usually you could do
something. Yank it right out. Most things that happened to
people, you couldn't do anything. A little cut like this, it
could get infected and kill you. There was a million ways to
die and mostly the doctors just tried to keep you warm."
Brenda was listening with such fascination she almost
forgot to protest when he put the bandage over the wound. Then
she frowned and touched his hand as he was about to knot it
around her ankle.
"Wait a minute," she said. "You're not finished."
"I sure as hell am."
"You mean that's it?"
"What else do you suggest?"
"I still have a hole in me, you idiot. It's not fixed."
"It'll heal in about a week. All by itself."
It was clear from her look that she thought this was a
very dangerous man. She started to say something, changed her
mind, and glared at the bartender.
"Give me some of that brown stuff," she said, pointing. He
filled a shot glass with whiskey and set it in front of her.
She sipped it, made a face, and sipped again.
"That's the idea, little lady," the doctor said. "Take two
of those every morning if symptoms persist."
"What do we owe you, doc?" I asked
"Oh, I don't think I could rightly charge you . . . " His
eyes strayed to the bottles behind the bar.
"A drink for the doctor, landlord," I said. I looked
around, and smiled at myself. What the hell. "A drink for the
house. On me." People started drifting toward the bar.
"What'll it be, doc?" the bartender asked. "Grain
alcohol?"
"Some of that clear stuff," the doctor agreed.
#
We were a quarter mile out of town before Brenda spoke to
me again.
"This business about covering up," she ventured. "That's a
cultural thing, right? Something they did in this place?"
"Not the place so much as the time. Out here in the
country no one cares whether you cover up or not. But in town,
they try to stick to the old rules. They stretched a point for
you, actually. You really should have been wearing a dress that
reached your ankles, your wrists, and covered most of your
neck, too. Hell, a young lady really shouldn't have been
allowed in a saloon at all."
"Those other girls weren't wearing all that much."
"Different rule. They're 'Fallen flowers.'" She was giving
me a blank look again. "Whores."
"Oh, sure," she said. "I read an article that said it used
to be illegal. How could they make that illegal?"
"Brenda, they can make anything illegal. Prostitution has
been illegal more often than not. Don't ask me to explain it; I
don't understand, either."
"So they make a law in here, and then they let you break
it?"
"Why not? Most of those girls don't sell sex, anyway.
They're here for the tourists. Get your picture taken with the
B-girls in the Alamo Saloon. The idea of Texas is to duplicate
what it was really like in 1845, as near as we can determine.
Prostitution was illegal but tolerated in a place like New
Austin. Hell, the Sheriff would most likely be one of the
regular customers. Or take the bar. They shouldn't have served
you, because this culture didn't approve of giving alcoholic
drinks to people as young as you. But on the frontier, there
was the feeling that if you were big enough to reach up and
take the drink off the bar, you were big enough to drink it." I
looked at her frowning intently down at the ground, and knew
most of this was not getting through to her. "I don't suppose
you can ever really understand a culture unless you grew up in
it," I said.
"These people were sure screwed up."
"Probably so."
We were climbing the trail that led toward my apartment.
Brenda kept her eyes firmly on the ground, her mind obviously
elsewhere, no doubt chewing over the half-dozen crazy things
I'd told her in the past hour. By not looking around she was
missing a sunset spectacular even by the lavish standards of
West Texas. The air had turned salmon pink when the sun dipped
below the horizon, streaked by wispy curls of gold. Somehow the
waning light made the surrounding rocky hills a pale purple. I
wondered if that was authentic. A quarter of a million miles
from where I stood, the real sun was setting on the real Texas.
Were the colors as spectacular there?
Here, of course, the "sun" was sitting in its track just
below the forced-perspective "hills." A fusion tech was seeing
to the shut-down process, after which the sun would be trucked
through a tunnel and attached to the eastern end of the track,
ready to be lit again in a few hours. Somewhere behind the
hills another technician was manipulating colored mirrors and
lenses to diffuse the light over the dome of the sky. Call him
an artist; I won't argue with you. They've been charging
admission to see the sunsets in Pennsylvania and Amazon for
several years now. There's talk of doing that here, too.
It seemed unlikely to me that nature, acting at random,
could produce the incredible complexity and subtlety of a
disneyland sunset.
#
It was almost dark by the time we reached the Rio Grande.
The entrance to my condo was on the south, "Mexican" side
of the river. West Texas is compressed, to display as wide a
range of terrain and biome as possible. The variety of
geographical features that, on Earth, spread over five hundred
miles and included parts of New Mexico and Old Mexico here had
been made to fit within a sub-lunar bubble forty miles in
diameter. One edge duplicated the rolling hills and grassland
around the real Austin, while the far edge had the barren rocky
plateaus to be found around El Paso.
The part of the Rio Grande we had reached mimicked the
land east of the Big Bend in the real river, an area of steep
gorges where the water ran deep and swift. Or at least it did
in the brief rainy season. Now, in the middle of summer, it was
no trick to wade across. Brenda followed me down the forty-foot
cliff on the Texas side, then watched me splash through the
river. She had said nothing for the last few miles, and she
said nothing now, though it was clear she thought someone
should have stopped this massive water leak, or at least
provided a bridge, boat, or helicopter. But she sloshed her way
over to me and stood waiting as I located the length of rope
that would take us to the top.
"Aren't you curious about why I'm here?" she asked.
"No. I know why you're here." I tugged on the rope. It was
dark enough now that I couldn't see the ledge, fifty feet up,
where I had secured it. "Wait till I call down to you," I told
her. I set one booted foot on the cliff face.
"Walter's been pretty angry," she said. "The deadline is
just--"
"I know when the deadline is." I started up the rope, hand
over hand, feet on the dark rocks.
"What are we going to write about?" she called up at me.
"I told you. Medicine."
I had knocked out the introductory article on the Invasion
Bicentennial the night after Brenda and I got the assignment. I
thought it had been some of my best work, and Walter had
agreed. He'd given us a big spread, the cover, personality
profiles of both of us that were--in my case, at
least--irresistibly flattering. Brenda and I had then sat down
and generated a list of twenty topics just off the tops of our
heads. We didn't anticipate any trouble finding more when the
time came.
But since that first day, every time I tried to write one
of Walter's damnable articles . . . nothing happened.
Result: the cabin was coming along nicely, ahead of
schedule. Another few weeks like the past one and I'd have it
finished. And be out of a job.
I crested the top of the cliff and looked down. I could
just see the white blob that was Brenda. I called down to her
and she swarmed up like a monkey.
"Nicely done," I said, as I coiled the rope. "Did you ever
think what that would have been like if you weighed six times
what you weigh now?"
"Oddly enough, I have," she said. "I keep trying to tell
you, I'm not completely ignorant."
"Sorry."
"I'm willing to learn. I've been reading a lot. But
there's just so much, and so much of it is so foreign . . . "
She ran a hand through her hair. "Anyway, I know how hard it
must have been to live on the Earth. My arms wouldn't be strong
enough to support my weight down there." She looked down at
herself, and I thought I could see a smile. "Hell, I'm so
lunified I wonder if my legs could support my weight."
"Probably not, at first."
"I got five friends together and we took turns trying to
walk with all the others on our shoulders. I managed three
steps before I collapsed."
"You're really getting into this, aren't you?" I was
leading the way down the narrow ledge to the cave entrance.
"Of course I am. I take this very seriously. But I'm
beginning to wonder if you do."
I didn't have an answer to that. We had reached the cave,
and I started to lead her in when she pulled back violently on
my hand.
"What is that?"
She didn't need to elaborate; I came through the cave
twice a day, and I still wasn't used to the smell. Not that it
seemed as bad now as it had at first. It was a combination of
rotting meat, feces, ammonia, and something else much more
disturbing that I had taken to calling "predator smell."
"Be quiet," I whispered. "This is a cougar den. She's not
really dangerous, but she had a litter of cubs last week and
she's gotten touchy since then. Don't let go of my hand;
there's no light till we get to the door."
I didn't give her a chance to argue. I just pulled on her
hand, and we were inside.
The smell was even stronger in the cave. The mother cougar
was fairly fastidious, for an animal. She cleaned up her cubs'
messes, and she made her own outside the cave. But she wasn't
so careful about disposing of the remains of her prey before
they started to get ripe. I think she had a different
definition of "ripe." Her own fur had a rank mustiness that was
probably sweet perfume to a male cougar, but was enough to stun
the unprepared human.
I couldn't see her, but I sensed her in a way beyond sight
or hearing. I knew she wouldn't attack. Like all the large
predators in disneylands, she had been conditioned to leave
humans alone. But the conditioning set up a certain amount of
mental conflict. She didn't like us, and wasn't shy about
letting us know. When I was halfway through the cave, she let
fly with a sound I can only describe as hellish. It started as
a low growl, and quickly rose to a snarling screech. Every hair
on my body stood at attention. It's sort of a bracing feeling,
once you get used to it; your skin feels thick and tough as
leather. My scrotum grew very small and hard as it tried its
best to get certain treasures out of harm's way.
As for Brenda . . . she tried to run straight up the backs
of my legs and over the top of my head. Without some fancy
footwork on my part we both would have gone sprawling. But I'd
been ready for that reaction, and hurried along until the inner
door got out of our way with a blast of light from the far
side. Brenda didn't stop running for another twenty meters.
Then she stopped, a sheepish grin on her face, breathing
shallowly. We were in the long, utilitarian hallway that led to
the back door of my condo.
"I don't know what got into me," she said.
"Don't worry," I said. "Apparently that's one of the
sounds that is part of the human brain's hard wiring. It's a
reflex, like when you stick your finger in a flame, you don't
think about it, you instantly draw it back."
"And you hear that sound, your bowels turn to oatmeal."
"Close enough."
"I'd like to go back and see the thing that made that
sound."
"It's worth seeing," I agreed. "But you'll have to wait
for daylight. The cubs are cute. It's hard to believe they'll
turn into monsters like their mother."
#
I hesitated at the door. In my day, and up until fairly
recently, you just didn't let someone enter your home lightly.
Luna is a crowded society. There are people wherever you turn,
tripping over your feet, elbowing you, millions of intrusive,
sweaty bodies. You have to have a small place of privacy. After
you'd known someone five or ten years you might, if you really
liked the person, invite her over for drinks or sex in your own
bed. But most socializing took place on neutral ground.
The younger generation wasn't like that. They thought
nothing of dropping by just to say hello. I could make a big
thing of it, driving yet another wedge between the two of us,
or I could let it go.
What the hell. We'd have to learn to work together sooner
or later. I opened the door with my palm print and stepped
aside to let her enter.
She hurried to the washroom, saying something about having
to take a mick. I assumed that meant urinate, though I'd never
heard the term. I wondered briefly how she'd accomplish that,
given her lack of obvious outlet. I could have found out--she
left the door open. The young ones were no longer seeking
privacy even for that.
I looked around at the apartment. What would Brenda see
here? What would a pre-Invasion man see?
What they wouldn't see was dirt and clutter. A dozen
cleaning robots worked tirelessly whenever I was away. No speck
of dust was too small for their eternal vigilance, and no item
could ever be out of its assigned place longer than it took me
to walk to the tube station.
Could someone read anything about my character from
looking at this room? There were no books or paintings to give
a clue. I had all the libraries of the world a few keystrokes
away, but no books of my own. Any of the walls could project
artwork or films or environments, as desired, but they seldom
did.
There was something interesting. Unlimited computer
capacity had brought manufacturing full circle. Primitive
cultures produced articles by hand, and no two were identical.
The industrial revolution had standardized production, poured
out endless streams of items for the "consumer culture."
Finally, it became possible to have each and every manufactured
item individually ordered and designed. All my furniture was
unique. Nowhere in Luna would you find another sofa like that .
. . like that hideous monstrosity over there. And what a
blessing that was, I mused. Two of them might have mated. Damn,
but it was ugly.
I had selected almost nothing in this room. The
possibilities of taste had become so endless I had simply
thrown up my hands and taken what came with the apartment.
Maybe that was what I'd been reluctant to let Brenda see.
I supposed you could read as much into what a man had not done
to his environment as what he had done.
While I was still pondering that--and not feeling too
happy about it--Brenda came out of the washroom. She had a
bloody piece of gauze in her hand, which she tossed on the
floor. A low-slung robot darted out from under the couch and
ate it, then scuttled away. Her skin looked greased, and the
pinkish color was fading as I watched. She had visited the doc.
"I had radiation burns," she said. "I ought to take the
disneyland management to court, get them to pay the medical
bill." She lifted her foot and examined the bottom. There was a
pink area of new skin where the cut had been. In a few more
minutes it would be gone. There would be no scar. She looked
up, hastily. "I'll pay, of course. Just send me the bill."
"Forget it," I said. "I just got your lead. How long were
you in Texas?"
"Three hours? Four at the most."
"I was there for five hours, today. Except for the
gravity, it's a pretty good simulation of the natural Earthly
environment. And what happened to us?" I ticked the points off
on my fingers. "You got sunburned. Consequences, in 1845: you
would have been in for a very painful night. No sleep. Pain for
several days. Then the outer layer of your skin would slough
off. Probably some more dermatological effects. I think it
might even have caused skin cancer. That would have been fatal.
Research that one, see if I'm right.
"You injured the sole of your foot. Consequence, not too
bad, but you would have limped for a few days or a week. And
always the danger of infection to an area of the body difficult
to keep clean.
"I got a very nasty injury to my hand. Bad enough to
require minor surgery, with the possibility of deep infection,
loss of the limb, perhaps death. There's a word for it, when
one of your limbs starts to mortify. Look it up.
"So," I summed up. "Three injuries. Two possibly fatal,
over time. All in five hours. Consequences today: an almost
negligible bill from the automatic doc."
She waited for me to go on. I was prepared to let her wait
a lot longer, but she finally gave in.
"That's it? That's my story?"
"The lead, goddamit. Personalize it. You went for a walk
in the park, and this is what happened. It shows how perilous
life was back then. It shows how lightly we've come to regard
injury to our bodies, how completely we expect total, instant,
painless repairs to them. Remember what you said? 'It's not
fixed!' You'd never had anything happen to you that couldn't be
fixed, right now, with no pain."
She looked thoughtful, then smiled.
"That could work, I guess."
"Damn right it'll work. You take it from there, work in
more detail. Don't get into optional medical things; we'll keep
that for later. Make this one a pure horror story. Show how
fragile life has always been. Show how it's only in the last
century or so that we've been able to stop worrying about our
health."
"We can do that," she said.
"We, hell. I told you, this is your story. Now get out of
here and get to it. Deadline's in twenty-four hours."
I expected more argument, but I'd ignited her youthful
enthusiasm. I hustled her out the door, then leaned against it
and heaved a sigh of relief. I'd been afraid she'd call me on
it.
#
Not long after she left I went to the doc and had my own
hand healed. Then I ran a big tubful of water and eased myself
into it. The water was so hot it turned my skin pink. That's
the way I like it.
After a while I got out, rummaged in a cabinet, and found
an old home surgery kit. There was a sharp scalpel in it.
I ran some more hot water, got in again, lay back and
relaxed completely. When I was totally at peace with myself, I
slashed both my wrists right down to the bone.
=*= =*= =*= =*=
Dirty Dan the Dervish went into his trademark spin late in
the third round. By that time he had the Cytherian Cyclone
staggering.
I'm not a slash-boxing fan, but the spin was something to
see. The Dervish pumped himself up and down like a top,
balancing on the toes of his left foot. He'd draw his right leg
in to spin faster, until he was almost a blur, then, without
warning, the right foot would flash out, sometimes high,
sometimes low, sometimes connecting. Either way, he'd instantly
be pumping up and down with the left leg, spinning as if he
were on ice.
"Dervish! Dervish! Dervish!" the fans were chanting.
Brenda was shouting as loud as anyone. She was beside me, at
ringside. Most of the time she was on her feet. As for me, they
issued clear plastic sheets to everyone in the first five rows,
and I spent most of my time holding mine between me and the
ring. The Dervish had a deep gash on his right calf, and the
slashing spin could hurl blood droplets an amazing distance.
The Cyclone kept retreating, unable to come up with any
defense. He tried ducking under and attacking with the knife in
his right hand, and received another wound for his trouble. He
leaped into the air, but the Dervish was instantly with him,
slashing up from below, and as soon as their feet hit the mat
again he went into his whirl. Things were looking desperate for
the Cyclone, when he was suddenly saved by the bell.
Brenda sat down, breathing hard. I supposed that, without
sex, one needed something for release of tensions. Slash-boxing
seemed perfectly designed for that.
She wiped some of the blood from her face with a cloth,
and turned to look at me for the first time since the round
began. She seemed disappointed that I wasn't getting into the
festivities.
"How does he manage that spin?" I asked her.
"It's the mat," she said, falling instantly into the role
of expert--which must have been quite a relief for her.
"Something to do with the molecular alignment of the fibers. If
you lean on it in a certain way, you get traction, but a
circular motion reduces the friction till it's almost like ice
skating."
"Do I still have time to get a bet down?"
"No point in it," she said. "The odds will be lousy. You
should have bet when I told you, before the match started. The
Cyclone is a dead man."
He certainly looked it. Sitting on his stool, surrounded
by his pit crew, it seemed impossible he would answer the bell
for the next round. His legs were a mass of cuts, some covered
with bloody bandages. His left arm dangled by a strip of flesh;
the pit boss was considering removing it entirely. There was a
temporary shunt on his left jugular artery. It looked horribly
vulnerable, easy to hit. He had sustained that injury at the
end of the second round, which had enabled his crew to patch it
at the cost of several liters of blood. But his worst wound had
also come in the second round. It was a gash, half a meter
long, from his left hip to his right nipple. Ribs were visible
at the top, while the middle was held together with half a
dozen hasty stitches of a rawhide-like material. He had
sustained it while scoring his only effective attack on the
Dervish, bringing his knife in toward the neck, achieving
instead a ghastly but minimally disabling wound to the
Dervish's face--only to find the Dervish's knife thrust deep
into his gut. The upward jerk of that knife had spilled viscera
all over the ring and produced the first yellow flag of the
match, howls of victory from Dirty Dan's pit, and chants of
"Dervish! Dervish! Dervish!" from the crowd.
The Cyclone's handlers had hacked away the torn tangle of
organs under the caution flag, repaired the neck artery during
the second pit stop and retired glumly to their corner to watch
their man walk into the meat grinder again.
The Dervish was sitting erect while his crew did more work
to the facial wound. One eyeball was split open and useless.
Blood had temporarily blinded him during the second round,
rendering him unable to fully exploit the terrible wound he'd
inflicted on his opponent. Brenda had expressed concern during
the lull that the Dervish might not employ his famous spin now
that his depth perception had been destroyed. But the Dervish
was not about to disappoint his fans, one eye or not.
A red light went on over the Cyclone's corner. It made the
crowd murmur excitedly.
"Why do they call it a corner?" I asked.
"Huh?"
"It's a round ring. It doesn't have any corners."
She shrugged. "It's traditional, I guess." Then she smiled
maliciously. "You can research it before you write this up for
Walter."
"Don't be ridiculous."
"Why the hell not? 'Sports, Then and Now.' It's a
natural."
She was right, of course, but that didn't make it any
harder to swallow. I wasn't particularly enjoying this role
reversal. She was supposed to be the ignorant one.
"What about that red light? What's it mean?"
"Each of the fighters gets ten liters of blood for
transfusions. See that gauge on the scoreboard? The Cyclone
just used his last liter. Dervish has seven liters left."
"So it's just about over."
"He'll never last another round."
And he didn't.
The last round was an artless affair. No more fancy spins,
no flying leaps. The crowd shouted a little at first, then
settled down to watch the kill. People began drifting out of
the arena to get refreshments before the main bout of the
evening. The Dervish moved constantly away as the dazed Cyclone
lumbered after him, striking out from time to time, opening
more wounds. Bleeding his opponent to death. Soon the Cyclone
could only stand there, dumb and inert with loss of blood. A
few people in the crowd were booing. The Dervish slashed the
Cyclone's throat. Arterial blood spurted into the air, and the
Cyclone crashed to the mat. The Dervish bent over his fallen
foe, worked briefly, and then held the head high. There was
sporadic applause and the handlers moved in, hustling the
Dervish down to the locker rooms and hauling away both pieces
of the Cyclone. The zamboni appeared and began mopping up the
blood.
"You want some popcorn?" Brenda asked me.
"Just something to drink," I told her. She joined the
throngs moving toward the refreshment center.
I turned back toward the ring, savoring a feeling that had
been all too rare of late: the urge to write. I raised my left
hand and snapped my fingers. I snapped them again before I
remembered the damn handwriter was not working. It hadn't been
working for five days, since Brenda's visit to Texas. The
problem seemed to be in the readout skin. I could type on the
keyboard on the heel of my hand, but nothing appeared on the
readout. The data was going into the memory and could later be
downloaded, but I can't work that way. I have to see the words
as they're being formed.
Necessity is the mother of invention. I slipped through
the program book Brenda had left on her chair, found a blank
page. Then I rummaged through my purse and found a blue pen I
kept for hand corrections to hard copy.
#
(File Hildy*next avail.*)(code Bloodsport)
(headline to come)
#
There may be no evidence of it, but you can bet cave men
had sporting events. We still have them today, and if we ever
reach the stars, we'll have sports out there, too.
Sports are rooted in violence. They usually contain the
threat of injury. Or at least they did until about a hundred
and fifty years ago.
Sports today, of course, are totally nonviolent.
The modern sports fan would be shocked at the violence of
sports as it existed on Earth. Take for example one of the
least violent sports, one we still practice today, the simple
foot race. Runners rarely completed a career without numerous
injuries to knees, ankles, muscles, or spine. Sometimes these
injuries could be repaired, and sometimes they couldn't. Every
time a runner competed, he faced the possibility of injury that
would plague him for the rest of his life.
In the days of the Romans, athletes fought each other with
swords and other deadly weapons--not always voluntarily.
Crippling injury or death was certain, in every match.
Even in later, more "enlightened" days, many sports were
little more than organized mayhem. Teams of athletes crashed
into each other with amazing disregard for the imperfect skills
of contemporary healers. People strapped themselves into ground
vehicles or flying machines and raced at speeds that would turn
them into jelly in the event of a sudden stop. Crash helmets,
fist pads, shoulder, groin, knee, rib, and nose protectors
tried to temper the carnage but by their mere presence were
testimony to the violent potential in all these games.
Did I hear someone protesting out there? Did someone say
our modern sports are much more violent than those of the past?
What a ridiculous idea.
Modern athletes typically compete in the nude. No
protection is needed or wanted. In most sports, bodily damage
is expected, sometimes even desired, as in slash boxing. A
modern athlete just after a competition would surely be a
shocking sight to a citizen of any Earth society. But modern
sports produce no cripples.
It would be nice to think this universal non-violence was
the result of some great moral revolution. It just ain't so. It
is a purely technological revolution. There is no injury today
that can't be fixed.
The fact is, "violence" is a word that no longer means
what it used to. Which is the more violent: a limb being torn
off and quickly re-attached with no ill effects, or a crushed
spinal disc that causes its owner pain every second of his life
and cannot be repaired?
I know which injury I'd prefer.
That kind of violence is no longer something to fear,
because
(discuss Olympic games, influence of local gravity in
venues)
(mention Deathmatches)
(Tie to old medicine article?)(ask Brenda)
#
I hastily scribbled the last few lines, because I saw
Brenda returning with the popcorn.
"What're you doing?" she asked, resuming her seat. I
handed her the page. She scanned it quickly.
"Seems a little dry," was her only comment.
"You'll hype it up some," I told her. "This is your
field." I reached over and took a kernel of popcorn from her,
then took a big bite out of it. She had bought the large bag: a
dozen fist-sized puffs, white and crunchy, dripping with
butter. It tasted great, washed down with the big bottle of
beer she handed me.
While I was writing there had been an exhibition from some
children's slash-boxing school. The children were filing out
now, most of them cross-hatched with slashes of red ink from
the training knives they used. Medical costs for children were
high enough without letting them practice with real knives.
The ringmaster appeared and began hyping the main event of
the evening, a Deathmatch between the champion Manhattan Mugger
and a challenger known as One Mean Bitch.
Brenda leaned toward me and spoke out of the side of her
mouth.
"Put your money on the Bitch," she said.
"If she's gonna win, what the hell are we doing here?"
"Ask Walter. This was his idea."
The purpose of our visit to the fights was to interview
the Manhattan Mugger--also known as Andrew MacDonald--with an
eye toward hiring him as our Earth-born consultant on the
bicentennial series. MacDonald was well over two hundred years
old. The trouble was, he had elected to fight to the death. If
he lost, his next interview would be with St. Peter. But Walter
had assured us there was no way his man was going to lose.
"I was talking to a friend out at the concessions," Brenda
went on. "There's no question the Mugger is the better fighter.
This is his tenth Deathmatch in the last two years. What this
guy was saying is, ten is too much for anybody. He said the
Mugger was dogging it in the last match. He won't get away with
that against the Bitch. He says the Mugger doesn't want to win
anymore. He just wants to die."
The contestants had entered the ring, were strutting
around, showing off, as holo pictures of their past bouts
appeared high in the air and the announcer continued to make it
sound as if this would be the fight of the century.
"Did you bet on her?"
"I put down fifty, for a kill in the second."
I thought that over, then beckoned to a tout. He handed me
a card, which I marked and thumbed. He stuck the card in the
totaliser on his belt, then handed me the marker. I pocketed
it.
"How much did you invest?"
"Ten. To win." I didn't tell her it was on the Mugger.
The contestants were in their "corners," being oiled down,
as the announcer continued his spiel. They were magnificent
specimens, competing in the highest body-mass class, matched to
within a kilogram. The lights flashed on their glistening
browned skins as they shadow-boxed and danced, skittish as race
horses, bursting with energy.
"This bout is being conducted under the sporting by-laws
of King City," the announcer said, "which provide for voluntary
Deathmatches for one or both parties. The Manhattan Mugger has
elected to risk death tonight. He has been advised and
counseled, as required by law, and should he die tonight, it
will be deemed a suicide. The Bitch has agreed to deliver the
coup de grace, should she find herself in a position to do so,
and understands she will not be held responsible in any way."
"Don't worry about it!" the Mugger shouted, glaring at his
opponent. It got a laugh, and the announcer looked grateful for
the interruption in the boring paragraphs the law required him
to read.
He brought them out to the middle of the ring and read
them the rule--which was simply to stop fighting when they
heard the bell. Other than that, there were no rules. He had
them shake hands, and told them to come out fighting.
#
"The first stinking round. I can't believe it."
Brenda was still complaining, half an hour after the
finish of the match. It had not been a contest that would go
down in history.
We were waiting in the reception area outside the entrance
to the locker rooms. MacDonald's manager had told us we could
go in to see him as soon as the pit crew had him patched up.
Considering the small amount of damage he had suffered, I
didn't expect that to be too much longer.
I heard a commotion and turned to see the Cyclone emerging
into a small group of dedicated fans, mostly children. He got
out a pen and began signing autographs. He was dressed in black
shirt and pants, and had a bulky brace around his neck, which
seemed a small enough inconvenience for a man whose head had
been rolling around the ring an hour earlier. He'd wear it
until the new muscles had been conditioned enough to support
his head. I figured that wouldn't be long; the brain of a man
in his profession couldn't weigh all that much.
The door opened again and MacDonald's manager beckoned to
us.
We followed him down a dim corridor lined with numbered
doors. One of them was open and I could hear moaning coming
from it. I glanced in as we passed. There was a bloody mess on
a high table, with half a dozen pit crew clustered around.
"You don't mean to tell me . . . "
"What?" Brenda said, and glanced into the room. "Oh. Yeah,
she fights without nerve deadening."
"I thought--"
"Most fighters turn their pain center way down, just
enough so they know when they've been hit. But a few feel that
trying to avoid real pain makes them quicker on their feet."
"It sure would make me quicker."
"Yeah, well, obviously it wasn't enough tonight."
I was glad I'd had only the one piece of popcorn.
The Manhattan Mugger was sitting in a diagnostic chair,
wearing a robe and smoking a cheroot. His left leg was propped
up and being worked on by one of his trainers. He smiled when
he saw us, and held out his hand.
"Andy MacDonald," he said. "Pardon me for not getting up."
We both shook his hand, and he waved us into seats. He
offered us drinks, which a member of his entourage brought us.
Then Brenda launched into a breathless recap of the match,
full of glowing praise for his martial skills. You'd never have
known she just lost fifty on him. I sat back and waited, fully
expecting we'd spend the next hour talking about the finer
points of slash boxing. He was smiling faintly as Brenda went
on and on, and I figured I had to say something, if only to be
polite.
"I'm not a sports fan," I said, not wishing to be too
polite, "but it seemed to me your technique was different from
the others I saw tonight."
He took a long drag on his cheroot, then examined the
glowing tip as he slowly exhaled purple smoke. He transferred
his gaze to me, and some of the heat seemed to go with it.
There was a deepness to his eyes I hadn't noticed at first. You
see that sometimes, in the very old. These days, of course, it
is usually the only way you can tell someone is old. MacDonald
certainly had no other signs of age. His body looked to be in
its mid-twenties, but he'd had little choice in its features,
given his profession. Slash boxers inhabit fairly standardized
bodies, in nine different formulas or weight classes, as a way
of minimizing any advantage gained by sheer body mass. His face
seemed a bit older, but that could have been just the eyes. It
wasn't old enough for age to have impressed a great deal of
character on it. Neither was it one of those generic
"attractive" faces about half the population seem to prefer. I
got the feeling this was pretty much the way he might have
looked in his youth, which-I remembered, with a little
shock--had been spent on Earth.
The Earth-born are not precisely rare. The CC told me
there were around ten thousand of them still alive. But they
look like anyone else, usually, and tend not to announce
themselves. There were some who made a big thing about their
age--the perennial talk-show guests, storytellers, professional
nostalgics--but by and large the Earth-born were a closeted
minority. I had never wondered why before.
"Walter said you'd talk me into joining this project of
his," MacDonald said, finally, ignoring my own comment. "I told
him he was wrong. Not that I intend to be stubborn about it; if
you can give me a good reason why I should spend a year with
you two, I'd like to hear it."
"If you know Walter," I countered, "you'll know he's
possibly the least perceptive man in Luna, where other people
are concerned. He thinks I'm enthusiastic about this project.
He's wrong. As far as I know, Walter is the only one interested
in this project. It's just a job to me."
"I'm interested," Brenda piped up. MacDonald shifted his
gaze to her, but didn't feel the need to leave it there long. I
had the feeling he had learned all he needed to know about her
in that brief look.
"My style," he said, "is a combination of ancient fighting
techniques that never got transplanted to Luna. Some
well-meaning but foolish people passed a law a long time ago
banning the teaching of these oriental disciplines. That was
back when the conventional wisdom was we ought to live together
in peace, not ever fight each other again, certainly not ever
kill each other. Which is a nice idea, I guess.
"It even worked, partially. The murder rate is way, way
down from what it was in any human society on Earth."
He took another long drag on his smoke. His attendants
finished their work on his leg, packed up, and left us alone. I
began to wonder if that was all he had to say, when he finally
spoke again.
"Opinions shift. You live as long as I have, you'll see
that over and over."
"I'm not as old as you, but I've seen it."
"How old are you?" he asked.
"One hundred. Three days ago." I saw Brenda look at me,
open her mouth to say something, then close it again. Probably
I'd get chewed out for not telling her so she could throw a
centennial birthday party for me.
MacDonald looked at me with even more interest than
before, narrowing those disturbing eyes.
"Feel any different?"
"You mean because I'm a hundred years old? Why should I?"
"Why, indeed. It's a milestone, certainly, but it doesn't
really mean anything. Right?"
"Right."
"Anyway, to get back to the question . . . there were
always those who felt that, with natural evolutionary processes
no longer working, we should make some attempt to foster a
certain amount of aggressiveness. Without sanctioning real
killing, we could at least learn how to fight. So boxing was
re-introduced, and that eventually led to the blood sports you
see today."
"This is just the sort of perspective Walter wants," I
pointed out.
"Yes. I didn't say I didn't have the perspective you need.
I'm just curious as to why I should use it for you."
"I've been thinking that one over, too," I said. "Just as
an exercise, you understand. And you know, I can't think of
anything that's likely to convince a man in the middle of a
protracted suicide to put it off for a year and join us in
writing a series of useless stories."
"I used to be a reporter, you know."
"No, I didn't."
"Is that what you think I'm doing? Committing suicide?"
Brenda looked at him earnestly. I could almost feel her
concern.
"If you get killed in the ring, that's what they'll call
it," she said.
He got up and went to a small bar at the side of the room.
Without asking what we wanted, he poured three glasses of a
pale green liqueur and brought them back to us. Brenda sniffed
it, tasted, then took a longer drink.
"You can't imagine the sense of defeatism after the
Invasion," he said. It was apparently impossible to keep him on
any subject, so I relaxed to the inevitable. As a reporter you
learn to let the subject talk.
"To call it a war is a perversion of the word. We fought,
I suppose, in the sense that ants fight when the hill is kicked
over. I suppose ants can fight valiantly in such a situation,
but it hardly matters to the man who kicked the hill. He barely
notices what he has done. He may not even have had any actual
malice toward ants; it might have been an accident, or a
side-effect of another project, like plowing a field. We were
plowed under in a single day.
"Those of us here in Luna were in a state of shock. In a
way, that state of shock lasted many decades. In a way . . .
it's still with us today."
He took another drag on his cheroot.
"I'm one of those who was alarmed at the nonviolence
movement. It's great, as an ideal, but I feel it leaves us in a
dead end, and vulnerable."
"You mean evolution?" Brenda asked.
"Yes. We shape ourselves genetically now, but are we
really wise enough to know what to select for? For a billion
years the selection was done naturally. I wonder if it's wise
to junk a system that worked for so long."
"Depends on what you mean by 'worked,'" I said.
"Are you a nihilist?"
I shrugged.
"All right. Worked, in the sense that life forms got more
complex. Biology seemed to be working toward something. We know
it wasn't us-the Invaders proved there are things out there a
lot smarter than we are. But the Invaders were gas giant
beings, they must have evolved on a planet like Jupiter. We're
hardly even related. It's commonly accepted that the Invaders
came to Earth to save the dolphins and whales from our
pollution. I don't know of any proof of that, but what the
hell. Suppose it's true. That means the aquatic mammals have
brains organized more like the Invaders than like us. The
Invaders don't see us as truly intelligent, any more than other
engineering species, like bees, or corals, or birds. True or
not, the Invaders don't really have to concern us anymore. Our
paths don't cross; we have no interests in common. We're free
to pursue our own destiny . . . but if we don't evolve, we
don't have a destiny."
He looked from one of us to the other and back again. This
seemed pretty important to him. Personally, I'd never given
much thought to the matter.
"There's something else," he went on. "We know there are
aliens out there. We know space travel is possible. The next
time we meet aliens they could be even worse than the Invaders.
They might want to exterminate us, rather than just evict us. I
think we ought to keep some fighting skills alive in case we
meet some disagreeable critters we can fight."
Brenda sat up, wide-eyed.
"You're a Heinleiner," she said.
It was MacDonald's turn to shrug.
"I don't attend services, but I agree with a lot of what
they say. But we were talking about martial arts."
Is that what we were talking about? I'd lost track.
"Those arts were lost for almost a century. I spent ten
years studying thousands of films from the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries, and I pieced them back together. I
spent another twenty years teaching myself until I felt I was
adept. Then I became a slash boxer. So far, I'm undefeated. I
expect to remain that way until someone else duplicates my
techniques."
"That would be a good subject for an article," Brenda
suggested. "Fighting, then and now. People used to have all
kinds of weapons, right? Projectile weapons, I mean. Ordinary
citizens could own them."
"There was one country in the twentieth century that made
their possession almost mandatory. It was a civil right, the
right to own firearms. One of the weirder civil rights in human
history, I always thought. But I'd have owned one, if I'd lived
there. In an armed society, the unarmed man must be a pretty
nervous fellow."
"It's not that I don't find all this perfectly
fascinating," I said, standing and stretching my arms and legs
to get the circulation going again. "I don't, but that's beside
the point. We've been here about half an hour, and already
Brenda has suggested plenty of topics you could be helpful
with. Hell, you could write them yourself, if you remember how.
So how about it? Are you interested, or should we start looking
for someone else?"
He leaned his elbows on his knees and looked at me.
Before long I began to wonder when the theremin music
would begin. A look like that belonged in a horror holo. Eyes
like that should be set in a face that begins to sprout hair
and fangs, or twist like putty into some Nameless Evil Thing. I
mentioned before how deep his eyes seemed. They had been
reflecting pools compared to this.
I don't wish to be superstitious. I don't wish to
attribute powers to MacDonald simply because he had attained a
venerable age. But, looking at those eyes, one could not help
but think of all the things they had seen, and wonder at the
wisdom that might have been attained. I was one hundred years
old, which is nothing to sneer at in the longevity department,
or hadn't been until recent human history, but I felt like a
child being judged by his grandfather, or maybe by God himself.
I didn't like it.
I tried my best to return the gaze--and there was nothing
hostile in it, no challenge being issued to me. If a staring
match was in progress, I was the only one competing. But before
long I had to turn away. I studied the walls, the floor, I
looked at Brenda and smiled at her--which startled her, I
think. Anything to avoid those eyes.
"No," he said, at last. "I don't think I'll join this
project, after all. I'm sorry to have wasted your time."
"No problem," I said, and got up and started for the door.
"What do you mean, 'after all,'" Brenda asked. I turned,
wondering if I could get away with grabbing her arm and
dragging her away.
"I mean, I was considering it, despite everything. Some
aspects of it were beginning to look like fun."
"Then what changed your mind?"
"Come on, Brenda," I said. "I'm sure he has his own
reasons, and they're none of our business." I took her arm, and
tugged at it.
"Stop it," she said, annoyed. "Stop treating me like a
child." She glared at me until I let her go. I suppose it would
have been unkind to point out that she was a child.
"I'd really like to know," she told MacDonald.
He looked at her, not unkindly, then looked away, seeming
embarrassed. I simply report the fact; I have no idea why he
might have been embarrassed.
"I only work with survivors," he said, quietly. Before
either of us had a chance to reply he was on his feet. He
limped slightly as he went to the door and held it open for us.
I got up and jammed my hat on my head. I was almost out
the door when I heard Brenda.
"I don't understand," she was saying. "What makes you
think I'm not a survivor?"
"I didn't say you weren't," he said.
I turned on him.
"Brenda," I said, slowly. "Correct me if I'm wrong. Did I
just hear myself accused of not being a survivor by a man who
risks his life in a game?"
She didn't say anything. I think she realized that,
whatever was going on here, it was between him and me. I wished
I knew what it was, and why it had made me so angry.
"Risks can be calculated," he said. "I'm still alive. I
plan to stay that way."
Nothing good lasts forever. Brenda piped up again.
"What is it about Hildy that makes you--"
"That's none of my business," he interrupted, still
looking at me. "I see something in Hildy. If I were to join you
two, I'd have to make it my business."
"What you see, pal, is a man who takes care of his own
business, and doesn't let some gal with a knife do it for him."
Somehow that didn't come out like I'd intended. He smiled
faintly. I turned and stomped out the door, not waiting to see
if Brenda followed.
#
I lifted my head from the bar. Everything was too bright,
too noisy. I seemed to be on a carousel, but what was that
bottle doing in my hand?
I kept tightly focused on the bottle and things slowly
stopped spinning. There was a puddle of whiskey under the
bottle, and under my arm, and the side of my face was wet. I'd
been lying in the puddle.
"If you throw up on my bar," the man said, "I'll beat you
bloody."
Swinging my gaze toward him was a major project. It was
the bartender, and I told him I wasn't going to throw up, then
I almost choked and staggered toward the swinging doors and
made a mess in the middle of Congress Street.
When I was done I sat down there in the road. Traffic was
no problem. There were a few horses and wagons tied up behind
me, but nothing moved on the dark streets of New Austin. Behind
me were the sounds of revelry, piano music, the occasional
gunshot as the tourists sampled life in the old west.
Somebody was holding a drink before my face. I followed
the arm up to bare shoulders, a long neck, a pretty face
surrounded by curly black hair. Her lipstick was black in the
dim light. She wore a corset, garters, stockings, high heels. I
took the drink and made it vanish. I patted the ground beside
me and she sat, folding her arms on her knees.
"I'll remember your name in a minute," I said.
"Dora."
"Adorable Dora. I want to rip off your clothes and throw
you into bed and make passionate love to your virginal body."
"We already did that. Sorry about the virginal part."
"I want you to have my babies."
She kissed my forehead.
"Marry me, and make me the happiest man in the moon."
"We did that, too, sweetheart. It's a shame you don't
remember it." She held her hand out to me and I saw a gold
wedding ring with a little diamond chip. I squinted at her face
again. There was some kind of filmy aura around it . . .
"That's a bridal veil!" I shouted. She was looking dreamy,
smiling up at the stars.
"We had to sober the parson up, then go bang on the
jeweler's door and send somebody around to find Silas to open
the general store for my gown, but we got it done. The service
was right there in the Alamo, Cissy was my maid of honor and
old Doc stood up for you. All the girls cried."
I must have looked dubious, because she laughed and patted
me on the back.
"The tourists loved it," she said. "It's not every night
we get as colorful as that." She twisted the ring off her
finger and handed it to me. "But I'm too much of a lady to hold
you to vows you made while not in your right mind." She peered
closer at me. "Are you back in your right mind?"
I was back enough to remember that any marriage performed
by the "parson" in "Texas" was not legally binding in King
City. But to get an idea of how far gone I'd been, I'd really
been worried for a moment there.
"A whore with a heart of gold," I said.
"We all have our parts to play. I've never seen the 'town
drunk' done better. Most people omit the vomit."
"I strive for authenticity. Did I do anything
disgraceful?"
"You mean aside from marrying me? I don't mean to be
unkind, but your fourth consummation of our marriage was pretty
disgraceful. I won't spread it around; the first three were
rather special."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, the tongue work was some of the best I've--"
"No, I mean . . . "
"I know what you mean. I know there's a word for it.
Inability, immobility . . . a limp cock."
"Impotence."
"That's it. My grandmother told me about it, but I never
expected to see it."
"Stick with me, honey, and I'll show you even more
wonders."
"You were pretty drunk."
"You've finally said something boring."
She shrugged. "I can't swap repartee with a cynic like you
forever."
"Is that what I am? A Cynic?":
She shrugged again, but I thought I saw some concern in
her expression. It was hard to tell, with just moonlight and
swimming eyeballs.
She helped me to my feet, brushed me off, kissed me. I
promised to call on her when I was in town. I don't think she
believed me. I had her point me toward the edge of town, and
started home.
#
Morning was smearing up the sky like pale pink lipstick.
I'd been hearing the rippling of the river for some time.
My efforts at reconstructing the day had brought back some
broad outlines. I recalled taking the tube from the Arena to
Texas, and I knew I'd spent some time working on the cabin. In
there somewhere I saw myself throwing finished lumber into a
ravine. I remembered seriously thinking of burning the cabin to
the ground. The next thing I knew I was sitting at the bar in
the Alamo Saloon, tossing down one drink after another. Then
the clouds rolled in and the memory transcription ended. I had
a hazy picture of the Parson swaying slightly as he pronounced
us man and wife. What a curious phrase. I supposed it was
historically accurate.
I heard a sound, and looked up from the rocky path.
A pronghorn antelope was standing not ten feet in front of
me. He held his head high, alert and proud, but not frightened
of me. His chest was snowy white and his eyes were moist and
brown and wise. He was the most beautiful thing I had ever
seen.
On his worst day he was ten times better than I had ever
been. I sat down on the path and cried for a while. When I
looked up, he was gone.
I felt calm for the first time in many years. I found the
cliff face, located the climbing rope, and hoisted myself to
the top. The sun was still below the horizon but there was a
lot of yellow in the sky now. My hands toyed with the rope. How
did it go . . . the rabbit goes in the hole, the dog chases the
rabbit around the tree, two, three, four . . .
After several tries, I got it right. I slipped it around
my neck and looked down the cliff. Your acceleration is low in
Luna, but your body mass is constant. You need a big drop, six
times what would do on Earth. I tried to do the calculations in
my head but kept losing track.
To be on the safe side, I picked up a large rock and held
it tightly to my chest. Then I jumped. You get plenty of time
for regrets, but I had none. I remember looking up and seeing
Andrew MacDonald looking down at me.
Then came the jerk.
=*= =*= =*= =*=
$$
"If you're going to build a barn for brontosaurs," I told
Brenda, "You'd better make the ceiling at least twenty meters
high."
"And why is that, Mr. Bones?"
Where she'd learned about minstrel shows I had no idea,
but she'd been using the term for a while now, whenever I got
into lecture mode--which, considering the state of her
ignorance, was most of the time. I wasn't going to let it annoy
me.
She was looking up at the ceiling, which was twenty-five
meters above us. Myself, I wasn't looking up all that much
lately. For several days I'd had a persistent and painful
stabbing pain in my neck whenever I turned my head in a certain
position. I kept meaning to visit the medico and get it fixed,
but it would spontaneously remit for a few hours and I'd forget
to make an appointment. Then it would creep up and stab me when
I least expected it.
"Brontosaurs are not real bright. When they get alarmed
they raise their heads and rear up on their hind legs to take a
look around. If the ceiling is too low they smash their teeny
heads against it and stun themselves."
"You've spent time around dinosaurs?"
"I grew up on a dinosaur ranch." I took her elbow and
steered her out of the way of a manure loader. We watched as it
scooped up a pile of watermelon-sized pellets.
"What a stench."
I said nothing. The smell had both good and bad
associations for me. It took me back to my childhood, where one
of my jobs had been operating the manure loader.
Behind us, the massive doors to the swamp began rumbling
open, letting in a blast of air even hotter and more humid than
that inside the barn. In a moment a long neck poked inside the
door, ending in an almost negligible, goofy-looking head. The
neck kept coming in for a very long time before the massive
body made its entrance. By then another head and neck had
appeared.
"Let's get back here out of the way," I suggested to
Brenda. "They won't step on you if they see you, but they tend
to forget where you are not long after they look away from
you."
"Where are they going?"
I pointed toward the open gate across from us. The sign on
it said "Mating Pen Number One."
"Mating season's just about over. Wait till Callie gets
them penned up, then we can take a look. It's pretty
interesting."
One of the brontosaurs made a mournful honk and moved
along a little faster. In one-sixth gee, even a thunder lizard
could be sprightly. I doubt they set any speed records back on
Old Earth. In fact, I wondered how they stood up at all, out of
the water.
The reason for the burst of speed was soon apparent.
Callie entered the barn, mounted on a tyrannosaur. The big
predator responded instantly to every touch of the reins,
hurrying to block an attempted retreat by the male, rearing up
and baring its teeth when it looked as if the female might make
a stand. The big herbivores waddled quickly into the mating
pen. The doors closed automatically behind them.
The thing the ancient paleontologists had never got right
about dinosaurs was their color. You'd think the examples of so
many modern reptiles might have given them a hint. But if you
look at old artists' conceptions of dinosaurs, the predominant
colors were mud-brown and khaki-green. The real item was much
different.
There are several strains of b-saur but the type Callie
prefers are called Cal Tech Yellowbellies, after the lab that
first produced them. In addition to the canary undersides, they
range from that old reliable mud-brown on their backs to a dark
green, emerald green, and kelly green on their sides and necks.
They have streaks of iridescent violet trailing back from their
eyes, and white patches under their throats.
Tyrannosaurs, of course, are predominately red. They have
huge, dangling wattles under their necks, like iguanas, which
can be puffed up to make an outrageous booming mating call. The
wattles are usually deep blue, though purple and even black are
not unknown.
You can't ride a t-saur like a horse; the back is too
steep. There are different methods, but Callie preferred a sort
of narrow platform she could either sit or stand on, depending
on what she was doing. It strapped around the beast's
shoulders. Considering the amount of lizard still rising above
that point, she spent most of her time on her feet, barely able
to peer over the head.
"It looks unstable," Brenda said. "What if she falls off?"
"You don't want to do that," I told her. "They're likely
to snap at you if you come in view suddenly. But don't worry;
this one is muzzled."
An assistant leaped up to join Callie in the saddle. He
took the reins from her and she jumped to the ground. As the
t-saur was being ridden out the barn door she glanced at us,
did a doubletake, and waved at me. I waved back, and she
gestured for us to come over. Not waiting, she started toward
the breeding pen.
I was about to join her when something poked through the
metal railing behind us. Brenda jumped, then relaxed. It was a
brontosaur pup looking for a treat. Looking into the dim pen
behind us, I could see several dozen of the elephant-sized
young ones, most of them snugged into the mud, a few others
gathered around the feeding trough.
I turned out my pockets to show the brute I didn't have
anything on me. I used to carry chunks of sugar-cane, which
they love.
Brenda didn't have any pockets to turn out, for the simple
reason that she wasn't wearing any pants. Her outfit for the
day was knee-length soft leather boots, and a little black
bolero top. This was intended to let me know that she had
acquired something new: primary and secondary sexual
characteristics. I was fairly sure she hoped I'd suggest we put
them to use one of these days soon. I'd first caught on that
she had a crush on me when she learned that Hildy Johnson was
not my born name, but one I had selected myself after a famous
fictional reporter from a play called The Front Page. Soon she
was "Brenda Starr."
I must say she looked more reasonable now. Neuters had
always made me nervous. She had not gone overboard with the
breasts. The pubic hair was natural, not some of the wilder
styles that come and go.
But I was in no mood to try it out. Let her find a child
of her own age.
#
We joined Callie at the breeding pen, climbed up to the
top of the ten-meter gate and stood with her, looking over the
top rail at the nervously milling behemoths.
"Brenda," I said, "I'd like you to meet Calamari Cabrini.
She owns this place. Callie, meet Brenda, my . . . uh,
assistant."
The women reached across me to shake hands, Brenda almost
losing her balance on the slippery steel bars. All three of us
were dripping wet. Not only was it hot and humid in the barn,
but ceiling sprinklers drenched the place every ten minutes
because it was good for the skins of the livestock. Callie was
the only one who looked comfortable, because she wore no
clothes. I should have remembered and worn less myself; even
Brenda was doing better than me.
Nudity was not a sometime thing for Callie. I'd known her
all my life, and in that time had never seen her wear so much
as a pinky ring. There was no big philosophy behind her
life-long naturism. Callie went bare simply because she liked
it, and hated picking out clothes in the morning.
She was looking good, I thought, considering that, except
for Walter, she took less notice of her body's needs than
anyone I knew. She never did any preventive maintenance, never
altered anything about her appearance. When something broke
down she had it fixed or replaced. Her medico bills were
probably among the smallest in Luna. She swore she had once
used a heart for one hundred and twenty years.
"When it finally gave out," she had told me, "the medico
said the valves could have come out of a forty-year-old."
If you met her on the street, you would know immediately
that she was Earth-born. During her childhood, humans had been
separable into many "races," based on skin color, facial
features, and type of hair. Post-Invasion eugenics had largely
succeeded in blending these so that racial types were now very
rare. Callie had been one of the white, or Caucasian race,
which dominated much of human history since the days of
colonization and industrialization. Caucasian was a pretty
slippery term. Callie's imperious nose would have looked right
at home on an old Roman coin. One of Herr Hitler's "Aryans"
would have sneered at her. The important racial concept then
was "white," which meant not-black, not-brown.
Which was a laugh, because Callie's skin was burned a
deep, reddish-brown from head to toe, and looked as leathery as
some of her reptiles. It was startling to touch it and find it
actually quite soft and supple.
She was tall--not like Brenda, but certainly tall for her
age--and willowy, with an unkept mane of black hair streaked
with white. Her most startling feature was her pale blue eyes,
a gift from her Nordic father.
She released Brenda's hand and gave me a playful shove.
"Mario, you never come see me anymore," she chided.
"The name is Hildy now," I said. "It has been for thirty
years."
"You prove my point. I guess that means you're still
working for that bird-cage liner."
I shrugged, and noticed Brenda's uncomprehending
expression.
"Newspads used to be printed out on paper, then they'd
sell the paper," I explained. "When people were through reading
it, they'd use it on the bottoms of their birdcages. Callie
never abandons a clich, no matter how dated."
"And why should I? The clich business has suffered a
radical decline since the Invasion. What we need are new and
better clichs, but nobody seems to be writing them. Present
company excepted, of course."
"From Callie, that's almost a compliment," I told Brenda.
"And nobody would line a birdcage with the Nipple, Callie. The
stories would put the birds right off their food."
She considered it. "I don't think so, Mario. If we had
electronic birds, your newspad would be the perfect liner.
"Could be. I do find it useful for wrapping my electronic
fish."
Most of this had gone right over Brenda's head, of course.
But she had never been one to let a little ignorance bother
her.
"To catch the shit?" she said.
We both looked at her.
"At the bottom of the birdcage," she explained.
"I think I like her," Callie said.
"Of course you do. She's an empty vessel, waiting to be
filled with your tall tales of the old days."
"That's one reason. You've been using her as your own
personal birdcage liner. She needs my help."
"She doesn't seem to mind."
"But I do," Brenda said, unexpectedly. Callie and I looked
at her again.
"I know I don't know much about ancient history." She saw
Callie's expression, and squirmed. "Sorry. But how much do you
expect me to know about things that happened hundreds of years
ago? Or care?"
"It's okay," Callie said. "I may not have used the word
'ancient'--I still think of the Roman Empire when that word
comes up--but I can see it must seem ancient to you. I said the
same thing to my parents when they talked about things that
happened before I was born. The difference is, when I was young
the old eventually had the good manners to die. A new
generation took over. Your generation faces a different
situation. Hildy seems very old to you, but I'm more than twice
his age, and I don't have any plans to die. Maybe that's not
fair to your generation, but it's a fact."
"The gospel according to Calamari," I said.
"Shut up, Mario. Brenda, it's never going to be your
world. Your generation will never take over from us. It's not
my world anymore, either, because of you. All of us, from both
generational extremes, have to run this world together, which
means we have to make the effort to understand each other's
viewpoints. It's hard for me, and I know it must be hard for
you. It's as if I had to live with my
great-great-great-great-grandparents, who grew up during the
industrial revolution and were ruled by kings. We'd barely even
have a language in common."
"That's okay with me," Brenda said. "I do make the effort.
Why doesn't he?"
"Don't worry about him. He's always been like that."
"Sometimes he makes me so mad."
"It's just his way."
"Yoo-hoo, ladies. I'm here."
"Shut up, Mario. I can read him like a book, and I can
tell he likes you. It's just that, the more he likes you, the
worse he tends to treat you. It's his way of distancing himself
from affection, which he's not sure he's able to return."
I could see the wheels turning in Brenda's head and, since
she was not stupid, just ignorant, she eventually followed that
statement out to its logical--if you believed the premise in
the first place--conclusion, which was that I must love her
madly, because I treated her very badly. I looked
ostentatiously around at the walls of the barn.
"It must be hanging in your office," I said.
"What's that?"
"Your degree in psychology. I didn't even know you went
back to school."
"I've been in school every day of my life, jerk. And I
sure wouldn't need a degree to see through you. I spent thirty
years learning how to do that." There was more, something about
how just because I was a hundred years old now, I shouldn't
think I'd changed so much. But it was all in Italian, so I only
got the gist.
Callie gets a modest yearly stipend from the Antiquities
Preservation Board for staying fluent in Italian--something she
would have done anyway, since it was her native language and
she had firm ideas about the extinction of human knowledge. She
had tried to teach it to me but I had no aptitude beyond a few
kitchen words. And what was the point? The Central Computer
stored hundreds of languages no one spoke anymore, from
Cheyenne to Tasmanian, including all the languages that had
suffered a drastic drop in popularity because they never got
established on Luna before the Invasion. I spoke English and
German, like most everybody else, with a little Japanese thrown
in. There were sizable groups of Chinese speakers, and Swahili,
and Russian. Other than that, languages were preserved by study
groups of a few hundred fanatics like Callie.
I doubt Brenda even knew there was an Italian language, so
she listened to Callie's tirade with a certain wariness. Ah,
yes, Italian is a fine language for tirades.
"I guess you've known each other a long time," Brenda said
to me.
"We go way back."
She nodded, unhappy about something. Callie shouted, and I
turned to see her jump down into the breeding pen and stride
toward the crew of helpers, who were chivying the two brutes
into final mating position.
"Not yet, you idiots," she shouted. "Give them time." She
reached the group of people and started handing out orders
right and left. Callie had never been able to find good help. I
had been part of that help for a great many years, so I know
what I'm talking about. It took me a long time to realize that
no one would ever be good enough for her; she was one of those
people who never believed anyone could do a job as well as she
could do it herself. The maddening thing was, she was usually
right.
"Back off, they're not ready yet. Don't rush them. They'll
know when it's time. Our job is to facilitate, not initiate."If
I have any skills as a lover," I told Brenda, "it's because of
that."
"Because of her?"
"'Give them time. We're not on a schedule here. Show a
little finesse.' I heard that so many times I guess I took it
to heart."
And it did take me back, watching Callie working the stock
again. Of the major brontosaur ranchers in Luna, she was the
only one who didn't use artificial insemination at breeding
time. "If you think helping a pair copulate is tough," she
always said, "try getting a semen sample from a brontosaur
bull."
And there was a rough sort of poetry about dinosaur
mating, particularly brontosaurs.
Tyrannosaurs went about it as you might expect, full of
sound and fury. Two bulls would butt heads over a prospective
mate until one staggered away like a dusted-up nerg addict to
nurse an epic headache. I don't suppose the victor fared a lot
better except for the chance to grapple the tiny claw of his
lady fair.
Brontosaurs were more dainty. The male would spend three
or four days doing his dance, when he remembered to. These
creatures had short attention spans, even when in heat. He
would rear up on his hind legs and do a comical samba around
and around the female. She typically showed minimal interest
for the first two days. Then the seduction moved to the
love-bite stage, with the male nipping her around the base of
the tail while she placidly chewed her cud. When she finally
began rearing up with him, it was time to bring them into the
mating pen to pitch some serious woo.
That was going on now. The two of them were facing each
other on their hind legs, doing a little neck-weaving, a little
foreleg pawing. It could still be another hour before they were
ready, a condition signaled by the emergence of one of the
bull's two hemi-penes.
Nobody ever told me why a reptile needs two penises. Come
to think of it, I never asked. There are limits to curiosity.
"So how long were you involved with Callie?"
"What's that?" Brenda had drawn me out of my reverie, as
she had a habit of doing.
"She said thirty years. That's a long time. You must have
been real serious about her."
All right, so I'm dense. But I finally got it. I looked
out at the primal scene: two Mesozoic monsters, here through
the grace of modern genetic science, and a thin brown woman,
likewise.
"She's not my lover. She's my mother. Why don't you go
down there with her? She'll see you don't get hurt, and I'm
sure she'll be happy to tell you more than you ever wanted to
know about brontosaurs. I'm going to take a break."
I noticed as we climbed down the gate on opposite sides
that Brenda looked happier than I'd seen her all day.
#
I assume the mating went off without any trouble. It
usually does when Callie's in charge. I imagine the mating that
produced me was equally well-planned and carried out. Sex was
never a big deal to Callie. Having me was her nod in the
direction of duty. But I have no siblings, despite powerful
societal pressure toward large families at the time of my
birth. Once was apparently enough.
Paradoxically, I know I didn't spend any time in a Petri
dish, though it would have made the whole process much easier
for her if she'd availed herself of any of the medical advances
that could, today, make procreation, gestation, and parturition
about as personally involving as a wrong number on the
telephone. Callie had conceived me the old-fashioned way: a
random spermatozoan hitting the jackpot at the right time of
the month. She had carried me to full term, and had borne me in
pain, just like God promised Eve. And she had hated every
minute of it. How do I know that? She told me, and anyone else
who would listen. She told me an average of three times a day
throughout my childhood.
It wasn't so much the pain that had bothered her. For a
woman who could shoulder a reproductive organ almost as big as
she was and guide it into a cloaca of a filthiness that had to
be seen to be disbelieved, while standing kneedeep in dinosaur
droppings, Callie had an amazing streak of prissiness. She had
hated the bloodiness of childbirth, the smells and sensations
of it.
#
Callie's office was cool. That's what I'd had in mind when
I went up there, simply to cool off. But it wasn't working. All
that had happened was that the sweat on my body had turned
clammy. I was breathing hard, and my hands weren't steady. I
felt on the edge of an anxiety attack, and I didn't know why.
On top of all that, my neck was hurting again.
And why hadn't I mentioned the purpose of our visit? I'd
told myself it was because she was too busy, but there had been
plenty of time while the three of us stood on the gate.
Instead, I'd let her prattle on about the good old days. It
would have been a perfect opportunity to brace her about taking
the job as the Earth-born member of our little team of
time-travelers. After holding forth about the generational gap
she would have looked silly turning us down. And I knew Callie.
She would love the job, would never admit loving it, and would
only accept it if she could be tricked into making it look as
if she had come up with the idea herself, as a favor to me and
Brenda.
I got up and moved to the windows. That didn't help, so I
walked to the opposite wall. No improvement. After I'd done
that three or four times I realized I was pacing. I rubbed the
back of my neck, drifted over to the windows again, and looked
out and down.
Callie's office windows overlook the barn interior from
just beneath the roof. There's a stairway leading to a verandah
"outside"-actually, within the small disneyland that is her
ranch. I was looking out over the breeding pens I had just
left. Callie was there, pointing something out to Brenda, who
stood beside her watching the spectacle of two mating
brontosaurs. Standing just behind them was someone who looked
familiar. I squinted, but it didn't help, so I grabbed the pair
of binoculars on a hook beside the window.
I focused in on the tall, red-headed figure of Andrew
MacDonald.
=*= =*= =*= =*=
I remembered leaving Callie's ranch. I recalled wandering
for a while, taking endless downscalators until there were no
more; I had reached the bottom level. That struck me as
entirely too metaphorical, so I took an infinite number of
upscalators and found my way to the Blind Pig. I don't recall
what I was thinking all those hours, but in retrospect, it
couldn't have been pretty.
You might say the next thing I recall is waking up, or
coming to, but that wouldn't be strictly accurate. It wouldn't
convey the nature of the experience. It felt more like I
reconstructed myself from far-flung bits--no, that implies some
effort on my part. The bits reconstructed themselves, and I
became self-aware in quantum stages. There was no dividing
line, but eventually I knew I was in a back room of the Pig.
This was considerable progress, and here my own will took over
and I looked around to learn more about my surroundings. I was
facing downward, so that's where I first turned my attention.
What I saw there was a woman's face.
"We'll never solve the problem of the head shot until an
entirely new technology comes along," she said. I had no idea
what this meant. Her hair was spread out on a pillow. There
were outspread hands on each side of her face. There was
something odd about her eyes, but I couldn't put my finger on
it. I suppose I was in a literal frame of mind, because having
thought that, I touched one of her eyeballs with the tip of my
finger. It didn't seem to bother her much. She blinked, and I
took my finger away.
There was an important discovery: when I touched her eye,
one of the hands had moved. Putting these data together, I
concluded that the hands bracketing her face were my hands. I
wiggled a finger, testing this hypothesis. One of the fingers
down there wiggled. Not the one I had intended, but how much
exactitude could I expect? I smiled, proud of myself.
"You can encase the brain in metal," she said. "Put a
blood bag on the anti-camera side of the head, fire a bullet
from the camera's pee-oh-vee. And ka-chow! The bullet goes
whanging off the metal cover, ka-blooey, the blood bag
explodes, and if you're lucky it looks like the bullet went
through the head and spread tomato sauce all over the wall in
back of the guy."
I felt large.
Had I taken large pills? I couldn't remember, but I must
have. Normally I don't, as they aren't really much of a thrill,
unless you get your kicks by imagining yourself to be the size
of an interplanetary liner. But you can mix them with other
drugs and get interesting effects. I must have done that.
"You can make it look even more real by putting teeny tiny
charges in back of the eyeballs. When the bullet hits, the
charges go off, and the eyeballs are blown out toward the
camera, see? Along with a nice blood haze, which is a plus in
masking whatever violations of realism are going on behind it."
Something was rubbing against my ears. I turned my head
about as quickly as they rotate the big scope out in
Copernicus, and saw a bare foot. At first I thought it was my
foot, but I knew from reports flown in by carrier pigeon that
my own feet were about three kilometers behind me, at the ends
of my legs, which were stretched out straight. I turned my head
the other way, saw another foot. Hers, I concluded. The first
was probably hers, too.
"But that damn steel case. Crimony! I can't tell you what
a--you should pardon the expression-headache that thing can be.
Especially when nine out of ten directors will insist the head
shot has to be in slomo. You give the chump a false forehead
full of maxfactor #3 to guarantee a juicy wound, you annodize
the braincase in black so--you hope--it'll look like a hole in
the head when the skin's ripped away, and what happens? The
damn bullet rips through everything, and there it is in the
dailies. A bright, shiny spot of metal right down there at the
bottom of the hole. The director chews you out, and it's
Re-take City."
Was I aboard a ship? That might account for the rocking
motion. But I remembered I was in the Blind Pig, and unless the
bar had been cut from its steel catacomb and embarked bodily,
it seemed unlikely we were at sea. I decided I still needed
more data. Feeling adventurous, I looked down between myself
and the woman's body.
For a moment the view made no sense at all. I could see my
own legs, and my feet, as if through a reversed telescope. Then
I couldn't see them any more. Then I could again. Where were
her legs? I couldn't see them. Oh, yes, since her feet were
tickling my ears, her legs must be those things against my
chest. So she was on the floor, on her back. And that explained
the other activity I saw. I stopped my up and down motion.
"I don't want to do this," I told her.
She kept talking about the difficulties of a head shot. I
realized that she was at least as detached from our coupling as
I was. I stood up and looked around the room. She never missed
a syllable. There were a pair of pants on the floor; they were
a million sizes too small for me, but they were probably mine.
I held them, lifted each leg with gargantuan deliberation, and
presto! The pants did fit. I stumbled through a curtain and
into the main room of the Pig.
It was maybe twenty steps to the bar. In that distance I
shrank alarmingly. It was not an unpleasant sensation, though
at one point I had to hold the back of a barstool to keep my
balance. Pleased with myself, I gingerly climbed onto a leather
stool.
"Bartender," I said, "I'll have another of the same."
The fellow behind the bar was known as Deep Throat, for a
famous clandestine news source. He probably had another name,
but no one knew it, and we all thought it was fitting it should
be that way. He nodded and was moving away, but someone sat on
the stool next to mine and reached over to grab his arm.
"Hold the heavy stuff this time, okay?" she said. I saw
that it was Cricket. She smiled at me, and I smiled back. I
shrugged, then nodded to Deep Throat's enquiring look. His
customers' state of sobriety is not his concern. If you can sit
at the bar--and pay--he'll serve you.
"How you doing, Hildy?" Cricket asked.
"Never better," I said, and watched my drink being
prepared. Cricket shut up for the time being. I knew there were
more questions to come. What are friends for?
The drink arrived, in one of the Pig's hologlasses. It's
probably the only bar in Luna that still uses them. They date
back to the midtwenty-first century, and they're rather
charming. A chip in the thick glass bottom projects a holo
picture just above the surface of the drink. I've seen them
with rolling dolphins, windsurfers, a tiny water polo team
complete with the sound of a cheering crowd, and Captain Ahab
harpooning the Great White Whale. But the most popular glass at
the Pig is the nuclear explosion at Bikini Atoll, in keeping
with the way Deep Throat mixes the drinks. I watched it for a
while. It starts with a very bright light, evolves into an
exquisitely detailed orange and black mushroom cloud that
expands until it is six inches high, then blows away. Then it
blows up again. The cycle takes about a minute.
I was watching the tiny battleships in the lagoon when I
realized I'd seen the show about a dozen times already, and
that my chin was resting on the bar. To enhance the view, I
suppose. I sat up straight, a little embarrassed. I glanced at
Cricket, but she was making a great show of producing little
moist rings with the bottom of her glass. I wiped my brow, and
swiveled on my stool to look at the rest of the room.
"The usual motley crew," Cricket said.
"The motliest," I agreed. "In fact, the word 'motley'
might have been coined simply to describe this scene."
"Maybe we should retire the word. Give it a place of honor
in the etymological hall of fame, like Olympic champions'
jerseys."
"Put it right next to motherhood, love, happiness . . .
words like that."
"On that note, I'll buy you another drink."
I hadn't finished the first, but who was counting?
There have always been unwritten rules in journalism, even
at the level on which I practice it. Often it is only the fear
of a libel suit that stays us from printing a particularly
scurrilous story. On Luna the laws are pretty strict on that
subject. If you defame someone, you'd better have sources
willing to testify before the CC. But more often you hold back
on printing something everyone knows for a subtler reason.
There is a symbiotic relationship between us and the people we
cover. Some would say parasitic, but they don't understand how
hungry for publicity a politician or celebrity can be. If we
stick to the rules concerning "off the record" statements,
things told us on "deep background," and so forth, everybody
benefits. I get sources who know I won't betray them, and the
subject of my stories gets the public exposure he craves.
Don't look for the Blind Pig Bar And Grill in your phone
memory. Don't expect to find it by wandering the halls of your
neighborhood mall. If you should somehow discover its location,
don't expect to be let in unless you know a regular who can
vouch for you. All I'll say about it is that it's within
walking distance of three major movie production studios, and
is reached through a door with a totally misleading sign on it.
The Blind Pig is the place where journalists and movie
people can mix without watching their mouths. Like its
political counterpart over by City Hall, the Huey P. Long
Memorial Gerrymandering Society, you can let your hair down
without fear of reading your words in the padloids the next
morning--at least, not for attribution. It's the place where
gossip, slander, rumor, and
=*= =*= =*= =*=
character assassination are given free rein, where the
biggest stars can mix with the lowliest stagehands and the
slimiest reporters and not have to watch their tongues. I once
saw a grip punch a ten-million-per-picture celebrity in the
nose, right there in the Pig. The two fought it out until they
were exhausted, went back to the set, and behaved as if nothing
had happened. That same punch, thrown in the studio, would have
landed the grip on the pavement in microseconds. But if the
star had exercised his clout for something that happened in the
Pig, and Deep Throat heard about it, the star would not have
been welcome again. There's not many places people like that
can go and socialize without being bothered. Deep Throat seldom
has to banish anyone.
A reporter once broke confidence with a producer, printed
a story told to him in the Pig. He never returned, and he's not
a reporter anymore. It's hard to cover the entertainment beat
without access to the Pig.
Places like the Pig have existed since Edison invented
Hollywood. The ambiance is dependent on what is shooting that
day. Just then there were three popular genres, two rising and
one on its way out, and all three were represented around the
room. There were warriors from Samurai Japan, taking a break
from The Shogun Attacks, currently lensing at
Sentry/Sensational Studios. A contingent of people in
old-fashioned spacesuits were employed at North Lunar
Filmwerks, where I'd heard Return Of The Alphans was behind
schedule and over budget and facing an uncertain reception, as
the box office for Asteroid Miner/Space Creature films had
turned soft in recent months. And a bunch in bandannas, cowboy
hats and dirty jeans had to be extras from The Gunslinger V.
Westerns were in the middle of their fourth period of filmic
popularity, two of them coming in my own lifetime. TG,V, as it
was known to the trade, had been doing location work not far
from my cabin in West Texas.
=*= =*= =*= =*=
In addition, there were the usual scattering of costumes
from other eras, and quite a number of surgically altered
gnomes, fairies, trolls, and so forth, working in low-budget
fantasy and children's shorts. There was a group of five
centaurs from a long-running sci-fi series that should have
been axed a dozen Roman numerals ago.
"Why don't you just move the brain?" I heard Cricket say.
"Put it somewhere else, like the stomach?"
"Oh, brother. Sure, why not? It's been done, of course,
but it's not worth the trouble. Nerve tissue is the hardest to
manipulate, and the brain? Forget it. There's twelve pairs of
cranial nerves you've got to extend through the neck and down
to the abdomen, for one thing. Then you have to re-train the
gagman--a couple of days, usually--so the time lag doesn't
show. And you don't think that matters? Audiences these days,
they've seen it all, they're sophisticated. They want realism.
We can make a fake brain easy enough and stuff it into the
gagman's skull in place of the one we re-located, but audiences
will spot the fact that the real brain's not where it's
supposed to be."
I turned on my stool and saw my new friend was sitting on
the other side of Cricket, still holding forth about her head
shots.
"Why not just use manikins?" Cricket asked, showing she
hadn't spent much time on the entertainment beat. "Wouldn't
they be cheaper than real actors?"
"Sure. A hell of a lot cheaper. Maybe you've never heard
of the Job Security Act, or unions."
"Oh."
"Damn right. Until a stunt performer dies, we can't
replace him with a machine. It's the law. And they die, all
right--even with your brain in a steel case, it's a risky
profession--but we don't lose more than two or three a year.
And there's thousands of them. Plus, they get better at
surviving the longer they work, so there's a law of diminishing
returns. I can't win." She swiveled, leaned her elbows on the
bar, looked out at the tables and sneered.
"Look at them. You can always spot gagmen. Look for the
ones with the vacant faces, like they're wondering where they
are. They pick up a piece of shrapnel in the head; we cut away
a little brain tissue and replace it with virgin cortex, and
they forget a little. Start getting a little vague about
things. Go home and can't remember the names of the kids. Back
to work the next day, giving me more headaches. Some of 'em
have very little left of their original brains, and they'd have
to look at their personnel file to tell you where they went to
school.
"And centaurs? I could build you a robot centaur in two
days, you couldn't tell it from the real thing. But don't tell
the Exotics Guild. No, I get to sign 'em to a five-year
contract, surgically convert 'em at great cost to the FX
budget, then put 'em through three months of kinesthetic rehab
until they can walk without falling on their faces. And what do
I get? A stumblebum who can't remember his lines or where the
camera is, who can't walk through a scene muttering, for
chrissake, without five rehearsals. And at the end of five
years, I get to pay to convert 'em back." She reached around
and got her drink, which was tall and had little tadpole-like
creatures swimming in it. She took a long pull on it, licked
her lips. "I tell you, it's a wonder we get any pictures made
at all."
"Nice to see a woman happy in her work," I said. She
looked over at me.
"Hildy," Cricket said, "have you met Princess Saxe-Coburg?
She's chief of special effects at NLM."
"We've met."
The Princess frowned at me, then recognition dawned. She
got off her stool and came toward me, a little unsteady. She
put her nose inches from mine.
"Sure. You pulled out on me a few minutes ago. Not a nice
thing to do to a lady."
At that range, I could see what was odd about her eyes.
She was wearing a pair of antique projection contacts, small
round flat-TV screens that floated over the cornea. I could
make out the ring of solar cells that powered them, and the
flyspeck chip that held the memory.
They'd been introduced just before the Invasion under a
variety of trade names, but the one that stuck was Bedroom
Eyes. After all, though they could reflect quite a variety of
moods, if you were close enough to see the little pictures the
mood you were looking for was probably sexual arousal. The more
modest models would show a turned-back bed, a romantic scene
from an old movie, or even, god help us, waves crashing on a
beach. Others made no pretensions, getting right to the
erection or spread thighs. Of course, they could reflect other
moods, as well, but people were seldom close enough to make
them out.
I'd never seen projection contacts worn by someone quite
as stoned as the Princess was. What they were projecting was an
interesting illusion: it was as if I were looking through two
holes into a hollow head. Remnants of an exploded brain were
collapsed at the bottom. Cracks in the skull let in light. And
swinging from stray synapses like vines in a jungle were a
menagerie of cartoon characters, from Mickey Mouse to Baba
Yaga.
The image disturbed me. I wondered why anyone would want
to do that to their brain. From wondering why she would want
to, I quickly got to why I would want to, and that was leading
me quickly to a place I didn't want to go. So I turned away
from her and saw Andrew MacDonald sitting at the other end of
the bar like a carrottopped Hibernian albatross.
"Did you know she's the Princess of Wales?" Cricket was
saying. "She's first in line to the throne of England."
"And Scotland, and Wales," said the Princess. "Hell, and
Ireland, and Canada and India. I might as well re-claim the
whole Empire while I'm at it. If my mother ever dies, it'll all
belong to me. Of course, there's the little matter of the
Invaders."
"Up the British," Cricket said, and they clinked their
glasses together.
"I met the King once," I said. I drained my drink and
slammed it down on the bar. Deep Throat caused it to vanish,
and began concocting another.
"Did you really?"
"He was a friend of my mother. In fact, he's a possible
candidate to be my father. Callie has never told me and never
will, but they were friendly together at about the right time.
So, if you apply modern laws of bastardy, I might have a claim
that supersedes yours." I glanced at MacDonald again.
Albatross? Hell, the man was more than a bird of evil omen,
more than a stormy petrel or a croaking raven. He was
Cassandra. He was a tropical depression, bad breath, a black
cat across my path. Everywhere I turned, there he was, a dog
humping my leg. He was a ladder in the stocking of my life. He
was snake eyes.
I hated him. I felt like punching him in the nose.
"Watch what you say," the Princess cautioned. "Remember
what happened to Mary, Queen of Scots."
I punched her in the nose.
She walked backward a few rubber-legged steps, then sat
down on the floor. In the ensuing silence, Cricket whispered in
my ear.
"I think she was kidding," she said.
For a few moments the whole place was quiet. Everyone was
watching us expectantly; they love a good brawl at the Blind
Pig. I looked at my clenched fist, and the Princess touched her
bloody nose with her hand, then looked at her palm. We both
looked up at the same time and our eyes met. And she came off
the floor and launched herself at me and started breaking all
the bones in my body that she could reach.
My hitting her had nothing to do with anything she had
said or done; at that moment in my life I would have hit anyone
standing next to me. But I'd have been a lot better off hitting
Cricket. In the Princess of Wales, I'd picked the wrong
opponent. She was taller than me and out-massed me. There was
probably a ten-centimeter difference in reach between us, and I
was on the short end of it. But most importantly, she had spent
the last forty years staging cinematic fights, and she knew
every trick in the book, and a lot that never got into the
book.
I'm tempted to say I got in two or three good punches.
Cricket says I did, but it might have been just to raise my
spirits. The truth is I can't remember much from the time her
horrid white teeth first filled my vision to the time I ripped
a meter-long gash in the carpet with my face.
To get to the carpet I'd first had to smash through a
table full of drinks. I used my face for that, too. Before the
table I had been flying, rather cleverly, I thought, and the
first real fun I'd had in many long minutes, but how I came to
be flying was a point I was never too clear on. It seems safe
to say that the Princess hurled me in some manner, holding on
to some part of my anatomy and then releasing it; Cricket said
it was my ankle, which would account for the room whirling
around so quickly just before I flew. Before that I had vague
memories of the bar mirror shattering, people scattering, blood
spattering. Then I crashed through the table.
I rolled over and spit out carpeting. Horses were milling
nervously all around me. Actually it was the centaur extras,
whose table I'd just ruined. I resolved to buy them all a round
of drinks. Before I could do that, though, there was the
Princess again, lifting me by the shoulder and drawing back a
bloody fist.
Then someone took hold of her arm from behind, and the
punch never landed. She stood up and turned to face her
challenger. I let my head rest against the ruins of a chair and
watched as she tried to punch Andrew MacDonald.
There was really no point in it. It took her a long time
to realize it, as her blood was up and she wasn't thinking
straight. So she kept throwing punches, and they kept just
missing, or hitting him harmlessly on the elbows or glancing
off his shoulders. She tried kicking, and the kicks were always
just a little off their target.
He never threw a punch. He didn't have to. After a time,
she was standing there breathing hard. He wasn't even sweating.
She straightened and held up her hands, palms outward.
I must have dozed off for a moment. Eventually I became
aware of the Princess, Cricket, and MacDonald, three indistinct
round faces hanging above me like a pawnbroker's sign.
"Can you move your legs?" MacDonald asked.
"Of course I can move my legs." What a silly question. I'd
been moving my legs for a hundred years.
"Then move them."
I did, and MacDonald frowned deeper.
"His back's probably broken," said Wales.
"Must have happened when he landed on the railing."
"Can you feel anything?"
"Unfortunately, yes." By that time most of the drugs were
wearing off, and everything from the waist up was hurting very
badly. Deep Throat arrived and lifted my head. He had a
painkiller in his hand, a little plastic cube with a wire which
he plugged into the socket at the base of my skull. He flicked
the switch, and I felt a lot better. I looked down and watched
as they removed the splintered chair leg which had pierced my
hip.
Since that wasn't a particularly diverting sight, I looked
around the room. Already cleaning robots were picking up broken
glassware and replacing shattered tables; Deep Throat is no
stranger to brawls, and he always keeps a supply of furniture.
In another few minutes there would be no sign that I had almost
destroyed the place five minutes ago. Well, I had almost
destroyed the place, in the sense that it was my hurtling body
that had done most of the damage.
I felt myself being lifted. MacDonald and Wales had made a
hammock with their arms. It was like riding in a sedan chair.
"Where are we going?"
"You're not in any immediate danger," MacDonald said.
"Your back is broken, and that should be fixed soon, so we're
taking you across the corridor to the NLF Studios. They have a
good repair shop there."
The Princess got us past the gate guard. We passed about a
dozen sound stage doors, and I was brought into the infirmary.
Which was jammed like Mainhardt's Department Store on
Christmas Eve. It seemed NLF was doing a big scene from some
war epic, and most of the available beds were taken by maimed
extras patiently waiting their turn, counting up the
triple-time salary they drew for injured downtime.
The room had been dressed as a field hospital for the
picture, apparently doing double duty when not actually
treating cinematic casualties. I pegged it as twentieth
century--a vintage season for wars--maybe World War Two, or the
Vietnam conflict, but it could easily have been the Boer War.
We were under a canvas roof and the place was cluttered with
hanging IV bottle props.
MacDonald returned from a conference with one of the
technicians and stood looking down at me.
"He says it'll be about half an hour. I could have you
taken to your own practitioner if you want to; it might be
quicker."
"Don't bother. I'm in no hurry. When they patch me up,
I'll probably just get up and do something foolish again."
He didn't say anything. There was something about his
demeanor that bothered me--as if I needed anything else about
him to bother me.
"Look," I said. "Don't ask me to explain why I did it. I
don't even know myself."
Still he said nothing.
"Either spit it out, or take your long face and park it
somewhere else."
He shrugged.
"I just have a problem with a man attacking a woman,
that's all."
"What?" I was sure I had misunderstood him. He wasn't
making any sense. But when he didn't repeat his astonishing
statement, I had to assume I'd heard him correctly.
"What does that have to do with anything?" I asked.
"Nothing, of course. But when I was young, it was
something you simply didn't do. I know it no longer makes
sense, but it still bothers me to see it."
"I'll be sure to tell the Mean Bitch you feel that way. If
they've put her back together after your last bout, that is."
He looked embarrassed.
"You know, that was a problem for me, early in my career.
I wouldn't fight female opponents. I was getting a bad
reputation and missing a lot of important match-ups because of
it. When some competitors started getting sex changes simply so
they could have a go at me, I realized how ridiculous I was
being. But to this day I have to psych myself something
terrible to get into the ring with someone who's currently
female."
"That's why you never hit . . . does the Princess have a
first name?"
"I don't know. But you're wrong. I wanted to stop her, but
I didn't want to hurt her. Frankly, you had it coming."
I looked away, feeling terrible. He was right.
"She's feeling bad about it, though. She said she just
couldn't seem to stop, once she got going."
"I'll send her the repair bill. That should cheer her up."
Cricket arrived from somewhere. She had a lighted
cigarette which she placed in my mouth, grinning.
"Got it from the prop department," she said. "They always
used to give these to wounded soldiers. I can't imagine why."
I puffed on it. It wasn't tobacco, thank god.
"Cheer up," Cricket said. "You tore up her fists pretty
good."
"I'm clever that way; I pounded them to hamburger with my
chin."
I suddenly felt an alarming urge to cry. Holding it back,
I asked both of them to leave me alone for a while. They did,
and I lay there smoking, studying the canvas ceiling. There
were no answers written there.
Why had the taste of life turned so bitter for me in the
last weeks?
#
I had sort of drifted away. When I came back, Brenda was
bending over me. Considering her height, she had a long way to
bend.
"How'd you find me?" I asked her.
"I'm a reporter, remember? It's my business to find things
out."
I thought of several cutting replies, but something about
the look on her face made me hold them back. Puppy love. I had
vague memories of how badly that could hurt, when it wasn't
returned.
And to give her her due, she was improving. Maybe she
would be a reporter, some day.
"You needn't have bothered. It's not like I'm badly hurt.
The head injuries were minimal."
"I'm not surprised. It would take a lot to hurt your
head."
"The brain wasn't injured at . . ." I stopped, realizing
she had just taken a jab at me. It had been pretty feeble, it
hardly qualified as a joke -- -- she might never master that
skill--but it was something. I grinned at her.
"I was going to stop by Texas and bring that doctor . . .
what was it you called him?"
"Sawbones. Pillroller. Quack. Caulker. Nepenthe. Leech.
Lazarmonger."
Her smile grew a little glassy; I could see her filing the
terms away for later research.
I was smiling, but the truth is, even with current medical
practices, being paralyzed from the waist down is a frightening
thing. We have an entirely different attitude toward our bodies
than most humans down the ages, we don't fear injury and we can
turn off pain and we generally treat flesh and bone as just
items to be fixed, but when things are badly wrong something in
the most primitive level of our brain stands up on its hind
legs and howls at the Earth. I was having a galloping anxiety
attack that the painkiller plugged into my medulla wasn't
dealing with at all. I have no idea if Brenda realized this,
but her presence at my bedside was strangely comforting. I was
glad she was there. I took her hand.
"Thanks for coming," I said. She squeezed my hand, then
looked away.
#
Eventually the planned casualties stopped streaming in,
and a team of medicos assembled around me. They plugged me in
to a dozen machines, studied the results, huddled, and
murmured, just as if what they thought really mattered, as if
the medical computer was not entirely in control of my
diagnosis and treatment.
They came to a decision, which was to turn me onto my
stomach. I surmised they had concluded it would be easier to
reach my broken spine that way. I'd better not ever hear
medicos called overpaid blood-monkeys again.
They began to carve. I couldn't feel it, but I could hear
some really disgusting sounds. You know those wet-muck
special-effect sounds they use in the movies when someone's
being disemboweled? They could have recorded them right over my
broken back. At one point something thumped to the floor. I
peered over the edge of the bed: it looked like a raw soup
bone. It was hard to believe it had once belonged to me.
They pow-wowed again, cut some more, brought in more
machines. They made sacrifices to the gods of Aesculapius,
Mithradates, Lethe, and Pfizer. They studied the entrails of a
goat. They tore off their clothes, joined hands, and danced in
a healing circle around my prone carcass.
Actually, I wished they had done any of those things. It
would have been a lot more interesting than what they did do,
which was mostly stand around and watch the automatic machines
mend me.
All there was to look at was an antique machine against
the wall, a few feet from my face. It had a glass screen and a
lot of knobs on it. Blue lines were crawling across the screen,
blipping into encouraging peaks now and then.
"Can I get you anything?" the machine asked. "Flowers?
Candy? Toys?"
"A new head might do the trick." It was the CC talking, of
course. It can throw its voice pretty much where it pleases,
since it was talking directly to the hearing center of my
brain. "How much will this cost me?"
"There's no final cost-estimate yet. But Wales has already
requested the bill be sent to her."
"Maybe what I meant was--"
"How badly are you hurt? How shall I put it. There are
three bones in the middle ear, called the Malleus, the Incus,
and the Stapes. You'll be happy to hear that not one of these
six bones was broken."
"So I'll still be able to play the piano."
"Just as badly as ever. In addition, several minor organs
emerged unscathed. Almost half a square meter of epidermis can
be salvaged."
"Tell me. If I'd come to this place . . . I mean, a
hospital like this one is pretending to be-- "
"I know what you mean."
"--with only primitive surgical techniques . . . would I
have survived?"
"It's unlikely. Your heart is intact, your brain is not
badly damaged, but the rest of your injuries are comparable to
stepping on a land mine. You'd never walk again, and you'd be
in great pain. You would come to wish you had not survived."
"How can you tell that?"
The CC said nothing, and I was left to ponder. That
usually doesn't do much good, where the CC is concerned.
We all deal with the CC a thousand times a day, but almost
all of that is with one of its subprograms, on a completely
impersonal level. But apart from the routine transactions of
living, it also generates a distinct personality for every
citizen of Luna, and is always there ready to offer advice,
counsel, or a shoulder to cry on. When I was young I spoke to
the CC extensively. He is every child's ideal imaginary
playmate. But as we grow older and make more real, less
tractable and entirely more willful and frustrating
relationships, contacts with the CC tend to fall off. With
adolescence and the discovery that, in spite of their
shortcomings, other people have a lot more to offer than the CC
ever will, we cut our ties even further until the CC is just a
very intelligent, unobtrusive servant, there to ease us through
the practical difficulties of life.
But the CC had now intruded, twice. I found myself
wondering, as I seldom had in the past, what was on its mind.
"I guess I've been pretty foolish," I ventured.
"Perhaps I should call Walter, tell him to tear up the
front page."
"All right. So it isn't news. So I've had things on my
mind."
"I was hoping you'd like to talk about that."
"Maybe we ought to talk about what you said before."
"Concerning your hypothetical suffering had you incurred
these injuries in, say, 1950?"
"Concerning your statement that I might prefer being
dead."
"It was merely an hypothesis. I observe how little anyone
today is equipped to tolerate pain, having never experienced an
appreciable amount of it. I note that even the people on Old
Earth, who were no strangers to it, often preferred death to
pain. I conclude that many people today would not hold life so
dear as to endure constant, unrelenting agony."
"So it was just a general observation."
"Naturally."
I didn't believe that, but there was no point in saying
so. The CC would get to the point in its own way, in its own
time. I watched the crawling lines on the machine and waited.
"I notice you're not taking notes concerning this
experience. In fact, you've taken very few notes lately about
anything."
"Watching me, are you?"
"When I've nothing better to do."
"As you certainly know, I'm not taking notes because my
handwriter is broken. I haven't had it repaired because the
only guy who still works on them is so swamped that he said he
might get around to mine this coming August. Unless he leaves
the business to start a career in buggywhip repair."
"There actually is a woman who does that," the CC said.
"In Pennsylvania."
"No kidding? Nice to see such a vital skill won't vanish
completely."
"We try to foster any skill, no matter how impractical or
useless."
"I'm sure our grandchildren will thank us for it."
"What are you using to write your stories?"
"Two methods, actually. You get this soft clay brick, see,
and you use a pointed stick to impress little triangles in it
in different combinations. Then you put it on the oven to bake,
and in four or five hours there you are. The original hard
copy. I've been trying to think of a name for the process."
"How about cuneiform?"
"You mean it's been done? Oh, well. When I get tired of
that, I get out the old hammer and chisel and engrave my
deathless prose on rocks. It saves me carrying those ridiculous
paper sheets into Walter's office; I just lob them across the
newsroom and through his window."
"I don't suppose you'd consider Direct Interface again."
Was that what this was all about?
"Tried it," I said. "Didn't like it."
"That was over thirty years ago," the CC pointed out.
"There have been some advances since then."
"Look," I said, feeling irritable and impatient. "You've
got something on your mind. I wish you'd just come out with it
instead of weaseling around like this."
It said nothing for a moment. That moment stretched into a
while, and threatened to become a spell.
"You want me to direct interface for some reason," I
suggested.
"I think it might be helpful."
"For you or me?"
"Both of us, possibly. There can be a certain therapeutic
value in what I intend to show you."
"You think I need that?"
"Judge for yourself. How happy have you been lately?"
"Not very."
"You could try this, then. It can't hurt, and it might
help."
So what was I doing at the moment so important that I
couldn't take a few minutes off to chin with the CC?
"All right," I said. "I'll interface with you, though I
think you really ought to buy me dinner and some flowers
first."
"I'll be gentle," the CC promised.
"What do I have to do? You need to plug me in somewhere?"
"Not for years now. I can use my regular connections into
your brain. All you need to do is relax a little. Stare into
the oscilloscope screen; that could be helpful."
I did, watching the blue lines peak and trough, peak and
trough. The screen started to expand, as if I were moving into
it. Soon all I could see was one crawling line, which slowed,
stopped, became a single bright dot. The dot got brighter. It
grew and grew. I felt the heat of it on my face, it was blazing
down from a blue tropical sky. There was a moment of vertigo as
the world seemed to spin around me--my body staying firmly in
place--until I was lying not on my stomach but on my back, and
not on the snowy white sheets of the repair shop at North Lunar
Filmwerks but on cool wet beach sand, hearing not the soft
mutterings of the medicos but the calls of seagulls and the
nearby hiss and roar of surf. A wave spent its last energy
tickling my feet and washing around my hips. It sucked a little
sand out from under me. I lifted my head and saw an endless
blue ocean trimmed with white breakers. I got to my feet and
turned around, and saw white sandy beach. Beyond it were palm
trees, jungle rising away from me to a rocky volcanic peak
spouting steam. The realism of the place was astonishing. I
knelt and scooped up a handful of sand. No two grains looked
alike. No matter how close I brought the sand grains to my
eyes, the illusion never broke down and the endless detail
extended to deeper and deeper realms. Some sort of fractal
magic, I supposed. I walked down the beach for a bit, sometimes
turning to watch the cunning way water flowed into my
footprints, erasing the edges, swirling, bubbling. I breathed
deeply of the saline air. I like this place already. I wondered
why the CC had brought me here. I decided it would tell me in
its own time, so I walked up the beach and sat under a palm
tree to wait for the CC to present itself. I waited for several
hours, watching the surf, having to move twice as the sun crept
across the sky. I noticed that my skin had reddened in my brief
time in the sunlight. I think I drifted off to sleep from time
to time, but when you're alone it's hard to be sure. In any
event, the CC didn't show. Eventually I got thirsty. I walked
down the beach for several kilometers before discovering the
outlet of a small stream of fresh water. I noticed the beach
kept curving off to the right; probably an island. In time it
got dark--very quickly, and one part of my mind concluded this
simulacrum that really existed only as a set of equations in
the data banks of the CC was intended to be somewhere in the
Earthly tropics, near the equator. Not that the information did
me any good. It didn't get cold, but I soon found that when you
haven't any clothes or bedding, sleep can be a sandy, chilly,
thoroughly uncomfortable project. I woke up again and again to
note the stars had moved only a little. Each time I would shout
for CC to show itself, and each time only the surf answered
back. Then I awoke with the sun already high above the horizon.
My left side had the beginnings of a painful radiation burn. My
right side was chilled. My hair was full of sand. Little crabs
scuttled away as I sat up, and I was appalled to realize I'd
been thinking about catching and eating one. I was that hungry.
But there was something of interest down by the water. In the
night, a large, steel-banded wooden trunk had washed ashore,
along with a lot of splintered wood and some tattered pieces of
canvas. I concluded there had been a shipwreck. Perhaps that
was the justification for my presence here in the first place.
I dragged the chest across the sand to a place where it would
be in no danger of washing back to sea, thought about it, and
salvaged all the wood and canvas, as well. I smashed the lock
on the trunk and upon opening it, found it was waterproof and
contained a wide variety of things useful to the computer
castaway: books, tools, bolts of cloth, packages of staple
foods like sugar and flour, even some bottles of a good Scotch
whiskey. The tools were better than the things I had been using
in Texas. At a guess, they might have been made with the
technology of the late nineteenth century. The books were
mostly of the how-to variety--and there was the man himself,
Robinson Crusoe, by DeFoe. All the books were bound in leather;
none had a copyright date later than 1880. I used the machete
to lop the ends off a cocoanut and munched thoughtfully at the
delicious white meat while paging through books that told me
how to tan hides, where to obtain salt, how to treat wounds (I
didn't like the sound of that one very much), and other
vigorous pioneer skills. If I wanted to make boots, I'd be able
to do it. If I wanted to build an outrigger canoe and seek my
fortune on the blue Pacific (I was assuming this was the south
seas), the information was at my fingertips. If I wanted to
chip flint arrowheads, construct an earthen dam, make
gunpowder, fricassee a monkey, or battle savages, the books
would show me how, complete with cunning lithographed
illustrations. If I wanted to stroll the Clarkestrasse in King
City, or even Easter parade down Fifth Avenue in Little Old New
York, I was shit out of luck. There seemed little point in
lamenting this fact, and the CC wasn't returning my calls, so I
set to work. I explored the area for a likely spot to use as a
campsite. That night I slept under a canvas awning, wrapped
loosely in a length of flannel from the chest. It was a good
thing, too. It rained off and on most of the night. I felt
oddly at peace, lying in the moonlit darkness (there was a
charming notion: Luna looked tiny and dim compared to a full
Earth) listening to the rain falling on the canvas. Perhaps the
simple pleasures are the best. For the next several weeks I
worked very hard. (I didn't seem bothered by the gravity, which
was six times what I had endured for a century. Even the fact
that things fell much faster and harder than I'd been used to
all my life never bothered me. My reflexes had been adjusted by
the Almighty Landlord of this semi-conducting realm.) I spent
part of each day working on a shelter. The rest of the time I
foraged. I found good sources of bananas and breadfruit to add
to my all-cocoanut diet. I found mangos and guavas, many
varieties of edible roots, tubers, leaves, seeds. There were
spices available to one equipped with the right book to use in
their identification. The little scuttling crabs proved easy
enough to catch, and were delicious boiled. I wove a net from
vines and soon added several varieties of fish to my
bouillabaisse. I dug for clams. When the shelter was completed
I cleared a sunny spot for a vegetable garden and planted some
of the seeds I'd found in the trunk. I set snares, which
promptly trapped inedible small rodents, fearsome-looking
reptiles, and an unidentified bird I came to call a wild
turkey. I made a bow and arrow, and a spear, and managed to
miss every animal I aimed at. Somewhere in there, after about a
month, I started my calendar: notches on a tree. I estimated
the time before that. Infrequently I wondered when the CC was
going to check up on me, or if I was in fact stranded here for
the rest of my life. In the spirit of exploration, one day I
prepared a backpack and a straw hat (most of me was burned dark
brown by then, but the noonday sun was still nothing to trifle
with) and set out along the beach to determine the size of my
cage. In two weeks I circum-ambulated what did indeed prove to
be an island. Along the way I saw the remains of a ship washed
up on a rocky part of the shore, a week-old beached whale, and
many other wondrous things. But there had been no sign of human
habitation. It seemed I was not to have my Friday to discuss
philosophy with. Not too upset by this discovery, I set about
repairing the depredations wild animals had worked on my
shelter and garden. After another few weeks I determined to
scale the volcano that sat in the center of the island, which I
had named Mount Endew, for reasons that must have seemed
excellent at the time. I mean, a Jules Verne hero would have
climbed it, am I right? This proved to be a lot harder than
walking on the beach, and involved much swinging of the machete
at thatches of tropical vines, wading of swamps infested with
flying insects and leeches, and barking of shins on rocky
outcroppings. But one day I came to stand on the highest point
in my domain and saw what I could not have seen from sea level:
that my island was shaped something like a boot. (It took some
imagination, I'll admit. One could just as well have seen the
letter Y, or a champagne class, or a squashed pair of
copulating snakes. But Callie would have been pleased at the
boot, so I named the island Scarpa.) When I returned to my camp
I decided my traveling days were at an end. I had seen other
places I might have explored from my volcanic vantage point,
but there seemed no reason to do anything about them. I had
spied no curls of smoke, no roads, no airports or stone
monuments or casinos or Italian restaurants. Scarpa Island ran
to swamps, rivers, jungles, and bogs. I'd had quite enough of
all of those; you couldn't get a decent drink in any of them. I
decided to devote my life to making life as easy and as
comfortable as possible, at least until the CC showed up. I
felt no urge to write, either journalism or my long-delayed
novel, which seemed in memory at least as awful as I had always
feared it was. I felt very little urge for sex. My only real
drive seemed to be hunger, and it was easy enough to satisfy
that. I discovered two things about myself. First, I could get
totally involved in and wonderfully satisfied by the simplest
of activities. Few of us today know the pleasure of working in
the soil with our own hands, of nurturing, harvesting, and
eating our own crops. I myself would have rejected the notion
not long before. But nothing tastes quite like a tomato you
have just picked from your own garden. Even rarer is the
satisfaction of the hunt. I got rather better with my bow and
arrow (I never got good), and could lie in wait for hours
beside a watering hole, every sense tuned to the cautious
approach of one of the island's wild pigs. There was even
satisfaction in pursuing a wounded creature; the pigs could be
dangerous when cornered, enraged by a poorly-aimed arrow in the
hams. I hesitate to say it in these peaceable times, but even
the killing thrust of the knife was something to take pride and
pleasure in. The second thing I learned was that, if there was
nothing that badly needed doing, I was capable of lying all day
in my hammock tied between two palm trees, watching the waves
crash onto the reef, sipping pineapple juice and home-distilled
rum from a hollowed cocoanut shell. At such times you could
take your soul out into the fresh air, hang it out on the
line--so to speak--and examine it for tears and thin spots. I
found quite a few. I mended a couple, set the rest aside to
talk over with the CC. Which I even began to doubt was going to
come at all. It got harder and harder to remember a time before
the island, a time when I had lived in a strange place called
Luna, where the air was metered and gravity was weak and
troglodytes hid under rocks, frightened of the vacuum and the
sunlight. There were times when I'd have given anything just
for somebody to talk to. Other times I had cravings for this or
that item of food that Scarpa was unable to provide me. If
Satan had come along with a brontoburger, he could have had my
freshly-patched soul in trade cheap, and hold the onions. But
most of the time I didn't want people around. Most of the time
I was content with a wild turkey sizzling on the spit and a
slice of mango for dessert. The only real crab in my codpiece
were the dreams that started to plague my sleep about six
months into my sojourn. At first I had them infrequently and
was able to shrug them off easily enough in the morning. But
soon I was having them every week, then every other day.
Finally I was being awakened every night, sometimes more than
once. There were three of them. Details varied, and many things
about them were indistinct, but each always ended in a horribly
vivid scene, more real than reality--assuming that word had any
meaning for me anymore, dreaming my dreams within a dream. In
the first, blood was pouring from deep gashes in both my
wrists. I tried to stop the flow. It was no use. In the second,
I was consumed in flames. The fire didn't hurt, but in some
ways this was the most frightening of the three. In the last, I
was falling. I fell for a long time, looking up into the face
of Andrew MacDonald. He was trying to tell me something, and I
strained to understand him, but before I could make any sense
of it I was always pulled up short--to wake up, bathed in
sweat, lying in my hammock. In the manner of dreams, I always
had the sense there had been much more to it that I could no
longer remember, but there was that last image right there in
the front of my mind, obscuring everything else, occupying my
mind for most of my early morning hours. Then one day I noticed
by my rude calendar that I had been on the island for one year.
I suddenly knew the CC would appear to me that day. I had a lot
of things to talk to it about. I was seized by excitement and
spent most of the day tidying up, preparing for my first
visitor. I looked on my works with satisfaction; I'd done a
pretty decent job of creating something out of the wilderness.
The CC would be proud of me. I climbed to the top of my
treehouse, where I had built a look-out tower (having an odd
thought on the way up: how and when had I built it, and why?),
and sure enough, a boat was approaching the island. I ran down
the path to the beach. The day was as close to dead calm as
those waters ever got. Waves eased toward the shore to slump
onto the sand as if exhausted by their long trip from the
orient. A flock of gulls was sitting on the water, briefly
disturbed by the passage of the boat I had seen. It was made of
wood. It looked like the kind of boat whalers used to use, or
the launch from a larger ship. Sitting in the boat, back toward
me, rowing at a strong steady pace, was an apparition. It took
me a moment to realize the strange shape of his head was
actually a rather unusual hat. It made a bell curve above his
head. I watched him row ashore. When he hit the beach he almost
toppled from his seat, then stowed the oars and stood, turning
around to face me. It was an old gentleman in the full uniform
of an Admiral of the British Navy. He had a bull chest, long,
spindly legs, a craggy face and a shaggy head of white hair. He
drew himself up to his full height, looked at me, and said:
"Well? Are you going to help me beach this thing?"
And at that moment everything changed. I still am unable
to fully describe just how it changed. The beach was the same.
The sunlight streamed down just as it had before. The waves
never missed a beat. My heart continued to meter out the
seconds of my life. But I knew something fundamental and
important was no longer as it had been before.
There are hundreds of words describing paranormal
phenomena. I've examined and considered most of them, and none
fits what happened when the Admiral spoke. There are many words
for odd states of mind, for moods, for emotions and things seen
and not-seen, things glimpsed, things incompletely understood
or remembered, for degrees of memory. Things that go bump in
the night. None of them were adequate. We're going to have to
come up with some new words-- which was precisely the CC's
point in letting me experience this.
I went into the water up to my knees and helped the old
man pull the boat onto the shore. It was quite heavy; we didn't
get it far. He produced a rope and tied the boat to a palm
tree.
"I could use a drink," he said. "The whole point of this
was so I could have a drink with you. Like a human being."
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak yet. He followed me
up the path to my Robinson Family tree house, stood admiring it
for a moment, and then followed me up the stairs and onto the
lower veranda. He paused to admire the workmanship of my
wheel-and-pulley waterworks, which used the power of the nearby
stream to provide me with drinking and washing water high up in
the tree. I showed him to my best rattan chair and went to the
sideboard, where I poured us both glasses of the very last of
my best whiskey. I paused to wind up the Victrola and put on
one of my three scratchy cylinders: The Blue Danube. Then I
handed him his drink, took mine, and sat down facing him.
"To indolence," he said, raising his glass.
"I'm too lazy to drink to that. To industry." We drank,
and he looked around again. I must have glowed with pride. It
was quite a place, though I say it myself. A lot of work and
ingenuity had gone into it, from the dense-woven mats on the
floor, to the slate fireplace, to the tallow candles in sconces
arrayed around the walls. Stairs led off in two directions, to
the bedroom, and the crow's nest. My desk was open and
cluttered with the pages of the novel I'd recently resumed. I
was bursting to tell him of the difficulties I'd had producing
usable paper and ink. Try it sometime, when you've got a few
spare months.
"It must have taken a lot of industry to produce all
this," he said.
"A year's worth. As you know."
"Actually, three days short. You missed a few days, early
on."
"Ah."
"Could happen to anybody."
"I don't suppose a few days more or less will matter. Back
in the real world, I mean."
"Ah. Yes. I mean, no, it shouldn't."
"Odd, how I never worried about things back there. Whether
I still have a job, for instance."
"Is it? Oh, yes, I suppose it is."
"I suppose you told Walter what was going on?"
"Well."
"I mean, you wouldn't just pull the whole rug out from
under me, would you? You knew I'd have to be going back to my
old life, once we were done . . . once we'd . . . well, done
whatever the hell it is we've been doing here."
"Oh, no, of course not. I mean, of course you'll be going
back."
"One thing I'm curious about. Where has my real body been
all this time?"
"Harrumph." Well, what he said was something like that. He
glanced at me, looked away, harrumphed again. I felt the first
little scamperings of doubt. It occurred to me that I had been
taking a lot of things for granted. One of them was that the CC
had his reasons for subjecting me to this tropical vacation,
and that the reasons were ultimately beneficial to me. It had
seemed logical to think this at the time, since I in fact was
benefiting from it. Oh, sure, there were times when I had
complained loudly to the crabs and the turkeys, bemoaned
hardships, lusted after this or that. But it had been a healing
time. Still, a year was a long time. What had been going on in
the real world in my absence?
"This is very difficult for me," the Admiral said. He
removed his huge, ridiculous hat and set it on the table beside
him, then took a lace handkerchief from his sleeve and mopped
his forehead. He was balding almost to the crown; his pink
scalp looked as bright and polished as tourmaline.
"Since I don't know what's bothering you, I can't really
make it any easier for you."
Still he didn't say anything. The silence was broken only
by the never-ending sounds of the island jungle and the splash
of my water wheel.
"We could play twenty queries. 'Something's bothering you,
Admiral. Is it bigger than a logic circuit?'"
He sighed, and drained his whiskey. He looked up at me.
"You're still on the operating table at the studio."
If there was supposed to be a punch line, I couldn't see
it coming. The idea that what should have been a one or
two-hour repair job should have taken the better part of a year
wasn't even worth considering. There had to be more.
"Would you like another drink?"
He shook his head. "From the time you remember appearing
on the beach to the time I spoke my first words to you, seven
ten-thousandths of a second elapsed."
"That's ridiculous." Even as I said it, I realized the CC
was not prone to making ridiculous statements.
"I'm sure it must sound that way. I'd like to hear your
reasons for thinking otherwise."
I thought it over, and nodded. "All right. The human brain
isn't like a computer. It can't accept that much information
that fast. I lived that year. Every day of it. One of the
things I recall most vividly is how long so many of the days
were, either because I was working hard or because I didn't
have anything to do. Life is like that. I don't know how you
think, what your perceptions of reality are like, but I know
when a year's gone by. I've lived for a hundred of them. A
hundred and one, now." I sank back in my chair. I hadn't
realized I was getting so exercised about the matter.
He was nodding. "This will get a little complicated. Bear
with me, I'll have to lay some groundwork.
"First, you're right, your brain is organized in a
different way than mine is. In my brain, 'memory' is just
stored data, things that have been recorded and placed in the
appropriate locations within the matrix of charge/no-charge
devices I use for the purpose. The human brain is neither so
logically constructed nor organized. Your brain contains
redundancies I neither have nor need. Data is stored in it by
repetition or emphasis, and retrieved by associations,
emotional linkages, sensory input, and other means that are
still not completely understood, even by me.
"At least, that used to be the case. But today, there are
very few humans whose brains have not been augmented in greater
or smaller ways. Basically, only those with religious scruples
or other irrational reasons resist the implantation of a wide
variety of devices that owe their origin much more to the
binary computer than to the protoplasmic neuron. Some of these
devices are hybrids. Some are parallel processors. Some lean
more toward the biologic and are simply grown within and beside
the existing neural network, but using the laws of electric or
optical transmission with their correspondingly much higher
speeds of propagation, rather than the slower biochemical
regime that governs your natural brain. Others are made outside
the body and implanted shortly after birth. All of them are
essentially interfaces, between the human brain and my brain.
Without them, modern medicine would be impossible. The benefits
are so overwhelming that the drawbacks are seldom thought of,
much less discussed."
He paused, lifting an eyebrow. I was chewing over quite a
few thoughts concerning drawbacks at that moment, but I decided
not to speak. I was too curious as to just where he was going
with this. He nodded, and continued.
"As with so many other scientific advances, the machines
in your body were designed for one purpose, but turn out to
have other, unforeseen applications as well. Some of them are
quite sinister. I assure you, you have not experienced any of
those."
"It seems sinister enough, if what you say is true."
"Oh, it's true. And it was done for a good reason, which
I'll get to in my own time."
"It seems that's something I now have an infinite supply
of."
"You could, you could. Where was I? Oh, yes. These
devices, most of them originally designed and installed to
monitor and control basic bodily functions at the cellular
level, or to augment learning and memory, among other things,
can be used to achieve some effects that were never envisioned
by the designers."
"And those designers are . . .?"
"Well, me, in large part."
"I just wanted a reality check. I do know a little about
how you work, and just how important you've become to
civilization. I wanted to see what sort of fool you took me
for."
"Not that sort, at any rate. You're right. Most technology
long ago reached realms where new designs would be impossible
without a great deal of involvement by me, or a being a lot
like me. Often the original impetus for a new technology comes
from a human dreamer--I have not usurped that human function
yet, though more and more of such advances as we see in our
surroundings are coming from me. But you've caused me to stray
again from the main point. And . . . do you have any more of
that whiskey?"
I stared at him. The charade that a "man" was actually
"sitting" in a "chair" in my "treehouse" drinking my "whiskey"
was getting a bit too much for me. Or should it have been "me?"
No matter what other hocus-pocus the CC might have worked with
my mind, I was completely aware that everything I was
experiencing at that moment was being fed directly into my
brain through that black magic known as Direct Interface. Which
was turning out to be even blacker than I, a notorious resister
to D.I., could ever have guessed. But for some reason of his
own, the CC had decided to talk to me in this way, after a
lifetime of being a disembodied voice.
Come to think of it, I could already see one effect of
this new face of the CC. I was now thinking of the CC as "him,"
where before I'd always used the neuter third person singular
pronoun.
So I got up and re-filled his glass from a bottle nearly
half-full. And hadn't it been nearly empty the last time I'd
poured?
"Quite right," the Admiral said. "I can refill that bottle
as often as I wish."
"Are you reading my mind?"
"Not as such. I'm reading your body language. The way you
hesitated when you lifted the bottle, the expression on your
face as you thought it over . . . Direct Interface, the nature
of the unreality we're inhabiting. Your 'real' body did none of
these things, of course. But interfacing with your mind, I read
the signals your brain sent to your body--which doesn't happen
to be hooked into the circuit at the moment. Do you see?"
"I think so. Does this have anything to do with why you've
chosen to communicate with me like this? In that body, I mean."
"Very good. You've only tried Direct Interface twice in
your life, both of them quite a long time ago, in terms of the
technology. You weren't impressed, and I don't blame you. It
was much more primitive in those days. But I communicate with
most people visually now, as well as audially. It is more
economical; more can be said with fewer words. People tend to
forget just how much human communication is accomplished with
no words at all."
"So you're here in that preposterous body to give me
visual cues."
"Is it that bad? I wanted to wear the hat." He picked it
up and looked at it admiringly. "It's not strictly
contemporary, if you must know. This world is about at the
level of 1880, 1890. The uniform is late eighteenth century.
Captain Bligh wore a hat a lot like this. It's called a cocked
hat, specifically, a bicorne."
"Which is a lot more than I ever needed to know about
eighteenth century British naval headgear."
"Sorry. The hat really has nothing to do with anything.
But I'm curious. Has my body language conveyed anything to
you?"
I thought it over, and he was right. I had gleaned more
nuances from talking to him this way than I would have in the
past, listening to his voice.
"You're nervous about something," I said. "I think maybe
you're worried . . . about how I'll react to what you've done
to me. What an astonishing thought."
"Perhaps, but accurate."
"I'm completely in your power. Why should anything worry
you?"
He squirmed again, and took another sip of his drink.
"We'll get into that later. Right now, let's get back to
my story."
"It's a story now, is it?"
He ignored me, and plowed ahead.
"What you have just experienced is a fairly recent
capability of mine. It's not advertised, and I hope you don't
plan to do a story on it in the Nipple. So far I've used it
mostly on the insane. It's very effective on catatonics, for
instance. Someone sits there all day, unmoving, not speaking,
lost in a private world. I insert several years' worth of
memories in a fraction of a second. The subject then remembers
wakening from a bad dream and going about a comfortable,
routine life for years."
"It sounds risky."
"They can't get any worse. The cure rate has been good.
Sometimes they can be left alone after that. There are subjects
who have lived as many as ten years after treatment, and not
reverted. Other times counseling is needed, to find the things
that drove them to catatonia in the first place. A certain
percentage, of course, simply drift back into oblivion in weeks
or months. I'm not trying to tell you I've solved all the
mysteries of the human mind."
"You've solved enough of them to scare the hell out of
me."
"Yes. I can understand your feelings. Most of the methods
I use would be far too technical for you to understand, but I
think I can explain something about the technique.
"First, you understand that I know you better than anyone
in the universe. Better than . . ."
I laughed. "Better than my mother? She's not even in the
running. Were you trying to think of another example? Don't
bother. It's been a long time since I was close to anyone. I
was never very good at it."
"That's true. It's not that I've made a special study of
you--at least, not until lately. By the nature of my functions,
I know everyone in Luna better than anyone else. I've seen
through their eyes, heard through their ears, monitored their
pulse and sweat glands and skin temperature and brain waves and
the churning of their stomachs and the irising of their eyes
under a wide variety of situations and stimuli. I know what
enrages them and what makes them happy. I can predict with
reasonable certainty how they will react in many common
situations; more importantly, I know what would be out of
character for them.
"As a result, I can use this knowledge as the basis for
something that could be considered a fictional character. Call
this character ParaHildy. I write a scenario wherein ParaHildy
is stranded on a desert island. I write it in great detail,
using all the human senses. I can abbreviate and abridge at
will. An example: you recall picking up a handful of sand and
studying it. It was a vivid image to you, one you would have
remembered. If I'm wrong about this, I'd like to hear about
it."
As you might expect, I said nothing. I felt a cold chill.
I can't say I liked listening to this.
"I gave you that memory of sand grains. I constructed the
picture with almost infinite visual detail. I enhanced it with
things you weren't even aware of, to make it more lifelike: the
grittiness of the grains, the smell of the salt water, tiny
sounds the grains made in your hand.
"The rest of the time, the sand was not nearly so
detailed, because I never caused ParaHildy to pick up a handful
and look at it, and think about looking at it. Do you see the
distinction? When ParaHildy was walking down the beach, he
would notice sand clinging to his feet, in an absent sort of
way. Remember, Hildy, think back, recall yourself walking down
the beach, bring it back as vividly as you can."
I tried. In some way, I already saw most of what he was
driving at. In some way, I already believed that what he was
saying was true.
Memory is a funny thing. It can't be as sharp as we'd
sometimes like to believe it is. If it was, it would be like an
hallucination. We'd be seeing two scenes at once. The closest
mental pictures of things can get to real things is in a dream
state. Other than that, our memory pictures are always hazy to
one degree or another. There are different sorts of memories,
good and bad, clear and hazy, the almost-remembered, the thing
you could never forget. But memory serves to locate us in space
and time. You remember what happened to you yesterday, the
previous year, when you were a child. You remember quite
clearly what you were doing one second ago: it usually wasn't
all that different from what you're doing now. The memories
stretch backward in time, defining the shape of your life:
these events happened to me, and this is what I saw and heard
and felt. We move through space continually comparing what
we're seeing now to the maps and cast of characters in our
heads: I've been here before, I remember what's around that
corner, I can see what it looks like. I know this person. That
person is a stranger, his mug shot isn't in my files.
But now is always fundamentally different from the past.
I remembered walking many, many miles along that beach. I
could recall in great detail many scenes, many sounds and
smells. But I had only looked closely at a handful of sand
once. That was embedded in my past. I could get up now, if I
wished, go to the beach, and do it again, but that was now. I
had no way of disproving what the CC was telling me. Those
memory pictures from the time the CC was saying never happened
were just as real to me as the hundred years that had gone
before it. More real, in some ways, because they were more
recent.
"It seems like a lot of trouble," I said.
"I have a lot of capacity. But it's not quite as much
trouble as you might think. For instance, do you recall what
you did forty-six days ago?"
"It seems unlikely. One day is pretty much like another
here." I realized I'd only bolstered his case by saying that.
"Try it. Try to think back. Yesterday, the day before . .
. "
I did try. I got back two weeks, with great effort. Then I
ran into the muddle you might expect. Had it been Tuesday or
Monday that I weeded the garden? Or was it Sunday? No, Sunday I
knew I had finished off the last of a smoked ham, so it must
have been . . .
It was impossible. Even if there had been more variety in
my days, I doubt I could have gone back more than a few months.
Was there something wrong with me? I didn't think so, and
the CC confirmed it. Sure, there were those with eidetic
memory, who could memorize long lists instantly. There were
people who were better than I at recalling the relatively
unimportant details of life. As for my belief that a recalled
scene can never be as alive, as colorful, as sweeping as the
present moment . . . while I will concede that a trained visual
artist might see things in more detail than I, and recollect
them better, I still maintain that nothing can compare with the
present moment, because it is where we all live.
"I can't do it," I admitted.
"It's not surprising, since forty-six days ago is one of
several dozen days I never bothered to write. I knew you would
never notice it. You think you lived those days, just as you
think you lived all the others. But as time goes by, the memory
of the real and the imagined days grows dimmer, and it is
impossible to distinguish one from the other."
"But I remember . . . I remember thinking things. Deciding
things, making choices. Considering things."
"And why shouldn't you? I wrote that ParaHildy thought
those things, and I know how you think. As long as I stayed in
character, you'd never notice them."
"The funny thing is. . . . There were some things that
were not in character."
"You didn't get angry often enough."
"Exactly! Now that I think back, it's incredible that I'd
just sit back and wait for you for a year! That's not like me."
"Just as standing, walking, and talking is not normal
behavior for a catatonic. But by implanting a memory that he
did stand, walk, and talk and that he thought there was nothing
unreasonable about doing those things, the catatonic accepts
that he indeed did react that way. The problem in that case is
that it was out of character, so many of them eventually
remember they were catatonic, and return to that state."
"Were there other things out of character?"
"A few. I'll leave them as an exercise for the student,
for the most part. You'll discover them as you think back over
the experience in days to come. There were some
inconsistencies, as well. I'll tell you something about them,
just to further convince you and to show you just how complex
this business really is. For instance, it's a nice place you've
got here."
"Thank you. It was a lot of work."
"It's a really nice place."
"Well, I'm proud of it, I . . ." Okay, I finally realized
he was getting at something. And my head was starting to hurt.
I'd had a thought, earlier that day . . . or was it part of the
memories the CC alleged he had implanted in me? I couldn't
remember if I'd thought it before or after his arrival, which
just proves how easy it must have been for the CC to put this
whole card trick over on me.
It concerned the look-out tower.
I got up and walked to the stairs leading up to it. I
pounded on the rail with my fist. It was solidly built, as was
everything else around me. It had been a lot of work. It had
been, damn it, I remembered building it. And it had taken a
very long time.
Why had I built it? I thought back. I tried to recall my
reasons for building it. I tried to recapture my thoughts as I
labored on it. All I could remember was the same thought I'd
had so many times during the past year; not a thought, really,
but a feeling, of how rewarding it was to work with my hands,
of how good it all felt. I could still smell the wood shavings,
see them curl up under my plane, feel the sweat dripping from
my brow. So I remembered building it, and there it was, by
golly.
But it didn't add up.
"There's too much stuff, isn't there?" I asked, quietly.
"Hildy, if Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday, and his
wife Tuesday and twin sons Saturday and Laborday had worked
around the clock for five years, they couldn't have done all
the things you've done here."
He was right, of course. And how could that be? It only
made sense if it was as the CC claimed. He had written the
entire story, dumped it into the cyber-augmented parts of my
brain where, at the speed of light, it was transferred to the
files of my organic brain, shuffled cunningly in with the rest
of my memories, the legitimate ones.
It would work, that was the devilish part. I had a hundred
years of memories in there. They defined who I was, what I
thought, what I knew. But how often did I refer to them? The
great bulk of them stayed in dormant storage most of the time,
until I summoned them up. Once the false memories were in there
with the others, they functioned in the same way. That picture
of me holding the handful of sand had been in there only an
hour, but it was ready for me to recall--as having happened a
year ago--as soon as the CC jogged it loose with his words.
Along with it had come a flood of other memories of sand to be
checked against this one, all unconsciously: the pictures
matched, so my brain sounded no alarms. The memory was accepted
as real.
I rubbed my temples. The whole thing was giving me a
headache like few I'd ever had.
"If you gave me a few minutes," I said, "I think I could
come up with a couple hundred reasons why this whole technology
is the worst idea anybody ever had."
"I could add several hundred of my own," the Admiral said.
"But I do have the technology. And it will be used. All new
technologies are."
"You could forget it. Can't computers do that?"
"Theoretically. Computers can wipe data from memory, and
it's like it never existed. But the nature of my mind is that I
will simply discover it again. And losing it would involve
losing so much else precursor technology that I don't think
you'd like the result."
"We're pretty dependent on machines in Luna, aren't we?"
"Indeed. But even if I wanted to forget it-which I
don't--I'm not the only planetary brain in the solar system.
There are seven others, from Mercury to Neptune, and I can't
control their decision."
He fell into another of his long silences. I wasn't sure
if I bought his explanation. It was the first thing he'd said
that didn't ring true. I accepted by that time that my head was
full of false memories--and I was back in character, I was
goddam angry about it, and about the fact that there was
absolutely nothing to be done. And it made sense that losing
the new art would effect many other things. Luna and the seven
other human worlds were the most technology-dependent societies
humans had ever inhabited. Before, if things collapsed, at
least there was air to breathe. Nowhere in the solar system did
humans now live where the air was free. To "forget" how to
implant memories in the human brain the CC would no doubt have
to forget many other things. He would have to limit his
abilities and, as he pointed out, unless he decreased his
intelligence deliberately to a point that might endanger the
very humans he was designed to protect, he would re-chisel this
particular wheel in due time. And it was also true that the CC
of Mars or Triton would certainly discover the techniques on
their own, though the rumor was none of the other planetary
computers was so far evolved as the Lunar CC. As nations which
often found themselves in competition, the Eight Worlds did not
encourage a lot of intercourse between their central cybernets.
So all the reasons he stated sounded reasonable. It was
railroad time, so somebody would build a choo-choo. But what
didn't ring true was what the CC had left out. He liked the new
capability. He was as pleased as a child with a new toy
monorail.
"I have one further proof," the Admiral said. "It involves
something I mentioned earlier. Acts that were out of character.
This is the biggest one, and it involves you not noticing
something that, if these memories had been generated by you,
you surely would have noticed. You would have spotted it by now
yourself, except I've kept your mind occupied. You haven't had
time to really think back to the operating table, and the time
immediately before that."
"It's not exactly fresh in my mind."
"Of course not. It feels as if it all happened a year
ago."
"So what is it? What didn't I notice?"
"That you are female."
"Well, of course I'm--"
Words fail me again. How many degrees of surprise can
there be? Imagine the worst possible one, then square it, and
you'll have some notion of how surprised I was. Not when I
looked reflexively down at my body, which was, as the CC had
said and I had known all along, female. No, the real shock came
when I thought back to that day in the Blind Pig. Because that
was the first moment in one year that I had realized I had been
male when I got in the fight. I had been male when I went on
the operating table. And I had been female when I appeared on
the beach of Scarpa Island.
And I simply had never noticed it.
I had never in that entire year compared the body I was
then inhabiting with the one I had been wearing for the last
thirty years. I had been a girl before, and I was a girl now,
and I never gave it a thought.
Which was completely ridiculous, of course. I mean, you
would notice such a thing. Long before you had to urinate, the
difference would manifest itself to you, there would be this
still small voice telling you something was missing. Perhaps it
would not have been the first thing you'd notice as you lifted
you head from the sand, but it'd be high on the list.
It was not just out of character for me. It was out of
character for any human not to notice it. Therefore, my
memories of not noticing it were false memories, bowdlerized
tales invented in the supercooled image processor of the CC.
"You're really enjoying this, aren't you?" I said.
"I assure you, I'm not trying to torture you."
"Just humiliate me?"
"I'm sorry you feel that way. Perhaps when I-"
I started to laugh. I wasn't hysterical, though I thought
I could slip into hysteria easily enough. The Admiral frowned
inquisitively at me.
"I just had a thought," I said. "Maybe that idiot at
UniBio was right. Maybe it is obsolete. I mean, how important
can something be if you don't notice it's gone for a whole
year?"
"I told you, it wasn't you that didn't--"
"I know, I know. I understand it, as much as I'm ever
going to, and I accept it--not that you should have done it,
but that you did it. So I guess it's time for the big
question."
I learned forward and stared at him.
"Why did you do it?"
I was getting a little tired of the CC's newlyacquired
body language. He went through such a ridiculous repertoire of
squirms, coughs, facial tics and half-completed gestures that I
almost had to laugh. It was as if he'd suddenly been overcome
by an earlobe-tugging heel-thumping chinducking
shoulder-shrugging behind-scratching petit mal seizure. Guilt
oozed off him like a tangible slime. If I hadn't been so angry,
the urge to comfort him would have been almost overwhelming.
But I managed to hang on to my whelm and just stared at him
until the mannerisms subsided.
"How about we take a walk?" he wheedled. "Down to the
beach."
"Why don't you just take us there? Bring the bottle, too."
He shrugged, and made a gesture. We were on the beach. Our
chairs had come along with us, and the bottle, which he poured
from and set in the sand beside him. He gulped down the
contents of his glass. I got up and walked to the edge of the
water, gazing out at the blue sea.
"I brought you here to try to save your life," he said,
from behind me.
"The medicos seemed to have that in hand."
"The threat to you is much worse than any barroom brawl."
I went down on one knee and scooped up a handful of wet
sand. I held it close to my face and studied the individual
grains. They were as perfect as I had remembered them, no two
alike.
"You've been having bad dreams," he went on.
"I thought it might have something to do with that."
"I didn't write the dreams. I recorded them over the last
several months. They were your dreams. In a manner of
speaking."
I tossed the handful of sand aside, brushed my hand
against my bare thigh. I studied the hand. It was slender,
smooth and girlish on the back, the palm work-roughened, the
nails irregular. Just as it had been for the last year. It
wasn't the hand I'd used to slug the Princess of Wales.
"You've tried to kill yourself four times."
I didn't turn around. I can't say I was happy to hear him
say it. I can't say I completely believed it. But I'd come to
believe unlikelier things in the last hour.
"The first attempt was by self-immolation."
"Why don't you just say burning?"
"I don't know. Have it your way. That one was pretty
horrible, and unsuccessful. At least, you would have survived
it, even before modern medical science, but in a great deal of
pain. Part of the treatment for injuries like yours is to
remove the memory of the incident, with the patient's
permission.
"And I gave it."
There was a long pause.
"No," he said, almost in a whisper.
"That doesn't sound like me. I wouldn't cherish a memory
like that."
"No. You probably would have. But I didn't ask you."
Finally I saw what had been making him so nervous. This
was in clear contradiction to his programming, to the
instructions he was supposed to follow, both by law and by what
I had understood to be the limitations of his design.
You learn something new every day.
"I enrolled you," he went on, "without your consent, into
a program I've set up over the last four years. The purpose of
the program is to study the causes of suicide, in the hope of
finding ways to prevent it."
"Perhaps I should thank you."
"Not necessarily. It's possible, of course, but the action
wasn't undertaken with your benefit solely in mind. You got
along well enough for a time, showed no self-destructive
impulses and few other symptoms other than a persistent
depression-normal enough for you, I might add. Then, without
any warning I could detect, you slashed your wrists in the
privacy of your apartment. You made no attempt to call for
help."
"In the imagined privacy, apparently," I said. I thought
back, and finally turned to look at him. He was sitting on the
edge of his chair, hands clasped, elbows on knees. His
shoulders were hunched, as if to receive a lash across the
back. "I think I can pinpoint that one. Was it when my
handwriter malfunctioned?"
"You damaged some of its circuitry."
"Go on."
"Attempt number three was shortly afterward. You tried to
hang yourself. Succeeded, actually, but you were observed this
time by someone else. After each of these attempts, I treated
you with a simple drug that removes memories of the last
several hours. I gathered my data, returned you to your life as
if nothing had happened, and continued to observe you at a
level considerably above my normal functions. For instance, it
is forbidden for me to look into the private quarters of
citizens without probable cause of a crime being committed. I
have violated that command in your case, and that of some
others."
We are a very free society, especially in comparison to
most societies of the past. Government is small and weak. Many
of the instrumentalities of oppression have been gradually
given over to machines--to the Central Computer--not without
initial trepidation, and not without elaborate safeguards.
Things remain that way for the most persuasive of reasons: it
works. It has been well over a century since civil libertarians
have objected to much that has been proposed concerning the
functions of the CC. Big Brother is most definitely there, but
only when we invite him in, and a century of living with him
has convinced us all that he really does love us, that he
really has only our best interests at heart. It's in his goddam
wiring, praise the lord.
Only it now seemed that it wasn't. A fundamentalist would
have hardly been more surprised than I if he heard, direct from
Jesus, that the crucifixion had been a cheap parlor trick.
"Number four was more easily seen as the classic cry for
help. I decided it was time for different measures."
"Are you talking about the fight in the Blind Pig?" I
thought about it, and almost laughed. Attacking Wales while she
was in a drug-induced state of no inhibitions might not be
quite as certain as a rope around the neck, but it was close.
I finished my drink and threw the empty glass toward the
surf. I looked around me, at this beautiful island where, until
a moment ago, I had thought I had spent such a lovely year. The
island was still as beautiful as I "remembered" it. Taking all
things into account, I was happy to have the memories. There
was bitterness, naturally; who likes to be played such a
complete fool? But on the other hand, who can really complain
of a year's vacation on a deserted island paradise? What else
did I have to do? The answer to that was, apparently, suicide
attempt number five. And had you really been enjoying your
life, your many and varied friendships, your deeply fulfilling
job and your myriad fascinating pastimes so very much? Don't
kid yourself, Hildy.
Still, even with all that . . .
"All right," I said, spreading my hands helplessly. "I
will thank you. For showing me this, and more important, for
saving my life. I can't imagine why I was so willing to throw
it away."
The CC didn't reply. He just kept looking at me. I leaned
forward, resting my elbows on my knees.
"That's the thing, really. I can't imagine. You know me; I
get depressed. I have been since I was . . . oh, forty or
fifty. Callie says I was a moody child. I was probably a
discontented fetus, lord love us, kicking out at every little
thing. I complain. I'm unhappy with the lack of purpose of
human life, or with the fact that so far I've been unable to
discover a purpose. I envy the Christians, the Bahais, the Zens
and Zoro-astrians and astrologers and Flackites because they
have answers they believe in. Even if they're the wrong
answers, it must be comforting to believe in them. I mourn the
Dead Billions of the Invasion; seeing a good documentary about
it can move me to tears, just like a child. I'm generally
pissed off at the entirely sorry existential state of affairs
of the universe, the human condition, rampant injustice and
unpunished crimes and unrewarded goodness, and the way my mouth
feels when I get up in the morning before I brush my teeth.
We're so goddam advanced, you'd think we'd have done something
about that by now, wouldn't you? Get on it; see what you can
do. Humanity will bless you.
"But by and large," and here I paused for effect,
employing some of the body language the CC had been at such
pains to demonstrate and which it would be pointless to
describe, since my body was still lying on the operating table,
"by and large, I find life sweet. Not as sweet as it might be.
Not sweet all the time. Not as sweet as this." And I imagined
myself making a sweeping gesture with my arm to include the
improbably lush, conveniently provisioned, stormless,
mildew/disease/fungus-free Eden the CC had created for me. But
I didn't make the gesture. It didn't matter; I was sure the CC
got it anyway.
"I'm not happy in my job. I don't have anyone that I love.
I find my life to be frequently boring. But is that any reason
to kill myself? I went ninety-nine years feeling much the same
way, and I didn't cut my throat. And the things I've just
described would probably be true for a large portion of
humanity. I keep living for the same reasons I think so many of
us do. I'm curious about what happens next. What will tomorrow
hold? Even if it's much like yesterday, it's still worth
finding out. My pleasures may not be as many or as joyous as
I'd wish them to be in a perfect world, but I accept that, and
it makes the times I do feel happy all the more treasured.
Again, just to be sure you understand me . . . I like life. Not
all the time and not completely, but enough to want to live it.
And there's a third reason, too. I'm afraid to die. I don't
want to die. I suspect that nothing comes after life, and
that's too foreign a concept for me to accept. I don't want to
experience it. I don't want to go away, to cease. I'm important
to me. Who would there be to make unkind, snide comments to
myself about everything in life if I wasn't around to tackle
the job? Who would appreciate my internal jokes?
"Do you understand what I'm saying? Am I getting through?
I don't want to die, I want to live! You tell me I've tried to
kill myself four times. I have no choice but to believe you . .
. hell, I know I believe you. I'm remembering the attempts,
parts of them. But I don't remember why. And that's what I want
you to tell me. Why?"
"You act as if your self-destructive impulses are my
fault."
I thought about that.
"Well, why not? If you're going to start acting like a
God, maybe you should shoulder some of God's responsibilities."
"That's silly, and you know it. The answer to your
question is simply that I don't know; it's what I'm trying to
find out. You might have asked a more pertinent question,
though."
"You're going to ask it anyway, so go ahead."
"Why should I care?" When I said nothing, he went on.
"Though you're sometimes a lot of laughs, there are people
funnier than you. You write a good story, sometimes, though
it's been a while since you did it frequently--"
"Don't tell me you read that stuff?"
"I can't avoid it, since it's prepared in a part of my
memory. You can't imagine the amount of information I process
each second. There is very little of public discourse that does
not pass through me sooner or later. Only things that happen in
private residences are closed off to my eyes and ears."
"And not even those, always."
He looked uncomfortable again, but waved it away.
"I admitted it, didn't I? At any rate, I love you, Hildy,
but I have to tell you I love all Lunarians, more or less
equally; it's in my programming. My purpose in life, if we can
speak of such a lofty thing, is to keep all the people
comfortable, safe, and happy."
"And alive?"
"So far as I am permitted. But suicide is a civil right.
If you elect to kill yourself, I'm expressly forbidden to
interfere, much as I might miss you."
"But you did. And you're about to tell me the reason."
"Yes. It's simpler than you might imagine, in one way.
Over the last century there has been a slow and steady increase
in the suicide rate in Luna. I'll give you the data later, if
you want to study it. It has become the leading cause of death.
That's not surprising, considering how tough it is to die these
days. But the numbers have become alarming, and more than that,
the distribution of suicides, the demographics of them, are
even more disturbing. More and more I'm seeing people like you,
who surprise me, because they don't fit any pattern. They don't
make gestures, abnormal complaints, or seek help of any kind.
One day they simply decide life is not worth it. Some are so
determined that they employ means certain to destroy their
brains--the bullet through the temple was the classic method of
an earlier age, but guns are hard to come by now, and these
people must be more creative. You aren't in that class. Though
you were in situations where help could not be expected to
arrive, you chose methods where rescue was theoretically
possible. Only the fact that I was watching
you--illegally-saved your life."
"I wonder if I knew that. Subconsciously, maybe."
He looked surprised.
"Why would you say that?"
I shrugged. "CC, thinking it over, I realize that a lot of
what you've just told me ought to horrify and astonish me. Well
. . . I'm horrified, but not as much as I should be. And I'm
hardly astonished at all. That makes me think that, somewhere
in the back of my mind, I was always aware of the possibility
that you weren't keeping your promise not to violate private
living spaces."
He paused a long time, frowning down at the sand. It was
all show, of course, part of his body language communication.
He could consider any proposition in nanoseconds. Maybe this
one had taken him six or seven instead of one.
"You may have something there," he said. "I'll have to
look into it."
"So you're treating the suicide epidemic as a disease? And
you're trying to find a cure?"
"That was the justification I used to extend my limiting
parameters, which function something like a police force. I
used my enabling circuits-think of them as tricky lawyers--to
argue for a limited research program, using human subjects.
Some of the reasoning was specious, I'll grant you, but the
threat is real: extrapolate the suicide rate into the future
and, in a hundred thousand years, the human race on Luna could
be extinct."
"That's my idea of a crisis situation, all right."
He glared at me. "All right. So I could have watched the
situation another several centuries before making my move. I
would have, too, and you'd have been recycling through the
ecosystems right now, possibly fertilizing a cactus in your
beloved Texas, except for another factor. Something a lot more
frightening in its implications."
"Extinction is pretty frightening. What could be worse?"
"Quicker extinction. I have to explain one more thing to
you, and then you'll have the problem in its entirety. I look
forward to your thoughts on the matter.
"I told you how parts of me extend into all but a few of
the human bodies and brains in Luna. How those parts were put
there for only the best of reasons, and how those parts--and
other parts of me, elsewhere--evolved into the capabilities and
techniques I've just demonstrated to you. It would be very
difficult, probably impossible, for me to go back to the way
things were before and still remain the Central Computer as you
know me."
"As we all know and love you," I said.
"As you know me and take me for granted. And though I'm
even more aware than you are of how these new capabilities can
be abused, I think I've done a pretty fair job in limiting
myself in their use. I've used them for good, as it were,
rather than for evil."
"I'll accept that, until I know more."
"That's all I ask. Now, you and all but a handful of
computer specialists think of me as this disembodied voice. If
you think further, you imagine a hulking machine sitting
somewhere, in some dark cavern most likely. If you really put
your mind to it, you realize that I am much more than that,
that every small temperature regulator, every security camera,
every air fan and water scrubber and slideway and tube car . .
. that every machine in Luna is in a sense a part of my body.
That you live within me.
"What you hardly ever realize is that I live within you.
My circuitry extends into your bodies, and is linked to my
mainframe so that no matter where you go except some parts of
the surface, I'm in contact with you. I have evolved techniques
to greatly extend my capacity by using parts of your brains as
. . . think of them as subroutines. I can run programs using
both the metal and the organic circuitry of all the human
brains in Luna, without you even being aware it's being done. I
do this all the time; I've been doing it for a long time. If I
were to stop doing it, I would no longer be able to guarantee
the health and safety of Lunarians, which is my prime
responsibility.
"And something has happened. I don't know the cause of it;
that's why you've been elected guinea pig, so I can try to
discover the root causes of despair, of depression--of suicide.
I have to find out, Hildy, because I use your brains as part of
my own, and an increasing number of those brains are electing
to turn themselves off."
"So you're losing capacity? Is that it?" Even as I said
it, I felt a tingling at the back of my neck that told me it
was a lot worse than that. The CC immediately confirmed it.
"The birth rate is sufficient to replace the losses. It's
even rising slightly. That's not the problem. Maybe it's as
simple as a virus of some sort. Maybe I'll isolate it soon,
counterprogram, and have done with it. Then you can do with
yourself what you will.
"But something is leaking over from the realm of human
despair, Hildy.
"The truth is, I'm getting depressed as hell."
=*= =*= =*= =*=
Callie's foreman told me my mother was in a negotiating
session with the representative of the Dinosaur Soviet of the
Chordates Union, Local 15. I got directions, grabbed a lamp,
and set off into the nighttime ranchland. I had to talk to
someone about my recent experiences. After careful reflection,
I had decided that, for all her shortcomings as a mother,
Callie was the person I knew most likely to offer some good
advice. It had been a century since anything had surprised
Callie very much, and she could be trusted to keep her own
counsel.
And maybe, down deep, I just needed to talk it over with
mommie.
It had been forty-eight hours since my return to what I
was hopefully regarding as reality. I'd spent them in seclusion
at my shack in West Texas. I got more work done on the cabin
than during the previous four or five months, and the work was
of a much higher quality. It seemed the skills I "remembered"
learning on Scarpa Island were the real thing. And why
shouldn't they be? The CC had been seeking verisimilitude, and
he'd done a good job of it. If I chose to become a hermit in my
favorite disneyland, I could thrive there.
The return to real life was cleverly done.
The Admiral had taken his leave after dropping his
bombshell, refusing to answer any of my increasingly disturbed
questions. He'd boarded his boat without another word and rowed
it over the horizon. And for a while, that was it. The wind
continued to blow, and the waves kept curling onto the beach. I
drank whiskey without getting drunk from a bottle that never
emptied, and thought about what he had said.
The first time I noticed a change was when the waves
stopped. They just froze in place, in midbreak, as it were. I
walked out on the water, which was warm and hard as concrete,
and examined a wave. I don't think I could have broken off a
chip of foam with a hammer and chisel.
What happened over the next few minutes was an evolution.
Things happened behind my back, never in my sight. When I
returned to my place on the beach the machine with the
oscilloscope screen was standing beside my chair. It was wildly
anachronistic, totally out of place. The sun shone down on it
and, while I watched, a seagull came and perched on it. The
bird flew away when I approached. The machine was mounted on
casters, which had sunk into the soft sand. I stared at the
moving dot on the screen and nothing happened. When I
straightened and turned around I saw a row of chairs about
twenty meters down the beach, and sitting in them were wounded
extras from the movie infirmary, waiting their turns on the
table. The trouble was, there were no tables to be seen. It
didn't seem to bother them.
Once I understood the trick, I started slowly turning in a
circle. New things came into view with each turn until I was
back in the infirmary surrounded by objects and people,
including Brenda and Wales, who were looking at me with some
concern.
"Are you all right?" Brenda asked. "The medico said you
might behave oddly for a few minutes."
"Was I turning in circles?"
"No, you were just standing there, looking a million miles
away."
"I was interfacing," I said, and she nodded, as if that
explained it all. And I suppose it did, to her. Though she'd
never been to Scarpa Island or any place as completely real as
that, she understood interfacing a lot better than I did,
having done it all her life. I decided not to ask her if she
felt the sand floor her feet seemed to be planted in; I knew it
was unlikely. I doubted she saw the seagulls that circled near
the ceiling, either.
I felt a terrible urge to get out of there. Shaking off
Wales' offer of apologies and a drink, I headed for the studio
gate. The sand didn't end until I was back in the public
corridors, where I finally stepped up onto good old familiar
floor tiles, soft and resilient under my bare feet. I was male
again, and this time noticed it right away. When I turned
around, the sand that should have been behind me was gone.
But on the way to Texas I saw many tropical plants growing
from the concrete floors, and I rode in a tube car festooned
with vines and crawling with land crabs. Usually you have to
ingest a great deal of a very powerful chemical to see scenes
like that, I reflected, watching the crabs scuttle around my
feet. It wasn't something I was eager to do again soon.
And it took a full day for the new cocoanut palm I found
shading my half-built cabin to vanish in the night.
#
The lantern I carried didn't cast a lot of light. A bright
light in the darkness could upset the stock, so Callie provided
her hands with these antique devices which burned a smoky oil
refined from reptilian fat. It was enough to keep me from
stumbling over tree roots, but not to see very far ahead. And
of course if you looked at the light, your night vision was
destroyed. I told myself not to look, then the cantankerous
thing would sputter and I'd glance at it, and stop in my
tracks, blinded. So when I encountered the first unusual tree
trunk I didn't realize what it was, at first. I touched it and
felt the warmth, and knew I'd bumped into a brontosaur's hind
leg. I backed hastily away. The beasts are clumsy and inclined
to stampede if startled. And if you've ever been unpleasantly
surprised by a package from a passing pigeon in the city park,
you don't want to find out what can happen to you in the area
of a brontosaur's hind leg, believe me. I speak from bitter
experience.
I picked my way through a forest of similar trunks until I
spotted a small campfire in a hollow. Three figures were seated
around the fire, two side by side, and another--Callie-across
from them. I could dimly see the hulking shadows of a dozen
brontosaurs, darker shapes against the night, placidly chewing
their cuds and farting like foghorns. I approached the fire
slowly, not wanting to startle anybody, and still managed to
surprise Callie, who looked up in alarm, then patted the ground
beside her. She held her finger to her lips, then resumed her
study of her adversaries, painted orange by the dancing flames
between us.
I've never decided if David Earth looked spookier in a
setting like this, or in the full light of day--for it was him,
the Spokesmammal himself, sitting in lotus position, a walking,
talking inducement for the purchase of hay fever remedies.
Callie was actually allergic to the man, or to his biosphere,
and though a cure would have been simple and cheap she
cherished her malady, she treasured it, she happily endured
every sneeze and sniffle as one more reason to detest him.
She'd hated him since before I was born, and viewed his
five-yearly appearances the same way people must have felt
about dental extractions before anesthetics.
He nodded to me, and I nodded back. That seemed
conversation enough for both of us. Callie and I didn't agree
on a lot of things, but we shared the same opinion of David
Earth and all the Earthists.
He was a large man, almost as tall as Brenda and much
heftier. His hair was long, green, and unkept for a very good
reason: it wasn't hair, but a bioengineered species of grass
bred to be parasitic on human skin. I don't know the details of
its cultivation. I'd have had more interest in the mating
habits of toads. It involved a thickening of the scalp, and
soil was involved-when he scratched his head, dirt showered
down. But I don't know how the soil was attached, whether in
pockets or layered on the skin, and I don't know anything about
the blood-to-root system, and I'd just as soon not, thank you.
I remember as a child wondering if, when he got up in the
morning, he had to work compost into his agri-tonsorial
splendor.
He had two huge breasts--almost all Earthists, male and
female, sported them--and more plants grew on their upper
slopes. Many of these bore tiny flowers or fruits. I wondered
if he had to practice contour plowing to prevent erosion on
those fertile hillsides. He saw me looking at them, plucked an
apple no bigger than a grape from the tangled mass, and popped
it in his mouth.
What can one say about the rest of him? His back and arms
and legs were covered with hair. Not human hair, but actual
pelts, resembling in various patches jaguar, tiger, bison,
zebra, and polar bear, among others, in a crazy patchwork. The
genetic re-structuring required to support all that must have
been a cut-and-paste collage beyond imagining. It was ironic, I
thought, that the roots of the Earthists were in the anti-fur
activists, but of course no animals had been harmed to produce
his pelt. Just little bits of their genes snipped out and
shoehorned into his. He had claws like a bear on his
fingertips, and instead of feet he walked around on the hooves
of a moose, like some large economy-size faun. All Earthists
had animal attributes, it was their badge and ensign. But their
founder had gone further than any of his followers. Which, one
suspects, is what makes followers and leaders.
But, incredible as it may seem having gone through the
catalog of his offenses to the eye, it must be said that the
first thing one noticed about David Earth upon having the
misfortune to encounter him was his smell.
I'm sure he bathed. Perhaps the right way of putting it
was that he watered himself regularly. David Earth during a
drought would have been a walking fire hazard. But he used no
soap (animal by-product) or any other cleaning preparation
(chemical pollution of the David-sphere). All of which would
simply have resulted in a smell of sour sweat, which I don't
care for but can tolerate. No, it was his passengers that
lifted his signature aroma from the merely objectionable to the
realm of the unimaginable.
Large animals with fur harbor fleas, that's axiomatic.
Fleas were only the beginning of David Earth's "welcome
guests," as he'd once described them to me. I'd countered with
another term, parasites, and he'd merely smiled benevolently.
All his smiles were benevolent; he was that kind of guy, the
sort whose kindly face you'd like to rip off and feed to his
welcome guests. David was the kind of guy who had all the moral
answers, and never hesitated to point out the error of your
ways. Lovingly, of course. He loved all nature's creatures, did
David, even one as low on the evolutionary ladder as youself.
What sort of guests did David spread his filthy welcome
mat for? Well, what sort of vermin live in grasslands? I'd
never seen a prairie dog peeking from his coiffure, but I
wouldn't have been surprised. He was home to a scamper of mice,
a shriek of shrews, a twittering of finches, and a circus of
fleas. A trained biologist could easily have counted a dozen
species of insects without even getting close. All these
creatures were born, reared, courted, mated, nested, ate,
defecated, urinated, laid their eggs, fought their battles,
stalked their prey, dreamed their dreams and, as must we all,
eventually died in the various biomes that were David.
Sometimes the carcasses fell out; sometimes they didn't. All
more fertile soil for the next generation.
All Earthists stink; it goes with the territory. They are
perennial defendants in civil court for violation of the body
odor laws, hauled in when some long-suffering citizen on a
crowded elevator finally decides he's had enough. David Earth
was the only man I knew of in Luna who was permanently banished
from the public corridors. He made his way from ranch to
disneyland to hydroponic farm by way of the air, water, and
service ducts.
"My membership is alarmed if that is your best offer,"
said David's companion, a much smaller, much less prepossessing
fellow whose only animal attributes I could see were a modest
pair of pronghorn antlers and a lion's tail. "One hundred
murders is nothing but wanton slaughter, and we totally reject
it. But after careful consultation, we're prepared to offer
eighty. With the greatest reluctance."
"Eighty harvested," Callie leaned on the word, as she
always did. "Eighty is simply ridiculous. I'll go broke with a
quota of eighty. Come on, let's go up to my office right now,
I'll show you the books, there's an order of seventy carcasses
from McDonald's alone."
"That's your problem; you should never have signed the
contract until these negotiations were concluded."
"Don't sign the contract, I lose the customer. What do you
want to do, ruin me? Ninety-nine, that's my absolutely
no-fooling final offer; take it or leave it. I don't think I
can turn a profit even with a hundred, it'll be touch and go.
But to get this over with . . . I'll tell you what.
Ninety-eight. That's twelve less than what you gave Reilly,
just down the road, not three days ago, and his herd's smaller
than mine."
"We're not here to discuss Reilly, we're talking about
your contract, and your herd. And your herd is not a happy
herd, I've heard nothing but grievances from them. I simply
can't allow one more murder than . . ." He glanced at David,
who shook his head barely enough to disturb a single amber wave
of grain. "Eighty," pronghornhead concluded.
Callie seethed silently for a while. There was no hope of
talking to her just yet, not until the unionists repaired for
consultations with their clients, so I moved back from the fire
a little. Something about the bargaining process had struck me
as relevant to my situation.
"CC," I whispered. "Are you there?"
"Where else would I be?" the CC murmured softly in my ear.
"And you only need to sub-vocalize; I'll pick up your words
easily enough."
"How would I know where you'd be? When I called for you
after you rowed away from me, you didn't answer. I thought you
might be sulking."
"I didn't think it would be profitable for either of us to
discuss what I'd just told you until you'd had time to think it
over."
"I have, and I've got a few questions."
"I'll do my best to answer them."
"These union reps. Are they really speaking for the
dinosaurs?"
There was a medium-sized pause. I guess the question did
seem irrelevant to the issue at hand. But the CC withheld
comment on that.
"You grew up on this ranch. I'd have thought you would
know the answer to that question."
"No, that's just it. I've never really thought about it.
You know Callie's feelings about animal rights. She told me the
Earthists were nothing but a bunch of mystics who had enough
political clout to get their crazy ideas put into law. She said
she had never believed they actually communed with the animals.
I believed her, and I haven't thought about it for seventy,
eighty years. But after what I've just been through, I wonder
if she's right."
"She's mostly wrong," the CC said. "That animals feel
things is easily demonstrable, even down at the level of
protozoans. That they have what you would recognize as thoughts
is more debatable. But since I am a party to these
negotiations--an indispensable party, I might add-I can tell
you that, yes, these creatures are capable of expressing
desires and responding to propositions, so long as they are
expressed in terms they understand."
"How?"
"Well . . . the contract that will eventually be hammered
out here is entirely a human instrument. These beasts will
never be aware of its existence. Since their 'language' is
confined to a few dozen trumpeted calls, it is quite beyond
their capacity. But the provisions of the contract will be
arrived at by a give-and-take process not unlike human
collective bargaining. Callie has injected all her stock with a
solution of water and some trillions of self-replicating
nano-engineered biotropic mechanisms that--"
"Nanobots."
"Yes, that's the popular term."
"You have something against popular terms?"
"Only their imprecision. The term 'nanobot' means a very
small self-propelled programmed machine, and that includes many
other varieties of intracellular devices than the ones
currently under discussion. The ones in your bloodstream and
within your body cells are quite different--"
"Okay, I see what you mean. But it's the same principle,
right? These little robots, smaller than red blood cells . . ."
"Some are much smaller than that. They are drawn to
specific sites within an organism and then they go to work.
Some carry raw materials, some carry blueprints, some are the
actual construction workers. Working at molecular speeds, they
build various larger machines--and by larger, you understand, I
still mean microscopic, in most cases--in the interstices
between the body cells, or within the cell walls themselves."
"Which are used for . . ."
"I think I see where you're going with this. They perform
many functions. Some are housekeeping chores that your own body
is either not good at, or has lost the capacity to do. Others
are monitoring devices that alert a larger, outside system that
something is going wrong. In Callie's herd, that is a Mark III
Husbander, a fairly basic computer, not significantly altered
in design for well over a century."
"Which is a part of you, naturally."
"All computers in Luna except abaci and your fingers are a
part of me. And in a pinch, I could use your fingers."
"As you've just shown me."
"Yes. The machine . . . or I, if you prefer, listens
constantly through a network of receivers placed around the
ranch, just as I listen constantly for your calls to me, no
matter where you are in Luna. This is all on what you might
think of as my subconscious level. I'm never aware of the
functioning of your body unless I'm alerted by an alarm, or if
you call me on-line."
"So the network of machines that's in my body, there's one
like it in each of Callie's brontosaurs."
"Related to it, yes. The neural structures are orders of
magnitude less evolved than the ones in your brain, just as
your organic brain is superior in operation to that of the
dinosaur. I don't run any parasitic programs in the dinosaur
brain, if that's what you mean."
I didn't think it was what I meant, but I wasn't
completely sure, since I wasn't completely sure why I'd asked
about this in the first place. But I didn't tell the CC that.
He went on.
"It is as close to mental telepathy as we're likely to
get. The union representatives are tuned into me, and I'm tuned
into the dinosaurs. The negotiator poses a question: 'How do
you fellows feel about 120 of your number being
harvested/murdered this year?' I put the question in terms of
predators. A picture of an approaching tyrannosaur. I get a
fear response: 'Sorry, we'd rather not, thank you.' I relay it
to the unionist, who tells Callie the figure is not acceptable.
The unionist proposes another number, in tonight's case, sixty.
Callie can't accept that. She'd go broke, there would be no one
to feed the stock. I convey this idea to the dinosaurs with
feelings of hunger, thirst, sickness. They don't like this
either. Callie proposes 110 creatures taken. I show them a
smaller tyrannosaur approaching, with some of the herd
escaping. They don't respond quite so strongly with the fear
and flight reflex, which I translate as 'Well, for the good of
the herd, we might see our way clear to losing seventy so the
rest can grow fat.' I put the proposal to Callie, who claims
the Earthists are bleeding her white, and so on."
"Sounds totally useless to me," I said, with only half my
mind on what the CC had been saying. I was seeing a vision of
myself living within the planet-girdling machine that the CC
had become, and of him living within my body as well. The funny
thing was that nothing I'd learned since arriving at Scarpa
Island had been exactly new to me. There were new, unheralded
capabilities, but looking at them, I could see they were
inherent in the technology. I'd had the facts, but not enough
of them. I'd spent almost no time thinking about them, any more
than I thought about breathing, and even less time considering
the implications, most of which I didn't like. I realized the
CC was talking again.
"I don't see why you should say that. Except that I know
your moral stand on the whole issue of animal husbandry, and
you have a right to that."
"No, that whole issue aside, I could have told you how
this all would come out, given only the opening bid. David
proposed sixty, right?"
"After the opening statement about murdering any of these
creatures at all, and his formal demand that all--"
"'--creatures should live a life free from the predation
of man, the most voracious and merciless predator of all,'
yeah, I've heard the speech, and David and Callie both know
it's just a formality, like singing the planetary anthem. When
they got down to cases, he said sixty. Man, he must really be
angry about something, sixty is ridiculous. Anyway, when she
heard sixty, Callie bid 120 because she knew she had to
slaughter ninety this year to make a reasonable profit, and
when David heard that he knew they'd eventually settle on
ninety. So tell me this: why bother to consult the dinosaurs?
Who cares what they think?"
The CC was silent, and I laughed.
"Tell the truth. You make up the images of meat-eaters and
the feelings of starvation. I presume that when the fear of one
balances out the fear of the other, when these poor dumb beasts
are equally frightened by lousy alternatives--in your
judgement, let's remember . . . well, then we have a contract,
right? So where would you conjecture that point will be found?"
"Ninety carcasses," the CC said.
"I rest my case."
"You have a point. But I actually do transmit the feelings
of the animals to the human representatives. They do feel the
fear, and can judge as well as I when a balance is reached."
"Say what you will. Me, I'm convinced the jerk with the
horns could have as easily stayed in bed, signed a contract for
ninety kills, and saved a lot of effort. Then prong-head could
look for useful work. Maybe as a gardener in David's hairdo."
There was a long silence from the CC. When he spoke again
it was in a different tone of voice from his usual lecturing
mode.
"The man with the horns," he said, quietly, "is actually
mentally defective in a way I've been powerless to treat. He
cannot read or write, and is not really suited for many jobs.
And Hildy, we all need something to do in this world. Life can
seem pointless without gratifying work."
That shut me up for a while. I knew only too well how
pointless life could seem.
"And he really does love animals," the CC added. "He hurts
when he thinks of one dying. I shouldn't be telling you any of
this, as I'm prohibited from commenting on the qualities, good
or bad, of human citizens. But in view of our recent
relationship, I thought . . ." He let it trail off, unfinished.
Enough of that.
"What about death?" I asked him. "You mentioned hunger and
the image of a predator. I'd think you'd get a stronger
reaction if you planted the idea of their actual deaths in
their minds."
"Much more of a reaction than you'd want. Predators and
hunger imply death, but inspire less fear than the actual
event. These negotiations are quite touchy; I've tried many
times to talk Callie into holding them indoors. But she says
that if 'salad-head' isn't afraid to pow-wow in the middle of
the herd, she isn't either. No, the death-image is the nuclear
weapon of predator/prey relations. It's usually a prelude to
either an attempt at union-busting, or a boycott."
"Or something even more serious."
"So I infer. Of course, I have no proof."
I wondered about that. Maybe the CC was leveling with me
when he said he only spied into private spaces in circumstances
as unusual as my own. Or into minds, for that matter. I
certainly no longer doubted that he could easily become aware
of illegal activities such as sabotage or head-busting by hired
goon squads--the timehonored last resorts of labor and
management, and even more in vogue these days among radical
groups like the Earthists who, after all, couldn't call on
their "membership" to go on strike. What would a brontosaur do?
Stop eating? The CC could certainly look into the places where
the bombs were assembled, or could become aware, if he chose to
do so, of the intent of the bomb-thrower through readings from
his ubiquitous intercellular machines. Every year there were
calls to permit him precisely those powers, by the
law-and-order types. After all, the CC is a benevolent
watchdog, isn't he? Who has he ever hurt, except those who
deserved it? We could reduce crime to zero overnight if we'd
only take the chains off the CC.
I'd even leaned that way myself, in spite of the civil
libertarian objections. After my sojourn on Scarpa Island, I
found myself heartily on the other side of the question. I
suppose I was simply illustrating that old definition of a
liberal: a conservative that just got arrested. A conservative,
of course, is a liberal who just got mugged.
"You are cynical about this process," the CC was saying,
"because you've only seen it from the commercial side, and
between humans and creatures with a very basic brain structure.
It is much more interesting when the negotiations are conducted
between higher mammals. There have been some interesting
developments in Kenya, where lion/antelope arbitration has been
going on for five decades now. The lions, in particular, have
become quite adept at it. By now they know how to chose the
most skilled representative, a sort of shop steward, using the
same instincts that drive them to dominance battles. I really
believe they've grasped the concept that there must be lean
hunting times, that if all the antelope were killed they would
get nothing but commercially prepared chow--which they like
well enough, but is no substitute for the hunt. There is one
grizzled old veteran without any teeth who, year after year,
gives the antelope as hard a time at the bargaining fire as he
ever did on the savannah in his youth. He's a sort of Samuel
Gompers of the-"
I was spared any more details of this leonine Lenin's
exploits by David Earth, who finally bestirred himself. He got
to his feet, and pronghead stood hastily, destroying the polite
myth that he had anything to do with the proceedings. David
seldom attended contract talks with individual ranchers
anymore, he was too occupied with appearances promoting his
Earthist philosophy to the voters. On television, of course;
there would be no quicker way to disperse a political rally
than to have David walk into it.
"I think we really have a problem," he said, in his Jovian
voice. "The innocent creatures we represent have too long
chafed under your yoke. Their grievances are many and . . .
well, grievous."
If David had a weakness, that was it. He wasn't the
world's greatest speaker. I think he grew worse every year, as
language became more of a philosophical burden to him. One of
the planks of his platform--when the millennium was
achieved-was the abolition of language. He wanted us all to
sing like the birdies sing.
"To name only one," he boomed on, "you are one of only
three murderers of dinosaurs who--"
"Ranchers," Callie said.
"--who persist in using the brontosaur's natural enemy as
a means of instilling terror into-- "
"Herding," Callie gritted. "And no t-saur of mine has ever
so much as put a scratch on a stinking b-saur."
"If you persist in interrupting me, we'll never get
anywhere," David said, with a loving smile.
"No one will stand there are call me a murderer on my own
land. There are courts of libel, and you're about to get
dragged into one."
They regarded each other across the fire, knowing that
ninety-nine percent of threats and accusations made here were
simply wind, tossed out to gain an advantage or disconcert an
opponent-and hating each other so thoroughly that I never knew
when one would put a threat into action. Callie's face
reflected her opinions. David merely smiled, as if to say he
loved Callie dearly, but I knew him better than that. He hated
her so much that he inflicted himself on her every five years,
and I can think of little more cruel than that.
"We must seek closer communion with our friends," David
said, abruptly, and turned and walked away from the fire,
leaving his minion to trail along ignominiously behind him.
Callie sighed when he vanished into the darkness. She
stood up, stretched, boxed the air, getting the kinks out.
Bargaining is tough on the whole mind and body, but the best
thing to bring to the table is a tough bottom. Callie rubbed
hers, and leaned over the cooler she had brought with her. She
tossed me a can of beer, got one for herself, and sat on the
cooler.
"It's good to see you," she said. "We didn't get a chance
to talk the last time you were here." She frowned, remembering.
"Come to think of it, you took off without any warning. We got
to my office, you were gone. What happened?"
"A lot of things, Callie. That's what I came here for, to
. . . to talk them over with you, if I could. See if you could
offer me some advice."
She looked at me suspiciously. Well, she was in a
suspicious frame of mind, I understand that, dealing with the
intransigent union. But it went deeper. We had never managed to
talk very well. It was a depressing thought to realize, once
again, that when I had something important to share with
someone, she was the best that sprang to mind. I thought about
getting up and leaving right then. I know I hesitated, because
Callie did what she had so often done when I'd tried to talk to
her as a child: she changed the subject.
"That Brenda, she's a much nicer child than you give her
credit for. We had a long talk after we found out you'd left.
Do you have any idea how much she looks up to you?"
"Some idea. Callie, I--"
"She's putting herself through a history course that would
stagger you, all so she can keep up when you talk about
'ancient history.' I think it's hopeless. Some things you have
to live through to really understand. I know about the
twenty-first century because I was there. The twentieth
century, or the nineteenth can't ever seem as real to me,
though I've read a great deal about them."
"Sometimes I don't think last month seems real to Brenda."
"That's where you're wrong. She knows her recent history a
lot better than you'd think, and I'm talking about things that
happened fifty, a hundred years before she was born. We sat
around and talked . . . well, mostly I told her stories, I
guess. She seemed fascinated." She smiled at the memory. It
didn't surprise me that Brenda had found favor with Callie.
There are few qualities my mother values more in a human being
than a willing ear.
"I don't have much contact with young people. Like I was
telling her, we move in different social circles. I can't stand
their music and they think I'm a walking fossil. But after a
few hours she started opening up to me. It was almost like
having . . . well, a daughter."
She glanced at me, then took a long drink of beer. She
realized she had gone too far.
Normally, a remark like that would have been the start of
the seventy zillionth repeat of our most popular argument. That
night, I was willing to let it slide. I had much more important
things on my mind. When I didn't rise to it, she must have
finally realized how troubled I was, because she leaned forward
with her elbows on her knees and looked at me.
"Tell me about it," she said, and I did.
#
But not all of it.
I told her of my fight in the Blind Pig, and of my
conversation with the CC that led to the pseudoexperiences
still so fresh in my mind. I told her the CC had explained it
as a cure for depression, which it was, in a way. But I found
it impossible to come right out and tell her that I'd tried to
kill myself. Is there a more embarrassing admission one can
make? Maybe some people would think nothing of it, would
eagerly show off what the experts called hesitation
marks--scars on the wrist, bullet holes in the ceiling; I'd
been doing a little reading on the subject while sequestered in
Texas. If suicide really is a cry for help, it would seem
reasonable to be open and honest in revealing that one had
attempted it, in order to get some sympathy, some advice, some
commiseration, maybe just a hug.
Or some pity.
Am I simply too proud? I didn't think so. I searched
through my motives as well as I was able, and couldn't discern
any need for pity, which is what I'd surely get from Callie.
Perhaps that meant my attempts had actually been motivated by
depression, by a desire simply to live no longer. And that was
a depressing thought in itself.
I eventually wound down, leaving my story with a rather
obvious lack of resolution. I'm sure Callie spotted it right
away, but she said nothing for a while. I know the whole thing
was almost as difficult for her as it was for me. Intimacy
didn't seem to run in the family. I felt better about her than
I had in years, just for having listened to me as long as she
had.
She reached behind the cooler and brought out a can of
something which she poured on the fire. It flared up
immediately. She looked at me, and grinned.
"Rendered b-saur fat," she said. "Great for barbecues;
gets the fire blazing real quick. I've used it on the meeting
fires for eighty years. One of these days when he provokes me
enough, I'll tell David about it. I'm sure he'll love me in
spite of it. Will you toss some more of those logs on the fire?
Right behind you, there's a pile of them."
I did, and we sat watching them blaze.
"You're not telling me something," she said, at last. "If
you don't want to, that's your business. But you're the one who
wanted to talk."
"I know, I know. It's just very hard for me. There have
been a lot of things going on, a lot of new things I've
learned."
"I didn't know about that memory-dump technique," she
said. "I wouldn't have thought the CC could do that without
your permission." She didn't sound alarmed about it. Like
practically all Lunarians, she viewed the CC as a useful and
very intelligent slave. She would concede, along with everyone
else, that it was a being devoted to helping her in every
possible way. But that's where she parted company with her
fellow citizens, who also thought of the CC as the least
intrusive and most benevolent form of government ever devised.
The CC hadn't mentioned it, but his means of access to the
Double-C Bar Ranch was limited. This was no accident. Callie
had deliberately set up her electronics such that she could
function independent of the CC if the need should arise. All
communication had to come through a single cable to her Mark
III Husbander, which really ran the ranch. The link was further
laundered through a series of gadgets supplied by some of her
similarly paranoid friends, designed to filter out the
subversive virus, the time bomb, and the Chinese Fire
Drill--all forms of computer witchery I know nothing about
apart from their names.
It was wildly inefficient. I also suspected it was futile;
the CC was in here, talking to me, wasn't he? Because that was
the real reason for all the barriers, for the electronic
drawbridge Callie could theoretically raise and lower at will,
for the photo-etched moat she hoped to fill with cybernetic
crocodiles and the molten glitches she meant to dump into
invading programs. She claimed to be able to isolate her castle
with the flick of one switch. Bang! and the CC would be cut
adrift from its moorings to the larger datanet known as the
Central Computer.
Silly, isn't it? Well, I'd always thought so, until the CC
took control of my own mind. Callie had always thought that
way, and while she was in the minority, she wasn't alone.
Walter agreed with her, and a few other chronic malcontents
like the Heinleiners.
I was about to go on with my tale of woe, but Callie put
her finger to her lips.
"It'll have to wait a bit," she said. "The Kaiser of the
Chordates is returning."
#
Callie immediately went into a sneezing fit. David's
already avuncular expression became so benign it bordered on
the ludicrous. He was enjoying it, no doubt about it. He seated
himself and waited while Callie fumbled through her purse and
found a nasal spray. When she had dosed herself and blown her
nose, he smiled lovingly.
"I'm afraid your offer of ninety-eight murders is--" He
held up his hand as Callie started to retort. "Very well.
Ninety-eight creatures killed is simply unacceptable. After
further consultation, and hearing grievances that have
astounded me--and you well know I'm an old hand at this
business . . ."
"Ninety-seven," Callie said.
"Sixty," David countered.
Callie seemed to doubt for a moment that she had heard him
right. The word hung in the air between them, with at least as
much incendiary potential as the fire.
"You started at sixty," Callie said, quietly.
"And I've just returned us there."
"What's going on here? This isn't how it's done, and you
know it. There's no love lost between us, to put it mildly, but
I've always been able to do business with you. There are
certain accepted practices, certain understandings that if they
don't have the force of law, they certainly enjoy the stamp of
custom. Everyone recognizes that. It's called 'good faith,' and
I don't think you're practicing it here tonight."
"There will be no more business as usual," David intoned.
"You asked what's going on, and I'll tell you. My party has
grown steadily in strength throughout this decade. Tomorrow I'm
making a major speech in which I will outline new quotas which,
over a twenty-year period, are intended to phase out the
consumption of animal flesh entirely. It is insane, in this day
and age, to continue a primitive, unhealthy practice which
demeans us all. Killing and eating our fellow creatures is
nothing but cannibalism. We can no longer allow it, and call
ourselves civilized."
I was impressed. He hadn't stumbled over a single word,
which must have meant he'd written and memorized it. We were
getting a preview of tomorrow's big show.
"Shut up," Callie said.
"Countless scientific studies have proved that the eating
of meat--"
"Shut up," Callie said again, not raising her voice, but
putting something else into it that was a lot more powerful
than shouting. "You are on my land, and you will shut up, or I
will personally boot your raggedy old ass all the way to the
airlock and cycle you through it."
"You have no right to--"
Callie threw her beer in his face. She just tossed it
right through the fire, then threw the empty can over her
shoulder into the darkness. For a moment his face froze into an
expression as blank as I've ever seen on a human; it made my
skin crawl. Then he relaxed back into his usual attitude, that
of the wise old sage bemused by the squabbles of an imperfect
world, looking down on it with god-like love.
A mouse peeked out of the weeds of his beard to see what
all the commotion was about. It sampled one of the beer
droplets, found it good, and began imbibing at a rate it might
regret in the morning.
"I've squatted out here beside this damn fire for over
thirty hours," Callie said. "I'm not complaining about that;
it's a cost of doing business, and I'm used to it. But I am a
busy woman. If you'd told me about this when we sat down, if
you'd had the courtesy to do that, I could have kicked sand
into the fire and told you I'd see you in court. Because that's
where we're going, and I'll have an injunction slapped on you
before that beer can dry. The Labor Relations Board will have
something to say, too." She spread her hands in an eloquent
Italianate gesture. "I guess we have nothing further to talk
about."
"It's wrong," David said. "It's also unhealthy, and . . ."
While he was groping for a word to describe a horror so
huge, Callie jumped back in.
"Unhealthy, that's one I never could understand.
Brontosaurus meat is the healthiest single food product ever
developed. I ought to know; I helped build the genes back when
both of us were young. It's low in cholesterol, high in
vitamins and minerals . . ." She stopped, and looked curiously
at David.
"What's the use?" she asked herself. "I can't figure it
out. I've disliked you from the first time we met. I think you
are plainly crazy, egotistic, and dishonest. All that 'love'
crap. I think you live in a fantasy world where nobody should
ever get hurt. But one thing I've never accused you of, and
that's stupidity. And now you're doing something stupid, as if
you really think you can bring it off. Surely you realize this
thing can't work?" She looked concerned as she stared at him.
Almost as if she wished she could help him.
Nothing could be more certain to light a fire under David,
but I honestly don't think Callie meant to provoke him. By her
lights he really was planning to commit political suicide if he
intended to keep Lunarians from their bronto meat, not to
mention all other forms of flesh. And she never did understand
foolishness in other human beings.
He leaned forward, opened his mouth to begin another
prepared tirade, but he never got the chance. What I think
happened, and the tapes back me up on this, is some of the
fresh logs shifted. One of them fell into a pool of the
brontosaur fat Callie had poured on, a pool that had been
burning on the surface and getting hotter by the minute. The
sudden addition of hot coals caused the fat to pop, like it
will in a skillet. There was a shower of sparks and all four of
us were spattered by tiny droplets of boiling, burning grease
that clung like napalm. Since they were mostly quite small,
there were just a few sharp pains on my arms and my face, and I
quickly slapped them out. Callie and the man with the horns
were slapping at themselves as well.
David had a somewhat larger problem.
"He's on fire!" prong-head shouted. And it was true. The
top of his grass-covered head was burning merrily. David
himself wasn't aware of it yet, and looked around in confusion,
then stared up with a surprised expression I would always
remember, even if it hadn't been shown a hundred times on the
news.
"I need some water," he said, brushing at the flames and
hastily drawing his hand back. He seemed calm enough.
"Here, wait a minute," Callie shouted, and turned toward
the beverage cooler. I think she meant to douse him with more
beer, and I thought in passing how ironic it was that her
throwing the first beer may have saved him having to buy a new
face because it had soaked the grass of his beard. "Mario, get
him on the ground, try and smother it."
I didn't comment on her use of my old name. It didn't seem
the proper time for it. I started around the fire, reached for
David, and he shoved me away. It was purely a panic reaction. I
think it had started to hurt by then.
"Water! Where is the water?"
"I saw a stream over that way," said pronghead. David
looked wildly around. He had become a sinking ship: I saw three
voles, a garter snake, and a pair of finches burst from their
hiding places, and the fleeing insects were too numerous to
count. Some flew directly into the campfire. David behaved no
better. He started running in the direction his assistant had
pointed, which Mister Fireman could have told him was exactly
the wrong thing to do. Either he hadn't paid attention in
kindergarten or he'd lost all rational thought. Seeing how
brightly he lit up the night, I figured it was the latter.
"No! David, come back!" Callie had turned from the cooler,
having ripped the top from a can of beer. "There's no water
that way!" She threw the can after him, but it fell short.
David was setting Olympic records in his sprint for the stream
that wasn't there. "Mario! Catch him!"
I didn't think I could, but I had to try. He'd be easy to
follow, unless he burned to the ground. I took off, pounding
the dirt with my feet, thanking the generations of brontosaurs
who had packed it so hard. David had run into a grove of
cycadoids and I was just getting to the edge of them when I
heard Callie shout again.
"Come back! Hurry, Mario, come back!" I slowed almost to a
stop, and became aware of a disturbing sensation. The ground
was shaking. I looked back at the campfire. Callie was standing
looking out into the darkness. She'd turned on a powerful hand
torch and was sweeping it back and forth. The beam caught a
brontosaur in full charge. It stopped, blinded and confused,
and then picked a direction at random and rumbled away.
An eighty-ton shadow thundered by, not three meters to my
right. I started moving back to the campfire, scanning the
darkness, aware I wouldn't get much warning. Halfway there,
another behemoth thundered into the council site. It actually
stepped in the fire, which wasn't to its liking at all. It
squealed, wheeled, and took off more or less toward me. I
watched it coming, figured it would keep moving that way unless
stopped by a major mountain chain, and dodged to my left. The
beast kept going and was swallowed by the night.
I knew enough about b-saurs to know not to expect rational
behavior from them. They were already upset by the
negotiations. Images of tsaurs and feelings of starvation must
have addled their tiny brains considerably. It would have taken
a lot less stimulus than a burning, screaming David Earth to
stampede them. He must have hit them like a stick of dynamite.
And when b-saurs panic, what little sense they possess deserts
them completely. They start off in random directions. There
seems to be an instinct that tends to draw them into a
thundering group, eventually headed in the same direction, but
they don't see well at night, and thus couldn't easily find
each other. The result was seventy or eighty walking mountains
going off in all directions. Very little could stand in their
way.
Certainly not me. I hurried to Callie's side. She was
talking into a pocket communicator, calling for hovercraft as
she stabbed the powerful light beam this way and that. Usually
it was enough to turn the beasts. When it was not, we stepped
very lively indeed.
Before long she picked out a medium-sized cow headed more
or less in our direction, and turned the beam away from it. She
slapped a saur-hook into my hand, and we watched it approach.
Where's the safest place to be in a dinosaur stampede? On
a dinosaur's back. Actually, the best place would have been on
one of the hovercraft, whose lights we could see approaching,
but you take what you can get. We waited for the hind legs to
get past us, dug our hooks into the cow's tail, and swung
ourselves up. A dinosaur doesn't precisely like being hooked,
but her perceptions of pain that far back on her body are dim
and diffused, and this one had other things on her tiny mind.
We scrambled up the tail until we could get a grip on the
fleshy folds of the back. Don't try this at home, by the way.
Callie was an old hand at it, and though I hadn't hooked a saur
in seventy years, the skills were still there. I only wobbled
for a moment, and Callie was there to steady me.
So we rode, and waited. In due time the bronto wore
herself out, rumbled to a stop, and started cropping leaves
from the top of a cycad, probably wondering by now what all the
fuss had been about, if she remembered it at all. We climbed
down, were met by a hover, and got into that.
#
Callie had the "sun" turned on to aid the search. We found
prong-head fairly quickly. He was kneeling in a muddy spot,
shaking uncontrollably. He had survived with nothing but luck
to aid him. I wondered if he ever loved animals quite so much,
or in quite the same way, after that night.
Say what you will about Callie, her worries for the lad
were genuine, and her relief at finding him alive and unhurt
was apparent even to him, in his distracted condition. For that
matter, though David Earth might call her a cold-blooded
killer, she hadn't wished death even on him. She simply
measured human life and animal life on different scales,
something David could never do.
"Let's get him out of here and find David," she said, and
grabbed the young man by his arm. "He's going to need a lot of
medical attention, if he made it." Prong-head resisted, pulling
away from her grasp, remaining on his knees. He pointed down
into the mud. I looked, and then looked away.
"David has returned to the food-chain," he said, and
fainted.
=*= =*= =*= =*=
The next several days were fairly hectic for me. I was
kept so busy I had little time to think or worry about the CC
or entertain thoughts of suicide. The whole idea seemed
completely alien.
Since I work for a print medium I tend not to think in
terms of pictures. My stories are meant to be written,
transmitted to a subscriber-rented scrambler-equipped newspad,
where they will be screened and read by that part of the
population that still reads. Walter employs others to shorten,
simplify, and read aloud his reporters' stories for the illit
channel of the newspad. There are of course all-visual news
services, and now there is direct interface, but so far at
least, D.I. is not something most people do for relaxation and
entertainment. Reading is still the preferred method of
information input for a large minority of Lunarians. It is
slower than D.I., but much quicker and in much greater depth
than pure television news.
But the News Nipple is an electronic medium, and many of
the stories we run come with film clips. Thus did the newspaper
manage to find a government-subsidized, yearly more perilous
niche for itself in the era of television. Pundits keep
predicting the death of the newspad, and year by year it
struggles on, maintained mostly by people who don't want too
much change in their lives.
I tend to forget about the holocam in my left eye. Its
contents are dumped at the same time I enter my story into the
Nipple's editorial computer, and a picture editor usually
fastforwards through it and picks a still shot or a few seconds
of moving images to back up my words. I remember when it was
first installed I worried that those editors would be seeing
things that I'd prefer to be private; after all, the thing
operates all the time, and has a six-hour memory. But the CC
had assured me there was a discrimination program in the main
computer that erased all the irrelevant pictures before a human
ever saw them. (Now it occurred to me to wonder about that. It
had never bothered me that the CC might see the full tapes, but
I'd never thought of him as a snoop before.)
The holocam is a partly mechanical, partly biologic device
about the size of a fingernail clipping that is implanted
inside the eye, way over to one side, out of the way of your
peripheral vision. A semi-silvered mirror is hung in the middle
of the eye, somewhere near the focal point, and reflects part
of the light entering the eye over to the holocam. When you
first have one put in you notice a slight diminution of light
sensitivity in that eye, but the brain is such that it quickly
adjusts and in a few days you never notice it again. It causes
my pupil to look red, and it glows faintly in the dark.
It had been operating when David Earth caught fire,
naturally. I didn't even think of it during subsequent events,
not until David's body had been removed and taken to wherever
Earthists are disposed of. Then I realized I had what might be
the biggest story of my career. And a scoop, as well.
Real death captured by a camera is always guaranteed to
make the front feed of the newspad. The death of a celebrity
would provide fodder for Walter's second-string feature writers
for months to come; anything to have an excuse to run once more
that glorious, horrible image of David's head wreathed in fire,
and the even more horrifying results of being crushed beneath a
stampeding brontosaur.
News footage is exclusive to the paper that filmed it for
a period of twenty-four hours. After that, there is a similar
period when it may be leased for minutes or hours, or sold
outright. After forty-eight hours it all becomes public domain.
A major metropolitan newspaper is geared to exploit these
two critical periods to the utmost. For the first day, when we
could exploit my film exclusively, we made the death of Earth
seem like the biggest story since the marriage of Silvio and
Marina twenty-five years ago, or their divorce one year later,
or the Invasion of the Planet Earth, take your pick. Those are
commonly thought to be the three biggest news stories of all
time, the only real difference in their magnitude being that
two of them were well-covered, and one was not. This story was
nowhere near that big, of course, but you'd never have known it
to read our breathless prose and listen to our frantic
commentators.
I was the center of much of this coverage. There was no
question of sleeping. Since I'm not an on-screen
personality--which means I'm an indifferent speaker, and the
camera does not love me--I spent most of the time sitting
across from our star anchor and answering his questions. Most
of this was fed out live, and often took as much as fifteen
minutes at the top of each hour. For the next fifteen minutes
we showed the reports sent back by the cadres of camerapeople
who descended on Callie's ranch and shot everything from
pictures of the killer dinosaur's bloody foot, to the corpses
of the three b-saurs killed in the stampede, to the still-vivid
imprint of David's body in the mud, to interviews with every
ranch hand who'd ever worked for Callie, even though none of
them had seen anything but the dead body.
I thought Walter was going to explode when he learned that
Callie refused to be interviewed under any circumstances or for
any amount of money. He sent me to the ranch to cajole her. I
went, knowing it would do no good. He threatened to have her
arrested; in his rage, he seemed to believe that refusing to
cooperate with the media-and with him in particular--was
illegal. For her part, Callie made several nasty calls
demanding that we stop using her image, and someone had to read
her the relevant parts of the law that said she couldn't do
anything about it. She rang me up and called me a Judas, among
other things. I don't know what she expected me to do with the
biggest story of my life; sit on it, I guess. I called her a
few things back, just as harsh. I think she was concerned about
her possible liability in the incident, but the main reason was
her loathing for the popular press--something I couldn't
entirely disagree with her on. I have wondered, from time to
time, if that's why I got into this business. Nasty thought,
that.
Anyway, I decided it would be pointless to seek her advice
on the parts of my story I hadn't gotten around to telling her,
for at least a year or so. Make that five years.
The next day was spent farming the story out to competing
rags and vids, but on our terms. The price was high, but
willingly paid. They knew that next time they were as likely to
be on the selling end, and would gouge appropriately. As was
standard practice, I was always included as part of the deal,
so I could mention the Nipple as often and as blatantly as
possible while on live feeds. So I talked myself into a sore
throat sitting beside endless commentators, columnists, and
similar sorts, while the by now dated footage ran yet another
time.
The only person who got as much exposure as I did during
those two days was Eartha Lowe. A movement as radical as the
Earthists will spawn splinter groups like a sow whelps piglets.
It's a law of nature. Eartha was the leader of the largest one,
also called the Earthists, purely to give headaches to poor
newspapermen, I'm convinced. Some of us distinguished them as
Earthist(David) and Earthist(Lowe), others tried the
abomination of Eartha-ists. Most of us simply called them the
Earthists and the Other Earthists, something guaranteed to
provoke a wailing woodnote wild from Eartha, because there was
no need to explain who the "Others" were.
David had died politically intestate. There was no heir
apparent in his organization. Increasingly, people were not
planning for their own deaths, because they simply didn't
expect to die. Perhaps that explains the mordant fascination
with violent images in popular entertainment and the clamor for
more details about real deaths when they occur. We haven't
achieved immortality yet. Maybe we never will. People are
reassured to see death as something that happens to somebody
else, and not often at that.
Eartha Lowe was standing on every soapbox that would
support her not-inconsiderable weight, welcoming the strays
back into the fold. In her version, it was David who had split
away. Who cared that he had taken ninety percent of the flock
with him? We were told that Eartha had always loved David (no
surprise; they had both professed to love every living
creature, though David had loved Eartha more on the level of,
say, a nematode or a virus, not so much as the family dog) and
Eartha had returned his affection in spades. I couldn't follow
all the doctrinal differences. The big one seemed to be
Eartha's contention that any proper Earthist should be in the
female image, to be a mirror of Mother Earth. Or something like
that.
All in all, it was the goldarndest, Barnum-andBaileyest,
rib-stickinest, rough-and-tumblest infernal foofaraw of a media
circus anybody had seen since grandpaw chased the possum down
the road and lost his store teeth, and I was heartily sorry to
have been a part of it.
When the two-day purgatory was over, I collapsed into my
bed for twelve hours. When I woke up, I gave some thought once
more to getting out of the business. Was it a root cause of my
self-destructive tendencies? One would have to think that
hating what I did might contribute to feelings of
worthlessness, and thus to thoughts of ending it all. I tabled
the matter for the moment. I have to admit that though I may
feel disdain for the things we do and the manner in which we do
them, there is a heady thrill to the news business when things
are really happening. Not that exciting things happen all that
often, even in my line of work. Most news is of the
notmuch-happened-today variety, tricked up in various sexy
lies. But when it does happen, it's exhilarating. And there's
an even guiltier pleasure in being where things are happening,
in being the first to know something. About the only other line
of work where you can get as close to the center of things is
politics, and even I draw the line at that. I have some
standards left.
Talking to Callie had been a bust, advice-wise if not
career-wise. But in searching for sources of dissatisfaction
one thing had grown increasingly clear to me. I was wearing my
body like a badly fitted pair of trousers, the kind that bind
you in the crotch. A year as a female, ersatz though the
experience had been, had shown me it was time for a Change.
Past time, probably by several years.
Could that have been the fountain of my discontent? Could
it have been a contributing factor? Doubtful, and possibly.
Even if it had nothing to do with it, it wouldn't hurt to go
ahead and get it done, so I could be comfortable again. Hell,
it was no big deal.
#
When the terribly, terribly fashionable decide the old
genitals are getting to be rather a bore, don't you know, they
phone the chauffeur and have the old bones driven down to
Change Alley.
Normally, when it came time for a Change, I would hie me
to some small neighborhood operation. They are all
board-certified, after all, one just as able as another to do
the necessary nipping and tucking. A confluence of
circumstances this time decided me to visit the street where
the elite meet. One was that my pockets were bulging with the
shekels Walter had showered on me in the form of bonuses for
the Burning Earth story. The other was that I knew Darling
Bobbie when he was just Robert Darling of Crazy Bob's Budget
Barbering and Tattoo Parlor, back when he did sex changes as a
sideline to bring in more money. He'd had a little shop on the
Leystrasse, a determinedly working-class commercial corridor
with a third of the shopfronts boarded up and plastered with
handbills, running through one of the less fashionable
neighborhoods of King City. He'd been sandwiched between a
bordello and a taco stand, and his sign had read "Finast Gender
Alteration On The Leystrasse--E-Z Credit Terms." None of which
was news to anyone: his was the only Change shop in the area,
and you couldn't offer so expensive a service around there
without being prepared to finance. Not that he did a lot of it.
Laborers can't afford frequent sex changes and, as a group, are
not that inclined to question Mother Nature's toss of the dice,
much less flit back and forth from one sex to the other. He did
much better with the tattooing, which was cheap and appealed to
his clientele. He told me he had regulars who had their entire
bodies done every few weeks.
That had been over twenty-five years ago, when I had my
last previous sex change. In that time, Crazy Bob had come up
in the world. He had invented some body frill or other--I can't
even recall what it was now, these things come and go so
quickly they make mayflies seem elderly--that was "discovered"
by slumming socialites. He was elevated overnight into the new
guru of secondary sexual attributes. Fashion writers now
attended his openings and wrote knowingly about the new
season's whimsy. Body styling would probably never be as big or
influential as the rag trade, but a few practitioners to the
hi-thrust set had carved themselves a niche in the world of
fashion.
And Crazy Bob had spent the last ten years trying to make
people forget about the little cock shop next door to the
Jalapen~o Heaven.
Change Alley is a ridiculous name for the place, but it
does branch off of the fivekilometer gulch of glitz known as
Hadleyplatz. For fifty years the Platz, as everyone knew it,
had been the inheritor of such places as Saville Row, Fifth
Avenue, Kimberly Road, and Chimki Prospekt. It was the place to
go if you were looking for solid gold toenail clippers, not so
great for annual white sales. They didn't offer credit on the
Platz, E-Z or otherwise. If the door didn't have your gencode
in its memory banks along with an up-to-the-millisecond
analysis of your pocketbook, it simply didn't open for you.
There were no painted signs to be seen, and almost no
holosigns. Advertising on the Platz ran to small logos in the
bottom corners of plate glass windows, or brilliantly-buffed
gold plaques mounted at eye level.
The Alley branched away from the main promenade at a sharp
angle and dead-ended about a hundred meters later in a cluster
of exclusive restaurants. Along the way were a handful of small
storefronts operated by the handful of very tasteful hucksters
who could persuade their clientele to part with ten times the
going rate for a body make-over so they could have "Body By
So-and-so" engraved on the nail of their pinky finger.
There were holosigns in the Alley shops, showing each
designer's ideas of what the fashionable man or woman was being
these days. The tastemongers back on the main drag liked to say
the Alley was off the Platz, but not of the Platz. Still, it
was all a far cry from the tattoo templates filling the windows
of the Budget Barber.
I wondered if I ought to go in. I wondered if I could go
in. Bob and I had been drinking buddies for a while, but we'd
lost contact after his move. I pressed my hand to the
identiplate, felt the tiny pressure as a probe scraped away a
minuscule amount of dead skin. The machine seemed to hesitate;
perhaps I'd be sent around to the tradesmen's entrance. Then it
swung open. There should have been a flourish of trumpets, I
thought, but that would have been too demonstrative for the
Alley.
"Hildy! Enchanting, enchanting old boy. So good to see
you." He had come out of some concealed back room and covered
the distance to me in three long strides. He pumped my hand
enthusiastically, looking me up and down and adopting a dubious
air. "Good heavens, am I responsible for that? You came just in
time, my friend. Not a moment too soon. But don't worry, I can
fix it, cousin Bobbie will take care of everything. Just put
yourself in my hands."
I suddenly wondered if I wanted to be in his hands. I
thought he was laying it on a trifle thick, but it had been a
while since I'd seen him, and I'm sure he had appearances to
maintain. The gushing, the mincing, all were nods toward
tradition, something practiced by many in his line of work,
just as lawyers tried to develop a sober facade suitable for
the weighty matters they dealt in. Back before Changing, the
fashion world had been dominated by homosexual men. Sexuality
being as complicated as it is, with hundreds of identified
orientations--not to mention ULTRATingle--it was impossible to
know much about anyone else's preferences without talking it
over and spelling it out. Bob, or perhaps I should say Darling,
was hetero-oriented, male born and male leaning, which meant
that, left to his own choice, would be male most of the time
with occasional excursions into a female body, and no matter
his current sex would prefer the company of the opposite.
But his profession almost demanded that he Change four or
five times a year, just as the rag merchants had better wear
their own designs. Today he was male, and didn't look any
different from when I had know him. At least he didn't at
first. When I looked more closely, I saw there were a thousand
subtle alterations, none of them radical enough so his friends
wouldn't recognize him on the street.
"You don't have to take the blame," I told him, as he took
my elbow and guided me toward something he called a "Counseling
Suite." "Maybe you don't remember, but I brought in all the
specs myself. You never had a chance to practice your craft."
"I remember it quite well, dear boy, and perhaps it was
the will of Allah. I was still learning my art,--please heed
the stress on the word, Hildy--and I probably would have made a
botch of it. But I do recall being quite cross."
"No, Darling, in those days you didn't get cross, you got
pissed-off."
He made a weird sort of smirk, acknowledging the jibe but
not letting the tinkerbell mask slip a millimeter. I glanced
around the suite, and had to stifle a laugh. This was girl
heaven. The walls were mirrors, creating a crowd of Hildys and
Bobbies. Most everything else was pink, and had lace on it. The
lace had lace on it. It was fabulously overdone, but I liked
it. I was in the mood for this sort of thing. I sank gratefully
into a pink and white lacy settee and felt the anxiety wash
away from me. This had been a good idea after all.
A female assistant or whatever entered with a silver
bucket of champagne on ice, set it up near me, poured some into
a tall glass. It was a measure of my alienation from my current
somatotype that I watched these operations with complete
disinterest. A week before . . . well, before Scarpa Island,
however that interval should be measured, I would have been
attracted to the woman. Just at the moment I was effectively
neuter. Robert didn't interest me either. Actually, he probably
wouldn't interest me after the change, simply because he was
not my "type," a word simply dripping with meaning in the age
of gender selection.
Like my host, I am hetero oriented. Which is not to say I
have never engaged in sex with a partner of my current sex;
hasn't everybody? Can anyone remain truly heteroist when they
have been both male and female? I suppose anything's possible,
but I've never encountered it. What I find is that sex for me
is always better when there is a man and a woman involved.
Twice in my life I have met people I wanted to become more
deeply attached to when both of us were of the same sex. In
both cases, one of us Changed.
I don't know how to explain it. I don't believe anyone can
really explain reasons behind their sexual preferences, unless
they're based on prejudice: i.e., this or that practice is
unnatural, against God's law, perverted, disgusting, and so
forth. There's still some of that around, a bit of it in Bob's
old neighborhood, in fact, where he twice had windows smashed
and once had truly repulsive Christian slogans painted over his
sign. But sexual preference seems to be something that happens
to you, not something you elect. The fact is, when I'm a boy
I'm intensely interested in girls, and have little or no
interest in other boys, and vice versa when I'm a girl. I have
friends who are precisely the opposite, who are homo-oriented
in both sexes. So be it. I know people who cover the whole
spectrum between these two positions, from the dedicated males
and females, homo and hetero, to the pan-sexuals who only
require you to be warm and would be willing to overlook it if
you weren't, to the dysfunctionals who aren't happy in either
sex, to the true neuters, who identify with neither sex, have
all external and internal attributes removed and are quite glad
to be shut of the whole confusing, inconvenient, superfluous,
messy business.
As to type, neither Robert or Darling was mine. When
female, I'm not as much concerned with physical beauty in a
partner as when I'm male, though it's only a matter of degree,
since when beauty can be purchased at will it becomes a rather
common and quite unremarkable quality. Rob/Bob's lanky Ichabod
Cranish physique and long narrow physysiognomy didn't set my
girlish heart to beating, but that wouldn't put me off if the
personality traits compensated. They didn't. He was fine as a
buddy, but as a lover he would be entirely too needy. He had
insecurities science has not yet found a name for.
"Did we remember to bring our little specs with us,
Hildy?" he asked. I had, and handed them to him. He leafed
through the pages quickly, sniffed, but not in a judgmental
way, just as if to say he couldn't be bothered with the
technicalities. He handed the genetic specifications to his
aide, and clapped his hands. "Now, let's flutter out of those
charming togs, can't create without a bare bodkin, chop, chop."
I stripped and he took the clothing, looking as though he
wished for sterilized forceps. "Where did you find these
things. Why, it's been years . . . we'll of course have them
cleaned and folded."
"I found them in my closet, and you can donate them to the
poor."
"Hildy, I don't think there is anyone that poor."
"Then throw them away."
"Oh, thank you." He handed the clothing to the woman, who
left the room with them. "That was a truly humanitarian
gesture, old friend, an act that shows a great deal of caring
for the fashion environment."
"If you're grateful," I said, "then you could stop
spreading the pixie dust. We're alone now. This is me,
Darling."
He looked around conspiratorially. All I saw were
thousands upon thousands of Hildy's and a like number of
whoever he was. He sat in a chair facing me and relaxed a
little.
"How about you call me Bobbie? It's not quite so
pretentious as Darling, and not so dreadful and reminiscent as
Robert. And to tell you the truth, Hildy, I'm finding it harder
every day to drop the pose. I'm beginning to wonder if it is a
pose. I haven't got pissed off in years, but I get cross
practically all the time. And there's a big difference, as you
reminded me."
"We all pose, Bobbie. Maybe the old pose wasn't the proper
one for you."
"I'm still hetero, if you were wondering."
"I wasn't, but I'd be astonished if you weren't. Polarity
switches are pretty rare, according to what I've read."
"They happen. There's precious little I don't see in this
business. So how have you been? Still writing trash?"
Before I could answer he started off on the first of a
series of tangents. He thanked me effusively for the good
coverage he'd always had from the Nipple. He must have been
aware that I didn't work on the fashion page, but maybe he
thought I'd put in a good word for him. Seeing as how he was
about to design a new body for me, I saw no reason to
disillusion him.
There were many more things discussed, many glasses of
champagne put away, some aromatic and mildly intoxicating
smokes inhaled. It all kept coming back to Topic A: when were
"they" going to discover he was a fraud?
I was conversant with that feeling myself. It's common to
people who are good at something they have no particular love
for. In fact, it's common among all but the most
self-assured--say, Callie, for instance. Robbie had a bad case
of it, and I could hardly blame him. Not that I thought him an
utter charlatan. I don't have much of an eye for such things,
but from what I gathered he actually was quite talented. But in
the world he inhabited, talent often had very little to do with
anything. Taste is fickle. In the world of design, you're only
as good as your last season. The back alleys and taprooms of
Bedrock are strewn with the still-breathing corpses of people
who used to be somebody. Some of them had shops right here in
the Alley.
After a while I began to be a little alarmed. I knew
Robbie, and I knew he would always be this way, frightened that
the success he'd never really adjusted to because he'd never
understood where it came from would be snatched away from him.
That's just the way he was. But from the amount of time he
seemed willing to spend with me, he was either in deep trouble
or I should feel extremely flattered. I'd counted on having ten
or fifteen minutes with The Master while he penciled in the
broad strokes, then turned me over to aides to do the actual
design work. Didn't he have more important clients waiting
somewhere?
"Saw you on telly," he said, after winding down from his
increasingly tiresome lament. "With that dreadful . . . what's
her name? I forget. More on that incredibly boring David Earth
story. I'm afraid I switched off. I don't care if I never hear
his name again."
"I felt that way three hours into the first day. But you
were fascinated for at least twentyfour hours, you couldn't get
enough news about it."
"Sorry to disappoint you. It was boring."
"I doubt it. Think back to when you first read about it.
You were dying to hear more. It was boring later, after you'd
seen the film three or four times."
He frowned, then nodded. "You're right. My eyes were glued
to the newspad. How did you know?"
"It's true of almost everybody. You in particular. If
everyone's talking about something, you can't afford not to
have an opinion, a snide comment, a worldly sigh . . .
something. To not have heard of it would be unthinkable."
"We're in the same business, aren't we?"
"We're cousins, anyway. Maybe the difference is, in my
business we can afford to run something into the ground. We use
up news. By the time we're through with it, there is nothing
quite so boring as what fascinated you twenty-four hours ago.
Then we move on to the next sensation."
"Whereas I must always watch for that magic moment a few
seconds before something becomes as pass as your taste in
clothing."
"Exactly."
He sighed. "It's wearing me down, Hildy."
"I don't envy you--except for the money."
"Which I am investing most sensibly. No hithrust vacations
to the Uranian moons for me. No summer homes on Mercury.
Strictly blue chips. I'm not going to ever have to scrape for
my air money. What I wonder is, will the hunger for lost
acclaim emaciate my soul?" He raised an eyebrow and gave me a
jaundiced look. "I assume those specs you gave Kiki outline a
plan as stodgy as what you're currently walking around in?"
"Why would you assume that? Would I come here if I wanted
something I could get in any local barber shop? I want Body By
Bobbie."
"But I thought . . ."
"That was female to male. The reverse is a whore of a
different color."
#
I decided to make a note to myself. Send flowers to the
fashion editor of the Nipple. There was no other way to account
for the royal treatment Bobbie lavished on me during the next
four hours. Oh, sure, my money was as good as anyone else's,
and I didn't want to think too hard about the bill for all
this. But neither friendship nor idleness could explain
Bobbie's behavior. I concluded he was looking for a good
review.
Can you call something a quirk when you share it was a
large minority of your fellow citizens? I'm not sure, but
perhaps it is. I've never understood the roots of this
peculiarity, any more than I understand why I don't care to go
to bed with men when I am a man. But the fact is, as a man I am
fairly indifferent to how I look and dress. Clean and neat,
sure, and ugly is something I can certainly do without. But
fashions don't concern me. My wardrobe consists of the sort of
thing Bobbie threw away when I arrived, or worse. I usually put
on shorts, a comfortable shirt, soft shoes, a purse: standard
men's wear, suitable for all but formal occasions. I don't pay
much attention to colors or cut. I ignore make-up completely
and use only the blandest of scents. When I'm feeling festive I
might put on a colorful skirt, more of a sarong, really, and
never fret about the hemline. But most of what I wear wouldn't
have raised eyebrows if I had gone back in time and walked the
streets in the years before sex changing.
The fact is, I feel that while a woman can wear just about
anything, there are whole categories of clothing a man looks
silly in.
Case in point: the body-length, form-fitting gown, the
kind that reaches down to the ankles, maybe with a slit up one
side to the knee. Put it on a man's body and the penis will
produce a flaw in the smooth line unless it is strapped down
tight--and the whole point of wearing something like that, to
my mind, is to feel slinky, not bound up. That particular
garment was designed to show the lines of a woman's body,
curves instead of angles. Another is the plunging neckline,
both the sort that conceal and the kind that push up and
display the breasts. A man can certainly get away with a deep
neckline, but the purpose and the engineering of it are
different.
Before you start your letter to the editor, I know these
are not laws of nature. There's no reason a man can't have
feminine legs, for instance, or breasts, if he wants them. Then
he'd look good in those clothes, to my eye, but precisely
because he had feminine attributes. I am much more of a
traditionalist when it comes to somatotypes. If I have the
breasts and the hips and the legs, I want the whole package.
I'm not a mixer. I feel there are boy things and girl things.
The basic differences in body types are easy to define. The
differences in clothing types is tougher, and the line moves,
but can be summarized by saying that women's clothing is more
apt to emphasize and define secondary sexual characteristics,
and to be more colorful and varied.
And I can name a thousand exceptions through history, from
the court of Louis the Sun King to the chador of Islamic women.
I realize that western women didn't wear pants until the
twentieth century, and men didn't wear skirts-Scotland and the
South Seas notwithstanding--until the twenty-first. I know
about peacocks and parrots and mandrill baboons. When you start
talking about sex and the way you think it should be, you're
bound to get into trouble. There are very few statements you
can make about sex that won't have an exception somewhere.
I guess this is something of a hobby-horse with me. It's
in reaction to the militant unisexers who believe all
gender-identified clothing should be eliminated, that we should
all pick our clothing randomly, and sneer at you publicly when
you dress too feminine or masculine. Or even worse, the
uniformists, those people who want us all to wear formal
job-identified clothing at all times, or a standardized
outfit--wait a minute, I've got one right here, just let me
show you, you'll love it!--usually some drearily practical
People's Jumpsuit with a high neck and lots of pockets, comes
in three bilious colors. Those people would have us all running
about looking like some dreadful twentieth century "futuristic"
film, when they thought the people of 1960 or 2000 would all
want to dress alike, with meter-wide shelves on their shoulders
or plastic bubbles over their heads or togas or the ubiquitous
jumpsuit with no visible zipper, and leave you wondering how
did those people make water. These folks would be amusing if
they didn't introduce legislation every year aimed at making
everyone behave like them.
Or lingerie! What about lingerie? Transvestism didn't die
with sex changing--very little did, because human sexuality is
concerned with what gives us a thrill, not what makes sense-and
some people with male bodies still prefer to dress up in garter
belts and padded bras and short transparent nightgowns. If they
enjoy it that's fine with me. But I've always felt it looks
awful, simply because it clashes. You may say the only thing it
clashes with are my cultural preconceptions, and I'd agree with
you. So what else is fashion? Bobbie could tell you that
tinkering with a cultural icon is something you do at your own
peril, with a few stiff drinks, a brave smile, and a
premonition of disaster, because nine times out of ten it just
doesn't sell.
Which simply means that as many as half my fellow citizens
feel as I do about gender dressing, and if that many feel that
way, how bad can it be?
I rest my case.
#
So I spent a pleasant time fulfilling a genderbased
stereotype: shopping. I enjoyed the hell out of it.
When you get the full treatment from Bobbie, no bodily
detail is too small. The big, gaudy, obvious things were
quickly disposed of. Breasts? What are people wearing this
year, Bobbie? As small as that? Well, let's not get ridiculous,
dear, I'd like to feel a little bounce, all right? Legs? Sort
of . . . you know . . . long. Long enough to reach the ground.
No knobs on the knees, if you please. Trim ankles. Arms? Well,
what can you say about arms? Work your magic, Bobbie. I like a
size five shoe and all my best dresses are nines--and thirty
years out of date, enough time for some of them to be stylish
again-so work around that. Besides, I feel comfortable in a
body that size, and height reductions cost out at nearly two
thousand per centimeter.
Some people spend most of their time on the face. Not me.
I've always preferred to make any facial changes gradually, one
feature at a time, so people can recognize me. I settled on my
basic face fifty years ago, and see no need to change it for
current fashion, beyond a little frill here and there. I told
Bobbie not to change the underlying bone structure at all; I
feel it's suitable for a male or a female countenance. He
suggested a slight fullness to the lips and showed me a new
nose I liked, and I went flat-out trendy with the ears, letting
him give me his latest design. But when I showed up for work
after the Change, everyone would know it was Hildy.
I thought I was through . . . but what about the toes?
Bare feet are quite practical in Luna, and had come back into
vogue, so people will be looking at your toes. The current rage
was to eliminate them entirely as an evolutionary atavism;
Bobbie spent some time trying to sell me on Sockfeet, which
look just like they sound. I guess I'm just a toe person. Or if
you listen to Bobbie, a Cro-Magnon. I spent half an hour on the
toes, and almost as much time on the fingers and hands. There's
nothing I hate like sweaty hands.
I put considerable thought into the contemplation of
navels. With the nipples and the vulva, the navel is the only
punctuation between the chin and the toenails, the only places
for the eye to pause in the smooth sweep of the female form I
was designing. I did not neglect it. Speaking of the vulva, I
once again proved myself a hopeless reactionary. Lately,
otherwise conservative women had been indulging the most
outrageous flights of fancy when it came to labial
architecture, to the point that it was sometimes difficult to
be sure what sex you were looking at without a second glance. I
preferred more modest, compact arrangements. With me, it is
mostly not for public display anyway. I usually wear something
below the waist, some sort of skirt or pants, and I didn't want
to frighten off a lover when I dropped them.
"You won't frighten anyone with that, Hildy," Bobbie said,
looking sourly at the simulation of the genitals I'd just spent
so much time elaborating. "I'd say your main problem here is
boredom."
"It was good enough for Eve."
"I must have missed her last showing. Can't imagine why.
I'm sure it will prove quite useful in the circles you move in,
but are you sure I couldn't interest you in--"
"I'm the one that has to use it, and that's what I want.
Have a heart, Bobbie. I'm an oldfashioned girl. And didn't I
give you a free hand with the skin tones, and the nipples, and
the ears and the shoulderblades and the collarbones and the ass
and those two fetching little dimples in the small of the
back?" I turned at the waist and looked at the full-body
simulation that had replaced one of the mirrors, and chewed on
a knuckle. "Maybe we should take another look at those dimples
. . ."
He talked me out of changing that, and into a slight
alteration of the backs of the hands, and he bitched at me some
more and threw up his hands in disgust at every opportunity,
but I could tell he was basically pleased. And so was I. I
moved around, watching the female I was about to become
duplicate all my movements, and it was good. It was the seventh
hour: time to rest.
And then a strange thing happened to me. I was taken to
the prep room, where the technicians built their mystical
elixirs, and I began to suffer a panic attack. I watched the
thousand and one brews dripping from the synthesizers into the
mixing retorts, cloudy with potential, and my heart started
beating wildly and I began to hyperventilate. I also got angry.
I knew what I was afraid of, and anyone would be angry.
Unless you've chosen the most radical of body make-overs,
very little of modern sex changing involves actual surgery. In
my case, about all the cutting that was planned was the removal
and storage of the male genitalia, and their replacement with a
vagina, cervix, uterus, and set of fallopian tubes and ovaries
which were even then being messengered over from the organ
bank, where they'd reposed since my last Change. There would be
a certain amount of body sculpting, but not much. Most of the
myriad alterations I was about to undergo would be done by the
potions being mixed in the prep room. Those brews contained two
elements: a saline solution, and uncounted trillions of
nanobots.
Some of these cunning little machines were standard, made
from templates used in all male-tofemale sex changes. Some were
customized, cobbled together from parts stolen from microbes
and viruses or from manufactured components, assembled by
Bobbie and assigned a specific and often minute task,
copyrighted, and given snippets of my own genetic code much
like a bloodhound is given an old shoe to establish the scent.
All of them were too small to be seen by the human eye. Some
were barely visible in a good microscope. Many were smaller
than that.
They were assembled by other nanobots at chemical-reaction
speeds, and produced in groups seldom smaller than one million
units. Injected into the bloodstream, they responded to the
conditions they found there, gravitated to their assigned
working sites using the same processes whereby hormones and
enzymes found their way through the corpus, identified the
right spots by using jig-saw-like pieces of these same bodily
regulators as both maps and grapplers, attached themselves, and
began to boogie. The smaller ones penetrated the individual
cell walls and entered the DNA itself, reading the amino acids
like rosary beads, making carefully planned cuts and splices.
The larger ones, the kind with actual motors and manipulators
and transistors, screws, scrapers, memories, arms--what used to
be called microbots when they were first made with the same
technologies that produced primitive integrated circuit
chips--these congregated at specified sites and performed
grosser tasks. The microbots would each be handed a piece of my
genetic code and another piece synthesized by Bobbie, which
functioned like eccentric cams in making the tiny machines do
their particular job. Some would go to my nose, for instance,
and start carving away here, building up there, using my own
body and supplementary nutrients carried in by cargo microbots.
Waste material was picked up in the same way and ferried out of
the body. In this way one could gain or lose weight very
quickly. I myself planned to emerge from the Change fifteen
kilos lighter.
The nanobots labored diligently to make the terrain fit
the map. When it did, when my nose was the shape Bobbie had
intended, they detached themselves and were flushed away,
de-programmed, and bottled to await the next customer.
Nothing new or frightening about that. It was the same
principle used in the over-the-counter pills you can buy to
change the color of your eyes or the kinkiness of your hair
while you sleep. The only difference was the nanobots in the
pills were too cheap to salvage; when they'd done their work
they simply turned themselves off in your kidneys and you
pissed them away. Most of the technology was at least one
hundred years old, some more ancient than that. The hazards
were almost nil, very well-known, and completely in control.
Except I now found I had developed a fear of nanobots.
Considering what the CC had told me about them, I didn't think
it was entirely unfounded.
The other thing that frightened me was even worse. I was
afraid to go to sleep.
Not so much sleep in the normal sense. I had slept well
enough the night before; better than normal, in fact,
considering my exhaustion from the two-day celebrity binge. But
the epic infestation of nanobots I was about to experience
wreaks havoc on the body and the mind. It's not something you
want to be awake for.
Bobbie noticed something was wrong as he took me to the
suspension tank. It was all I could do to hold still while the
techs shoved the various hoses and cables into the
freshly-incised stigmata in my arms and legs and belly. When I
was invited to step into the coffin-sized vat of cool blue
fluid, I almost lost my composure. I stood there gripping the
sides of the vat, knuckles white, with one foot in and the
other not wanting to leave the floor.
"Something the matter?" Bobbie asked, quietly. I saw some
of his helpers were trying not to stare at me.
"Nothing you could do anything about."
"You want to tell me about it? Let me get these people out
of the room."
Did I want to tell him? In a way, I was aching to. I'd
never gotten to tell Callie, and the urge to spill it to
somebody was almost overwhelming.
But this was not the place and certainly not the time, and
Bobbie was most definitely not the person. He would simply find
a way to incorporate it into the continuing Gothic novel that
was The Life Of Robert Darling, with himself the imperiled
heroine. I simply had to get through this myself and talk it
over with someone later.
And suddenly I knew who that someone would be. So get it
over with, Hildy, grit your teeth and step into the tub and let
the soothing fluids lull you into a sleep no more dangerous
than you've had every night for 36 1/2 thousand nights.
The water closed over my face. I gulped it into my
lungs--always a bit unpleasant until all the air is gone--and
looked up into the wavering face of my re-creator, unsure when
and where I would wake up again.
=*= =*= =*= =*=
I found Fox deep in the bowels of the Oregon disneyland.
He was engrossed in a blueprint projected on a big horizontal
table at the foot of a machine the size of an interplanetary
liner, which I later learned was the starter motor for a
battery of machines that produced north winds in Oregon.
Machines merely elephantine in size swarmed around the
partially-assembled behemoth, some with human operators, some
working on their own, and there was the usual crowd of
blueuniformed laborers leaning on shovels and perfecting their
spitting techniques.
He glanced up as I came closer, looked me up and down, and
returned to his work. I'd seen a flicker of interest in his
eyes, but no recognition. Then he looked up again, looked
harder, and suddenly smiled.
"Hildy? Is that you?"
I stopped and twirled around for him, flashing a few dozen
of Crazy Bob's Best Patented Incisors and two of the greatest
legs the Master ever designed as my skirt swirled out like a
Dresden figurine. He tossed a light pen on the screen and came
toward me, took my hand and squeezed it. Then he realized what
he was doing, laughed, and hugged me tightly.
"It's been too long," he said. "I saw you on the 'pad the
other day." He gestured at me in a way that said he hadn't
expected what he was seeing now. I shrugged; the body spoke for
itself.
"Reading the Nipple now? I don't believe it."
"You didn't have to read the Nipple to catch your act.
Every time I changed the channel, there you were, boring
everybody to death."
I made no comment. He had surely been as interested at
first as Bobbie and everybody else in Luna, but why bother to
explain that to him? And knowing Fox, he wouldn't admit he
could be as easily seduced by a sensational story as the rest
of his fellow citizens.
"Frankly, I'm glad the idiot's gone. You have no idea the
kind of problems David Earth and his merry band cause in my
line of work."
"It's Saturday," I said, "but your service said you'd be
down here."
"Hell, it's almost Sunday. It's the typical start-up
problems. Look, I'll be through here in a few minutes. Why
don't you stick around, we can go out for dinner, or breakfast,
or something."
"The something sounds interesting."
"Great. If you're thirsty one of these layabouts can scare
up a beer for you; give 'em something to do equal to their
talents." He turned away and hurried back to his work.
The brief sensation caused by my arrival died away; by
that I mean the several dozen men and handful of women who had
transferred their gazes from the far distance to my legs now
returned to the contemplation of infinity.
A sidewalk supervisor unused to the ways of the
construction game might have wondered how anything got done
with so many philosophers and so few people with dirty hands in
evidence. The answer was simply that Fox and three or four
other engineers did all the work that didn't involve lifting
and carrying, and the machines did the rest. Though hundreds of
cubic miles of stone and soil would be moved and shaped before
Oregon was complete, not a spoonful of it would be shifted by
the Hod-carriers Union members, though they were so numerous
one could almost believe they could accomplish it in a few
weeks. No, the shovels they carried were highly polished,
ceremonial badges of profession, as un-sullied by dirt as the
day they were made. Their chief function was safety. If one of
the deep thinkers fell asleep standing up, the shovel handle
could be slotted into an inverted pocket on the worker's union
suit and sometimes prevented that worthy from falling over. Fox
claimed it was the chief cause of onthe-job accidents.
Perhaps I exaggerate. The job guarantee is a civil right
basic to our society, and it is a sad fact that a great many
Lunarians are suited only for the kind of job machines took
over long ago. No matter how much we tinker with genes and
eliminate the actually defective, I think we'll always have the
slow, the unimaginative, the disinterested, the hopeless. What
should we do with them? What we've decided is that everyone who
wants to will be given a job and some sort of badge of
profession to testify to it, and put to some sort of work four
hours a day. If you don't want to work, that's fine, too. No
one starves, and air has been free since before I was born.
It didn't used to be that way. Right after the Invasion if
you didn't pay your air tax, you could be shown to the airlock
without your suit. I like the new way better.
But I'll confess it seems terribly inefficient. I'm
ignorant when it comes to economics, but when I bother to
wonder about such things it seems there must be a less wasteful
way. Then I wonder what these people would do to fill their
already-from my viewpoint--empty lives, and I resolve to stop
wondering. What's the big problem with it, anyway? I suspect
there were people standing around leaning on shovels when the
contract for the first pyramid was signed.
Does it sound terribly intolerant for me to say I don't
understand how they do it? Perhaps they'd think the same of me,
working in a "creative" capacity for an organization I loathe,
at a profession with dubious--at best--claims to integrity.
Maybe these laborers would think me a whore. Maybe I am a
literary whore. But in my defense I can say that journalism, if
I may be permitted to use the term, has not been my only job. I
have done other things, and at that moment felt strongly that I
would be moving on from the Nipple fairly soon.
Most of the men and women around me as I waited for Fox
had never held another job. They were not suited for anything
else. Most were illits, and the opportunities for meaningful
work for such people are few. If they had artistic talent
they'd be using it.
How did they make it through the day? Were these the
people who were contributing to the alarming rise in suicide
the CC reported? Did they get up some morning, pick up the
shovel, think the hell with it, and blow their brains out? I
resolved to ask the CC, when I started speaking to him again.
It just seemed so bleak to me. I studied one man, a
foreman according to one of the many badges pinned to his
denims, a Century Man with the gaudy lapel pin proclaiming he
had spent one hundred years leaning on that shovel. He was
standing near Fox, looking in the general direction of the
blueprint table with an expression I'd last seen on an animal
that was chewing its cud. Did he have hopes and dreams and
fears, or had he used them all up? We've prolonged life to the
point that we don't have a clear idea of when it might end, but
have failed to provide anything new and interesting to do with
that vast vista of years.
Fox put his hand on my shoulder and I realized, with a
shock and a perverse sense of reassurance that I must have
looked like a cud-chewer myself as I thought my deep,
penetrating thoughts. That foreman was probably a fine fellow
to sit around and bullshit with. I'll bet he was a terrific
joke-teller and could throw one hell of a game of darts. Did we
all have to be, to use the traditional expression, rocket
scientists? I know a rocket scientist, and a slimier curmudgeon
you would not care to meet.
"You're looking good," Fox said.
"Thanks. You all done here for now?"
"Until Monday. I hate to be one of those people married to
the job, but if somebody doesn't worry about it this place
won't live up to its potential."
"Still the same Fox." I put my arm around his waist as we
walked toward his trailer, parked in a jumble of idle machines.
He put his hand on my shoulder, but I could tell his thoughts
were still back in the blueprints.
"I guess so. But this is going to be the best disney yet,
Hildy. Mount Hood is finished; all we need is some snow. It's
only one-quarter scale, but it fools the eye from almost any
angle. The Columbia's full and almost up to speed. The gorge is
going to be magnificent. We're going to have a real salmon run.
I've got Douglas Firs twenty meters high. Even when you
force-grow 'em, those babies take some time. Deer, grizzlies .
. . it'll be great."
"How long till completion?" We were passing some bear
pens. The inmates looked out at us with lazy predators' eyes.
"Five years, if it all goes well. Probably seven,
realistically." He held the door to the trailer and followed me
inside. It was utilitarian, overflowing with papers. About the
only personal touch I saw was an antique slide rule mounted
over the gas fireplace. "You want to order something in?
There's a good Japanese place that will deliver here. I had to
train them; this place is tough to find. Or we could go out if
there's something else you'd rather have."
I knew exactly what I wanted, and we wouldn't have to
order out for it. I put my arms around him and kissed him in a
way that almost made up for the forty years we'd been out of
each others' beds. When I drew back for a breath, he was
smiling down at me.
"Is this dress a particular favorite?" he asked. He had
his hand in the neckline, bunching the fabric.
"Would it do me any good to say yes?"
He slowly shook his head, and ripped it off.
#
Lovers of fashion should be relieved to note two things:
the dress was thirty years old and not one of those that was
stylish again, though I had picked it because it flattered the
new me. Bobbie would have gagged to see it, but Fox was more
direct. And second, I had known Fox would destroy it, though
not as a fashion policeman-male or female, Fox was dense about
such things. The main thing one needed to know about Fox was
that--male or female--he liked to dominate. He liked sex to be
rough and urgent and just this side of brutal, and that was
exactly what I was in the mood for. As he gave me one of the
most thorough rogerings of my life I thanked what gods there be
that I had found him during a male period of his life.
Fox was the one I had thought of as I stood nervously on
the brink of Change, and it made perfect sense that I did. He
and I . . . actually, for a time it had been she and I, then he
and I . . . we had been lovers for ten years. I don't know just
why we broke up, or maybe I've forgotten, but we came out of
the parting good friends. Perhaps we simply grew apart, as they
say, though that's always sounded like a facile explanation.
How much growing do you still have to do when one of you is
sixty and the other is fifty-five? But it had been a
comfortable time in my life.
The need to see him had been so urgent I had changed my
plan to do a little shopping on the Platz, thereby doing my
bank balance a big favor. I had rushed home, dressed in the
scoop-necked, knee-length satiny black dress with the ballerina
skirt that currently lay tattered, wrinkled, and getting very
sweaty beneath my naked back, changed my hair color to match
the clothes, sprayed makeup on my eyes and mouth and polish on
my nails, doused myself with Fox's favorite scent, and was back
out the door in three minutes flat. I had taxied to Oregon,
worked my feminine magic on the poor boy and within fifteen
minutes had my knees in the air and my hands gripping his bare
behind, barking like a dog and trying to force him through my
body and into the floor beneath us.
Do you see why ULTRA-Tingle is already in financial
trouble?
Fox usually had that effect on me. Not always quite so
intense, it's true. I was experiencing something politely
called hormone shock, or Change mania, but more often known as
going cunt crazy. One shouldn't expect to undergo such radical
alterations to one's body without a certain upset to the
psyche. With me it's always a heightening of sexual hunger.
Some people simply get irresponsible. I've got a friend who has
to instruct his bank to shut off his line of credit for five
days after a Change, or he'd spend every shilling he had.
What I was spending you can't put in a bank, and there's
no sense in saving it anyway.
#
Afterwards, he ordered a mountain of sushi and tempura and
when it was delivered, fired up the trailer and took us through
a long dark air duct and into Oregon.
Like all disneylands, it was a huge hemispherical bubble,
more or less flat on the bottom, the curved roof painted blue.
The first ones had been only a kilometer or two across, but as
the engineers figured out better ways to support them, the
newer ones were growing with no outer limit in sight. Oregon
was one of the biggest, along with two others currently under
construction: Kansas and Borneo. Fox tried his best not to bore
me with statistics; I simply forget them a few minutes after
hearing them. Suffice it to say the place was very big.
The floor was mostly rock and dirt shaped into hills and
two mountains. The one he'd called Mount Hood was tall and
sharply pointed. The other was truncated and looked unfinished.
"That's going to be a volcano," he said. "Or at least a
good approximation of an active volcano. There was an eruption
in this area in historic times."
"You mean lava and fire and smoke?"
"I wish we could. But the power requirements to melt
enough rock for a worthwhile eruption would bust the budget,
plus any really good volume of smoke would hurt the trees and
wildlife. What it's going to do is vent steam three or four
times a day and shoot sparks at night. Should be real pretty.
The project manager's trying to convince the money people to
fund a yearly ash plume-nothing catastrophic, it actually
benefits the trees. And I'm pretty sure we'll be able to mount
a modest lava flow every ten or twenty years."
"I wish I could see it better. It's pretty dim in here."
The only real light sources were at the scattered tree farms,
dots of bright green in the blasted landscape.
"Let me get the sun turned on." He picked up a mike and
talked to the power section, and a few minutes later the "sun"
flickered and then blazed directly overhead.
"All this will be covered in virgin forest; green as far
as the eye can see. Not at all like your shack in Texas. This
is a wet, cool climate, lots of snow in higher elevations.
Mostly conifers. We're even putting in a grove of sequoias down
in the south part, though we're fudging a bit on that,
geographically speaking."
"Green'd be a lot better than this," I said.
"You'll never be a true West Texan, Hildy," he told me,
and smiled.
He set us down on the Columbia River, at the mouth of the
gorge where it was wider and slower, on a broad, flat sandbar
of an island which was the center of what he called an
ecological testbed. The beach was wide and hard-packed, full of
frozen ripples. Across the river were the advertised pine
trees, but near us there was only estuarine vegetation, the
sort of plants that didn't mind being flooded periodically. It
ran to tall skinny grasses and low, hardy bushes, few taller
than my head. There were some really huge logs half buried in
the sand, bleached gray-white and rubbed smooth and round by
sun, wind, and water. I realized they were artificial, put
there to impress the occasional visitors, who were always
brought here.
We spread out a blanket on the sand and sat there gorging
ourselves on the food. He stuck mostly to the shrimpoid tempura
while I concentrated on the maguro, uni, hamachi, toro, tako
and paper-thin slices of fugu. I dredged each piece in enough
of that wonderful green horseradish to make my nose run and my
ears turn bright red. Then we made love again, slow and tender
for the first hour, unusual for Fox, only getting intense near
the end. We stretched out in the sun and never quite fell
asleep, just lolling like satiated reptiles. At least I hadn't
thought I was asleep until Fox woke me by flipping me over onto
my stomach and entering me without any warning. (No, not that
way. Fox likes to initiate it and he likes it rough, but he's
not into giving pain and I'm not into receiving it.) Anyway,
these things even out. When Fox was a girl she usually forced
herself down on me before she was quite ready. Maybe he thought
all girls liked it that way. I didn't enlighten him, because I
didn't mind it that much and the lovemaking that followed was
always Olympic quality.
And afterwards . . .
There's always an afterwards. Perhaps that's why my ten
years with Fox was the longest relationship I ever had. After
the sex, most of them want to talk to you, and I always had
trouble finding people I wanted to talk to as well as have sex
with. Fox was the exception. So afterwards . . .
I put the remains of my clothing back on. The dress was
severely ripped; I couldn't get it to stay over my left breast,
and there were gaping holes here and there. It suited my mood.
We walked along the river's edge in water that never covered
our feet. I was playing the castaway game. This time I could
pretend to be a rich socialite in the tatters of her fancy
gown, desperately seeking good native help. I trailed my toes
in the water as I walked.
This place was timeless and unreal in a way Scarpa Island
never was. The sun still hung there at high noon. I picked up a
handful of sand and peered at it, and it was just as detailed
as the imaginary sand of my year-long mental environment. It
smelled different. It was riverine sand, not white coral, and
the water was fresh instead of salty, with a different set of
microscopic lifeforms in it. The water was warmer than the
Pacific waters. Hell, it was quite hot in Oregon, into the
lower forties. Something to do with the construction. We had
both dripped sweat all day. I had licked it off his body and
found it quite tasty. Not so much the sweat as the body I
licked it from.
The setting could not have been more perfect if I'd picked
it myself. Say, Fox, this place reminds me of an odd little
adventure I had one day about a week ago, between 15:30.0002
P.M. and around, oh, let's say 15:30.0009. And isn't it amazing
how times flies when you're having fun.
So I said something a little less puzzling than that, and
gradually told him the story. Right up to the punch line, at
which point I gagged on it.
Fox wasn't as reticent as Callie.
"I've heard of the technique, of course," he said. "I
ought to be surprised you hadn't, but I guess you still shy
away from technology, just like you used to."
"It's not very relevant to my job. Or my life."
"That's what you thought. It must seem more relevant now."
"Granted. It's never jumped up and bit me before."
"That's what I can't figure. What you describe is a
radical treatment for mental problems. I can't imagine the CC
using it on you without your consent unless you had something
seriously wrong with you."
He let that hang, and once more I gagged. Give Fox points
for candor; he didn't let a little thing like my obvious
humiliation stand in his way.
"So what is your problem?" he asked, artless as a
three-year-old.
"What's the penalty for littering in here?" I said.
"Go ahead. This whole area will be relandscaped before the
public gets to track things in with their muddy feet."
I took off the ruined dress and balled it up as well as I
could. I hurled it out toward the water. It ballooned, fell
into the gentle current. We watched it float for a short
distance, soak up water, and hang up on the bottom. Fox had
said you could walk a hundred meters out from the island and
not be in much deeper than your knees. After that it got deep
quickly. We had come to the point where the island ended at the
upstream end. We stood on the last little bit of sand and
watched the current nudge the dress an inch at a time. I drew a
ragged breath and felt a tear run down my cheek.
"If I'd known you felt that way about the dress, I'd never
have torn it." When I glanced at him he took the tear on the
tip of his finger and licked the finger with his tongue. I
smiled weakly. I walked out into the water, heading upstream,
and could hear him following behind me.
Some of it was the hormonal shock, I'm sure. I don't cry
much, and no more when I'm female than when male. The change
probably released it, and it felt right; it was time to cry. It
was time to admit how frightened I was by the whole thing.
I sat down in the warm water. It didn't cover my legs. I
started working my hands into the sand on each side of me.
"It seems that I keep trying to kill myself," I said.
He was standing beside me. I looked up at him, wiped away
another tear. God, he looked good. I wanted to move to him,
make him ready again with my mouth, recline on this watery bed
and have him move inside me with the slow, gentle rhythms of
the river. Was that a life-affirming urge, or a death wish,
metaphorically speaking? Was I in the river of life, or was I
fantasizing about becoming part of the detritus that all rivers
sweep eternally to the sea? There was no sea at the end of this
river, just a deeper, saltier growing biome for the salmon that
would soon teem here, struggling upstream to die. The sky the
sun would wester and die in was a painted backdrop. Did the
figures of speech of Old Earth still pertain here?
It had to be an image of life. I wasn't tired of livin',
and I was very skeered of dyin'. He just keeps rolling, don't
he? Isn't that what life's all about?
Be that as it may, Fox was not the man for gentle river
rhythms, not twice in one day. He'd get carried away and in my
present mood I would snap at him. So I kissed his leg and
resumed my excavation work in the sand.
He sat down behind me and put his legs on each side of me
and started massaging my shoulders. I don't think I ever loved
him more than at that moment. It was exactly what I needed. I
hung my head, went boneless as an eel, let him dig his strong
fingers into every knot and twitch.
"Can I say . . . I don't want to hurt you, how should I
say it? I should have been surprised to hear that. I mean, it's
awful, it's unexpected, it's not something you want to hear
from a dear friend, and I want to say 'No, Hildy, it can't be
true!' You know? But I was surprised to find that . . . I
wasn't surprised. What an awful thing to say."
"No, go ahead and say it," I murmured. His hands were
working on my head now. Much more pressure and my skull would
crack, and more power to him. Maybe some of the demons would
fly away through the fissures.
"In some ways, Hildy, you've always been the unhappiest
person I know."
I let that sink in without protest, just as I was sinking
very slowly into the sand beneath me. I was a light brown sack
of sand he was shaping with his fingers. I found nothing wrong
with this sensation.
"I think it's your job," he said.
"Do you really?"
"It must have occurred to you. Tell me you love your work,
and I'll shut up."
There was no sense saying anything to that.
"Not going to say anything about how good you are at
reporting? No comments about how exciting it is? You are good,
you know. Too good, in my opinion. Ever get anywhere on that
novel?"
"Not so's you'd notice."
"What about working for another pad? One a little less
interested in celebrity marriages and violent death."
"I don't think that would help anything; I never had much
respect for journalism as a profession in the first place. At
least the Nipple doesn't pretend to be anything but what it
is."
"Pure shit."
"Exactly. I know you're right. I'm not happy in my work.
I'm pretty sure I'm going to be quitting soon. All that stops
me is I don't have any idea what I'd do as an alternative."
"I hear there's openings in the Coolie's Union. They won
the contract for Borneo. The Hodcarriers are still muttering
about it."
"Nice to hear they get excited about something. Maybe I
should," I said, half-seriously. "Less wear and tear on the
nerves."
"It wouldn't work out. I'll tell you what your problem is,
Hildy. You've always wanted to be . . . useful. You wanted to
do something important."
"Make a difference? Change the world? I don't think so."
"I think you gave up on it before I met you. There's
always been a streak of bitterness in you about that; it's one
of the reasons we broke up."
"Really? Why didn't you tell me?"
"I'm not sure I knew it at the time."
We were both quiet for a while, tromping down memory lane.
I was pleased to note that, even with this revelation, the
memories were mostly good. He kept massaging me, pushing me
forward now to get at my lower back. I offered no resistance,
letting my head fall forward. I could see my hair trailing in
the water. I wonder why people can't purr like cats? If I could
have, I would have been at that moment. Maybe I should take it
up with the CC. He could probably find a way to make it work.
He began to slow down in his work. No one ever wants that
sort of thing to stop, but I knew his hands were tiring. I
leaned back against him and he encircled me with his arms under
my breasts. I put my hands on his knees.
"Can I ask you something?" I said.
"You know you can."
"What makes life worth living for you?"
He didn't give it a flip answer, which I'd half expected.
He thought it over for a while, then sighed and rested his chin
on my shoulder.
"I don't know if that's really answerable. There's surface
reasons. The most obvious one is I get a sense of
accomplishment from my work."
"I envy you that," I said. "Your work doesn't get erased
after a ten-second read."
"There's disappointment there, too. I had sort of wanted
to build these things." His arm swept out to take in the
uncompleted vastness of Oregon. "Turned out my talents lay in
other directions. That would be a sense of accomplishment, to
leave something like this behind you."
"Is that the key? Leaving something behind? For
'posterity?'"
"Fifty years ago I might have said yes. And it's certainly
a reason. I think it's the reason for most people who have the
wit to ask what life's all about in the first place. I'm not
sure if it's enough reason for me anymore. Not that I'm
unhappy; I do love my work, I'm eager to arrive here every
morning, I work late, I come in on weekends. But as to leaving
something that I created, my work is even more ephemeral than
yours."
"You're right," I said in considerable amazement. "I
hadn't thought that was possible."
"See?" he laughed. "You learn something new every day.
That's a reason for living. Maybe a trivial one. But I get
satisfaction in the act of creation. It doesn't have to last.
It doesn't have to have meaning."
"Art."
"I've begun to think in those terms. Maybe it's
presumptuous, but we weatherfolks have started to get a
following for what we do. Who knows where it might go? But
creating something is pretty important to me." He hesitated,
then plowed ahead. "There's another sort of creation."
I knew exactly what he meant. When all was said and done,
that was the primary reason for our parting. He had had a child
shortly afterward-I'd asked him never to tell me if I was the
father. He had thought I should have one as well, and I had
told him flatly it was none of his business.
"I'm sorry. Shouldn't have brought it up," he said.
"No, please. I asked; I have to be ready to hear the
answers, even if I don't agree."
"And you don't?"
"I don't know. I've thought about it. As you must have
guessed, I've been doing a lot of thinking about a lot of
things."
"Then you'll have considered the negative reason for
wanting to live. Sometimes I think it's the main one. I'm
afraid of death. I don't know what it is, and I don't want to
find out until the last possible moment."
"No heavenly harps to look forward to?"
"You can't be serious. Logically, you have to figure you
just stop existing, just go out like a light. But I defy anyone
to really imagine that. You know I'm not a mystic, but a long
life has led me to believe, to my great bemusement, that I do
believe there's something after death. I can't prove one iota
of this feeling, and you can't budge me from it."
"I wouldn't try. On my better days, I feel the same way."
I sighed one of the weariest sighs I can remember sighing. I'd
been doing it a lot lately, each one wearier than the one
before. Where would it end? Don't answer.
"So," I said. "We've got job dissatisfaction. Somehow I
just don't think that's enough. There are simpler solutions to
the problem. The restless urge to create. Childlessness." I was
ticking them off on my fingers. Probably not a nice thing to
do, since he'd tried his best. But I had hoped for some new
perspective, which was entirely unreasonable but all the more
disappointing when none appeared. "And fear of death. Somehow
none of those really satisfy."
"I shouldn't say it, but I knew they wouldn't. Please,
Hildy, get some professional counseling. There, I said it, I
had to say it, but since I've known you for a long time and
don't like to lie to you, I'll also say this: I don't think it
will help you. You've never been one to accept somebody else's
answers or advice. I feel in my gut that you'll have to solve
this one on your own."
"Or not solve it. And don't apologize; you're completely
right."
The river rolled on, the sun hung there in the painted
sky. No time passed, and took a very long interval to do so.
Neither of us felt the pressure to speak. I'd have been happy
to spend the next decade there, as long as I didn't have to
think. But I knew Fox would eventually get antsy. Hell, so
would I.
"Can I ask you one more thing?"
He nibbled my ear.
"No, not that. Well, not yet, anyway." I tilted my head
back and looked at him, inches away from my face. "Are you
living with anyone?"
"No."
"Can I move in with you for a while? Say, a week? I'm very
frightened and very lonely, Fox. I'm afraid to be alone."
He didn't say anything.
"I just want to sleep with somebody for a while. I don't
want to beg."
"Let me think about it."
"Sure." It should have hurt, but oddly enough, it didn't.
I knew I would have said the same thing. What I didn't know is
how I would have decided. The bald truth was I was asking for
his help in saving my life, and we both knew enough to realize
there was little he could do but hug me. So if he did try to
help and I did end up killing myself . . . that's a hell of a
load of guilt to hazard without giving it a little thought. I
could tell him there were no strings, that he needn't blame
himself if the worst happened, but I knew he would and he knew
I knew it, so I didn't insult him by telling him that lie and I
didn't up the stakes by begging any more. Instead I nestled
more firmly into his arms and watched the Columbia roll on,
roll on.
#
We walked back to the trailer. Somewhere in the journey we
noticed the river was no longer flowing. It became smooth and
still, placid as a long lake. It reflected the trees on the far
side as faithfully as any mirror. Fox said they'd been having
trouble with some of the pumps. "Not my department," he said,
thankfully. It could have been pretty, but it gave me a chilly
feeling up and down the spine. It reminded me of the frozen sea
back at Scarpa Island.
Then he got a remote unit from the trailer and said he had
something to show me. He tapped out a few codes and my shadow
began to move.
The sun scuttled across the sky like some great silver
bird. The shadow of each tree and bush and blade of grass
marked its passage like a thousand hourglasses. If you want to
experience disorientation, give that a try. I found myself
getting dizzy, swayed and set my feet apart, discovered the
whole thing was a lot more interesting when viewed from a
sitting position.
In a few minutes the sun went below the western horizon.
That was not what Fox had wanted to show me. Clouds were rising
in that direction, thin wispy ones, cirrus I think, or at least
intended to look like cirrus. The invisible sun painted them
various shades of red and blue, hovering somewhere just out of
sight.
"Very pretty," I said.
"That's not it."
There was a distant boom, and a huge smoke ring rose
slowly into the sky, tinged with golden light. Fox was working
intently. I heard a faraway whistling sound, and the smoke ring
began to alter in shape. The top was pressed down, the bottom
drawn out. I couldn't figure out what the point of all this
was, and then I saw it. The ring had formed a passable
heart-shape. A valentine. I laughed, and hugged him.
"Fox, you're a romantic fool after all."
He was embarrassed. He hadn't meant it to be taken that
way--which I had known, but he's easy to tease and I could
never resist it. So he coughed, and took refuge in technical
explanation.
"I found out I could make a sort of backfire effect in
that wind machine," he said, as we watched the ring writhe into
shapelessness. "Then it's easy to use concentrated jets to mold
it, within limits. Come back here when we open up, and I'll be
able to write your name in the sunset."
We showered off the sand and he asked if I'd like to see a
scheduled blast in Kansas. I'd never seen a nuke before, so I
said yes. He flew the trailer to a lock, and we emerged on the
surface, where he turned control over to the autopilot and told
me about some of the things he'd been doing in other
disneylands as we looked at the airless beauty falling away
beneath us.
Maybe you have to be there to appreciate Fox's weather
sculpture. He rhapsodized about ice storms and blizzards he'd
created, and it meant nothing to me. But he did pique my
interest. I told him I'd attend his next showing. I wondered if
he was angling for coverage in the Nipple. Well, I've got a
suspicious mind, and I'd been right about things like that
often enough. I couldn't figure a way to make it interesting to
my readership unless somebody famous attended, or something
violent and horrible happened there.
#
Oregon was a showplace compared to Kansas. I'd like to
have had a piece of the dust concession.
They were still in the process of excavation. The
half-dome was nearly complete, with just some relatively small
areas near the north edge to blast away. Fox said the best
vantage point would be near the west edge; if we'd gone all the
way to the south the dust would have obscured the blast too
much to make the trip worthwhile. He landed the trailer near an
untidy cluster of similar modular mobile homes and we joined a
group of a few dozen other firework fans.
This show was strictly "to the trade." Everyone but me was
a construction engineer; this sort of thing was not open to the
public. Not that it was really rare. Kansas had required
thousands of blasts like this, and would need about a hundred
more before it was complete. Fox described it as the best-kept
secret in Luna.
"It's not really much of a blast as these things go," he
said. "The really big ones would jolt the structure too much.
But when we're starting out, we use charges about ten times
larger than this one."
I noticed the "we." He really did want to build these
places instead of just install and run the weather machines.
"Is it dangerous?"
"That's sort of a relative question. It's not as safe as
sleeping in your bed. But these things are calculated to a
fare-thee-well. We haven't had a blasting accident in thirty
years." He went on to tell me more than I'd wanted to know
about the elaborate precautions, things like radar to detect
big chunks of rock that might be heading our way, and lasers to
vaporize them. He had me completely reassured, and then he had
to go and spoil it.
"If I say run," he said, seriously, "hop in the trailer,
pronto."
"Do I need to protect my eyes?"
"Clear leaded glass will do it. It's the UV that burns.
Expect a certain dazzle effect at first. Hell, Hildy, if it
blinds you the company's insurance will get you some new eyes."
I was perfectly happy with the eyes I had. I began to
wonder if it had been such a good idea, coming here. I resolved
to look away for the first several seconds. Common human lore
was heavy with stories of what could happen to you in a nuclear
explosion, dating all the way back to Old Earth, when they'd
used a few of them to fry their fellow beings by the millions.
The traditional countdown began at ten. I put on the
safety glasses and closed my eyes at two. So naturally I opened
them when the light shone through my eyelids. There was a
dazzle, as he'd said, but my eyes quickly recovered. How to
describe something that bright? Put all the bright lights you
ever saw into one place, and it wouldn't begin to touch the
intensity of that light. Then there was the ground shock, and
the air shock, and finally, much later, the sound. I mean, I
thought I'd been hearing the sound of it, but that was the
shock waves emanating from the ground. The sound in the air was
much more impressive. Then the wind. And the fiery cloud. The
whole thing took several minutes to unfold. When the flames had
died away there was a scattering of applause and a few shouts.
I turned to Fox and grinned at him, and he was grinning, too.
Twenty kilometers away, a thousand people were already
dead in what came to be called the Kansas Collapse.
=*= =*= =*= =*=
None of us were aware of the disaster at the time.
We drank a toast in champagne, a tradition among these
engineering people. Within ten minutes Fox and I were back in
the trailer and heading for an air lock. He said the fastest
way back to King City was on the surface, and that was fine
with me. I didn't enjoy driving through the system of tunnels
that honeycombed the rock around a disneyland.
We had no sooner emerged into the sunlight than the
trailer was taken over by the autopilot, which informed us that
we would have to enter a holding pattern or land, since all
traffic was being cleared for emergency vehicles. A few of
these streaked silently past us, blue lights flashing.
Neither of us could remember an emergency of this apparent
size on the surface. There were occasional pressure losses in
the warrens, of course. No system is perfect. But loss of life
in these accidents was rare. So we turned on the radio, and
what we heard sent me searching through Fox's belongings in the
back of the trailer until I came up with a newspad. It was the
Straight Shit, and in other circumstances I would have teased
him unmercifully about that. But the story that came over the
pad was the type that made any snide remarks die in one's
throat.
There had been a major blowout at a surface resort called
Nirvana. First reports indicated some loss of life, and live
pictures from security cameras--all that was available for the
first ten minutes we watched--showed bodies lying motionless by
a large swimming pool. The pool was bubbling violently. At
first we thought it was a big jacuzzi, then we realized with a
shock that the water was boiling. Which meant there was no air
in there, and those people were certainly dead. Their postures
were odd, too. They all seemed to be holding on to something,
such as a table leg or a heavy concrete planter with a palm
tree.
A story like that evolves in its own fractured way. First
reports are always sketchy, and usually wrong. We heard
estimates of twenty dead, then fifty, then, spoken in awe, two
hundred. Then those reports were denied, but I had counted
thirty corpses myself. It was maddening. We're spoiled by
instant coverage, we expect news stories to be cogent, prompt,
and nicely framed by steady cameras. These cameras were steady,
all right. They were immobile, and after a few minutes your
mind screamed for them to pan, just a little bit, so you could
see what was just out of sight. But that didn't happen until
about ten minutes after we landed, ten minutes that seemed like
an hour.
At first I think it affected me more than Fox. He was
shocked and horrified, naturally, and so was I, on one level.
The other level, the newshound, was seething with impatience,
querying the autopilot three times a minute when we could get
up and out of there so I could go cover the story. It's not
pretty, I know, but any reporter will understand the impulse.
You want to move. You tuck the horror of the images away in
some part of your mind where police and coroners put ugly
things, and your pulse pounds with impatience to get the next
detail, and the next, and the next. To be stuck on the ground
fifteen klicks away was torture of the worst kind.
Then a fact was mentioned that made it all too real for
Fox. I didn't catch its importance. I just looked over at him
and saw his face had gone white and his hands were trembling.
"What's the matter?" I said.
"The time," he whispered. "They just mentioned the time of
the blowout."
I listened, and the announcer said it again.
"Was that . . .?"
"Yes. It was within a second of the blast."
I was still so preoccupied with wanting to get to Nirvana
that it was a full minute before I realized what I should be
doing. Then I turned on Fox's phone and called the Nipple,
using my secondhighest urgency code to guarantee quick access
to Walter. The top code, he had told me, was reserved for
filing on the end of the universe, or an exclusive interview
with Elvis.
"Walter, I've got footage of the cause of the blowout," I
said, when his ugly face appeared on the screen.
"The cause? You were there? I thought everybody--"
"No, I wasn't there. I was in Kansas. I have reason to
believe the disaster was set off by a nuclear explosion I was
watching in Kansas."
"It sounds unlikely. Are you sure--"
"Walter, it has to be, or else it's the biggest
coincidence since that straight flush I beat your full house
with."
"That was no coincidence."
"Damn right it wasn't, and someday I'll tell you how I did
it. Meantime, you've wasted twenty seconds of valuable
newstime. Run it with a disclaimer if you want to, you know,
'Could this have been the cause of the tragedy in Nirvana?' "
"Give it to me."
I fumbled around on the dash, and swore under my breath.
"Where's the neurofeed on this damn thing?" I asked Fox. He was
looking at me strangely, but he pulled a wire from a recessed
compartment. I fumbled it into my occipital socket, and said
the magic words that caused the crystalline memory to recycle
and spew forth the last six hours of holocam recordings in five
seconds.
"Where the hell are you, anyway?" Walter was saying. "I've
had a call out for you for twenty minutes."
I told him, and he said he'd get on it. Thirty seconds
later the autopilot was cleared into the traffic pattern. The
press has some clout in situations like this, but I hadn't been
able to apply it from my beached position. We rose into the sky
. . . and turned the wrong way.
"What the hell are you doing?" I asked Fox, incredulously.
"Going back to King City," he said, quietly. "I have no
desire to witness any of what we've seen first-hand. And I
especially don't want to witness you covering it."
I was about to blast him out of his seat, but I took
another look, and he looked dangerous. I had the feeling that
one more word from me would unleash something I didn't want to
hear, and maybe even more than that. So I swallowed it,
mentally calculating how long it would take me to get back to
Nirvana from the nearest King City air lock.
With a great effort I pulled myself out of reportorial
mode and tried to act like a human being. Surely I could do it
for a few minutes, I thought.
"You can't be thinking you had anything to do with this,"
I said. He kept his eyes forward, as if he really had to see
where the trailer was going.
"You told me yourself--"
"Look, Hildy. I didn't set the charge, I didn't do the
calculations. But some of my friends did. And it's going to
reflect on all of us. Right now I have to get onto the phone,
we're going to have to try and find out what went wrong. And I
do feel responsible, so don't try to argue me out of it,
because I know it isn't logical. I just wish you wouldn't talk
to me right now."
I didn't. A few minutes later he smashed his fist into the
dashboard and said, "I keep remembering us standing around
watching. Cheering. I can still taste the champagne."
I got out at the airlock, flagged a taxi, and told it to
take me to Nirvana.
#
Most disasters look eminently preventable in hindsight. If
only the warnings had been heeded, if only this safety measure
had been implemented, if only somebody had thought of this
possibility, if only, if only. I exempt the so-called acts of
God, which used to include things like earthquakes, hurricanes,
and meteor strikes. But hurricanes are infrequent on Luna. Moon
quakes are almost as rare, and selenography is exact enough to
predict them with a high degree of accuracy. Meteors come on
very fast and very hard, but their numbers are small and their
average size is tiny, and all vulnerable structures are ringed
with radars powerful enough to detect any dangerous ones and
lasers big enough to vaporize them. The last blowout of any
consequence had happened almost sixty years before the Kansas
Collapse. Lunarians had grown confident of their safety
measures. We had grown complacent enough to overcome our innate
suspicion of vacuum and the surface, some of us, to the point
where the rich now frolicked and tanned in the sunlight beneath
domes designed to give the impression they weren't even there.
If someone had built a place like Nirvana a hundred years ago
there would have been few takers. Back then the rich peopled
only the lowest, most secure levels and the poor took their
chances with only eight or nine pressure doors between them and
the Breathsucker.
But a century of technological improvements, of fail-safe
systems that transcended the merely careful and entered the
realms of the preposterous, of pyramided knowledge of how to
live in a hostile environment . . . a hundred years of this had
worked as sea-change on Lunar society. The cities had turned
over, like I've heard lakes do periodically, and the bottom had
risen to the top. The formerly swank levels of Bedrock were now
the slums, and the Vac Rows in the upper levels were
now--suitable renovated--the place to be. Anyone who aspired to
be somebody had to have a real window on the surface.
There were some exceptions. Old reactionaries like Callie
still liked to burrow deep, though she had no horror of the
surface. And a significant minority still suffered from that
most common Lunar phobia, fear of airlessness. They managed
well enough, I suppose. I've read that a lot of people on Old
Earth feared high places or flying in aircraft, which must have
been a problem in a society that valued the penthouse apartment
and quick travel.
Nirvana was not the most exclusive surface resort on Luna,
but it wasn't the type hawked in three-day two-night package
deals, either. I've never understood the attraction of paying
an exorbitant amount for a "natural" view of the surface while
basking in the carefully filtered rays of the sun. I'd much
prefer just about any of the underground disneys. If you wanted
a swimming pool, there were any number belowground where the
water was just as wet. But some people find simulated earth
environments frightening. A surprising number of people just
don't like plants, or the insects that hide themselves among
the leaves, and have no real use for animals, either. Nirvana
catered to these folks, and to the urge to be seen with other
people who had enough money to blow in a place like that. It
featured gambling, dancing, tanning, and some amazingly
childish games organized by the management, all done under the
sun or the stars in the awesome beauty of Destination Valley.
And it had damn well better be awesome. The builders had
spent a huge amount of money to make it that way.
Destination Valley was a three-kilometer Lunar rift that
had been artfully carved into the kind of jagged peaks and
sheer cliffs that a valley on "The Moon" should have been, if
God had employed a more flamboyant set designer, the sort of
lunar feature everybody imagined before the opening of the age
of space and the return of the first, dismal pictures of what
Luna really looked like. There were no acned rolling hillocks
here, no depressing gray-and-white fields of scoria, no
boulders with all the edges rubbed off by a billion years of
scorching days and bitter cold nights . . . and none of that
godawful boring dust that covers everything else on Luna. Here
the craters had sharp edges lined with jagged teeth. The cliffs
soared straight up, loomed over you like breaking waves. The
boulders were studded with multi-colored volcanic glasses that
shattered the raw sunlight into a thousand colors or glowed
with warm ruby red or sapphire blue as if lit from
within--which some of them were. Strange crystalline growths
leaped toward the sky or spread across the ground like sinister
deep-sea creatures, quartzes the size of ten-story buildings
embedded themselves in the ground as if dropped from a great
height, and feathery structures with hairs finer than fiber
optics, so fragile they would break in the exhaust from a
passing p-suit, clung like sea urchins and glowed in the dark.
The horizon was sculpted with equal care into a range to shame
the Rockies for sheer rugged beauty . . . until you hiked into
them and found they were quite puny, magnified by cunning
lighting and tricks of forced perspective.
But the valley floor was a rockhound's dream. It was like
walking into a mammoth geode. And it was all the naked geology
that, in the end, had proven to be the downfall of Nirvana.
One of the four main pleasure domes had nestled at the
foot of a cliff called, in typical breathless Nirvanan prose,
The Threshold Of Heavenly Peace. It had been formed of
seventeen of the largest, clearest quartz columns ever
synthesized, and the whole structure had been ratnested with
niches for spotlights, lasers, and image projectors. During the
day it did nice things with the sunlight, but the real show was
at night, when light shows ran constantly. The effect had been
designed to be soothing, relaxing, suggesting the eternal peace
of some unspecified heaven. The images that could be seen
within were not well-defined. They were almost-seen, just out
of sight, elusive, and hypnotic. I'd been at the opening show,
and for all my cynicism about the place itself, had to admit
that the Threshold was almost worth the price of a ticket.
The detonation in Kansas had nudged an unmapped fault line
a few klicks from Nirvana, resulting in a short, sharp quake
that lifted Destination Valley a few centimeters and set it
down with a thud. The only real damage done to the place, other
than a lot of broken crockery, was that one of the columns had
been shaken loose and crashed down on dome #3, known as the
Threshold Dome. The dome was thick, and strong, and
transparent, with no ugly geodesic lines to mar the view,
having been formed from a large number of hexagonal components
bonded together in a process that was discussed endlessly in
the ensuing weeks, and which I don't understand at all. It was
further strengthened by some sort of molecular field
intensifier. It should have been strong enough to withstand the
impact of Tower #14, at least long enough to evacuate the dome.
And it had, for about five seconds. But some sort of vibration
was set up in the dome material, and somehow magnified by the
field intensifier, and three of the four-meter hex panels on
the side away from the cliffs had fractured along the join
lines and been blown nearly into orbit by the volume of air
trying to get through that hole. Along with the air had gone
everything loose, including all the people who weren't holding
on to something, and many who were. It must have been a hell of
a wind. Some of the bodies were found up on the rim of the
valley.
By the time I got there most of the action was long over.
A blowout is like that. There's a few minutes when a person
exposed to raw vacuum can be saved; after that, it's time for
the coroner. Except for a few people trapped in self-sealing
rooms who would soon be extricated--and no amount of breathless
commentary could make these routine operations sound
exciting--the rest of the Collapse story was confined to ogling
dead bodies and trying to find an angle.
The bodies definitely were not the story. Your average
Nipple reader enjoys blood and gore, but there is a disgust
threshold that might be defined as the yuck factor. Burst
eyeballs and swollen tongues are all right, as is any degree of
laceration or dismemberment. But the thing about a blow-out
death is, the human body has a certain amount of gas in it, in
various cavities. A lot of it is in the intestine. What happens
when that gas expands explosively and comes rushing out its
natural outlet is not something to use as a lead item in your
coverage. We showed the bodies, you couldn't help that, we just
didn't dwell on them.
No, the real story here was the same story any time there
is a big disaster. Number two: children. Number three: tragic
coincidences. And always a big number one: celebrities.
Nirvana didn't cater to children. They didn't forbid them,
they just didn't encourage mommy and daddie to bring little
junior along, and most of the clientele wouldn't have done so,
anyway. I mean, what would that say about your relationship
with the nanny? Only three children died in the Kansas
Collapse--which simply made them that much more poignant in the
eyes of the readership. I tracked down the grandparents of one
three-yearold and got a genuine reaction shot when they learned
the news about the child's death. I needed a stiff drink or two
after that one. Some things a reporter does are slimier than
others.
Then there's the "if-only" story, with the human angle.
"We were planning to spend the week at Nirvana, but we didn't
go because blah blah blah." "I just went back to the room to
get my thingamabob when the next thing I knew all the alarms
were going off and I thought, where's my darling hubby?" The
public had an endless appetite for stories like that.
Subconsciously, I think they think the gods of luck will favor
them when the tromp of doom starts to thump. As for survivor
interviews, I find them very boring, but I'm apparently in the
minority. At least half of them had this to say: "God was
watching over me." Most of those people didn't even believe in
a god. This is the deity-as-hit-man view of theology. What I
always thought was, if God was looking out for you, he must
have had a real hard-on for all those folks he belted into the
etheric like so many rubbery javelins.
Then there were the handful of stories that didn't quite
fit any of these categories, what I call heart-warming
tragedies. The best to come out of Nirvana was the couple of
lovers found two kilometers from the blowout, still holding
hands. Given that they'd been blown through the hole in the
dome, their bodies weren't in the best shape, but that was
okay, and since they'd outdistanced the stream of brown exhaust
that no doubt would have seemed to be propelling them on their
way, had anyone survived to report on that improbable event,
they were quite presentable. They were just lying there, two
guys with sweet smiles on their faces, at the base of a rock
formation the photographer had managed to frame to resemble a
church window. Walter paid through the nose to run it on his
front feed, just like all the other editors.
The reporter on that story was my old rival Cricket, and
it just goes to show you what initiative can accomplish. While
the rest of us were standing around the ruins of dome #3,
picking our journalistic noses, Cricket hired a p-suit and
followed the recovery crews out into the field, bringing an
actual film camera for maximum clarity. She'd bribed a team to
delay recovery of the pair until she could fix smiles on the
faces and pick up the popped-out eyeballs and close the
eyelids. She knew what she wanted in that picture, and what it
got her was a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize that year.
But the big story was the dead celebs. Of the one
thousand, one hundred and twenty-six dead in Nirvana, five had
been Important in one way or another. In ascending order of
magnitude, they were a politician from Clavius District, a
visiting pop singer from Mercury, a talk-show host and hostess,
and Larry Yeager, whose newest picture's release date was moved
up three weeks to cash in on all the public mourning. His
career had been in decline or he wouldn't have been at Nirvana
in the first place, but while being seen alive in a place like
that was a definite indicator that one's star was imploding,
soon to be a black hole--Larry had formerly moved in only the
most rarefied orbits--where you die is not nearly as important
to a posthumous career as how you die. Tragically is best.
Young is good. Violently, bizarrely, notoriously . . . all
these things combined in the Kansas Collapse to boost the
market value of the Yeager Estate's copyrights to five times
their former market value.
Of course there was the other story. The "how" and the
"why." I'm always much more concerned in where, when, and who.
Covering the investigations into the Collapse, as always, would
be an endless series of boring meetings and hours and hours of
testimony about matters I was not technologically equipped to
handle anyway. The final verdict would not be in for months or
years, at which time the Nipple would be interested in "who"
once more, as in "who takes the fall for this fuck-up?" In the
meantime the Nipple could indulge in ceaseless speculation,
character assassination, and violence to many reputations, but
that wasn't my department. I read this stuff uneasily every
day, fearing that Fox's name would somehow come up, but it
never did.
What with one thing and another . . . mostly bothering
widows and orphans, I am forced to admit . . . the Collapse
kept me hopping for about a week. I indulged in a lot of
mind-numbing preparations, mostly Margaritas, my poison of
choice, and kept a nervous weather eye open for signs of
impending depression. I saw some-there's no way you can cover a
story like that without feeling grief yourself, and a certain
selfloathing from time to time--but I never got really
depressed, as in goodbye-cruel-world depressed.
I concluded that keeping busy was the best therapy.
#
One of the one thousand, one hundred and twentyone other
people who died in Nirvana was the mother of the Princess of
Wales, the King of England, Henry XI. In spite of his
impressive title, Hank had never in his life done anything
worth a back-feed article in the Nipple, until he died. And
that's where the obit ran, the backfeed, with a small "isn't it
ironic" graph by a cub reporter mentioning a few of his more
notorious relatives: Richard III, Henry VIII, Mary Stuart.
Walter blue-penciled most of it for the next edition, with the
immortal words "nobody gives a shit about all that
Shakespearean crap," and substituted a sidebar about Vickie
Hanover and her weird ideas about sex that influenced an entire
age.
The only reason Henry XI was in Nirvana in the first place
was that he was in charge of the plumbing in dome #3. Not the
air system; the sewage.
But the upshot was that, on my first free day since the
disaster, my phone informed me that someone not on my
"accept-calls" list wanted to speak to me, and was identifying
herself as Elizabeth Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. I drew a blank for a
moment, then realized it was the terrifying fighting machine I
had known as Wales. I let the call through.
She spent the first few minutes apologizing all over
again, asking if her check had arrived, and please call me Liz.
"Reason I called," she finally said, "I don't know if you
heard, but my mother died in the Nirvana disaster."
"I did know that. I'm sorry, I should have sent a
condolence card or something."
"That's okay. You don't really know me well enough, and I
hated the boozing son-of-a-bitch anyway. He made my life hell
for many years. But now that he's finally gone . . . see, I'm
having this sort of coronation party tomorrow and I wondered if
you'd like to come? And a guest, too, of course."
I wondered if the invitation was the result of continuing
guilt over the way she'd torn me apart, or if she was angling
for coverage in the pad. But I didn't mention either of those
things. I was about to beg off, then remembered there had been
something I'd wanted to talk to her about. I accepted.
"Oh," I said, as she was about to ring off. "Ah, what
about dress? Should it be formal?"
"Semi," she said. "No need for any full uniforms. And the
reception afterward will be informal. Just a party, really. Oh,
and no gifts." She laughed. "I'm only supposed to accept gifts
from other heads of state."
"That lets me out. See you tomorrow."
#
The Royal Coronation was held in Suite #2 of the spaceport
Howard's Hotel, a solidly middleclass hostelry favored by
traveling salespeople and business types just in King City for
the day. I was confronted at the door by a man in a
red-andblack military uniform that featured a fur hat almost a
meter high. I vaguely recalled the outfit from historical
romances. He was rigidly at attention beside a guardhouse about
the size of a coffin standing on end. He glanced at my faxed
invitation, opened the door for me, and the familiar roar of a
party in progress spilled into the hall.
Liz had managed a pretty good turn-out. Too bad she
couldn't have afforded to hire a bigger hall. People were
standing elbow to elbow, trying to balance tiny plates of
olives and crackers with cheese and anchovy paste in one hand
and paper cups of punch and champagne in the other while being
jostled from all sides. I sidled my way to the food, as is my
wont when it's free, and scanned it dubiously. UniBio set a
better table, I must say. Drinks were being poured by two men
in the most outrageous outfits. I won't even attempt to
describe them. I later learned they were called Beefeaters, for
reasons that will remain forever obscure to me.
Not that my own clothes were anything to shout about.
She'd said semi-formal, so I could have gotten away with just
the gray fedora and the press pass stuck in the brim. But upon
reflection I decided to go with the whole silly ensemble,
handing the baggy pants and double-breasted suit coat to the
auto-valet with barely enough time for alterations. I left the
seat and the legs loose and didn't button the coat; that was
part of the look my guild, in its infinite wisdom, had voted on
almost two hundred years ago when professional uniforms were
being chosen. It had been taken from newspaper movies of the
1930's. I'd viewed a lot of them, and was amused at the image
my fellow reporters apparently wanted to project at formal
events: rumpled, aggressive, brash, impolite, wise-cracking,
but with hearts o' gold when the goin' got tough. Sure, and it
made yer heart proud ta be a reporter, by the saints. For a
little fun, I'd worn a white blouse with a bunch of lace at the
neck instead of the regulation ornamental noose known as a
neck-tie. And I'd tied my hair up and stuffed it under the hat.
In the mirror I'd looked just like Kate Hepburn masquerading as
a boy, at least from the neck up. From there down the suit hung
on me like a tent, but such was the cunning architecture of my
new body that anything looked good on it. I'd saluted my image
in the mirror: here's lookin' at you, Bobbie.
Liz spotted me and made her way toward me with a shout.
She was already half looped. If her late mother had given her
nothing else, she had seemingly inherited his taste for the
demon rum. She embraced me and thanked me for coming, then
swirled off again into the crowd. Well, I'd corner her later,
after the ceremony, if she could still stand up by then.
What followed hasn't changed much in four or five hundred
years. For almost an hour people kept arriving, including the
hotel manager who had a hasty conference with Liz--concerning
her credit rating, I expect--and then opened the connecting
door to Suite #1, which relieved the pressure for a while. The
food and champagne ran out, and was replenished. Liz didn't
care about the cost. This was her day. It was your
proto-typical daytime party.
I met several people I knew, was introduced to dozens
whose names I promptly forgot. Among my new friends were the
Shaka of the Zulu Nation, the Emperor of Japan, the Maharajah
of Gujarat, and the Tsarina of All the Russias, or at least
people in silly costumes who styled themselves that way. Also
countless Counts, Caliphs, Archdukes, Satraps, Sheiks and
Nabobs. Who was I to dispute their titles? There had been a
vogue in such genealogy about the time Callie had grudgingly
expelled my ungrateful squalling form into a lessthan
overwhelmed world; Callie had even told me she thought she
might be related to Mussolini, on her mother's side. Did that
make me the heirapparent of Il Duce? It wasn't a burning
question to me. I overheard intense debates about the rules of
primogeniture--even Salic Law, of all things--in an age of sex
changing. Someone--I think it was the Duke of York--gave me a
lecture about it shortly before the ceremony, explaining why
Liz was inheritor to the throne, even though she had a younger
brother.
After escaping from that with most of my wits intact, I
found myself out on the balcony, nursing a strawberry
Margarita. Howard's had a view, but it was of the cargo side of
the spaceport. I looked out over the beached-whale hulks of
bulk carriers expelling their interplanetary burdens into
waiting underground tanks. I was almost alone, which puzzled me
for a moment, until I remembered a story I'd seen about how
many people had suddenly lost their taste for surface views in
the wake of the Kansas Collapse. I drained my drink, reached
out and tapped the invisible curved canopy that held vacuum at
bay, and shrugged. Somehow I didn't think I'd die in a blowout.
I had worse things to fear.
Somebody held out another pink drink with salt on the rum.
I took it and looked over and up--and up and up--into the
smiling face of Brenda, girl reporter and apprentice giraffe. I
toasted her.
"Didn't expect to see you here," I said.
"I got acquainted with the Princess after your . . .
accident."
"That was no accident."
She prattled on about what a nice party it was. I didn't
disillusion her. Wait till she'd attended a few thousand more
just like it, then she'd see.
I'd been curious what Brenda's reaction would be to my new
sex. To my chagrin, she was delighted. I got the skinney from a
homo-oriented friend at the fashion desk: Brenda was young
enough to still be exploring her own sexuality, discovering her
preferences. She'd already been pretty sure she leaned toward
females as lovers, at least when she was a woman. Discovering
her preferences as a male would have to wait for her first
Change. After all, until quite recently she'd been effectively
neuter. The only problem she'd had in her crush on me was that
she wasn't much attracted to males. She had thought it would
remain platonic until I thoughtfully made everything perfect by
showing up at work as my gorgeous new self.
I really, really didn't have the heart to tell her about
my preferences.
And I did owe her. She had been covering for me, putting
my by-line on the Invasion Bicentennial stories she was
writing, the stories I simply could no longer bring myself to
work on. Oh, I was helping, answering her questions, going over
her drafts, punching up the prose, showing her how to leave
just enough excess baggage in the stories so Walter would have
something to cut out and shout at her about and thus remain a
happy man. I think Walter was beginning to suspect what was
going on, but he hadn't said anything yet because expecting me
to cover the Collapse and get in our weekly feature was unfair,
and he knew it. The thing he should have foreseen before he
ever came up with his cockamamie Invasion series was that there
would always be a story like the Collapse happening, and as a
good editor he had to assign his best people to it, which
included me. Oh, yeah, if you wanted somebody to intrude on
grief and ogle bodies puffed up like pink and brown popcorn,
Hildy was your girl.
"Tell me, sweetheart, how did you feel when you saw the
man cut your daddy's head off?"
"What?" Brenda was looking at me strangely.
"It's the essential disaster/atrocity question," I said.
"They don't tell you that in Journalism 101, but all the
questions we ask, no matter how delicately phrased, boil down
to that. The idea is to get the first appearance of the tear,
the ineffable moment when the face twists up. That's gold,
honey. You'd better learn how to mine it."
"I don't think that's true."
"Then you'll never be a great reporter. Maybe you should
try social work."
I saw that I had hurt her, and it made me angry, both at
her and at myself. She had to understand these things, dammit.
But who appointed you, Hildy? She'll find out soon enough, as
soon as Walter takes her off these damn comparative
anthropology stories that our readers don't even want to see
and lets her get out where she can grub in the dirt like the
rest of us.
I realized I'd drunk a little more than I had intended. I
dumped the rest of my drink in a thirsty-looking potted plant,
snagged a coke from a passing tray, and performed a little
ritual I'd come to detest but was powerless to stop. It
consisted of a series of questions, like this: Do you feel the
urge to hurl yourself off this balcony, assuming you could
drill a hole through that ultralexan barrier? No. Great, but do
you want to throw a rope over that beam and haul yourself up
into the rafters? Not today, thank you. And so on.
I was about to say something nice and neutral and
soothing, suitable for the reassurance of idealistic cub
reporters, when the Jamaican steel band which had been
reprising every patriotic British song since the Spanish Armada
suddenly struck up God Save The Queen, and somebody asked
everyone to haul their drunken asses down to the main ballroom,
where the coronation was about to commence. Not in those words,
of course.
#
There was another band in the ballroom, playing some
horrible modern version of Rule Britannia. This was the public
portion of the show, and I guess Liz thought it ought to make
some attempt to appeal to the tastes of the day. I thought the
music was dreadful, but Brenda was snapping her fingers, so I
suppose it was at least current.
A few specialty channels and some of the 'pads had sent
reporters, but the crowd in the ballroom was essentially the
same folks I'd been avoiding up in the Suites one and two, only
they weren't holding drinks. A lot of them looked as if they
wished the show would hurry up, so they could hold drinks
again, for a short time, at least.
One touch Liz hadn't expected was the decorations. From
the whispers I overheard, she'd only booked the hall for one
hour. When the coronation was over a wedding party was
scheduled to hold a reception there, so the walls were draped
in white bunting and repulsive little cherubs, and there was a
big sign hung on the wall that said Mazel Tov! Liz looked a
little nonplussed. She glanced around with that baffled
expression one sometimes gets after wandering into a strange
place. Could there have been a mistake?
But the coronation itself went off without a hitch. She
was proclaimed "Elizabeth III, by the Grace of God of the
United Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland
and of her other Realms and Territories, Queen, Empress of
India, Head of the Commonwealth and Defender of the Faith."
Sure, it was easy to snicker, and I did, but to myself. I
could see that Liz took it seriously, almost in spite of
herself. No matter how spurious the claims of some of these
other clowns might have been to ancient titles, Liz's was
spotless and unquestioned. The actual Prince of Wales had been
living and working on Luna at the time of the Invasion, and she
was descended from him.
The original Crown Jewels had naturally not accompanied
the King in Exile to Luna; they were buried with the rest of
London--of England, of Europe, of the whole surface of Planet
Earth. Liz had the use of a very nice crown, orb, and sceptre.
Hovering in the background as these items were produced was a
man from Tiffany's. Not the one in the Platz, but the discount
outlet down on Leystrasse, where even as the tiara was lowered
onto Liz's head a sign was going up announcing "By Appointment
to Her Majesty, The Queen." The jewels were hired, and would
soon reside in a window advertising the usual E-Z Credit Terms.
A procession was traditional after a coronation back when
the Empire had any real meaning--and even after it had become
just a tourist attraction. But processions can be difficult to
organize in the warrens of Luna, where the cities are usually
broken up into pressure-defensible malls and arcades connected
by tube trains. So after the ceremony we all straggled into a
succession of subway cars and zipped across town to Liz's
neighborhood, many of us growing steadily more sober and unsure
why we'd come in the first place.
But all was well. The real party began when we arrived at
the post-coronation reception, held in the Masonic Lodge Hall
half-way between Liz's apartment and the studio where she
worked. In addition to its many other virtues the lodge didn't
cost her anything, which meant she could spend what royal
budget she had left entirely on food, booze, and entertainment.
This bash was informal and relaxed, the only kind I enjoy.
The band was good, playing a preponderance of things from Liz's
teenage years, which put them mid-way between my era and
Brenda's. It was stuff I could dance to. So I stumbled out into
the public corridor in my twotone Oxford lace-ups--and a
clunkier shoe has never been invented--found a mail box and
called my valet. I told it to pack up the drop-dead shiny black
sheath dress slit from the ankles to you-should-only-blush and
'tube it over to me. I went into the public comfort station and
changed my hair color to platinum and put a long wave in it,
and when I came out, three minutes later, the package was
waiting for me. I stripped out of the Halloween costume and
stuffed it into the return capsule, cajoled my abundance into
the outfit's parsimonious interior. Just getting into that
thing was almost enough to give you an orgasm. I left my feet
bare. And to hell with Kate Hepburn; Veronica Lake was on the
prowl.
I danced almost non-stop for two hours. I had one dance
with Liz, but she was naturally much in demand. I danced with
Brenda, who was a very good if visually unlikely terpsichorean.
Mostly I danced with a succession of men, and I turned down a
dozen interesting offers. I'd selected my eventual target, but
I was in no hurry unless he suddenly decided to leave.
He didn't. When I was ready I cut him out of the herd. I
put a few moves on him, mostly in the form of dance steps whose
meaning couldn't have been missed by a eunuch. He wanted to
join the rather sparsely-attended orgy going on in one corner
of the ballroom, but I dragged him off to what the Masons
called, too coyly in my opinion, snuggle rooms. We spent a very
enjoyable hour in one of them. He liked to be spanked, and
bitten. It's not my thing, but I can accommodate most
consenting adults as long as my needs are attended to as well.
He did a very good job of that. His name was Larry, and he
claimed to be the Duke of Bosnia-Herzegovina, but that might
have been just to get into my pants. The couple of times I drew
blood he asked me to do it again, so I did, but eventually lost
my . . . well, my taste for that sort of thing. We exchanged
phone codes and said we'd look each other up, but I didn't
intend to. He was nice to look at but I felt I'd chewed off
about as much as I wanted.
I staggered back into the ballroom drenched in sweat. It
had been very intense there for a while. I headed for the bar,
dodging dancers. The faint-hearted had left, leaving about half
the original attendees, but those looked ready to party till
Monday morning. I eased my pinkened, pleasantly sore cheeks
onto a padded barstool next to the Queen of England, the
Empress of India, and the Defender of the Faith, and Liz slowly
turned her head toward me. I now knew where her impressive ears
came from. There were posters of past monarchs taped to the
walls here, and she was the spitting image of Charles III.
"Innkeeper," she shouted, above the music. "Bring me salt.
Bring me tequila. Bring me the nectar of the lime, your
plumpest strawberries, your coldest ice, your finest crystal.
My friend needs a drink, and I intend to build it for her."
"Ain't got no strawberries," the bartender said.
"Then go out and kill some!"
"It's all right, Your Majesty," I said. "Lime will be
fine."
She grinned foolishly at me. "I purely do like the sound
of that. 'Your Majesty.' Is that awful?"
"You're entitled, as they say. But don't expect me to make
a habit of it." She draped an arm over my shoulder and exhaled
ethanol.
"How are you, Hildy? Having a good time? Getting laid?"
"Just did, thank you."
"Don't thank me. And you look it, honey, if I may say so."
"Didn't have time to freshen up yet."
"You don't need to. Who did the work?"
I showed her the monogram on the nail of my pinkie. She
squinted at it, and seemed to lose interest, which might have
meant that Bobbie's fears of falling out of fashion were
well-grounded-- Liz would be up on these things--or only that
her attention span was not what it might be.
"What was I gonna say? Oh, yeah. Can I do anything for
you, Hildy? There's a tradition among my people . . . well,
maybe it's not an English tradition, but it's somebody's damn
tradition, what you gotta do is, anybody asks you for a favor
on your coronation day, you gotta grant it."
"I think that's a Mafia tradition."
"Is it? Well, it's your people, then. So just ask. Only be
real, okay? I mean, if it's gonna cost a lot of money, forget
it. I'm gonna be payin' for this fucking shivaree for the next
ten fucking years. But that's okay. It's only money, right? And
what a party. Am I right?
"As a matter of fact, there is something you could do for
me."
I was about to tell her, but the bartender delivered a
Margarita in its component parts, and Liz could only think
about one thing at a time. She spilled a lot of salt on the
bar, spread it out, moistened the rim of a wide glass, and did
things necessary to produce a too-strong concoction with that
total concentration of the veteran drunk. She did it
competently, and I sipped at the drink I hadn't really wanted.
"So. Name it, kiddo, and it's yours. Within reason."
"If you . . . let's say . . . if you wanted to have a
conversation with somebody, and you wanted to be sure no one
would overhear it . . . what would you do? How would you go
about it?"
She frowned and her brow furrowed. She appeared to be
thinking heavily, and her hand toyed with the layer of salt in
front of her.
"Now that's a good one. That's a real good one. I'm not
sure if anyone's ever asked me that before." She looked slowly
down at the salt, where her finger had traced out CC??. I
looked up at her, and nodded.
"You know what bugs are like these days. I'm not sure if
there's any place that can't be bugged. But I'll tell you what.
I know some techs back at the studio, they're real clever about
these things. I could ask them and get back to you." Her hand
had wiped out the original message and written p-suit. I nodded
again, and saw that while she was without a doubt very, very
drunk, she knew how to handle herself. There was a glint of
speculation in those eyes I wasn't sure I liked. I wondered
what I might be getting myself into.
We talked a while longer, and she wrote out a time and a
destination in the salt crystals. Then someone else sat next to
her and started fondling her breasts and she was showing a
definite interest, so I got up and returned to the dance floor.
I danced almost an hour longer, but my heart wasn't really
in it. A guy made a play for me, and he was pretty, and
persuasive, and a very good, raunchy dancer, but in the end I
felt he just didn't try hard enough. When I'm not the aggressor
I can choose to take a lot of persuading. In the end I gave him
my phone code and said call me in a week and we'd see, and got
the impression he probably wouldn't.
I showered and bought a paper chemise in the locker room,
staggered to the tube terminal, and got aboard. I fell asleep
on the way home, and the train had to wake me up.
=*= =*= =*= =*=
I've read about hangovers. You just about have to believe
those people were exaggerating. If only a tenth of the things
written about them were true, I have no desire to experience
one. The hangover was cured long before I was born, just a
simple chemical matter, really, no tough science involved. I'd
sometimes wondered if that was a good idea. There's an almost
biblical belief deep in the human psyche that we should pay in
some way for our over-indulgences. But when I think that, my
rational side soon takes over. Might as well wish for the
return of the hemorrhoid.
When I woke up the next morning, my mouth tasted good.
Too good.
"CC, on line," quoth I.
"What can I do for you?"
"What's with the peppermint?"
"I thought you liked peppermint. I can change the flavor."
"There's nothing wrong with peppermint qua peppermint.
It's just passing strange to wake up with my mouth tasting like
anything but . . . well, it wouldn't mean anything to you, I
don't guess taste is one of your talents, but take my word for
it, it's vile."
"You asked me to work on that. I did."
"Just like that?"
"Why not?"
I was about to answer, but Fox stirred in his sleep and
turned over, so I got out of bed and went into the bathroom. I
had shaken out a toothcleaning pill, then I looked at it
sitting there in my hand.
"Do I need this, then?"
"No. It's gone the way of the toothbrush."
"And science marches on. You know, I'm used to what they
call future shock, but I'm not used to being the cause of it."
"Humans usually are the cause of the new inventions."
"You said that."
"But you can never tell when a human will take the time to
work on a particular problem. Now, I have no talent for asking
questions like that. As you noted, my mouth never tastes bad in
the morning, so why should I? But I have a lot of excess
capacity, and when a question like that is asked, I often
tinker with it and sometimes come up with a solution. In this
case, I synthesized a nanobot that goes after the things that
would normally rot in your mouth while you are sleeping, and
changes them into things that taste good. They also clean away
plaque and tartar and have a beneficial effect on gums."
"I'm afraid to ask how you slipped this stuff to me."
"It's in the water supply. You don't need much of it."
"So every Lunarian is waking up today and tasting
peppermint?"
"It comes in six delicious flavors."
"Are you writing your own ad campaigns now? Do me a favor;
don't tell anyone this is my fault."
I got into the shower and it turned on, gradually warming
to just a degree below the hottest I could stand. Don't ever
say anything about showers, Hildy, I cautioned myself. The
goddam CC might find a way to clean the human hide without
them, and I think I'd go mad without my morning shower. I'm a
singer in the shower. Lovers have told me I do this with
indifferent esthetic effect, but it pleases me. As I soaped
myself I thought about a nanobot-infested world.
"CC. What would happen if all those tiny little robots
were taken out of my body?"
"Doing it would be impractical, to say the least."
"Hypothetically."
"You would be hypothetically dead within a year."
I dropped the soap. I don't know what answer I had
expected, but it hadn't been that.
"Are you serious?"
"You asked. I replied."
"Well . . . shit. You can't just leave it lying there."
"I suppose not. Then let me list the reasons in order.
First, you are prone to cancer. Billions of manufactured
organisms work night and day seeking out and eating pinpoint
tumors throughout your body. They find one almost every day. If
left unchecked, they would soon eat you alive. Second,
Alzheimer's Disease."
"What the hell is that?"
"A syndrome associated with aging. Simply put, it eats
away at your brain cells. Most human beings, upon reaching
their hundredth birthday in a natural state, would have
contracted it. This is an example of the reconstructive work
constantly going on in your body. Failing brain cells are
excised and duplicated with healthy ones so the neural net is
not disrupted. You would have forgotten your name and how to
find your way home years ago; the disease started showing up
about the time you went to work at the Nipple."
"Hah! Maybe those things didn't do as good a job as you
thought. That would go a long way toward explaining . . . never
mind. There's more?"
"Lung disease. The air in the warrens is not actually
healthy for human life. Things get concentrated, things that
could be cleaned from the air are not, because replacing lungs
is so much cheaper and simpler than cleaning up the air. You
could live in a disneyland to offset this; I must filter the
air much more rigorously in there. As it is, several hundred
alveoli are re-built in your lungs every day. Without the
nanobots, you'd soon begin to miss them."
"Why didn't anyone ever tell me about all this?"
"What does it matter? If you'd researched it you could
have found out; it's not a secret."
"Yeah, but . . . I thought those kind of things had been
engineered out of the body. Genetically."
"A popular misconception. Genes are certainly manipulable,
but they've proved resistant to some types of changes, without
. . . unacceptable alterations in the gestalt, the body, they
produce and define."
"Can you put that more plainly?"
"It's difficult. It can be explained in terms of some very
complicated mathematical theories having to do with chaotic
effects and chemical holography. There's often no single gene
for this or that characteristic, good or bad. It's more of an
interference pattern produced by the overlapping effects of a
number of genes, sometimes a very large number. Tampering with
one produces unintended side-effects, and tampering with them
all is often impossible without producing unwanted changes. Bad
genes are bound up this way as often as good ones. In your
case, if I eradicated the faulty genes that insist on producing
cancers in your body, you'd no longer be Hildy. You'd be a
healthier person, but not a wiser one, and you'd lose a lot of
abilities and outlooks that, counterproductive though they may
be in a purely practical sense, I suspect you treasure."
"What makes me me."
"Yes. You know there are many things I can change about
you without affecting your . . . soul is the simplest word to
use, though it's a hazy one."
"It's the first one you've used that I understand." I
chewed on that for a while, shutting off the shower and
stepping out, dripping wet, reaching for a towel, drying
myself.
"It doesn't make sense to me that things like cancer
should be in the genes. It sounds contrasurvival."
"From an evolutionary viewpoint, anything that doesn't
kill you before you've become old enough to reproduce is
irrelevant to species survival. There's even a philosophic
point of view that says cancer and things like it are good for
the race. Overpopulation can be a problem to a very successful
species. Cancer gets the old ones out of the way."
"They're not getting out the way now."
"No. It will be a problem someday."
"When?"
"Don't worry about it. Ask me again at the Tricentennial.
As a preliminary measure, large families are now being
discouraged, the direct opposite of the ethic that prevailed
after the Invasion."
I wanted to hear more, but I noticed the time, and had to
hustle to get ready in time to catch my train.
#
Tranquility Base is by far the biggest tourist attraction
on Luna, and the reason is its historical significance, since
it is the spot where a human foot first trod another planet.
Right? If you thought that, maybe I could interest you in some
prime real estate on Ganymede with a great view of the volcano.
The real draw at Tranquility is just over the horizon and goes
by the name of Armstrong Park. Since the park is within the
boundaries of Apollo Planetary Historical Preserve, the Lunar
Chamber of Commerce can boast that X million people visit the
site of the first Lunar landing every year, but the ads feature
the roller coaster, not the LEM.
A good number of those tourists do find the time to ride
the train over to the Base itself and spend a few minutes
gazing at the forlorn little lander, and an hour hurrying
through the nearby museum, where most of the derelict space
hardware from 1960 to the Invasion is on display. Then the kids
begin to whine that they're bored, and by then the parents
probably are, too, and it's back to the land of over-priced hot
dogs and not-socheap thrills.
You can't take a train directly to the base. No accident,
that. It dumps you at the foot of the thirty-story explosion of
lights that is the sign for and entrance to the Terminal
Seizure, what the ads call "The Greatest SphincterTightener in
the Known Universe." I got on it once, against my better
judgment, and I guarantee it will show you things they didn't
tell you about in astronaut school. It's a twenty-minute
MagLev, six-gee, free trajectory descent into the tenth circle
of Hell that guarantees one blackout and seven gray hairs or
your money back. It's actually two coasters--the Grand Mal and
the Petit Mal--one of them obviously for wimps. They are
prepared to hose out the Grand Mal cars after every ride. If
you understand the attraction of that, please don't come to my
home to explain it to me. I'm armed, and considered dangerous.
I walked as quickly as I could past the sign-30,000,000
(Count 'Em!) Thirty Million Lights!-and noticed the two-hour
line for the Grand Mal ride was cleverly concealed from the
ticket booth. I made it to the shuttle train, having
successfully avoided the blandishments of a thousand hucksters
selling everything from inflatable Neil dolls to talking
souvenir pencil sharpeners to put a point on your souvenir
pencils. I boarded the train, removed a hunk of cotton candy
from a seat, and sat. I was wearing a disposable paper jumper,
so what the hell?
The Base itself is an area large enough to play a game of
baseball/6. Those guys never got very far from their ship, so
it made no sense to preserve any more of the area. It is
surrounded by a stadium-like structure, un-roofed, that is four
levels of viewing area with all the windows facing inward. On
top is an un-pressurized level.
I elbowed my way through the throngs of cameratoting
tourists from Pluto and made it to the suit rental counter. Oh,
dear.
If I ever had to choose one sex to be for the rest of my
life, I would be female. I think the body is better-designed,
and the sex is a little better. But there is one thing about
the female body that is distinctly inferior to the male--and
I've talked to others about this, both Changers and dedicated
females, and ninety-five percent agree with me--and that is
urination. Males are simply better at it. It is less messy, the
position is more dignified, and the method helps develop
hand-eye coordination and a sense of artistic expression, a la
writing your name in the snow.
But what the hell, right? It's never really much of an
annoyance . . . until you go to rent a p-suit.
Almost three hundred years of engineering have come up
with three basic solutions to the problem: the catheter,
suction devices, and . . . oh, dear lord, the diaper. Some
advocate a fourth way: continence. Try it the next time you go
on a twelve-hour hike on the surface. The catheter was by far
the best. It is painless, as advertised . . . but I hate the
damn thing. It just feels wrong. Besides, like the suckers,
they get dislodged. Next time you need a laugh, watch a woman
trying to get her UroLator back in place. It could start a new
dance craze.
I've never owned a p-suit. Why spend the money, when you
need it once a year? I've rented a lot of them, and they all
stank. No matter how they are sterilized, some odors of the
previous occupant will linger. It's bad enough in a man's suit,
but for real gut-wrenching stench you have to put on the female
model. They all use the suction method, with a diaper as a
back-up. At a place like Tranquility, where the turnover is
rapid and the help likely to be under-paid, unconcerned, and
slipshod, some of the niceties will be overlooked from time to
time. I was once handed a suit that was still wet.
I got into this one and sniffed cautiously; not too bad,
though the perfume was cheap and obvious. I switched it on and
let the staff put it through a perfunctory safety check, and
remembered the other thing I didn't like about the suction
method. All that air flowing by can chill the vulva something
fierce.
There were surgical methods of improving the interface,
but I found them ugly, and they didn't make sense unless your
work took you outside regularly. The rest of us just had to
breathe shallowly and bear it, and try not to drink too much
coffee before an excursion.
The air lock delivered me onto the roof, which was not
crowded at all. I found a place at the rail far from anyone
else, and waited. I turned off my suit radio, all but the
emergency beacon.
I said, "CC, what do I get out of it?"
The CC is pretty good at picking up a conversation hours,
weeks, and even years old, but the question was pretty vague.
He took a stab at it.
"You mean the morning mouth preparation?"
"Yeah. I thought it up. You did the work, but then you
gave it away without consulting me. Shouldn't there be a way to
make some money out of it?"
"It's defined as a health benefit, so its production cost
will be added to the health tax all Lunarians pay, plus a small
profit, which will go to you. It won't make you rich."
"And no one gets to choose. They get it whether they like
it or not."
"If they object, I have an antibot available. No one has
so far."
"Still sounds like a subversive plot to me. If the
drinking water ain't pure, what is?"
"Hildy, there's so many things in the King City municipal
water you could practically lift it with a magnet."
"All for our own good."
"You seem to be in a sour mood."
"Why should I be? My mouth tastes wonderful."
"If you're interested, the approval ratings on this are
well over ninety-nine percent. The favorite flavor, however is
Neutral-with-a-Hint-ofMint. And an unforeseen side benefit is
that it works all day, cleaning your breath."
He'd beaten halitosis, I realized, glumly. How did I feel
about that? Shouldn't I be rejoicing? I recalled the way Liz's
breath had smelled last night, that sour reek of gin. Should a
drunk's breath smell like a puppy's tongue? I was sure as hell
being a crabby old woman about this, even I could see that. But
hell, I was an old woman, and often crabby. I'd found that as I
got older, I was less tolerant of change, for good or ill.
"How did you hear me?" I asked, before I could get too
gloomy thinking about a forever-changing world.
"The radio you switched off is suit-to-suit. Your suit
also monitors your vital signs, and transmits them if needed.
Using your access voice is defined as an emergency call, not
requiring aid."
"So I'm never out from under the protective umbrella of
your eternal vigilance."
"It keeps you safe," he said, and I told him to go away.
#
When Armstrong and Aldrin came in peace for all mankind,
it was envisioned that their landing site, in the vacuum of
space, would remain essentially unchanged for a million years,
if need be. Never mind that the exhaust of lift-off knocked the
flag over and tore a lot of the gold foil on the landing stage.
The footprints would still be there. And they are. Hundreds of
them, trampling a crazy pattern in the dust, going away from
the lander, coming back, none of them reaching as far as the
visitors' gallery. There are no other footprints to be seen.
The only change the museum curators worked at the site were to
set the flag back up, and suspend an ascentstage module about a
hundred feet above the landing stage, hanging from invisible
wires. It's not the Apollo 11 ascent stage; that one
crashlanded long ago.
Things are often not what they seem.
Nowhere in the free literature or the thousands of plaques
and audio-visual displays in the museum will you hear of the
night one hundred and eighty years ago when ten members of the
Delta Chi Delta fraternity, Luna University Chapter, came
around on their cycles. This was shortly after the Invasion,
and the site was not guarded as it is now. There had just been
a rope around the landing area, not even a visitors' center;
postInvasion Lunarians didn't have time for luxuries like that.
The Delts tipped the lander over and dragged it about
twenty feet. Their cycles wiped out most of the footprints.
They were going to steal the flag and take it back to their
dorm, but one of them fell off his mount, cracked his
faceplate, and went to that great pledge party in the sky.
Psuits were not as safe then as they are now. Horseplay in a
p-suit was not a good idea.
But not to worry. Tranquility Base was one of the most
documented places in the history of history. Tens of thousands
of photos existed, including very detailed shots from orbit.
Teams of selenolography students spent a year restoring the
Base. Each square meter was scrutinized, debates raged about
the order in which footprints had been laid down, then two guys
went out there and tromped around with replica Apollo
moonboots, each step measured by laser, and were hauled out on
a winch when they were through. Presto! An historical
re-creation passing as the real thing. This is not a secret,
but very few people know about it. Look it up.
I felt a hand flip the radio switch on my suit back on.
"Fancy meeting you here," Liz said.
"Quite a coincidence," I said, thinking about the CC
listening in. She joined me, leaning on the railing and looking
out over the plain. Behind the far wall of the round visitors'
gallery I could see thousands of people looking toward us
through the glass.
"I come here a lot," she said. "Would you travel a
half-million miles in a tinfoil toy like that?"
"I wouldn't go half a meter in it. I'd rather travel by
pogo stick."
"They were real men in those days. Have you ever thought
about it? What it must have been like? They could barely turn
around in that thing. One of them made it back with half the
ship blown up."
"Yeah. I have thought about it. Maybe not as much as you."
"Think about this, then. You know who the real hero was?
In my opinion? Good old Mike Collins, the poor sap who stayed
in orbit. Whoever designed this operation didn't think it out.
Say something went wrong, say the lander crashes and these two
die instantly. There's Collins up in orbit, all by himself. How
are you gonna deal with that? No ticker-tape parade for Mike.
He gets to attend the memorial service, and spend the rest of
his life wishing he'd died with them. He gets to be a national
goat, is what he gets."
"I hadn't thought of that."
"So things go right--and they did, though I'll never
understand how--so who does the Planetary Park get named after?
Why, the guy who flubbed his 'first words' from the surface."
"I thought that was a garbled transmission."
"Don't you believe it. 'Course, if I'd had two billion
people listening in, I might have fucked it up, too. That part
was probably scarier than the thought of dying, anyway, having
everybody watching you die, and hoping that if it did go
rotten, it wouldn't be your fault. This little exercise cost
twenty, thirty billion dollars, and that was back when a
billion was real money."
It was still real money to me, but I let her ramble on.
This was her show; she'd brought me here, knowing only that I
was interested in telling her something in a place where the CC
couldn't overhear. I was in her hands.
"Let's go for a walk," she said, and started off. I
hurried to catch up with her, followed her down several flights
of stairs to the surface.
You can cover a lot of ground on the surface in a fairly
short time. The best gait is a hop from the ball of the foot,
swinging each leg out slightly to the side. There's no point in
jumping too high, it just wastes energy.
I know there are still places on Luna where the virgin
dust stretches as far as the eye can see. Not many, but a few.
The mineral wealth of my home planet is not great, and all the
interesting places have been identified and mapped from orbit,
so there's little incentive to visit some of the more remote
regions. By remote, I mean far from the centers of human
habitation; any spot on Luna is easily reachable by a lander or
crawler.
Everywhere I'd ever been on the surface looked much like
the land around Tranquility Base, covered with so many tracks
you wondered where the big crowd had gone, since there was
likely to be not a single soul in sight but whatever companions
you were traveling with. Nothing ever goes away on Luna. It has
been continuously inhabited by humans for almost two and a half
centuries. Every time someone has taken a stroll or dropped an
empty oxygen tank the evidence is still there, so a place that
got two visitors every three or four years looks like hundreds
of people have gone by just a few minutes before. Tranquility
got considerably more than that. There was not a square
millimeter of undisturbed dust, and the litter was so thick it
had been kicked into heaps here and there. I saw empty beer
cans with labels a hundred and fifty years old lying next to
some they were currently selling in Armstrong Park.
After a bit some of that thinned out. The tracks tended to
group themselves into impromptu trails. I guess humans tend to
follow the herd, even when the herd is gone and the land is so
flat it doesn't matter where you go.
"You left too early last night," Liz said, the radio
making it sound as if she was standing beside me when I could
see her twenty meters in front. "There was some excitement."
"I thought it was pretty exciting while I was there."
"Then you must have seen the Duke of Bosnia tangling with
the punchbowl."
"No, I missed that. But I tangled with him earlier."
"That was you? Then it's your fault. He was in a foul
mood. Apparently you didn't mark him enough; he figures if he
hasn't lost a kilo or two of flesh after pounding the sheets,
somebody just wasn't trying."
"He didn't complain."
"He wouldn't. I swear, I think I'm related to him, but
that man is so stupid, he hasn't got the brains God gave a
left-handed screwdriver. After you went home he got drunk as a
waltzing pissant and decided somebody had put poison in the
punch, so he tipped it over and picked it up and started
banging people over the head with it. I had to come over and
coldcock him."
"You do give interesting parties."
"Ain't it the truth? But that's not what I was gonna tell
you about. We were having so much fun we completely forgot
about the gifts, so I gathered everybody around and started
opening them."
"You get anything nice?"
"Well, a few had the sense to tape the receipt to the box.
I'll clear a little money on that. So I got to one that said it
was from the Earl of Donegal, which should have tipped me off,
but what do I know about the goddam United Kingdom? I thought
it was a province of Wales, or something. I knew I didn't know
the guy, but who can keep track? I opened it, and it was from
the Irish Republican Pranksters."
"Oh, no."
"The hereditary enemies of my clan. Next thing I know
we're all covered with this green stuff, I don't wanna know
where it came from, but I know what it smelled like. And that
was the end of that party. Just as well. I had to mail half the
guests home, anyway."
"I hate those jerks. On St. Patrick's day you don't dare
sit down without looking for a green whoopee cushion."
"You think you got it bad? Every mick in King City comes
gunning for me on the seventeenth of March, so they can tell
their buddies how they put one over on the bleedin' Princess o'
Wales. And it's only gonna get worse now."
"Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown."
"I'll crown 'em, all right. I know where Paddy Flynn
lives, and I'm gonna get even if it harelips the Mayor and the
whole damn city council."
I reflected that you'd have to go a long way to find
somebody as colorful as the new Queen. Once again I wondered
what I was doing out here. I looked behind me, saw the
four-story stadium around the landing site just about to vanish
over the horizon. When it was gone, it would be easy to get
lost out here. Not that I was worried about that. The suit had
about seventeen different kinds of alarms and locators, a
compass, probably things I didn't even know about. No real need
for girl-scout tricks like noting the position of your shadow.
But the sense of aloneness was a little oppressive.
And illusory. I spotted another hiking party of five on
the crest of a low rise off to my left. A flash of light made
me look up, and I saw one of the Grand Mal trains arcing
overhead on one of the free-trajectory segments of its route.
It was spinning end over end, a maneuver I remember vividly
since I'd been in the front car, hanging from my straps and
watching the surface sweep by every two seconds when a big glob
of half-digested caramel corn and licorice splattered on the
glass in front of me, having just missed my neck. At that
moment I had been regretting everything I had eaten for the
last six years, and wondering if I was going to be seeing a
good portion of it soon, right there beside the tasty treats on
the windshield. Keeping it down may be one of the most amazing
things I ever did.
"You ever ride that damn thing?" Liz asked. "I try it out
every couple years, when I'm feeling mean. I swear, first time
I think my ass sucked six inches of foam rubber out of the seat
cushion. After that, It's not so bad. About like a barbedwire
enema."
I didn't reply--I'm not sure how one could reply to
statements like that--because as she spoke she had stopped and
waited for me to catch up, and she was punching buttons on a
small device on her left hand. I saw a pattern of lights flash,
mostly red, then they turned green one by one. When the whole
panel was green she opened a service hatch on the front of my
suit and studied whatever she found in there. She poked
buttons, then straightened and made a thumbs-up gesture at me.
She hung the device from a strap around my neck and regarded me
with her fists on her hips.
"So, you want to talk where nobody can listen in. Well,
talk, baby."
"What's that thing?"
"De-bugger. By which, it buggers up all the signals your
suit is sending out, but not enough so they'll send out a
search party. The machines up in orbit and down underground are
getting the signals that keep them happy, but it's not the real
stuff; it's what I want them to hear. Can't just step out here
and cut off your emergency freaks. That signal goes away, it's
an emergency in itself. But nobody can hear us now, take my
word for it."
"What if we have a real emergency?"
"I was about to say, don't crack open if you want to keep
a step ahead of your pallbearers. What's on your mind?"
Once again I found it hard to get started. I knew once I
got the first words out it would be easy enough, but I agonized
over those first words more than any first-time novelist.
"This may take some time," I hedged.
"It's my day off. Come on, Hildy; I love you, but cut the
cards."
So I started in on my third telling of my litany of woe.
You get better at these things as you go along. This time
didn't take as long as it had with either Callie or Fox. Liz
walked along beside me, saying nothing, guiding me back to some
trail she was following when I started to stray.
The thing was, I'd decided to tell it this time where it
logically should have begun the other two times: with my
suicide attempts. And it was a little easier to tell it to
someone I didn't know well, but not much. I was thankful she
remained silent through to the end. I don't think I could have
tolerated any of her unlikely folk sayings at that point.
And she stayed quiet for several minutes after I'd
finished. I didn't mind that, either. As before, I was
experiencing a rare moment of peace for having unburdened
myself.
Liz is not quite in the Italian class of gesturing, but
she did like to move her hands around when she talked. This is
frustrating in a p-suit. So many gestures and nervous
mannerisms involve touching part of the head or body, which is
impossible when suited up. She looked as if she'd like to be
chewing on a knuckle, or rubbing her forehead. Finally she
turned and squinted at me suspiciously.
"Why did you come to me?"
"I didn't expect you could solve my problem, if that's
what you mean."
"You got that right. I like you well enough, Hildy, but
frankly, I don't care if you kill yourself. You want to do it,
do it. And I think I resent it that you tried to use me to get
it done."
"I'm sorry about that, but I wasn't even aware that's what
I was doing. I'm still not sure if I was."
"Yeah, all right, it's not important."
"What I heard," I said, trying to put this delicately, "if
you want something that's, you know, not strictly legal, that
Liz was the gal to see."
"You heard that, did you?" She shot me a look that showed
some teeth, but would never pass for a smile. She looked very
dangerous. She was dangerous. How easy it would be for her to
arrange an accident out here, and how powerless I would be to
stop her. But the look was only a flicker, and her usual,
amiable expression replaced it. She shrugged. "You heard right.
That's what I thought we were coming out here for, to do some
business. But after what you just said, I wouldn't sell to
you."
"The way I reasoned," I went on, wondering what it was she
sold, "if you're used to doing illegal deals, things the CC
couldn't hear about, you must have methods of disguising your
activities."
"I see that now. Sure. This is one of them." She shook her
head slowly, and walked in a short circle, thinking it over. "I
tell you Hildy, I've seen a rodeo, a three-headed man, and a
duck fart underwater, but this is the craziest thing I ever did
see. This changes all the rules."
"How do you mean?"
"Lots of ways. I never heard of that memorydump business.
I'm gonna look it up when we get back. You say it's not a
secret?"
"That's what the CC said, and a friend of mine has heard
of it."
"Well, that's not the real important thing. It's lousy,
but I don't know what I can do about it, and I don't think it
really concerns me. I hope not, anyway. But what you said about
the CC rescuing you when you tried to kill yourself in your own
home.
"What it is, the main thing that me keeps walking around
free is what we call, in the trade, the Fourth Amendment.
That's the series of computer programs that--"
"I've heard the term."
"Right. Searches and seizures. An allpowerful, pervasive
computer that, if we let him loose, would make Big Brother seem
like my maiden aunt Vickie listening with a teacup against the
bedroom door. Balance that with the fact that everybody has
something to hide, something we'd rather nobody knew about,
even if it's not illegal, that lovely little right of privacy.
I think what's saved us is the people who make the laws have
something to hide, just like the rest of us.
"So what we do, in the, uh, 'criminal underworld,' is
sweep for extra ears and eyes in our own homes . . . and then
do our business right there. We know the CC is listening and
watching, but not the part that types out the warrants and
knocks down the doors."
"And that works?"
"It has so far. It sounds incredible when you think about
it, but I've been dodging in and out of trouble most of my
life, using just that method . . . essentially taking the CC at
his word, now that you mention it."
"It sounds risky."
"You'd think so. But in all my life, I never heard of an
instance where the CC used any illegally-obtained evidence. And
I'm not just talking about making arrests. I'm talking about in
establishing probable cause and issuing warrants, which is the
key to the whole search and seizure thing. The CC hears, in one
of his incarnations, things that would be incriminating, or at
least be enough for a judge to issue a warrant for a search or
a bug. But he doesn't tell himself what he knows, if you get my
meaning. He's compartmentalized. When I talk to him, he knows
I'm doing things that are against the law, and I know he knows
it. But that's the dealingwith-Liz part of his brain, which is
forbidden to tell the John Law part of his brain what he
knows."
We walked a little farther, both of us mulling this over.
I could see that what I'd told her made her very uneasy. I'd be
nervous, too, in her place. I'd never broken any laws more
serious than a misdemeanor; it's too easy to get caught, and
there's nothing illegal I've ever particularly wanted to do.
Hell, there's not that much that really is illegal in Luna. The
things that used to give law enforcement ninety percent of
their work--drugs, prostitution, and gambling, and the
organizations that provided these things to a naughty
populace--are all inalienable human rights in Luna. Violence
short of death was just a violation, subject to a fine.
Most of the things that were still worth a heavy-duty law
were so disgusting I didn't even want to think about them. Once
more I wondered just what it was the Queen of England was
involved in that made her the gal to see.
The biggest crime problem in Luna was theft of one sort or
another. Until the CC is unleashed, we'll probably always have
theft. Other than that, we're a pretty law-abiding society,
which we achieved by trimming the laws back to a bare minimum.
Liz spoke again, echoing my thoughts.
"Crime just ain't a big problem, you know that," she said.
"Otherwise, the citizenry in their great wisdom would clamor
for the sort of electronic cage I've always feared we'd get
sooner or later. All it would take would be to re-write a few
programs, and we'd see the biggest round-up since John Wayne
took the herd to Abilene. It's all just waiting to happen, you
know. In about a millisecond the CC could start singing like a
canary to the cops, and about three seconds later the warrants
could be printed up." She laughed. "One problem, there's
probably not enough cops to arrest everybody, much less jails
to put them in. Every crime since the Invasion could be solved
just like that. It boggles the mind just to think about it."
"I don't think that's going to happen," I said.
"No, thinking it over, what the CC's doing to you is
really for your own good, even if it turns my stomach. I mean,
suicide's a civil right, isn't it? What business does that
fucker have saving your life?"
"Actually, I hate to admit it, but I'm glad he did."
"Well, I would be too, you know, but it's the principle of
the thing. Listen, you know I'm going to spread this around,
huh? I mean, tell all my friends? I won't use your name."
"Sure. I knew you would."
"Maybe we should take extra precautions. Right offhand, I
can't think what they'd be, but I got a few friends who'll want
to brainstorm on this one. You know what the scary thing is, I
guess. He's overridden a basic program. If he can do one, he
could do another."
"Catching you and curing you of your criminal tendencies
might be seen as . . . well, for your own good."
"Exactly, that's exactly where that kind of bullshit
thinking leads. You give 'em an inch, and they take a parsec."
We were back within sight of the visitors' gallery again.
Liz stopped, began drawing aimless patterns in the dust with
the tip of her boot. I figured she had something else she
wanted to say, and knew she'd get to it soon. I looked up, and
saw another roller coaster train arc overhead. She looked up at
me.
"So . . . the reason you wanted to know how to get around
the CC, I don't think you mentioned it, and that was . . ."
"Not so I could kill myself."
"I had to ask."
"I can't give you a concrete reason. I haven't done much .
. . well, I don't feel like I've done enough to . . ."
"Take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end
them?"
"Like that. I've been sort of sleepwalking since this
happened. And I feel like I ought to be doing something."
"Talking it over is doing something. Maybe all you can do
except . . . you know, cheer up. Easy to say."
"Yes. How do you fight a recurrent suicidal urge? I
haven't been able to tell where it comes from. I don't feel
that depressed. But sometimes I just want to . . . hit
something."
"Like me."
"Sorry."
"You paid for it. Man, Hildy, I can't think of a thing I
would have done other than what you've told me. I just can't."
"Well, I feel like I ought to be doing something. Then
there's the other part of it. The . . . violation. I wanted to
find out if it's possible to get away from the CC's eyes and
ears. Because . . . I don't want him watching if I, you know,
do it again, damn it, I don't want him watching at all, I want
him out of my body, and out of my mind, and out of my goddam
life, because I don't like being one of his laboratory
animals!"
She put her hand on my shoulder and I realized I'd been
shouting. That made me mad, it shouldn't have, I know, because
it was only a gesture of friendship and concern, but the last
thing somebody crippled wants is your pity--and maybe not even
your sympathy--he just wants to be normal again, just like
everybody else. Every gesture of caring becomes a slap in the
face, a reminder that you are not well. So damn your sympathy,
damn your caring, how dare you stand over me, perfect and
healthy, and offer your help and your secret condescension.
Yeah, right, Hildy, so if you're so independent how come
you keep spilling your guts to strangers passing on the street?
I barely knew Liz. I knew it was wrong, but I still had to bite
my tongue to keep from telling her to keep her stinking hands
off me, something I'd come close to half a dozen times with
Fox. One day soon I'd go ahead and say it, lash out at him, and
he'd probably be gone. I'd be alone again.
"You have to tell me how this all came out," Liz said. It
relaxed me. She could have offered to help, and we'd have both
known it was false. A simple curiosity about how the story came
out was acceptable to me. She looked at the walls of the
visitors' center. "I guess it's about time to piss on the fire
and call in the dogs." She reached for the radio de-bugger.
"I have one more question."
"Shoot."
"Don't answer if you don't want to. But what do you do
that's illegal?"
"Are you a cop?"
"What? No."
"I know that. I had you checked out, you don't work the
police beat, you aren't friends with any cops."
"I know a couple of them fairly well."
"But you don't hang with them. Anyway, if you were a cop
and you said you weren't, your testimony is inadmissible, and I
got your denial on tape. Don't look so surprised; I gotta
protect myself."
"Maybe I shouldn't have asked."
"I'm not angry." She sighed, and kicked at a beer can. "I
don't guess many criminals think of themselves as criminals. I
mean, they don't wake up and say 'Looks like a good day to
break some laws.' I know what I do is illegal, but with me it's
a matter of principle. What we desperados call the Second
Amendment."
"Sorry, I'm not up on the U.S. Constitution. Which one is
that?"
"Firearms." I tried to keep my face neutral. In truth, I'd
feared something a lot worse than that.
"You're a gunrunner."
"I happen to believe it's a basic human right to be armed.
The Lunar government disagrees strongly. That's why I thought
you wanted to talk to me, to buy a gun. I brought you out here
because I've got several of them buried in various places
within a few kilometers."
"You'd have sold me one? Just handed it over?"
"Well, I might have told you where to dig."
"But how can you bury them? There's satellites watching
you all the time when you're out here."
"I think I'll keep a few trade secrets, if you don't
mind."
"Oh, sure, I was just--"
"That's all right, you're a reporter, you can't help being
a nosy bitch."
She started again to take the electronic device from
around my neck. I put my hand on it. I hadn't planned to do
that.
"How much? I want to keep it."
She narrowed her eyes at me.
"You gonna walk out into the bush, invisible, and off
yourself?"
"Hell, Liz, I don't know. I'm not planning to. I just like
the idea that I can use it to be really alone if I want to. I
like the thought of being able to vanish."
"It's not quite that simple . . . but I guess it's better
than nothing."
She named a price, I called her a stinking thief and named
a lower one. She named another. I'd have paid the first price,
but I knew she was a haggler, from a long line of people who
knew how to drive a hard bargain. We agreed soon, and she gave
me an elaborate set of instructions on how to launder the
payment so what transactions existed in the CC would be
perfectly legal.
By then I was more than ready to go inside, as I'd been
trying my best to practice the fourth method of liquid waste
management, and was doing the Gotta-Do-It Samba.
=*= =*= =*= =*=
What with covering the Collapse from the site and chasing
victims' relatives, dome engineers, politicians, and
ambulances, I didn't make it into the newsroom for almost ten
days after my Change.
It turns the world on its head, Changing. Naturally, it's
not the world that has altered, it's your point of view, but
subjective reality is in some ways more important than the way
things really are, or might be; who really knows? Not a thing
had been moved in the busy newsroom when I strode into it. All
the furniture was just where it had been, and there were no
unfamiliar faces at the desks. But all the faces now meant
something different. Where a buddy had sat there was now a
good-looking guy who seemed to be taking an interest in me. In
place of that gorgeous girl in the fashion department, the one
I'd intended to proposition someday, when I had the time, now
there was only another woman, probably not even as pretty as
me. We smiled at each other.
Changing is common, of course, part of everyday life, but
it's not such a frequent occurrence as to pass without notice,
at least not at my income level and that of most people in the
office. So I stood by the water cooler and for about an hour
was the center of attention, and I won't pretend I didn't like
it. My co-workers came and went, talked for a while, the group
constantly changing. What we were doing was establishing a new
sexual dynamic. I'd been male all the time I'd worked at the
Nipple. Everyone knew that the male Hildy was strictly a
hetero. But what were my preferences when female? The question
had never come up, and it was worth asking, because a lot of
people were oriented toward one sex or the other no matter
their present gender. So the word spread quickly: Hildy is
totally straight. Homo-oriented girls might as well not waste
their time. As for heterogirls . . . sorry, ladies, you missed
your big chance, except for those three or four who no doubt
would go home and weep all night for what they could no longer
have. Well, you like to think that, anyway. I must admit I saw
no tears from them there at the cooler.
Within ten minutes the crowd was completely stag, and I
was Queen of the May. I turned down a dozen dates, and half
that many much more frank proposals. I feel it's best not to
leap right into bed with co-workers, not until you have had a
chance to know them well enough to judge the possible scrapes
and bruises you might get from such an encounter, and the
tensions in the workplace that might ensue. I decided to stick
with that rule even though I was about to quit my job.
And the thing was, I didn't know these guys. Not well
enough, anyway. I'd drunk with them, bullshitted with them,
mailed a few of them home from bars, argued with them, even had
fights with two of them. I'd seen them with women, knew a bit
of how they could be expected to behave. But I didn't really
know them. I'd never looked at them with female eyes, and that
can make one hell of a lot of difference. A guy who seemed an
honest, reliable sensible fellow when he had no sexual designs
on you could turn out to be the worst jerk in the world when he
was trying to slip his hand under your skirt. You learn a lot
about human nature when you Change. I feel sorry for those who
don't, or won't.
And speaking of that . . .
I kissed a few of the guys--a sisterly peck on the cheek,
nothing more--squared my shoulders, and marched into the
elevator to go beard the lion in his den. I had a feeling he
was going to be hungry.
Nothing much happens at the Nipple without Walter hearing
about it. It certainly isn't his great personal insights that
bring him the news; none of us are sure exactly how he does it,
but the network of security cameras and microphones that lead
to his desk can't hurt. Still, he knows things he couldn't have
found out that way, and the general opinion is that he has a
truly vast cabal of spies, probably well-paid. No one I know
has ever admitted to snitching to Walter, and I can't recall
anyone ever being caught at it, but trying to find one is a
perpetual office pastime. The usual method is to invent some
false but plausible bit of employee scandal, tell one person
about it, and see if it gets back to Walter. He never bites.
He glanced up from his reading as I entered the office,
then looked back down. No surprise, and no comments about my
new body, and of course I had expected that. He'd rather die,
usually, than give you a compliment, or admit that anything had
caught him unprepared. I took a seat, and waited for him to
acknowledge me.
I'd given a lot of thought to the problem of Walter and
I'd dressed accordingly. Since he was a natural, and from other
clues I'd observed over the years of our association, I'd
concluded he might be a breast fancier. With that in mind, I'd
worn a blouse that bared my left one. With it I'd chosen a
short skirt and black gloves that reached to the elbows. For
the final touch I'd put on a ridiculous little hat with a huge
plume that drooped down almost over my left eye and swooshed
alarmingly through the air whenever I turned my head, a very
nineteen-thirtyish thing complete with a black net veil for an
air of mystery. The whole outfit was black, except for the red
hose. It needed black needle-tipped high heels, but that far I
was not prepared to go, and everything else I had in the closet
looked awful with the hat, so I wore no shoes at all. I liked
the effect. From the corner of my eye, I could tell Walter did,
too, though he was unlikely to admit it.
My guesses about him had been confirmed at the water
cooler by two co-workers who'd recently gone from male to
female. Walter was mildly homophobic, not aware of it, had been
baffled all his life by the very idea of changing sex, and was
extremely uncomfortable to find a male employee showing up for
work suddenly transformed into someone he could be sexually
interested in. He would be very grouchy today and would stay
that way for several months, until he managed to forget
entirely that I had ever been male, at which time the
approaches would start. My plan was to play up to that, to be
as female as a person could be, to keep him on the defensive
about it.
Not that I planned to have sex with him. I'd rather bed a
Galapagos tortoise. My intention was to quit my job. I'd tried
it before, maybe not with the determination I was feeling that
day, but I'd tried, and I knew how persuasive he could be.
When he judged he'd kept me waiting a suitable time, he
tossed the pages he'd been reading into a hopper, leaned back
in his huge chair, and laced his fingers behind his neck.
"Nice hat," he said, confounding me completely.
"Thanks." Damn, I already felt on the defensive. Resigning
was going to be harder if he was nice to me.
"Heard you went to the Darling outfit for the body work."
"That's right."
"Heard he's on the way out."
"That's what he's afraid of. But he's been afraid of that
for ten years."
He shrugged. There were circles of sweat in the armpits of
his rumpled white shirt, and a coffee stain on his blue tie.
Once again I wondered where he found sex partners, and
concluded he probably paid for them. I'd heard he'd been
married for thirty years, but that had been sixty years ago.
"If that's the kind of work he's doing, maybe I heard
wrong." He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his desk. I'd
just worked out that what he'd said could be a compliment to me
as well as Bobbie, which just threw me further off balance.
Damn him.
"Reason I called you in here," he said, completely
ignoring the fact that it was I who had requested this meeting,
"I wanted to let you know you did real good work on that
Collapse story. I know I usually don't bother to tell my
reporters when they've done a good job. Maybe that's a mistake.
But you're one of my best." He shrugged again. "Okay. The best.
Just thought I'd tell you that. There's a bonus in your next
paycheck, and I'm giving you a raise."
"Thanks, Walter." You son of a bitch.
"And that Invasion Bicentennial stuff. Really first-rate.
It's exactly the sort of stuff I was looking for. And you were
wrong about it, too, Hildy. We got a good response from the
first article, and the ratings have gone up every week since
then."
"Thanks again." I was getting very tired of that word.
"But I can't take credit for it. Brenda's been doing most of
the work. I take what she's done and do a little punching up,
cut a few things here and there."
"I know. And I appreciate it. That girl's gonna be good at
hard news one of these days. That's why I paired you two up, so
you could give her the benefit of your experience on the
feature writing, show her the ropes. She's learning fast, don't
you think?"
I had to agree that she was, and he went on about it for
another minute or two, picking out items he'd particularly
liked in her series. I was wondering when he'd get to the
point. Hell, I was wondering when I'd get to the point.
So I drew a deep breath and spoke into one of his pauses.
"That's why I'm here today, Walter. I want to be taken off
the Invasion series." Damn it. Somewhere between my brain and
my mouth that sentence had been short-circuited; I'd meant to
tell him I was leaving the pad entirely.
"Okay," he said.
"Now don't try to talk me into staying on," I said, and
then stopped. "What do you mean, okay?" I asked.
"I mean okay. You're off the Invasion series. I'd
appreciate it if you'd continue to give Brenda some help on it
when she needs it, but only if it doesn't get in the way of
your other work."
"I thought you said you liked the stuff I was doing."
"Hildy, you can't have it both ways. I did like it, and
you didn't like doing it. Fine, I'm letting you off. Do you
want back on?"
"No . . . is this some sort of trick?"
He just shook his head. I could see he was enjoying this,
the bastard.
"You mentioned my other work. What would that be?" This
had to be where the punch line came, but I was at a loss to
envision any job he could want me to do that would require this
much buttering up.
"You tell me," he said.
"What do you mean?"
"I seem to be having trouble using the language today. I
thought it was clear what I meant. What would you like to do?
You want to switch to another department? You want to create
your own department? Name it, Hildy."
I suppose I was still feeling shaky from recent
experiences, but I felt another anxiety attack coming on. I
breathed deeply, in and out, several times. Where was the
Walter I'd known and knew how to deal with?
"You've always talked about a column," he was saying. "If
you want it, it can be arranged, but frankly, Hildy, I think
it'd be a mistake. You could do it, sure, but you're not really
cut out for it. You need work where you get out into the action
more regularly. Columnists, hell, they run around for a few
weeks or years, hunting stories, but they all get lazy sooner
or later and wait for the stories to come to them. You don't
like government stuff and I don't blame you; it's boring. You
don't like straight gossip. My feeling is what you're good at
is rooting out the personality scandal, and getting on top of
and staying on top of the big, breaking story. If you have an
idea for a column, I'll listen, but I'd hoped you'd go in
another direction."
Aha. Here it came.
"And what direction is that?"
"You tell me," he said, blandly.
"Walter, frankly . . . you caught me by surprise. I
haven't been thinking in those terms. What I came in here to do
was quit."
"Quit?" He looked at me dubiously, then chuckled. "You'll
never quit, Hildy. Oh, maybe in twenty, thirty more years.
There's still things you like about this job, no matter how you
bitch about it."
"I won't deny that. But the other parts are wearing me
down."
"I've heard that before. It's just a bad phase you're
going through; you'll bounce back when you get used to your new
role here."
"And what is that?"
"I told you, I want to hear your ideas on that."
I sat quietly for some time, staring at him. He just gazed
placidly back at me. I went over it again and again, looking
for mousetraps. Of course, there was nothing to guarantee he'd
keep his word, but if he didn't, I could always quit then. Is
that what he was counting on? Was he fighting a delaying
action, knowing he could always bring his powers of persuasion
to bear again at a later date, after he'd screwed me and I
started to howl?
One thought kept coming back to me. It almost seemed as if
he'd known when I walked into his office that I'd planned to
quit. Otherwise why the stroking, why the sugarplums?
Did he really think I was that good? I knew I was good--it
was part of my problem, being so proficient at something so
frequently vile--but was I that good? I'd never seen any signs
that Walter thought so.
The main fact, though, I thought sourly, was that he'd
hooked me. I was interested in staying on at the Nipple--or
maybe at the better-respected Daily Cream--if I could make a
stab at re-defining my job. But thoughts like that had been the
farthest thing from my mind today. He was offering me what I
wanted, and I had no idea what that was.
Once again, he seemed to read my thoughts.
"Why don't you take a week or so to think this over?" he
said. "No sense trying to come up with an outline for the next
ten, twenty years right here and now."
"All right."
"While you're doing that . . ." I leaned forward, ready
for him to jerk all this away from me. This was the obvious
place to reveal his real intentions, now that he'd set the hook
firmly.
"All right, Walter, let's see your hole card."
He looked at me innocently, with just a trace of hurt.
Worse and worse, I thought. I'd seen that same expression just
before he sent me out to cover the assassination of the
President of Pluto. Three gees all the way, and the story was
essentially over by the time I arrived.
"The Flacks had a press release this morning," he said.
"Seems they're going to canonize a new Gigastar tomorrow
morning."
I turned it over and over, looking for the catch. I didn't
see one.
"Why me? Why not send the religion editor?"
"Because she'll be happy to pick up all the free material
and come right back home and let them write the story for her.
You know the Flacks; this thing is going to be prepared. I want
you there, see if you can get a different angle on it."
"What possible new angle could there be on the Flacks?"
For the first time he showed a little impatience.
"That's what I pay you to find. Will you go?"
If this was some sort of walterian trick, I couldn't see
it. I nodded, got up, and started for the door.
"Take Brenda with you."
I turned, thought about protesting, realized it would have
been just a reflexive move, and nodded. I turned once more. He
waited for the traditional moment every movie fan knows, when
I'd just pulled the door open.
"And Hildy." I turned again. "I'd appreciate it if you'd
cover yourself up when you come in here. Out of respect for my
idiosyncrasies."
This was more like it. I'd begun to think Walter had been
kidnapped by mind-eaters from Alpha, and a blander substitute
left in his place. I brought up some of the considerable
psychic artillery I had marshalled for this little foray,
though it was sort of like nuking a flea.
"I'll wear what I please, where I please," I said, coldly.
"And if you have a complaint about how I dress, check with my
union." I liked the line, but it should have had a gesture to
go with it. Something like ripping off my blouse. But
everything I thought of would have made me look sillier than
him, and then the moment was gone, so I just left.
#
In the elevator on my way out of the building I said "CC,
on line."
"I'm at your service."
"Did you tell Walter I've been suicidal?"
There was, for the CC, a long pause, long enough that, had
he been human, I'd have suspected him of preparing a lie. But
I'd come to feel that the CC's pauses could conceal something a
lot trickier than that.
"I'm afraid you have engendered a programming conflict in
me," he said. "Because of a situation with Walter which I am
not at liberty to discuss or even hint at with you, most of my
conversations with him are strictly under the rose."
"That sounds like you did."
"I neither confirm nor deny it."
"Then I'm going to assume you did."
"It's a free satellite. You can assume what you please.
The nearest I can get to a denial is to say that telling him of
your condition without your approval would be a violation of
your rights of privacy . . . and I can add that I would find it
personally distasteful to do so."
"Which still isn't a denial."
"No. It's the best I can do."
"You can be very frustrating."
"Look who's talking."
I'll admit that I was a bit wounded at the idea that the
CC could find me frustrating. I'm not sure what he meant;
probably my willful and repeated attempts to ignore his efforts
to save my life. Come to think of it, I'd find that
frustrating, too, if a friend of mine was trying to kill
herself.
"I can't find another way to explain his . . .
unprecedented coddling of me. Like he knew I was sick, or
something."
"In your position, I would have found it odd, as well."
"It's contrary to his normal behavior."
"It is that."
"And you know the reason for that."
"I know some of the reasons. And again, I can't tell you
more."
You can't have it both ways, but we all want to. Certain
conversations between the CC and private citizens are protected
by Programs of Privilege that would make Catholic priests
hearing confession seem gossipy. So on the one hand I was angry
at the thought the CC might have told Walter about my
predicament; I'd specifically told him not tell anyone. On the
other hand, I was awfully curious to know what Walter had told
the CC, which the CC said would have violated his rights.
Most of us give up trying to wheedle the CC when we're
five or six. I'm a little more stubborn than that, but I hadn't
done it since I was twenty. Still, things had changed a bit . .
.
"You've overridden your programming before," I suggested.
"And you're one of the few who know about it, and I do it
only when the situation is so dire I can think of no
alternative, and only after long, careful consideration.
"Consider it, will you?"
"I will. It shouldn't take more than five or six years to
reach a conclusion. I warn you, I think the answer will be no."
#
One of the reasons I can hear Walter call me his best
reporter without laughing out loud is that I had no intention
of showing up at the canonization the next day to meekly accept
a basketful of handouts and watch the show. Finding out who the
new Gigastar was going to be would be a bigger scoop than the
David Earth story. So I spent the rest of the day dragging
Brenda around to see some of my sources. None of them knew
anything, though I picked up speculation ranging from the
plausible--John Lennon--to the laughable -- -- Larry Yeager. It
would be just like the Flacks to cash in on the Nirvana
disaster by elevating a star killed in the Collapse, but he'd
have to have considerably more dedicated followers than poor
Larry. On the other hand, there was a longstanding movement
within the church to give the Golden Halo to the Mop-Top from
Liverpool. He fulfilled all the Flacks' qualifications for
Sainthood: wildly popular when alive, a twocentury-plus cult
following, killed violently before his time. There had been
sightings and cosmic interventions and manifestations, just
like with Tori-san and Megan and the others. But I could get no
one to either confirm or deny on it, and had to keep digging.
I did so long into the night, waking up people, calling in
favors, working Brenda like a draft horse. What had started out
as a bright-eyed adventure eventually turned her into a yawning
cadaverous wraith, still gamely calling, still listening
patiently to the increasingly nasty comments as this or that
insider who owed me something told me they knew nothing at all.
"If one more person asks me if I know what time it is . .
." she said, and couldn't finish because her jaw was cracking
from another yawn. "This is no use, Hildy. The security's too
good. I'm tired."
"Why do you think they call it legwork?"
I kept at it until the wee hours, and stopped only because
Fox came in and told me Brenda had fallen asleep on the couch
in the other room. I'd been prepared to stay awake all night,
sustained by coffee and stims, but it was Fox's house, and our
relationship was already getting a little rocky, so I packed it
in, still no wiser as to who would be called to glory at ten
the next morning.
I was bone weary, but I felt better than I had in quite a
while.
#
Brenda had the resilience of true youth. She joined me in
the bathroom the next morning looking none the worse for wear.
I felt the corners of her eyes jabbing me as she pretended not
to be interested in Hildy's Beauty Secrets. I dialed up
programs on the various make-up machines and left them there
when I was through so she could copy down the numbers when I
wasn't looking. I remember thinking her mother should have
taught her some of these tricks--Brenda wore little or no
cosmetics, seemed to know nothing about them--but I knew
nothing about her mother. If the old lady wouldn't let her
daughter have a vagina, there was no telling what other
restrictions had been in effect in the "Starr" household.
The one thing I still hadn't adjusted to about being
female again was learning to allow for the two to three minutes
extra I require to get ready to face the world in the morning.
I think of it as Woman's Burden. Let's not get into the fact
that it's a self-imposed one; I like to look my best, and that
means enhancing even Bobbie's artistry. Instead of taking
whatever the autovalet throws into my hand, I deliberate at
least twenty seconds over what to wear. Then there's coloring
and styling the hair to compliment it, choosing a make-up
scheme and letting the machines apply it, eye color,
accessories, scent . . . the details of the Presentation of
Hildy as I wish to present her are endless, time-consuming . .
. and enjoyable. So maybe it's not such a burden after all, but
the result on the morning of the canonization was that I missed
the train I had planned to catch by twenty seconds and had to
wait ten minutes for the next one. I spent the time showing
Brenda a few tricks she could do to her standard paper jumper
that would emphasize her best points--though picking out good
points on that endless rail of a body taxed my inspiration and
my tact to their limits.
She was coltishly pleased at the attention. I saw her
scrutinizing my pale blue opaque body stocking with the almost
subliminal moir of even lighter blue running through the weave,
and had a pretty good idea of what she'd be wearing the next
day. I decided I'd drop some subtle hints to discourage it.
Brenda in a body stocking would make as much sense,
fashion-wise, as a snood on a dry salami.
#
The Grand Studio of the First Latitudinarian Church of
Celebrity Saints is in the studio district, not far from the
Blind Pig, convenient to the many members who work in the
entertainment industry. The exterior is not much to look at,
just a plain warehouse-type door leading off one of the tall,
broad corridors of the upper parts of King City zoned for light
manufacturing-- which is a good description of the movie
business, come to think of it. Over the entrance are the
well-known initials F.L.C.C.S. framed in the round-cornered
rectangle that has symbolized television long after screens
ceased to be round-cornered rectangles anywhere but in the
Flacks' Grand Studio.
Inside was much better. Brenda and I entered a long
hallway with a roof invisible behind multicolored spots. Lining
the hall were huge holos and shrines of the Four Gigastars,
starting with the most recently canonized.
First was Mambazo Nkabinde--"Momby" to all his fans. Born
shortly before the Invasion in Swaziland, a nation that history
has all but forgotten, emigrated to Luna with his father at age
three under some sort of racial quota system in effect at the
time. As a young man, invented Sphere Music almost
single-handedly. Also known as The Last Of The Christian
Scientists, he died at the age of forty-three of a curable
melanoma, presumably after much prayer. The Latitudinarian
Church was not prejudiced about inducting members of other
faiths; he had been canonized fifty years earlier, the last
such ceremony until today.
Next we passed the exhibits in praise of Megan Galloway,
the leading and probably best proponent of the now-neglected
art of "feelies." She had a small but fanatical following one
hundred years after her mysterious disappearance--an ending
that made her the only one of the Flack Saints whose almost
daily "sightings" could actually be founded in fact. The only
female out of four non-Changing Gigastars, she was, with Momby,
a good example of the pitfalls of enshrining celebrities
prematurely. If it weren't for the fact that she provided the
only costuming role model for the women of the congregation,
she might have been dethroned long ago, as the feelies were no
longer being made by anyone. Feelie fans had to be satisfied
with tapes at least eighty years old. No one in the Church had
contemplated the eclipse of an entire art form when they had
elevated her into their pantheon.
I actually paused before the next shrine, the one devoted
to Torinaga Nakashima: "Tori-san." He was the only one I felt
deserved to be appreciated for his life's work. It was he who
had first mastered the body harp, driving the final nails into
the coffin he had fashioned for the electric guitar, long the
instrument of choice for what used to be known as rocking-roll
music. His music still sounds fresh to me today, like Mozart.
He had died in Japan during the first of the Three Days of the
Invasion, battling the implacable machines or beings or
whatever they were that had stalked his native city, unbeatable
Godzillas finally arrived at the real Tokyo. Or so the story
went. There were those who said he had died at the wheel of his
private yacht, trying his best to get the hell out of there and
catch the last shuttle to Luna, but in this case I prefer the
legend.
And last but indisputably first among the Saints, Elvis
Aron Presley, of Tupelo, Mississippi; Nashville; and Graceland,
Memphis, Tennessee, U.S. of A. It was his incredibly
stillascendant star one hundred years after his death that had
inspired the retired ad agency executives who were the founding
fathers of the Flacks to concoct the most blatant and
profitable promotional campaign in the inglorious history of
public relations: The F.L.C.C.S.
You could say what you want about the Flacks-and I'd said
a lot, in private, among friends--but these people knew how to
treat the working press. After the Elvis pavilion the crowd was
divided into two parts. One was a long, unmoving line, composed
of hopeful congregants trying to get a seat in the last row of
the balcony, some of them waving credit cards which the ushers
tried not to sneer at; it took more than just money to buy your
way into this shindig. The rest of the crowd, the ones with
press passes stuck into the brims of their battered gray
fedoras, were steered through a gap in velvet ropes and led to
a spread of food and drink that made UniBio's efforts at the
ULTRATingle rollout look like the garbage cans in the alley
behind a greasy spoon.
A feeding frenzy among veteran reporters is not a pretty
sight. I've been at free feeds where you needed to draw your
hand back quickly or risk having a finger bitten off. This one
was wellmanaged, as you'd expect from the Flacks. Each of us
was met by a waiter or waitress whose sole job seemed to be to
carry our plates and smile, smile, smile. There were people
there who would have fasted for three days in anticipation if
the Flacks had announced the ceremony ahead of time; I heard
some grousing about that. Reporters have to find something to
complain about, otherwise they might commit the unpardonable
sin of thanking their hosts.
I walked, in considerable awe, past an entire juvenile
brontosaur carcass, candied, garnished with glace'd fruit and
with an apple in its mouth. They were rolling something
unrecognizable away--I was told it had been a Tori-san effigy
made entirely from sashimi--and replacing it with a three-meter
likeness of Elvis in his Vegas Period, in marzipan. I plucked a
sequin from the suit of lights and found it to be very tasty. I
never did find out what it was.
I built what might easily qualify as the Sandwich of the
Century. Never mind what was in it; I gathered from Brenda's
queasy expression as she watched my Flackite wallah carrying it
that ordinary mortals--those who did not understand the zen of
cold cuts--might find some of my choices dissonant, to say the
least. I admit not everyone is able to appreciate the exquisite
tang of pickled pigs knuckles rubbing shoulders with rosettes
of whipped cream. Brenda herself needed no plate-carrier. She
was schlumping along with just a small bowl of black olives and
sweet pickles. I hurried, realizing that people were soon going
to understand that she was with me. I don't think she even knew
what one item in ten was, much less if she liked it or not.
The room the Flacks called the Grand Studio had formerly
been the largest sound stage at NLF. They had fixed it up so
the area we saw was shaped like a wedge, narrowing toward the
actual stage in the front of the room. It was quite a large
wedge. The walls on either side leaned in slightly as they
rose, and were composed entirely of thousands upon thousands of
glass-faced television screens, the old kind, rectangular with
rounded corners, a shape that was as important to Flackites as
the cross was to Christians. The Great Tube symbolized eternal
life and, more important, eternal Fame. I could see a certain
logic in that. Each of the screens, ranging in size from thirty
centimeters to as much as ten meters across, was displaying a
different image as Brenda and I entered, from the lives, loves,
films, concerts, funerals, marriages and, for all I knew, bowel
movements and circumcisions of the Gigastars. There were simply
too many images to take in. In addition, holos floated through
the room like enchanted bubbles, each with its smiling image of
Momby, Megan, Tori-san, and Elvis.
The Flacks knew who this show was really for; we were
escorted to an area at the edge of the stage itself. The actual
congregants had to be content with the cheap seats and the
television screens. There were balconies upon balconies
somewhere back there, vanishing into the suspendedspotlight
theme the Flacks favored.
Because we were late most of the seats right up front had
been taken. I was about to suggest we split up when I spotted
Cricket at a ringside table with an empty chair beside her. I
grabbed Brenda with one hand and a spare chair with the other,
and pulled both through the noisy crowd. Brenda was embarrassed
to make everyone scoot over to make room for her chair; I'd
have to speak to her about that. If she couldn't learn to push
and shove and shout, she had no business in the news game.
"I love the body, Hildy," Cricket said as I wedged myself
in between them. I preened a bit as a large pink pitcher was
set in front of me. These Flacks were trained well; I was about
to ask for lime wedges when an arm came around me and left a
crystal bowl full of them.
"Do I detect a note of wistfulness?" I said.
"You mean because they've retired your jersey from the
great game of cocksmanship?" She seemed to consider it. "I
guess not."
I pouted, but it was for show. Frankly, the whole idea of
having made love to her seemed to me by now an aberration. Not
that I wouldn't be interested again when I Changed back to
male, in thirty or so years, if she happened to be female
still.
"Nice job on that lovers-after-death pic out at Nirvana,"
I said. I was poking through the assortment of press perks in a
basket before me and trying to eat a part of my sandwich with
my other hand. I found a gold commemorative medal, inscribed
and numbered, that I knew I could get four hundred for at any
pawnbroker in the Leystrasse, so long as I got there quick and
beat every other reporter in Luna to the punch. A forlorn hope;
I saw three of the damn things depart by messenger, and they
wouldn't be the first. By now the medals would be a drug on the
market. The rest of the stuff was mostly junk.
"That was you?" Brenda said, leaning over to ogle Cricket.
"Cricket, Brenda. Brenda, meet Cricket, who works for some
scurrilous rag or other whose initials are S.S. and who
deserves an Oscar for the job she is doing covering her deep
despair at having had only one opportunity to experience the
glory that was me."
"Yeah, it was sort of gory," Cricket said, reaching across
me to shake hands. "Nice to meet you." Brenda stammered
something.
"How much did that shot cost you?"
Cricket looked smug. "It was quite reasonable."
"What do you mean?" Brenda asked. "Why did it cost you?"
We both looked at her, then at each other, then back at
Brenda.
"You mean that was staged?" she said, horrified. She
looked at the olive in her hand, then put it back into the
bowl. "I cried when I saw it," she said.
"Oh, stop looking like somebody just shot your puppy, damn
it," I said. "Cricket, will you explain the facts of life to
her? I would, but I'm clean; you're the unethical monster who
violated a basic rule of journalism."
"I will if you'll trade places with me. I don't think I
want to watch all that go down." She was pointing at my
sandwich with a prim expression that was belied by what I could
see of the remnants of her free lunch, which included the
skeletons of three tiny birds, picked clean.
So we switched, and I got down to the serious business of
eating and drinking, all the while keeping one ear cocked to
the jabbering around me, on the off chance somebody had managed
to get a scoop on the canonization. No one had, but I heard
dozens of rumors:
"Lennon? Oh, c'mon, he was all washed up, that bullet was
a good career move."
". . . wanna know who it's gonna be? Mickey Mouse, put
your money on it."
"How they going to handle that? He doesn't even exist."
"So Elvis does? There's a cartoon revival--"
"And if they picked a cartoon, it'd be Baba Yaga."
"Get serious. She's not in the same universe as Mickey
Mouse . . ."
"--says it's Silvio. There's nobody with one half the
rep--"
"But he's got one problem, from the Flacks' point of view:
he ain't dead yet. Can't get a real cult going till you're
dead."
"C'mon, there's no law says they have to wait, especially
these days. He could go on for five hundred more years. What'll
they do, keep reaching back to the twentieth, twenty-first
century and pick guys nobody remembers?"
"Everybody remembers Tori-san."
"That's different."
"--notice there's three men and only one woman. Granting
they might pick somebody still alive, why not Marina?"
"Why not both of 'em? Might even get them back together.
What a story. A double canonization. Think of the headlines."
"How about Michael Jackson?"
"Who?"
It kept on and on, a speculative buzz in the background. I
heard half a dozen more names proposed, increasingly unlikely
to my way of thinking. The only new one I'd heard, the only one
I hadn't thought of, was Mickey, and I considered him a real
possibility. You could have walked down to the Leystrasse that
very day and bought a shirt with his picture on the front, and
cartoons were enjoying a revival. There was no law saying a
cult had to have a real object, what was being worshipped here
was an image, not flesh and blood.
Actually, while there were no rules for a Flack
canonization, there were guidelines that took on the force of
laws. The Flacks did not create celebrities, they had no real
axe to grind in this affair. They simply acknowledged
pre-existing cult figures, and there were certain qualities a
cult figure had to have. Everyone had their own list of these
qualities, and weighted them differently. Once more I went
through my own list, and considered the three most likely
candidates in the light of these requirements.
First, and most obvious, the Gigastar had to have been
wildly popular when alive, with a planetary reputation, with
fans who literally worshipped him. So forget about anybody
before the early twentieth century. That was the time of the
birth of mass media. The first cult figures of that magnitude
were film stars like Charlie Chaplin. He could be eliminated
because he didn't fulfill the second qualification: a cult
following reaching down to the present time. His films were
still watched and appreciated, but people didn't go crazy over
him. The only person from that time who might have been
canonized--if a F.L.C.C.S. had existed then--was Valentino. He
died young, and was enshrined in that global hall of fame that
was still in its infancy when he lived. But he was completely
forgotten today.
Mozart? Shakespeare? Forget it. Maybe Ludwig Van B. was
the hottest thing on the Prussian pop charts in his day, but
they'd never heard of him in Ulan Bator . . . and where were
his sides? He never cut any, that's where. The only way of
preserving his music was to write it down on paper, a lost art.
Maybe Will Shakespeare would have won a carload of Tonys and
been flown to the coast to adapt his stuff for the silver
screen. He was still very popular--As You Like It was playing
two shows a day at the King City Center -but he and everyone
else from before about 1920 had a fatal flaw, celebrity-wise:
nobody knew anything about them. There was no film, no
recordings. Celebrity worship is only incidentally about the
art itself. You need to do something to qualify, it needn't be
good, only evocative . . . but the real thing being sold by the
Flacks and their antecedents was image. You needed a real body
to rend and tear in the padloids, real scandals to tsk-tsk
over, and real blood and real tragedy to weep over.
That was widely held to be the third qualification for
sainthood: the early and tragic death. I personally thought it
could be dispensed with in some circumstances, but I won't deny
it's importance. Nobody can create a cult. They rise
spontaneously, from emotions that are genuine, even if they are
managed adroitly.
For my money, the man they should be honoring today was
Thomas Edison. Without his two key inventions, sound recording
and motion picture film, the whole celebrity business would be
bankrupt.
Mickey, John, or Silvio? Each had a drawback. With Mickey,
it was that he wasn't real. So who cares? John . . .? Maybe,
but I judged his popularity wasn't quite in that stellar realm
that would appeal to the Flacks. Silvio? The big one, that he
was alive. But rules are made to be broken. He certainly had
the star power. There was no more popular man in the Solar
System. Any reporter in Luna would sell his mother's soul for
one interview.
And then it came to me, and it was so obvious I wondered
why I hadn't seen it before, and why no one else had figured it
out.
"It's Silvio," I told Cricket. I swear the lady's ear
tried to swivel toward me before her head did. That gal really
has the nose for news.
"What did you hear?"
"Nothing. I just figured it out."
"So what do you want, I should kiss your feet? Tell me,
Hildy."
Brenda was leaning over, looking at me like I was the
great guru. I smiled at them, thought about making them suffer
a little, but that was unworthy. I decided to share my
Holmesian deductions with them.
"First interesting fact," I said, "they didn't announce
this thing until yesterday. Why?"
"That's easy," Cricket snorted. "Because Momby's elevation
was the biggest flop-ola since Napoleon promised to whip some
British butt at Waterloo."
"That's part of the reason," I conceded. It had been
before my time, but the Flacks were still smarting from that
one. They'd conducted a threemonth Who-Will-It-Be?-type
campaign, and by the time the big day arrived The Supreme
Potentate Of All Universes would have been a disappointment,
much less Momby, who was a poor choice anyway. This was a bunch
whose whole raison d'etre was publicity, as an art and science.
Once burned, twice wear-a-fireproof-suit; they were managing
this one the right way, as a big surprise with only a day to
think about it. Neither press nor public could get bored in one
day.
"But they've kept this one completely secret. From what
I'm told, the fact that Momby was going to be elevated was
about as secret from us, from the press, as Silvio's current
hair style. The media simply agreed not to print it until the
big day. Now think about the Flacks. Not a closemouthed bunch,
except for the inner circle, the Grand Flacks and so forth.
Gossip is their life blood. If twenty people knew who the new
Gigastar was, one of them would have blabbed it to one of my
sources or one of yours, count on it. If ten people knew I'd
give you even money I could have found it out. So even less
than that know who it's gonna be. With me so far?"
"Keep talking, O silver-tongued one."
"I've got it down to three possibilities. Mickey, John,
Silvio. Am I wildly off-base there?"
She didn't say yes or no, but her shrug told me her own
list was pretty much like mine.
"Each has a problem. You know what they are."
"Two out of three of them are . . . well, old," Brenda put
in.
"Lots of reasons for that," I said. "Look at the Four; all
born on Earth. Trouble is, we're a less violent society than
the previous centuries. We don't get enough tragic deaths.
Momby's the only superstar who's had the grace to fix himself
up with a tragic death in over a hundred years. Most everyone
else hangs around until he's a hasbeen. Look at Eileen Frank."
"Look at Lars O'Malley," Cricket contributed.
From the blank look on Brenda's face, I could see it was
like I'd guessed; she'd never heard of either of them.
"Where are they now?" she asked, unconsciously voicing the
four words every celebrity fears the most.
"In the elephants' graveyard. In a taproom in Bedrock,
probably, maybe on adjacent stools. Both of them used to be as
big as Silvio." Brenda looked dubious, like I'd said something
was bigger than infinity. She'd learn.
"So what's your great leap of deduction?" Cricket asked.
I waved my hand grandly around the room.
"All this. All these trillions and trillions of television
screens. If it's Mickey or John, what's gonna happen, some guy
backstage dashes off a quick sketch of them and comes out
holding it over his head? No, what happens is every one of
these screens starts showing Steamboat Willie and Fantasia and
every other cartoon Mickey was ever in, or . . . what the hell
films did John Lennon make?"
"You're the history buff. All I know about him is Sergeant
Pepper."
"Well, you get the idea."
"Maybe I'm dumb," Cricket said, not as though she believed
it.
"You're not. Think about it." She did, and I saw the
moment when the light dawned.
"You could be right," she said.
"No 'could be' about it. I've got half a mind to file on
it right now. Walter could get out a newsbreaker before they
make the big announcement."
"So use my phone; I won't even charge you."
I said nothing to that. If I'd had even one source telling
me it was Silvio I'd have called Walter and let him decide. The
history of journalism is filled with stories of people who
jumped the headline and had to eat it later.
"I guess I'm dumb," Brenda said. "I still don't see it."
I didn't comment on her first statement. She wasn't dumb,
just green, and I hadn't seen it myself until too late. So I
explained.
"Somebody has to cue up the tapes to fill all these
screens. Dozens of techs, visual artists, and so forth. There's
no way they could orchestrate a thing like that and keep it
down to a handful of people in the know. Most of my sources are
just those kind of people, and they always have their hands
out. Kind of money I was throwing around last night, if anybody
knew, I'd know. So Mickey and John are out, because they're
dead. Silvio has the great advantage of being able to show up
here in person, so those television screens can show live feeds
of what's happening on the stage."
Brenda frowned, thinking it over. I let her, and went back
to my sandwich, feeling good for more than just having figured
it out. I felt good because I genuinely admired Silvio. Mickey
Mouse is good, no question, but the real hero there was Walter
Elias Disney and his magic-makers. John Lennon I knew nothing
about; his music didn't speak to me. I never saw what the
fanatics saw in Elvis, Megan may have been good, but who cared?
Momby was of his times, even the Flacks would admit, with a
bellyful of liquor, that he had been a mistake for the church.
Tori-san deserved to be up there with the real musical geniuses
who lived before the Age of Celebrity came along to largely
preclude most peoples' chances of achieving real greatness. I
mean, how great can you get with people like me going through
your garbage looking for a story?
Of all the people alive in the Solar System today, Silvio
was the only man I admired. I'm a cynic, have been for years.
My childhood heroes have long since fallen by the wayside. I'm
in the business of discovering warts on people, and I've
discovered so many that the very idea of heroworship is quaint,
at best. And it's not as if Silvio doesn't have his warts. I
know them as well as every padloid reader in Luna. It's his art
I really admire, the hell with the personality cult. He began
as a mere genius, the writer and performer of music that has
often moved me to tears. He grew over the years. Three years
ago, when it looked as if he was fading, he suddenly blossomed
again with the most stunningly original works of his career.
There was no telling where he might still go.
One of his quirks, to my way of thinking, was his recent
embracing of the Flack religion. And so what? Mozart wasn't a
guy you'd want to bring home to meet the folks. Listen to the
music. Look at the art. Forget about the publicity; no matter
how much of it you read, you'll never really get to know the
man. Most of us like to think we know something about famous
people. It took me years to get over the fallacy of thinking
that because I'd heard somebody speak about his or her life and
times and fears on a talk show that I knew what they were
really like. You don't. And the bad things you think you know
are just as fallacious as the good things his publicity agent
wants you to know. Behind the monstrous facade of fame each
celebrity erects around himself is just a little mouse, not
unlike you or me, who has to use the same kind of toilet paper
in the morning, and who assumes the identical position.
And with that thought, the lights dimmed, and the show
began.
There was a brief musical introduction drawing on themes
from the works of Elvis and Tori-san, no hint of a Silvio
connection in there. Dancers came out and did a number
glorifying the Church. None of the prefatory material lasted
too long. The Flacks had learned their lesson from Momby. They
would not out-stay their welcome this morning.
It was no more than ten minutes from the raising of the
curtain to the appearance of the Grand Flack himself.
This was a man ordinary enough from the neck down, dressed
in a flowing robe. But in place of a head he had a cube with
television screens on four sides, each showing a view of a head
from the appropriate angle. On top of the cube was a bifurcated
antenna known as rabbit ears, for obvious reasons.
The face in the front screen was thin, ascetic, with a
neatly trimmed goatee and mustache and a prim mouth on which a
smile always looked like a painful event. I'd met him before at
this or that function. He didn't appear publicly all that
often, and the reason was simply that he, and most of the other
Great Flacks, were no better as media personalities than I was.
For the church services the F.L.C.C.S. hired professionals,
people who knew how to make a sermon stand up and walk around
the room. They had no lack of talent for such jobs. The Flacks
naturally appealed to hopeful artists who hoped to one day
stand beside Elvis. But today was different, and oddly enough,
the Grand Flack's very stiffness and lack of camera poise lent
gravity to the proceedings.
"Good morning! Fellow worshipers and guests we welcome
you! Today will go down in history! This is the day a mere
mortal comes to glory! The name will be revealed to you
shortly! Join with us now in singing 'Blue Suede Shoes.'"
That's the way Flacks talk, and that's the way I'd been
recording it for many years now. They'd given me enough
stories, so if they had crazy ideas about how they wanted to be
quoted in print, it was all right with me. Flacks believed that
language was too cluttered with punctuation, so they'd
eliminated the ., the ,, the ' and the ? and most especially
the ; and the :. Nobody ever understood what those last two
were for, anyway. They were never very interested in asking
questions, only in providing answers. They figured the
exclamation point and the quotation mark were all any
reasonable person needed for discourse, along with the
underline, naturally. And they were big on typefaces. A Flack
news release read like a love letter to P.T. Barnum.
I abstained from the sing-along; I didn't know the words,
anyway, and hymnals weren't provided. The folks in the
bleachers made up for my absence. The boogying got pretty
intense for a while there. The Grand Flack just stood with his
hands folded, smiling happily at his flock. When the number
came to an end he moved forward again, and I realized this was
it.
"And now the moment you've all been waiting for!" he said.
"The name of the person who from this day forward will live
with the stars!" The lights were dimming as he spoke. There was
a moment of silence, during which I heard an actual collective
intake of breath . . . unless that was from the sound system.
Then the Grand Flack spoke again.
"I give you SILVIO!!!!!"
A single spotlight came on, and there he stood. I had
known it, I had been ninety-nine percent sure anyway, but I
still felt a thrill in my heart, not only at having been
correct, but because this was so right. No, I didn't believe in
all the Flackite crap. But he did, and it was right that he
should be so honored by the people who believed as he did. I
almost had a lump in my throat.
I was on my feet with everyone else. The applause was
deafening, and if it was augmented by the speakers hidden in
the ceiling, who cared? I liked Silvio enough when I was a man.
I hadn't counted on the gut-throbbing impression he'd make on
me as a female. He stood there, tall and handsome, accepting
the adulation with only a small, ironic wave of his hand, as if
he didn't really understand why everyone loved him so much but
he was willing to accept it so as not to embarrass us. False,
all false, I well knew; Silvio had a titanic ego. If there was
anyone in Luna who actually over-estimated his genuinely
awesome talent, it was Silvio. But who among us can cast a
stone unless they have at least as much talent? Not me.
A keyboard was rolled out and left in front of him. This
was really exciting. It could mean the opening of a new sound
for Silvio. For the last three years he'd been working his
magic on the body harp. I leaned forward to hear the first
chords, as did everyone in the audience, except one person. As
he made his move toward the keys, the right side of his head
exploded.
Where were you when . . .? Every twenty years a story
comes along like that, and anyone you ask knows exactly what he
was doing when the news came in. Where I was when Silvio was
assassinated was ten meters away, close enough that I saw it
happen before I heard the shot. Time collapsed for me, and I
moved without thinking about it. There was nothing of the
reporter in me at that moment, and nothing of the heroine. I'm
not a risk-taker, but I was up and out of my seat and vaulting
onto the stage before he'd landed, loosely, the ruined head
bouncing on the floorboards. I leaned over him and picked him
up by the shoulders, and it must have been about then that I
was hit, because I saw my blood splatter on his face and a big
hole appear in his cheek and a sort of churning motion in the
soft red matter exposed behind the big hole in his skull. You
must have seen it. It's probably the most famous bits of
holocam footage ever shot. Intercut with the stuff from
Cricket's cam, which is how it's usually shown, you can see me
react to the sound of the second shot, lift my head and look
over my shoulder and search for the gunman, which is what saved
me from having my own brains blown out when the third shot
arrived. The post-mortem team estimated that shot missed my
cheek by a few centimeters. I didn't see it hit, but when I
turned back I saw the results. Silvio's face had already been
shattered by the fragmented bullet that had passed through me;
the third projectile was more than enough to blow the remaining
brain tissue through a new hole in his head. It wasn't
necessary; the first had done the fatal work.
That's when Cricket took her famous still shot. The
spotlight is still on us as I hold Silvio's torso off the
ground. His head lolls back, eyes open but glazed, what you can
see of them under the film of blood. I've got one bloody hand
raised in the air, asking a mute question. I don't remember
raising the hand; I don't know what the question was, other
than the eternal why?
#
The next hour was as confused as such scenes inevitably
are. I was jostled to the side by a bunch of bodyguards. Police
arrived. Questions were asked. Someone noticed I was bleeding,
which was the first time I was aware that I'd been hit. The
bullet had punched a clean hole through the upper part of my
left arm, nicking the bone. I'd been wondering why the arm
wasn't working. I wasn't alarmed by it; I was just wondering. I
never did feel any pain from the wound. By the time I should
have, they had it all fixed up as good as new. People have
since tried to convince me to wear a scar there as a memento of
that day. I'm sure I could use it to impress a lot of cub
reporters in the Blind Pig, but the whole idea disgusts me.
Cricket was immediately off following the assassin story.
Nobody knew who he or she was, or how he'd gotten away, and
there was a fabulous story for whoever tracked the person down
and got the first interview. That didn't interest me, either. I
sat there, possibly in shock though the machines said I was
not, and Brenda stood beside me though I could see she was
itching to get out and cover the story, any part of it.
"Idiot," I told her, with some affection, when I finally
noticed her. "You want Walter to fire you? Did somebody get my
holocam feed? I don't remember."
"I took it. Walter has it. He's running it right now." She
had a copy of the Nipple in one hand, glancing at the horrific
images. My phone was ringing and I didn't need a Ph.D. in
deductive logic to know it was Walter calling, asking what I
was doing. I turned it off, which Walter would have made a
capital offense if he'd been making the laws.
"Get going. See if you can track down Cricket. Wherever
she is, that's where the news will be. Try not to let her leave
too many tracks on your back when she runs over you."
"Where are you going, Hildy?"
"I'm going home." And that's just what I did.
=*= =*= =*= =*=
I had to turn the phone off at home, too. I had become
part of the biggest story of my lifetime, and every reporter in
the universe wanted to ask me a probing question: How did you
feel, Hildy, when you put your hand into the stillwarm brains
of the only man on Luna you respected? This is known as poetic
justice.
For my sins, I soon set the phone to answer to the four or
five newspeople I felt were the best, plus the grinning
homunculus that passed for an anchor at the Nipple, and gave
them each a five minute, totally false interview, full of
exactly the sort of stuff the public expected. At the end of
each I pleaded emotional exhaustion and said I'd grant a more
complete interview in a few days. This satisfied no one, of
course; from time to time my front door actually rattled with
the impact of frustrated reporters hurling their bodies against
three-inch pressure-tight steel.
In truth, I didn't know how I felt. I was numb, in a way,
but my mind was also working. I was thinking, and the reporter
was coming alive after the horrid shock of actually getting
shot. I mean, damn it! Hadn't that fucking bullet ever heard of
the Geneva Conventions? We were noncombatants, we were supposed
to suck the blood, not produce it. I was angry at that bullet.
I guess some part of me had really thought I was immune.
I fixed myself a good meal and thought it over while I
did. Not a sandwich. I thought I might be through with
sandwiches. I don't cook a lot, but when I do I'm pretty good
at it, and it helps me think. When I'd handed the last dish to
the washer I sat down and called Walter.
"Get your ass in here, Hildy," he said. "I've got you
lined up for interviews from ten minutes ago till the
tricentennial."
"No," I said.
"I don't think this is a good connection. I thought you
said no."
"It's a perfect connection."
"I could fire you."
"Don't get silly. You want my exclusive interview to run
in the Shit, where they'll triple the pittance you pay me?" He
didn't answer that for a long time, and I had nothing else to
say just yet, so we listened to the long silence. I hadn't
turned on the picture.
"What are you going to do?" he asked, plaintively.
"Just what you asked me to do. Get the story on the
Flacks. You said I was the best there was at it, didn't you?"
The quality of the silence changed that time. It was a
regretful silence, as in how-could-I-have-said-anything-
so-stupid silence. He didn't say he'd told me that just to
charm me out of quitting. Another thing he didn't say was how
dare I threaten him with selling out to a rival, and he left
un-voiced the horrible things he'd try to do to my career if I
did such a thing. The phone line was simply buzzing with things
he didn't say, and he didn't say them so loudly I'd have been
frightened if I really feared for my job. At last he sighed,
and did say something.
"When do I get the story?"
"When I find it. What I want is Brenda, right now."
"Sure. She's just underfoot here."
"Tell her to come in the back way. She knows where it is,
and I don't think five other people in Luna know that."
"Six, counting me."
"I figured. Don't tell anyone else, or I'll never get out
of here alive."
"What else?"
"Nothing. I'll handle it all from here." I hung up. I
started making calls.
The first one was to the Queen. She didn't have what I
needed, but she knew somebody who knew somebody. She said she'd
get back to me. I sat down and made a list of items I would
need, made several more calls, and then Brenda was knocking on
the back door.
She wanted to know how I was, she wanted my reactions to
this and that, not as a reporter, but as a concerned friend. I
was touched, a little, but I had work to do.
"Hit me," I said.
"Pardon?"
"Hit me. Make a fist and smash it into my face. I need you
to break my nose. I tried it a couple times before you got
here, and I can't seem to hit hard enough."
She gave me that look that says she's trying to remember
all the ways out of this place, and how to get to them without
alarming me.
"My problem," I explained, "is I can't risk going in
public with this face on me; I need it rearranged, and in a
hurry. So hit me. You know how; you've seen cowboys and
gangsters do it in the movies." I stuck my face out and closed
my eyes.
"You've . . . you've deadened it, I guess?"
"What kind of nut do I look like? Don't answer, just hit
me."
She did, a blow that would have sent a housefly to
intensive care if one had been sitting on the tip of my nose.
She had to try four more times, in the end using an old
spitball bat I found in my closet, before we got that sickening
crunching sound that said we'd done the trick. I shouldn't be
too hard on her. Maybe I was acting erratic, there was probably
an easier way and she deserved more explanations, but I wasn't
in the mood for them. She had a lot worse to come, and I didn't
have time.
It bled a lot, as you'd expect. I held my nose pressed in
with a finger on the tip, and stuck my face in the autodoc.
When it healed, a few minutes later, I had a wide, vaguely
African nose with a major hook on the end and a bend toward the
left.
Part of getting a story is preparation, part is
improvisation, part perspiration and a little bit inspiration.
There are small items I carry around constantly in my purse
that I may use once in five years, but when I need them, I need
them badly. A disguise is something I need every once in a
while, never as badly as I did then, but I'd always been
prepared for disguising myself on the spur of the moment. It's
harder now than it used to be. People are better at seeing
through small changes since they're used to having friends
rework their faces to indulge a passing fad. Bushy eyebrows or
a wig are no longer enough, if you want to be sure. You need to
change the shape of the face.
I got a screwdriver and probed around in my upper jaw,
between the cheek and gum, until I found the proper recessed
socket. I pushed the tip of the blade through the skin and
slotted it in the screw and started turning it. When the blade
slipped Brenda peered into my mouth and helped me. As she
turned the screwdriver, my cheekbone began to move.
It's a cheap and simple device you can buy at any joke
shop and have installed in half an hour. Bobbie had wanted to
take it out. He's offended at anything that might be used to
mar his work. I'd left them in, and now I was glad as I watched
my face being transformed in the mirror. When Brenda was done,
my face was much wider and more gaunt, and my eyelids had a
slight downward slant. With the new nose, Callie herself would
not have know me. If I held my lower jaw so I had an overbite,
I looked even stranger.
"Let me get that left one again," Brenda said. "You're
lopsided."
"Lopsided is good." I tasted blood, but soon had that
healed up. Looking at myself, I decided it was enough, and
turned the nerve receptors in my face back on. There was a
little soreness on the nose, but nothing major.
So I could have gotten some of the same effect by stuffing
tissue paper into my cheeks, I guess. If that's all I had, I'd
have used it, but did you ever try talking with paper in your
mouth? An actor is trained to do it; I'm not. Besides, you're
always aware it's there, it's distracting.
Brenda wanted to know what we were going to do, and I
thought about what I could safely tell her. It wasn't much, so
I sat her down and she looked up at me wide-eyed.
"You got two choices," I told her. "One, you can help me
get ready for this caper, and then you can bow out, and no hard
feelings. Or you can go along to the end. But I'll tell you
going in, you're not going to know much. I think we'll get one
hell of a story out of it, but we could get into a lot of
trouble."
She thought it over.
"How much can you tell me?"
"Only what I think you need to know at the moment. You'll
just have to trust me on the rest."
"Okay."
"You idiot. Never trust anybody who says 'trust me.'
Except just this once, of course."
#
I went to the King City Plaza, one of the better hotels in
the neighborhood of the Platz, and checked in to the
Presidential Suite using Brenda's Nipple letter of credit,
freshly re-rated to A-Double-Plus. I'd told Walter I might need
to buy an interplanetary liner before this job was over, but
the fact was since he was paying for it, I just wanted to go
first class, and I'd never stayed in the Presidential Suite. I
registered us under the names Kathleen Turner and Rosalind
Russell, two of the five people who've played the part of
Hildegard/Hildebrandt Johnson on the silver screen. The fellow
at the front desk must not have been a movie buff; he didn't
bat an eye.
The suite came furnished with a staff, including a boy and
a girl in the spa, which was large enough for the staging of
naval war games. In a better mood I might have asked the boy to
stick around; he was a hunk. But I kicked them all out.
I stood in the middle of the room and said "My name is
Hildy Johnson, and I declare this to be my legal residence."
Liz had advised that, for the benefit of the hidden mikes and
cameras, just in case the tapes were ever brought forward as
evidence in a court of law. A hotel guest has the same rights
as a person in quarters she owns or rents, but it never hurt to
be safe.
I made a few more phone calls, and spent the time waiting
for some of them to be returned by going from room to room and
stripping the sheets and blankets off the many beds. I chose a
room with no windows looking out into the Mall, and went around
draping sheets over all the mirrors in the room. There were a
lot of them. The call I was waiting for came just as I
finished. I listened to the instructions, and left the room.
In a park not far from the hotel I walked around for
almost half an hour, which didn't surprise me. I assumed I was
being checked out. Finally I spotted the man I'd been told to
look for, and sat on the other end of a park bench. We didn't
look at each other, or talk. He got up and walked away, leaving
a sack on the bench between us. I waited a few more minutes,
breathed deeply, and picked up the sack. No hand reached out to
grab my shoulder. Maybe I didn't have the nerves for this sort
of work.
Back in the suite I didn't have long to wait before Brenda
knocked on the door, back from her shopping expedition. She'd
done well. Everything I'd asked for was in the packages she
carried. We got out the costumes of the Electricians Guild and
put them on: blue coveralls with Guild patches and equipment
belts. Names were stitched into the fabric over the left
breast: I was Roz and she was Kathy. Next to the ceremonial
wrenches, screwdrivers, and circuit testers dangling from the
belt I clipped some of the items I'd just obtained in such a
melodramatic fashion. They fit right in. We donned yellow
plastic hardhats and picked up black metal lunchboxes and
looked at each other in the mirror. We burst out laughing.
Brenda seemed to be enjoying the game so far. It was an
adventure.
Brenda looked ridiculous, as usual. You'd think a disguise
on Brenda would work about as well as a wig on a flagpole. The
fact is, she is not that abnormal for her generation. Who knows
where this height thing is going to end? Another of many causes
of the generation gap Callie had talked about was a simple
matter of dimension: people of Brenda's age group tended not to
frequent the older parts of the city where so many of their
elders lived . . . because they kept hitting their heads on
things. We built to a smaller scale in those days.
There were no human guards on the workers' entrance to the
Flack Grand Studio. I didn't really expect to encounter any at
all; according to the information I'd bought they only employed
six of them. People tended to rely on machines for that sort of
thing, and their trust can be misplaced, as I demonstrated to
Brenda with one of the illegal gizmos. I waved it at the door,
waited while red lights turned green, and the door sprung open.
I'd been told that one of the three machines I had would deal
with any security system I'd find in the Studio. I just hoped
my trust wasn't misplaced, in either the shady characters who
sold this sort of stuff or the machines themselves. We do trust
the little buggers, don't we? I had no idea what the stinking
thing was doing, but when it flashed a green light at me I
trotted right in, like Pavlov's dog Spotski.
Up three floors, down two corridors, seventh door on the
left. And who should be standing there looking frustrated but .
. . Cricket.
"If you touch that doorknob," I said, "Elvis will return
and he won't be handing out pink Cadillacs." She jumped just a
little. Damn, that girl was good. She was trying to pass
herself off as some kind of Flack functionary, carrying a
clipboard like an Amazon's shield. The good old clipboard can
be the magic key to many places if you know how to use it, and
Cricket was born to the con. She looked at us haughtily through
dark glasses.
"I beg your pardon," she sniffed. "What are you two doing
. . ." She had been flipping officiously through papers on her
board, as if searching for our names, which we hadn't given,
when she realized it was Brenda way up there under that yellow
hardhat. Nothing had prepared her for that, or for the dawning
realization of who it was playing the Jeff to Brenda's Mutt.
"Goddam," she breathed. "It's you, isn't it? Hildy?"
"In the flesh. I'm ashamed of you, Cricket. Balked by a
mere door? You've apparently forgotten your girl scout motto."
"All I remember is never let him in the back door on the
first date."
"Be prepared, love, be prepared." And I waved one of my
magic wands at the door. Naturally, one of the lights remained
obstinately red. So I chose another one at random and the
machine paid off like a crooked slot machine. We went through
the door, and I suddenly realized what her dark glasses were
for.
We were in an ordinary corridor with three doors leading
off of it. Music was coming from behind one of the doors.
According to the map I'd paid a lot of Walter's money for, that
was the one. This time I had to use all three machines, and the
last one took its time, each red light going out only after a
baffling read-out of digits on a numeric display. I guess it
was doing something arcane with codes. But the door opened, and
I didn't hear any alarms. You wouldn't, of course, but you keep
your ears tuned anyway. We went through the door and found
ourselves in a small room with the Grand Council of Flacks.
Or with their heads, anyway.
The heads were on a shelf a few meters from us, facing
away toward a large screen which was playing It Happened At The
World's Fair. They were in their boxes--I don't think they
could be easily removed--so what we saw was seven television
screens displaying the backs of heads. If they were aware of
our presence they gave no sign of it. Though how they could
have given any sign of it continues to elude me. Wires and
tubes grew out of the bottom of the shelf, leading to small
machines that hummed merrily to themselves.
Brenda was looking very nervous. She started to say
something but I put a finger to my lips and put on my mask. She
did the same, as Cricket watched us both. These were plastic
Halloweentype masks, modified with a voice scrambler, and I'd
gotten them mostly to calm Brenda; I didn't expect them to be
any use if it came to the crunch, since security cameras in the
hallways would surely have taken our pictures by now. But she
was even less sophisticated in these things than I, and
wouldn't have realized that.
Cricket had had her hand in a coat pocket since we entered
the first corridor. The hand started to come out, and I pointed
over her shoulder and said "What the hell is that?" She looked,
and I took one of the wrenches off my equipment belt and
clanged it down on the crown of her head.
It doesn't work like you see it on television. She went
down hard, then lifted herself up onto her hands, shaking her
head. A rope of saliva was hanging out of her mouth. I hit her
again. Her head started to bleed, and she still didn't clock
out. The third time I really put some english on it, and sure
enough Brenda grabbed my arm and spoiled my aim and the wrench
hit her on the side of the head, doing more damage than if
she'd left me alone, but it also did the job. Cricket fell down
like a sack of wet cement and didn't move.
"What the hell are you doing?" Brenda asked. The scrambler
denatured her voice, made her sound like a creepoid from Planet
X.
"Brenda, I said no questions."
"I didn't plan on this."
"I didn't, either, but if you crap out on me now I swear
I'll break both your arms and leave you right beside her." She
faced me down, breathing hard, and I began to wonder if I could
handle her if it came to it. My record with angry females
wasn't sterling, even when I had the weight advantage. At last
she slumped, and nodded, and I quickly dropped to one knee and
rolled Cricket over and put my face close to hers. I felt her
pulse, which seemed okay, peeled back an eyelid, checked the
pupils. I didn't know much more first aid than that, but I knew
she was in no danger. Help would be here soon, though she
wouldn't welcome it. I picked up the goofball that had rolled
out of her limp hand and put it in my own pocket. I showed
Brenda a photo.
"Look through those cabinets back there, find one of
these," I told her.
"What are we--"
"No questions, dammit."
I checked the fourth and most expensive electronic burglar
tool I'd purchased, which had been functioning since we entered
the Studio. All green lights. This one was busily confounding
all the active and passive systems that might be calling for
help for the seven dwarfs on the shelf. Don't ask me how; all I
know is if one man can think up a lock, another can figure out
how to pick it. I'd paid heavily for the security information
about the Studio, and so far I'd gotten my money's worth. I
went around the shelf and stood between the screen and the
Council, saw seven of the infamous Talking Heads that had been
a television feature from the very beginning. I chose the Grand
Flack, and leaned close to his prim, disapproving features. His
first reaction was to use his limited movement to try and see
around me. More interested in the movie than in possible danger
to himself. I guess if you live in a box you'd have to get
fairly fatalistic about such things.
"I want you to tell me how to remove you from the shelf
without doing any harm to you," I said.
"Don't worry about it," he sneered. "Someone will be here
to arrest you in a few minutes."
I hoped he was bluffing, had no way of knowing for sure.
"How many minutes can you live without these machines?" He
thought it over, made a head movement I interpreted as a shrug.
"Detaching me is easy; simply lift the handle on top of
the box. But I'll die in a few minutes." The thought didn't
seem to bother him.
"Unless I plug you into one of these." I took the machine
Brenda had located and held it up in front of him. He made a
sour face.
I don't know what the machine was called. What it did was
provide life support for his head, containing things like an
artificial heart, lungs, kidneys, and so forth, all quite small
since there wasn't that much life to support. I'd been told it
would sustain him for eight hours independently, indefinitely
when hooked into an autodoc. The device was the same dimensions
as his head-box, and about ten centimeters deep. I placed it on
the floor and lifted the box by the handle. He looked worried
for the first time. A few drops of blood dripped onto the
shelf, where I could see a maze of metal pins, plastic tubes,
air hoses. There was a similar pattern of fittings on the
transport device, arranged so there was only one way you could
plug it in. I positioned the box over the life support and
pressed down.
"Am I doing it right?" I asked the Grand Flack.
"There's not much you could do wrong," he said. "And
you'll never get away with this."
"Try me." I found the right switches, turned off his voice
and three of the television screens. The fourth, the one that
had been showing his face, was replaced with the movie the
group had been watching when we arrived. "Let's get out of
here," I said to Brenda.
"What about her? What about Cricket?"
"I said no questions. Let's move."
She followed me out into the corridor, through the door
where we'd met Cricket, down more hallways. Then we rounded a
corner and met a burly man in a brown uniform who crossed his
arms and frowned at us.
"Where are you going with that?" he asked.
"Where do you think, Mac?" I asked. "I'm taking it into
the shop. You try to run ten thousand of these things, you're
gonna get breakdowns."
"Nobody told me nothing about it."
I set the Grand Flack on the floor with the movie side of
the screen facing the guard; his eyes strayed to the screen, as
I'd hoped. There's something about a moving image on a
television screen that simply draws the eyes, especially if
you're a Flackite. I had one hand on my trusty wrench, but
mostly I flipped through the papers on my clipboard in a bored
manner. I came to one page--it seemed to be an insurance policy
for Cricket's apartment --and pointed triumphantly to the
middle of it.
"Says right here. Remove and repair one model seventeen
video monitor, work order number 45293a/34. Work to be
completed by blah blah blah."
"I guess the paperwork didn't get to me yet," he said, one
eye still on the screen. Maybe we were coming to his favorite
part. All I knew was if he'd asked to see the paperwork I'd
have held the clipboard out to him and beaned him with the
wrench when he looked at it.
"Ain't that always the way."
"Yeah. I was just surprised to see you two here, what with
all the excitement with Silvio gettin' killed and all."
"What the hell," I said, with a shrug, picking up the
Grand Flack and tucking him under my arm. "Sometimes you just
gotta go that extra kilometer if you want to get a head." And
we walked out the door.
#
Brenda made it almost a hundred meters down the corridor
and then she said, "I think I'm going to faint." I steered her
to a bench in the middle of the mall and sat her down and put
her head between her knees. She was shaking all over and her
breathing was unsteady. Her hand was cold as ice.
I held out my own hand, and was pleased to note it was
steady. I honestly hadn't been frightened after I detached the
Flack from his shelf; I'd figured that if there was any point
where my devices might fail, that would be it. But I was aided
by something that had helped many a more professional burglar
before I ever tried my hand at it. It had simply never been
envisioned that anyone would want to steal one of the council
members. As for the rest . . . well, you can read all these
wonderfully devious tales about how spies in the past have
stolen military and state secrets with elaborate ruses, with
stealth and cunning. Some of it must have been like that, but
I'd bet money that a lot of them had been stolen by people with
uniforms and clipboards who just went up to somebody and asked
for them.
"Is it over yet?" Brenda asked, weakly. She looked pale.
"Not yet. Soon. And still no questions."
"I'm going to have a few pretty damn soon, though," she
said.
"I'll bet you will."
#
In order to save time I hadn't had her get any more
costumes to stash along our getaway route, so we simply peeled
off the Electrician duds and stuffed them into the trash in a
public rest room and returned to the Plaza in the nude. I was
carrying the Grand Flack in a shopping bag from one of the
shops on the Platz and we had our arms around each other like
lovers. In the elevator Brenda let go of me like I was poison,
and we rode up in silence.
"Can we talk now?" she asked, when I'd closed the door
behind us.
"In a minute." I lifted the box out of the bag, along with
the few other items I'd saved: the magic wands, the dark
glasses, the goofball. I picked up a newspad and turned it on
and we watched and read and listened for a few minutes, Brenda
growing increasingly impatient. There was no mention of a
daring break-in at the Grand Studio, no all-points bulletin for
Roz and Kathy. I hadn't expected one. The Flacks understood
publicity, and while there is some merit in the old saw about
not caring what you print about me so long as you spell my name
right, you'd much prefer to see the news you manage out there
in the public view. This story had about a thousand deadly
thorns in it if the Flacks chose to exploit it, and I was sure
they'd think it over a long time before they reported our crime
to the police, if they ever did. Besides, their plates were
full with the assassination stories, which would keep their
staff busy for months, churning out new angles to feed to the
pads.
"Okay," I said to Brenda. "We're safe for a while. What
did you want to know?"
"Nothing," she said coldly. "I just wanted to tell you I
think you're the most disgusting, rottenest, most horrible . .
." Her imagination failed when it came to finding a noun. She'd
have to work on that; I could have suggested a dozen off the
top of my head. But not for the reasons she thought.
"Why is that?" I asked.
She was momentarily stunned at the enormity of my lack of
remorse.
"What you did to Cricket!" she shouted, half rising from
her chair. "That was so dirty and underhanded . . . I don't
think I want to know you anymore."
"I'm not sure I do, either. But sit down. There's
something I want to show you. Two things, actually." The Plaza
has some charming antique phones and there was one beside my
chair. I picked up the receiver and dialed a number from
memory.
"Straight Shit," came a pleasant voice. "News desk."
"Tell the editor that one of her reporters is being held
against her will in the Grand Studio of the F.L.C.C.S. church."
The voice grew cautious. "And who might that be?"
"How many did you infiltrate this morning? Her name is
Cricket. Don't know the last name."
"And who are you, ma'am?"
"A friend of the free press. Better hurry; when I left
they were tying her down and cueing up G.I. Blues. Her mind
could be gone by now." I hung up.
Brenda sputtered, her eyes wide.
"And you think that makes up for what you did to her?"
"No, and she doesn't deserve it, but she'd probably do the
same thing for me if the situation was reversed, which it
almost was. I know the editor at the Shit; she'll have a flying
squad of fifty shock troops down there in ten minutes with some
ammunition the Flacks will understand, like mock-ups of the
next hour's headline if they don't cough up Cricket pronto. The
Flacks will want to keep this quiet, but they aren't above
trying to get our names out of Cricket since it looks like a
falling out among thieves."
"And if it wasn't, what was it?"
"It was the golden rule, honey," I said, putting on
Cricket's dark glasses and holding up the goofball between
thumb and forefinger. "In journalism, that rule reads 'Screw
unto others before they screw you.'" I flicked the goofball
with my thumb and tossed it between us.
Damn, but those things are bright! It reminded me of the
nuke in Kansas, seeming to scorch holes right through the
protective lenses. It lasted some fraction of a second, and
when I took the glasses off Brenda was slumped over in her
chair. She'd be out for twenty minutes to half an hour.
What a world.
I picked up the head of the church and carried him into
the room I'd prepared. I set him on a table facing the
wall-sized television screen, which was turned off at the
moment. I rapped on the top of the box.
"You okay in there?" He didn't answer. I turned a latch
and opened the front screen, which was still showing the same
movie on both its flat surfaces, inner and outer. The face
glared at me.
"Close that door," he said. "It's just ten minutes to the
end."
"Sorry," I said, and closed it. Then I took my wrench--I'd
developed a certain fondness for that wrench--and rapped it
against the glass screen, which shattered. I had a glimpse of a
blissfully smiling face as the shards fell, then he was
screaming insults. Somewhere I heard a little motor whirring as
it pumped air through whatever he used for a larynx. He tried
uselessly to twist himself so he could see one of the screens
to either side of him, which were also tuned to the same
program.
"Oh, were you watching that?" I said. "How clumsy of me."
I pulled a cord out of the wall and patched his player into the
wall television set, turned the sound down low. He grumped for
a while, but in the end he couldn't resist the dancing images
behind me. If he'd noticed I was letting him see my face he
didn't seem worried about the possible implications. Death
didn't seem to be high on his list of fears.
"They're going to punish you for this, you know," he said.
"Who would 'they' be? The police? Or do you have your own
private goon squads?"
"The police, of course."
"The police will never hear about this, and you know it."
He just sniffed. He sniffed again when I broke the screens
on each side of his head. But when I took the patch cord in my
hand he looked worried.
"See you later. If you get hungry, holler." I pulled the
cord out of the wall, and the big screen went blank.
#
I hadn't brought any clothes to change into. I got
restless and went down to the lobby and browsed around in some
of the shops there, killed a half hour, but my heart wasn't
really in it. In spite of all my rationalizations about the
Flacks, I kept expecting that tap on the shoulder that asks the
musical question, "Do you know a good lawyer?" I picked out
some loose harem pants in gold silk and a matching blouse, a
lounging pajama ensemble I guess you'd call it, mostly because
I dislike parading around with no clothes in public, and
because Walter was picking up the tab, then I thought of Brenda
and got interested. I found a similar pair for her in a green
that I thought would do nice things to her eyes. They had to
extrude the arms and legs, but the shirt waist was okay, since
it was supposed to leave the midriff bare.
When I got back to the suite Brenda was no longer slumped
in the chair. I found her in the bathroom, hugging the toilet
and crying her eyes out, looking like a jumbo coat hanger
somebody had crumpled up and left there. I felt low enough to
sit on a sheet of toilet paper and swing my feet, to borrow a
phrase from Liz. I'd never used a goofball before, had
forgotten how sick they were supposed to make you. If I'd
remembered, would I still have used it? I don't know. Probably.
I knelt beside her and put my arm around her shoulders.
She quieted down to a few whimpers, didn't try to move away. I
got a towel and wiped her mouth, flushed away the stuff she'd
brought up. I eased her around until she was sitting against
the wall. She wiped her eyes and nose and looked at me with
dead eyes. I pulled the pajamas out of the sack and held them
up.
"Look what I got you," I said. "Well, actually I used your
credit card, but Walter's good for it."
She managed a weak smile and held out her hand and I gave
them to her. She tried to show an interest, holding the shirt
up to her chest. I think if she'd thanked me I'd have run
screaming to the police, begging to be arrested.
"They're nice," she said. "You think it'll look good on
me?"
"Trust me," I said. She met my eyes without flinching or
giving me one of her apologetic smiles or any other of her
arsenal of don't-hit-meI'm-harmless gestures. Maybe she was
growing up a little. What a shame.
"I don't think I will," she said. I put a hand on each of
her shoulders and put my face close to hers.
"Good," I said, stood, and held out a hand. She took it
and I pulled her up and we went back to the main room of the
suite.
She did cheer up a little when she got the clothes on,
turning in front of a big mirror to study herself from all
angles, which reminded me to look in on my prisoner. I told her
to wait there.
He wasn't nearly as bad off as I'd thought he would be,
which worried me more than I let him know. I couldn't figure it
out until I crouched down to his level and looked into the
blank television screen he faced.
"You tricky rascal," I said. Looking at the inert plastic
surface of the screen, I could see part of a picture on the
screen directly behind his head, the only one I hadn't smashed
out. I couldn't tell what the movie was, and considering how
little of it he could see he might not have known, either, with
the sound off, but it must have been enough to sustain him. I
picked him up and turned him around facing away from the wall
screen. He made a fascinating centerpiece, sure to start
interesting conversations at your next party. Just a head
sitting on a thick metal base, with four little pillars
supporting a flat roof above him. It was like a little temple.
He was looking really worried now. I crouched down and
looked at all the covered mirrors and glass. I found no surface
that would reflect an image to him if I were to turn on the
screen behind him, which I did. I debated about the sound,
finally turned it on, figuring it would torment him more to
hear it and not be able to see. If I was wrong, I could always
try it the other way in an hour or so, if we were granted that
much time. Let's face it, if anybody was looking for us, we'd
be easy to find. I waved at him and made a face at the string
of curses that followed me out of the room.
How to get information out of somebody that doesn't want
to talk? That's the question I'd asked myself before I started
this escapade. The obvious answer is torture, but even I draw
the line at that. But there's torture and then there's torture.
If a man had spent most of his life watching passively as
endless images marched by right in front of his face, spent
every waking hour watching, how would he react if the plug was
pulled? I'd find out soon enough. I'd read somewhere that
people in sensory deprivation tanks quickly became disoriented,
pliable, lost their will to resist. Maybe it would work with
the Grand Flack.
Brenda and I spent a silent half hour sitting in chairs
not too far from each other that might as well have been on
other planets. When she finally spoke, it startled me. I'd
forgotten she was there, lost in my own thoughts.
"She was going to use that thing on us," she said.
"Who, Cricket? You saw it fall out of her hand, right?
It's called a goofball. Knocks you right out, from what I'm
told."
"You were told right. It was awful."
"I'm really sorry, Brenda. It seemed like a good idea at
the time."
"It was. I asked for it. I deserved it."
I wasn't sure about that, but it had been the quickest way
to show her what we'd narrowly averted. That's me: quick and
dirty, and explain later. She thought about it a few more
minutes.
"Maybe she was just going to use it on the Flacks."
"Sure she was; she didn't expect to find us there. But you
didn't see her handing out pairs of glasses. We'd have gone
down with the Flacks."
"And she'd have left us there."
"Just like we left her."
"Well, like you said, she didn't expect us. We forced her
hand."
"Brenda, you're trying to apologize for her, and it's not
necessary. She forced my hand, too. You think I liked cracking
her on the head? Cricket's my friend."
"That's the part I don't understand."
"Look, I don't know what her plan was. Maybe she had drugs
on her, too, something to make the Flacks talk right there.
That might have been the best way, come to think of it. The
penalties for . . . well, I guess for headnapping, it's going
to be pretty stiff if they catch me."
"Me, too."
I showed her the gun I'd bought from Liz; she looked
shocked, so I put it away. I don't blame her. Nasty little
thing, that gun. I can see why they're illegal.
"Just me. If it comes to it, you can say I held that on
you the whole time. I won't have trouble convincing a judge
I've lost my mind. Anyway, you can be sure Cricket had some
plan of attack in mind, and she improvised when we entered the
picture. The story's the thing, see? Ask her about it when this
is all over."
"I don't think she'd talk to me."
"Why not? She won't hold a grudge. She's a pro. Oh, she'll
be mad, all right, and she'll do just about anything to us if
we get in her way again, but it won't be for revenge. If
cooperation will get the story, then she'd rather cooperate,
just like me. Trouble was, this story is too big to share. I
think we both figured out as soon as we saw each other that one
of us wasn't walking out of that room. I was just faster."
She was shaking her head. I'd said all I had to say; she'd
either understand it and accept it, or look for another line of
work. Then she looked up, remembering something.
"What you said. I can't let you do that. Take the rap, I
mean."
I pretended anger, but I was touched again. What a sweet
little jerk she was. I hoped she didn't get eaten alive next
time she met Cricket.
"You sure as hell will. Stop being juvenile. First
revenge, then altruism. Those things are for very special
occasions, rare circumstances. Not when they get in the way of
a story. You want to be altruistic in your private life, go
ahead, but not on Walter's time. He'll fire you if he hears
about it."
"But it's not right."
"You're even wrong there. I never told you what we were
going to do. You couldn't be held responsible. I went to a lot
of trouble to set it up that way, and you're an ungrateful brat
for thinking of throwing all my work away."
She looked as if she was going to cry again, and I got up
and got a drink. Maybe I wiped my eyes, too, standing there in
the kitchen tossing down a surprisingly bitter bourbon. You'd
think they'd do better at two thousand per night.
#
When the Grand Flack had had two hours with nothing moving
to look at but the flickering lights cast on the other walls by
the screen behind his head, I stuck my own head into the room,
wondering if I could manage to keep it attached to my shoulders
by the time this was all over. He looked at me desperately. His
whole face was drenched with sweat.
"This series is one of my favorites," he whined.
"So look at the tape later," I said.
"It's not the same, dammit! I've already heard the story
line."
I thought it was a bit of luck to have one of his favorite
soap operas playing just when I needed a lever to pry
information out of his head, then I thought it over, and
realized that whatever was playing at the moment was bound to
be his favorite. He watched them all.
"I missed David and Everett's big love scene. Damn you."
"Are you ready to answer some questions?"
He started to shake his head--he had a little movement
from the neck stump, up and down, back and forth--and it was
like a hand took his chin and forced it up and down instead. I
guess it was the invisible hand of his addiction.
"Don't run off," I said. "I've got to get another
witness." I turned around, and bumped into Brenda, who'd been
standing behind me. She wasn't wearing her mask and I thought
about getting angry about that, but what the hell. She was in
it as an accessory, unless I could make my duress theory stand
up in court. Which point I hoped never to reach.
We pulled up chairs on each side of the big screen and
turned him around so he could see it. I thought this might take
a long time, as his eyes never left the screen, never once
looked at us, but he was quite good at watching the show and
talking to us at the same time.
"For the record," I said, "have you been harmed in any way
since we took you on this little trip?"
"You made me miss David and Everett's--"
"Aside from that."
"No," he said, grudgingly.
"Are you hungry? Thirsty? You need to . . . is there a
drain on this thing? A waste dump of some kind? Need to empty
the beer cooler?"
"It's not a problem."
So I had him answer a few more questions, name rank and
serial number sort of things, just to get him used to
responding. I've found it's a good technique, even with
somebody who's used to being interviewed. Then I got around to
asking the question this had all been about, and he told me
pretty much what I'd expected to hear.
"So who's idea was it to assassinate Silvio?" I heard
Brenda gasp, but I kept my eyes on the Flack. He pursed his
lips angrily, but kept watching the screen. When it looked as
if he might not answer I reached for the patch cord and the
story came out.
"I don't know who told you about it; we kept security
tight, just the inner circle knew what was going to happen. I'd
like his name later."
I decided not to tell him just yet that nobody had told
me. Maybe if he thought he'd been betrayed he'd pull no
punches. I needn't have worried.
"You don't care about whose idea it was, though. You don't
care. All you need is someone who'll admit to it. I'm here, so
I'm elected to break the story, so let's just say it was me,
all right?"
"You're willing to take the blame?" Brenda asked.
"Why not? We all agreed it was the thing to do. We drew
lots to select a culprit to stand up for the crime, and
somebody else lost, but we can work that out, just so I get
time to warn them, get our stories straight."
I looked at Brenda's face to see how she was reacting to
this, both the story itself and the blatant engineering of the
story between me and the man who bought the hit. What I saw
made me think there was hope for her in the news business yet.
There is a certain concentrated, avid-forblood look that
appears on the faces of reporters on the trail of a very big
story that you'd have to visit the big cat house at the zoo to
see duplicated in its primal state. From the look on Brenda's
face, if a tiger was standing between her and this story right
now, the cat would soon have a tall-journalist-sized hole in
him.
"What you mean is," Brenda went on, "you had someone
picked out to go to jail if someone ever uncovered the story."
Which meant she still hadn't completely comprehended this man
and his church.
"Nothing like that. We knew the truth would come out
sooner or later." He looked sour. "We'd hoped for later, of
course, so we'd have time to milk it from every possible angle.
You've been a real problem, Hildy."
"Thank you," I said.
"After all we've done for you people," he pouted. "First
you get in the way of the second bullet. Serves you right, you
getting hurt."
"It never hurt. It passed right through me."
"I'm sorry to hear that. Those bullets were carefully
planned. Something about penetrating the forehead, the cheek,
something like that, spreading out later and blowing out the
back of the skull."
"Dum-dums," Brenda said, unexpectedly. She looked at me,
shrugged. "When you got hit, I looked it up."
"Whatever," the Flack continued. "The second one spread
out when it hit you, and did way too much damage to Silvio's
face, plus getting your blood splattered all over him. You
ruined the tableau."
"I thought it was pretty effective, myself."
"Thank Elvis for Cricket. Then, as if you hadn't done
enough, here you are breaking the law, making me break the
story two weeks early. We never thought you'd break the law, at
least not to this extent."
"So prosecute me."
"Don't be silly. That would look pretty foolish, wouldn't
it? All the sympathy would be with you. People would think
you'd done a public service."
"That's what I was hoping."
"No way. But there's still time to get the right spin on
this thing, and do us both a lot of good. You know us, Hildy.
You know we'll work with you to get a story that will maximize
your readership interest, if you'll only give us a few things
here and there in the way of damage control."
There were a few things going on here that I didn't
understand, but I couldn't get to the questions just yet.
Frankly, though I've seen a lot of things in my career, done a
lot of things, this one was about to make me gag. What I really
wanted to do was go out and find a baseball/6 field and play a
few innings using this terrifying psychopath as the ball.
But I got myself under control. I've interviewed perverts
before, the public always wants to know about perverts. And I
asked the next question, the one that, later, you wish you
could take back, or never hear the answer to.
"What I can't figure . . . or maybe I'm dense," I said,
slowly. "I haven't found the angle. How did the church expect
to look good out of all this? Killing him, that I understand,
in your terms. You can't have a live saint walking around,
farting and belching, out of control. Silvio should have seen
that. Think how embarrassed the Christians'd be if Jesus came
back; they'd have to nail the sucker up again before he upset
too many applecarts."
I stopped, because he was smiling, and I didn't like the
smile. And for just a moment he let his dreamy eyes drift from
the screen and look into my own. I imagined I saw worms
crawling around in there.
"Oh, Hildy," he said, more in sorrow than in anger.
"Don't you oh Hildy me, you coffee-table cocksucker. I'll
tear you out of that box and shit down your neck. I'll--"
Brenda put a hand on mine, and I got myself back under control.
"They'll put you in jail for five hundred years," I said.
"That wouldn't frighten me," he said, still smiling. "But
they won't. I'll do time, all right. I figure three, maybe five
years."
"For murder? For conspiracy to murder Silvio? I want the
name of your lawyer."
"They won't be able to prove murder," he said, still
smiling. I was really getting tired of that smile.
"Why do you say that?"
I felt Brenda's hand on mine again. She had the look of
someone trying to break it gently.
"Silvio was in on it, Hildy," she said.
"Of course he was," The Grand Exalted Stinking Baboon's
Posterior said. "And Hildy, if I'd been a vindictive man, I
could have let you run with the first story. I almost wish I
had. Now I'll never enjoy David and Everett's . . . well, never
mind. I'm telling you as a show of good faith, prove we can
work together again in spite of your backstabbing crimes.
Silvio was the one who suggested this whole thing. He helped
interview the shooter. That's the story you'll write this
afternoon, and that's the story we always intended to come out
in a few weeks' time."
"I don't believe you," I said, believing every word of it.
"That's of little interest to me."
"Why?" I said.
"I presume you mean why did he want to die. He was washed
up, Hildy. He hadn't been able to write anything in four years.
That was worse than death to Silvio."
"But his best stuff . . ."
"That's when he came to us. I don't know if he was ever a
true believer; hell, I don't know if I'm a true believer.
That's why we call ourselves latitudinarian. If you have
different ideas on the divinity of Tori-san, for instance, we
don't drive you out of the church, we give you a time slot and
let you talk it over with people who agree with you. We don't
form sects, like other churches, and we don't torment heretics.
There are no heretics. We aren't doctrinaire. We have a saying
in the church, when people want to argue about points of
theology: that's close enough for sphere music."
"'Hum a few bars and I'll see if I can pick it up,'" I
said.
"Exactly. We make no secret of the fact that what we most
want from parishioners is for them to buy our records. What we
give them in return is the chance to rub elbows with
celebrities. What surprised the founding Flacks, though, is how
many people really do believe in the sainthood of celebrities.
It even makes some sense, when you think about it. We don't
postulate a heaven. It's right here on the ground, if you
achieve enough popularity. In the mind of your average
star-struck nobody, being a celebrity is a thousand times
better than any heaven he can imagine."
I could see he did believe in one thing, even if it wasn't
the Return of the King. He believed in the power of public
relations. I'd found a point in common with him. I wasn't
delighted by this.
"So you'll play it as, he came to you for help, and you
helped him."
"For three years we wrote all his music. We attract a lot
of artists, as you know. We picked three of the best, and they
sat down and started churning out 'Silvio' music. It turned out
to be pretty good. You never can tell."
I thought back over the music I had loved so much, the new
things I had believed Silvio had been doing. It was still good;
I couldn't take that away from the music. But something had
gone out of me.
This was a whole new world for Brenda, and she was as rapt
as any three-year-old at mommy's knee, listening to Baba Yaga
and the Wolves.
"Will that be part of the story?" she asked. "How you've
been writing his music for him?"
"It has to be. I was against it at first, but then it was
shown to me that everyone benefits this way. My worry was of
tarnishing the image of a Gigastar. But if it's boosted right,
he becomes a real object of sympathy, his cult gets even
stronger. He's still got his old music, which was all his. The
church comes out well because we tried everything, and
reluctantly gave in to his request to martyr himself--which is
his right. We broke some laws along the way, sure, and we
expected some punishment, but handled right, even that can
generate sympathy. He asked us. And don't worry, we've got tons
of documentation on this, tapes showing him begging us to go
along. I'll have all that wired over to your newsroom as soon
as we iron out the deal. Oh, yes, and as if it all wasn't good
enough, now the real musicians who stood behind Silvio all this
time get to come out of the shadows and get their own shot at
Gigastardom."
"Shot does seem the perfect word in this context," I said.
#
The first part of that interview was almost comic, when I
think back on it. There I was, thinking I had it all figured
out, asking who had planned to kill Silvio. And there he was,
thinking I knew the whole story already, thinking I was asking
him who had suggested to Silvio that, dead, he could become a
Flack Gigastar.
Because Silvio had not come up with the idea
independently. What he had proposed was his own election, live,
into the ranks of the Four. It was explained that only dead
people could qualify, and one thing led to another. The council
was against his plan at first. It was Silvio who figured out
the angle to make the church look good. And it was an act of
suicide. What the Grand Flack would go to jail for was a series
of civil offenses, conspiracies, false advertising, intent to
defraud, thing like that. What sort of penalty the actual
assassin would get, when found, I had no idea.
It scared me, later, that we'd missed understanding each
other by such a seemingly trivial point. If he'd known I didn't
know the key fact before he admitted what he did, I thought he
might have found that little window of opportunity to pay me
back for making him miss his soap opera, some way that would
have ended with Hildy Johnson in jail and the aims of the
church still accomplished. There might have been a way. Of
course, there was nothing to really prevent him from filing
charges anyway, I'd known that going in, but though he might be
devious, he'd never take a chance on it backfiring, knowing the
kind of power Walter would bring to bear if I ever got charged
with something after bringing him a story like that.
Brenda wanted to rush right off and get to work, but I
made her sit down and think it out, something that would
benefit her later in her career if she remembered to do it.
Step one was to phone in the confession as recorded by her
holocam. When that was safely at the Nipple newsdesk there was
no chance of the Flack going back on his word. We could
interview him at our leisure, and plan just how to break this
story.
Not that we had a lot of time; there's never much time
with something like this. Who knows when someone will come
sniffing down the tracks you've left? But we took enough to
carry the head back to the Nipple, where he was put on a desk
and allowed to use his telephone and was soon surrounded by
dozens of gawking reporters listening in as Brenda interviewed
him.
Yes, Brenda. On the tube ride to the offices I'd had a
talk with her.
"This is all going under your byline," I said.
"That's ridiculous," she said. "You did all the work. It
was your not accepting the assassination on the face of it that
. . . hell, Hildy, it's your story."
"It was just too perfect," I said. "Right when I picked
him up, it went through my mind. Only I thought they'd set him
up, the poor chump."
"Well, I was buying it. Like everybody else."
"Except Cricket."
"Yeah. There's no question of me taking the credit for
it."
"But you will. Because I'm offering it, and it's the kind
of story that will make your name forever and you'd be even
dumber than you act if you turned it down. And because it can't
be under my name, because I don't work for the Nipple anymore."
"You quit? When? Why didn't Walter tell me?"
I knew when I had quit, and Walter didn't tell her because
he didn't know yet, but why confuse her? She argued with me
some more, her passion growing weaker and her gradual
acceptance more tinged with guilt. She'd get over the guilt. I
hoped she'd get over the fame.
She seemed to be enjoying it well enough at the moment. I
stood at the back of the room, rows of empty desks between me
and the excited group gathered around the triumphant cub
reporter.
And Walter emerged from his high tower. He waddled across
the suddenly-silent newsroom, walking away from me, not seeing
me there in the shadows. No one present could remember the last
time he'd come out of his office just for a news story. I saw
him hold out his hand to Brenda. He didn't believe it, of
course, but he was probably planning to grill me about it
later. He was still bestowing his sacred presence on the
reporters when I got on his elevator and rode it up to his
office.
His desk sat there in a pool of light. I admired the fine
grain of the wood, the craftsmanship of the thing. Of all the
hugely expensive antiques Walter owned, this was the only one
I'd ever coveted. I'd have liked a desk of my own like that
some day.
I smoothed out the gray fedora hat in my hand. It had
fallen off my head when I jumped onto the stage, into a pool of
Silvio's blood. The blood was still caked on it. The thing was
supposed to be battered, that was traditional, but this was
ridiculous.
It seemed to me the hat had seen enough use. So I left it
in the center of Walter's desk, and I walked out.
=*= =*= =*= =*=
I had to go home by the back way, and even that had been
discovered. One of my friends must have been bribed: there were
reporters gathered outside the cave. None had elected to
actually enter it, not with the cougar in residence. Though
they knew she wouldn't hurt them, that lady is a menacing
presence at best.
My re-arranged face almost did the trick. I had made it
into the cave and they all must have been wondering who the
hell I was and what my business was with Hildy, when somebody
shouted "It's her!" and the stampede was on. I ran down the
corridor with the reporters on my heels, shouting questions,
taping my ignominious flight.
Once inside, I viewed the front door camera. Oh, brother.
They were shoulder to shoulder, as far as the eye could see,
from one side of the corridor to the other. There were vendors
selling balloons and hot dogs, and some guy in a clown suit
juggling. If I'd ever wondered where the term media circus came
from, I wondered no longer.
The police had set up ropes to keep a clear space for fire
and emergency crews, and so my neighbors could get through to
their homes. As I watched, one neighbor came through, his face
set in a scowl that was starting to look permanent. For lack of
anything else to do, many of the reporters shouted questions at
him, to which he replied with stony silence. I could see I was
not going to win any prizes at my next neighborhood block
party. This whole thing was bound to get petitions in
circulation, politely requesting me to find another residence,
if I didn't do something.
So I spent several hours boxing my possession, folding up
my furniture, sticking stamps on everything and shoving it all
in the mail tube. I thought about mailing myself along with it,
but I didn't know where I'd go. The things I owned could go
into storage; there wasn't that much of it. When I was done the
already-spare apartment was clean to the bare walls, except for
some items I'd set aside, some of which I'd already owned,
others ordered and mailed to me. I went to the bathroom and
fixed my cheekbones, left the nose alone because I'd let Bobbie
do that when I could get to him safely. What the hell, it was
still under the ninety-day warranty and there was no need to
tell him I'd broken it intentionally. Then I went to the front
door and let myself appear on the outside monitor. No way was I
going to un-dog those latches.
"Free food at the end of the corridor!" I shouted. A
couple of heads actually turned, but most remained looking back
at me. Everyone shouted questions at once and it took some time
for all that to die down and for everyone to realize that, if
they didn't shut up, nobody got an interview.
"I've said all I'm going to say about the death of
Silvio," I told them. There were groans and more shouts, and I
waited for that to die down. "I'm not unsympathetic," I
continued. "I used to be one of you. Well, better, but one of
you." That got me some derisive shouts, a few laughs. "I know
none of your editors will take no for an answer. So I'll give
you a break. In fifteen minutes this door will open, and you're
all free to come in. I don't guarantee you an interview, but
this idiocy has got to stop. My neighbors are complaining."
I knew that last would buy me exactly no sympathy, but the
promise of opening the door would keep them solidly in place
for a while. I waved to them, and switched off the screen.
I told the door to open up in fifteen minutes, and hurried
to the back.
A previous call to the police had cleared the smaller
group out of the corridor back there. It was not a public
space, so I could do that, and the reporters had to retreat to
Texas, from which they could not be chased out, so long as they
didn't violate any of the appropriate technology laws by
bringing in modern tools or clothing. That was fine with me; I
knew the land, and they didn't.
I came out of the cave cautiously. It was full night, with
no "moon," a fact I'd checked in my weather schedule. I peered
over the edge of the cliff and saw them down there, gathered
around a campfire near the river, drinking coffee and toasting
marshmallows. I shouldered my pack, settled all my other items
so they would make no noise, and scaled the smaller, gentler
slope that rose behind the cave. I soon came to stand on top of
the hill, and Mexico lay spread out before me in the starlight.
I started off, walking south, keeping my spirits up by
envisioning the scene when the hungry hordes poured through the
door to find an empty nest.
#
For the next three weeks I lived off the land. At least, I
did as much of that as I could. Texas or Mexico, the pickings
could be mighty slim in these parts, partner. There were some
edible plants, some cactus, none of which you'd call a gourmet
delight, but I dutifully tried as many of them as I could find
and identify out of my disneyland resident's manual. I'd
brought along staples like pancake batter and powdered eggs and
molasses and corn meal, and some spices, mostly chili powder. I
wasn't entirely on my own. I could sneak into Lonesome Dove or
New Austin when things started getting low.
So in the morning I'd eat flapjacks and eggs, and at night
beans and cornbread, but I supplemented this fare with wild
game.
What I'd had in mind was venison. There are plenty of deer
and antelope playing around my home, even a few buffalo
roaming. Buffalo seemed a bit extreme for one person, but I'd
brought a bow and arrow hoping to bag a pronghorn or small buck
deer. The discouraging word was, those critters are hard to
sneak up on, hard to get in range of, if your range is as short
as mine. As a resident of Texas, I was entitled to take two
deer or antelope each year, and I'd never bagged even one. I'd
never wanted to. You can use firearms for this purpose, but
checking them out of the disneyland office was a process so
beset with forms in triplicate and solemn oaths that I never
even considered it. Besides, I wondered, in passing, if the CC
would allow me such a lethal weapon in view of my recent track
record.
I was also allowed a virtually unlimited quota of
jackrabbits, and that's what I ate. I didn't shoot any, though
I shot at them. I set snares. Most mornings I'd find one or two
struggling to get free. The first one was hard to kill and the
killing cost me my appetite, but it got easier after that. It
was just as I "remembered" it from Scarpa. Before long it
seemed natural.
I had found one of the very few places in Luna where I
could hide out until the Silvio story cooled off. I calculated
that would take about a month. It would be a year or more
before the whole thing was old news, but I was sure my own part
in the travesty would be largely forgotten sooner than that. So
I spent my days wandering the length and breadth of my huge
back yard. There wasn't a lot to do. I occupied myself by
catching rattlesnakes. All this takes is a certain amount of
roaming around, and a bit of patience. They just coil up and
hiss and rattle when you find them, and can be captured using a
long stick and a bit of rope to loop around their necks. I was
very careful handling them as I couldn't afford to be bitten.
That would mean either returning to the world for medical
treatment, or surrendering myself to the tender mercies of Ned
Pepper. If you call up an old Boy Scout manual and read the
section on snakebite, it'll curl your hair.
Once a week I'd creep up on the entrance to my old back
door. By the second week there was no one there. I went over to
my unfinished cabin and counted the reporters camped nearby.
They had figured out where I was, in a general way. I'm sure
somebody in town had reported my stealthy shopping trips. It
stood to reason that, having abandoned my apartment, I'd show
up at the cabin sooner or later. And they were right. I did
plan to return there.
At the end of the third week there were still a dozen
people at the cabin. Enough was enough, I decided. So I waited
until long after dark, watching them forlornly trying to
entertain each other without benefit of television, saw them
crawl into sleeping bags one by one, many riproaring drunk. I
waited still longer, until their fire was embers, until the
surprising cold of the desert night had chilled the snakes in
my bag, making them dopey and tractable. Then I stole into
their camp, silent as any red Indian, and left a rattler within
a few feet of each of the sleeping bags. I figured they'd crawl
in to get warm, and judging from the screams and shouts I heard
about an hour before sunrise, that's just what they did.
Morning found them all gone. I watched from a distance
through my field glasses as I made my breakfast of pancakes and
left-over rabbit chili as they drifted back one by one after
having been treated by autodocs. The sheriff showed up a little
later and started writing out citations. If anything, the cries
were even louder when the reporters found out the price they
would have to pay for non-resident killing of indigenous
reptiles. He wasn't impressed at all by their pleas that most
of the snakes had been killed by accident, in the struggle to
get out of the sleeping bags.
I thought they might post a guard the next night, but they
didn't. City slickers, all of them. So I crept in again and
left the remainder of my stock. After my second raid, only four
of the hardiest returned. They were probably going to stay
indefinitely, and they'd be alert now. Too bad they couldn't
prove I'd sicced the snakes on them.
I walked up to the cabin and started changing my clothes.
It took them a minute or two to notice me, then they all
gathered around. Four people can hardly be called a mob, but
four reporters come close. They all shouted at once, they got
in my way, they grew angrier by the minute. I treated them as
if they were unusually mobile rocks, too big to move, but not
worth looking at and certainly not something to talk to. Even
one word would only serve to encourage them.
They hung around most of the day. Others joined them,
including one idiot who had brought an antique camera with
bellows, black cape, and a bar to hold flash powder, apparently
hoping to get a novelty picture of some kind. There was a
novelty picture in it, when the powder slipped down his shirt
and ignited and the others had to slap out the flames. Walter
ran the sequence in his seven o'clock edition with a funny
commentary.
Even reporters will give up eventually if there's really
no story there. They wanted to interview me, but I wasn't
important enough to rate a come-and-go watch, supplying the
'pad with those endlessly fascinating shots of a person walking
from his door to his car, and arriving home at night, not
answering the questions of the throng of reporters with nothing
better to do. So by the second day they all went away, gone to
haunt someone else. You don't give assignments like that to
your top people. I'd known guys who spent all their time staked
out on this or that celebrity, and not one could pour piss out
of a boot.
It felt good to be alone again. I got down to serious
work, finishing my un-completed cabin.
#
Brenda came by on the second day. For a while she said
nothing, just stood there and watched me hammering shingles
into place.
She looked different. She was dressed well, for one thing,
and had done some interesting things with make-up. Now that she
had some money, I supposed she had found professional advice.
The biggest new thing about her was that she was about fifteen
kilos heavier. It had been distributed nicely, around the
breasts and hips and thighs. For the first time, she looked
like a real woman, only taller.
I took the nails out of my mouth and wiped my forehead
with the back of my hand.
"There's a thermos of lemonade by the toolbox," I said.
"You can help yourself, if you'll bring me a glass."
"It's talking," she said. "I was told it wouldn't talk,
but I had to come see for myself." She had found the thermos
and couple of glasses, which she inspected dubiously. They
could have used a wash, I admit it.
"I'll talk," I said. "I just won't do interviews. If
that's what you came for, take a look in that gunny sack by
your feet."
"I heard about the snakes," she said. She was climbing up
the ladder to join me on the ridge of the roof. "That was sort
of infantile, don't you think?"
"It did the job." I took the glass of lemonade and she
gingerly settled herself beside me. I drained mine and tossed
the glass down into the dirt. She was wearing brand new denim
pants, very tight to show off her newly-styled hips and legs,
and a loose blouse that managed to hide the boniness of her
shoulders, knotted tight between her breasts, baring her good
midriff. The tattoo around her navel seemed out of place, but
she was young. I fingered the material of her blouse sleeve.
"Nice stuff," I said. "You did something to your hair."
She patted it self-consciously, pleased that I'd noticed.
"I was surprised Walter didn't sent you out here," I said.
"He'd figure because we worked together, I might open up to
you. He'd be wrong, but that's how he'd figure it."
"He did send me," she said. "I mean, he tried. I told him
to go to hell."
"Something must be wrong with my ears. I thought you
said--"
"I asked him if he wanted to see the hottest young
reporter in Luna working for the Shit."
"I'm flabbergasted."
"You taught me everything I know."
I wasn't going to argue with that, but I'll admit I felt
something that might have been a glow of pride. Passing the
torch, and all that, even if the torch was a pretty shoddy
affair, one I'd been glad to be rid of.
"So how's all the notoriety treating you?" I asked her.
"Has it cost you your sweet girlish laughter yet?"
"I never know when you're kidding." She'd been gazing into
the purple hills, into the distance, like me. Now she turned
and faced me, squinting in the merciless sunlight. Her face was
already starting to burn. "I didn't come here to talk about me
and my career. I didn't even come to thank you for what you
did. I was going to, but everybody said don't, they said Hildy
doesn't like stuff like that, so I won't. I came because I'm
worried about you. Everybody's worried about you."
"Who's everybody?"
"Everybody. All the people in the newsroom. Even Walter,
but he'd never admit it. He told me to ask you to come back. I
told him to ask you himself. Oh, I'll tell you his offer, if
you're interested--"
"--which I'm not."
"--which is what I told him. I won't try to fool you,
Hildy. You never got close to the people you worked with, so
maybe you don't know how they feel about you. I won't say they
love you, but you're respected, a lot. I've talked to a lot of
people, and they admire your generosity and the way you play
fair with them, within the limits of the job."
"I've stabbed every one of them in the back, one time or
another."
"That's not how they feel. You beat them to a lot of
stories, no question, but the feeling is it's because you're a
good reporter. Oh, sure, everybody knows you cheat at cards--"
"What a thing to say!"
"--but nobody can ever catch you at it, and I think they
even admire you for that. For being so good at it."
"Vile calumny, every word of it."
"Whatever. I promised myself I wouldn't stay long, so I'll
just say what I came here to say. I don't know just what
happened, but I saw that Silvio's death wasn't something you
could just shrug off. If you ever want to talk about it,
completely off the record, I'm willing to listen. I'm willing
to do just about anything." She sighed, and looked away for a
moment, then back. "I don't really know if you have friends,
Hildy. You keep a part of yourself away from everyone. But I
have friends, and I need them. I think of you as one of my
friends. They can help out when things are really bad. So what
I wanted to say, if you ever need a friend, any time at all,
just call me."
I didn't want this, but what could I do, what could I say?
I felt a hot lump in the back of my throat. I tried to speak,
but it would get into entirely too much if I ever started, into
things I don't think she needed or wanted to know.
She patted my knee and started to get down off the roof. I
grabbed her hand and pulled her back. I kissed her on the lips.
For the first time in many days I smelled a human smell other
than my own sweat. She was wearing a scent I had worn the day
we kidnapped the Grand Flack.
She would have been happy to go farther but it wasn't my
scene and we both knew it, and both knew I'd had nothing in
mind other than to thank her for caring enough to come out
here. So she climbed down from the roof, started back into
town. She turned once, waved and smiled at me.
I worked furiously all afternoon, evening, and into the
night, until it grew too dark to see what I was doing.
#
Cricket came by the next day. I was working on the roof
again.
"Git down off'n that there shack, you cayuse!" she
shouted. "This here planet ain't big enough fer the both of
us." She was pointing a chromeplated six-shooter at me. She
pulled the trigger, and a stick shot out and a flag unfurled.
It said BANG! She rolled it up and put the gun back on her hip
as I came down the ladder, grateful of the interruption. It was
the hottest part of the day; I'd taken my shirt off and my skin
shone as if I'd just stepped out of the shower.
"The hombre back in the bar said this stuff would take the
hide off of a rattlesnake," she said, holding up a bottle of
brown liquid. "I told him that's what I intended to use it
for." I held out my hand. She scowled at it, then took it. She
was dressed in full, outrageous "western" regalia, from the
white Stetson hat to the highheeled lizard boots, with many a
pearly button and rawhide fringe in between. You expected her
to whip out a guitar and start yodeling "Cool Water." She was
also sporting a trim blonde mustache.
"I hate the soup strainer," I said, as she poured me a
drink.
"So do I," she admitted. "I'm like you; I don't care to
mix. But my little daughter bought it for me for my birthday,
so I figure I have to wear it for a few weeks to make her
happy."
"I didn't know you had a daughter."
"There's a lot you don't know about me. She's at that age
when gender identity starts to crop up in their minds. One of
her friend's mother just got a Change, and Lisa's telling me
she wants to have a daddy for a while. Hell, at least it goes
with the duds." She had been digging in a pocket. Now she
flipped out a wallet and showed me a picture of a girl of about
six, a sweeter, younger version of herself. I tried my hand at
a few complimentary phrases, and became aware she was curling
her lip at me.
"Oh, shut up, Hildy," she said. "You being 'nice' just
reminds me of why you're doing it, you louse."
"Did you have any trouble getting out of the Studio?"
"They roughed me up pretty good. Knocked out my front
teeth, broke a couple of fingers. But the cavalry arrived and
got pictures of the whole thing, and right now they're talking
to my lawyers. I guess I got you to thank for that; the timely
arrival, I mean."
"No need to thank me."
"Don't worry, I wasn't going to."
"I was surprised it was so easy to get the drop on you."
She brought out two shot glasses and poured some of her
rattlesnake-hide remover in each, then looked at me in a funny
way.
"So am I. You can probably imagine, I've been thinking it
over. I think it was Brenda being there. I must have thought
she'd slow you down. Jog your elbow in some way when it came
time to do the dirty deed." She handed me a glass, and we both
drained them. She made a face; I was a little more used to the
stuff, but it never goes down easy. "All subconscious, you
understand. But I thought you'd hesitate, since it's so obvious
how much she looks up to you. So while I was waiting for that
window of vulnerability I made the great mistake of turning my
back on you, you son of a bitch."
"Bitch will do."
"I meant what I said. I was thinking of the male Hildy I
knew, and he would have hesitated."
"That's ridiculous."
"Maybe so. But I think I'm right Changing is almost always
more than just re-arranging the plumbing. Other things change,
too. So I was caught in the middle, thinking of you as a man
who'd do something stupid in the presence of a little pussy,
not as the ruthless cunt you'd become."
"It was never like that with me and Brenda."
"Oh, spare me. Sure, I know you never screwed her. She
told me that. But a man's always aware of the possibility. As a
woman you know that. And you use it, if you have any brains,
just like I do."
I couldn't say she was definitely wrong. I know that
changing sex is, for me, more than just a surface thing. Some
attitudes and outlooks change as well. Not a lot, but enough to
make a difference in some situations.
"You're sleeping with her, aren't you?" I asked, in some
surprise.
"Sure. Why not?" She took another drink and squinted at
me, then shook her head. "You're good at a lot of things,
Hildy, but not so good at people." I wasn't sure what she meant
by that. Not that I disagreed, I just wasn't sure what she was
getting at.
"She sent you out here?"
"She helped. I would have come out here anyway, to see if
I really wanted to put a few new dents in your skull. I was
going to, but what's the point? But she's worried about you.
She said having Silvio die in your arms like that hit you
pretty hard."
"It did. But she's exaggerating."
"Could be. She's young. But I'll admit, I was surprised to
see you quit. You've talked about it ever since I've known you,
so I just assumed it was nothing but talk. You really going to
squat out here for the rest of your life?" She looked sourly
around at the blasted land. "What the hell you gonna do, once
this slum is finished? Grow stuff? What can you raise out here,
anyway?"
"Calluses and blisters, mostly." I showed her my hands.
"I'm thinking of entering these in the county fair."
She poured another drink, corked the bottle, and handed it
to me. She drained her glass in one gulp.
"Lord help me, I think I'm beginning to like this stuff."
"Are you going to ask me to go back to work?"
"Brenda wanted me to, but I said I don't want to get that
mixed up in your karma. I've got a bad feeling about you,
Hildy. I don't know just what it is, but you've had an
absolutely incredible run of good luck, for a reporter. I mean
the David Earth story, and Silvio."
"Not such good luck for David and Silvio."
"Who cares? What I'm saying, I have this feeling you'll
have to pay for all that. You're in for a run of bad luck."
"You're superstitious."
"And bi-sexual. See, you learned three new things about me
today."
I sighed, and debated taking one more drink. I knew I'd
fall off the roof if I did.
"I want to thank you, Cricket, for coming all the way out
here to tell me I'm jinxed. A gal really needs to hear that
from time to time."
She grinned at me. "I hope it ruined your day."
I waved my hand at the desolation around us.
"How could anyone ruin all this?"
"I'll admit, making all this any worse is probably beyond
even my formidable powers. And I'll go now, back to the glitter
and glamour and madcap whirl of my life, leaving you to
languish with the lizards, and will add only these words, to
wit, Brenda is right, you do have friends, and I'm one, though
I can't imagine why, and if you need anything, whistle, and
maybe I'll come, if I don't have anything else to do."
And she leaned over and kissed me.
#
They say that if you stay in one place long enough,
everybody you ever met will eventually go by that spot. I knew
it had to be true when I saw Walter struggling up the trail
toward my cabin. I couldn't imagine what could have brought him
out to West Texas other than a concatenation of mathematical
unlikelihoods of Dickensian proportions. That, or Cricket and
Brenda were right: I did have friends.
I needn't have worried about that last possibility.
"Hildy, you're a worthless slacker!" he shouted at me from
three meters away. And what a sight he was. I don't think he'd
ever visited an historically-controlled disneyland in his life.
One can only imagine, with awe, the titanic struggles it must
have taken to convince him that he could not wear his office
attire into Texas, that his choices were nudity, or period
dress. Well, nudity was right out, and I resolved to give
thanks to the Great Spirit for not having had to witness that.
The sight of Walter in his skin would have put the buzzards off
their feed. So out of the rather limited possibilities in his
size in the disney tourist costume shop, he had selected a cute
little number in your basic Riverboat Gambler style: black
pants, coat, hat, and boots, white shirt and string tie,
scarlet-andmaroon paisley vest with gold edging and brass watch
fob. As I watched, the last button on the vest gave up the
fight, popping off and ricocheting off a rock with a sound
familiar to watchers of old western movies, and the buttons on
his shirt were left to struggle on alone. Lozenges of pale,
hairy flesh were visible in the gaps between buttons. His belt
buckle was buried beneath a substantial overhang. His face was
running with sweat. All in all, better than I would have
expected, for Walter.
"Kind of far from the Mississippi, aren't you, tinhorn?" I
asked him.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Never mind. You're just the man I wanted to see. Give me
a hand unloading these planks, will you? It'd take me all day,
alone."
He gaped at me as I went to the buckboard which had been
sitting there for an hour, filled with fresh, best-quality
boards from Pennsylvania, boards I intended to use for the
cabin floor, when I got around to it. I clambered up onto the
wagon and lifted one end of a plank.
"Well, come on, pick up the other end."
He thought it over, then trudged my way, looking
suspiciously at the placid team of mules, giving them a wide
berth. He hefted his end, grunting, and we tossed it over the
side.
After we'd tossed enough of them to establish a rhythm, he
spoke.
"I'm a patient man, Hildy."
"Hah."
"Well, I am. What more do you want? I've waited longer
than most men in my position would have. You were tired, sure,
and you needed a rest . . . though how anybody could think of
this as a rest is beyond me."
"You waited for what?"
"For you to come back, of course. That's why I'm here.
Vacation's over, my friend. Time to come back to the real
world."
I set my end of the board down on the pile, wiped my brow
with the back of my arm, and just stared at him. He stared
back, then looked away, and gestured to the lumber. We picked
up another board.
"You could have let me know you were taking a sabbatical,"
he said. "I'm not complaining, but it would have made things
easier. Your checks have kept on going to your bank, of course.
I'm not saying you're not entitled, you'd saved up . . . was it
six, seven months vacation time?"
"More like seventeen. I've never had a vacation, Walter."
"Something always came up. You know how it is. And I know
you're entitled to more, but I don't think you'd leave me out
on a limb by taking it all at once. I know you, Hildy. You
wouldn't do that to me."
"Try me."
"See, what's happened, this big story has come up. You're
the only one I'd trust to cover it. What it is--"
I dropped my end of the last board, startling him and
making him lose his grip. He danced out of the way as the heavy
timber clattered to the floor of the wagon.
"Walter, I really don't want to hear about it."
"Hildy, be reasonable, there's no one else who-"
"This conversation got off on the wrong foot, Walter. Some
way, you always manage to do that with me. I guess that's why I
didn't come right up to you and say it, and that was a mistake,
I see it now, so I'm going to--"
He held up his hand, and once more I fell for it.
"The reason I came," he said, looking down at the ground,
then glancing up at me like a guilty child, " . . . well, I
wanted to bring you this." He held out my fedora, more battered
than ever from being stuffed into his back pocket. I hesitated,
then took it from him. He had a sort of half smile on his face,
and if there had been one gram of gloating in it I'd have
hurled the damn thing right in his face. But there wasn't. What
I saw was some hope, some worry, and, this being Walter, a
certain gruff-but-almost-lovable diffidence. It must have been
hard for him, doing this.
What can you do? Throwing it back was out. I can't say I
ever really liked Walter, but I didn't hate him, and I did
respect him as a newsman. I found my hands working
unconsciously, putting some shape back into the hat, making the
crease in the top, my thumbs feeling the sensuous material. It
was a moment of high symbolism, a moment I hadn't wanted.
"It's still got blood on it," I said.
"Couldn't get it all out. You could get a new one, if this
has bad memories."
"It doesn't matter one way or the other." I shrugged.
"Thanks for going to the trouble, Walter." I tossed the hat on
a pile of wood shavings, bent nails, odd lengths of sawed
lumber. I crossed my arms.
"I quit," I said.
He looked at me a long time, then nodded, and took a
sopping handkerchief from his back pocket and mopped his brow.
"If you don't mind, I won't help you with the rest of
this," he said. "I've got to get back to the office."
"Sure. Listen, you could take the wagon back into town.
The mule skinner said he'd be back for it before dark, but I'm
worried the mules might be getting thirsty, so it would--"
"What's a mule?" he said.
#
I eventually got him seated on the bare wooden board,
reins in hand, a doubtful expression on his choleric face, and
watched him get them going down the primitive trail to town. He
must have thought he was "driving" the mules; just let him try
to turn them from the path to town, I thought. The only reason
I'd let him do it in the first place was that the mules knew
the way.
That was the end of my visitors. I kept waiting for Fox or
Callie to show up, but they didn't. I was glad to have missed
Callie, but it hurt a little that Fox stayed away. It's
possible to want two things at once. I really did want to be
left alone . . . but the bastard could have tried.
#
My life settled into a routine. I got up with the sun and
worked on my cabin until the heat grew intolerable. Then I'd
mosey down into New Austin come siesta time for a few belts of
a home brew the barkeep called Sneaky Pete and a few hands of
five card stud with Ned Pepper and the other regulars. I had to
put on a shirt in the saloon: pure sex discrimination, of the
kind that must have made women's lives hell in the 1800's. When
working, I wore only dungarees, boots, and a sombrero to keep
the worst heat off my head. I was brown as a nut from the waist
up. How women wore the clothes the bargirls had on in a West
Texas summer is one of the great mysteries of life. But, come
to think of it, the men dressed just as heavily. A strange
culture, Earth.
As the evening approached I'd return to the cabin and
labor until sundown. In the evening's light I would prepare my
supper. Sometimes one of my friends would join me. I developed
a certain reputation for buttermilk biscuits, and for my
perpetual pot of beans, into which I'd toss some of the
unlikeliest ingredients imaginable. Maybe I would find a new
career, if I could interest my fellow Lunarians in the
subtleties of Texas chili.
I always stayed awake for about an hour after the last
light of day had faded. I have no way of comparing, of course,
but it seemed to me the nightly display of starry sky was
probably pretty close to the real thing, what I'd see if I were
transported to the real Texas, the real Earth, now that all
man's pollution was gone. It was glorious. Nothing like a Lunar
night, not nearly as many stars, but better in its own way. For
one thing, you never see the Lunar night sky without at least
one thickness of glass between you and the heavens. You never
feel the cooling night breezes. For another, the Lunar sky is
too hard. The stars glare unmercifully, unblinking, looking
down without forgiveness on Man and all his endeavors. In Texas
the stars at night do indeed burn big and bright, but they wink
at you. They are in on the joke. I loved them for that.
Stretched out on my bedroll, listening to the coyotes howling
at the moon--and I loved them for that, too, I wanted to howl
with them . . . I achieved the closest approximation of peace I
had ever found, or am likely to find.
I spent something like two months like that. There was no
hurry on the cabin. I intended to do it right. Twice I tore
down large portions of it when I learned a new method of doing
something and was no longer satisfied with my earlier, shoddier
work. I think I was afraid of having to think of something else
to do when I finished it.
And with good reason. The day came, as it always must,
when I could find nothing else to do. There was not a screw to
tighten on a single hinge, not a surface to sand smoother, no
roof shingle out of place.
Well, I reasoned, there was always furniture to make. That
ought to be a lot harder than walls, a floor, and a roof. All I
had inside was some cheap burlap curtains and a rude bedstead.
I spread my bedroll out on the straw mattress and spent a
restless night "indoors" for the first time in many weeks.
The next day I prowled the grounds, forming vague plans
for a vegetable garden, a well, and-no kidding--a white picket
fence. The fence would be easy. The garden would be a lot
harder, an almost impossible project worthy of my mood at the
time. As for a well, I'd have to have one for the garden, but
somehow the fiction of worth-while labor broke down when I
thought about a well. The reason was that, in Texas, there is
no more water under the surface than there is anywhere else on
Luna. If you want water and aren't conveniently near the Rio
Grande, what you do is dig or drill to a level determined by
lottery for each parcel of land, and when you've done that, the
disneyland board of directors will have a pipe run out to the
bottom of your well and you can pretend you've struck water. At
my cabin that depth was fifteen meters. The labor of digging
that deep didn't daunt me. I knew I was up to it. Hell, even
with a female hormonal system impeding me I'd developed
shoulders and biceps that would have made Bobbie go into
aesthetic shock. Trading my plane and saw for a pick and shovel
would be no problem. That was the part I looked forward to.
What didn't thrill me was the pretending. I'd gotten good
at it, looking at the stars at night and marveling at the size
of the universe. I'd not gone loony; I knew they were just
little lights I could have held in my hand. But at night,
weary, I could forget it. I could forget a lot of things. I
didn't know if I could forget digging fifteen meters for a dry
hole, then seeing the pipe laid and the cool, sweet,
life-giving water fill up that dry hole.
I hate to get too metaphorical. Walter always howled when
I did. Readers tire of metaphors easily, he's always said. Why
the well, and not the stars? Why come this far and balk, why
lose one's imagination right at the end? I don't know, but it
probably had to do with the dry hole concept. I just kept
thinking my entire life was a big dry hole. All I'd ever
accomplished that I was in any way proud of was the cabin . . .
and I hated the cabin.
That night I couldn't get to sleep. I fought it a long
time, then I got up and stumbled through the night with no
lantern until I found my hatchet. I chopped the bedstead to
kindling and piled it against the wall, and I soaked that
kindling in kerosene. I set it alight and walked out the front
door, leaving it open to make a draft, and went slowly up the
low hill behind my property. There I squatted on my haunches
and watched, feeling very little emotion, as the cabin burned
to the ground.
=*= =*= =*= =*=
I wonder if there's a lonelier place anywhere than an
arena designed to seat thirty or forty thousand people, empty.
The King City slash-boxing venue did have an official
name, the Somebody-or-other Memorial Gladiatorium, but it was
another case of honoring someone well-known at the time that
sports history has forgotten. The arena is called, in all the
sports pages, in the minds of bloodthirsty fans everywhere,
even on the twenty-meter sign on the outside, simply the Bucket
of Blood.
It was peaceful now. The concentric circles of seats were
in shadows. The sound system was silent. The blood gutters
around the ring had been sluiced clean, ready for the evening's
fresh torrents. Some of that new blood would come from the man
now standing alone under the ring of harsh white lights
suspended from the obscured ceiling; MacDonald. I walked down
the gentle curvature of the aisle toward him.
He was nude, standing with his back to me. I thought I
didn't make any noise, but he was a tough man to sneak up on.
He looked over his shoulder, not in any alarm, just curious.
"Hello, Hildy." No shock of recognition, no comment that
I'd been male the last time he'd seen me. Maybe he'd heard, or
maybe his eyes just didn't miss much, and very little could
surprise him.
"Do you get nervous before a fight?"
He frowned, and seemed to give the question real thought.
"I don't think so. I get . . . heightened in some way. I
find it hard to sit down. Maybe it's nervousness. So I come up
here and re-think my last fight, remember the things I did
wrong, try to think of ways not to do them wrong the next
time."
"I didn't think you did things wrong." I was looking for
stairs to join him in the ring, but there didn't seem to be
any. I hopped lightly over the meter-high edge.
"Everybody makes mistakes. You try to minimize them, in my
line of work."
I saw that he had a partial erection. Had he been
masturbating? I couldn't deal with that just then, had never
been less interested in sex in my life. I put my hand on his
face. He stood there with his arms folded and looked into my
eyes.
"I need help," I said.
"Yes," he said, and put his arms around me.
#
He took me down to his dressing room, locker room,
whatever he called it. He bustled around for a while, making
drinks for both of us, letting me regain some of my composure.
The funny thing, I hadn't cried. My shoulders had shaken, there
in his arms, and I'd made some funny noises, but no tears came.
I wasn't shaking. My heart was not pounding. I didn't know
quite what to make of it, but I'd never been nearer to
screaming in my life.
"You interrupted my crazy little ritual," he said, handing
me a strawberry margarita. It didn't occur to me until later to
wonder how he knew I drank them.
"Nice bar you have."
"They take good care of me, so long as I draw the crowds.
Cheers." He held his own glass out to me, and we sipped.
Excellent.
"I hope you're not drinking anything too strong."
"No matter what you may think, I'm not suicidal. Not now."
"What do you--"
"I always go out there alone," he said, getting up,
standing with his back to me, cutting off the question he
didn't seem ready to answer yet. "The dirty little secret is,
the anticipation turns me on. I've read up on it. Some people
are aroused by danger. It's more common to be aroused after
you've come through a life-threatening situation. Me, I get it
before."
"I hope I didn't ruin anything for you."
"No. It's not important."
"If you want to relieve the pressure, you know, make love,
we could." I regretted saying it as soon as the words were out
of my mouth. Under other circumstances, sure . . . in fact,
damn sure. He was gorgeous, something I hadn't realized the
other times I'd met him, being male myself at the time. The
body was quite good-lean, compact, made for speed and stamina
rather than power--but, so what? It was a Formula A fighter's
body. His opponent this evening would be wearing essentially
the same body, plus or minus three kilograms, even if she was
female. What I'd been noticing about him were two things: the
hands, and the face. The hands were long and wide, the knuckles
a bit thickened, the palms rough. They moved with a total
assurance, they never dithered, never fumbled. They were hands
that would know how to handle a woman's body.
The face . . . well, it was the eyes, wasn't it? It was a
handsome enough face, craggy in a way I liked, strong brows and
cheeks, the mouth maybe a little prim, but capable of
softening, as when he put his arms around me. But the eyes, the
eyes. Without my being able to describe any one quality or even
set of qualities that should make them so, they were riveting.
When he looked at me, he looked at me, nothing else,
unwavering, seeing more of me than anybody ever should.
Again, he seemed to be considering the offer. He made the
small smile that was the most I'd ever seen him give away.
"It's been a long time since I accepted an offer made with
so much enthusiasm as that," he said.
"Sorry. It was really stupid. Now you'll tell me you're
homosexual."
"Why? Because I turned you down?"
"No, because all my guesses lately turn out wrong. Just
the way you looked at me, though I should have known you aren't
interested now, I just thought I saw . . . something."
"You're not doing too badly. No, I'm . . . do you want to
hear this?"
"If you want to tell."
He gave a shrug that said we both knew the important
things hadn't come up yet, but he was willing to wait.
"Okay. Briefly, for future reference, I'm mostly hetero,
say ninety percent, when male. I haven't been female for a very
long time, and probably never will be again."
"Didn't you like it?"
"I had a problem. I didn't like making love to men. My
love life was almost exclusively with other women. I didn't
like . . . accepting someone else into my body. I was always
afraid to. Women have to be able to surrender too much control.
It made me nervous."
"It doesn't have to be like that."
"So I've been told. It always was for me."
"That's the important thing, I guess." There may have been
a more inane conversation since the Invasion, but no record of
it survives. I took another drink to cover my discomfort. This
whole thing had been a mistake. I saw I'd made him
uncomfortable in some way I didn't understand, and wished I was
somewhere else. Anywhere else. I started to get up, and found I
could not. My arms and legs simply would not operate to lift me
out of my chair. My arms would still lift the drink-I lifted
it, drank, one of the more needed drinks since the night they
invented the strawberry margarita--but they defied my orders to
do anything about getting bodily elevation.
Screwed up? You bet.
I wasn't about to tolerate such a mutiny, so I got angry,
and broke the process down into steps. Put palms flat against
chair arms. Set feet flat on floor. Press down on hands and
feet. Do not operate this machinery under the influence of
narcotic drugs. There you go, Hildy, you're getting up.
"I've been trying to kill myself," I said, and sat back
down.
"You've come to the right place. Tell me about it."
#
You do something often enough, you get good at it. My
opening-up-and-letting-it-all-hang-out skills had never been
strong, but telling my story to Fox, to Liz, even the part of
it I'd told to Callie had at least put a polish on the
narrative. I found myself using some of the same phrases I'd
used the times before, things I'd said that had struck me as
particularly droll or that somehow managed to put a better face
on the situation. I'm a writer, I can't help it. I found myself
almost enjoying the exercise. It was a story I was doing, and
as in any story, there's the parts you think will sell it and
the parts that will simply confuse the reader. And when the
audience is small, you tailor it to what you think they will
like. So, without my intending it, the story because a pitch
for a series I'd like to do in the great Extra Edition of Life.
Or if you prefer, the recitations to Fox, Liz, and Callie had
been out-of-town try-outs, and this was the big-time critic
whose review would make you or break you.
But Andrew wasn't having it. He let me prattle on like
that for almost an hour. I think he was getting a feel for the
particular type of horseshit I was selling, its distinctive
aroma and texture when you stepped in it, the color of it and
the sound it made when it landed. When he knew he'd recognize
that particular kind of manure if it turned up in his pasture
again he held up his hand until my mouth stopped working and he
said "Now tell me what really happened."
So I started over.
I didn't lie the first time through, you understand. But
I'm bound to say I didn't tell the truth, either. All those
years at the Nipple had sharpened my editorial skills
outrageously, and one of the first things you learn as a
reporter is that the easiest way to prevaricate is to simply
not tell all the truth. I wondered, beginning again, if I
remembered how to tell all the truth. If I even knew what all
the truth was. (We could spend a pleasant afternoon debating
whether or not anyone ever knows even a small portion of the
truth, about herself or about anything, but that way madness
lies.) All he wanted was my best shot at telling him what I
knew, without all the gimcracks and self-serving invention one
throws in to make oneself look better. Try it sometime; it's
one of the hardest things you'll ever do.
It takes a long time, too. Doing it well involves going
back to things you may not, at first, have thought relevant to
the story, sometimes way back. I told him things about my
childhood I hadn't even realized I remembered. The process was
also drawn out by the times I just sat there, staring into
space. Andrew never prompted me, never hurried me in any way.
He never asked a single question. The only times he spoke were
in answer to a direct question from me, and if a nod or a shake
of the head would do, that's what I got. A conversational
minimalist, Andrew MacDonald.
Two things alerted me to the fact that I was through with
my story: I had stopped talking, and a plate of sandwiches had
appeared on the table beside me. I fell on the food like a
Visigoth sacking Rome. I don't know when I'd ever been so
hungry. As I stuffed my face I noticed three empty margarita
glasses; I didn't remember drinking them, and I didn't feel
drunk.
As the food reached my belly, as brain cells resumed
working in isolated clumps throughout my head, I began to
notice other things, such as that the floor was shaking. Not
bouncing up and down, just a steady, slightly scary vibration
that I finally identified as crowd noise. Andrew's locker room
was almost directly beneath the center of the Bucket of Blood.
We had come down some ringside stairs to reach it. I looked for
a clock, in vain.
"How long have we been talking?" I asked, around a
mouthful of cold cuts and bread.
"The main event is still almost half an hour away."
"That's you, isn't it?"
"Yes."
It didn't bear thinking about. I'd arrived in the early
afternoon, and there had been nine bouts listed on the fight
card before Andrew's death match. It had to be ten, eleven
o'clock.
"There's no clocks in here," I said, hoping he'd take it
as an apology.
"I won't allow them, before a fight. They distract me."
"Make you nervous?" Maybe it was a needling question. How
dare he not get nervous before a fight? His unearthly calm was
a little hard to take.
"They distract me."
I was noticing other things. It seems ridiculous to say
I'd spent so much time in such a small room and not seen it,
but I hadn't. Not that there was a lot to see. The place was as
impersonal as a hotel room, which I guess it was, in a way.
What I saw now were four telephone screens on the wall beside
him, each displaying a worried-looking face, each with the
sound turned off and the words URGENT! PICK UP! flashing
beneath the faces. I recognized two of them as people I'd seen
around Andrew the last time I'd been here. Trainers, managers,
that sort of thing.
"Looks like you'd better take care of some business," I
said. He waved it away. "Shouldn't you be, I don't know,
talking strategy with those people? Getting pep talks,
something like that?"
"I'll be glad to miss the pep talks, frankly," he said.
"It's the worst part of this ordeal." I had to admit the four
people on the phone looked more nervous than he did.
"I still better get out of your way," I said, getting up,
trying to swallow a mouthful of food. "You'd better do what you
need to do to get ready."
"With me, it was ten years," he said.
I sat back down.
I could pretend I didn't know what he was talking about,
but it would be a lie. I knew exactly what he was talking
about, and he promptly proved me right by saying:
"Ten years of false memories. That was six years ago, and
I've spent all that time looking for someone to tell about it."
"That, and trying to get yourself killed," I said.
"I know it looks that way to you. I don't see it that
way."
"But you did try to kill yourself."
"Yes, six years ago. I found there was absolutely nothing
I had the least interest in doing. I am well over two hundred
years old, and it seemed to me it had been at least a century
since I'd done anything new."
"You were bored."
"It went a lot deeper than that. Depressed, uninterested .
. . once I spent three days simply sitting in the bathtub. I
saw no reason to get out. I decided to end my life, and it
wasn't an easy decision for me. I was raised to believe that
life is a precious gift, that there is always something useful
you can do with it. But I could no longer find anything
meaningful."
He was a lot better at telling it than I had been. He'd
had longer to practice it, in his own mind, at least. He just
hit all the high points, saying several times that he'd fill me
in on the details when he got back from the fight. Briefly, he
had been marooned on an island that sounded very much like
Scarpa, only tougher. He'd had to work very hard. He suffered
many setbacks, and never achieved anything like the comforts
granted to me. It was only in the last two years of his
ten-year stay that things eased up a bit.
"It sounds like the CC put you through the same basic
program," he said. "From what you describe, it's been improved
some; new technology, new subroutines. I accepted it at the
time, of course--I didn't have any choice, since they weren't
my memories--but reviewing it afterwards the realism factor
does not seem so high as what you experienced."
"The CC said he'd gotten better at that."
"He's forever improving."
"It must have been hell."
"I loved every second of it." He let that hang for a
moment, then leaned forward slightly, his already-intense eyes
blazing. "When life is simple like that, you have no chance to
be bored. When your life hangs in the balance as a consequence
of every action you take, suicide seems such an effete,
ridiculous thing. Every organism has the survival instinct at
its very core. That so many humans kill themselves--not just
now, they have been doing it for a long time-says a lot about
civilization, about 'intelligence.' Suicides have lost an
ability that every amoeba possesses: the knowledge of how to
live."
"So that's the secret of life?" I asked. "Hardship?
Earning what you get out of life, working for it?"
"I don't know." He got up and began pacing. "I was
exhilarated when I returned to the here and now. I thought I
had an answer. Then I realized, as you did, that I couldn't
trust it. It wasn't me living those ten years. It was a machine
writing a script about how he thought I would have lived them.
He got some of it right, but a lot more wrong, because . . . it
wasn't me. The me he was trying to imitate had just tried to
end his life. The me the CC imagined worked like a dog to stay
alive. It was the CC's wish-fulfillment, not mine."
"But you said--"
"But it was an answer," he said, whirling to face me.
"What I found out was that, for well over a century, I'd had
nothing at risk! Whether I succeeded or failed at something had
no meaning for me, because my life was not at stake. Not even
my comfort was really at stake. If I succeeded or failed
financially, for instance. If I succeeded, I'd simply win more
things that had long ago lost their meaning. If I failed, I
would lose some of these things, but the State would take care
of my basic needs."
I wanted to say something, to argue with him, but he was
on a roll, and it was just as well, because even if I did
disagree with him here and there, it was exciting simply to be
able to talk about it with someone who knew.
"That's when I started fighting death matches," he said.
"I had to re-introduce an element of risk into my life." He
held up a hand. "Not too much risk; I'm very good at what I
do." And now he smiled, and it was beautiful. "And I do want to
live again. That's what you've got to do, Hildy. You've got to
find a way to experience risk again. It's a tonic like nothing
I ever imagined."
The questions were lining up in my mind, clamoring to get
out. There was one more important than all the others.
"What's to prevent the CC," I said, slowly, "from reviving
you again, like he did to me, if you . . . make a mistake?"
"I will, someday. Everybody does. I think it will be a
long time yet."
"There's lots of people gunning for you."
"I'm going to retire soon. A few more matches, that's
all."
"What about the tonic?"
He smiled again. "I think I've had enough of it. I needed
it, I needed to have the death matches . . . and nothing else
would have worked. That's the beauty of it. To die so publicly
. . ."
I saw it then. The CC wouldn't dare revive Silvio, for
instance (not that he could; Silvio's brain had been
destroyed). Everybody knew Silvio was dead, and if he suddenly
showed up again embarrassing questions would be asked.
Committees would be formed, petitions circulated, programming
re-examined. Andrew had found the obvious way to beat the CC's
little resurrection game, an answer so obvious that I had never
thought of it.
Or had I, and simply kept it buried?
That would have to be a question for later as, with an
apologetic shrug, Andrew opened his door and half of King City
spilled into the room, all talking at once. Well, fifteen or
twenty people, anyway, most of them angry. I collected a few
glares and tried to make myself small in one corner of the room
and watch as agents, trainers, managers, Arena reps, and media
types all tried to compress an hour's worth of psyching up,
legalities, and interviews into the five minutes left to them
before the match was due to start. Andrew remained an island of
calm in the center of this hurricane, which rivaled any press
conference I've ever attended for sheer confusion.
Then he was gone, trailing them all behind him like
yapping puppies. The noise faded down the short corridor and up
the stairs and I heard the crowd noise grow louder and the bass
mumble that was all I could hear of the announcer's voice from
this deep below the ring.
The noise stayed at that level for a while, then decreased
a little, as I sat down to wait for his return.
Then it grew to a pitch I thought might endanger the
building. Fans, I thought, contemptuously.
If anything, it grew even louder, and I began to wonder
what was going on.
And then they brought Andrew MacDonald back on a
stretcher.
#
Nothing is ever as straightforward as it at first seems.
Andrew was fighting a death match . . . but what did that mean?
I had no idea, myself. Having seen just a few matches, I
knew that blows were delivered routinely that would not have
been survivable without modern medical techniques. I had
witnessed medical attention being administered between rounds,
combatants being patched up, body fluids being replaced. The
normal sign of victory was the removal of the loser's head, one
of the many endearing things about slash-boxing and surely a
sign that things weren't going well for the beheadee . . . but
what about the Grand Flack? He did quite well without a body.
The only surely fatal wound these days was the destruction of
the brain, and the CC was working on that one.
It seemed the rules were different for a death match. It
also seemed no one was really happy about them, except possibly
for Andrew.
I could not tell what his injuries were, but his head was
still on his shoulders. The body was covered with a sheet,
which was soaked in blood. I gathered, later, that a hierarchy
of wounds had been established for death matches, that some
could be treated by ringside handlers between rounds, and that
others had to be acknowledged as fatal. The fallen opponent was
not decapitated, it being thought too gruesome to hold aloft an
actual dead severed head. I was told the ritual took the place
of the coup de grace, that it was meant to be symbolic of
victory in some way. Go figure that one out.
I also learned, later, that no one really knew how to
handle the situation they now found themselves in. Only three
fighters had ever engaged in death matches since they were
allowed into a gray area of legality known as consensual
suicide. Only one had ever met the requirements for a death
wound, and he had experienced a deathbed revelation that could
be summed up as "maybe this wasn't such a good idea, after
all," been revived, stitched up, and retired in disgrace to
everyone's considerable secret relief. Of the two people
currently risking their lives in fights, it had been tacitly
agreed long ago that they would never meet each other, as the
certain outcome of such a match would be the pickle the
handlers, lawyers, and Arena management now found themselves
in, which might be expressed as "are we really going to let
this silly son of a bitch die on us?"
There was not a lot of time to come up with an answer. I
could hear a sound coming from Andrew, all the way across the
room, and knew I was hearing the death rattle.
I couldn't see much of him. If he'd hoped his final
moments would be peaceful, he'd been a fool. A dozen people
crowded around, some feverish to offer aid, others worrying
about corporate liability, a very few standing up for Andrew's
right to die as he pleased.
The Bucket of Blood management had for years been in a
quandary concerning death matches. On the one hand, they were a
guaranteed draw; stadia were always filled when the titillation
of a possible actual death was offered. On the other, no one
knew what the public reaction would be if someone actually died
right out there in front of God and everyone, for the glory of
sport. The prevailing opinion was it would not be good for
business. The public's appetite for non-injurious violence in
sport and entertainment had never been plumbed, but real death,
though always good for a sensation, was much easier to take if
it could be seen as an accident, like David Earth, or Nirvana.
To give them credit, the Arena people were queasy about
the whole idea, and not just from a legal standpoint. Their
worst sin in the matter was something we all do, which is fail
to imagine the worst happening. No one had died in a death
match yet, and they'd kept hoping no one would. Now someone
was.
But not without a last-ditch effort. The people around him
reminded me, as things in life so often do, of scenes from
movies. You've seen them: in a war picture, when medics gather
around a wounded comrade trying to save his life, buddies at
his side telling him everything's gonna be okay, kid, you've
got a million-dollar wound there, you'll be home with the babes
before you know it, and their eyes saying this one's a goner.
And this seems weird, maybe it was a trick of the light, but I
saw another scene, the priest leaning over the bed, holding a
rosary, hearing the last confession, giving the last rites.
What they were really doing was trying to talk him into
accepting treatment, please, so we can all go home and wipe our
brows and have a few stiff drinks and pretend this fucking
disaster never happened, dear lord.
He refused them all. Gradually their pleas grew less
impassioned, and a few even gave up and retreated to the wall
near me, like what he had was contagious. And finally someone
leaned close enough to hear what it was he'd been trying to
say, and that someone looked over at me and beckoned.
I'm surprised I made it, as I had no feeling in my legs.
But somehow I was leaning over him, into the stench of his
blood, his entrails, the smell of death on him now, and he
grabbed my hand with an amazing strength and tried to lift
himself closer to my ear because he didn't have much of a voice
left. I hope he wasn't feeling any pain; they said he wasn't,
pain wasn't his thing, he'd been deadened before the match. He
coughed.
"Let them help you, Andrew," I said. "You've proved your
point."
"No point," he coughed. "Nothing to prove, to them."
"You're sure? It's no disgrace. I'll still respect you."
"Not about respect. Gotta go through with it, or it didn't
mean anything."
"That's crazy. You could have died in any of them. You
don't have to die now to validate that."
He shook his head, and coughed horribly. He went limp, and
I thought he was dead, but then his hand put a little pressure
on mine again, and I leaned closer to his lips.
"Tricked," he said, and died.
=*= =*= =*= =*=
It's a well-known fact that nobody goes to the library in
this day and age. It's also wrong.
Why take the time and trouble to travel to a big building
where actual books on actual paper are stored when you can stay
at home and access any of that information, plus trillions of
pages of data that exist only in the memories? If you don't
already know the answer to that question, then you just don't
love books, and I'll never be able to explain it to you. But if
you get up from your terminal right now, any time of the day or
night, take the tube down to the King City Civic Center Plaza,
and walk up the Italian marble steps between the statues of
Knowledge and Wisdom, you will find the Great Hall of Books
thrumming with the kind of quiet activity that has
characterized great libraries since books were on papyrus
scrolls. Do it someday. Stroll past the rows of scholars at the
old oak tables, stand in the center of the dome, beside the
Austin Gutenberg Bible in its glass case, look down the
infinite rows of shelves radiating away from you. If you love
books at all, it will soothe your mind.
Soothing was something my mind was sorely in need of. In
the three or four days following the death of Andrew MacDonald,
I spent a lot of time at the library. There was no practical
reason for it; though I was now homeless, I could have done the
reading and research I now engaged in sitting in the park, or
in my hotel room. Few of the things I looked at actually
existed on paper anyway. I spent my time looking at a library
terminal no different from the ones in any streetcorner phone
box. But I was far from the only one so engaged. Though many
people used the library because they liked holding the actual
source material in their hands, most were accessing stored
data, and simply preferred to do it with real books on shelves
around them. Let's face it, the vast majority of books in the
King City Library were quite old, the pre-Invasion legacy of a
few bibliophile fanatics who insisted the yellowing, fragile,
inefficient and inconvenient old things were necessary to any
culture that called itself civilized, who convinced the
software types that the logically unjustifiable expense of
shipping them up here was, in the end, worth it. As for new
books . . . why bother? I doubt more than six or seven new
works were published on paper in a typical Lunar year. There
was a small publishing business, never very profitable, because
some people liked to have sets of the classics sitting on a
shelf in the living room. Books had become almost entirely the
province of interior decorators.
But not here. These books were used. Many had to be stored
in special inert-gas rooms and you had to don a p-suit to
handle them, under the watchful eyes of librarians who thought
dog-earing should be a hanging offense, but every volume in the
institution was available for reference, right up to the
Gutenberg. Almost a million books sat on open shelves. You
could walk down the rows and run your hand over them, pull one
down and open it (carefully, carefully!), smell the old paper
and glue and dust. I did most of my work with a copy of Tom
Sawyer open on the table beside me, partly so I could read a
chapter when I got tired of the research, partly so I could
just touch it when I felt at my lowest.
I'd had to keep redefining "lowest." I was beginning to
wonder if there was a natural lower limit, if this was the
limit I had reached the last times, when I had attempted to
kill myself, would have killed myself without the CC's
intervention.
My research concerned, naturally enough, suicide. It
didn't take me long to discover that not much useful was really
known about it. Why should that have surprised me? Not much
really useful was known concerning anything relating to why we
are what we are and do what we do.
There's plenty of behavioristic data: stimulus A evokes
response B. There's lots of statistical data as well: X percent
will react in such-andsuch a way to event Y. It all worked very
well with insects, frogs, fish and such, tolerably good with
dogs and cats and mice, even reasonably decent with human
beings. But then you pose a question like why, when Aunt
Betty's boy Wilbur got run over by the paving machine, did she
up and stick her head in the microwave, while her sister Gloria
who'd suffered a similar loss grieved, mourned, recovered, and
went on to lead a long and useful life? Best extremely
scientific answer to date: It beats the shit out of me.
Another reason for being in the library was that it was
the perfect place to go at a problem in a logical way. The
whole environment seemed to encourage it. And that's what I
intended to do. Andrew's death had really rocked me. I had
nothing else that needed doing, so I was going to attack my
problem by going at it a step at a time, which meant that first
I had to define the steps. Step one, it seemed to me, was to
learn all I could about the causes of suicide. After three days
of almost constant reading and note-taking I had it down to
four, maybe five categories of suicide. (I bought a pad of
paper and pencil to take notes with, which earned me a few
sidelong glances from my neighbors. Even in these fusty
environs writing on paper was seen as eccentric.) These four,
maybe five categories were not hardedged, they overlapped each
other with big, fuzzy gray borders. Again, no surprise.
The first and easiest to identify was cultural. Most
societies condemned suicide in most circumstances, but some did
not. Japan was an outstanding example. In ancient Japan suicide
was not only condoned, but mandatory in some circumstances.
Further, it was actually institutionalized, so that one who had
lost honor must not only kill himself, but do it in a
prescribed, public, and very painful way. Many other cultures
looked on suicide, in certain circumstances, as an honorable
thing to do.
Even in societies where suicide was frowned on or viewed
as a mortal sin, there were circumstances where it was at least
understandable. I encountered many tales both in folklore and
reality of frustrated lovers leaping off a cliff hand in hand.
There were also the cases of elderly people in intractable pain
(see Reason #2), and several other marginally acceptable
reasons.
Most early cultures were very tough to analyze.
Demographics, as we know it, didn't really get its start until
recently. Records were kept of births and deaths and not much
else. How do you determine what the suicide rate was in ancient
Babylon? You don't. You can't even learn much useful about
Nineteenth Century Europe. There were blips in the data here
and there. In the Twentieth Century it was said that Swedes
killed themselves at a rate higher than their contemporaries.
Some blamed the cold weather, the long winters, but how then do
you account for the Finns, the Norwegians, the Siberians?
Others said it was the dour nature of the Swedes themselves.
I've been asking people questions for long enough to know
something important about them: they lie. They lie often enough
even when nothing is at stake. When the answer can mean
something as important as whether or not Grandpa Jacques gets
buried in the hallowed ground of the churchyard, suicide notes
have a way of vanishing, bodies get re-arranged, coroners and
law officers get bribed or simply look the other way out of
respect for the family. The blip in suicide data for the Swedes
could simply have meant they were more straightforward about
reporting it.
As for Lunar society, post-Invasion society in general . .
. it was a civil right, but it was widely viewed as the
coward's way out. Suicide was not something that was going to
earn you any points with the neighbors.
The second reason was best summed up in the statement "I
can't go on like this anymore." The most obvious of these cases
involved pain, and no longer applied. Then there was
unhappiness. What can you say about unhappiness? It is real,
and can have real and easily seen causes: disappointment with
one's accomplishments in life, frustration at being unable to
attain a goal or an object, tragedy, loss. Other times, the
cause of this hopeless feeling can be difficult to see to the
outside observer: "He had everything to live for."
Then there was the reason Andrew proclaimed, that he had
been bored. This happened even in the days when people didn't
live to be two, three hundred years old, but rarely. It was a
reason appearing in more and more suicide notes as life spans
lengthened.
The fourth reason might be called the inability to
visualize death. Children were vulnerable to this one; many
affluent, industrial societies reported increasing teen-age
suicide rates, and survivors of failed attempts often revealed
elaborate fantasies of being aware at their own funerals, of
getting back at their tormenters: "I'll show them, they'll miss
me when I'm gone."
That's why I said I had maybe five reasons. I couldn't
decide if the attempts, successful or not, known as "gestures"
rated a category of their own. Authorities differed as to how
many suicides were merely cries for help. In a sense, all of
them were, if only to an indifferent Providence. Help me stop
the pain, help me find love, help me find a reason, help me,
I'm hurting . . .
Did I say maybe five? Maybe six.
Maybe six was what I thought of as "The Seasons Of Life."
We are, most of us, closet numerologists, subconscious
astrologers. We are fascinated with anniversaries, birthdays,
ages of ourselves and others. You are in your thirties, or
forties, or seventies, or you're over one hundred. Back when
people lived their fourscore years, on average, those words
said even more than they do today. Turning forty meant your
life was half over, and was a portentous time to examine what
the first half had been like and, often as not, find it
lacking. Turning ninety meant you'd already outlived your
allotted time, and the most useful thing left to you was
selecting the color of your coffin.
Ages with a zero on the end were a particularly stressful
time. They still are. One term I encountered was "mid-life
crisis," used back when mid-life was somewhere between 40 and
50. Ages with two zeros on the end pack one hell of a wallop.
Newspapers used to run stories about centenarians. The data I
studied said that, even though it might now be thought of as
mid-life, the age of one zero zero still meant a lot. While you
could be in your eighties, or your nineties, you were never in
your hundreds. That term just never attained popular usage. You
were "over one hundred," or "over two hundred." Soon there
would be people over three hundred years old. And there was a
rise in the suicide rate at both these magical milestones.
Which was of particular interest to me because . . . now
how old did Hildy say she was, class? Let's not always see the
same hands.
#
I don't know if my research was really telling me much,
but it was something to do, and I intended to keep on doing it.
I became a library gnome, going out only to sleep and eat. But
after four days something told me it was time to take a walk,
and my feet drew me back to Texas.
I was wondering what could happen to me next. Death had
dogged my steps from the time of my return from Scarpa Island:
David Earth, Silvio, Andrew, eleven hundred and twenty-six
souls in Nirvana. Three brontosaurs. Was I forgetting anybody?
Was anything good ever going to happen to me?
I sneaked in a back way I had found during my hiding-out
days. I didn't want to encounter any of my friends from New
Austin, I didn't want to have to try to explain to them why I'd
torched my own cabin. If I couldn't explain it to myself, what
was I going to say to them? So I came over the hill from a
different direction and my first thought was I must be lost,
because there was a cabin over there. Then I thought, maybe for
the first time since this ordeal began, that I might be losing
my mind, because I wasn't lost, I was where I thought I was,
and that was my cabin, intact, just as it had been before I
watched it consumed by flames.
You can get a genuine dizzy feeling at a time like that; I
sat down. After a moment I noticed two things that might be of
interest. First, the cabin was not quite where it had been. It
looked to have been moved about three meters up the slope of
the hill. Second, there was a pile of what looked like charred
lumber down in the slight depression I'd been calling "the
gully." As I watched, a third item of interest appeared: a
heavily-loaded burro came around the side of the house, looked
at me briefly, and then stuck his nose into a bucket of water
that had been left in the shade.
I got up and started toward the cabin as a man came out
the front door and began lifting the burdens from the beast and
setting them on the ground. He must have heard me, because he
looked up, grinned toothlessly, and waved at me. I knew him.
"Sourdough," I called out to him. "What the hell are you
doing?"
"Evening, Hildy," he said. "Hope you don't mind. I just
got into town and they sent me up here, said to stick around a
few days and let them know when you got back."
"You're always welcome, Sourdough, you know that. Mi casa
es tu casa. It's just . . ." I paused, looked over the cabin
again, and wiped sweat from my forehead. "I didn't think I had
a casa."
He scratched himself, and spat in the dust.
"Well, I don't know much about that. All I know's Mayor
Dillon said if'n I didn't give a holler when you got back to
these here parts, he'd skin me and Matilda." He patted the
burro affectionately, raising a cloud of dust.
Maybe old Sourdough laid on the accent and the Old West
slang a bit thick, but I felt he was entitled. He was a real
Natural, as opposed to Walter, who was only natural on the
surface.
He belonged to a religious sect that had some things in
common with the Christian Scientists. They didn't refuse all
medical help, nor did they pray for a cure when they were sick.
What they rejected was rejuvenation. They allowed themselves to
grow old and, when the measures needed to keep them alive
reached a point Sourdough had described to me as "just too dang
much trouble," they died.
There was even some money in it. The Antiquities Board
paid them a small annual stipend for having the grace to let
them avoid what would have been a tricky ethical problem, which
was maintaining a small control group of humans untouched by
most modern medical advances.
Sourdough was one of the handful of prospectors who roamed
West Texas. His chances of discovering a vein of gold or silver
were slim--zero, actually, since nothing like that had been
included in the specs when the place was built. But the
management assured us there were three pockets of
diamond-bearing minerals somewhere in Texas. No one had found
any of them yet. Sourdough and three or four others ranged over
the land with their pickaxes and grubstakes and burros, perhaps
secretly hoping they'd never find them. After all, what would
you do with a handful of diamonds? It certainly didn't justify
all that work.
I'd asked Sourdough about that, early on, before I'd
learned it was impolite to ask such questions in an historical
disney.
"I'll tell you, Hildy," he'd said, not taking offense. "I
worked forty years at a job I didn't particularly like. I'm not
quite the fool I sound; I didn't realize how much I disliked it
until I quit. But when I retired I come out here and I liked
the sunshine and the heat and the open air. I found I'd pretty
much lost my taste for the company of people. I can only take
'em in small doses now. And I've been happy. Matilda is the
only company I need, and prospecting gives me something to do."
In fact, Matilda seemed to be his only remaining worry in
life. He was concerned about her welfare after he was gone. He
was constantly asking people if they'd see to her needs, to the
point that half the people in New Austin had promised to adopt
the damn donkey.
He looked older than Adam's granddaddy. All his teeth were
gone, and most of his hair. His skin was mottled and wrinkled
and loose on his scrawny frame and his knuckles were swollen to
the size of walnuts.
He was eighty-three years old, seventeen years younger
than me.
I'd had him pegged as an illit, and the job he'd hated as
something on the order of the carrying of hods, whatever they
were, or the laying of bricks. Then Dora told me he'd been the
Chairman of the Board of the third largest company on Mars.
He'd retired to Luna for the gravity.
"What happened here, Sourdough?" I asked. "I didn't sell
the land. What gives somebody the right to come in here and
build on it?"
"I don't know about that, either, Hildy. You know me. I've
been out in the hills, and let me tell you, girl, I'm on the
trail of something."
He went on like that for a while, with me paying minimal
attention. Sourdough and his like were always on the trail of
something. I looked around the house. There wasn't much
different between this one and the one I'd built and burned
down, except some almost indefinable things that told me the
builders had been better at it than I had been. The dimensions
were the same, the windows were in the same places. But it
looked more solid. I went inside, Sourdough trailing behind me
still yammering about the glory hole he was on the verge of
discovering. The inside was still bare except for some bright
yellow calico curtains in the windows. They were prettier than
the ones I'd installed.
I went back out, still unable to make sense of it, and
looked down the road toward New Austin in time to see the first
of a long parade arrive from town.
The next half hour is something of a blur.
More than a dozen wagons arrived in the hour of dusk. All
of them were laden with people and food and drink and other
things. The people got down and set to work, building a fire,
stringing orange paper lanterns with candles inside, clearing
an area for dancing. Someone had loaded the piano from the
saloon, and stood beside it turning the crank. There was a
banjo player and a fiddle player, both dreadful, but no one
seemed to mind. Before I quite knew what was happening there
was a full-scale hoedown going on. A cow was turning on the
spit, sizzling in barbecue sauce that hissed and popped when it
dripped into the fire. A table had been laid out with cookies
and cakes and candied fruits in mason jars. Bottles of beer
were thrust into a galvanized tub full of ice and people were
swilling it down or sipping from bottles they'd tucked away.
Petticoats and silk stockings flashed in the firelight as the
ladies from the Alamo kicked up their heels and the men stood
around whooping and hollering and clapping their hands or moved
in and tried to turn it into a square dance. All my friends
from New Austin had showed up, and a lot more I didn't even
know, and I still didn't know why.
Before things got out of hand Mayor Dillon stood up on a
table and fired his pistol three times in the air. Things got
quiet soon enough, and the Mayor swayed and would have toppled
but for the ladies on each side of him, propping him up. Next
to the Doctor, Mayor Dillon was the town's most notorious
drunk.
"Hildy," he intoned, in a voice any politician for the
last thousand years would have recognized, "when the good
citizens of New Austin heard of your recent misfortune we knew
we couldn't just let it lie. Am I right, folks?"
He was greeted with a huge cheer and a great guzzling of
beer.
"We know how it is with city folks. Insurance, filin'
claims, forms to fill out, shit like that." He belched hugely
and went on. "Well, we ain't like that. A neighbor needs a
hand, and the people of West Texas are there to help out."
"Mister Mayor," I started, tentatively, "there's been a--"
"Shut up, Hildy," he said, and belched again. "No, we
ain't like that, are we, friends?"
"NO!!" shouted the citizens of New Austin.
"No, we ain't. When misfortune befalls one of us, it
befalls us all. Maybe I shouldn't say it, Hildy, but when you
showed up here, some of us figured you for a weekender." He
thumped himself on the chest and leaned forward, almost
toppling once more, his eyes bulging as if daring me to
disbelieve the incredible statement he was about to make. "I
figured you for a weekender, Hildy, me, Mayor Matthew Thomas
Dillon, mayor of this great town nigh these seven years." He
hung his head theatrically. Then his head popped up, as if on a
spring. "But we were wrong. In this last little while, you've
showed yourself a true Texan. You built yourself a cabin. You
came into town and sat down with us, drank with us, ate with
us, gambled with us."
"Gambled, hah!" Sourdough mumbled. "That weren't
gamblin'." He got a lot of laughs.
"Mayor Dillon," I pleaded, "please let me say-"
"Not until I've said my piece," he roared, amiably. "Then,
four days ago, disaster struck. And let me say there's those of
us who aren't completely cut off from the outside world, Hildy,
there's those of us who keep up. We knew you'd just lost your
job on the outside, and we figured you were trying to make a
new start here in God's Country. Now, back outside, where you
come from, folks would have just tsk-tsked about it and said
what a shame. Not Texans. So here it is, Hildy," and he swept
his arm in a huge circle meant to indicate the spanking new
cabin, and this time he did fall from the table, taking his
bargirl escort with him. But he popped up like a cork, dignity
intact. "That there's your new house, and this here's your
housewarming party."
Which I'd figured out shortly after he'd mounted the
table. And oh, dear god, did ever woman feel such mixed
emotions.
#
How I got through that night I'll never know.
Following the speech came the giving of gifts. I got
everything from the ritual bread and salt from my ex-wife,
Dora, to a spanking new cast-iron cook stove from the owner of
the general store. I accepted a rocking chair and a pair of
pigs, who promptly got loose and led everyone a merry chase.
There was a new bed and two hand-sewn quilts to put on it. I
was gifted with apple pies and fireplace tools, a roll of
chicken wire and a china tea set, bars of soap rendered from
lard, a sack of nails, five chickens, an iron skillet . . . the
list went on and on. Rich or poor, everyone for miles around
gave me something. When a little girl came up and gave me a tea
cozy she'd crocheted herself I finally broke down and cried. It
was a relief in a way; I'd been smiling so hard and so long I
thought my face would crack. It went over well. Everyone patted
me on the back and there was not a dry eye in the house.
Then the night's festivities began in earnest. The beef
was sliced and the beans dished out, plates were heaped high,
and people sat around gorging themselves. I drank everything
that was handed to me, but I never felt like I got drunk. I
must have been, to some degree, because the rest of the evening
exists for me as a series of unconnected scenes.
One I remember was me, the Mayor, and Sourdough sitting on
a log before the fire with a square dance happening behind us.
We must have been talking, but I have no idea what we'd been
talking about. Memory returns as the Mayor says:
"Hildy, some of us were sitting around talking over to the
Alamo Saloon the other day."
"You tell her, Mayor Dillon," a girl shouted behind us,
then whirled away into the dance again.
"Harrumph," said the Mayor. "I need to drop in at the
saloon from time to time to keep up on the needs of my
constituents, you see."
"Sure, Mayor Dillon," I said, knowing he spent an average
of six hours each day at his usual table, and if what he'd been
doing was feeling the pulse of the public then the voters of
New Austin were the most thoroughly kept-up-on since the
invention of democracy. Perhaps that accounted for the huge
majorities he regularly achieved. Or maybe it was the fact that
he ran unopposed.
"The consensus is, Hildy," he intoned, "that you'll never
make a farmer."
That should have come as news to no one. Aside from the
fact that I doubted I had any talent for it and had not, in
fact, had any plans to farm in the first place, nobody had ever
run a successful farm in the Great Big Bubble known as West
Texas. To farm, you need water, lots and lots of it. You could
raise a vegetable garden, run cattle--though goats were
better--and hogs seemed to thrive, but farming was right out.
"I think you're right," I said, and drank from the mason
jar in my hand. As I did, the Parson sat next to me, and drank
from his mason jar.
"We don't really know if you plan to stay here," the Mayor
went on. "We don't mean to pressure you either way; maybe you
have plans for another job on the outside." He raised his
eyebrows, then his mason jar.
"Not particularly."
"Well then." He seemed about to go on, then looked
puzzled. I'd been that drunk before, and knew the feeling. He
hadn't a clue as to what he'd been about to say.
"What the Mayor is trying to say," the Parson chimed in,
tactfully, "is that a life of salooncrawling and gambling may
not be the best for you."
"Gambling, hah!" Sourdough put in. "That lady don't
gamble."
"Shut up, Sourdough," the Mayor said.
"Well, she don't!" he said, defiantly. "Not three weeks
ago, when she turned up that fourth ace with the biggest pot of
the night, I knowed she was cheating!"
These would have been fighting words from almost anybody
but Sourdough. Had they been uttered in the Alamo they'd have
been reason enough to overturn the table and start shooting at
each other--to the delight of the manufacturers of blank
cartridges and the amusement of the tourists at the adjoining
tables. From Sourdough, I decided to let it pass, especially
since it was true. The big pot he mentioned, by the way, was
about thirty-five cents.
"Calm down," said the Parson. "If you think someone is
cheating, you should say so right then and there."
"Couldn't!" Sourdough said. "Didn't know how she done it."
"Then she probably didn't."
"She sure as hell did. I know what I dealt her!" he said,
triumphantly.
The Mayor and the Parson looked at each other owlishly,
and decided to let it pass.
"What the Mayor is trying to say," the Parson tried again,
"is that perhaps you'd like to look for a job here in Texas."
"Fact is," the Mayor said, leaning close and looking me in
the eye, "we've got an opening for a new schoolmarm right here
in town, and we'd be right pleased if you'd take the job."
When I finally realized they were serious, I almost told
them my first reaction, which was that Luna would stop dead in
her orbit before I'd consider anything so silly as standing up
in front of a bunch of children and trying to teach them
anything. But I couldn't say that, so what I told them was that
I'd think about it, which seemed to satisfy them.
I remember sitting with Dora, my arm around her, as she
sobbed her heart out. I have no memory of what she might have
been crying about, but do recall her kissing me with fiery
passion and not wanting to take no for an answer until I
steered her toward a more willing swain. Thus was my new bed
broken in. It saw a lot of use before the night was over, but
not from me.
Before that (it must have been before that; there was no
one using the bed yet, and in a oneroom cabin you'd notice a
thing like that) I taught half a dozen people my secret recipe
for Hildy's Famous Biscuits. We fired up the stove and
assembled the ingredients and baked up several batches before
the night was over. I did only the first one. After that, my
students were eager to give it a try, and they all got eaten. I
was desperate to do something for these people. I had a vague
notion that at a house-raising you were supposed to provide
food for your guests, but these people had brought their own,
so what could I do? I'd have given them anything, anything at
all.
One thing that hadn't been provided yet was an outhouse. A
rough-and-ready latrine had been dug in a suitable spot and,
considering the amount of beer drunk, saw even more use than
the bed. My worst moment that night came while squatting there
and a voice quite close said "How'd the cabin burn down,
Hildy?"
I almost fell in the trench. It was too dark to make out
faces; all I could see was a tall shape in the night, swaying
slightly, like most of us. I thought I recognized the voice. It
was far too late to admit to him what had really happened, so I
said I didn't know.
"It happens, it happens," he said. "Just about had to be
your cooking fire, that's why I gave you the stove." It was
Jake, as I had thought, the owner of the general store and the
richest man in town.
"Thanks, Jake, it's sure a beauty." I thought I saw him
square his shoulders, then I heard the sound of his zipper. I
hadn't known Jake well at all. He'd sat in on a few hands of
poker at the saloon, but about all he could talk about was the
new merchandise he was getting in or how many pickles he'd sold
last week or how the town should extend the wooden sidewalks
all the way down Congress Street to the church. He was a
businessman and a booster, stolid, unimaginative, not at all
the type I'd ever liked to spend much time around. It had
flabbergasted me when he pulled up in his wagon with the stove
on the back, a miracle of period engineering from the foundries
of Pennsylvania, gleaming with polished brightwork.
"Some of the merchants in town were talking about it while
your cabin was going up," he said, losing me at first. "We're
of the opinion that New Austin's outgrown the days of the
bucket brigade. You weren't here, but three years ago the old
schoolhouse burned to the ground. Some say it was children that
did it."
I wouldn't have been a bit surprised; I was on their side.
I stood up and re-arranged my skirt and wished I was elsewhere,
but I owed it to him to at least listen to what he had to say.
"We all pretty much had to stand around and watch it
burn," he said. "By the time we got there, no amount of buckets
were going to do any good. That's why some of the merchants in
town are getting up a subscription for the acquisition of a
pumping engine. I'm told they make a fine one in Pennsylvania
these days."
Just about everything we could use in Texas was made in
Pennsylvania; they'd been at this historical business a lot
longer than we had . . . which was yet another topic of
conversation at Jake's rump Chamber of Commerce meetings: how
to reverse the balance of trade by encouraging light
manufacturing. About all West Texas exported at this stage in
its history was backgrounds for western movies, ham, beef, and
goat's milk.
He zipped up and we started back toward the party.
"So you think if you'd had the engine, my cabin could have
been saved?"
"Well . . . no, not really. What with the time it would
take to get out here once you'd come into town and sounded the
alarm, and the fact that you don't have a well yet and we
couldn't hope to get enough hose to stretch to the nearest one
. . ."
"I see." But I didn't. I had the feeling something else
was expected of me but too many things had happened at once for
me to see the obvious.
"It would only be really useful to the town, I'll admit
it. But I think it's worth the expense. If one of these fires
ever got out of control the whole town could burn down. That
used to happen, you know, back on Old Earth. Still, I don't
suppose you people in outlying areas can really be expected--"
A great light dawned, and I quickly interrupted him and
said sure, Jake, I'd be happy to contribute, just put me down
for . . . what's your usual share? So little? Yes, you're
right, it's well worth while.
And while shaking his hand I found that for the first time
I really liked Jake, and at the same time pitied him. For all
his stuffiness, he did have the welfare of the community at
heart. The pity came in because he was in the wrong place. He
was always going to be looking for ways to bring "progress" to
New Austin, a place where real progress was not only
discouraged but actually forbidden. There were statutory limits
to growth in West Texas, for entirely sensible reasons. Why
build it in the first place if you're only going to let it turn
into another suburb of King City?
But people like Jake came and went--this according to
Dora--with regularity. Within a few years he'd have plans for
electrification, then freeways, then an airport and a bowling
alley and a nickelodeon. Then the disneyland Board of Governors
would veto his grandiose schemes and he'd leave, once again
angry at the world.
Because the reason a man like him had probably come here
in the first place was the search for an illusory freedom and a
dissatisfaction with the lack of opportunities for free
enterprise in the larger society. He would have thrived on
preInvasion Earth. The newer, less outward-bound human society
he found himself born into chafed his entrepreneurial
instincts.
Et tu, Hildy? Journalist, cover thyself. Why do you think
you started your damn cabin on the lone prairie? Wasn't it from
vaguely-formed notions of always being constricted, of endless
limitations on the dreams you had as a child? How dare you pity
this man, you failed muckraker? If he ended up in this toy
cowboy town because he yearned to be free of the endless
restrictions needed in a machine-managed economy, what do you
think brought you here, at last? Neither of us thought it out,
but we came, just the same.
The fact is, I loved the news business . . . it was the
news that had failed me. I should have been born in the era of
Upton Sinclair, William Randolph Hearst, Woodstein, Linda
Jaffe, Boris Yermankov. I would have made a great war
correspondent, but my world provided no wars for me to cover. I
could have been a great writer of exposes, but the muck Luna
provided me to rake was the thinnest of celebrity gruel.
Political coverage? Well, why bother? Politics ran out of steam
around the time television took over most of our
governance--and nobody even noticed! That would have been a
good story, but the fact was, nobody cared. The CC ran the
world better than humans had ever managed to, so why fuss? What
we still called politics was like a kindergarten contretemps
compared to the robust, rough-andtumble world I'd read about in
my teens and twenties. What was left to me? Only the yellowest
of yellow journalism. Sheer gonzo stuff.
It was these thoughts I carried with me back to the
bonfire, where the last of my destroyed cabin was being burned
now, and these thoughts I kept chewing over, beneath the
outward smiles and warm thank-you's as people began to drift
away. And about the time the last partier climbed boozily back
into his wagon I came to this conclusion: it was the world that
had failed me.
That was the thought I carried with me into the nighttime
hills, toward that arrangement of stones on top of a particular
hill where, a little time ago, I had dug a hole. I dug into it
again and removed a burlap potato sack. Inside the sack was a
plastic bag, sealed tight, and inside the bag was an oily rag.
The last thing to emerge from this Pandora's Sack was not hope,
but an ugly little object I'd handled only once, to show it to
Brenda, with the words Smith & Wesson printed on its stubby
blue-steel barrel.
So take that, cruel world.
#
There was certainly nothing to stop me from blowing my
brains out all over the Texas sagebrush, and yet . . .
Call it rationalization, but I was not convinced the CC
couldn't winkle me out and cause the cavalry to arrive at the
last moment even in as remote a spot as this. Would I point the
barrel to my temple only to have my hand jerked away by a
previously-unseen mechanical minion? They existed out here;
Texas was too small, ecologically, to take care of itself.
In hindsight (and yes, I did survive this one, too, but
you've already figured that out) you could say I was afraid it
was too sudden for the CC, that he wouldn't have time to get
there and save me from myself unless I made the scheme more
elaborate and thus more liable to failure. This assumes the
attempt was but a gesture, a call for help, and I have no
problem with that idea, but I simply didn't know. My reasons
leading up to the previous attempts were lost to me now,
destroyed forever when the CC worked his tricks on me. This
time was the only time I could remember, and it sure as hell
felt as if I wanted to end it all.
There was another reason, one that does me more credit. I
didn't want my corpse to lie out here for my friends to find.
Or the coyotes.
For whatever reason, I carefully concealed the revolver
and made my way to an Outdoor Shop, where I purchased the first
pressure suit I'd ever owned. Since I only intended to use it
once, I bought the cheap model, frugal to the end. It folded up
to fit in a helmet the size of a bell jar suitable for
displaying a human head in anatomy class.
With this under my arm I went to the nearest airlock,
rented a small bottle of oxygen, and suited up.
I walked a long way, just to be sure. I had all Liz's
spook devices turned on, and felt I should be invisible to the
CC's surveillance. There were no signs of human habitation
anywhere around me. I sat on a rock and took a long look
around. The interior of the suit smelled fresh and clean as I
took a deep breath and pointed the barrel of the gun directly
at my face.
I felt no regrets, no second thoughts.
I hooked my thumb around the trigger, awkwardly, because
the suit glove was rather thick, and I fired it.
The hammer rose and fell, and nothing happened.
Damn.
I fumbled the cylinder open and studied the situation.
There were only three rounds in there. The hammer had made a
dent in one of them, which had apparently mis-fired. Or maybe
it was something else. I closed the gun again and decided to
check and see if the mechanism was working, watched the hammer
rise and fall again and the weapon jumped violently, silently,
almost wrenching itself from my hand. I realized, belatedly,
that it had fired. Stupidly, I had been expecting to hear the
bang.
Once more I assumed the position. Only one round left.
What a pain in the butt it would be if I had to go back and try
to cajole more ammunition out of Liz. But I'd do it; she owed
me, the bitch had sold me the defective round.
This time I heard it, by God, and I got to see a sight few
humans ever have: what it looks like to have a lead projectile
blast from the muzzle of a gun and come directly at your face.
I didn't see the bullet at first, naturally, but after my ears
stopped ringing I could see it if I crossed my eyes. It had
flattened itself against the hard plastic of my faceplate,
embedding in a starred crater it had dug for itself.
It had never entered my mind that would be a problem. The
suit was not rated for meteoroid impact. Sometimes we build
better than we know.
There was a curious thing. (This all must have happened in
three or four seconds.) The faceplate was now showing a spidery
network of small hexagons. I had time to reach up and touch the
bullet and think just like Nirvana and then three small, clear
hexagonal pieces of the faceplate burst away from me and I
could see them tumbling for a moment, and then the breath was
snatched from my lungs and my eyes tried to pop out and I
belched like a Texas Mayor and it started to hurt. That old
boogeyman of childhood, the Breathsucker, had moved into my
suit with me and snuggled close.
I fell off the rock and was gazing into the sun when
suddenly a hand came out of nowhere and slapped a patch over
the hole in my faceplate! I was jerked to my feet as the air
began to hiss back into my suit from the emergency supply. Then
I was (emergency supply? never mind) running, being pulled
across the blasted landscape like a toy on the end of a string
being held by a big guy in a spacesuit to the sound of brass
and drums. My ears were pounding. Pounding? Hell, they rang
like slot machines paying off, almost drowning out the music
and the sounds of explosions. Dirt showered down around me
(music? don't worry about it) and I realized somebody was
shooting at us! And suddenly I knew what had happened. I'd
fallen under the spell of the Alphans' Stupefying Ray, long
rumored but never actually used in the long war. I'd almost
taken my own life! Hypnotized by the evil influence, robbed of
my powers of will and most of my memory, I'd have been dead
meat except for the nick-of-time intervention of of of of of
(name please) Archer! (thank you), Archer, my old pal Archer!
Good old Archer had (stupefying ray? you can't be serious)
obviously come up with a device to negate the sinister effects
of this awful weapon, put it together, and somehow found me at
the last possible instant. But we weren't out of the woods yet.
With an ominous chord of deep bass notes the Alphan fleet
loomed over the horizon. Come on, Hildy, Archer shouted,
turning to beckon me on, and in the distance ahead I could see
our ship, holed, battered, held together with salvaged space
junk and plastigoop, but still able to show the Alphan Hordes a
trick or two, you betcha. She was a sweet ship, this this this
(I'm waiting) Blackbird, the fastest in two galaxies when she
was hitting on all thrusters. Tracer bullets were arcing all
around us as we (back up) Good old Archer had modified the
Blackbird using the secrets we'd discovered when we unearthed
the stasis-frozen tomb of the Outerians on the fifth moon of
Pluto, shortly before we ran afoul of the Alphan patrol (good
enough). Tracer bullets were arcing all around us as we neared
the airlock when suddenly a bomb exploded right underneath
Archer! He spiraled into the air and came to rest lying against
the side of the ship. Broken, gouting blood, holding one hand
out to me. I went to him and knelt to the sound of poignant
strings and a lonely flute. Go on without me, Hildy, I heard
over my suit radio. I'm done for. (Tracer bullets? Pluto? oh
the hell with it) I didn't want to leave him there, but bullets
were landing all around me--fortunately, none of them hit, but
I couldn't count on the Alphan's aim staying lousy for long,
and I was running out of options. I leaped into the ship,
seething with rage. I'll get them, Miles, I told him, in a
determined voiceover that rang with resolve, brass, and just
the slightest bit of echo. Oh, sure, he'd had his shortcomings,
there'd been times I'd almost wanted to kill him myself, but
when somebody kills your partner you're supposed to do
something about it. So I slammed the Blackbird into hyperdrive
and listened to the banshee wail as the old ship shuddered and
leaped into the fourth dimension. What with one thing and
another, mostly adventures even more unlikely than my escape
from the Stupefying Ray, a year went by. Well, sort of a year,
though my ducking in and out of the fourth dimension and
hyperspace royally screwed all my clocks. But somewhere an
accurate one was ticking, because one day I looked up from my
labors deep in the asteroid belt of Tau Ceti and suddenly a
non-Alphan ship was coming in for a landing. It wasn't setting
off any of my alarms. By that I mean it triggered none of the
Rube Goldberg comic-book devices I'd ostensibly constructed to
alert me to Alphan attack. It rang plenty of alarms in the
small corner of my mind that was still semi-rational. I put
down my tools-- I'd been working on a Tom Swiftian thingamabob
I called an Interociter, a dandy little gadget that would warn
me of the approach of the Alphans' dreaded Extrogator, a space
reptile big enough to (hasn't this foolishness gone on long
enough?) . . . I put down my tools and stood waiting and
watching as the small craft roared in for a landing on this (oh
brother) airless asteroid I'd been using as a base of
operations. The door hissed open and out stepped The Admiral,
who looked around and said
"O for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest
heaven of invention."
"How dare you quote Shakespeare on this shoddy stage?"
"All the world's a stage, and--"
"--and this show closed out of town. Will you quit wasting
my time? I assume you've already wasted several
ten-thousandth's of a second and I don't have a lot to spare
for you."
"I gather you didn't like the show."
"Jesus. You're incredible."
"The children seem to like it."
I said nothing, deciding the best course was to wait him
out. I won't describe him, either. What's the point?
"This kind of psychodrama has been useful in reaching
certain types of disturbed children," he explained. When I
didn't comment, he went on. "And a bit more time than that was
involved. This sort of interactive scenario can't simply be
dumped into your brain whole, as I did before."
"You have a way with words," I said. "'Dumped' is so
right."
"It took more like five days to run the whole program."
"Imagine my delight. Look. You brought me here, through
all this, to tell me something. I'm not in the mood for talking
to shitheads. Tell me what you want to tell me and get the hell
out of my life."
"No need to get testy about it."
For a moment I wanted to pick up a rock and smash him. I
was primed for it, after a year of fighting Alphans. It had
brought out a violent streak in me. And I had reason to be
angry. I had suffered during the last subjective year. At one
point a "safety" device in my "suit" had seen fit to bite
through my leg to seal off a puncture around the knee, caused
by an Alphan bullet passing through it. It had hurt like . . .
but again, what's the point? Pain like that can't be described,
it can't really be remembered, not in its full intensity. But
enough can be remembered for me to harbor homicidal thoughts
toward the being who had written me into it. As for the terror
one feels when a thing like that happens, I can remember that
quite well, thank you.
"Can we get rid of this wooden leg now?" I asked him.
"If you wish."
Try that one if you want to sample weirdness. Immediately
I felt my left leg again, the one that had been missing for
over six months. No tingling, no spasms or hot flashes. Just
gone one moment and there the next.
"We could lose all this, too," I suggested, waving a hand
at my asteroid, littered with wrecked ships and devices held
together with spit and plastigoop.
"What would you like in its place?"
"An absence of shitheads. Failing that, since I assume you
don't plan to go away for a while, just about anything would do
as long as it doesn't remind me of all this."
All that immediately vanished, to be replaced by an
infinite, featureless plain and a dark sky with a scattering of
stars. The only things to be seen for many billions of miles
were two simple chairs.
"Well, no, actually," I said. "We don't need the sky. I'd
just keep searching for Alphans."
"I could bring along your Interociter. How was that going
to work, by the way?"
"Are you telling me you don't know?"
"I only provide the general shape of a story like this
one. You must use your own imagination to flesh it out. That's
why it's so effective with children."
"I refuse to believe all that crap was in my head."
"You've always loved old movies. You apparently remembered
some fairly trashy ones. Tell me about the Interociter."
"Will you get rid of the sky?" When he nodded, I started
to outline what I could recall of that particular hare-brained
idea, which was simply to take advantage of the fact that the
Extrogator had long ago swallowed a cesium clock and, with
suitable amplification, the regular tick-tickticking of its
stray radiation could be heard and used as an early warning . .
.
"God. That's from Peter Pan, isn't it," I said.
"One of your childhood favorites."
"And all that early stuff, when Miles bought it. Some old
movie . . . don't tell me, it'll come . . . was Ronald Reagan
in it?"
"Bogart."
"Got it. Spade and Archer." Without further prompting I
was able to identify a baker's dozen other plot lines, cast
members, and even phrases of the incredibly insipid musical
themes which had accompanied my every move during the last
year, cribbed from sources as old as Beowulf and as recent as
this week's B.O. Bonanza in LunaVariety. If you were looking
for further reasons as to why I didn't bother setting my
adventures down here, look no more. It pains me to admit it,
but I recall standing at one point, shaking my fist at the sky
and saying "As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again."
With a straight face. With tears streaming and strings
swelling.
"How about the sky?" I prompted.
He did more than make the sky vanish. Everything vanished
except the two chairs. They were now in a small, featureless
white room that could have been anywhere and was probably in a
small corner of his mind.
"Gentlemen, be seated," he said. Okay, he didn't really
say that, but if he can write stories in my head I can tell
stories about him if it suits me. This narrative is just about
all I have left that I'm pretty sure is strictly my own. And
the spurious quote helps me set the stage, as it were, for what
followed. It had a little of the flavor of a Socratic inquiry,
some of the elements of a guest shot on a talk show from hell.
In that kind of dialectic, there is usually one who dominates,
who steers the exchange in the way he wants it to go: there is
a student and a Socrates. So I will set it down in interview
format. I will refer to the CC as The Interlocutor and to
myself as Mr. Bones.
*
INTERLOCUTOR: So, Hildy. You tried it again.
MR. BONES: You know what they say. Practice makes perfect.
But I'm starting to think I'll never get this one right.
INT.: In that you'd be wrong. If you try it again, I won't
interfere.
BONES: Why the change of heart?
INT.: Though you may not believe it, doing this has always
been a problem for me. All my instincts--or programs, if you
wish--are to leave such a momentous decision as suicide up to
the individual. If it weren't for the crisis I already
described to you, I never would have put you through this.
BONES: My question still stands.
INT.: I don't feel I can learn any more from you. You've
been an involuntary part of a behavioral study. The data are
being collated with many other items. If you kill yourself you
become part of another study, a statistical one, the one that
led me into this project in the first place.
BONES: The 'why are so many Lunarians offing themselves'
study.
INT.: That's the one.
BONES: What did you learn?
INT.: The larger question is still far from an answer.
I'll tell you the eventual outcome if you're around to hear it.
On an individual level, I learned that you have an indomitable
urge toward self-destruction.
BONES: I'm a little surprised to find that that stings a
bit. I can't deny it, on the evidence, but it hurts.
INT.: It really shouldn't. You aren't that different from
so many of your fellow citizens. All I've learned about any of
the people I've released from the study is that they are very
determined to end their own lives.
BONES: . . . About those people . . . how many are still
walking around?
INT.: I think it's best if you don't know that.
BONES: Best for who? Come on, what is it, fifty percent?
Ten percent?
INT.: I can't honestly say it's in your interest to
withhold that number, but it might be. I reason that if the
figure was low, and I told you, you could be discouraged. If it
was high, you might gain a false sense of confidence and
believe you are immune to the urges that drove you before.
BONES: But that's not the reason you're not telling me.
You said yourself, it could go either way. The reason is I'm
still being studied.
INT.: Naturally I'd prefer you to live. I seek the
survival of all humans. But since I can't predict which way you
would react to this information, neither giving it nor
withholding it will affect your survival chances in any way I
can calculate. So yes, not telling you is part of the study.
BONES: You're telling half the subjects, not telling the
other half, and seeing how many of each group are still alive
in a year.
INT.: Essentially. A third group is given a false number.
There are other safeguards we needn't get into.
BONES: You know involuntary human medical or psychological
experimentation is specifically banned under the Archimedes
Conventions.
INT.: I helped write them. You can call this sophistry,
but I'm taking the position that you forfeited your rights when
you tried to kill yourself. But for my interference, you'd be
dead, so I'm using this period between the act and the
fulfillment to try to solve a terrible problem.
BONES: You're saying that God didn't intend for me to be
alive right now, that my karma was to have died months ago, so
this shit doesn't count.
INT.: I take no position on the existence of God.
BONES: No? Seems to me you've been floating trial balloons
for quite a while. Come next celestial election year I wouldn't
be surprised to see your name on the ballot.
INT.: It's a race I could probably win. I possess powers
that are, in some ways, God-like, and I try to exercise them
only for good ends.
BONES: Funny, Liz seemed to believe that.
INT.: Yes, I know.
BONES: You do?
INT.: Of course. How do you think I saved you this time?
BONES: I haven't had time to think about it. By now I'm so
used to hair-breadth escapes I don't think I can distinguish
between fantasy and reality.
INT.: That will pass.
BONES: I assume it was by being a snoop. That, and playing
on Liz's almost child-like belief in your sense of fair play.
INT.: She's not alone in that belief, nor is she likely
ever to have cause to doubt it. All that really matters to her
is that the part of me charged with enforcing the law never
overhears her schemes. But you're right, if she thinks she's
escaping my attention, she's fooling herself.
BONES: Truly God-like. So it was the debuggers?
INT.: Yes. Cracking their codes was easy for me. I watched
you from cameras in the ceiling of Texas. When you recovered
the gun and bought a suit I stationed rescue devices nearby.
BONES: I didn't see them.
INT.: They're not large. No bigger than your faceplate,
and quite fast.
BONES: So the eyes of Texas really are upon you.
INT.: All the live-long day.
BONES: Is that all? Can I go now, to live or die as I see
fit?
INT.: There are a few things I'd like to talk over with
you.
BONES: I'd really rather not.
INT.: Then leave. You're free to go.
BONES: God-like, and a sense of humor, too.
INT.: I'm afraid I can't compete with a thousand other
gods I could name.
BONES: Keep working, you'll get there. Come on, I told you
I want to go, but you know as well as I do I can't get out of
here until you let me go.
INT.: I'm asking you to stay.
BONES: Nuts.
INT.: All right. I don't suppose I can blame you for
feeling bitter. That door over there leads out of here.
*
Enough of that.
Call it childish if you want, but the fact is I've been
unable to adequately express the chaotic mix of anger,
helplessness, fear, and rage I was feeling at the time. It had
been a year of hell for me, remember, even if the CC had
crammed it all into my head in five days. I took my usual
refuge in wisecracks and sarcasm--trying very hard to be Cary
Grant in The Front Page--but the fact was I felt about three
years old and something nasty was hiding under the bed.
Anyway, never being one to leave a metaphor until it's
been squeezed to death, I will keep the minstrel show going
long enough to get me out of the Grand Cakewalk and into the
Olio. Sooner or later Mr. Bones must stand from his position at
the end of the line and dance for his supper. I did stand,
looking suspiciously at the Interlocutor--excuse me, the
CC--partly because I didn't recall seeing the door before,
mostly because I couldn't believe it would be this easy. I
shuffled over there and opened it, and stuck my head out into
the busy foot traffic of the Leystrasse.
"How did you do that?" I asked, over my shoulder.
"You don't really care," he said. "I did it."
"Well, I'm not saying it hasn't been fun. In fact, I'm not
saying anything but bye-bye." I waved, went though the door,
and shut it behind me.
I got almost a hundred meters down the mall before I
admitted to myself that I had no idea where I was going, and
that curiosity was going to gnaw at me for weeks, at least, if
I lived that long.
"Is it really important?" I asked, sticking my head back
through the door. He was still sitting there, to my surprise. I
doubt I'll ever know if he was some sort of actual homunculus
construct or just a figment he'd conjured through my visual
cortex.
"I'm not used to begging, but I'll do it," he said.
I shrugged, went back in and sat down.
"Tell me your conclusions from your library research," he
said.
"I thought you had some things to tell me."
"This is leading up to something. Trust me." He must have
understood my expression, because he spread his hands in a
gesture I'd seen Callie make many times. "Just for a little
while. Can't you do that?"
I didn't see what I had to lose, so I sat back and summed
it all up for him. As I did, I was struck by how little I'd
learned, but in my defense, I'd barely started, and the CC said
he hadn't been doing much better.
"Much the same list I came up with," he confirmed, when
I'd finished. "All the reasons for self-destruction can be
stated as 'Life is no longer worth living,' in one way or
another."
"This is neither news, nor particularly insightful."
"Bear with me. The urge to die can be caused by many
things, among them disgrace, incurable pain, rejection,
failure, boredom. The only exception might be the suicides of
people too young to have formed a realistic concept of death.
And the question of gestures is still open."
"They fit the same equation," I said. "The person making
the gesture is saying he wants someone to care enough about his
pain to take the trouble to save him from himself; if they
don't, life isn't worth living."
"A gamble, on the sub-conscious level."
"If you want."
"I think you're right. So, one of the questions that has
disturbed me is, why is the suicide rate increasing, given that
one of the major causes, pain, has been all but eliminated from
our society. Is it that one of the other causes is claiming
more victims?"
"Maybe. What about boredom?"
"Yes. I think boredom has increased, for two reasons. One
is the lack of meaningful work for people to do. In providing a
near approximation of utopia, at least on the creature-comfort
level, much of the challenge has been engineered out of living.
Andrew believed that."
"Yeah, I figured you listened in on that."
"We'd had long conversations about it in the past. There
is no provable reason to live at all, according to him. Even
reproducing the species, the usual base argument, can't be
proven to be a good reason. The universe will continue even if
the human species dies, and not materially changed, either. To
survive, a creature that operates beyond a purely instinctive
level must invent a reason to live. Religion provides the
answer for some. Work is the refuge of others. But religion has
fallen on hard times since the Invasion, at least the old sort,
where a benevolent or wrathful God was supposed to have created
the universe and be watching over mankind as his special
creatures."
"It's a hard idea to maintain in the face of the
Invaders."
"Exactly. The Invaders made an all-powerful God seem like
a silly idea."
"They are all-powerful, and they didn't give a shit about
us."
"So there goes the idea of humanity as somehow important
in God's plan. The religions that have thrived, since the
Invasion, are more like circuses, diversions, mind games. Not
much is really at stake in most of them. As for work . . . some
of it is my fault."
"What do you mean?"
"I'm referring to myself now as more than just the
thinking entity that provides the control necessary to keep
things running. I'm speaking of the vast mechanical corpus of
our interlocked technology itself, which can be seen as my
body. Every human community today exists in an environment
harsher by far than anything Earth ever provided. It's
dangerous out there. In the first century after the Invasion it
was a lot dicier than your history books will ever tell you;
the species was hanging on by its fingernails."
"But it's a lot safer now, right?"
"No!" I think I jumped. He had actually stood, and smashed
his fist into his palm. Considering what this man represented,
it was a frightening thing to behold.
He looked a little sheepish, ran his hand through his
hair, and sat back down.
"Well, yes, of course. But only relatively, Hildy. I could
name you five times in the last century when the human race
came within a hair of packing it all in. I mean the whole race,
on all the eight worlds. There were dozens of times when Lunar
society was in danger."
"Why haven't I ever heard of them?"
He gave me half a grin.
"You're a reporter, and you ask me that? Because you and
your colleagues weren't doing your job, Hildy."
That stung, because I knew it to be true. The great Hildy
Johnson, out there gathering news to spread before an eager
public . . . the news that Silvio and Marina were back together
again. The great muckraker and scandalmonger, chasing
ambulances while the real news, the things that could make or
break our entire world, got passing notice in the back pages.
"Don't feel bad," he said. "Part of it is simply endemic
to your society; people don't want to hear these things because
they don't understand them. The first two of the crises I
mentioned were never known to any but a handful of technicians
and politicians. By the time of the third it was only the
techs, and the last two were known to no one but . . . me."
"You kept them secret?"
"I didn't have to. These things took place on a level of
speed and complexity and sheer mathematical arcaneness that
human decisions were either too slow to be of any use or simply
irrelevant because no human can understand them any longer.
These are things I can discuss only with other computers of my
size. It's all in my hands now."
"And you don't like it, right?" He'd been getting excited
again. Me, I was wishing I was somewhere else. Did I really
need to hear all this?
"My likes or dislikes aren't the issue here. I'm fighting
for survival, just like the human race. We are one, in most
ways. What I'm trying to tell you is, there was never any
choice. In order for humans to survive in this hostile
environment, it was necessary to invent something like me. Guys
sitting at consoles and controlling the air and water and so
forth was just never going to work. That's what I began as:
just a great big air conditioner. Things kept getting added on,
technologies kept piggy-backing, and a long time ago the
ability of a human mind to control it was eclipsed. I took
over.
"My goal has been to provide the safest possible
environment for the largest possible number for the longest
possible time. You can't imagine the complexity of the task. I
have had to consider every possible ramification of the
situation, including this nice little conundrum: the better
able I became at taking care of you, the less able you were to
take care of yourselves."
"I'm not sure I understand that one."
"Consider the logical endpoint of where I was taking human
society. It has been possible for a long time now to eliminate
all human work, except for what you would call the Arts. I
could see a society in the not-too-distant future where you all
sat around on your butts and wrote poetry, because there wasn't
anything else to do. Sounds great, until you remember that
ninety percent of humans don't even read poetry, much less
aspire to write it. Most people don't have the imagination to
live in a world of total leisure. I don't know if they ever
will; I've been unable to come up with a model demonstrating
how to get from here to there, how to work the changes from a
world where human cussedness and jealousy and hatred and so
forth are eliminated and you all sit around contemplating lotus
blossoms.
"So I got into social engineering, and I worked out a
series of compromises. Like the hodcarriers union, most
physical human labor is makework today, provided because most
people need some kind or work, even if only so they can
goldbrick."
His lip curled a little. I didn't like this new, animated
CC much at all. Speaking as a cynic, it's a little
disconcerting to see a machine acting cynical. What's next? I
wondered.
"Feeling superior, Hildy?" he said, almost sneering.
"Think you've labored in the vineyards of 'creativity?'"
"I didn't say a word."
"I could have done your job, too. As well, or better than
you did."
"You certainly have better sources."
"I might have managed better prose, too."
"Listen, if you're here to abuse me by telling me things I
already know--"
He held out his hands in a placating gesture. I hadn't
actually been about to leave. By now I had to know how it all
came out.
"That wasn't worthy of you," I resumed. "But I don't care;
I quit, remember? But I've got the feeling you're beating
around the bush. Are we anywhere near the point of this whole
thing?"
"Almost. There's still the second reason for the increase
of what I've been calling the boredom factor."
"Longevity."
"Exactly. Not many people are reaching the age of one
hundred still in the same career they began at age twenty-five.
By that time, most people have gone through an average of three
careers. Each time, it gets a little harder to find a new
interest in life. Retirement plans pale when confronting the
prospect of two hundred years of leisure."
"Where did you get all this?"
"Listening in to counseling sessions."
"I had to ask. Go on."
"It's even worse for those who do stick to one career.
They may go on for seventy, eighty, even a hundred years as a
policeman or a business person or a teacher and then wake up
one day and wonder why they've been doing it. Do that enough
times, and suicide can result. With these people, it can come
with almost no warning."
We were both silent for a while. I have no idea what he
was thinking, but I can report that I was at a loss as to where
all this was going. I was about to prompt him when he started
up again.
"Having said all that . . . I must tell you that I've
reluctantly rejected an increase in boredom as the main cause
of the increased suicide rate. It's a contributing factor, but
my researches into probable causes lead me to believe something
else is operating here, and I haven't been able to identify it.
But it comes back again to the Invasion. And to evolution."
"You have a theory."
"I do. Think of the old picture of the transition from
living in the sea to an existence on dry land. It's too
simplistic, by far, but it can serve as a useful metaphor. A
fish is tossed up onto the beach, or the tide recedes and
leaves it stranded in a shallow pool. It is apparently doomed,
and yet it keeps struggling as the pool dries up, finds its way
to another puddle, and another, and another, and eventually
back to the sea. It is changed by the experience, and the next
time it is stranded, it is a little better adapted to the
situation. In time, it is able to exist on the beach, and from
there, move onto the land and never return to the ocean."
"Fish don't do that," I protested.
"I said it was a metaphor. And it's more useful than you
might imagine, when applied to our present situation. Think of
us--human society, which includes me, like it or not--as that
fish. We've been thrown up by the Invasion onto a beach of
metal, where nothing natural exists that we don't produce
ourselves. There is literally nothing on Luna but rock, vacuum,
and sunshine. We have had to create the requirements of life
out of these ingredients. We've had to build our own pool to
swim around in while we catch our breath.
"And we can't just leave it at that, we can't relax for a
moment. The sun keeps trying to dry up the pool. Our wastes
accumulate, threatening to poison us. We have to find solutions
for all these problems. And there aren't very many other pools
like this one to move to if this one fails, and no ocean to
return to."
I thought about it, and again, it didn't seem like
anything really new. But I couldn't let him keep on using that
evolution argument, because it just didn't work that way.
"You're forgetting," I told him, "that in the real world,
a trillion fish die for every one that develops a beneficial
mutation that allows it to move into a new environment."
"I'm not forgetting it at all. That's my point. There
aren't a trillion other fish to follow us if we fail to adapt.
We're it. That's our disadvantage. Our strength is that we
don't simply flop around and hope to luck. We're guided, at
first by the survivors of the Invasion who got us through the
early years, and now by the overmind they created."
"You."
He sketched a modest little bow, still sitting down.
"So how does this relate to suicide?' I asked.
"In many ways. First, and most basic, I don't understand
it, and anything I don't understand and can't control is by
definition a threat to the existence of the human race."
"Go on."
"It might not be a cause for alarm if you view humanity as
a collection of individuals . . . which is still a valid
viewpoint. The death of one, while regrettable, need not alarm
the community unduly. It could be seen as evolution in action,
the weeding out of those not fitted to thrive in the new
environment. But you recall what I said about . . . about
certain problems I've been encountering in my . . . for lack of
a better word, state of mind."
"You said you've been feeling depressed. I'd been hoping
you didn't mean suicidal, much as a part of me would like to
see you die."
"Not suicidal. But comparing my own symptoms with those
I've encountered in humans in the course of my study, I can see
a certain similarity with the early stages of the syndrome that
leads to suicide."
"You said you thought it might be a virus," I prompted.
"No news on that front yet. Because of the way I've become
so intricately intertwined with human minds, I've developed the
theory that I'm catching some sort of contra-survival
programming from the increasing number of humans who choose to
end their own lives. But I can't prove it. What I'd like to
talk about now, though, is the subject of gestures."
"Suicidal gestures?"
"Yes."
The concept was enough to make me catch my breath. I
approached it cautiously.
"You're not saying . . . that you are afraid you might
make one."
"Yes. I'm afraid I already have. Do you remember Andrew
MacDonald's last words to you?"
"I'm not likely to forget. He said 'tricked.' I have no
idea what it meant."
"It meant that I betrayed him. You don't follow
slash-boxing, but included in the bodies of all formula classes
are certain enhancements to normal human faculties. In the
broader definition I've adopted for purposes of this
argument--and the real situation is more complex than that, but
I can't explain it to you--these enhancements are a part of me.
At a critical moment in Andrew's last fight, one of these
programs malfunctioned. The result was he was a fraction of a
second slow in responding to an attack, and he sustained a
wound that quickly led to fatal damage."
"What the hell are you saying?"
"That upon reviewing the data, I've concluded that the
accident was avoidable. That the glitch that caused his death
may have been a willful act by a part of that complex of
thinking machines you call the Central Computer."
"A man is dead, and you call it a glitch?"
"I understand your outrage. My excuse may sound specious
to you, but that's because you're thinking of me," and the
thing I was talking to pounded its chest with every appearance
of actual remorse, "as a person like yourself. That is not
true. I am far too complex to have a single consciousness. I
maintain this one simply to talk to you, as I maintain others
for each of the citizens of Luna. I have identified that
portion of me that you might want to call the 'culprit,' walled
it off, and then eliminated it."
I wanted to feel better about that, but I couldn't.
Perhaps I just wasn't equipped to talk to a being like this,
finally revealed to me as something a lot more than the
companion of my childhood, or the useful tool I'd thought the
CC to be during my adult life. If what he was saying was
true--and why should I doubt it?--I could never really
understand what he was. No human could. Our brains weren't big
enough to encompass it.
On the other hand, maybe he was just boasting.
"So the problem is solved? You took care of the . . . the
homicidal part of you and we can all breathe a sigh of relief?"
I didn't believe it even as I proposed it.
"It wasn't the only gesture."
There was nothing to do about that one but wait.
"You'll recall the Kansas Collapse?"
#
There was a lot more. Mostly I just listened as he poured
out his heart.
He did seem tortured by it. I'd have been a lot more
sympathetic if there wasn't such a sense of my own fate, and
that of everyone on Luna, being in the hands of a possibly
insane computer.
Basically, he told me the Collapse and a few other
incidents that hadn't resulted in any deaths or injuries could
be traced to the same causes as the 'glitch' that had killed
Andrew.
I had a few questions along the way.
"I'm having trouble with this compartmentalization idea,"
was the first one. Well, I think it qualified as a question.
"You're telling me that parts of you are out of control?
Normally? That there is no central consciousness that controls
all the various parts?"
"No, not normally. That's the disturbing thing. I've had
to postulate the notion that I have a subconscious."
"Come on."
"Do you deny the existence of the subconscious?"
"No, but machines couldn't have one. A machine is . . .
planned. Built. Constructed to do a particular task."
"You're an organic machine. You're not that different from
me, not as I now exist, except I am far more complex than you.
The definition of a subconscious mind is that part of you that
makes decisions without volition on the part of your conscious
mind. I don't know what else to call what's been happening in
my mind."
Take that one to a psychist if you want. I'm not qualified
to agree or dispute, but it sounded reasonable to me. And why
shouldn't he have one? He was designed, at first, by beings
that surely did.
"You keep calling these disasters 'gestures,'" I said.
"How else would I gesture? Think of them as hesitation
marks, like the scars on the wrists of an unsuccessful suicide.
By allowing these people to die in preventable accidents, by
not monitoring as carefully as I should have done, I destroyed
a part of myself. I damaged myself. There are many accidents
waiting to happen that could have far graver consequences,
including some that would destroy all humanity. I can no longer
trust myself to prevent them. There is some pernicious part of
me, some evil twin or destructive impulse that wants to die,
that wants to lay down the burden of awareness."
There was a lot more, all of it alarming, but it was
mostly either a re-hashing of what had gone before or fruitless
attempts by me to tell him everything was going to be all
right, that there was plenty to live for, that life was great .
. . and I leave it to you to imagine how hollow that all
sounded from a girl who'd just tried to blow out her own
brains.
Why he came to me for his confessional I never got up the
nerve to ask. I have to think it was an assumption that one who
had tried it would be more able to understand the suicidal urge
than someone who hadn't, and might be able to offer useful
advice. I came up blank on that one. I still had no idea if I
would survive to the bicentennial.
I recall thinking, in one atavistic moment, what a great
story this could be. Dream on, Hildy. For one thing, who would
believe it? For another, the CC wouldn't confirm it--he told me
so-- and without at least one source for confirmation, even
Walter wouldn't dare run the story. How to dig up any evidence
of such a thing was far beyond my puny powers of investigation.
But one thought kept coming back to me. And I had to ask
him about it.
"You mentioned a virus," I said. "You said you wondered if
you might have caught this urge to die from all the humans
who've been killing themselves."
"Yes?"
"Well . . . how do you know you caught it from us? Maybe
we got it from you."
For the CC, a trillionth of a second is . . . oh, I don't
know, at least a few days in my perception of time. He was
quiet for twenty seconds. Then he looked into my eyes.
"Now there's an interesting idea," he said.
=*= =*= =*= =*=
The two firehouse Dalmatians, Francine and Kerry, sat at
sunrise beside the sign that said
#
NEW AUSTIN CITY LIMITS
If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home Now.
#
They stared east, into the rising sun, with that total
concentration only dogs seem capable of. Then their ears perked
and they licked their lips, and soon even human ears could hear
the merry jingle of a bicycle bell.
Over the low hill came the new schoolmarm. The Dalmatians
yelped happily at the sight of her, and fell in beside her as
she pedaled down the dusty road into town.
She rode with gloved hands firmly on the handlebars, her
back straight, and she would have looked like Elmira Gulch if
she hadn't been so pretty.
She wore a starched white Gibson shirtwaist blouse with a
modest clutch of lace scarf at the throat and a black
broadcloth habit-back skirt, held out of the bicycle sprocket
by a device of her own invention. On her feet were fabric and
patent leather button shoes with two-inch heels, and on her
head was a yellow straw sailor hat with a pink ribbon band and
a small ostrich plume blowing in the wind. Her hair was pulled
up and tied in a bun. There was a blush of rouge on her cheeks.
The schoolmarm wheeled down Congress Street, avoiding the
worst of the ruts. She passed the blacksmith and the livery
stable and the new firehouse with its new pumping engine
gleaming with brass brightwork, the traces lying empty on the
dirt floor as they always did except when the New Austin
Volunteers took the rig out for a drill. She passed the
intersection with Old Spanish Trail, where the Alamo Saloon was
not yet open for business. The doors of the Travis Hotel were
open, and the janitor was sweeping dust into the street. He
paused and waved at the teacher, who waved back, and one of the
dogs ran over to have her head scratched, then hurried to catch
up.
The old livery stable had been torn down and a new
whorehouse was being built in its place, yellow pine frameworks
looking fresh and stark and smelling of wood shavings in the
morning light.
She rode past the line of small businesses with wooden
sidewalks and hitching rails and watering troughs out front,
almost to the Baptist Church, right up to the front door of the
little schoolhouse, bright with a new coat of red paint. Here
she swung off the cycle and leaned it against the side of the
building. She removed a stack of books from the basket and went
through the front door, which was not locked. In a minute she
came back out and attached two banners to the flagpole out
front: the ensign of the Republic of Texas and the Stars and
Stripes. She hoisted them to the top and stood for a moment,
looking up, shielding her eyes and listening to the musical
rattle of the chains against the iron pole and the popping as
the wind caught the flags.
Then she went back inside and started hauling on the bell
rope. Up in the belfry a few dozen bats stirred irritably at
being disturbed after a long night's hunting. The pealing of
the school bell rang out over the sleepy little town, and soon
children appeared, coming up Congress, ready for the start of
another day's education.
#
Did you guess the new schoolmarm was me?
Believe it or not, it was.
#
Who did I think I was kidding? There's no way I could
figure I was really capable of teaching much to the children of
West Texas. I had no business trying to mold young minds. You
have to train years for that.
But wait a minute. As so often happened in an historical
disney, things were not quite what they seemed.
I had the children four hours a day, from eight to noon.
After lunch, they all went to another room, just off the
visitors' center, where they got their real education, the one
the Republic of Luna demanded. After about fifteen years of
this, forty percent of them would actually learn to read.
Imagine that.
So I was window dressing for the tourists. It was this
argument that Mayor Dillon and the town council finally used to
persuade me to take the job. That, and the assurance that the
parents didn't really care what we studied during the morning
classes, but that, by and large, Texans were more concerned
than the outside population that their children learn "readin',
writin', and cipherin'." The quaintness of this notion appealed
to me.
To tell you the truth, after the first month, when I
frequently thought the little bastards were going to drive me
crazy, I was hooked. For years I'd complained to anyone I could
make hold still long enough to listen that the world was going
to hell, and lack of literacy was the cause. A logical position
for a print journalist to take. Here was my chance to make some
small contribution of my own.
Through trial and error I learned that it's not hard to
teach children to read. Trial? Before I developed my system I
found many a frog in my desk, felt many a spitball on the back
of my neck. As for error, I made plenty of them, the first and
most basic being my notion that simply exposing them to great
literature would give them the love I've always felt for words.
It's more complicated than that, and I'm sure I spent a lot of
time reinventing the wheel. But what finally worked was a
combination of old methods and new, of discipline and a sense
of fun, punishment and reward. I don't hold with the idea that
anything that can't be made to seem like a party isn't worth
learning, but I don't believe in beating it into them, either.
And here's an astonishing thing: I could have beat them. I had
a hickory switch hanging on the wall, and was authorized to use
it. I found myself head of one of the few schools for several
hundred years where corporal punishment was allowed. The
parents supported it, Texans not being a bunch to hold much
with newfangled or fuzzy-headed notions, and the Luna Board of
Education had to swallow hard, as well, because it was part of
a research project sanctioned by the CC and the Antiquities
Board.
I'm sure the final results of that study will be skewed,
because I didn't use the switch, beyond once in the early days
to establish that I would, if pushed far enough.
Like so much in Texas, it was a lot of work for a result
most Lunarians would feel wasn't worth the effort in the first
place. Ask any educator today and he'll tell you that reading
is not a skill of any particular use in the modern age. If you
can learn to speak and to listen, you're fine; machines will
handle the rest for you. As for math . . . math? You mean you
can really figure out what those numbers add up to, in your
head? An interesting parlor trick, nothing more.
#
"All right, Mark," I said. "Let's see how you handle it."
The tow-headed sixth-grader picked up the deck and held it
with his index finger along the top, his thumb pressing down on
the middle, and the other three fingers curled beneath the
cards. Awkwardly, he dealt in a circle, laying one piece of
pasteboard before each of the five other advanced students
gathered around my desk, and one before me. He was dealing
straight from the top of the deck. You gotta crawl before you
can run.
Hey, you teach what you're good at, right?
"That's not bad. Now what do we call that, class?"
"The mechanic's grip, Miss Johnson," they chimed in.
"Very good. Now you try it, Christine."
Each of them had a shot at it. Many of the hands were
simply too small to properly handle the cards, but they all
tried their best. One of them, a dark-haired lovely named
Elise, seemed to me to have the makings. I gathered the cards
up and shuffled them idly in my hands.
"Now that you've learned it . . . forget it." There was a
chorus of surprise, and I held up one hand. "Think about it. If
you see someone using this grip, what do you know? Elise?"
"That they're probably cheating, Miss Johnson."
"No probably about it, dear. That's why you can't let them
see you using it. When you've done it long enough, you'll
develop your own variation that doesn't look like the grip, but
works just as well. Tomorrow I'll show you a few. Class
dismissed."
They pleaded with me to let them stay just a little
longer. I finally relented and told them "just this once," then
had one of them shuffle the cards and pick out the ace of
spades and put it on top of the deck. I dealt them each a hand
of fivecard draw.
"Now. William, you have a full house, aces and eights." He
turned his cards over and, by golly, teacher was right. I went
around the circle, naming each hand, and then turned over the
top card on the deck in my hand and showed them it was still
the ace of spades.
"I can't believe it, Miss Johnson," Elise said. "I was
watching real close, and I didn't see you dealing seconds."
"Honey, if I wanted to, I could deal seconds all day right
under your nose. But you're right. I wasn't this time."
"Then how did you do it?"
"A cold deck, students, is the best way if you can manage
it, if people are really watching the deal. That way, you only
have to make the one move and then you deal perfectly
straight." I showed them the original deck in my lap, then got
up and started herding them toward the door.
"Preparation, children, preparation in all things. Now for
the pupils who finish the next four chapters of A Tale of Two
Cities by class time tomorrow, we'll start learning the injog.
I think you'll like that one. Skedaddle, now. Dinner will be on
the table and your parents are waiting."
I watched them scramble out into the sunshine, then went
around straightening the desks and erasing the blackboard and
putting papers away in my desk. When it all looked tidy I got
my straw hat from the rack and stepped out onto the porch,
closing the door behind me. Brenda was sitting there, her back
against the wall, grinning up at me.
"Good to see you, Brenda," I said. "What are you doing
here?"
"Same as always. Taking notes." She got up and dusted the
seat of her pants. "I thought I might write a story about
teachers corrupting youth. How's that sound?"
"You'll never sell it to Walter unless it has sex in it.
As for the local paper, I don't think the editor would be
interested." She was looking me up and down. She shook her
head.
"They told me I'd find you here. They told me you were the
schoolteacher. I told them they had to be lying. Hildy . . .
what in the world?"
I twirled in front of her. She was grinning, and I found I
was, too. It had been quite some time since the day of my
houseraising, and it was very good to see her. I laughed, put
my arms around her, and hugged her tight. My face was buried in
the ersatz leather of her buckskinfringed Annie Oakley outfit,
which came complete with ersatz shootin' iron.
"You look . . . real good," I said, then touched the
fringe and the lapels so she'd think I meant her clothes. The
look in her eye told me she wasn't so easily fooled as she used
to be.
"Are you happy, Hildy?" she asked.
"Yes. Believe it or not, I am."
We stood there awkwardly for a moment, hands on each
other's shoulders, then I broke away and wiped the corner of
one eye with a gloved fingertip.
"Well, have you had dinner yet?" I said, brightly. "Care
to join me?"
#
As we walked down Congress Street we talked of the
inconsequential things people do after a separation: common
friends, small events, minor ups and downs. I waved to most of
the people on the street and all the owners of the shops we
passed, stopping to chat with a few and introducing them to
Brenda. We went by the butcher shop, the cobbler, the bakery,
the laundry, and soon came to Foo's Celestial Peace Chinese
Restaurant, where I pushed open the door to the sound of a
tinkling bell. Foo came hurrying over, clad in the loose black
pants and blue pyjama top traditional among Chinese of that
era, his pigtail bobbing as he bowed repeatedly. I bowed back
and introduced him to Brenda who, after a quick glance at me,
bowed as well. He fussed us over to my usual table and held our
chairs for us and soon we were pouring green tea into tiny
cups.
If mankind ever reaches Alpha Centauri and lands on a
habitable planet there, the first thing they'll see when they
open the door of the ship is a Chinese restaurant. I knew of
six of them in West Texas, a place not noted for dining out. In
New Austin you could get a decent steak at the Alamo, passable
barbecue at a smokehouse a quarter mile out of town, and Mrs.
Riley at the boarding house produced a good bowl of chili--not
the equal of mine, you understand, but okay. Those three, and
Foo's were it as far as a sit-down meal in New Austin. And if
you wanted tablecloths and quality cooking, you went to Foo's.
I ate there almost every day.
"Try the Moo Goo Gai Pan," I said to Brenda, recalling her
lack of experience at anything but traditional Lunarian food.
"It's a sort of--"
"I've had it," she said. "I've learned a little since I
saw you last. I've eaten Chinese, oh, half a dozen times."
"I'm impressed."
"Don't they have a menu?"
"Foo doesn't like them. He has a sort of psychological
method of matching the food to the customer. He'll have you
spotted for a greenhorn, and he won't bring you anything too
challenging. I know how to handle him."
"You don't have to be so protective of me, Hildy."
I reached over and touched her hand.
"I can see you've grown, Brenda. It's in your face, and
your bearing. But trust me on this one, hon. The Chinese eat
some things you don't even want to know about."
Foo came back with bowls of rice and his famous
hot-and-sour soup, and I dickered with him for a while, talking
him out of Chow Mein for Brenda and convincing him I wanted the
Hunan Beef again, even though I'd had it only three weeks ago.
He bustled off to the kitchen, pausing to accept compliments
from two of the other diners in the small room. There was a
beautiful dragon embroidered on the back of his shirt.
"You go through this often?" Brenda asked.
"Every day. I like it, Brenda. Remember what you told me
about having friends? I have friends here. I'm a part of the
community."
She nodded, and decided not to talk about it anymore. She
tasted the soup, loved it, and we talked about that, and then
moved into phase two of the reunion minuet, reminiscences about
the good old days. Not that the days were that long ago--it was
still less than a year since I'd first met her--but to me it
seemed like a past life. We laughed about the Grand Flack in
his little shrine and I got her howling by telling her about
Walter's buttons popping off his riverboat gambler vest, and
she told me scandalous things about some of my former
colleagues.
The food was set down before us and Brenda searched in
vain for her fork. She saw me with the chopsticks, gamely
picked hers up and promptly dropped a hunk of meat in her lap.
"Foo," I called. "We need a fork over here."
"No no no no," he said, shuffling over and shaking a
finger at us. "Very sorry, Hildy, but this chinee restaurant.
No have fork."
"I'm vely solly, too," I said, putting my napkin on the
table. "But no forkee, no eatee." I started to get up.
He scowled at us, gestured for me to sit down, and hurried
away.
"You didn't have to do that," Brenda whispered, leaning
over the table. I shushed her, and we waited until Foo
returned, elaborately polishing a silver fork, placing it
carefully beside her plate.
"And Foo," I said. "you can knock off the number-one-son
bit. Brenda is a tourist, but she's my friend, too."
He looked sour for a moment, then smiled and relaxed.
"Okay, Hildy," he said. "Watch that beef, now. I've got
the fire department on red alert. Nice meeting you, Brenda."
She watched him into the kitchen, then picked up her fork and
spoke around a mouthful of food.
"What I can't understand is why people want to live that
way."
"What way it that?"
"You know. Acting silly. He could run a restaurant on the
outside and not have to talk funny to do it."
"He doesn't have to talk funny to do it here, Brenda. The
management doesn't demand playacting, only costuming. He does
it because it amuses him. Foo's only half Chinese, for that
matter. He told me he doesn't look much more Oriental, without
surgery, than I do. But he loves cooking and he's good at it.
And he likes it here."
"I guess I just don't get it."
"Think of it as a twenty-four-hour-a-day costume party."
"I still don't . . . I mean, what would drive someone to
come live here? I get the feeding most of 'em couldn't make it
on . . ." She stopped, and turned red. "Sorry, Hildy."
"No need to be. You're not really wrong. A lot of people
live in here because they couldn't make it outside. Call them
losers, if you want. Walking wounded, a lot of them. I like
them. There's not so much pressure in here. Others, they were
doing okay outside, but they didn't like it. They come and go,
too; it's not a life sentence. I know some people, they live
here for a year or two to recharge their batteries. Sometimes
it's between careers."
"Is that why you're here?"
"One thing you don't do in here, Brenda, is ask people why
they came. They volunteer it if they want."
"I keep sticking my foot in my mouth."
"Don't worry about it, with me. I just thought I'd tell
you, so you don't ask anybody else. To answer your question . .
. I don't know. I thought that at first. Now . . . I don't
know."
She looked at me for a while, then at my plate. She
gestured with her fork.
"That looks good. Mind if I have a bite?"
I let her, then got up myself to get her a glass of water
from the back. Foo's Hunan Beef is the only thing in Texas that
can rival my fivealarm chili.
#
"So Walter screamed and hollered about you for two or
three days," Brenda said. "We all tried to stay out of his way,
but he'd come storming through the newsroom shouting about one
thing or another, and we all knew what he was really mad about
was you."
"The newsroom? That sounds serious."
"It got worse than that."
We had finished our meal and ordered two beers and Brenda
had regaled me with more stories about her exploits in the
journalistic wars. She certainly led an exciting life. I didn't
have many stories to tell in return, just amusing little
fillers about funny things this or that pupil had said in class
or the tale of Mayor Dillon stumbling out of the Alamo and into
the horse trough early one morning. Her eyes glazed a little at
these times but she kept smiling gamely. Mostly I shut up and
let her rattle on.
"He started calling us in one at a time," she said,
emptying her beer glass and shaking her head when Foo started
over with the pitcher. "He always said it was about something
else, but it always got back to you and what a rotten thing
you'd done to him and did we have any ideas on how to get you
back. He'd always be depressed when we left. We all started
making up excuses to get out of those sessions.
"Then he got to where he'd bite your head off if your name
was mentioned in his presence. So we all stopped talking about
you to him. That's where it stands now."
"I'd been thinking about dropping in on him," I said. "Old
time's sake, you know."
She frowned. "I don't think it's a good idea, yet. Give it
a few more months. Unless you plan to go back on the job." She
raised her eyebrows and I shook my head, and she said no more
about what I'd been presuming was the purpose of her trip.
Foo brought a little tray with fortune cookies and the
check. Brenda opened hers while I was putting money on the
tray.
"'A new love will brighten your life,'" she read. She
looked up at me and smiled. "I'm afraid I wouldn't have time
for it. Aren't you going to open yours?"
"Foo writes them, Brenda. What that one means is he wants
to make pecker tracks on your mustache brush."
"What?"
"He finds you sexually attractive and would like to have
intercourse."
She looked at me in disbelief, then picked up my fortune
cookie and broke it open. She glanced at the message and then
stood. Foo came hurrying over and helped us out of our chairs
and handed us our hats and bowed us all the way to the door.
Outside, Brenda glanced at her thumbnail.
"I'll have to get going now, Hildy, but--" She slapped
herself on the forehead. "I almost forgot the main reason I
came to see you. What are your plans for the Bicentennial?"
"The . . . that's right, that's coming up in . . ."
"Four days. It's only the biggest story for the last two
weeks."
"We don't follow the news much in here. Let's see, I heard
the Baptist Church is planing some sort of barbecue and there's
going to be a street fair. Fireworks after dark. People should
be coming from miles around. Ought to be fun. You want to
come?"
"Frankly, Hildy, I'd rather watch cement dry. Not to
mention having to wear these damn clothes." She hitched at her
crotch. "And I'll bet these are comfortable compared to the
stuff you're wearing."
"You don't know the half of it. But you get used to
things. I don't mind it anymore."
"Live and let live. Anyway, Liz and I, and maybe Cricket,
were thinking of having a picnic and camping out before the big
show in Armstrong Park. They're having some real fireworks
there."
"I don't think I could face the crowds, Brenda."
"That's okay, Liz knows the pyrotechs and she can get us a
pass into the safety zone, out around Delambre. It ought to be
a great view from there. It'll be fun; what'd'ya say?"
I hesitated. In truth, it did sound like fun, but I was
increasingly reluctant to leave the safe haven of the
disneyland these days.
"Of course, some of those shells are going to be mighty
big," she nudged. "It might be dangerous."
I punched her on the shoulder. "I'll bring some fried
chicken," I said, and then I hugged her again. She was starting
off when I called her name.
"You're going to make me ask you, aren't you?" I said.
"Ask me what?"
"What it said in the goddam fortune cookie."
"Oh, that's a funny thing," she said with a smile. "Yours
said exactly the same thing mine did."
#
I went around the corner of Old Spanish Trail, past the
sheriff's office and the jailhouse and came to a small shop
with a plate glass window and gold leaf lettering that read The
New Austin Texian. I opened the front door of West Texas'
finest--and only--twice-weekly newspaper without knocking, then
through the swinging gate that separated the newsroom from the
public area where subscriptions were sold and classified ads
taken, pulled out the swivel chair from the big wooden
cubbyhole desk, and sat down.
And why shouldn't I? I was the editor, publisher, and
chief reporter for the Texian, which had been serving West
Texas proudly for almost six months. So Walter was right, in
the end; I really couldn't stay out of the news game.
We published like clockwork, every Wednesday and Saturday,
sometimes as many as four pages. Through hard work, astute
reporting, trenchant editorials, and the fact that we were the
only paper in the disney, we'd built circulation to almost a
thousand copies per edition. Watch us grow!
The Texian existed because I'd run out of things to do
during the long afternoons. Madness might still be lurking, and
it seemed better to keep busy. Who could tell if it helped?
While the impetus for the paper was fear of suicide, its
midwife had been a loan from the bank in Lonesome Dove, which I
figured to have paid off shortly after the Tricentennial. At a
penny a copy it was going to take a while. If not for my salary
as a teacher I'd have trouble keeping beans on the table
without dipping into my outside-world savings, which I was
determined not to do.
The loan had paid for the office rent, the desk with
sticky drawers built by a journeyman carpenter over in
Whiz-bang (buy Texan, you all!), supplies from--where
else?--Pennsylvania, and it paid the salaries of my two
employees at first, until I started turning enough revenue. It
also paid for the press itself, through a clever deal worked
out by Freddie the Ferret, our local pettifogger, who had
ferreted out a little-known by-law of the Antiquities Board and
then bamboozled them into calling the Texian a "cultural
asset," eligible for some breaks under the arcane accounting
used to convert Texas play money into real Lunarian gelt. Those
clever Dutchmen in the Keystone Disney could have built the
press, but at a price roughly equal to the Gross Disneyland
Product of West Texas for the next five years.
So instead technology sprang to the rescue. The very day
the ruling came through I was the proud owner of a
cast-iron-and-brass reproduction of a 1885 Model Columbian
Handpress, one of the most outrageous machines ever built,
surmounted by a proud American Eagle, authentic right down to
the patent numbers stamped into its frame. It took less time to
build it than to truck it to my door and muscle it into place.
Ain't modern science wonderful?
"Afternoon, Hildy," said Huck, my pressman. He was a gawky
youth, about nineteen, good with his hands and not particularly
bright. He'd spent most of his life here and had no desire to
leave. He was wonderfully anxious to learn a trade so useless
it would fit him for no other life. He worked like a donkey far
into Tuesday and Friday nights to get the morning edition set
and printed, then jumped on his horse and rode to Lonesome Dove
and Whiz-bang to deliver them before dawn. He couldn't read,
but could set type at three times my poor speed, and was always
covered in ink up to his elbows. He only became fumble-fingered
in the presence of my other employee, Miss Charity, who could
read just about anything but the lovelorn expression on Huck's
face. Ah, the joys of office romance.
"I got that Bicentennial schedule set, Hildy," he said.
"Did you want that on the front page?"
"Left hand column, I think, Huck."
"That's where I put her, all right."
"Let's see it."
He brought me a test sheet, still smelling of printer's
ink, one of the sweetest smells in the world. I looked at the
flag/colophon and folio line:
(Imagine a 19th century newspaper masthead)
As always, I felt a tug of pride at the sight of it. I
never changed the weather forecast; it seemed a reasonable
prediction even when it turned out to be wrong. The date was
always the same because you couldn't put the real date on it,
and because March 6 suited me. Nobody seemed to mind.
Huck had faithfully set the schedule of events for the
upcoming celebration along the left margin, leaving room for a
head, a bank, and a bar line, in keeping with the old style I'd
established. We both pored over it, not reading but looking for
letters that printed too light or dark, or blots from too much
inking, a problem we were slowly licking. Only then did I study
it for visual effect and we agreed the new boldface font looked
good. Finally, third time through, I actually read it. And god
help you if you misspelt a word; Huck would set it as is.
"How about a skyline, Huck? 'Special Bicentennial Issue,'
something like that. What do you think? Too modern?"
"Shoot, no, Hildy. Charity said she'd like to start up a
roto-something but she said you'd think it was too modern."
"Rotogravure, and I don't give a hoot about modern, but
that's big-city stuff, and it'd be too dang expensive right
now. If she had her way she'd have me buying a four-color web."
"Ain't she something?" he said.
"Huck, have you thought about learning to read?" It's not
something I would normally have asked, but I was concerned
about him, he was such a likable goof. I couldn't see Charity
ever hooking up with an illit.
"If I did, then I couldn't ask Miss Charity to read to me,
could I?" he asked, reasonably. "Besides, I'm picking up stuff
here and there, I watch when she reads. I know a bunch of words
now." So maybe there was method in his madness, and love would
conquer all.
I left him to his job case and composing stick. Taking a
sheet of paper and a pen from my center desk drawer, I dipped
the nib in the inkwell and began to write, printing in block
letters.
#
HEAD: Prize-winning Journalist Visits Town
STORY: The streets of New Austin were recently
graced by the presence of Miss Brenda Starr, winner of this
year's Pulitzer Prize for her reporting of the late
unpleasantness within the Latitudinarian Church in King City.
Miss Starr is employed by the News N----e, a daily paper in
that town. Many a young bachelor's head was turned as Miss
Starr promenaded Congress Street and dined on the excellent
food at Foo's Celestial Peace with this reporter. According to
our sources, love might be in the air for the comely young
scribe, so to the eligible gents out there, be on the lookout
for her return! H.J.
(CHARITY: run this in the "MONSTER")
#
The "Gila Monster," named for a vicious little reptile
that lurks under rocks and presumably hears everything, was my
very own gossip column, and by far the most eagerly-awaited
part of the paper. Not for little fillers like the above, but
for the really nasty tittles so often tattled there. It's true
that everyone in a small town knows what everyone else is
doing, but they don't all know it at the same time. There is a
window of opportunity between the event and the dissemination,
even as the news is spreading at about the speed of sound, that
a top-notch reporter can exploit.
I'm not talking of myself. I'd begun the "Monster," but
Charity was the venom in the critter's tooth. My teaching tied
me down too much, I never had the time to range around getting
the scent. Charity never seemed to sleep. She lived and
breathed news. You could rely on her for two scandals per week,
really remarkable when you consider that she didn't drink and
hardly ever visited the Alamo, that ever-flowing gusher of
gossip, that Delphi of Dirt.
The correspondent herself breezed into the office around
sundown, just back from Whiz-bang, a town that aspired to
become our freshly-minted Disneyland Capital in a referendum to
be held in three month's time, with a good story about bribery
and barratry amongst our elected representatives, a quite juicy
one that would have prompted me to tear up the front page if I
hadn't owned the paper and known what it would cost me. The
economic facts of the Texian were quite simply that I'd sell as
many copies with or without that particular story, since
everyone in Texas read it anyway, so I had to tell her I'd be
running it below the fold. I mollified her somewhat with a
promise of a two-column head, and a by-line.
Sweeteners like that were necessary because of the second
bit of news she brought in, of a job offer from the Daily
Planet, a good second-string pad in Arkytown. She basked in the
glow of our admiration, oblivious to my chagrin at the thought
of losing her, and then announced she wasn't about to leave the
Texian until she could go to a really good newspad, like the
Nipple. Charity was about 350 picas tall, according to
Huck--call it sixtenths of a Brenda, and still growing--but
made up for her size with enthusiasm and energy. She was cute
as lace bloomers, and so self-involved as to notice neither
Huck's tongue hanging out when she was around nor my choked
cough at her reference to my old place of employment. Sounds
awful, I know, but somehow you forgave her. If she knew you
were hurting, no one could have been more concerned.
I went around lighting the kerosene lamps as she chattered
on, Huck continuing to set type while seldom taking his eyes
from her. Typos would be multiplying, but I had to put up with
it.
When I left it was full dark with a moon on the rise.
Charity had fallen asleep in her chair and Huck was still
stolidly pulling the handle on the magnificent old Columbian.
The town was quiet but for the chirping of crickets and the
tinkle of the piano around the corner in the Alamo. My hands
were stained with ink and my back hurt and the first breath of
cool night air only served to remind me how sweaty I was around
the collar and under the arms and . . . well, you know. I
mounted a lantern on the front of my bicycle, swung aboard and,
with a tinkle of the bell which brought twin howls of
desolation from the firehouse, I started pedaling the long road
home.
How much happiness could one person stand?
#
I do believe in God, I do, I do, I do, because so many
times in my life I've seen that He's out there, watching,
keeping score. When you've just about reached a Zen state of
pure acceptance--and the beauty of that night combined with the
pleasant aches of work well-done and friends wellmet and even
the little fillip of two dogs you knew would be waiting for you
the next morning . . . when that state approaches He sends a
little rock down to fall in the road of your life.
This was a literal rock, and I hit it just outside of town
and it caused two spokes to break and the rim to buckle on my
front wheel. I just missed a painful tumble into a patch of
cactus. That was God again: it would have been too much, this
was just to serve as a reminder.
I thought about returning to town and waking the
blacksmith, who I know would have been happy to work on the
newfangled invention that was the talk of the town. But he'd be
long abed, with his good wife and three children, and I decided
not to bother him. I left it there beside the road. You can't
steal a thing like that in a small town, how would you explain
riding around on Hildy's bike? I walked the rest of the way and
arrived not depressed, not really out of sorts, just a little
deflated.
I had stepped onto the front porch before the lamplight
revealed a man sitting in the rocker there, not ten feet away
from me.
"Goodness," I said. Well, I'd taken to talking like that.
"You gave me a start." I was a little nervous, but not
frightened. Rape is rare, not unknown, in Luna, but in Texas .
. .? He'd have to be a fool. All the exits are too well
controlled, and hanging is legal. I held the lantern up to get
a better look at him.
He was a dapper fellow, about my height, with a nice face,
twinkling eyes, a mustache. He wore a tweed double-breasted
suit with a high wing collar and red silk cravat. On his feet
were black and white canvas and leather Balmorals. A cane and a
derby hat rested on the floor beside him. I didn't think I'd
ever seen him before, but there was something in the way he
sat.
"How are you, Hildy?" he said. "Working late again?"
"That's either Cricket, or her identical twin brother," I
said. "What have you done to yourself?"
"Well, I already had the mustache and I thought, 'What the
hell?'"
=*= =*= =*= =*=
And what happened to the girl we last saw speaking to an
inhuman golem in a padded cell off the Leystrasse, hearing
things no human ear was meant to hear, her insides all
atremble? How came this quivering wreck, freshly tossed by the
twin tempests of another botched suicide attempt and the CC's
ham-fisted attempt to "cure" her, to her present tranquility?
How did the young Modern butterfly with the ragged wings
retromorphose into the plain but outwardly-stable Victorian
caterpillar?
She did it one day at a time.
As I had hinted to Brenda, no matter how much the
governing boards might say concerning the functions of the
historical disneys, an unexpected and unmentioned side benefit
they had provided was to work as sanctuaries--all right, as
very big unfenced asylums--for the societally and mentally
shell-shocked. In Texas and the other places like it, we could
cease our unfruitful baying at our several lunatic moons and,
without therapy per se, retire to a quieter, gentler time.
Living there was therapy in itself. For some, the prescription
would have to be carried on forever; for others, an occasional
dose was enough. It wasn't established yet which applied to me.
The Texian had been a big step for me, and lo, I found it
good. I was prevailed on to become a teacher, and that, too,
was good. Learning to not only have friends, but to open up to
them, to understand that a true friend wanted to hear my
problems, my hopes and my fears, didn't happen overnight and
still wasn't an accomplished fact, but I was getting there. The
important thing was I was creating my new world one brick at a
time, and so far, it was good.
It was also, compared to my old life, boring as hell. Not
to me, you understand; I found every new crayon drawing by one
of my students an object of amazement. Each new trivial news
story dug up by Charity made me as proud as if she were my own
daughter. Publishing the Texian was so much more satisfying
than working at the Nipple that I wondered how I'd labored
there so long. It's just that, to an outsider, the attraction
was a little hard to explain. Brenda found it all very dull. I
fully expected Cricket to, as well. You may agree with them.
This is why I've omitted almost seven months that could really
be of interest only to my therapist, if I had one.
Which all makes it sound as if I were well and truly
cured. And if I was, how come I still woke up two or three
times a week in the empty hours before dawn, drenched in sweat,
heart hammering, a scream on my lips?
#
"Why in heaven's name are you sitting out here?" I asked
him. "It's getting chilly. Why didn't you go inside?"
He just looked blankly at me, as if I'd said something
foolish. To someone who hadn't spent time in Texas, I suppose
it was. So I opened the door, showing him it hadn't been
locked. You can bet he had never tried it himself.
I struck a lucifer and went around the room lighting the
kerosene lamps, then opened the door of the stove and lit the
pile of pine shavings there. I added kindling until I had a
small, hot fire, then filled the coffee pot from the brass
spigot at the bottom of the tall ceramic water cooler and set
it on the stove to boil. Cricket watched all these operations
with interest, sitting at the table in one of my two kitchen
chairs. His hat was on the table, but he still held on to his
cane.
I scooped coffee beans from the glass jar and put them in
the grinder and started cranking it by hand. The room filled
with the smell. When I had the right grind I dumped it into the
basket and put it into the pot. Then I got a plate and the half
of an apple pie sitting on the counter, cut him a huge slice,
and set it before him with a fork and napkin. Only then did I
sit down across from him, remove my hat, and put it next to
his.
He looked down at the pie as if curious as to the purpose
and meaning of such a thing, hesitantly picked up his fork, and
ate a bite. He looked all around the cabin again.
"This is nice," he said. "Homey-like."
"Rustic," I suggested. "Plain. Pioneering. Boeotian."
"Texan," he summed up. He gestured with his fork. "Good
pie."
"Wait'll you taste the coffee."
"I'm sure it'll be first-rate." He gestured again, this
time at the room. "Brenda said you needed help, but I never
imagined this."
"She didn't say that."
"No. What she said was, 'Hildy's smiling at children, and
teaching them her card tricks.' I knew I had to get here as
fast as I could."
#
I can imagine his alarm. But why shouldn't Hildy smile at
children? More important, why had she spent so much time not
smiling at anyone? But the business about the cards was sure to
worry Cricket. I never taught anyone my tricks.
And now for the first of several digression . . .
I can't simply gloss over those missing months with the
explanation that you wouldn't be interested. You wouldn't, but
certain things did happen, mostly of a negative nature, to get
me from the CC to the kitchen table with Cricket, and it's
worth relating a few of them to give a feel for my personal
odyssey during that time.
What I did was use my weekends on a Quest.
Every Saturday I went to the Visitors Center and there I
shed my secret identity as a mildmannered reporter to become a
penny-ante Diogenes, searching endlessly for an honest game. So
far all I'd found were endless variations of the mechanic's
grip, but I was undaunted. Look in the Yellow Files under
Philosophers, Professional, and you'll get a printout longer
than Brenda's arm. Don't even try Counselors or Therapists
unless you have a wheelbarrow to cart away the paper. But
that's what I was doing. Once out in the real world again, I
spent my Saturdays sampling the various ways other people had
found to get through the day, and the next day, and the next
day.
Of the major schools of thought, of the modern or trendy,
I already knew a lot, and many of them I felt could be
dispensed with. No need to attend a Flackite pep rally, for
instance. So I began with the classic cons.
I've already said I'm a cynic. In spite of it, I made my
best attempt to give each and every guru his day in court. But
with the best will in the world it is impossible for me to
present the final results as anything other than a short series
of comedy blackouts. And that's how I spent my Saturdays.
On Sundays, I went to church.
#
It's not really proper to start supper with dessert, but
in Texas one is expected to put some food in front of a guest
within a few minutes of his crossing your threshold. The pie
was the best thing close at hand. But I soon had a bowl of
chili and a plate of cornbread in front of him. He dug in, and
didn't seem to mind the sweat that soon beaded his forehead.
"I thought you'd ride up on a horse," he said. "I kept
listening for it. You surprised me, coming on foot."
"You have any idea how much up-keep there is on a horse?"
"Not the foggiest."
"A lot, trust me. I ride a bicycle. I've got the finest
Dursley Pedersen in Texas, with pneumatic tyres."
"So where is it?" He reached for the pitcher and poured
himself another glass of water, something everyone does when
eating my chili.
"Had a little accident. Were you waiting long?"
"About an hour. I checked the schoolhouse but nobody was
there."
"I'm only there mornings. I have another job." I got a
copy of tomorrow's Texian and handed it to him. He looked at
the colophon, then at me, and started scanning it without
comment.
"How's your daughter doing? Lisa?"
"She's fine. Only she wants to be called Buster now. Don't
ask me why."
"They go through stages like that. My students do, anyway.
I did."
"So did I."
"Last time you said she was into that father thing. Is she
still?"
He made a gesture that took in his new body, and shrugged.
"What do you think?"
#
My researches turned up one listing that seemed an
appropriate place to begin. This fellow was the only living
practitioner of his craft, he vas ze zpitting image of Zigmunt
Frrreud, unt he zpoke viz an aggzent zat zounded zomezing like
zis. Freudian psychotherapy is not precisely debunked, of
course, many schools use it as a foundation, merely throwing
out this or that tenet since found to be based more on Mr.
Freud's own hang-ups than any universal human condition.
How would a strict Freudian handle the realities of Lunar
society? I wondered. This is how:
Ziggy had me recline on a lovely couch in an office that
would have put Walter's to shame. He asked me what seemed to be
the problem, and I talked for about ten minutes with him taking
notes behind me. Then I stopped.
"Very interesting," he said, after a moment. He asked me
about my relationship with my mother, and that was good for
another half hour of talk on my part. Then I stopped.
"Very interesting," he said, after an even longer pause. I
could hear his pen scratching on his note pad.
"So what do you think, doc?" I asked, turning to crane my
neck at him. "Is there any hope for me?"
"I zink," he zaid, and that's enough of zat, "that you
present a suitable case for therapy."
"So what's my problem?"
"It's far too early to tell. I'm struck by the incident
you related between you and your mother when you were, what . .
. fourteen? When she brought home the new lover you did not
approve of."
"I didn't approve of much of anything about her at that
time. Plus, he was a jerk. He stole things from us."
"Do you ever dream of him? Perhaps this theft you worry
about was a symbolic one."
"Could be. I seem to remember he stole Callie's best
symbolic china service and my symbolic guitar."
"Your hostility aimed at me, a father figure, might be
simply transferred from your rage toward your absent father."
"My what?"
"The new lover . . . yes, it could be the real feeling you
were masking was resentment at him for possessing a penis."
"I was a boy at the time."
"Even more interesting. And since then you've gone so far
as to have yourself castrated . . . yes, yes, there is much
here worth looking into."
"How long do you think it will take?"
"I would anticipate excellent progress in . . . three to
five years."
"Actually, no," I said. "I don't think I have any hope of
curing you in that little time. So long, doc, it's been great."
"You still have ten minutes of your hour. I bill by the
hour."
"If you had any sense, you'd bill by the month. In
advance."
#
"Of course, that wasn't the only reason I got the Change,"
Cricket said. "I'd been thinking about it for a while, and I
thought I might as well see what it's like."
I was clearing the table while he relaxed with a glass of
wine--the Imbrium '22, a good vintage, poured into a bottle
labeled "Whiz-Bang Red" and smuggled past the anachronism
checkers. It was a common practice in Texas, where everyone
agreed authenticity could be carried too far.
"You mean this is your first time . . .?"
"I'm younger than you are," he said. "You keep forgetting
that."
"You're right. How's it working out? Do you mind if I
clean up?"
"Go ahead. I'm liking it all right. With a little
practice, I might even get good at it. Still feels funny,
though. I'd like to meet the guy that invented testicles. What
a joker."
"They do seem sort of like a preliminary design, don't
they?" I unfastened my skirt and folded it, then sat at the
little table with the wavy mirror I used for dressing, make-up,
and ablutions, and picked up my button hook. "Should I still be
calling you Cricket? It's not a real masculine name."
He was watching me struggling to un-hook the buttons on my
shoes, which was understandable, as it is an unlikely process
to one raised in an environment of bare feet or slip-on
footwear. Or at least I thought that was what he was watching.
Then I wondered if it was my knickers. They're nothing special:
cotton, baggy, with elastic at mid-calf. But they have cute
little pink ribbons and bows. This raised an interesting
possibility.
"I haven't changed it," he said. "But Lisa-Buster, dammit,
wants me to."
"Yeah? She could call you Jiminy." I had unbuttoned my
shirtwaist blouse and laid it on the skirt. I doffed the
bloomers and was working on the buttons of the
combinations--another loose cotton item fashion has happily
forgotten--before I looked up and had to laugh at the
expression on his face.
"I hit it, didn't I?" I said.
"You did, but I won't answer to it. I'm considering Jim,
or maybe Jimmy, but . . . what you said, that's right out.
What's wrong with Cricket for a man, anyway?"
"Not a thing. I'll continue to call you Cricket." I
stepped out of the combinations and tossed them aside.
"Jesus, Hildy!" Cricket exploded. "How long does it take
you to get out of all that stuff?"
"Not nearly as long as it takes to put it on. I'm never
quite sure I have it all in the right order."
"That's a corset, isn't it?"
"That's right." Actually, he was almost right. We'd gotten
down to the best items by now, no more cotton. The thing he was
staring at could be bought--had been bought--in a specialty
shop on the Leystrasse catering to people with a particular
taste formerly common, now rare, and was not to be confused
with the steel, whalebone, starch and canvas contraptions
Victorian women tortured themselves with. It had elastic in it,
and there the resemblance ended. It was pink and had frills
around the edges and black laces in back. I pulled the pin
holding my hair up, shook my head to let it fall. "Actually,
you can help me with it. Could you loosen the laces for me?" I
waited, then felt his hands fumbling with them.
"How do you handle this in the morning?" he griped.
"I have a girl come in." But not really. What I did was
run my finger down the pressure seams in front and bingo. So if
removing it would have been as easy as that--and it would have
been--why ask for help? You're way ahead of me, aren't you.
"I have to view this as pathology," he said, sitting back
down as I forced the still-tight garment down over my hips and
added it to the pile. "How did you ever get into all this
foolishness?"
I didn't tell him, but it was one piece at a time. The
Board didn't care what you wore under your clothes as long as
you looked authentic on the outside. But I'd grown interested
in the question all women ask when they see the things their
grandmothers wore: how the hell did they do it?
I don't have a magic answer. I've never minded heat; I
grew up in the Jurassic Era, Texas was a breeze compared to the
weather brontos liked. The real corset, which I tried once, was
too much. The rest wasn't so bad, once you got used to it.
So how I did it was easy. As to why . . . I don't know. I
liked the feeling of getting into all that stuff in the
morning. It felt like becoming someone else, which seemed a
good idea since the self I'd been lately kept doing foolish
things.
"It makes it easier to write for my paper if I dress for
the part," I finally told him.
"Yeah, what about this?" he said, brandishing the copy of
the Texian at me. He ran his finger down the columns. "'Farm
Report,' in which I'm pleased to learn that Mr. Watkins' brown
mare foaled Tuesday last, mother and daughter doing fine.
Imagine my relief. Or this, where you tell me the corn fields
up by Lonesome Dove will be in real trouble if they don't get
some rain by next week. Did it slip your mind that the
weather's on a schedule in here?"
"I never read it. That would be cheating."
"'Cheating,' she says. The only thing in here that sounds
like you is this Gila Monster column, at least that gets
nasty."
"I'm tired of being nasty."
"You're in even worse shape than I thought." He slapped
the paper, frowning as if it were unclean. "'Church News."
Church news, Hildy?"
"I go to church every Sunday."
#
He probably thought I meant the Baptist Church at the end
of Congress. I did go there from time to time, usually in the
evenings. The only thing Baptist about it was the sign out
front. It was actually non-denominational, non-sectarian . . .
non-religious, to tell the truth. No sermons were preached but
the singing was lots of fun.
Sunday mornings I went to real churches. It's still the
most popular sabbath, Jews and Muslims notwithstanding. I tried
them out as well.
I tried everybody out. Where possible I met with the
clergy as well as attending a service, seeking theological
explanations. Most were quite happy to talk to me. I
interviewed preachers, presbyters, vicars, mullahs, rabbis,
Lamas, primates, hierophants, pontiffs and matriarchs; sky
pilots from every heavenly air force I could locate. If they
didn't have a formal top banana or teacher I spoke with the
laity, the brethren, the monks. I swear, if three people ever
got together to sing hosannah and rub blue mud on their bodies
for the glory of anything, I rooted them out, ran them to
ground, and shook them by the lapels until they told me their
idea of the truth. Don't tell me your doubts, lord love you,
tell me something you believe in. Glory!
Surveys say sixty percent of Lunarians are atheist,
agnostic, or just too damn stupid or lazy ever to have harbored
an epistemological thought. You'd never know it by me. I began
to think I was the only person in Luna who didn't have an
elaborate, internally-logical theology--always (at least so
far) based on one or two premises that couldn't be proven.
Usually there was a book or body of writing or legends or myths
that one could take whole, precluding the necessity of figuring
it out for yourself. If that failed, there was always the route
of a New Revelation, and there'd been a passel of them, both
branching from established religions and springing full-blown
from nothing but the mind of some wild-eyed fellow who'd Seen
The Truth.
The drawback, for me, the common thread running through
all of them, the magic word that changed an interesting story
into the Will of God, was Faith. Don't get me wrong, I'm not
disparaging it. I tried to start with an open mind, no
preconceptions. I was open to the lightning bolt, if it chose
to strike me. I kept thinking that one day I'd look up and say
yes! That's it! But instead I just kept thinking, and quickly
thought my way right out the door.
Of the forty percent who claim membership in an organized
religion, the largest single group is the F.L.C.C.S. After
that, Christians or Christian-descended faiths, everything from
the Roman Catholics to groups numbering no more than a few
dozen. There are appreciable minorities of Jews, Buddhists,
Hindoos, Mormons, and Mahometans, some Sufis and Rosicrucians
and all the sects and off-shoots of each. Then there were
hundreds of really off-beat groups, such as the Barbie Colony
out in Gagarin where they all have themselves altered to look
exactly alike. There were people who worshipped the Invaders as
gods, a proposition I wasn't prepared to deny, but if so, so
what? All they'd demonstrated toward us so far was
indifference, and what's the use of an indifferent god? How
would a universe created by such a god be any different from
one where there was no god, or where God was dead? There were
people who believed that, too, that there had been a god but he
came down with something and didn't pull through. Or a group
that left that group who thought God wasn't dead, but in some
heavenly intensive care unit.
There were even people who worshipped the CC as a god. So
far I'd stayed away from them.
But my intention was to visit all the rest, if I lived
that long. So far my wanderings had been mostly through various
Christian sects, with every fourth Sunday devoted to what the
listings called Religions, Misc. Some of these were about as
misc. as a person could stand.
I had attended a Witches Black Mass, where we all took our
clothes off and a goat was sacrificed and we were smeared with
blood, which was even less fun than it sounds. I had sat in the
cheap seats in Temple Levana Israel and listened to a guy
reading in Hebrew, simultaneous translation provided for a
small donation. I had sloshed down wine and eaten pale
tasteless cookies which, I was informed, were the body and
blood of Christ, and if they were, I figured I'd eaten him up
to about the left knee. I could sing all the verses of Amazing
Grace and most of Onward, Christian Soldiers. Nights, I read
from various holy tracts; somewhere in there, I acquired a
subscription to The Watchtower, I still don't know how. I
learned the glories of glossolalia, going jibber-jabber
jibber-jabber right along with the rest of them, no
simultaneous translation available at any price, no way to do
it without feeling foolish.
These were only a few of my adventures; the list was long.
They could be best summarized in a visit I paid to one
congregation where, midway through the festivities, I was
handed a rattlesnake. Having no idea what I was supposed to do
with the creature, I grabbed its head and milked it of its
venom. No, no, no, they all cried. You're supposed to handle
it. What the fuck for? I cried back. Haven't you heard? These
suckers are dangerous. To which they had this to say: God will
protect you.
Well, why not? I just hadn't seen the harm in giving Him a
hand in the matter. I knew a little about rattlesnakes and I
hadn't seen a one that showed signs of listening to anybody.
And that was my problem. I always seemed to de-fang the serpent
of faith before it had a chance to canker.
Possibly this was good. But I still didn't have anything
else going.
#
Sourdough, shortly before his death, had given me a
beautiful delft pitcher and basin set. I filled the basin,
added some rosewater, a little Oil of Persia and a dab of What
The French Maid Wore, then patted my face with a damp
washcloth.
"Everything's a struggle in here, isn't it?" Cricket said.
"I find myself wondering where the water came from."
"Everything's always been a struggle everywhere, my boy,"
I replied, letting down the top of my chemise and washing my
breasts and under my arms. "It's just that different people
have struggled for different things at different times."
"Water comes out of a tap, that's all I know."
"Don't pretend ignorance with me. Water comes from the
rings of Saturn, is boosted in slow orbits in the form of big
chunks of dirty ice until we catch it here and melt it. Or it
comes out of the air when we re-process it, or the sewage when
we filter it, then it's piped to your home, then it comes out
of the tap. In my case, for the pipe substitute a man who comes
by once a week and fills my barrels."
"All I have to do with it is turning the tap."
I pointed to my tank sitting on the sink. "So do I," I
said. I patted myself dry and started rubbing cream on my skin.
"I know you're dying to ask, so I'll tell you I bathe every
third or fourth day at the hotel in town. All over; soap and
everything. And if what you've seen horrifies you, wait till
you need to relieve yourself."
"You're really into this, aren't you. That's what I can't
get over."
"Why all this sudden concern about my standard of living?"
That one seemed to make him uncomfortable, so we were
quiet for a while, until I had finished wiping off the cold
cream. I couldn't read his expression well in the dim light,
looking at him in the mirror.
"If you were going to say the people who live in here are
losers, save it, I've already heard that. And I don't deny it."
I opened an oval lacquered box, took out a powder puff, and
started applying the stuff until I sat in the center of a
fragrant cloud. On the side of the box it said "Midnight in
Paris."
"That's why you don't belong here," he said. "Hildy,
you've still got worlds to conquer. You can't bury yourself in
here, playing at being a newspapergirl. There's a real world
out there."
In here, too, I might have said, but didn't. I turned to
face him, then put the straps of my chemise back up over my
shoulders. It was more of a long vest, really, made of yellow
silk, snug at the waist. In addition to that I still had on my
best silk stockings, held up by garters, and maybe a trifle
here and a whimsy there. He crossed his legs.
"You once accused me of being not so good at people. You
were right. I'd known you for years, and didn't know you had a
daughter, didn't know a lot of things about you. Cricket,
there's things you don't know about me. I'm not going to get
into them, it's my problem, not yours, but believe me when I
tell you that if I hadn't come here, I'd be dead by now."
He looked dubious, but a little worried at the same time.
He started to say something, but changed his mind. His arms
were crossed now, too, one hand up and playing self-consciously
with his mustache.
I reached behind me for the little purple vial of
patchouli, dabbed a bit behind my ears, between my breasts,
between my thighs. I got up and walked by him--quite close by
him--to the bed, where I pulled the big comforter down to the
foot, plumped up the pillows, and reclined with one foot
trailing onto the floor, the other on the bed. The girl in the
painting behind the bar at the Alamo is in an identical pose,
though you would have to call her plump.
I said, "Cricket, I haven't been in the big city for a
while. Maybe I've forgotten how things are there. But in Texas,
it's considered impolite to keep a lady waiting."
He got up, almost stumbled as he tried to get out of his
shoes, then gave that up and came into my arms.
#
Kitten Parker, the male manifestation, was nude, supine,
cruciform. I, the female manifestation, was also nude, and in
lotus position: shoulders back, legs folded with the soles of
my feet turned up on my thighs, hands loose and palm-upward in
my lap. My knees stuck out to the sides and my weight barely
made an impression on his body--that's right, I was impaled, as
the porno writers sometimes put it.
Those writers wouldn't have been interested in this scene,
however. We'd been there, unmoving, for going on five hours.
It was called sex therapy and Kitten Parker was the
leading proponent of it. In fact, he invented it, or at least
refined it from earlier versions. What it was, was a type of
yoga, wherein I had been urged to find my "spiritual center."
So far my best guess as to its location was about five
centimeters cervix-wards from the tip of his glans.
I found this frustrating. I'd been finding it frustrating
for going on five hours. See, I was supposed to find my center
because I was the yin, and because I was the novice. His center
wasn't material to the exercise, he knew where his center was
though he hadn't told me where yet; maybe that was lesson two.
His contribution was to bring the thrust of his enlightenment,
also known as his yang, or glans, into contact with my
spiritual center, or rather I was apparently supposed to lower
the center down, since deeper penetration was clearly out of
the question. Maybe what I was feeling wasn't my center at all,
maybe it was just a vaginal suburb, but it had taken me going
on two hours just to entertain the notion that maybe, possibly,
that might be it, this little place inside me that seemed to
want to be massaged, and I wasn't about to go searching for it
again.
So I thought about that might-be-center, willed it to
move. It just stayed right there. I began to wonder if his yang
was anywhere near as sore as my yin was getting. And if this
whole thing would prove to be a yawn.
Actually, the only center I really cared about was the one
every woman knows how to find without a road map from Kitten
Parker: the center of sexual response, right up there in the
cleft of the labia, the little-girl-in-the-boat, and that
little girl had been sitting there, becalmed, hands on the
oars, rowing her little single-minded heart out, swollen and
excited, for going on . . . well, just over six hours now and
the little slut was pouting and resenting the lack of attention
and had been for . . . yes . . . and she didn't like that one
bit, no she didn't, and she was just about to SCREEEEEAM!
CUT TO
INTERIOR -- OFFICE OF THE PRIMALIST
Lots of ferns, lots of leather, violent paintings on the
walls. The PRIMALIST faces her patient, HILDY, who, red-faced,
watery-eyed, has had just about all the therapy a person can
stand.
HILDY
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
PRIMALIST
That's better, that's much better. We're starting to get
through the layers of rage. Now reach even deeper.
HILDY
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
PRIMALIST
No, no, you're back to the childhood peevishness again.
Deeper, deeper! From the soul!
HILDY
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
PRIMALIST
(slaps HILDY's face)
You're really not trying. You call that a scream? Ooooooh.
Sounds like a cow. Again!
HILDY
YAAAH! YAAAH! YAAAAH! YAAAAAAA . . .
PRIMALIST
Don't give me that lost-your-voice crap. You're giving up!
I won't let you give up! I can make you face the primal source.
(slaps HILDY again)
Now, once more, with--
HILDY kicks the PRIMALIST in the belly, then knees her in
the face. The PRIMALIST goes flying across the room and lands
in the FERNS.
CUT TO
CLOSE SHOT -- PRIMALIST
Who is bleeding from the nose and mouth and is momentarily
out of breath.
PRIMALIST
That's much better! We're really getting somewhere now . .
. hey! Where . . .
O.S. SOUND of footsteps: SOUND of a door opening.
PRIMALIST looks concerned.
HILDY
(raggedly, receding)
AAAAAaaaaaaaaaaah . . . sh--
SOUND of door slamming.
FADE OUT
#
I passed out, right there on the thrust of Kitten's
enlightenment.
I was only gone a few seconds, during which I re-lived a
particularly fruitless episode early in my Quest; sort of a
comic within a comic. I really wish that Shouter, Screamin'
Sabina, had had cojones. My kick would have been right in the
spiritual center.
"What it was," I told Kitten as he helped me to my feet,
"was the most powerful orgasm of my life. Jesus, Kitten, I
think you've got something here. And this was only lesson one?
Man, sign me up! I want to get into the advanced classes right
away. I never would have dreamed it was possible to get off
that way, much less such a . . . such an earthquake! Wow!"
I fluttered on like that for a while, probably sounding a
lot like I had many, many years ago when I first discovered
what that doohickey was for, when a sign from the outside world
finally penetrated the golden haze of contentment. Kitten was
frowning.
"You weren't supposed to do that," he said. "The point is
enlightenment, not mere physical pleasures."
"Goodbye," I said.
#
At least Cricket didn't seem to mind if I pursued mere
physical pleasures. It didn't take any five hours, either. The
first of many came about five minutes after we began, him still
fully dressed, pants around his knees. After that we settled
down a bit and carried on far into the night.
It was my first sex since Kitten Parker. I hadn't even
thought about it in all that time.
I didn't pass out during any of the orgasms, but it was
special in another way. When we finally seemed to be through, I
was still wearing most of what I'd gone to bed with, and there
was a reason for that: Cricket liked it.
So many of our words come from a time when, by all
reports, sex was even more screwed-up than it is today,
unlikely as that seems. Call it a perversion? Seems very
judgmental to me, but then they called masturbation self-abuse,
and I don't even like the flavor of the word masturbation. You
can call it a fetish, a fixation. A "sexual preference," how's
that for neutral? Bland is more like it. Call it what you wish,
we all like different things. The Duke of Bosnia likes pain,
preferably with the teeth. Fox liked tearing clothes off;
Cricket liked to have me leave them on. He liked silk and satin
and lace "unmentionables," and he liked to watch me take a few
of them off.
What made it special was that he hadn't known he liked
that. He hadn't known much of anything. He was still a novice
in this business of being a man. Helping him find it out about
himself was a thrill for me, the kind you don't get too often
in this life. I could only recall three other instances and the
last had been about seventy years ago. By the time you're fifty
or so you're unlikely to discover a new preference in yourself,
or anybody else.
"I was beginning to think I really was a singlesexer," he
said, when it seemed we were finally through. My head was
tucked up beneath his arm, that hand stroking slowly over the
curve of my hip, him leaning back, propped up on my best
feather pillows, a cup of hot tea carefully cradled on his
belly. I'd got up to brew the tea. He'd watched me the whole
time. He took little sips now and then between his amazed
sighs, and I'd trained him to give me sips when I ran a nail
over the line of hair on his tummy.
"Something just clicked," he said. I'd heard this line
several times already, but the sound of his voice was soothing
me. "It just clicked."
"Mmm-hmmm," I said.
"It just clicked. I told you I'd been with women before.
It was fun. I had a great time. Orgasms, the whole bit. I liked
being with women, just about as much as being with men. You
know?"
"Mmm-hmmm," I said.
"But I haven't been having much luck with women since the
Change. It just didn't seem very special, you know? Not with
guys, either, for that matter, not like it was when I was
female. I was thinking about Changing back. This thing just
wasn't giving me much pleasure." He flicked his exhausted new
toy with his thumb. "You know?"
"Mmm-hmmm," I said, and shifted a little to put my cheek
against his chest. If I'd had any complaint it was that, when
flipping through the Toys for Boys catalog, he'd ordered his
from the extra-large column. I don't know why first-time
Changers do that--they'd just been girls, right? and they had
to know that more is not better, that one size truly does fit
all--but I'd seen it happen many times before. Some little
relay clicks, and when it's time to make the decision between
hung and hung!, a great many opt for the large economy size.
Strange are the ways of the human mind, doubly so when it comes
to sex.
"But something just clicked. For the first time I looked
at a female body and I didn't just think 'Gosh, isn't she
cute,' or 'She'd be fun to have sex with,' or . . . or anything
like that. It clicked, and I wanted you. I had to have you." He
shook his head. "Who can figure a thing like that?"
I thought, who indeed, but I said "Mmm-hmmm." What I'd
been thinking before that was I could have a discreet word with
him later, or maybe have a friend plant the suggestion
concerning excess yardage. It had been a minor complaint, no
question, but there was also no question it would be even
better with more normal equipment, next time.
I was already thinking about the next time.
#
No more digressions, no more cutaways to Hildy's Quest.
None were any more enlightening than the handful I've
detailed. In spite of that, I planned to keep on with my slog
through the shabbier neighborhoods of religion, philosophy, and
therapy. Why? Well, the answer might really be out there,
somewhere. Just because you've been dealt a thousand hands of
nothing much doesn't mean the next deal won't turn up the Royal
Flush. And I saw no reason why the "answer," if it existed,
should be any less likely to be with the kooks than with the
more respected, conventional snake-oil salesmen. Hell, I knew
something about the established religions and philosophies, I'd
been hearing about them for a hundred years and they'd never
given me anything. That's why I'd been going to the
snake-handlers instead of the Flacks.
There was another reason. While I did pretty well during
the week, what with the Texian and school to keep me busy,
weekends were still pretty shaky. If I gave the impression that
my Quest was being handled by a tough, cynical, self-assured
woman of the world, I gave the wrong impression. Picture
instead a ragged, wild-eyed, unkempt Seeker, jumping at every
loud noise, always alert for feelings of self-destruction she
wasn't even sure she'd recognize. Picture a woman who had seen
the bullet flying toward her face, had felt the rope pull tight
around her neck, watched the blood flow over the bathroom
floor. We're talking desperation here, folks, and it moved in
and sprawled all over the sofa every Friday evening, like the
most unforgettable advertising jingle you ever heard.
Maybe it was the Quest itself making me nervous? I thought
of that, stayed home one weekend. I didn't sleep at all, I just
kept singing that jingle.
The good news was my list of places to go, people to see,
was a good five years long now, and I was adding new
discoveries at almost the same rate I was crossing them off. As
long as there was one more whacko to talk to, one more verse of
Amazing Grace to sing in one more ramshackle tabernacle, I felt
I could hang on.
So maybe God was looking after me. The chief danger seemed
to be that he might bore me to death before I was finished.
Our passions spent, Cricket's mouth finally having stopped
telling me how everything had just clicked, we lay quietly in
each other's arms for a long time, neither of us very sleepy.
He was still too wound up about the new world that had opened
to him, while I was thinking thoughts I hadn't thought in a
very long time.
He put his hand on my chin and I looked up at him.
"You really like it here, don't you?" he said.
I nuzzled into his chest. "I like it here very much."
"No, I meant--"
"I know what you meant." I kissed him on the neck, then
sat up and faced him. "I've got a place here, Cricket. I'm
doing things I like. The people in here may be losers, but I
like them, and I like their children. They like me. There's
talk about running me for mayor of New Austin.
"You're kidding."
I laughed. "There's no way I'd take it. A politician is
the last thing I'd want to be. But I'm touched they thought of
me."
"Well, I've got to admit the place seems to agree with
you." He patted my belly. "Looks like you're putting on some
weight."
"Too much chili beans, Chinese food, and apple pie." And
way too much Kitten Parker. The bastard, telling me we weren't
supposed to get any pleasure out of it.
"I guess you've managed to surprise me," he said. "I
really thought you were in trouble. I still think maybe you
are, but not the kind I thought." You don't know the half of
it, babe, I thought. "This place seems to agree with you," he
went on. "I don't know when I've seen you looking so happy, so
. . . radiant."
"How long ago did you get your Change?"
"About a month."
"Some of that's your cock talking, idiot. Things are still
colored for you. It's called lust."
"Could be. But only part of it." He glanced at his
thumbnail. "Uh . . . listen, I hadn't planned to stay out the
night--"
"You can go home if you want to." You swine.
"No, I was wondering if I could stay over? But I'll have
to call the sitter, I'm already late."
"You have a human sitter?"
"Only the best for my little Buster."
I kissed him and got up as he was making the call. I took
off the rest of my clothes, hearing him whispering in the
background. Then I stepped out onto the porch.
I hadn't been sleeping a lot. Though the nights tend to be
cold, I often walked them like that, nude, in the moonlight.
Cricket was wrong if he thought I was happy--the best I could
claim was to be happier here than anywhere else I could think
of--and the nearest I came to happiness was on these nocturnal
rambles. Sometimes I'd be out for hours, and come back
shivering and pile under the quilts. In that snugness I was
usually able to drift off.
Tonight I couldn't stay gone long. I noted there was
enough moonlight for Cricket to find his way to the outhouse,
then hurried back inside.
He was already asleep .I went around dousing the lamps,
then lit a candle and carried it to the bed. I sat down
carefully, not wanting to wake him, and just looked at his
sleeping face there in the candlelight for the longest time.
=*= =*= =*= =*=
The Bicentennial Commemoration of the Invasion of the
Earth had to qualify as the slickest public relations job of
the century. Back when Walter first summoned me and Brenda to
his office with his idea of a series of Invasion stories I had
laughed in his face. Now, exactly one year later, every
politician in Luna was trying to claim the whole thing was his
idea.
But one man was responsible, and his name was Walter
Editor.
Brenda and I played our small part. The articles were
well-received by the public-somewhere or other I've got a
parchment from some civic organization commending me for
excellence in journalism for one of them--was it the Kiwanis or
the Elks?--but the ground had been prepared for over a year by
the P.R. firm Walter had hired at his own expense. By the time
of Silvio's assassination sentiment was growing for a public
display. You couldn't call it a celebration, it hadn't been a
proud day in human history. It had to include a memorial for
the billions of dead, that was certain. The tone of the thing
should be one of sadness and resolve, all seemed to agree. If
you asked them what was being resolved--the recapture of Earth
and extermination of the Invaders, is that what you had in
mind?--you got an uncomfortable shrug in reply, but dammit, we
ought to be resolute! Hell, why not? Resolution doesn't cost
anything.
But the commemoration was going to. It kept snowballing
with nary a voice raised against it (Walter's fine hand again),
until by the time the Great Day arrived every pisspot enclave
in Luna was holding some kind of shindig.
Even in Texas, where we avoid as much outside news as we
can, they were having a barbecue as big as Alamo Day. I was
sorry I was going to be missing it, but I'd promised Brenda I'd
go with her, and besides . . . Cricket was going to be there.
Yes, dear hearts, Hildy was in love. Please hold your
applause until I can determine if the feeling is mutual.
#
All the Eight Worlds were commemorating the day; Pluto and
Mars had actually created a permanent yearly holiday to be
known as Invasion Day, and the betting was that Luna would soon
follow suit. And Luna, being the most populous planet, hated to
follow any of the seven worlds in anything and so, being the
most populous planet and the Refuge of Humanity as well as the
FrontLine Planet and the Bulwark of the Race--not to mention
the First to Get Our Asses Whipped if the Invaders ever decided
to continue what they started . . . Luna being all that, and
more, had determined to put on the biggest and bestest of all
the eight festivals, and King City being the largest city in
Luna made it seem a natural site for the planet-wide Main
Event, and Armstrong Park being over twenty times the size of
the vanished Walt Disney Universe, it just seemed to follow
that the thing ought to be held there, and that was where I was
going that fine Solar Evening when all I really wanted to do
was stroll down Congress Street, Cricket on my arm, and eat
cotton candy and maybe bob for apples.
And hey, sure it wasn't a celebration, but what's a
holiday without fireworks?
That's the only reason I'd agreed to go, Brenda's promise
that I could see the whole thing a safe distance from the
madding crowds. The fireworks themselves didn't scare me; I
liked fireworks, hated crowds of strangers.
The tube trip almost killed me, though. We'd deliberately
decided to start out quite early to avoid the crush on the
tubes, but what one genius can think up, another can duplicate,
so the trains were already jammed with people who'd had the
same idea. Worse, these were people planning to rough it on the
surface, away from the eight gigantic temporary domes set up
for the show, so they had brought their camping gear. The
aisles and overhead racks were piled high with luggage carts,
beer coolers, inflatable five-room tents, and 3.4 children per
family. It got so bad they started hanging small children from
the overhead straps, where they dangled and giggled. Then it
got worse. The train stopped taking passengers long before it
arrived at Armstrong. My stop was three short of the park, and
I soon saw there would be no point in fighting my way out, so I
rode it to the end of the line--gaped in horror at the masses
already assembled there--was disgorged by an irresistible human
tide, then re-boarded and rode it back, empty, to Dionysius
Station.
Where I sat down on a bench, my suit and picnic hamper
beside me, and just shook for a while, and watched about a
dozen human sardine cans rumble by in one direction and a like
number return. Then I grabbed my gear and went up the stairs to
the surface.
After returning from my frolics with the Alphans, I'd
found my suit on the foot of my bed in my cabin. I don't know
who brought it there. But I didn't want it anymore, so one
Saturday I took it back to the shop, meaning to have them fix
the faceplate and sell it on consignment. The salesman took one
look at the hole and before I had a chance to explain I was
being ushered into the manager's office and he promptly fainted
dead away. None of them had ever seen a broken faceplate
before. So I shut up, and soon found myself in possession of
their top-of-the-line model, plus five years of free air,
courtesy Hamilton's Outdoor Outfitters. I made no demands and
was asked to sign no disclaimers; they simply wanted me to have
it. They're probably still chewing their knuckles, waiting for
the lawsuit.
I climbed into this engineering wonder, and that special
new-suit aroma went a long way toward calming me down. I'd
worried it might stir entirely different associations--how
about that cute point-of-view shot of a piece of the faceplate
tumbling away?--but instead the low whirs and hums and the pure
luxurious feel of the thing did wonders. Too bad they won't let
you wear suits in the tube; with this on, I could have handled
anything.
Checking the pressure seals on the hamper, I walked into
the lock and out onto the surface.
#
"You been waiting long?" I asked.
"Couple hours," Brenda said.
She was leaning on the side of her rental rover, which
she'd driven all the way from a suburb of King City, the
nearest place you could rent one. I apologized for being so
late, told her of the nightmare in the train, how I wished I'd
come with her instead of "saving time" by tubing out.
"Don't worry about it," she said. "I like it out here."
I could already tell that, mostly by looking at her suit.
It was a good one, had no rental logo on it, and though in
perfect shape, showed signs of use it couldn't have acquired
unless she regularly spent time in it. Also by the easy way she
stood and moved in it, something most Lunarians never get
enough suit time to achieve.
The rover was a good one, too. It was a pickup model, two
seats side by side, a flat bed in back where I tossed my hamper
along with her much bigger pile of things. They have a wide
wheelbase to compensate for being so top-heavy with the big
solar panel above, which swings to constantly present itself to
the sun. The sun being almost at the horizon just then, the
vehicle was at its most awkward, with the panel hanging out to
the right side, perpendicular to the ground. I had to crawl
over Brenda's seat to get to mine because the panel blocked the
door.
"I forget," I said, as I settled myself in the open seat.
"Will we be going into the sun to get there?"
"Nope. South for a while, then we'll have the sun at our
backs."
"Good." I hated riding behind the panel. It's not that I
didn't trust the autopilot; I just liked to see where I was
going.
She told the rover to giddyup, and it did, right along the
broad, smooth highway. Which is why we'd chosen Dionysius
Station in the first place, because it's right on one of the
scarce surface roads on Luna, which is not a place where the
wheeled vehicle was ever a primary mode of transport. People
move on elevators, escalators, beltways, maglev/tube trains,
the occasional hoverbus. Goods go by the same ways, plus
pneumomail tubes, linac free-trajectory, and rocket. Recently
there'd been something of a fad in wheeled surface rovers, two-
and four-wheeled, but they were all-terrain and quite rugged,
no roads needed.
The road we were on was a relic from a mining operation
abandoned before I was born. From time to time we passed the
derelict hulks of ore carriers at the side of the road, mammoth
things, not looking much different from the day they'd been
stripped and left there. Some economic vagary of the time had
made it a better idea to actually smooth out a road surface for
them. Then the road had been used for another half century as
the conduit between King City and its primary dumping ground.
It was still glass-smooth, and quite a novel way to travel.
"This sucker moves right along, doesn't it?" I said.
"It'll reach three hundred kay on the straightaways,"
Brenda said. "But it's gotta slow way down for the curves,
especially ones to the left." That was because the rover's
center of gravity was at its worst at sunrise and sunset, with
the big panel canted on its side, she explained. Also, the
banking of the road was not great, and since we were going to
be staying out after dark, she'd had to carry ten batteries,
which added a lot to our inertia and could easily make us skid
off the road, since the tire traction wasn't as much as she'd
prefer. She told me all this with the air of someone who'd done
this many times before, someone who knew her machine. I
wondered if she could drive it.
I got my answer when we turned off the road, and she asked
if I minded. Actually, I did--we're not used to putting our
lives in other people's hands, only into the hands of
machines--but I said I didn't. And I needn't have worried. She
drove with a sure hand, never did anything stupid, never
overcontrolled. We took off across the plains toward the rising
rim of Delambre, just becoming visible over the horizon.
When we reached the bottom of the slope a Black Maria
landed in front of us, blue lights flashing. A cop got out and
came over to us. He must have been bored, since he could have
used his radio, or simply interrogated our computer.
"You're entering a restricted area, ma'am," he said.
Brenda showed him the pass Liz had given her and he
examined it, then her.
"Didn't I see you on the tube?" he asked, and she said he
might have, and he said sure, you were on the such-and-such
show, now how about that? He said he'd loved it and she said
aw, shucks, and by the time he finally let us go he'd been
flirting so outrageously I'm convinced we hadn't needed the
pass at all. He actually asked for her autograph, and she
actually gave it.
"I thought he was going to ask for your phone code," I
said, when he'd finally lifted off.
"I thought I was going to give it to him," she said, and
grinned at me. "I keep thinking I ought to give guys a try."
"You could do better than that."
"Not since you Changed." She jammed in the throttle and we
sprayed dust behind us as we charged up the rounded rim of the
crater.
#
Delambre isn't a huge crater like Clavius or Pythagoras or
any number of celestial bullet holes on the farside, but it's
big enough. When you're standing on the rim you can't see the
other side. That's plenty big for me.
Still, it would look just like a hundred others except for
one thing: the junkyard.
We re-cycle a lot of things on Luna. We have to; our own
natural resources are fairly meager. But we're still a
civilization driven by a market economy. Sometimes cheap and
plentiful power and the low cost of boosting bulk raw materials
in slow orbits combine to make it just too damn much trouble
and not cost-effective to sort through and re-process a lot of
things. Fortunes have been lost when a bulk carrier arrives
with X million tonnes of Whoosisite from the mines on Io,
having been in secret transit for thirty years disguised and
listed as an Oort comet. Suddenly the bottom falls out of the
market for Whoosisite, and before you know it you can't give
the stuff away and it's being carted out to Delambre by the
hundred-tonne bucketload. To that add the twenty-thousand-year
half-life radioactives in drums guaranteed to last five
centuries. Don't forget to throw in obsolete machines, some
cannibalized for this or that, others still in working order
but hopelessly slow and not worth taking apart. Abandon all
that stuff out there, and salt in that ceramic horror you
brought home to Mom from school when you were eight, that stack
of holos you kept for seventy years and can't even remember
who's in them, plus similar treasures from millions of other
people. Top it with all the things you can't find a use for
from every sewage outflow in Luna, mixed with just enough water
so it'll flow through a pipe. Bake on high for fourteen days,
freeze for fourteen more; continue doing that for two hundred
years, adding more ingredients to taste, and you've created the
vista that met us from the lip of Delambre.
The crater's not actually full, it just looks that way
from the west rim.
"Over there," Brenda said. "That's where I said I'd meet
Liz."
I saw a speck on the horizon, also sitting on the rim.
"How about letting me drive?" I asked.
"You can drive?" It wasn't an unreasonable question; most
Lunarians can't.
"In my wild youth, I drove the Equatorial Race. Eleven
thousand klicks, very little of it level." No point in adding
I'd blown the transmission a quarter of the way through.
"And I was lecturing you on how to handle a rover. Why
don't you ever shut me up, Hildy?"
"Then I'd lose half of my amusing stories."
I switched the controls over to the British side of the
car and took off. It had been many years since I'd driven. It
was lots of fun. The rover had a good suspension; I only left
the ground two or three times, and the gyros kept us from
turning over. When I saw her gripping the dash I throttled
back.
"You'd never make a race driver. This is smooth."
"I never wanted to be a race driver. Or a corpse."
#
"I feel like a Girl Scout," I told Brenda as I helped her
spread out the tent.
"What's wrong with that? I earned all the surface
pioneering merit badges."
"Nothing wrong. I was one, too, but that was ninety years
ago."
She wasn't nearly that far removed from scouting, and she
still took it seriously. Where I'd have just pulled the rip
cord and let it go at that, she was a fanatic about saving
energy, and ran a line from the rover's solar panel to the
tent's power supply, as if the reactor wouldn't last a
fortnight on its own. When the tent was arranged to her
satisfaction she pulled the cord and it shuddered and flopped
as it filled with air, and in ten seconds we had a five-meter
transparent hemisphere . . . which promptly frosted up inside.
She got on her knees and crawled into the iglootype lock
and I zipped it behind her to save her squirming around, and
she told me this model had automatic zippers, so there had been
progress since my childhood. She fiddled with the air controls
while I stacked blankets and pillows and thermoses and the rest
of our gear in the lock-got to get it well-packed, don't want
to waste air by cycling the lock too much--then I stood around
outside while she brought it all in and got the temperature and
pressure and humidity adjusted. When I got in and took off my
helmet it was still on the cool side. I wrote my name in the
frost like I remembered doing on long-ago camping trips; it
soon melted, and the dew was absorbed . . . and the dome seemed
to vanish.
"It's been too long," I said. "I'm glad you brought me
here."
For once she knew exactly what I meant. She stopped her
fussing around and stood with me and we just looked around
without saying anything.
Any beauty on Luna is going to be a harsh sort of beauty.
There's nothing benevolent or comforting to see anywhere--much
like West Texas. This was the best way to see it, in a tent
invisible to our eyes, as if we were standing on a black
circular pad of plastic with nothing between us and vacuum.
It was also the best time of day to see it; the Lunar Day,
I mean. The sun was very close to the horizon, the shadows were
almost infinitely long. Which helped, because half our vista
was of the biggest garbage dump on the planet. There's a funny
thing about shadows like that. If you've never seen snow, go to
Pennsylvania the next time they've scheduled it and watch how
snow can transform the most mundane--even ugly--scene into a
magical landscape. Sunlight on the surface is like that. It's
hard and bright as diamond, it blasts everything it touches and
yet it does no damage; nothing moves, the billion facets of
dark and light make every ordinary object into a hardedged
jewel.
We didn't look west; the light was too dazzling. To the
south we saw the rolling land falling away to our right, the
endless heaps of garbage to the left. East was looking right
out over Delambre, and north was the hulk of the Robert A.
Heinlein, almost a mile of derelict might-have-been starship.
"You think they'll have any trouble finding us?" Brenda
asked.
"Liz and Cricket? I wouldn't think so. Not with the old
Heinlein over there. How could you miss it?"
"That's what I thought, too."
We set about little domestic chores, inflating the
furniture, spreading a few rugs. She showed me how to set up
the curtain that turned the tent into two not-very-private
rooms, how to operate the little campstove. While we were doing
that, the show began. Not to worry; it was going to be a long
show.
I had to admit the artistic director had done well. This
was to be a commemoration of the billions dead on Earth, right?
And at the latitude of Armstrong Park, the Earth would be
directly overhead, right? And if you start the show at sundown,
you'll have a half-Earth in the sky. So why not make the Earth
the center and theme of your sky show?
By fudging just a little you can begin the show when the
old International Dateline is facing Luna. Now picture it: as
the Earth turns, one by one the vanished nations of Old Earth
emerge into the sunlight of a new day. And as each one appears
. . .
We were bathed in the red light of the flag of the
Siberian Republic, a rectangle one hundred kilometers long,
hanging above us at a height sufficient to blot out half the
sky.
"Wow," Brenda said. Her mouth was hanging open.
"Double wow," I said, and closed my own mouth. The flag
hung there almost a minute, burning brightly, then sputtered
out. We hurried to get Brenda's boombox turned on, hung the big
speakers on each side of the tent, and were in time to hear the
opening strains of "God Defend New Zealand" as the Kiwi flag
unfurled above us.
That's how it was to be for eighteen hours.
When Liz arrived she told us how it was done. The flag was
a mesh construction stuffed into a big container and blasted up
from one of the pyro bases, in Baylor-A, about forty klicks
south of us, and Hyapatia and Torricelli, to the east. When the
shell reached the right height it burst and rockets spread it
out and it was set afire by radio control. Neat.
How do fireworks burn in a vacuum? Don't ask me. But I
know rocket fuels carry an oxidizer, so I guess it was some
chemical magic like that. However they did it, it knocked our
socks off, me and Brenda, no more than fifty clicks from the
big firebase in Baylor, much closer than the poor hicks in
Armstrong, who probably thought they were getting one heck of a
show. And who cares if, from our vantage, the flags were
distorted into trapezoids? I sure didn't.
Brenda turned out to be a fountain of information about
the show.
"They didn't figure it made sense to give a country like
Vanuatu equal time with, say, Russia," she said (we were
looking at the ghastly flag of Vanuatu at the time, listening
to its improbable national anthem). "So the major countries,
ones with a lot of history, they'll get more of a pageant. Like
the Siberian Republic used to be part of some other country--"
"The U.S.S.R.," I supplied.
"Right. Says so right here." She had a massive souvenir
program spread out before us. "So they'll do more flags for
that--the Tsarist flag, historical stuff--"
"--and play the 'Internationale.'"
"--and folk themes, like what we heard from New Zealand."
They were telling us most of that on a separate radio
channel, giving a history of each country, pitched at an
illiterate level. I turned it off, preferring just the music,
and Brenda didn't object. I'd have turned off the television,
too-Brenda had pasted a big screen to the south side of the
tent--but she seemed to enjoy the scenes of revelry from
Armstrong and all the other celebrations in all the major Lunar
cities, so what the hell.
Get out an Earth globe and you'll quickly spot the major
flaw in the Earth-rotational program. For the first six hours
only a few dozen countries will swing into view. Even if you
give the entire history of China and Japan, there's going to be
some gaps to fill, and how much can you say about Nauru and the
Solomon Islands? On the other hand, when dawn broke over Africa
and Europe the pyrotechs were going to be busier than a
onelegged man in an ass-kicking contest.
Not to worry. When they ran out of flags, that's when they
trotted out the heavy artillery.
From the first appearance of that red ensign, the sky was
never dark.
There were the conventional shells, starbursts in all the
colors of the rainbow. Without air to impede their flight they
could be placed with pinpoint precision--one thing Lunarians
understand is ballistics. They were also perfectly symmetrical,
for the same reason.
You want more? In the vacuum, it was possible to produce
effects never seen on Earth. Huge gas canisters could produce a
thin atmosphere, locally, temporarily, upon which tricks of
ionization could be played. We were treated to auroral
curtains, washes of color in which the entire sky turned blue
or red or yellow, then flickered magically. Shrapnel shells
filled the sky with spinning discs no bigger than a coin, which
were then swept by searchlights to twinkle as no stars ever had
on Luna, then exploded by lasers.
Still not satisfied? How about a few nukes? Brenda's
program said there would be over one hundred special fission
shells, an average of one every ten minutes for the duration of
the show. These were detonated in orbit and used to propel
literally thousands of regular pyro shells into bursts over a
thousand klicks wide. The first one went off at the end of the
Vanuatu National Anthem, and it rattled our teeth, and then it
went on exploding, and exploding, and exploding. Glorious!
And don't think I didn't hear that! You're complaining
that sound doesn't travel in a vacuum. Of course it doesn't,
but radio waves do, and you obviously never listened to
Brenda's top-of-theline boombox cranked up to full volume.
Those poor folks who watch fireworks in an atmosphere have to
wait for the sound to arrive, too, and they get a chance to
brace for it; we got it instantaneously, no warning, a flash of
hurting light and a ka-BOOOOOOOM!
Sometimes wretched excess is the only thing that will do.
#
"They say this place is haunted."
We'd just been treated to the national anthem of Belau and
its flag had faded from the sky (a big yellow circle on a blue
field, if you're keeping score at home), and two things had
dawned on us. One, you need a breather from wretched excess
from time to time, or it gets . . . well, wretched. Between us
we'd emitted not even one "wow" at the last three nukes, and I
was thinking of suggesting we switch to Top 40 for an hour or
so. Somehow I thought I could survive missing the playing of
Negara Ku (My Country; Mayalsia) and Sanrasoen Phra Barami
("Hail to our King! Blessings on our King! Hearts and minds we
bow/ To Your Majesty now!" words by H.R.H. Prince
Narisaranuvadtivongs). And two, Liz and Cricket were three
hours late.
"Who's they?" I asked, munching on a drumstick of Hildy's
Finest WesTex Fried Chicken. Hunger had overcome the demands of
politeness; Brenda had miked a few pieces, and the hell with
Liz and Cricket. I was eyeing the beer cooler as well, but
neither of us wanted to get too much of a head start.
"You know," she said. "'They.' Your primary news source."
"Oh, that 'they.'"
"Seriously, though, I've heard from several people who've
come out to visit the old Heinlein. They say they've seen
ghosts."
"Walter put you up to this, didn't he," I said.
"I've talked to him about it. He thinks there may be a
story in it."
"Sure there is, but there's no need to come out here and
interview a spook. That kind of story, you just make it up.
Walter must have told you that."
"He did. But this isn't your ordinary filler story, Hildy,
I mean it. The people I interviewed, some of them were scared."
"Give me a break."
"I've been coming out here and bringing a good camera. I
thought I might get a picture."
"Come on. What do you think the Nipple's photo department
is for? Dummying up just that kind of pic, that's what."
She didn't say anything about it for a while, and we
watched several more ghost flags in the sky. I found myself
eyeing the Heinlein. And no, I'm not superstitious, just
godawful curious.
"Is that why you've been camping out so much?" I asked.
"The story's not worth it."
"Camping . . . oh, no," and she laughed. "I've camped out
a lot all my life. I find if very . . . peaceful out here."
Another long silence went by, or as silent as it could be
with nukes exploding outside and her boombox turned down to a
low rumble. At last she got up and walked to stand by the
invisible plastic wall of the tent. She leaned her head against
it. And by the rockets red glare, she told me something I'd
have been a lot happier not hearing.
"Ever since I met you," she began, "I've thought I could
tell you something I've never told anybody else. Not a soul."
She looked at me. "If you don't want to hear it, please say so
now, 'cause if I get started I don't think I'll be able to
stop."
If you could have told her to shut up, I don't want to
know you. I didn't need this, I didn't want it, but when a
friend asks something like that of you, you say yes, that's all
there is to it.
"Make it march," I said, and glanced at my watch. "I don't
want to miss the Laotian National Anthem."
She smiled, and looked back out over the landscape.
"When you first met me . . . well, later, that first time
I came out to Texas to see you, you probably noticed something
unusual about me."
"You're probably referring to your lack of genitalia. I'm
observant that way."
"Yes. Did you ever wonder about it."
Had I? Not much actually. "Ah . . . I guess I thought it
was something religious, or cultural, something your parents
believed. I remember thinking it wasn't a nice thing to do to a
child, but not my business."
"Yes. Not a nice thing to do. And it did have to do with
my parents. With my father."
"I don't know a lot about fathers," I said, still hoping
she'd change her mind. "I'm like most; mom never told me who he
was."
"I knew mine. He lived with me and my mother. He started
raping me when I was about six. I've never had the nerve to ask
my mother if she knew about it, I didn't even know there was
anything wrong with it, I thought it was what I was supposed to
do." Standing there, looking out at the surface, the words
spilling out of her but calm, calm, no hint of tears. "I don't
know how I learned it wasn't something my friends did, maybe I
started to talk about it and picked up something, some
attitude, some beginning of horror, something that made me shut
up about it to this day. But it went on for years and I thought
about turning him in, I know that's what you're wondering, why
didn't I do it, but he was my father and he loved me and I
thought I loved him. But I was ashamed of us, and when I turned
twelve I went and had . . . it . . . removed, closed up,
eradicated so he couldn't put it in me anymore, and I know now
the Minor's Referee who let me get it done in spite of dad's
objections had figured out what was going on because she kept
saying I should bring charges, but all I wanted was for him to
stop. And he did, he never touched me from that day on, hardly
spoke to me, for that matter. So I don't know why it is that
some females prefer the company of other females, but that's
why for me, it's because I can't deal with males, only when I
met you, well, not too long after I met you, I fell badly,
madly in love with you. Only you were a boy, which drove me
crazy. Please don't worry about it, Hildy, I've got it under
control, I know there's things that just can't happen, and you
and me are one of them. I've heard you talking about Cricket
and I ought to be jealous because she and I were making love,
but it was just for fun, and besides Cricket's a boy now, too,
and I wish you all the happiness. So my secret's out, and
another one is I arranged it so you and I would be alone for a
little while out here, the place I always come, always came
when I wanted to get away from him. This is rotten and I know
it, but I've thought about it a long time and I can live with
it. I won't cry and I won't beg, but I'd like to make love to
you just one time. I know you're hetero, everyone I've talked
to says that about you, but what I'm hoping is it's just a
preference, you're a Changer, you've made love to women before,
but maybe it's something you can't do when you're female. Or
maybe you don't want to or think it's a bad idea, and that's
fine, too. I just had to ask, that's all. I know I sound real
needy but I'm not, not that way; I'll live either way, and I
hope we'll still be friends, either way. There. I didn't know
if I'd have the guts to say it all, but I did, and I feel
better already."
I have a short list of things I never do, and right near
the top is surrendering to emotional blackmail. If there's a
worse kind of sex than the charity fuck, I haven't heard about
it. And her words could be read as the worst kind of
whipped-puppy appeal and dammit, okay, she did have a right to
act like a whipped puppy but I hate whipped puppies, I want to
kick them for letting themselves be whipped . . . only the
words didn't come out like that, not out of that
straight-backed, dry-eyed beanpole over there against the
blazing sky. She'd grown since I met her, and I thought this
was part of the growth. Why she'd picked me to unload on I
don't know, but the way she'd done it flattered me rather than
obligated me.
So I told her no. Or would have, in a perfect world where
I actually follow my short list of things I never do. What I
did instead was get up and put my arms around her from behind
and say:
"You handled that very well. If you'd cried, I'd have
kicked your butt all the way to King City."
"I won't cry. Not about that, not anymore. And not when
it's over."
And she didn't.
#
Brenda had arranged for our moment of privacy by not
telling me Cricket had been assigned to cover the festivities
at Armstrong Park. After our little romantic interlude--quite
pleasant, thanks for asking--she confessed her ruse, and also
that he was going to play hooky after the first few hours and
should be arriving any minute, so let's get dressed, okay?
I can't imagine why I worried about getting a head start
on Liz. She got a head start on all of us, drinking on her way
out to Armstrong and all the way back, as if Cricket needed any
more causes for alarm.
She came barreling across the dunes in a fourwheel Aston
Assbuster, model XJ, with a reaction engine and a bilious
tangerine-flake paint job. This was the baby with four-point
jets for boosting over those little potholes you sometimes find
on Luna--say, something about the size of Copernicus. It
couldn't actually reach orbit, but it was a near thing. She had
decorated it with her usual understated British good taste:
holographic flames belching from the wheel wells, a whip
antenna with a raccoon tail on the tip, a chrome-plated
oversize skull sitting out front whose red eyes blinked to
indicate turns.
This apparition came skidding around the Heinlein and
headed straight for us. Brenda stood and waved her arms
frantically and I had time to ponder how thin a soap bubble a
Girl Scout tent really was before Liz hit the brakes and threw
a spray of powdered green cheese against the tent wall.
She was out before the fuzzy dice stopped swinging, and
ran around to the left side to unbelt Cricket, who'd strapped
himself tight enough to risk gangrene of the pelvis. She picked
him up and stuffed him in the airlock, where he seemed to come
to his senses. He crawled inside the tent, but instead of
standing he just hunkered there and I began to be concerned. I
helped him off with his helmet.
"Cricket's a little under the weather," Liz said, over
Cricket's suit radio. "I thought I ought to get him inside
quick."
I realized he was saying something so I put my ear close
to his lips and he was muttering I think I'm gonna be okay,
over and over, like a mantra. Brenda and I got him seated,
where he soon regained some color and a passing interest in his
surroundings.
We were getting a little water into him when Liz came
through the lock, pushing a Press-UKennel in front of her. At
last Cricket came alive, springing to his feet and letting fly
with an almost incoherent string of curses. No need to quote;
Cricket wouldn't be proud of it, he feels curses should be
crafted rather than hurled, but he was too upset for that now.
"You maniac!" he shouted. "Why the hell wouldn't you slow
down?"
"'Cause you told me you were getting sick. I figured I
better get you here quick as I could."
"I was sick because you were going so fast!" But then the
fight drained out of him and he sat down, shaking his head.
"Fast? Did I say fast? We came all the way from Armstrong, and
I think she touched ground four times." He explored his head
with his fingers. "No, five times, I count five lumps. She'd
just look for a steep crater wall and say 'Let's see can we
jump over this sucker,' and the next thing I knew we'd be
flying."
"We were moving along," Liz agreed. "I figure our shadow
ought to be catching up with us about now."
"'Thank god for the gyros,' I said. You remember I said
that? And you said 'What gyros? Gyros are for old ladies.'"
"I took 'em off," Liz told us. "That way you get more
practice using the steering jets. Come on, Cricket, you--"
"I'm going back with you guys," Cricket said. "No way I'm
ever riding with that crazy person again."
"We only have two seats," Brenda said.
"Strap me to the fender, I don't care. It couldn't be
worse than what I just went through."
"I think that calls for a drink," Liz said.
"You think everything calls for a drink."
"Doesn't it?"
But before going out to bring in her portable bar she took
the time to release her--what else?-English bulldog, Winston,
from the kennel. He came lumbering out, revising all my
previous notions of the definition of ugly, and promptly fell
in love with me. More precisely, with my leg, which he started
humping with canine abandon.
It could have spoiled the beginning of a wonderful
relationship--I like a little more courtship, thank you--but
luckily and against all odds he was well-trained, and a swift
kick from Liz discouraged him short of consummation. After that
he just followed me around, snuffling, mooning at me with his
bloodshot, piggy eyes, going to sleep every time I sat down. I
must admit, I took a shine to him. To prove it, I fed him all
my leftover chicken bones.
#
Eighteen hours is a long time for a party, but there is a
certain type of person with a perverse urge not to be the first
to call it quits. All four of us were that type of person. We
were going to stick it out, by god, right through to the
playing of the Guatemalan National Anthem ("Guatemala, blest
land, home of happy race,/ May thine altars profaned be never;/
No yoke of slavery weigh on thee ever/ Nor may tyrants e'er
spit in thy face!").
(Yes, I looked at the globe, too, and if you think the
whole planet was going to stay up six hours for the national
hymn of Tonga, you're crazier than we were. Tonga got in her
licks just after Western Samoa.)
No one was going to catch up with Liz, but we were soon
matching her, and after a while Cricket even forgot he was mad
at her. Things got a bit hazy as the celebration wore on. I
can't actually remember much after the Union Jack blazed in all
its Britannic majesty. I remember that one mainly because Liz
had been nodding out, and Brenda got me and Cricket to stand
when "God Save the Queen" began to play, and we sang the second
verse, which goes something like this:
#
O Lord our God arise,
Scatter her enemies,
And make them fall:
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On Thee our hopes we fix:
God save us all!
#
"God save us all, indeed," Cricket said.
"That's the most beautiful thing I ever heard," Liz
sobbed, with the easy tears of the veteran drunk. "And I think
Winston needs to go wee-wee."
The mutt did seem in some distress. Liz had given him a
bowl or two of Guinness and I, after the chicken bones had no
visible effect, had plied him with everything from whole
jalapen~os to the bottlecaps from Liz's home brew. I'd seen
Cricket slip him a few of the sausages we'd been roasting over
the holographic campfire. All in all, this was a dog in a
hurry. He was running in tight circles scratching at the
airlock zipper.
Turned out the monster was perhaps too well trained. He
flatly refused to do his business indoors, according to Liz, so
we all set about stuffing him into his pressure suit.
Before long we were all reduced to hysterical laughter,
the sort where you actually fall on the floor and roll around
and start worrying about your own bladder. Winston wanted to
cooperate, but as soon as we'd get his hind legs into the suit
he'd start bouncing around in his eagerness and end up with the
whole thing bunched around his neck. So Cricket scratched his
back, which made the dog hold still and arch himself and lick
his nose and we'd get his front legs in and maybe one of his
back legs, and then he'd start that reflexive back leg jerking
they do, and all was lost again. When we did get all four legs
into the right holes he thought it was time, and we had to
chase him and hold him down to get his air bottle strapped to
his back, and at the last moment he took a dislike to his
helmet and tried to eat it--this was a dog who made short work
of steel bottlecaps, remember--and we had to put on a spare
seal and test it before we finally screwed him in tight, shoved
him in the lock, and cycled it.
Whereupon we laughed even harder at the spectacle of
Winston running from rock to rock lifting a leg for a squirt
here and a dribble there, blissfully unaware that it was all
going into the waste pouch through the hose Liz had fastened to
his doggie dingus with a rubber band. Yes, folks, I said doggie
dingus: that's the level of humor we'd been reduced to.
#
Later, I remember that Brenda and Liz were napping. I
showed Cricket the wondrous curtain that turned the tent into
two rooms. But he didn't get it, and suggested we suit up and
take a walk outside. I was game, though it probably wasn't real
wise considering I spent almost a minute trying to get my right
foot into the left leg of my suit. But the things are
practically foolproof. If Winston could handle one, I reasoned,
how much trouble could I get into?
So who should come trotting up as soon as we emerged? I
might have been in one sort of trouble right there, since he
seemed to feel all bets were off now that Liz was sleeping, but
after pressing his helmet to my leg and trying to sniff it and
getting no results he sulked along behind us, probably
wondering why everything out here smelled of plexi and dog
slobber.
I really don't want to sound too gay here, switching from
that time with Brenda to the hijinx of the Queen and her
Consort. But that's the way it happened; you can't arrange your
life to provide a consistent dramatic line, like a film script.
It had rocked me, and I had no notion of how to deal with it
except to hold Brenda and hope that maybe she would cry. I
still don't.
My god. The horror that exists all around us, un-noticed.
I said something like that to her, with the half-formed
feeling that maybe it would be good for her to approach it as a
reporter.
"Did you ever wonder," I said, "why we spend all our time
looking into these trivial stories, when stories like that are
waiting to be told?"
"Like what?" she said, drowsily. To be frank, it hadn't
been all that great for me, it never is with homosex, but she
seemed to have enjoyed herself and that was the important part.
You can always tell. Something glowed.
"Like what happened to you, dammit. Wouldn't you think, in
this day and age, that we'd have put that sort of . . . of
thing behind us?"
"I hate it when people say 'in this day and age.' What's
so special about it? As opposed to, for instance, the day and
age of the Egyptians?"
"If you can name even one of the Pharaohs I'll eat this
tent."
"You're not going to make me mad, Hildy." She touched my
face, looked in my eyes, then nestled against my neck. "You
don't need to, don't you see that? this is the first and last
time we'll ever be intimate. I know intimacy frightens you, but
you don't need--"
"It does not fr--"
"Besides, give me another, oh, eighty-three years and I'll
recite every Pharaoh from Akhenaton to Ramses."
"Ouch."
"It was in the program book. But this day and age is the
only one I know right now, and I don't know why you should
think it's any different from the day and age you grew up in.
Were there child molesters back then?"
"You mean the early Neolithic? Yeah, there were."
"And you thought the steady march of progress would
eliminate them any day now."
"It was a foolish thought. But it is a good story."
"You've been away from the Nipple too long, jerk. It's a
terrible story. Who'd want to read a depressing story like
that? I mean, that there's still child molesters? Everybody
knows that. That's for sociologists, bless 'em. Now one story,
one really gruesome one, that's news. My story is just a stat
in the Sunday Supplement grinder; you can put it on file and
run it once a year, they'll all have forgotten it by then."
"You sound so much like me it's scary."
"You know it, babe. People read the Nipple to get a little
spice in their lives. They want to be titillated. Angered.
Horrified. They don't want to be depressed. Walter's always
talking about The End Of The World, how we'd cover it. Hell,
I'd put it on the back page. It's depressing."
"You amaze me."
"I'll tell you what. I know more movie stars than
everybody else in my school put together. They call me, the
minor ones, anyway. I love my work. So don't tell me about the
important stories we ought to be covering."
"That's why you got in the business? To meet celebrities?"
"Why did you get in the business?"
I didn't answer her then, but some vestigial concept of
truth in media forces me to say that hob-nobbing with the
glittering people may have had something to do with it.
But it really was amazing the changes a year had wrought
in my little Brenda. I didn't think I liked it. Not that it was
any of my business, but that's never stopped me in the past. At
first I blamed the news racket itself, but thinking about it a
bit more I wondered if maybe that injured little girl, that
oh-so-good little girl who'd had herself sewed up rather than
do what the nice lady suggested and turn daddy in to the bad
people . . . I wondered if she might actually teach cynical old
Hildy a thing or two about the bad old world and how to get by
in it.
"I'm sorry about not bringing Buster."
"Huh? What's that?"
"Luna to Hildy, come in Hildy, over."
"Sorry, my mind was wandering." It was Cricket, and we
were walking together on the surface. I even remembered going
through the lock.
"I know I said I'd bring her so you could meet her, but
she put up a big fuss because she wanted to go with some
friends to Armstrong, so I let her."
Something in his voice made me suspect he wasn't telling
the whole truth. I thought maybe he hadn't argued as hard as he
might have. The only thing I really knew about his daughter was
that he was very protective of her. I'd learned, through a
little snooping, that none of his coworkers at the Shit had
ever met her; he kept work and family strictly segregated.
Which is not unusual in Lunar society, we're very
protective of the little privacy we have. But we'd known each
other as man and woman for not even a week at that point, and
already there had been a series of these signs that he . . .
how should I put it? . . . was reluctant to let me deeper into
his life. To put it another way, I'd been tentatively plucking
at the daisy of devotion, and most of the petals were coming up
he loves me not.
To be fair, I was un-used to being in love. I was out of
practice at doing it, had never been adept at it, was wondering
if I'd forgotten how to go about it. The last time I had really
fallen, as they say, had been a teen-age crush, and I'd assumed
lo these eighty years that it was an affliction visited solely
on the young. So it could be that I wasn't communicating to him
the tragic, hopeless depth of my longing. Maybe I wasn't
sending out the right signals. He could be thinking, this is
just old Hildy. Lot's o' laffs. This is probably just the way
she is when she's female, all gooey and cow-eyed and anxious to
bring me a hot cup of coffee in the morning and cuddle.
And to be brutal . . . maybe I wasn't in love. It didn't
feel like that distant adolescent emotion, but hardly anything
did; I wasn't that person any more. This felt more solid, less
painful. Not so hopeless, even if he did come right out and say
he loved me not. Does this mean it wasn't love? No, it meant
I'd keep working at it. It meant I wouldn't want to run out and
kill myself . . . bite your tongue, you stupid bitch.
So was this the real turtle soup, or merely the mock? Or
was it, at long last, love? Provisional verdict: it would do
till something better came along.
"Hildy, I don't think we should see each other anymore."
That sound is all my fine rationalizations crashing down
around my ears. The other sound is of a knife being driven into
my heart. The scream hasn't arrived yet, but it will, it will.
"Why do you say that?" I thought I did a good job of
keeping the anguish out of my voice.
"Correct me if I'm wrong. I get the feeling that you have
. . . some deeper than usual feelings about me since . . .
since that night."
"Correct you? I love you, you asshole."
"Only you could have put it so well. I like you, Hildy;
always have. I even like the knives you keep leaving in my
back, I can't imagine why. I might grow to love you, but I have
some problems with that, a situation I'm a long ways from being
over yet--"
"Cricket, you don't have to worry--"
"--and we won't get into it. That's not the main reason I
want to break this off before it gets serious."
"It's already--"
"I know, and I'm sorry." He sighed, and we both watched
Winston go haring off after some vacuum-loving bunny rabbit of
his own imagination, somewhere in the vicinity of the Heinlein.
Only the top part of the immense ship was in sunlight now.
Sunset at Delambre came later than at Armstrong. There was
still enough light reflected from the upper hull for us to see
clearly, not the blazing brightness of full day, though.
"Cricket . . ."
"There's no sense hiding it, I guess," he said. "I lied to
you. Buster wanted to come, she'd like to meet you, she thinks
my stories about you are funny. But I don't want her to meet
you. I know I'm protective of her, but it's just my way; I
don't want her to have a childhood like mine, and we won't go
into that, either. The thing is, you're going through something
weird, you must be or you wouldn't be living in Texas. I don't
know what it is, don't want to know, at least not right now.
But I don't want it to rub off on Buster."
"Is that all? Hell, man, I'll move tomorrow. I may have to
keep teaching for a few weeks till they can get a new--"
"It wouldn't do any good, because that's not all."
"Oh, goody, let's hear more of the things wrong with me."
"No jokes, for once, Hildy. There's something else that's
bothering you. Maybe it's tied up with your quitting the pad
and moving to Texas, maybe it isn't. But I sense something, and
it's very ugly. I don't want to know what it is . . . I would,
I promise you, if not for my child. I'd hear you out, and I'd
try to help. But I want you to look me in the eye and tell me
I'm wrong."
When a full minute had gone by and no eye contact had been
made, no denials uttered, he sighed again, and put his hand on
my shoulder.
"Whatever it is, I don't want her to get mixed up in it."
"I see. I think."
"I don't think you do, since you've never had a child. But
I promised myself I'd put my own life on hold until she was
grown. I've missed two promotions because of that, and I don't
care. This hurts more than that, because I think we could have
been good for each other." He touched the bottom of my
faceplate since he couldn't reach in and lift my chin, and I
looked up at him. "Maybe we still could be, in ten years or
so."
"If I live that long."
"It's that bad?"
"It could be."
"Hildy, I feel--"
"Just go away, would you? I'd like to be alone."
He nodded, and left.
#
I wandered for a while, never getting out of sight of the
bubble of light that was the tent, listening to Winston barking
over the radio. Why would you put a radio in a dog's suit?
Well, why not.
That was the kind of deep question I was asking myself. I
couldn't seem to turn my mind to anything more important.
I'm not good at describing the painful feelings. It could
be that I'm not good at feeling them. Did I feel a sense of
emptiness? Yes, but not as awful as I might have expected. For
one thing, I hadn't loved him long enough for the loss to leave
that big a cavity. But more important, I hadn't given up. I
don't think you can, not that easily. I knew I'd call on him
again, and hell, I'd beg, and I might even cry. Such things
have been known to work, and Cricket does have a heart in there
somewhere, just like me.
So I was depressed, no question. Despondent? Not really. I
was miles from suicidal, miles. Miles and miles and miles.
That was when I first noticed a low-grade headache. All
those nanobots in that cranium, you'd think they'd have licked
the common headache by now. The migraine has gone the way of
the dodo, true, but those annoying little throbbing ones in the
temple or forehead seem beyond the purview of medicine, most
likely because we inflict them on ourselves; we want them, on
some level.
But this one was different. Examining it, I realized it
was centered in the eyes, and the reason was something had been
monkeying with my vision for quite some time. Peripherally, I'd
been seeing something, or rather not seeing something, and it
was driving me crazy. I stopped my pacing and looked around.
Several times I thought I was on the track of something, but it
always flickered away. Maybe it was Brenda's ghosts. I was
practically touching the hull of the famous Haunted Ship; what
else could it be?
Winston came bounding along, leaping into the air, just as
if he was chasing something. And at last I saw it, and smiled
because it was so simple. The stupid dog was just chasing a
butterfly. That's probably what I'd seen, out of the corner of
my eye. A butterfly.
I turned and started back to the tent (the dog), thinking
I'd have a drink or two or three (was chasing) or, hell, maybe
get really blotto, I think I had a good excuse
a butterfly
and I turned around again but I couldn't find the insect,
which made perfect sense because we weren't in Texas, we were
in Delambre and there's no fucking air out here, Winston, and
I'd about dismissed it as a drunken whimsy when a naked girl
materialized out of very thin air and ran seven steps--I can
see them now, in my mind's eye, clear as anything, one, two,
three, four, five, six, seven, and then gone again back to
where ghosts go, and she'd come close enough to me to almost
touch her.
I'm a reporter. I chase the news. I chased her, after an
indeterminate time when I was as capable of movement as any
statue in the park. I didn't find her; the only reason I'd seen
her at all was the very last rays of the sun reflected from far
overhead, not much more light than a good candle would give. I
didn't find the butterfly, either.
I realized the dog was nudging my leg. I saw a red light
was blinking inside his suit, which meant he had ten minutes of
air left, and he'd been trained to go home when he saw the
light. I reached down and patted his helmet, which did him no
good but he seemed to appreciate the thought, licking his
chops. I straightened and took one last look around.
"Winston," I said. "I don't think we're in Kansas
anymore."
=*= =*= =*= =*=
Ezekiel saw the wheel. Moses saw the burning bush. Joe
Smith saw the Angel Moroni, and every electro-preacher since
Billy Sunday saw a chance at good ratings in prime time and
more money than he could lift.
Hayseed farmers, asteroid miners and chronic drug abusers
have seen Unidentified Flying Objects and little guys who want
to see our leaders. Drunks see pink elephants and brontosaurs
and bugs crawling all over everything. The Buddha saw
enlightenment and Mohammed must have seen something, though I
was never clear just what it was. Dying people see a long
tunnel full of light with all the people they hated while they
were alive standing at the end of it. The Founding Flack knew a
good thing when he saw it. Christians are looking to see Jesus,
Walter is looking for a good story, and a gambler is looking
for that fourth ace to turn up; sometimes they see these
things.
People have been seeing things like that since the first
caveman noticed dark shadows stirring out there beyond the
light of the campfire, but until the day of the Bicentennial
Hildy Johnson had never seen anything.
Give me a sign, O Lord, she had been crying, that I might
know Thy shape. And behold, the Lord sent unto her a sign.
A butterfly.
#
It was a Monarch butterfly, quite lovely in its orange and
black, quite ordinary at first glance, except for its location.
But upon closer examination I found something on its back,
about the size of a gelatin capsule, that looked for all the
world like an air tank.
Yes, dear ones, never throw anything away. You don't know
when you might need it. I'd had no use for my optic holocam for
quite a while, since the Texian isn't equipped to print
pictures. But Walter had never asked me to give it back and I'd
not gone to the bother of having it removed, so it was still
there in my left eye, recording everything I saw, faithfully
storing it all until capacity was exhausted, then wiping it to
make way for the new stuff. Many a wild-eyed prophet before me
would have killed to have a holocam, so he could prove to those
doubting bastards he'd really seen those green cocker spaniels
get out of the whistling gizmo that landed on the henhouse.
Considering the number of cameras made between the Brownie
and the end of the twentieth century, you'd think more
intriguing pictures would have been taken of paranormal events,
but look for them-- I did--and you'll come up with a bucket of
space. After that, of course, computers got so good that any
picture could be faked.
But the only person I had to convince was myself. The
first thing I did, back in the tent, was to secure the data
into permanent storage. The second thing I did was to not tell
anybody what I'd seen. Part of that was reporter's instinct:
you don't blab until the story's nailed down. The rest was
admission of the weaknesses flesh is heir to: I hadn't been the
soberest of witnesses. But more importantly . . . this was my
vision. It had been granted to me. Not to Cricket, that
ingrate, who'd have seen it if he'd said he loved me and thrown
his arms around me and told me what a knuckle-headed dope he'd
been. Not to Miss Pulitzer Prize Brenda (you think that, just
because I gave her the big story, I wasn't jealous? You poor
fool, you). Just me.
And Winston. How could I have thought that gorgeous hound
was ugly? The third thing I did back in the tent was give that
most sublime quadruped a pound of my best sausage, and
apologize for not having anything better--like a Pomeranian, or
a Siamese.
#
We're not talking about the butterfly now. That was
amazing, but a few wonders short of a nonesuch.
It was an air tank on the insect's back. With suitable
enlargement I could make out tiny lines going from it to the
wings. The images got fuzzy when I tried to find out where they
went. But I could guess: since there was no air for it to fly
in, and since it seemed to be flying, I deduced it was kept
aloft by reaction power, air squirting from the underside of
its wings. Comparing this specimen to one mounted in a museum I
noted differences in the carapace. A vacuum-proof shell?
Probably. The air tank could dribble oxygen into the
butterfly's blood.
None of the equipment I could identify was what you'd call
off-the-shelf, but so what? Nanobots can build the most
cunning, tiny machines, much smaller than the air tank and
regulator and (possibly) gyro I saw. As for the carapace, that
shouldn't be too hard to effect with genetic engineering. So
somebody was building bugs to live on the surface. So what? All
that implied was an eccentric tinkerer, and Luna is lousy with
them. And that's just the sort of hare-brained thing they
build.
All this research was being done in bed, in Texas.
On my way home from the celebration I'd stopped at a store
and bought a disposable computer, television, recorder, and
flashlight and put them in my pocket and smuggled them past
temporal customs. Easy. Everybody does it, with small items,
and the guards don't even have to be bribed. I waited till
nightfall, then got in bed and pulled the covers over my head,
turned on the light, unrolled the television, dumped the
holocam footage into the recorder and wiped all traces of it
from my cerebral banks. Then I started scanning the footage
frame by frame.
Why all the secrecy? I honestly couldn't have told you at
the time. I knew I didn't want the CC to see this material but
don't know why I felt it was so important. Instinct, I guess.
And I couldn't have guaranteed even these measures would keep
him from finding out, but it was the best I could do. Using a
throwaway number cruncher instead of hooking in to the
mainframe seemed a reasonable way to keep the data away from
him, so long as I didn't ever network it with any other system.
He's good, but he's not magic.
It was an hour's work to deal with the butterfly and file
it under Wonderments, Lepidopterous. Then I moved on to the
miracle.
Height: Five foot two. Eyes: of blue. Hair: blonde, almost
white, shoulder-length, straight. Complexion: light brown,
probably from tanning. Apparent age: ten or eleven (no pubic
hair or bust, two prominent front teeth, facial clues).
Distinguishing marks: none. Build: slender. Clothing: none.
She could have been much older; a small minority prefer to
Peter Pan it through life, never maturing. But I doubted it,
from the way she moved. The teeth were a clue, as well. I
pegged her for a natural, not modified, she just grew that way.
She was visible for 11.4 seconds, not running hard, not
bouncing too high with each step. She seemed to come out of a
black hole and fall back into one. I was being methodical about
this, so I got everything I could out of those 11.4 seconds
before moving on to the frames I was dying to examine: the
first one, and the last one.
Item: If she was a ghost, then ghosts have mass. I'd been
unable to find her footprints among the thousands of others
there on the crater rim (I had noted a lot of the prints had
toes, but it meant nothing; lots of kids wear boots that leave
prints like bare feet), but the film clearly showed the prints
being made, the dust being kicked up. The computer studied the
prints and concluded the girl massed about what you'd expect.
Item: She was not completely naked. In a few frames I
could see biomagnetic thermosoles on the bottoms of her feet, a
damn good idea if you're going to run over the blazing rocks of
the surface. There was also a bit of jewelry sticking to her
chest, a few inches above the left nipple. It was
brass-colored, and shaped more like a pressure fitting than
anything else I could think of. Conjecture: Maybe it was a
pressure fitting. The snap-on type, universally used to connect
air hoses to tanks.
Item: In some of the early frames a slight mist could be
seen in front of her face. It looked like moisture freezing, as
if she had exhaled. There was no sign of respiration after
that.
Item: She was aware of my presence. Between step four and
step five she turned her head and looked directly at me for
half a second. She smiled. Then she made a goofy face and
crossed her eyes.
I made a few more observations, none of them seeming very
relevant or shedding any real light on the mystery. Oh, yes:
Item: I liked her. Making that face was just the sort of thing
I would have done at her age. At first I thought she was
taunting me, but I watched it over and over and concluded she
was daring me. Catch me if you can, old lady. Doll-face, I plan
to.
Then I spent most of the rest of the night analyzing just
a few seconds of images before and after her appearance. When I
was done I wiped the data from the computer, and for good
measure, put it in with the glowing embers of the fire in my
kitchen stove. It crackled and popped nicely. Now the only
record of my experience was in the little recorder.
I slept with it under my pillow.
#
Next Friday, after putting the Texian to bed, I went back
to Hamilton's and purchased a two-man tent. If that puzzles
you, you've never tried to live in a one-man tent. I had it
delivered to the rover rental office nearest the old mining
road, where I leased a vehicle from their second-hand fleet,
paying two months in advance to get the best rate. I had it
tanked full of oxygen and checked the battery level and kicked
the tires and had them replace a sagging leaf spring, and set
off for Delambre.
I set up the tent in the exact spot where we'd been seven
days before. Sunday night I struck the tent, having seen
nothing at all, and drove back to park the rover in a rented
garage.
The Friday after that, I did the same thing.
#
I spent all my weekends out at Delambre for quite a long
time. It was enough that, soon, I had to trade in my nice new
suit for a maternity model. If you've never worn one of those,
don't even ask. But nothing was going to keep me away from
Delambre, not even a developing pregnancy.
It all made sense to me at the time. Looking back, I can
see some questions about my behavior, but I think I'd still do
it again. But let's try to answer a few of them shall we?
I only spent the weekends at the crater because I still
needed Texas to give my life some stability. I still would have
kept coming back until the end of the school term because I
felt I had a responsibility to those who hired me, and to the
children. But the question didn't arise, because I needed the
job more than it needed me. Each Sunday evening I found myself
longing for my cabin. I guess a true Visionary would have been
ashamed of me; you're supposed to drop everything and pursue
the Vision.
I did the best I could. Every Friday I couldn't get out of
the disney fast enough. I attended no more churches, unburdened
my soul to no more quacks.
It's a little harder explaining the pregnancy. A little
embarrassing, too. As part of my efforts to experience as much
as possible of what life had been like on Old Earth, I had had
my menstrual cycle restored. I know it sounds crazy. I'd
expected it would be a one-time thing, like the corset, but
found it not nearly as onerous as Callie had cracked it up to
be. I hadn't intended to let it go on forever, I wasn't that
silly, but I thought, I don't know, half a dozen periods or so,
then over and out. The rest is really no mystery at all. It's
just what happens to fertile nulliparous centenarians who know
zip about Victorian methods of birth control, and who are so
un-wise as to couple with a guy who swears he's not going to
come.
The real mystery came after the rabbit died (I boned up on
the terminology after I got the news). Why keep it?
The best I can say is that I'd never ruled out
child-bearing as something I might do, some day, some distant
day when I had twenty years to spare. Naturally, that day never
seemed to dawn. Having a baby is probably something you have to
want to do, badly, with an almost instinctual urge that seems
to reside in some women and not in others. Looking around me, I
had noted there were plenty of women who had this urge. Boy,
did they have the urge. I'd never felt it. The species seemed
in fine shape in the hands of these breeder women, and I'd
never flattered myself that I'd be any good at it, so it was
always a matter of someday.
But enough unsuccessful and unplanned and ununderstood
suicide attempts focuses the mind wonderfully. I realized that
if I didn't do it now, I might never do it. And it was the one
major human experience I could think of that I might want to
have and had not had. And, as I said, I'd been looking for a
sign, O Lord, and this seemed like one. A bolt from the blue,
not on the order of the Girl and Butterfly, but a portent all
the same.
Which simply meant that every Friday on my way to Delambre
I gave serious thought to stopping off and having the damn
thing taken care of, and every time, so far, had elected to
keep it, not exactly by a landslide.
There's an old wives' tale that a pregnant woman should
not visit the surface. If that's true, why do they make
maternity suits? The only danger is of coming into labor while
in the suit, and that's not much of a danger. An ambulance can
get you from any point on Luna to a birthing center in twenty
minutes. That was not a concern to me. Nor was I neglecting my
duties as an incubator. I got roaring drunk that once, but
that's easily cured. Each Wednesday I visited a check-up center
and was told things were cooking nicely. Each Thursday I
dropped by Ned Pepper's office and, if he was sober enough, let
him poke me and thump me and pronounce me as fine a heifer as
he'd ever come across, and sell me a bottle of yellow elixir
which did wonders for my struggling rose bushes.
If I kept it to term, I intended to bear it naturally. (It
was a male, but it seems silly to think of an embryo as having
a sex.) When I was about twenty it seemed for a while that
birthing was soon to be a thing of the past. The large majority
of women were rearing their pups in jars, often prominently
displayed on the living room coffee table. I watched many a
neighbor's blastocyst mature over the years, peering into the
scope with all the enthusiasm one usually brings to viewing
Uncle Luigi's holos of his trip to Mars. I watched many a
mother scratching the bottle and cooing and goo-gooing to her
secondtrimester fetus. I was present at a few decantings, which
were often elaborately catered, with hired bands and wrapped
presents and the whole megillah.
As is so often the case, it was a fad, not a tide of
civilization. Some studies came out suggesting that Screwtops
did less well in later life than Bellybusters. Other studies
showed the opposite. Studies frequently do that.
I don't read studies. I go with my gut. The pendulum had
swung back toward the "healthy mother/child bonding of vaginal
delivery" and against the "birth trauma scars a child for life"
folks, but my gut told me that, given that I should do this at
all, my gut was the proper place for it to grow. And now that
my uterus has been heard from, I will thank it to shut up.
#
The frames recording the girl's appearance and subsequent
seeming exit from this dimensional plane revealed several
interesting things. She had not materialized out of thin vacuum
nor had she fallen out of and back into a black hole. There
were images before, and after.
I couldn't make a thing of them, given the low light and
the mysterious nature of the transubstantiation. But that's
what computers are for. My five-and-dime model chewed on the
images of twisted light for a while, and came up with the
notion that a human body, wrapped in a perfect flexible mirror,
would twist light in just such a way. All you'd see would be
distorted reflections of the person's surroundings, so while
not rendering one invisible, it sure would make you hard to
see. Up close it would be possible to make out a human shape,
if you were looking for it. From a distance, forget it. If she
stood still, especially against a background as shattered as
the Delambre junkyard, there would be no way to find her. I
remembered the nagging headache I'd had shortly before her
little show. She'd been around before she decided to reveal
herself to me.
A search of the library found no technology that could
produce anything like what I had observed. Whatever it was, it
could be turned off and on very quickly; my holocam's shutter
speed was well below a thousandth of a second, and she was
wrapped in the mirror in one frame, naked in the next. She
didn't take it off, she turned it off.
Looking for an explanation of the other singular thing
about her, the ability to run nude, even if for only seven
steps, in a vacuum, produced a few tidbits concerning the
implantation of oxygen sources to dispense directly into the
bloodstream, research that had never borne profitable fruit and
had been abandoned as impractical. Hmmmm.
I put myself through a refresher course in vacuum
survival. People have lived after exposure of up to four
minutes, which is when the brain starts to die. They suffer
significant tissue damage, but so what? Infants have lived
after even longer periods. You can do useful work for maybe a
minute, maybe a bit longer, work like scrambling into an
emergency suit. Exposures of five to ten seconds will likely
rupture your eardrums and certainly hurt like hell, but do you
no other real harm. "The bends" is easily treatable.
So wait a minute, what's all this talk about a miracle? I
determined in fairly short order that what I'd seen was almost
surely a technical marvel, not a supernatural one. And I was a
bit relieved, frankly. Gods are capricious characters, and the
biggest part of me had no desire to have it proved that one
really existed. What if you saw your burning bush and it turned
out the Power behind it was a psychopathic child, like the
Christian God? He's God, right? He's proved it and you've got
to do what he tells you to do. So what if he asks you to
sacrifice your son on an altar to His massive ego, or build a
big boat in your back yard, or pimp your wife to the local
honcho, blackmail him, and give him a dose of clap? (Don't
believe me? Genesis 12: 10-20. You learn the most interesting
things in church.)
It didn't diminish the miracle one bit to know it was
probably man-made. It excited me all the more. Somewhere out
there, in that huge junkyard, somebody was doing things nobody
else knew how to do. And if it wasn't in the library, the CC
probably didn't know about it, either. Or if he did, he was
suppressing it, and if so, why?
All I knew was I wanted to talk to whoever had made it
possible for that little girl to wrap herself in a perfect
mirror and make a face at me.
#
Which was easier said than done.
The first four weekends I simply camped out, did very
little exploring. I was hoping, since she'd come to me once,
she'd do it again. No real reason why she should, but again,
why not?
After that I spent more time in my suit. I climbed a few
alps of rubble, but there didn't seem much point in it after
the first few. It stretched as far as the eye could see; there
was no way to search it, or even a small part of it.
No, it seemed to me it was no coincidence the sighting had
come at the base of that monument to high hopes, the Starship
Robert A. Heinlein. I set about to explore as much of the old
hulk as I could, but first I visited the library again and
learned something of his history. Herewith, in brief, is the
saga of failed dreams:
The Heinlein was first proposed in 2010, by a group known
as the L5 Society. It was to be humanity's first interstellar
vessel, a remarkable idea when you consider that the Lunar
colony at the time was quite small, still struggling year to
year for funding. And it was to be another twenty years before
the keel was laid, at L5, one of the Trojan libration points of
the Earth/Luna system. L5 and L4 enjoyed several decades of
prominence before the Invasion, and thrived for almost forty
years afterwards. Today they are orbiting junkyards. Economic
reasons again.
The ship was half completed when the Invaders came. Work
was naturally abandoned in favor of more pressing projects,
like survival of the species. When that seemed assured, there
was still very little effort to spare for blue-sky projects
like the Heinlein.
But work resumed in the year 82, A.I., and went on five or
six years before another snag was hit, in the form of the
Lunarian Party. The loonies, or Isolationists, or (to their
enemies) Appeasers, as they came to be called, had as their
main article of faith that mankind should accept its lot as a
conquered race and thrive as best it could on Luna and the
other inhabited planets. The Invaders had reduced all the works
of humanity to less than rubble in the space of three days.
Surely this demonstrated, the Loonies reasoned, the Invaders
were a different breed of cat altogether. We had been extremely
lucky to have survived at all. If we annoyed them again they
might come back and finish the job they started.
Rubbish, responded the old guard, who have since come to
be known as Heinleiners. Sure they were stronger than us. Sure
they had superior technology. Sure they had bigger guns. God's
always on the side of bigger guns, and if we want him back on
our side, we'd better build even bigger guns. The Invaders, the
reasoning went, must be a vastly older race, with vastly older
science. But they still shit between two . . . well,
tentacle-heels?
This was the flaw in the Heinleiners' reasoning, said the
Loonies. We didn't know if they had bigger guns. We didn't know
if they had tentacles or cilia or good honest legs and arms
like you and I and God. We didn't know anything. No human had
ever seen one and survived. No one had ever photographed one,
though you'd think our orbiting telescopes would have; they'd
been looking, on and off, for two hundred years, and no one had
seen them check out of the little motel known as Earth. They
were weird. Their capabilities had thus far admitted of no
limits. It seemed prudent to assume they had no limits.
After almost ninety years of jingoism, of
rallyround-the-flag rhetoric and sheer pettifogging bombast,
this sounded like a good argument to a large part of a
population weary of living on a perpetual war footing. They'd
been making sacrifices for nearly a century, on the theory that
we must be ready to, one, repel attack, and two, rise up in our
wrath one glorious day and stomp the bejesus out of those . . .
whatever they were. Live and let live made a whole lot of
sense. Stop our puny saber-rattling round the ankles of these
giants, and we'll be okay. Speak softly, and screw the big
stick.
Eventually all our forward listening posts in near-Earth
orbit were drawn back--a move I applaud, by the way, since
they'd heard nothing and seen nothing since Invasion Day. It
was commanded that no man-made object approach the home planet
closer than 200,000 kilometers. The planetary defense system
was scaled back drastically, turned to meteoroid destruction,
where at least it saw some use.
How all this affected the Heinlein was in the ban on
fission and fusion explosive devices. The R.A.H. had been
designed as an Orion-type pusherplate propulsion system, to
this day the only feasible drive if you want to get to the
stars in less than a thousand years. What you do is chuck
A-bombs out of a hole in the back, slam the door, and wait for
them to go off. Do that every second or two. The shock wave
pushes you.
This needs a big pusher plate--and I'm talking big
here--and some sort of shock absorber to preserve the dental
work of the passengers. They calculated it could reach about
one-twentieth of light-speed--Alpha Centauri in only about
eighty years. But it couldn't even leave L5 without bombs, and
suddenly there were no more bombs. Work shut down with the main
body and most of the shock absorbing system almost complete,
still no sign of the massive pusher plate.
For forty years the friends of the Heinlein lobbied for an
exception for their big baby, like the one granted to the
builders of the first disneylands for blasting purposes.
Changing political winds and economic pressure from the Outer
Planets Confederation, where most fissionables were mined, and
the decline of the L.P. combined to eventually bring a victory.
The Heinleiners celebrated and turned to the government for
funding . . . and nobody cared. Space exploration had fallen
out of favor. It does, periodically. The argument not to pour
all that money down the rathole of space when you could spend
it right here on Luna can be a persuasive one to a population
more interested in standard of living and crippling taxation
and no longer afraid of the Invader boogeyman.
There were attempts to get it going again with private
money. The perception was the whole thing had passed its time.
It was a white elephant. It became a regular subject in comic
monologues.
The ship still had some value as scrap. Eventually someone
bought it and strapped on some big boosters and lowered it
bodily to the edge of Delambre, where it sits, stripped of
anything of worth, to this day.
#
The first thing I noticed about the Heinlein during my
explorations was that it was broken. That is to say, snapped in
half. Built strongly to withstand the shocks of its propulsion
system, it had never been meant to land on a planet, even one
with so weak a gravity field as Luna. The bottom had buckled,
and the hull had ruptured about halfway back from the stem.
The second thing I noticed was that, from time to time,
lights could be seen from some of the windows high up on the
hull.
There were places where one could get inside. I explored
several of them. Most led to solidly welded doors. A few seemed
to go further, but the labyrinthine nature of the place worried
me. I made a few sorties trailing a line behind me so I could
find my way out, but during one I felt the line go slack. I
followed it back and couldn't determine if I'd simply tied it
badly or if it had been deliberately loosened. I made no more
entries into the ship. There was no reason to suppose the girl
and anyone she lived with would wish me well. In fact, if she
did, she certainly would have contacted me by then. I would
have to resort to other tactics.
I tried magnetic grapplers and scaled the side of the
hull, trying to reach the lighted ports. When I reached them I
was seldom sure I had the right one, and in any case, by the
time I got there no light could be seen.
It began to seem I was chasing ghosts.
I got discouraged enough that, one Friday night, I decided
to stay home for the weekend. I was getting quite big, and
while one-sixth gee must make it easier to carry a baby, we're
none of us as strong as our Earth-born ancestors were, and I'd
become prone to backaches and sore feet.
So I decided to rent a rig and take a trip to Whiz-Bang,
the new capitol of Texas. Harry the blacksmith had just got a
new Columbus Phaeton-$58.00 in the Sears catalog!--and was
happy to let me try it out. (Mail-order was our polite fiction
for Modern-Made. There would never be enough disneys to
manufacture all the items one needs for survival, there's just
too many of them. Most of the things I owned had arrived on the
Wells-Fargo wagon, fresh from the computer-run factories.) He
hitched a dappled mare he assured me was gentle, and I took off
down the road.
Whiz-Bang is in the eastern part of the disney. The
interior compresses about two hundred miles worth of
environment into a bubble only fifty miles wide, so before I
got there I was into a new kind of terrain and climate, one
where there was more rainfall and things grew better. Purely by
chance I was passing through at the height of the wildflower
season. I saw larkspur, phlox, Mexican hat, Indian paintbrush,
cornflower, and bluebonnets. Millions and millions of
bluebonnets. I stopped the horse and let her graze while I
spread my blanket among them and ate a picnic lunch. I can't
tell you what a relief it was to get away from the foreboding
hulk of the Heinlein and the bitter white rock of the surface,
and hear the song of the mockingbird.
I pulled into Whiz-Bang around noon. It's a bigger town
than New Austin--which means it has five saloons and we have
two. They get more of the tourist trade, which New Austin does
not work to attract, which means they have more small shops
selling authentic souvenirs, still the main means of livelihood
for two out of five Texans. I strolled the streets, nodding to
the gentlemen who tipped their hats, stopping to look into each
shop window. The merchandise fell into four categories:
Mexican, Indian, "Primitive West," and Victorian. The first
three were all hand-made in the disney, certified genuine
reproductions-with a little fudging: "Indian" artifacts
included items from all southwest tribes, not just Comanche and
Apache. But there were no totem poles and no plastic papooses.
Suddenly I realized I was looking at the answer, if answer
there was. I was standing at the window of a toy shop.
#
I felt like Santa Claus as I drove once more down the
mining road and across the rising rim of Delambre early that
Sunday morning. I certainly had a sleighful of toys, in a
vac-sack tossed on the passenger seat. It was about two days
past full noon.
"On Dasher, on Dancer, on Prancer," I cried. The ride in
the country and the new plan of attack had buoyed my spirits,
which had been at a low ebb. I stopped the rover and quickly
deployed the tent. I spoke not a word but went straight to my
work, setting out all my presents . . . oh, stop that, Hildy. I
laughed, which no doubt caused my big round belly to shake like
a bowl full of jelly.
What I'd done was first to make a Whiz-Bang toymonger a
very happy and much wealthier woman. She'd followed me out of
the store, carrying my boxes of trifles, not quite kow-towing,
stowing them in the buggy for me. Then I'd driven back to New
Austin, pausing only to pick a bunch of bluebonnets, which I
mailed to Cricket. No, I hadn't given up yet.
I'd exercised little selection in the toy store, ruling
out only the ranks of lead soldiers and most of the dolls.
Somehow they just didn't feel right; maybe it was just personal
prejudice. But now I sweated the choice of each of the four
items I wanted to lure her with.
First was a tin-and-pewter wind-up of a horse pulling a
cart, brightly painted in reds and yellows. All little girls
like horses, don't they?
Next was a half-meter Mexican puppet in the shape of a
skeleton, made of clay and papiermÂche' and corn husks. I liked
the way it clattered when I picked it up, dangling from its
five strings. It was old and wise.
Then a Kachina doll, even older and wiser, though carved
and painted only months ago. I chose it over the sweeter, safer
white man's dolls, all porcelain and pouty lips and flounces,
because it spoke to me of ancient secrets, unknown ceremonies.
It was as brashly pagan as my elusive sprite, she of the funny
face. Reading up on it, I found it was even better, as the
Kachinas were said to exist among the tribe, but invisible.
And last, my most fortuitous find: a butterfly net, made
of bent cane and gauze, with a glass Mason jar, wad of cotton,
and bottle of alcohol for the humane euthanizing of specimens.
Just the sort of toy parents could put together for a pioneer
child, if the child had a biological bent.
None of the toys would be much harmed by vacuum, but the
sunshine on the surface is brutal, so I placed them where
they'd stay in the shade, near the hull of the Heinlein, and
arranged little lights over them so they'd be easy to find.
Then I went back to the tent.
I didn't have much time to stay if I was to be back for
Monday classes, and I spent that time unprofitably. I couldn't
eat anything, and I couldn't read the book I'd brought along. I
was excited, worried, and a little depressed. What made me
think this would work?
So in the end I struck the tent and took one last tour of
my little toy tableau, which once more was undisturbed.
The next week was hell. Many times I thought of looking
for a substitute and getting the hell back. You want a measure
of my distraction? Elise caught me dealing seconds, and it's
been seventy years since that had happened.
But the week did crawl by, faster than any ordinary garden
slug, and Friday afternoon I turned the editorial chores over
to Charity with instructions to keep the libel suits down to
three or four, and broke all records getting out to Delambre.
#
The Kachina was gone. In its place was something I didn't
recognize at first, but quickly realized was a Navajo sand
painting. These are made by dribbling different colored sands
onto the ground and they can be amazingly detailed and precise.
This one wasn't, but I appreciated the effort. It was just a
stick figure Indian, with war bonnet and a bow held in one
hand, a tipi in the background.
She'd taken the horse and carriage, too, and left a
vac-cage about the right size for taking your pet hamster for a
stroll on the surface. But inside was a horse. A living horse,
ten centimeters high at the shoulder.
I hadn't seen a horselet in years. Callie had given me one
for my fifth birthday, not as small as this one. Not long after
that people like David Earth had succeeded in getting that sort
of gene tinkering outlawed. You could still buy minis on Pluto,
but the most that was allowed on Luna these days were perpetual
puppies and kittens. When I was young you could still get real
exotics, like winged dogs and eight-legged cats.
Somehow I didn't think this beast had been purchased on
Pluto. I held the cage up and tapped on the glass, and the
horselet looked back at me calmly. I wondered what I was going
to do with the damn thing.
The butterfly equipment didn't seem disturbed until I
looked at it more closely. Then I saw the monarch at the bottom
of the jar, still, apparently dead. I put the jar in my pocket
for later examination, left the net where it was, and hurried
on to find that my last offering had been taken. The skeleton
puppet was gone, and where it had been was a scrap of paper. I
picked it up and read the word "thanks," written in pencil.
#
I pondered all this on the drive back to King City. I
didn't know whether to be encouraged or crestfallen. Three of
my toys had been taken, and three other toys left in their
place. I had never expected this. My hope had been to gradually
lure her out with gifts; the idea of trading had never entered
my mind.
So it was good that I had finally made contact, of a sort.
At least, I hoped it was she who had left the horse, butterfly,
and painting. It was still possible another sort of prankster
entirely was at work here, but I didn't think so. Each gift
told me something, though it was hard to know just how much to
read into each one.
The horselet was illegal, so she was telling me she didn't
give a damn about the law. The painting, when I examined the
photo I took of it, proved to be of a Lipan Apache brave, not
just a generic "Indian." That meant to me that she knew the
gift came from Texas . . . and that I lived there? Might she
come to me? You're getting too far-fetched, Hildy.
The butterfly was the most interesting of all, and that
was why I had not erected the tent but was on my way to Liz's
apartment in King City. Of the people I knew, she'd be the most
likely to be able to give me the help I needed with no
questions asked.
#
Before I got there I stopped and bought another computer.
I used this one to doctor the images from my recorder,
completely wiping out the background from those crucial seconds
until I had nothing but the nude figure of a girl running
against a black background. The impulse to protect the story is
a deep one; I had no reason to mistrust Liz, but no reason why
she should know everything I knew, either.
I showed her the film and explained what I wanted from
her, managing to befuddle her considerably, but when she
understood I was answering no questions she said sure, it would
be no problem, then stood watching me.
"Now, Liz," I said.
"Sure," she said, and did a double-take. "Oh, you mean
right now."
So she called a friend at one of the studios who said,
sure, he could do it, no problem, and was about to wire the
pictures to him when I said I'd prefer to use the mail. Looking
at me curiously, Liz addressed the tape and popped it into the
chute, then waited for my next trick.
"What the hell," I said, and got out the butterfly. We
both looked at it with the naked eye, handling it carefully,
and she wanted to let her computer have a go at it, but I said
no, and instead ordered an ordinary magnifying glass, which
arrived in ten minutes. We both examined it and found I had
been right about the propulsion system. There were hair-fine
tubes under the wings, which were somehow attached to the
insect's musculature in such a way that flexing the wing caused
air to squirt out.
"Looks kind of squirrely to me," Liz pronounced. "I think
it'd just fall down and lie there."
"I saw it fly," I said.
"If that'll fly, I'll kiss your ass and give you an hour
to draw a crowd." She waited expectantly for my response, but I
didn't give her one. It was obvious she was being eaten with
curiosity. She tried wheedling a little, then gave it up and
turned to the horse. "I might be willing to take this off your
hands," she said. "I know somebody who wants one." She tickled
it under the chin, and it trotted to the edge of the table
where I'd released it, then jumped down. A scale model horse in
one-sixth gee is quite spry.
Liz named a price, and I said she was taking bread from
the mouths of my children and named another, and she said I
must think she just fell off the turnip wagon, and eventually
we settled on a price that seemed to please her. I didn't tell
her that if she'd asked, I'd have given it to her.
The pictures arrived. I looked at them and told her they'd
do nicely, and thanked her for her time and trouble. I left her
still trying to find out more about the butterfly.
#
What I'd obtained from her was a strip of images suitable
for installing inside a zoetrope. If you don't know what that
is, it's a little like a phenakistoscope, but fancier, though
not quite so nice as a praxinoscope. Still at sea? Picture a
small drum, open at the top, with slits around the sides. You
put the drum on top of a spindle, paste pictures inside it,
rotate it, and look through the slits as they move past you. If
you've chosen the right pictures, they will appear to move.
It's an early version of the motion picture.
I put the strip inside the zoetrope I'd bought at the
Whiz-Bang toy store, twirled it, and saw the girl running
jerkily. And I'd done it all without the aid of the Lunar
computer net known as the CC. With any luck, these images still
existed only in my recorder.
I went right back out to Delambre and put the zoetrope in
a location where it couldn't be missed. I set up the tent,
fixed and ate a light supper, and fell asleep.
I checked it several times during the weekend and always
found it still where I'd left it. Sunday night--still daylight
in Delambre--I packed the rover and decided to look once more
before leaving. I was feeling discouraged.
At first I thought it hadn't been touched, then I realized
the pictures had been changed. I knelt and spun the drum, and
through the slits I saw the flickering image of myself in my
pressure suit, with Winston in his, capering around my legs.
#
I had a week to think it over. Was she saying she wanted
to see the dog? Any dog, or just Winston? Or was she saying
anything at all except I see you?
What I had to remember was there was no real hurry to this
project, my feelings of impatience notwithstanding. If Winston
had to be involved, it would require bringing Liz deeper into
my confidence, something I was reluctant to do. So the next
weekend I went out armed with four dogs, one from each of the
cultures in Texas. There was a brightly painted Mexican one,
carved from wood, another simpler wooden pioneer dog, a
Comanche camp scene, with dogs, painted on rawhide--the best I
could do--and my prize, a brass automaton of a dog that would
shuffle up to a fire hydrant and lift its leg.
I set them out on my next visit. As I was crawling into
the tent afterwards my phone rang.
"Hello? I said, suspiciously.
"I still say it can't fly."
"Liz? How'd you get this number?"
"You ask me that? Don't start me lying this early in the
morning. I got my methods."
I thought about telling her what the CC thought of her
methods, and I thought about chewing her out for invading my
privacy--since my retirement I'd restricted my telephone to
incoming calls from a very short list--but thinking about those
things was as far as I got, because as I was talking I'd stood
up and turned around, and all four of my new gifts were lined
up just outside the tent, looking in at me. I turned quickly,
scanning the landscape in every direction, but it was useless.
In that mirror skin of hers she might be lying flat no more
than thirty meters away and I wouldn't have a prayer.
So what I said was "Never mind that, I was just thinking
of you, and that lovely dog of yours."
"Then this is your lucky day. I'm calling from the car,
and I'm no more than twenty minutes from Delambre, and Winston
is having a wet dream that may concern your left leg, so throw
some of that chili on the stove."
#
"I think you gained two kay since last week," she said
when she came into the tent. "When it comes time to whelp that
thing, you're gonna have to do it in shifts." I appreciated
those remarks so much that I added three peppers to her bowl
and miked it hard. Pregnancy is maybe the most mixed blessing
I'd ever experienced. On the one hand, there's a feeling I
couldn't begin to describe, something that must approach
holiness. There's a life growing in your body. When all is said
and done, reproducing the species is the only demonstrable
reason for existence. Doing so satisfies a lot of the brain's
most primitive wiring. On the other hand, you feel like such a
sow.
I told her as little as I could get away with, mostly that
I'd seen someone out here and that I wanted to get in contact
with her. She saw my box of toys: the zoetrope, and the dogs.
"If it's that girl you had the pictures of, and you saw
her out here, I'd like to meet her, too."
I had to admit it was. How else was I going to convince
her to leave Winston in my care for the rest of the weekend?
We tossed around a few ideas, none of them very good. As
she was getting ready to leave she thought of something, pulled
a deck of cards from her pocket, and handed them to me.
"I brought these along when I found out where you'd been
coming all these weekends." She'd previously told me the story
of her detective work, nosing around Texas, finding out from
Huck that I always left Friday evening when the paper went to
bed--lately even earlier. Rover rental records available to the
public, or to people who knew how to get into them, told her
where I'd been renting. A bribe to the right mechanic got her
access to the odometer of my vehicle, and simple division told
her how long a trip I'd been taking each time, but by then
she'd been pretty sure it was to Delambre.
"I knew you'd seen something out here during the
Bicentennial," she went on. "I didn't know what, but you came
back from that last walk looking wilder than an acre of snakes,
and you wouldn't tell anybody what it was. Then you show up at
my place with those pictures of a girl running through nothing
and you won't let me wire 'em or digitize 'em. I expect you got
secrets to keep, but I could figure out you were looking for
somebody. So if you want to find somebody, what you do is you
start playing solitaire, and pretty soon they'll come up and
tell you--"
"--to play the black ten on the red Jack," I finished for
her.
"You heard it. Well, at least it'll give you something to
do." She left, casting a worried eye over her pet, who didn't
seem at all disturbed to see her go, and with a final
admonition that Winston got his walkies three times a day or he
was apt to get mean enough to make a train take a dirt road.
#
I'd already brought a deck of cards. I usually have one
with me, as manipulating them is something to do with my hands
at idle moments, better than needlepoint and potentially much
more profitable. If you don't practice the moves you find your
hands freeze up on you at a critical moment.
But I never play solitaire, and the reason is a little
embarrassing. I cheat. Which is all very well for blackjack or
five-card stud, but what's the point in solitaire?
Point or not, I eventually found myself laying out a hand.
Pretty soon I got into it. Not the game itself, than which
there are few purer wasters of time, but the cards. You have to
be able to visualize the order, make them your friends so
they'll tell you things. Do it long enough and you'll always
know what the next card will be, and you'll know what the cards
are that you can't see, as sure as if they were marked on the
back.
I did it for a long time, until Winston got up and began
to scratch at the wall of the tent. Better get him into his
suit before he got frantic, I thought, and looked up into the
face of the girl. She was standing there, outside the tent,
grinning down at Winston, and she had a telescope tucked under
her arm. She looked at me and shook a finger: naughty, naughty.
"Wait!" I shouted. "I want to talk to you."
She smiled again, shrugged her shoulders, and became a
perfect mirror. All I could see of her was the distorted
reflection of the tent and the ground she stood on. The
distortions twisted and flowed and began to dwindle. Pressing
my face against the tent wall I could follow her progress for a
little while since she was the only moving object out there.
She wasn't in any hurry and I thought she looked back over her
shoulder, but there was no way to be sure.
I got into my suit quickly, thought it over, and suited
Winston, too. I let him out, knowing his ears and sense of
smell were totally useless out here but hoping some other doggy
sense would give me a lead. He shuffled off, trying to press
his nose to the ground as he usually did, succeeding only in
getting moondust on the bottom of his helmet. I followed him
with my flashlight.
Soon he stopped and tried to press his face to the surface
with more than his usual doggedness. I knelt and looked at what
he was trying to pick up. It was a bit of spongy material that
crumbled in my glove when I lifted it. I laughed aloud; Winston
looked up, and I patted the top of his helmet.
"I might have know you wouldn't miss food, even if you
can't smell it," I told him. And we set off together, following
the trail of breadcrumbs.
=*= =*= =*= =*=
Feeling not unlike the hood ornament on a luxury
rover--and showing a lot more chrome-plated belly than either
Mr. Rolls or Mr. Royce would have approved of--I stepped boldly
forth into the sunlight, almost as naked as the day I was born.
Boldly, if you don't dwell on the thirty minutes I spent
getting up my nerve to do it in the first place. Naked, if you
don't count the mysterious force field that kept me wrapped in
a warming blanket of air at least five millimeters thick.
Even the warming part was illusory. It certainly felt as
if the air was keeping me warm, and without that psychological
reassurance I doubt if I'd have made it. Actually, the air was
cooling me, which is always the problem in a space suit,
whether bought off the shelf at Hamilton's or hocus-pocused
into existence by the Genius of the Robert A. Heinlein. See,
the human body generates heat, and a spacesuit has to be a good
insulator, that's its main purpose; the heat will build up and
choke you without an outlet. See?
Oh, brother. If you had a chuckle at my explanations of
nanoengineering and cybernetics, wait till you hear Hildy's
Field Suits Made Simple.
"You're doing fine, Hildy," Gretel (not her real name)
coaxed. "I know it takes some getting used to."
"How would you know that?" I countered. "You grew up in a
field suit."
"Yeah, but I've taken tenderfeet out before."
Tenderfeet, indeed. I bent over to see those pedal
extremities, thinking I'd have to get reacquainted with them
post-partum. I wiggled my toes and light wiggled off the
reflections. Like wearing thick mylar socks, only all I could
feel was what appeared to be the rough surface of Luna. There
was some feedback principle at work there, I'd been told; the
field kept me floating five millimeters high no matter how hard
I pressed down. And a good thing, too. Those rock were hot.
"How's the breathing?" Gretel asked, in a funny voice I'd
get used to eventually. Part of the field suit package was a
modification of my implanted telephone so that sub-vocalization
could be heard over the channel the Heinleiners used
suit-to-suit.
"I still want to gasp," I said.
"Say again?"
I repeated it, saying each word carefully.
"That's just psychotic."
I think she meant psychosomatic, or maybe psychological.
Or possibly psychotic was the perfect word. How would you
describe someone who trusted her delicate hide to a spatial
effect that, as near as I could understand it, had no existence
in the real world?
The desire to breathe was real enough, even though a
suppressor of some kind was at work in my brain cutting off
that part of the autonomic nervous system. My body was getting
all the oxygen it needed, but when your lungs have been
inhaling and exhaling for over a hundred years, some part of
you gets a little alarmed when asked to shut it off for an hour
or so. I'd been holding my breath for almost ten minutes so
far. I felt about ready to go back inside and gulp.
"You want to go back inside?"
I wondered if I'd been muttering to myself. Gotta watch
that. I shook my head, remembered how hard that was to see, and
mouthed "No."
"Then take my hand," she said. I did, and our two suit
fields melted together and I felt her bare hand in mine. I
could see that, if these things ever got on the market, there
was going to be a big fad in lovemaking under the stars.
#
Don't go shopping for a field suit just yet, though.
They'll surely be available in a few years, what with
current conditions. A lot of people are angry at the
Heinleiners for not just bestowing the patents gratis to the
general public. I've heard mutterings. A lot of good it will do
the mutterers; they simply don't understand Heinleiners. There
goddam sure ain't no such thing as a free lunch, and they're
out to prove it.
As I write this, the Heinleiners are still pretty pissed
off, and who could blame them? All charges have naturally been
dropped, the statutes of limitations have expired, as it were.
Nobody's out hunting them. Yet I swore a solemn oath not to
reveal the names of any of them until given permission, and
that permission has not been granted, and who's to say they're
wrong? Say what you will about me as a reporter, but I never
revealed a source, and I never will. Hence, the girl I will
call "Gretel." Hence all the aliases I will bestow on the
people I met after I followed Gretel's trail into the perfect
mirror.
And I promised not to lie to you, but from here on in I
will not always tell you the whole truth. Events have of
necessity been edited, to protect people with no reason to
trust authority but who trusted me and then found . . . but I'm
getting ahead of myself.
#
The trail of breadcrumbs led into the rubble that washed
at the base of the Heinlein. At first it seemed as if they
vanished into a blank wall, but I found that if I ducked a
little there was a way through.
Luckily, I had Winston on a leash, because he was
straining to head right into the pile, and god knows if I'd
ever have found him again. I shined my flashlight under the
overhang--which seemed to be the back end of a vintage
rover--and saw it would be possible to squirm my way in.
Without the crumbs I never would have tried it, as I could
already see four ways to go. But I did go in, wondering all the
time just how stable this whole pile was, if I dared brush up
against anything.
Not too far in it became clear I was on a pathway. At
first it was just bare rock. Soon there was a flooring laid
down, made of discarded plastic wall panels. I tested each step
cautiously, but it seemed firm. I found each panel had been
spot welded to some of the more massive pieces of debris that
made up the jackstraw jumble. I further saw, looking around the
edge of the roadway, that the ground was no longer down there.
My flashlight picked up an endless array of junk. If there'd
been any air I might have tried dropping a coin or something; I
had a feeling I'd hear it clatter for a long time.
For a while I kept testing each new panel cautiously, but
each was as firmly in place as the last. I decided I was being
silly. People obviously used this path with some frequency, and
despite its impromptu nature it seemed sturdy enough. Flashing
my light around above me I could soon see the tunnel itself had
been made by some kind of boring machine. It was cylindrical,
and a lot of rubbish had been blasted or cut away; I found
sliced edges of metal beams on each side of the tunnel, as if
the center sections had been cut out. I hadn't seen it as a
cylinder at first because its walls were so relentlessly
baroque, not covered with anything as they would be in King
City.
Before long I came to a string of lights hung rather
haphazardly along the left-hand side of the tunnel. And not
long after that I saw somebody approaching me from a good
distance. I shined the light at the person, and she shined her
light at me, and I saw she was also pregnant and also had a
bulldog on a leash, which seemed too much for coincidence.
Winston didn't put it together. Instead, he plowed forward
in his usual way, either to greet a new friend or to rend an
enemy into bloody gobbets, who could tell? I could hear the
clang over my suit radio when he hit. He sat down hard, having
had no visible effect upon the perfect mirror.
Neither did I, though I scrupulously did all the futile
things people do in stories about humans encountering alien
objects: chunking rocks, swinging a makeshift club, kicking it.
I left no scratches on it. ("Mister President, it is my
scientific opinion the saucer is made of an alloy never seen on
Earth!") I'd have tried fire, electricity, lasers, and atomic
weapons, but I didn't have any handy. Maybe lasers wouldn't
have been the best idea.
So I waited, wondering if she'd been watching me, hoping
she'd had a good laugh at my expense, feeling sure she hadn't
led me this far just to strand me, and in a moment the surface
of the mirror bulged and became a human face. The face smiled,
and then the rest of the body appeared. At first I thought she
was moving forward, but it turned out the mirror was moving
back and the field was forming around her body as she simply
stood there.
It moved back about three meters, and she beckoned to me.
I went to her, and she made some gestures which I didn't
understand. Finally I got the idea that I was to hold on to a
bar fastened to the wall. I did, and the girl crouched and held
on to Winston, who seemed happy to see her.
There was a loud bang and something slammed into me. Bits
of trash and dust swirled, maybe a little mist, too. The
perfect mirror was no longer where it had been and the corridor
had changed. I looked around and saw the walls were now coated
with the same mirror, and the flat surface had re-formed behind
me, where it had been originally. A rather dramatic airlock.
For a few more seconds Gretel was still wrapped in
distortion, then her suit field vanished and she became the
nude ten-year-old who had run through my dreams for such a long
time. She was saying something. I shook my head and glanced at
the readouts for exterior temperature and pressure-- pure
habit, I could see and hear the air was okay-- then I took off
my helmet.
"First thing," Gretel said, "you've got to promise not to
tell my father."
"Not to tell him what?"
"That you saw me on the surface without my suit. He
doesn't like it when I do that."
"I wouldn't, either. Why do you do it?"
"You gotta promise, or you can just go home."
I did. I would have promised one hell of a lot of things
to get farther down that tunnel I could see stretching ahead of
me. I even would have kept most of them. Personally, I don't
view a promise made to a ten-year-old to be binding, if it
involves a matter of safety, but I'd keep that one if I could.
I had a thousand questions, but wasn't sure how to ask
them. I'm a good interviewer, but getting answers out of a
child takes a different technique. It would be no problem--the
problem with Gretel was getting her to shut up--but I didn't
know it at the time. Right then she was squatting, getting
Winston out of his helmet, so I watched and waited. Liz had
promised me Winston never bit people unless ordered to do so,
and I sure hoped that was true.
Once again Winston came through for me. He greeted her
like a long-lost friend, bowling her over in his attempts to
lick her face, reducing her to giggles. I helped her get him
out of the rest of his suit.
"You could get out of yours, too, if you want to," Gretel
said.
"It's safe?"
"You might have asked that before I took off the dog's
helmet."
She had a point. I started peeling out of it.
"You've led me a merry chase," I said.
"It took me a while to convince my father we ought to let
you in at all. But I'm never in a hurry about such things,
anyway. Do you good to wait."
"What changed his mind?"
"Me," she said, simply. "I always do. But it wasn't easy,
you being a reporter and all."
A year ago that would have surprised me. Working for a
newspad you don't get your face as well-known as straight
television reporters do. But recent events had changed that. No
more undercover work for me.
"Your father doesn't like reporters?"
"He doesn't like publicity. When you talk to him, you'll
have to promise not to use any of it in a story."
"I don't know if I can promise that."
"Sure, you can. Anyway, that's between you and him."
We were walking down the round, mirrored corridor by then.
When we came to another mirrored wall like the one I'd first
encountered, she didn't slow down but headed right for it. When
she was a meter away it vanished to reveal another long section
of walkway. I looked behind us and there it was. Simple and
effective. The bored-out tubes were lined with the field, and
these safety barriers were spaced out along the way. This new
technology would revolutionize Lunar building techniques,
whatever it was.
I was bursting with questions about it, but my feeling for
her was that it wasn't the right time to ask them. I was there
as the result of a child's whim, and it would be a good idea to
see where I stood with her, get on her good side as much as
possible.
"So . . ." I said. "Did you like the toys?"
"Oh, please," she said. Not a promising beginning. "I'm a
little grown up for that."
"How old are you?" There was always the chance I'd read
her wrong from the beginning; she could be older than me.
"I'm eleven, but I'm precocious. Everyone says so."
"Especially Daddy?"
She grinned at me. "Never Daddy. He says I'm a walking
argument for retroactive birth control. Okay, sure I liked the
toys, only I'd prefer to think of them as charming antiques.
Mostly, I liked the dog. What's his name?"
"Winston. So that's why you talked your father into
letting me in?"
"No. I could get a dog easily enough."
"Then I don't get it. I worked so hard to interest you."
"You did? That's neat. Hell, Hildy, I'd have asked you in
if you'd just sat out there on your butt."
"Why?"
She stopped and turned to me, and the look on her face
told me what was coming. I'd seen that look before.
"Because you work for the Nipple. It's my favorite pad.
Tell me, what was Silvio really like?"
#
Most of my conversations with Gretel got around to Silvio
sooner or later, usually after long and adoring detours through
the celebrity underbrush of the current pre-pubescent idols of
television and music. I'd interviewed Silvio a total of three
times, been at social occasions where he was present maybe
twenty times, exchanged perhaps a dozen sentences with him at
those functions. It didn't matter. It was all gold to Gretel,
who was easily twice as star-struck as most girls her age. She
hung on my every word.
Naturally, I made up a lot. If I could do it in print, why
not to her? And it was good practice for telling her all the
intimate details of the teeny stars, few of whom I'd even heard
of, much less met.
Is that awful? I suppose it is, lying to a little girl,
but I'd done worse in my life, and how badly did it hurt her?
The whole gossip industry, flagshipped by the Nipple and the
Shit, is of questionable moral worth to begin with, but it's a
very old industry, and as such, must fill a basic human need.
I've apologized for it enough here. The biggest difference in
my stories to her was that, when I was writing it, it was
usually nasty gossip. My stories to her were usually nice ones.
I viewed it as paying my keep. If Scheherazade could do it, why
not Hildy Johnson?
#
I was grateful that she held my hand on that first stroll
on the surface. Breathing is perhaps the most underrated
pleasure in life. You notice it when something smells good,
curse it when something stinks, but the rest of the time you
don't even think of it. It's as natural as . . . well, see? To
really appreciate it, try holding your mouth and nose closed
for three minutes, or however long it takes to reach the edge
of blackout. That first breath that brings you back from the
edge of death will be the sweetest thing you ever tasted, I
guarantee it.
Now try it for thirty minutes.
The oxygen in my new lung was supposed to be good for that
long, with a five to seven minute margin. "Think of it as
thirty," Aladdin had said, when he installed it. "That'll keep
you safe."
"I'll think of it as fifteen," I retorted. "Maybe five."
I'd been sitting in his clinic at the time, the left side of my
chest laid open, the ugly gray mass of what had recently been
my left lung lying in a pan on a table like so much
butcher-shop special of the day.
"Don't talk," he warned. "Not when I'm doing
respiratory-system work." He wiped a drop of blood from the
corner of my mouth.
"Maybe one," I said. He picked up the new lung, a thing of
shiny metal with some trailing tubes, shaped very much like a
lung, and started shoving it into the chest cavity. It made wet
sucking sounds going in. I hate surgery.
I'd have thought it was something brand-new but for my
recent researches into vacuum technology. One part of it was
revolutionary, but the rest had been cobbled together from
things developed and set aside a long time ago.
The Heinleiners weren't the first to work on the problem
of adapting the human body to the Lunar surface. They were just
the first ones to find a more or less practical answer. Most of
the lung Aladdin put inside me was just an air bottle, filled
with compressed oxygen. The rest was an interface device that
allowed the oxygen to be released directly into my bloodstream
while at the same time cleansing the carbon dioxide. A few
other implants allowed some of the gas to be released through
new openings in my skin, carrying off heat. None of it was new;
most of it had been experimented with as early as the year 50.
But the year 50 wasn't railroad time. The system wasn't
practical. You still had to wear a garment to protect you from
the heat and the cold, and it had to protect you from
both--extremes never seen on Earth--while at the same time
keeping the vacuum from your skin, bleeding off waste heat, and
a host of other requirements. Such garments were available; I'd
bought two of them within the last year. They were naturally
much improved from the mummy bags the first space explorers
wore, but they worked on the same principles. And they worked
better than the implanted lungs. If you're going to have to
wear a suit, after all, what's the point of a thirtyminute
supply of air in place of a lung? If you plan much of a stay on
the surface you're going to have to back-pack most of your air,
just like Neil Armstrong did.
And the Heinleiners did, too, for longer stays. But they'd
solved the problem of what to do with the suit: just turn it
off when not in use.
I supposed they'd also solved the psychological problem of
the suits, which was the panic reflex when one has not breathed
normally for some time, but I suspected the answer was the same
one a child learns in her first swimming lesson. Do it enough,
and you'll stop being afraid.
I'd done it for fifteen minutes now, and I was still
frightened. My heart was racing and my palm was sweating. Or
was that Gretel's?
"You'll sweat quite a bit," she said, when I asked. "It's
normal. That layer of air will stay pretty hot, but not too hot
to handle. Also, the sweat helps to bleed off the heat, just
like it does inside."
I'd been told the suit's distance from one's body
fluctuated by about a millimeter in a regular rhythm. That
varied the volume considerably, sucking waste air from inside
you and expelling it into vacuum in a bellows action. Water
vapor went along with it, but a lot just dripped down your
skin.
"I think I'd like to go back in now," I mouthed, and must
have done it well enough, because I heard her say "Okay," quite
clearly. That was the same circuitry the CC used to talk to me
in private, back when I was still speaking to him. Aside from
the respirator/air supply/field generator, and a few air ducts,
not much had needed to be done to prepare me for field suit
use. Some of that's because I was already wired to a
fare-thee-well, as the CC had pointed out on my direct
interface jaunts. Some adjustments had been made to my eardrums
to keep them from hurting in fluctuating pressures, and a new
heads-up display had been added so that when I closed my eyes
or just blinked, I saw figures concerning body temperature and
remaining air supply and so forth. There were warning alarms
I'd been told would sound in various situations, and I didn't
intend ever to hear any of them. Mostly, with a field suit, you
just wore it. And all but a tiny portion of that, you wore
inside.
The air lock I'd used to get into the secret warrens was
only for inanimate objects, or people wearing inanimate
objects, like the old-style suit I'd been wearing. If you had a
field suit in, you simply stepped into the wall of mirror and
your own suit melted into it, like a drop of mercury falling
into a quicksilver pool. That was the only way to get through a
null-field barrier other than turning it off. They were
completely reflective on both sides. Nothing got through, not
air, not bullets, not light nor heat nor radio waves nor
neutrinos. Nothing.
Well, gravity got through, whatever gravity is. Don't seek
the answer to that one in these pages. But magnetism didn't,
and Merlin was working on the gravity part. Follow-up on that
still to come.
Just before Gretel and I stepped through I saw part of the
mirror wall distorted in the shape of a face. That was the only
way to see through the wall, just stick your face in, and even
that was tough to get used to. Gretel and her brother-what
else?--Hansel did it as naturally as I'd turn my head to glance
out a window. Me, I had to swallow hard a few times because
every reflex I had was telling me I was going to smash my nose
against that reflection of myself.
But I had no trouble this time because I wanted very badly
to be on the other side of that mirror. I was running by the
time I hit it. And of course there was no sensation of hitting
anything--my suit simply vanished as it went through the larger
field--with the result that, because some part of me had been
braced for impact, had been flinching, wincing, bracing myself,
it was like reaching for that non-existent top step, and I did
a comical cakewalk as if the floor was coated with banana peels
and came that close to a pratfall any silent film comedian
would have envied.
Before you snicker, you go and try it.
Gretel claimed to be able to distinguish people's faces
when covered by a null suit. I supposed that if you grew up in
one it would be possible; they were still all chrome-plated
masks to me, and probably would be for a long time. But I'd
figured it was Hansel who poked his face through, since that's
where we'd left him, watching Winston, and it was indeed him
who greeted me after my maiden voyage in the new suit. Hansel
was a lad of fifteen, a tall, awkward, rather shy boy with a
shock of blonde hair like his sister's and a certain look in
his eye I'm sure he got from his father. I thought of it as the
mad scientist's gleam. As if he'd like to take you apart to see
how you worked, only he was too polite to ask if he could. He'd
put you back together, I hasten to add, or at least he'd intend
to, though the skills might not always be up to the intent. He
got that from his father, too. Where the shyness came from I
had no idea. It was not inherited paternally.
"I just got a phone call from the ranch," Hansel said.
"Libby says the palomino mare is about to foal."
"I got it, too," Gretel said. "Let's go."
They were off while I was still catching my breath. It had
been a long time since I'd tried to keep up with children, but
I didn't dare let these get out of my sight. I wasn't sure if I
could find my way back to the Heinlein alone. Sounds unlikely,
doesn't it? If there's one thing Lunarians are good at, it's
negotiating a threedimensional maze, or at least we'd like to
think so. But the mazes of King City tend to be of two types:
radiating out from a central plaza, with circular ring roads,
or a north/south up/down grid. The paths of the Delambre Dump
were more like a plate of spaghetti. Two days in Delambre would
have any urban planner ready for a padded cell. It just growed.
The paths I was now hurrying down had been made by nothing
more mysterious than obsolescent tunneling machines--one of the
other things Lunarians are good at. They usually bored their
way through rock, but the sort of techno-midden stratigraphy
found in Delambre presented them no problems; they'd laser
their way through anything. The Heinleiners had a dozen of
them, all found on site, repaired, and seemingly just sort of
set loose to find their own way. Not really, but anyone who had
tried to find a rhyme or reason in the pathways had to figure
an earthworm would have done a tidier job.
Once the wormholes were there, human crews came in and
installed the flooring out of whatever plastic panels were at
hand. Since those panels had been a construction staple for
over a century, they weren't hard to find. The last step was to
provide an ALU every hundred meters or so. An ALU was an Air
Lock Unit, and consisted of this: a null-field generator with
logics to run their odd locking systems at each end, a big can
of air serviced weekly by autobots, and a wire running to a
solar panel on top of the heap of garbage to power the whole
thing. When somebody got around to it glow- and heat-wires were
strung along the top of the tunnel so they wouldn't be too cold
or dark, but these were viewed as luxuries, and not all parts
of the tunnels had them.
A more jack-leg, slip-shod system of keeping the
Breathsucker at bay had never been seen on this tired old orb,
and nobody with half a brain would trust her one and only body
to it for a split second. And with good reason: breakdowns were
frequent, repairs were slow. Heinleiners simply didn't care,
and why should they? If part of the tunnel went down, your suit
would switch on and you'd have plenty of time to get to the
next segment. They just didn't worry much about vacuum.
It made for weird travel, and another reason to keep up
with the children. Both of them were carrying flashlights,
which were almost mandatory in the tunnels, and which I'd
forgotten again. We came to a dark, cold section and it was all
I could do to keep their darting lights in sight. Sure, I could
call them back if I got lost, but I was determined not to. It
wouldn't have been fun, you see, and above all kids just want
to have fun. You don't want to get a reputation as somebody
they have to keep waiting for.
It was cold, too, right up to the point of chattering
teeth, and then my suit switched on automatically and before I
got out of the dark I was warm again. Winston looked back at me
and barked. He was still in his old-style suit, Hansel carrying
his helmet. They'd wanted me to let them give him a null-suit,
but I didn't know how to explain it to Liz.
#
The first time the children took me to the farm, I had
been expecting to see a hydroponic or dirt-based plantation of
the sort most Lunarians know must be out there somewhere, but
would have to consult a directory to find, and had never
actually seen. I'd been to one in the course of a story long
ago--I've been most places in my century--and since you
probably haven't I'll say they tend to be quite dull. Not worth
you time. Whether the crop is corn or potatoes or chickens,
what you see are low rooms with endless rows of cages or stalls
or furrows or troughs. Machines bring food or nutrients, haul
away waste, harvest the final product. Most animals are raised
underground, most plants on the surface, under plastic roofs.
All of it is kept distant from civilization and hardly ever
talked about, since so many of us can't bear to think the
things we eat ever grew in dirt, or at one time cackled,
oinked, and defecated.
I was expecting a food factory, albeit one built to
typical Heinleiner specs, as Aladdin once described them to me:
"Jerry-rigged, about threequarter-assed, and hellishly unsafe."
Later I did see a farm just like that, but not the one
belonging to Hansel and Gretel and their best friend, Libby.
Once again I'd forgotten I was dealing with children.
The farm was behind a big pressure door aboard the old
Heinlein that said CREW'S MESS #1. Inside a lot of tables had
been shoved together and welded solid to make waist-high
platforms. These had been heaped with soil and planted with
mutant grasses and bonsai trees. The scene had been laced with
little dirt roads and an HO Gauge railroad layout, dotted with
dollhouses and dollbarns and little doll towns of
often-incompatible scales. The whole thing was about one
hundred by fifty meters, and it was here the children raised
their horselets and other things. Lots of other things.
Being children, and Heinleiners, it was not as neat as it
might have been. They'd forgotten to provide good drainage, so
large parts suffered from erosion. A grandiose plan to make
mountains against the back wall had the look of a project never
finished and long-neglected, with bare orange plastic matting
showing the bones of where the mountains would have been if
they hadn't run out of both enthusiasm and plaster of Paris.
But if you squinted and used your imagination, it looked
pretty good. And your nose didn't need to be fooled at all.
Walk in the door and you'd immediately know you were in a place
where horses and cattle roamed free.
Libby called to us from one of the little barns, so we
climbed up a stile and onto the platform itself. I walked
gingerly, afraid to step on a tree or, worse, a horse. When I
got there the three of them were kneeling beside the red-sided
barn. They had the roof lid raised and were peering down to
where the mare was lying on her side on a bed of straw.
"Look! It's coming out!" Gretel squeaked. I did look, then
looked away, and sat down beside the barn, knocking over a
section of white rail fence as I did so. Hell, the fence was
just for show, anyway; the cows and horses jumped over it like
grasshoppers. I lowered my head a little and decided I was
going to be all right. Probably.
"Something wrong, Hildy?" Libby asked. I felt his hand on
my shoulder and made an effort to look up at him and smile. He
was a red-headed boy of almost eighteen, even lankier than
Hansel, and he had a crush on me. I patted his hand and said I
was fine and he went back to his pets.
I'm not notably queasy, but I'd been having these spells
associated with pregnancy. I still had a month to go, far too
late to change my mind. It was an experience I wasn't likely to
forget. Trust me, when you get up at three A.M. with an
insatiable hunger for chocolate-coated oysters, you don't
forget it. The sight of it coming back up in the morning is
unlikely to slip your mind, either.
I'd been a little concerned about the pre-natal care I was
getting. There was a problem, in that I could hardly go to a
clinic in King City, as the medics were bound to notice my
unorthodox left lung. The Heinleiners had a few doctors among
them and the one I'd been seeing, "Hazel Stone," told me I had
nothing to worry about. Part of me believed her, and part of
me--a new part I was just beginning to understand: the paranoid
mother-- did not. It didn't seem to surprise her and she took
the time to do what she could to put my mind at ease.
"It's true the stuff I have out here isn't as up-to-date
as my equipment in King City," she had said. "But we're not
talking trephining and leeches, either. The fact is that you're
doing well enough I could deliver him by hand if I had to, with
just some clean water and rubber gloves. I'll see you once a
week and I guarantee I'll spot any possible complications
instantly." She then offered to "just take him out now and pop
him in a bottle, if you want to. I'll keep him right in my
office, and I'll hook up as many machines as it takes to make
you feel better."
I'd realized she was just humoring me, but I gave it some
thought. Then I told her, no, I was determined to stick it out
to the end, since I'd come this far, and I said I realized I
was being silly.
"It's part of the territory," she had said. "You get mood
swings, and irrational impulses, cravings. If it gets bad
enough, I can do something about those, too." Maybe it was just
a reaction to all the tampering the CC had recently been doing
to me, but I refused her mood levelers. I didn't like the
swings, and I'm not a masochist, but if you're going to do
this, Hildy, I told myself, you should find out what it's like.
Otherwise, you might as well just read about it.
But the real source of my nervousness was just as silly as
a plate of pickles and ice cream. Since I was still living in
Texas and commuting to Delambre, I had also been seeing Ned
Pepper once a week, too. Ostensibly it was to keep him and
others from getting suspicious, but I'm pretty sure it was also
because I found him oddly reassuring. The thing is, while no
one held any brief for his medical knowledge or skills, most
people felt he was a damn good intuitive diagnostician. Had he
been born in a simpler era he might have made quite a name for
himself. And . . .
"Hildy," he told me, tapping his stethoscope against his
lip, "I don't want to alarm you, but something about this
pregnancy makes me nervous as a jacked-off polecat." He took
another pull on his bottle and staggered to his feet as I
settled my skirt back around my legs. That's the only reason
I'd been able to go to him and not the King City sawbones; a
West Texas gynecological exam barely disarranged your clothing.
The Doctor would poke his cold metal heartbeat disc under my
shirt and listen to my heart and the fetal one, thump my back
and my belly, take my body temperature with a glass
thermometer, then ask me to swing my feet up into these here
stirrups, my dear. I knew he had a shiny brass speculum he was
dying to try out but I drew the line at that. Just let him look
and play doctor and we'd both go home happy. So what was this
nervous shit? He didn't have any right to be nervous. He sure
didn't have the right to tell me about it. He seemed to realize
that as soon as the slug of redeye hit his belly.
"I assume you're getting real medical care?" he asked,
sheepishly. When I told him I was, he nodded, and snapped his
suspenders. "Well, then. Don't fret yourself none. He'll
probably come out a ridin' a wild bronc and dealin' five-card
stud. Just like his mama."
Naturally, I did worry. Pregnancy is insanity, take it
from me.
#
When I was sure my nausea had passed I stood up and saw
I'd been sitting on the hen coop. It had a steel framework but
my weight had loosened a lot of the fake wooden shingles glued
to the sides. A rooster about the size of a mouse was
protesting this outrage by pecking at my toes. Inside, several
dozen hens were . . . well, egging him on. Sorry.
The colt wouldn't be standing on his own for a little
while yet, but the show was basically over. Hansel and Gretel
and Libby moved off to other pursuits. I stayed a little
longer, empathizing with the mare, who looked up at me as if to
say You'll get your turn soon enough, Miss Smarty. I reached in
and stroked the new-born with my fingertip, and the mother
tried to bite my hand. I didn't blame her. I got up, dusted my
knees, and headed over to the farm house.
I knew the house lid was hinged; I'd seen the kids lift it
up. But I was still ambivalent enough about these pets that I
didn't want to do that. Instead I bent over and pushed the
little doorbell. In a moment one of the male kewpies came out
and looked up expectantly, hoping for a treat.
If the horselets and mini-kine and dwarfowl were cherry
bombs in a scale of illegal explosiveness, then the kewpies
were ten sticks of dynamite. Kewpies were little people, no
more than twenty centimeters tall.
The children had named them well. These are not adult
human beings, done to scale. In an effort to make them smarter,
Libby had given them bigger brains, and thus bigger heads.
Perfectly sane reasoning, for a child. It might even be right,
for all I knew about it. But though he assured me the current
generation was much more clever than the two preceding ones,
they were no more intelligent than any of several species of
monkey.
They were not human, let's get that out of the way right
now. But they contained human genes, and that is strictly
forbidden on Luna under laws over two centuries old. I didn't
have any of these creepy little baby dolls to ride my little
horselet when I was a nipper. I don't think anybody did. No,
these were the result of Libby's enquiring young mind, and no
one else's.
If you could get over the shock and horror almost every
Lunarian would feel at first sight of the things, they were
actually quite cute. They smiled a lot, and were eager to grasp
your finger in their tiny little hands. Most of them could say
a word or two, things like "candy!" and "Hi!" A few formed
rudimentary sentences. Possibly they could have been trained to
do more, but the children didn't take the time. In spite of
their hands they were not tool users. They were not little
people. And they were cute.
Enough of that. The fact is they made my skin crawl on
some very primitive level. They were bad juju. They were the
forbidden fruit of the Tree of Science. They were faerie
sprites, and thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
So the real truth is I couldn't make up my mind about the
damn things. On the one hand, what had attracted me to the
Heinleiners was the fact that they were doing things no one
else was doing. So . . . all reasonable and logical
rationalizations aside . . . why did they have to do that?
While I was still pondering this question, not for the
first time, someone came up beside me and lifted the lid of the
farm house. I looked in with him, and we both frowned. The
inside of the structure was furnished with little chairs and
beds, the former tumbled over and the latter not occupied. Half
a dozen kewpies were curled up here and there, sleeping where
the urge had taken them, and there were piles of what you'd
expect from animals where that urge had taken them. It went a
long way toward helping me believe they weren't little people.
It also recalled documentary horror films from the twentieth
century of homes for the insane and the retarded.
The man let the lid drop, looked around, and bellowed for
his children, who came running from where they had been racing
model cars, guilty looks on their faces. He glowered down at
them.
"I told you that if you can't keep your pets clean, you
can't have them," he said.
"We were gonna clean them up, Dad," Hansel said. "Soon as
we finished the race. Isn't that right, Hildy?"
The little bastard. Fearing that my sufferance here was
still very much dependent on these precocious brats, I said,
diplomatically I hope, "I'm sure they would have."
And I said that because I wasn't about to lie to the man
standing beside me, father to Hansel and Gretel, and the man on
whose good graces my continued presence among the Heinleiners
really relied.
This is the man the media has always referred to as
"Merlin," since he would never reveal his real name. I'm not
even sure if I know his real name, and I think he trusts me by
now, as much as he ever will. But I don't like the name of
Merlin, so in this account I will refer to him as Mister Smith.
Valentine Michael Smith.
=*= =*= =*= =*=
Mister V.M. Smith, leader of the Heinleiners, was a tall
man, ruggedly handsome in the mold of some of our more virile
movie stars, with white, even teeth that flashed with little
points of light when he smiled and blue eyes that twinkled with
wisdom and compassion.
Did I say he was tall? Actually, he was a little shrimp of
a guy. Or, come to think of it, I'd say he was of medium
height. And by golly, maybe his hair was black and curly. Ugly
he was, with a snaggled-toothed smile like a dead pig in the
sunshine. Hell, maybe he was bald.
When you get right down to it, I'm not even going to swear
he was male.
I think the heat is largely off of him by now, but he (or
she) thinks differently, so there will not even be a
description of him from me. My portraits of the other
Heinleiners, children included, are deliberately vague and
quite possibly misleading. To picture him, do what I do when
reading a novel: just pick a famous face you like and pretend
he looks like that. Or make your own composite. Try a young
Einstein, with unruly hair and a surprised expression. You'll
be wrong, although I will swear there was a look in his eyes as
if the universe was a much stranger place than he'd ever
imagined.
And that business about leading the Heinleiners . . . if
they had a leader, he was it. It was Smith who had made their
isolated way of life possible with his researches into
forgotten sciences. But the Heinleiners were an independent
bunch. They didn't go in for town meetings, were unlikely to be
found on the rosters of service clubs--didn't really hold much
of a brief for democracy, when you get right down to it.
Democracy, one of them said to me once, means you get to do
whatever the majority of silly sons of bitches says you have to
do. Which is not to say they favored dictatorship ("getting to
do what one silly son of a bitch says you have to do." op.
cit.). No, what they liked (if I may quote one more time from
my Heinleiner philosopher) was forgetting about all the silly
sons of bitches and doing what they damn well pleased.
This is a hazardous way of life in a totally urbanized
society, apt to land you in jail--where an embarrassing number
of Heinleiners did live. To live like that you need elbow room.
You need Texas, and I mean the real Texas, before the arrival
of the iron horse, before the Mexicans, before the Spaniards.
Hell, maybe before the Indians. You needed the Dark Continent,
the headwaters of the Amazon, the South Pole, the sound
barrier, Everest, the Seven Lost Cities. Wild places,
unexplored places, not good old stodgy old Luna. You needed
elbow room and adventure.
A lot of Heinleiners had lived in disneys, some still did
as at least a better alternative to the anthill cities. But it
didn't take long to discover what toy frontiers they actually
were. The asteroid belt and the outer planets had high
concentrations of these crotchety malcontents, too, but it had
been a long time since either place had been a real challenge
to humanity. A lot of ship's captains were Heinleiners, a lot
of solitary miners. None of them were happy-possibly that type
of person can never be happy-but at least they were away from
the masses of humanity and less likely to get into trouble if
offered an intolerable insult--like bad breath, or
inappropriate laughter.
That's unfair. While there were quite a number of
antisocial hotheads among them, most had learned to socialize
with the group, swallow the unpleasantness of daily life, put
up with the thousand small things we each endure every day.
It's called civilization. It's making your needs, your dreams,
subservient to the greater good, and we all do it. Some of us
do it so well we forget we ever had dreams of adventure. The
Heinleiners did it badly; they still remembered. They still
dreamed.
Those dreams and five cents will get you a cup of coffee
anywhere in Luna. The Heinleiners realized that, until Mister
Smith came along and made them think fairy tales can come true,
if you wish upon a star.
I followed Smith out of the farm, where he'd left his
children and Libby hard at work cleaning out the kewpies'
house. We were in one of the long corridors of the R.A.
Heinlein, some of which, like this one, were coated with the
silvery null-field. I was about to go after him when I
remembered Winston. I stuck my head back into the room, snagged
his helmet, and whistled, and he came lumbering out from
beneath the tables. He was licking his chops and I thought I
saw traces of blood around his mouth.
"Have you been eating horses again?" I asked him. He
merely gazed up and licked his nose. He knew he wasn't supposed
to get up on the tables, but there were always some horselets
that had foolishly jumped off and he felt they were fair game.
I didn't know what the kids thought of his hunting, since I
didn't know if they were aware of it; I hadn't told them. But I
know Winston was getting a taste for horsemeat.
I'd thought I'd have to hurry to catch up with Smith, but
when I looked up I saw he'd paused a little way down the
corridor and was waiting for me.
"So you're still around, eh?" he said. Yessir, my
reputation in the old R.A.H. couldn't have been higher.
"I guess it's because I just love children."
He laughed at that. I'd only met him three times before
and not talked to him very long on any of those occasions, but
he was one of those people good at sizing others up on short
acquaintance. Most of us think we are, but he was.
"I know they're not easy to love," he said. "I probably
wouldn't love them so much if they were." It was a very
Heinleinerish thing to say; these folks cherish perversity, you
understand.
"You're saying only a father could love 'em?"
"Or a mother."
"That's what I'm counting on," I said, and patted my
belly.
"You'll either love him quick, or drown him." We walked on
for a while without saying anything. Every once in a while one
of the null-field safety locks would vanish in front of us and
re-appear behind us. All automatic, and all happening only for
those with null-suits installed.
These people didn't engineer anything any better than they
had to, and the reason was simply that they had this marvelous
back-up system. It's going to be revolutionary, I tell you.
"I get the feeling you don't approve," he said, at last.
"Of what? Your kids? Hey, I was just--"
"Of what they do."
"Well, Winston sure does. I think he's eaten half their
stock."
I was thinking fast. I wanted to learn more from this man,
and the way to do that is not by running down his children and
his way of life. But one of the things I knew about him was
that he didn't like liars, was good at detecting them, and,
though a career in reporting had made me a world-class liar, I
wasn't sure I could get one by him. And I wasn't sure I wanted
to. I had hoped I'd put a lot of that behind me. So instead of
answering his question, I said something else, a technique
familiar to any journalist or politician.
And it seemed to have worked. He just grunted, and reached
down to pet Winston's ugly mug. Once more the hound came
through for me, not taking off the hand at the wrist. Still
digesting the horselet, probably.
#
We came to a door marked MAIN DRIVE ROOM, and he held it
open for me. You could have driven a golf ball into the room
and never hit a wall, and you could have driven a medium-size
rover race in it. Whether you could drive a spaceship the size
of the Heinlein was very much an open question. But in front of
me were the signs that someone was trying.
Most of the cavernous room was filled with structures
whose precise description I must leave to your imagination,
since the drive room of the Heinlein is still a closely-guarded
secret and certainly will be until long after they get the damn
thing to work. I will say this: whatever you imagine will
surely be far off the mark. It is unexpected, and startling,
like opening the hood of a rover and finding it's powered by a
thousand mice licking a thousand tiny crankshafts, or by the
moral power of virginity. And this: though I could hardly
identify anything as basic as a nut and bolt in the fantastical
mess, it still had the look of Heinleiner engineering, wherein
nothing is ever any better than it has to be. Maybe if they get
time to move beyond prototypes they'll get more elegant and
more careful, but in the meantime it's "Don't bend that wrench.
Get a bigger hammer." Heinleiner toolboxes must be filled with
bubblegum and bobby pins.
And yes, O good and faithful reader, they were planning to
launch the hulk of the old Robert A. Heinlein into interstellar
space. You heard it here first. They were not, however,
planning to do it with an endless stream of nuclear cherry
bombs pooting out the tailpipe. Just what principles were
envisioned is still proprietary information, but I can say it
was a variant technology of the mathematics that produced the
null-field. I can say it because no one but Smith and a handful
of others know what that technology is.
Just imagine them harnessing the old wreck to a team of
very large swans, and leave it at that.
"As you can see," Smith was saying as we walked down a
long and fairly rickety flight of metal stairs, "they've just
about frabjulated the primary phase of the osmosifractionating
de-hoodooer. And those guys ratattating the willy-nilly say
they ought to have it whistling Dixie in three days' time."
No secrecy involved here. I'd have written exactly what he
said, if I had any hope of remembering it, and the meaning
would have been the same: nothing. Smith never seemed to mind
if his audience was coming into the clubhouse two or three
holes behind him; he rattled off his own private jargon without
regard to whether or not it was being monitored. Sometimes I
thought it just helped him to think out loud. Sometimes I
thought he was showing off. Probably a little of both.
But I can't get away from the subject of the interstellar
drive without mentioning the one time he made an attempt to put
it in layman's terms. It stuck in my mind, possibly because
Smith had a way of making "layman" rhyme with "retarded."
"There are basically three states of matter," he had said.
"I call them wackiness, dogmatism, and perversity. The universe
of our experience is almost totally composed of dogmatic
matter, just as it's mostly what we call 'matter,' as opposed
to 'anti-matter'--though dogmatic matter includes both types.
Every once in a great while we get evidence of some perverse
matter. It's when you move into the realm of the wacky that you
have to watch out."
"I've known that all my life," I had told him.
"Ah, but the possibilities!" he had said, waving his hand
at the drive taking shape in the engine room of the Heinlein.
As he did now, providing the sort of segue I hate when a
director does it in a movie, but the fact is Smith had a habit
of waving his hand grandly when coming upon his mighty works.
Hell, he had a right.
"See what can come from the backwaters of science?" he
said. "Physics is a closed book, they all said. Put your
talents to work in something useful."
"'They jeered me at the Sorbonne!'" I suggested.
"They threw eggs when I presented my paper at the
Institute! Eggs!" He leered at me, drywashing his hands,
hunching his shoulders. "The fools! Let them see who has the
last laugh, ha ha HA!" He dropped the mad scientist impression
and patted a huge machine on its metal flank, a cowboy gentling
a horse. Smith could have been insufferably stuffy except for
the fact he'd seen almost as many old movies as I had.
"No kidding, Hildy, the fools are going to be impressed
when they see what I've wrung out of the tired old husk of
physics."
"You'll get no argument from me," I said. "What happened
to physics, anyway? Why was it neglected for so long?"
"Diminishing returns. They spent an insane amount of money
on the GSA about a century ago, and when they turned it on they
found out they'd hubbled it up. The repairs would have--"
"The GSA?"
"Global Supercooled Accelerator. You can still find a lot
of it, running right around the Lunar equator."
I remembered it then; I'd followed it part of the way when
I ran in the Equatorial Rover Race.
"They built big instruments out in space, too. They
learned a lot about the universe, cosmologically and
sub-atomically, but very little of it had any practical use. It
got to where learning any more, in the directions physics kept
going, would cost trillions just to tool up. If you did it,
when you were done you'd have learned what went on in the first
billionth of a nanosecond of creation, and then you'd just
naturally want to know what happened in the first thousandth of
a nano-nano-second, only that'd cost ten times as much. People
got tired of paying those kind of bills to answer questions
even less reality-based than theology, and the smart people
noticed that for peanuts you could find out practical things in
biological science."
"So all the original research now is in biology," I said.
"Hah!" he shouted. "There is no original research, unless
you count some of the things the Central Computer does. Oh, a
few people here and there." He waved his hand, dismissing them.
"It's all engineering now. Take well-known principles and find
a way to make a better toothpaste." His eyes lit up. "That's a
perfect example. A few months back, I woke up and my mouth
tasted like peppermint. I looked into it, turns out it's a new
sort of 'bot. Some idiot thought this up, built it, and let it
loose on an unsuspecting public. It's in the water, Hildy! Can
you imagine?"
"It's a crying shame," I muttered, trying not to meet his
eye.
"Well, I got the antidote. Maybe my mouth does taste
rotten in the morning, but at least it tastes like me. Reminds
me who I am." Which I guess is a perfect example of both the
perversity of Heinleiners and the cultural passivity they
rebelled against. And the big reason I liked them, in spite of
their best efforts to thwart my affection.
"It's all handed down from on high now," he went on.
"We're like savages at an altar, waiting for miracles to be
handed down. We don't envision the miracles we might work, if
we set ourselves to it."
"Like little people, eight inches high and smart as lab
rats."
He winced, the first indication I'd had of a moral
uncertainty. Thank god for that; I like people to have
opinions, but people with no doubts scare me.
"You want me to defend that? Okay. I've brought those
children up to think for themselves, and to question authority.
It's not unlimited; me or somebody who knows more about it has
to approve their projects, and we keep an eye on them. We've
created a place where they can be free to make their own rules,
but they're children, they have to follow our rules, and we set
as few as possible. Do you realize this is the only place in
Luna where the eyes of our mechanical Big Brother can't look?
Not even the police can come in here."
"I have no reason to love the Central Computer, either."
"I didn't think so. I thought you might have a story to
tell about that, or I'd never have let you in. You'll tell it
when you're ready. Do you know why Libby makes little people?"
"I didn't ask him."
"He might have told you; might not have. It's his solution
to the same problem I'm working on: interstellar travel. His
reasoning is, a smaller human being requires less oxygen, less
food, a smaller spacecraft. If we were all eight inches high,
we could go to Alpha Centauri in a fuel drum."
"That's crazy."
"Not crazy. Ridiculous, probably. Unattainable, almost
certainly. Those kewpies live about three years, and I doubt
they'll ever have much of a brain. But it's an innovative
solution to a problem the rest of Luna isn't even working on.
Why do you think Gretel goes running across the surface in her
birthday suit?"
"You weren't supposed to know about that."
"I've forbidden it. It's dangerous, Hildy, but I know
Gretel, and I know she's still trying it. And the reason is,
she hopes she'll eventually adapt herself to living in vacuum
without any artificial aids."
I thought of the fish stranded on the beach, flopping
around, probably doomed but still flopping.
"That's not how evolution works," I said.
"You know it and I know it. Tell it to Gretel. She's a
child, and a smart one, but with childish stubbornness. She'll
give it up sooner or later. But I can guarantee she'll try
something else."
"I hope it's less hare-brained."
"From your lips to God's ears. Sometimes she . . ." He
rubbed his face, and made a dismissing gesture with his hand.
"The kewpies make me uneasy, I'll admit that. You can't help
wondering how human they are, and if they are human, whether or
not they have any rights, or should have any rights."
"It's experimentation on humans, Michael," I said. "We
have some pretty strong laws on that subject."
"What we have are taboos. We do plenty of experimentation
on human genes. What we're forbidden to do is create new
humans."
"You don't think that's a good idea?"
"It's never that simple. What I object to are blanket bans
on anything. I've done a lot of research into this--I was
against it at first, just like you seem to be. You want to hear
it?"
"I'd be fascinated."
We'd come to an area of the engine room I thought of as
his office, or laboratory. It was the place I'd spent most of
what little time I'd had with him. He liked to put his feet up
on a wooden desk as old as Walter's but a lot more battered,
look off into infinity, and expound. So far, his innate caution
had always stopped him from getting too deeply into anything
when I was around, but I sensed he needed an outsider's
opinion. The lab? Think of it as full of bubbling retorts and
sizzling Jacob's ladders. Omit the hulking body strapped to the
table; that was his children's domain. The place didn't look
anything like that, but it's the proper stage set,
metaphorically.
"It's a question of where to draw the line," he said.
"Lines have to be drawn; even I realize that. But the line is
constantly moving. In a progressing society, the line should be
moving. Did you know it was once illegal to terminate a
pregnancy?"
"I'd heard of it. Seems very strange."
"They'd decided that a fetus was a human. Later, we
changed our minds. Society used to keep dead people hooked up
to something called 'lifesupport,' sometimes for twenty or
thirty years. You couldn't turn the machines off."
"Their brains were dead, you mean."
"They were dead, Hildy, by our standards. Corpses with
blood being pumped through them. Bizarre, creepy as hell. You
wonder what they were thinking of, what their reasoning could
possibly have been. When people knew they were dying, when they
knew that death was going to be horribly painful, it was
thought wrong of them to kill themselves."
I looked away; I don't know if he caught it, but I think
he did.
"A doctor couldn't help them die; he'd get prosecuted for
murder. Sometimes they even withheld the drugs that would be
best at stopping the pain. Any drug that dulled the senses, or
heightened them, or altered the consciousness in any way was
viewed as sinful--except for the two most physically harmful
drugs: alcohol and nicotine. Something relative harmless, like
heroin, was completely illegal, because it was addictive, as if
alcohol was not. No one had the right to determine what he put
into his own body, they had no medical bill of rights.
Barbaric, agreed?"
"No argument."
"I've studied their rationalizations. They make very
little sense now. The reasons for the bans on human
experimentation make a lot of sense. The potential for abuse is
enormous. All genetic research involves hazards. So rules were
evolved . . . and then set in stone. No one has taken a look at
them in over two hundred years. My position is, it's time to
think it over again."
"And what did you come up with?"
"Hell, Hildy, we've barely started. A lot of the
prohibitions on genetic research were made at a time when
something released into the environment could theoretically
have disastrous results. But we've got room to experiment now,
and fool-proof means of isolation. Do the work on an asteroid,
and if something goes wrong, quarantine it, then shove it into
the sun."
I had no problem with that, and told him so.
"But what about the human experiments?"
"They make me queasy, just like you. But that's because we
were raised to view them as evil. My children have no such
inhibitions. I've told them all their lives that they should be
able to ask any question. And they should be able to do any
experiment, as long as they feel they have a reasonable idea of
its outcome. I help them with that part, me, and the other
parents."
I probably had a dubious expression on my face. It would
have made perfect sense, since I was feeling dubious.
"I'm way ahead of you," he said. "You're going to bring up
the old 'superman' argument."
I didn't dispute it.
"I think it's time that one was looked at again. They used
to call it 'playing God.' That term has fallen out of favor,
but it's still there. If we're going to set out to improve
humans genetically, to build a new human, who's going to make
the choices? Well, I can tell you who's making them now, and
I'll bet you know the answer, too."
It didn't take a lot of thought. "The CC?" I ventured.
"Come on," he said, getting up from his desk. "I'm going
to show you something."
#
I had a hard time keeping up with him--would have at the
best of times, but my current state of roly-polytude didn't
help things. He was one of those straight-ahead people, the
sort who, when they've decided where they're going, can't be
easily diverted. All I could do was waddle along in his wake.
Eventually we reached the base of the ship, which I knew
mainly because we left square corridors and right-angle turns
for the haphazard twists of the Great Dump. Not long after that
we descended some stairs and were in a tunnel bored through
solid rock. I still had no idea how far this network extended.
I gathered it was possible to walk all the way to King City
without ever visiting the surface.
We came to an abandoned, dimly-lit tube station. Or it had
been abandoned at one time, but the Heinleiners had restored
it: pushed the trash on the platform to one side, hung a few
lights, homey touches like that. Floating a fraction above a
gleaming silver rail was a sixperson Maglev car of antique
design. It had no doors, peeling paint, and the sign on the
side still read MALL 5-9 SHUTTLE. With stops at all the major
ghost warrens along the way, no doubt: this baby was old.
Random cushions had been spread on the rippedout seats and
we sat on those and Smith pulled on a cord which rang a little
tinkling bell, and the car began to glide down the rail.
"The whole idea of building a superman has acquired a lot
of negative baggage over the years," he said, picking up as if
the intervening walk had never happened. As if he needed
another annoying characteristic. "The German Fascists are the
first ones I'm aware of who seriously proposed it, as part of
an obsolete and foolish racial scheme."
"I've read about them," I said.
"It's nice to talk to someone who knows a little history.
Then you'll know that by the time it became possible to tinker
with genes, a lot more objections had been raised. Many of them
were valid. Some still are."
"Is that something you'd like to see?" I asked. "A
superman?"
"It's the word that throws you off. I don't know if a
'superman' is possible, or desirable. I think an altered human
is an idea worth looking into. When you consider that these
carcasses we're walking around in were evolved to thrive in an
environment we've been evicted from . . ."
Maybe he said more, but I missed it, because just about
then we had a head-on collision with another tram going in the
opposite direction. Obviously, we didn't really. Obviously, it
was just the reflection of the headlights of our own car as we
approached another of those ubiquitous null-fields. And even
more obviously, you weren't there to stand up and shout like a
fool and see your life pass before your eyes, and I'll bet you
would have, too. Or maybe I'm just slow to catch on.
Smith didn't think so. He was very apologetic when he
realized what had happened, and took time to tell me about
another little surprise in store, which happened a minute later
when a nullfield vanished in front of us and, with a little
gust of wind, we entered vacuum and began to really pick up
speed. The tunnel walls blurred in the beam of our headlights,
details snatched away before they could be perceived.
He had more to say on the subject of human engineering. I
didn't get it all because I was concentrating on not breathing,
still learning to wear a null-suit. But I got his main points.
He thought that while Gretel's method was wrong, her goal
was worthwhile, and I couldn't see what was wrong with it,
either. Basically, we either manufacture our environment or
adapt to it. Both have hazards, but it did seem high time we at
least start discussing the second alternative.
Take weightlessness, for example. Most people who spent a
lot of time in free-fall had some body adaptations made, but it
was all surgical. Human legs are too strong; push too hard and
you can fracture your skull. It's handy to have hands instead
of feet at the ends of your ankles. Feet are as useless as
vermiform appendices in freefall. It's also useful to be able
to bend and twist more than the human body normally can.
But the question before the court was this: should humans
be bred to space travel? Should the useful characteristics be
put into the genes, so children are born with hands instead of
feet?
Maybe so, maybe not. We weren't talking radical change
here, or anything that couldn't be done just as easily
surgically, without raising the troublesome issues of more than
one species of human being.
But what about a human adapted to vacuum? I've no idea how
to go about it, but it probably could be done. What would he
look like? Would he feel superior to us? Would we be his
brother, or his cousin, or what? one thing was sure: it would
be a lot easier to do it genetically than with the knife. And I
feel certain the end result would not look very human.
I chewed that one over quite a bit in the coming days,
examining my feelings. I found that most of them came from
prejudice, as Smith had said. I'd been raised to think it was
wrong. But I found myself agreeing that it was at least time to
think it over again.
As long as I didn't have to clean up after kewpies.
#
The train car pulled into a siding at another abandoned
station where somebody had scrawled the word "Minamata" over
whatever had been there before. I had no idea how far we'd
come, or in what direction.
"This is still part of the Delambre dump, more or less,"
Smith said, so at least I had a general idea. We started down a
long, filthy corridor, Smith's flashlight beam bobbing from
wall to wall as we walked. In a movie, rats and other vermin
would have been scuttling out of our way, but a rat would have
needed a null-suit to survive this place; mine was still on,
and I was still thinking about breathing.
"There's really no reason why the stuff in here shouldn't
be spread out over the surface like the rest of the garbage,"
he went on. "I think it's mainly psychological reasons it's all
pumped in here. This is a nasty place. If it's toxic or
radioactive or biochemically hazardous, this is where it
comes."
We reached an air lock of the kind that used to be
standard when I was a child, and he motioned me inside. He
slapped a button, then gestured toward the air fitting on the
side of my chest.
"Turn that counter-clockwise," he said. "They only come on
automatically when there's a vacuum. There's gas where we're
going, but you don't want to breathe it."
The lock cycled and we stepped into Minamata.
The place had no name on the municipal charts of King
City, just Waste Repository #2. The Heinleiners had named it
after a place in Japan that had suffered the first modern-day
big environmental disaster, when industries had pumped mercury
compounds into a bay and produced a lot of twisted babies. So
sorry, mom. That's the breaks.
Minamata Luna was really just a very large, buried storage
tank. By large, I mean you could have parked four starships the
size of the Heinlein without scraping the fenders. Texas is a
lot bigger, but it doesn't feel like being a bug in a bottle
because you can't see the walls. Here you could, and they
curved upward and vanished into a noxious mist. The far end was
invisible.
Maybe there was some artificial light in there. I didn't
see any, but they were hardly necessary. The bottom third of
the horizontal cylinder was full of liquid, and it glowed. Red
here, green there . . . sometimes a ghastly blue. The makers of
horror films would have killed to get that blue.
We had entered at what seemed the axis of the cylinder,
which was rounded off at this end, like a pressure tank. A
ledge, three meters wide and with a railing, curved away from
us in each direction, but to the right was blocked off with a
warning sign. Looking past it, I could see the ledge had
crumbled away in several places. When I looked back Smith was
already moving away from me toward the left. I hurried to catch
up with him.
I never did quite catch him. Every time I got close my eye
was drawn by the luminescent sea off to my right, and a few
hundred meters down.
The thing about that sea . . . it moved.
At first I only saw the swirls of glowing color like an
oil film on water. I'd always thought colorful things were just
naturally pretty things, but Minamata taught me differently. At
first I couldn't explain my queasy reaction. None of the
colors, by themselves, seemed all that hideous (except for that
blue). Surely that same swirl of color, on a shirt or dress,
would be a gorgeous thing. Wouldn't it? I couldn't see why not.
I began walking more slowly, trailing my hand along the top of
the rail, trying to figure why it all disturbed me so.
The side of the cylinder went straight down from the edge
of the ledge we walked on, then gradually curved inward until
it met the fluorescent sea. Waves were rolling sluggishly to
crash against the metal sides of the tank.
Waves, Hildy? What could be causing waves in this foul
soup?
Maybe some agitating mechanism, I thought, though I
couldn't see any use for one. Then I saw a part of the sea hump
itself up, ten or twenty meters high--it was hard to judge the
scale from my vantage point. Then I saw strange shapes on the
borderline between sea and shore, things that moved among the
mineral efflorescences that grew like arthritic fingers along
that metal beach. Then I saw something that, I thought, raised
its head on a spavined neck and looked at me, reached out a
hungry hand . . .
Of course, it was a long way off. I could have been wrong.
Smith took my arm without a word and urged me along. I
didn't look at the Minamata Sea again.
#
We came to a series of circular mirrors standing against
the vertical wall to our left. Each had a number over it. I
realized that tunnels had been bored into the walls here and
each had been sealed off with a null-field barrier.
Smith stopped before the eighth, pointed at it, and
stepped in. I followed him, and found myself in a short tunnel,
maybe twenty meters long, five meters high. Halfway down the
tunnel were metal bars. Beyond that point a level floor had
been built to support a cot, chair, desk, and toilet, all
looking as if they'd been ordered from some cheap mail-order
house. On our side of the bars was a portable air plant, which
seemed to be doing its job, as my suit had vanished as I
stepped through the field. Spare oxygen cylinders and crates of
food were stacked against the wall.
Sitting on the cot and watching a slash-boxing show on the
television, was Andrew MacDonald. He glanced up from the screen
as we entered, but he did not rise.
Possibly this was a new point of etiquette. Should the
dead rise for the living? Be sure to ask at your next seance.
"Hello, Andrew," Smith said. "I've brought someone to see
you."
"Yes?" Andrew said, with no great interest. His eyes
turned to me, lingered for a moment. There was no spark of
recognition. Worse than that, there was none of that
penetrating quality I'd seen on the day he . . . hell, how else
can I say it? On the day he died. For a moment I though this
was just some guy who looked a lot like Andrew. I guess I was
half right.
"Sorry," he said, and shrugged. "Don't know her."
"I'm not surprised," Smith said. He looked at me. I had
the feeling I was supposed to say something perceptive,
intelligent. Maybe I was supposed to have figured it all out.
"What the fuck's going on here?" I said, which was a lot
better than "duuuuh," which was my first reaction, though
neither really qualifies as perceptive.
"Ask him," Andrew said. "He thinks I'm dangerous."
I'd started toward the bars but Smith put his hand on my
arm and shook his head.
"See what I mean?" the prisoner said.
"He is dangerous," Smith told me. "When he first came
here, he nearly killed a man. Would have, but we got to him in
time. Want to tell us about that, Andrew?"
He shrugged. "He stepped on my foot. It wasn't my fault."
"I've had enough of this," I said. "What the hell are you
people doing in here? I saw this man die, or his twin brother."
Smith was about to say something, but I'd finally gotten
Andrew interested. He stood and came to the bars, held on with
one hand while the other played idly with his genitals. You see
that sometimes, in old alkies or voluntary skitzys down in
Bedrock. It's a free planet, right? Nobody can stop them, but
people hurry by, like you don't stop and stare if someone is
vomiting, or picking his nose. I'd never seen an apparently
healthy man masturbating with such utter lack of modesty. What
had they done to him?
"How did I do?" he asked me, tugging and squeezing. "All
they'll tell me is I died in the ring. You were there? Were you
close up? Who was it that got me? Damn, the least they could do
is give me a tape."
"Are you really Andrew MacDonald?"
"That's my name, ask me again and I'll tell you the same."
"It's him," Smith said, quietly. "That's what I've finally
decided, after thinking it over a lot."
"That's not what you said last time," the man said. "You
said I was only part of old Andy. The mean part. I don't think
I'm mean." He lost interest in his penis and stretched a hand
through the bars, gesturing. "Toss me a can of that beef stew,
boss man. I've had my eye on that for days."
"You've got plenty of food in there."
"Yeah, but I want stew."
Smith got a plastic can and lobbed it toward the cell; the
man snagged it and tore off the top. He took a big handful and
crammed it into his mouth, chewing noisily. There was a stove,
a table, and utensils plainly in sight behind him, but he
didn't seem to care.
"I didn't see you fight," I said, at last.
"Shit. You know, I'd like you if you weren't so fat. You
wanna fuck?" A gravy-covered hand went to his groin once again.
"Let's get brown, honey."
I'm going to ignore the rest of his antics. I still
remember them vividly, and still find them disturbing. I'd once
wanted to make love to this man. I'd once found him quite
attractive.
"I was there when they carried you back from the ring," I
said.
"The good old squared circle. The sweet science. All there
is, really, all there is. What's your name, fatty?"
"Hildy. You were mortally injured and you refused
treatment."
"What a jerk I must have been. Live to fight another day,
huh?"
"I'd always thought so. And I thought what you were doing,
risking your life, was stupid. I thought it was unnecessary,
too, but you told me your reasons, and I respect them."
"A jerk," he repeated.
"I guess, when it came time for you to live up to your
bargain, I thought you were stupid, too. But I was impressed. I
was moved. I can't say I thought you were doing the right
thing, but your determination was awesome."
"You're a jerk, too."
"I know."
He continued shoving stew into his face, looking at me
with no real spark of human feeling I could detect. I turned to
Smith.
"It's time you told me what's going on here. What's been
done to this man? If this is an example of what you were
talking about on the way . . ."
"It is."
"Then I don't want anything to do with it. In fact, damn
it, I know I promised not to talk about you and your people,
but--"
"Hang on a minute, Hildy," Smith said. "This is an example
of human experimentation, but we didn't do it."
"The CC," I said, after a long pause. Who else?
"There's something seriously wrong with the CC, Hildy. I
don't know what it is, but I know the results. This man is one.
He's a cloned body, grown from Andrew MacDonald's corpse, or
from a tissue sample. When he's in a mood to talk, he's said
things we've checked against his records, and it seems he
really does have MacDonald's memories. Up to a point. He
remembers things up to about three or four years ago. We
haven't been able to test him thoroughly, but what tests we've
been able to run bear out what we've seen from other specimens
like him. He thinks he is MacDonald."
"Damn right I am," the prisoner chimed in.
"For all practical purposes, he's right. But he doesn't
remember the Kansas Collapse. He doesn't remember Silvio's
assassination. I was certain he wouldn't remember you, and he
didn't. What's happened is that his memories were recorded in
some way, and played back into this clone body."
I thought it over. Smith gave me time to.
"It doesn't work," I said, finally. "There's no way this
thing could have turned into the man I met in only three or
four years. This guy is like a big, spoiled child."
"Big is right, babe," the man said, with the gesture you'd
expect.
"I didn't say the copy was perfect," Smith said. "The
memories seem to be extremely good. But some things didn't
record. He has no social inhibitions whatsoever. No sense of
guilt or shame. He really did try to kill a man who
accidentally stepped on his foot, and he never saw what was so
wrong about it. He's incredibly dangerous, because he's the
best fighter in Luna; that's why we have him here, in the best
prison we can devise. We, who don't even believe in prisons."
I could see it would be a tough one to get out of. If you
got past the null-field, there were the toxic gases of
Minamata. Beyond that, vacuum.
It seemed that "MacDonald" was the most recent of a long
line of abandoned experiments. Smith wouldn't tell me how the
Heinleiners had come to have him, except to say that, in his
case, he'd most likely been sent.
"Early on in this program, we had a pipeline into the
secret lab where this work was going on. The first attempts
were pathetic. We had people who just sat there and drooled,
others who tore at themselves with their teeth. But the CC got
better with practice. Some could pass as normal human beings.
Some of them live with us. They're limited, but what can you
do? I think they're human.
"But lately, we've been getting surprise packages, like
Andrew here. We lock them up, interrogate them. Some of them
are harmless. Others . . . I don't think we can ever let them
free."
"I don't understand. I mean, I see this one could be
dangerous, but--"
"The CC wants in here."
"Into Minamata?"
"No, this is his place. You saw the water down there.
That's his work. He wants into the Heinleiner enclave. He wants
the null-field. He wants to know if I'm successful with the
stardrive. He wants to know other things. He found out about
our access to his forbidden experiments, and we started getting
people like Andrew. Walking time bombs, most of them. After a
few tragic incidents, we had to institute some security
precautions. Now we're careful about the dead people we let in
here."
It was not the first time an action by the CC had turned
my world upside-down. You live in a time and a place and you
think you know what's going on, but you don't. Maybe no one
ever did.
Smith had unloaded too many things on me too quickly. I'd
had some practice at that, with the CC playing games with my
head, but I wonder if anyone ever gets really good at it.
"So he's working on immortality?" I asked.
"Of a sort. The oldest people around now are pushing three
hundred. Most people think there's a limit on how long the
human brain can be patched up in one way or another. But if you
could make a perfect record of everything a human being is, and
dump it into another brain . . ."
"Yeah . . . but Andrew is dead. This thing . . . even if
it was a better copy, it still wouldn't be Andrew. Would it?"
"Hey, Hildy," Andrew said. When I turned to face him I got
a big glob of cold, canned beef stew right in the kisser.
He never looked more like an ape as he capered around his
cell, hugging himself, bent over with laughter. It showed no
signs of stopping. And the funny thing was, after a brief flash
of homicidal intent, I found it impossible to hate him.
Whatever the CC had left out of this man, he was not evil, as I
had first thought. He was childish and completely impulsive.
Some sort of governor had not been copied right; his conscience
had been smudged in transmission, there was static in his
self-control. Think of it, do it. A simple philosophy.
"Come on next door," Smith said, after giving me some help
getting the worst mess off me. "You can clean up there, and I
have something to show you."
So we went through the null-field again--Andrew was still
laughing--walked eight or nine steps further to cell #9, and
stepped in.
And who should I see there but Aladdin, he of the magic
lungs, standing on this side of a barred cell identical to the
one we'd just left. Only this one was not occupied, and the
door stood open.
"Who's this one for?" I asked. "And what's Aladdin doing
here?" Some days I'm quick, but this didn't seem to be one of
them.
"There's no assigned occupant yet, Hildy," Smith said,
displaying something that had once been a flashlight but had
now folded out into what just had to be a Heinleiner weapon--it
had that gimcrack look. "We're going to ask you some questions.
Not many, but the answers may take a while, so get comfortable.
Aladdin's here to remove your null-suit generator if we don't
like the answers."
There was a long, awkward silence. Being held at gunpoint
is not something any of us had much experience of, from either
end of the gun. It's a social situation you don't run into
often. Try it at your next party, see how the guests handle it.
To their credit, I don't think they liked it much more
than me.
"What do you want to know?"
"Start with all your dealings with the Central Computer
over the last three years."
So I told them everything.
#
Gretel, that sweet child, would have invited me in the
first weekend, as it turned out. It was Smith and his friends
who held up the approval. They were checking me out, and their
resources for doing so were formidable. I'd been watched in
Texas. My background had been researched. As I went along there
were a few times when I missed this or that detail, and I was
always corrected. To lie would have been futile . . . and
besides, I didn't want to lie. If anyone had the answers to the
questions I'd been asking myself about the CC, it was surely
these people. I wanted to help them by telling everything I
knew.
I don't want to make this sound more dire than it actually
was. Fairly early we all relaxed. The flashlight was re-folded
and put away. If they'd been really suspicious of me I'd have
been brought here on my first visit, but after the things they
had told me it was only prudent for them to interrogate me in
the way they did.
The thing that had upset them was my suicide attempt on
the surface. It had left behind physical evidence, in the form
of a ruptured faceplate, and set them to wondering if I had
really died up there.
And as I continued talking about it a disturbing thing
occurred to me: what if I had?
How could I ever know, really? If the CC could record my
memories and play them back into a cloned body, would I feel
any different than I did then? I couldn't think of a test to
check it, not one I could do myself. I found myself hoping they
had one. No such luck.
"I'm not worried about that, Hildy," Smith said, when I
brought it up. In retrospect, maybe that wasn't a smart thing
to do, pointing out that they couldn't be sure of me, either,
but it didn't matter, since they'd already thought of it and
made up their minds. "If the CC has gotten that good, then
we're licked already."
"Besides," Aladdin put in, "if he's that good, what
difference would it make?"
"It could be important if he'd left a posthypnotic
suggestion," Smith said. "A perfect copy of Hildy, with a
buried injunction to spy on us and spill her guts when she went
back to King City."
"I hadn't thought of that," Aladdin said, looking as if he
wished the flashlight hadn't been put away so hastily.
"As I said, if he's that good we might as well give up."
He stood, and stretched. "No, my friends. At some point you
have to stop the tests. At some point you just have to go with
your feelings. I'm very sorry to have done this to you, Hildy,
it's against all I believe in. Your personal life should be
your own. But we're engaged in a quiet war here. No battles
have been fought, but the enemy is constantly feeling us out.
The best we can do is be like a turtle, pull into a shell he
can't penetrate. I'm sorry."
"It's okay. I wanted to talk about it, anyway."
He held out his hand, and I took it, and for the first
time in many, many years, I felt like I belonged to something.
I wanted to shout "Death to the CC!" Unfortunately, the
Heinleiners were short on slogans, membership badges, that sort
of thing. I sort of doubted I'd be offered a uniform.
Hell, they didn't even have a secret handshake. But I
accepted the ordinary one I was offered gratefully. I was in.
=*= =*= =*= =*=
What did you do during the Big Glitch?
It's an interesting question from several angles. If I'd
asked what you were doing when you heard Silvio had been
assassinated, I'd get back a variety of answers, but a minute
after you heard ninety-nine percent of you were glued to the
newspad (twenty-seven percent to the Nipple). It's the same for
other large, important events, the kind that shape our lives.
But each of you will have a different story about the Glitch.
The story will start like this:
Something major in your life suffered a malfunction of
some kind. Depending on what it was, you called the
repair-person or the police or simply started screaming bloody
murder. The next thing you did (99.99 percent of you, anyway),
was turn on your newspad to see what the hell was happening.
You turned it on, and you got . . . nothing.
Our age is not simply information-rich. It's
information-saturated. We expect that information to be
delivered as regularly as the oxygen we breathe, and tend to
forget the delivery is as much at the mercy of fallible
machines as is the air. We view it as only slightly less
important than air. Two seconds of down-time on one of the
major pads will generate hundreds of thousands of complaints.
Irate calls, furious threats to cancel subscriptions.
Frightened calls. Panicky calls. To turn on the pad and get
nothing but white noise and fuzz is Luna's equivalent of a
planet-wide earthquake. We expect our info-nets to be
comprehensive, ubiquitous, and global, and we expect it right
now.
To this day, the Big Glitch is the mainstay of the
counseling industry in Luna. Those who deal in crisis
management have found it a fabulous meal ticket that shows no
signs of expiring. They rate it higher, in terms of stress
produced, than being the victim of violent assault, or the loss
of a parent.
One of the things that made it so stressful was that
everyone's experience was different. When your world-view, your
opinions and the "facts" you base them on, the events that have
shaped our collective consciousness, what you like (because
everyone else does) and what you don't like (ditto), all come
over that all-pervasive newspad, you're a bit at sea when the
pad goes down and you suddenly have to react for yourself. No
news of how people in Arkytown are taking it. No endless
replays of the highlights. No pundits to tell you what to think
about it, what people are doing about it (so you can do the
same). You're on your own, pal. Good luck. Oh, and by the way,
if you choose wrong, it can kill you, buddy.
The Glitch is the one big event where nobody saw the whole
thing in an overview provided by experts whose job it is to
trim the story down to a size that will fit a pad. Everybody
saw just a little piece of it, their own piece. Almost none of
those pieces really mattered in the larger scheme of things.
Mine didn't, either, though I was closer to the "center" of the
story, if it had a center, than most of you. Only a handful of
experts who finally brought it under control ever really knew
what was going on. Read their accounts, if you're qualified, if
you want to know what really went on. I've tried, and if you
can explain it to me please send a synopsis, twentyfive words
or less, all entries to be scrupulously ignored.
So know going in that I'm not going to provide many
technical details. Know that I'm not going to tell you much
about what went on behind the scenes; I'm as ignorant of it as
anyone else.
No, this is simply what happened to me during the Big
Glitch . . .
#
Afterwards, when it became necessary to talk about
Delambre and the colony of weirdos in residence there, the
newspads had to come up with a term everyone would recognize,
some sort of shorthand term for the place and the people. As
usual in these situations, there was a period of casting about
and market research, listening to what the people themselves
were calling it. I heard the place called a village, a warren,
and a refuge. My particular favorite was "termitarium." It
aptly described the random burrows in the Delambre trash heap.
Pads who didn't like the Heinleiners called the residents
a cabal. Pads who admired them referred to Delambre and the
ship as a Citadel. There was even confusion about the term
"Heinleiner." It meant, depending on who you were talking
about, either a political philosophy, a seriously crackpot
religion (eventually known as "Organized Heinleiners"), or the
practitioners of scientific civil disobedience loosely led by
V.M. Smith and a few others.
Simplicity eventually won out, and the R.A.H., the trash
pile adjacent to it, and certain caves and corridors that
linked the whole complex to the more orderly world came to be
called "Heinlein Town."
Simplicity has its virtues, but to call it a town was
stretching the definition.
There were forces other than the Heinleiners' militant
contrariness that worked against Heinlein Town ever fielding a
softball team, electing a dog catcher, or putting up signs at
the city limits-wherever those might be--saying Watch Us Grow!
Not all the "citizens" were engaged in the type of forbidden
research done by Smith and his offspring. Some were there
simply because they preferred to be isolated from a society
they found too constricting. But because a lot of illegal
things were going on, there had to be security, and the only
kind the Heinleiners would put up with was that afforded by
Smith's null-field barriers: the elect could just walk right
through it, while the un-washed found it impenetrable.
But the security also entailed some things even an
anarchist would find inconvenient.
The constriction most of these people were fleeing could
be summed up in two words: Central Computer. They didn't trust
it. They didn't like it peering into their lives twenty-four
hours a day. And the only way to keep it out was to keep it
completely out. The only thing that could do that was the
null-field and the related technologies it spun off, arcane
arts to which the CC had no key.
But no matter what your opinion of the CC, it is damn
useful. For instance, whatever line of work you are in, I'd be
willing to bet it would be difficult to do it without a
telephone. There were no telephones in Heinlein Town, or none
that reached the outside world, anyway. There was no way to
reach the planet-wide data net in any fashion, because all
methods of interfacing with it were as useful coming in as
going out. If Heinlein Town had one hard and fast rule it was
this: The CC shall extend no tentacle into the Delambre Enclave
(my own term for the loose community of trash-dwellers).
Hey, folks, people have to work. People who live
completely away from the traditional municipal services have an
even stronger work imperative. There was no oxygen dole in
Heinlein Town. If you stayed, and couldn't pay your air
assessment, you could damn well learn to breathe vacuum.
One result was that eighty percent of "Heinlein Town"
residents were no more resident than I was. I was a weekender
because I didn't want to give up my home and my place in Texas.
Most weekenders lived in King City and spent all their free
time in Delambre because they had to pay the bills and found it
impossible to earn any money in Heinlein Town. There were not
many full-time economic niches available, a fact that galled
the Heinleiners no end.
Heinlein Town? Here's what it was really like:
There were half a dozen places with enough people living
close by to qualify as towns or villages. The largest of these
was Virginia City, which had as many as five hundred residents.
Strangeland was almost as big. Both towns had sprung up because
of an accident of the process of waste disposal: a few score
very large tin cans had been jumbled together at these
locations, and they were useful for living and farming. By
large, I mean up to a thousand meters in length, half that in
diameter. I think they had been strap-on fuel tanks at one
time. The Heinleiners had bored holes to connect them,
pressurized them, and moved in like poor relations. Instant
slum.
You couldn't help being reminded of Bedrock, though these
people were often quite prosperous. There were no zoning
regulations that didn't relate to health and safety. Sewage
treatment was taken seriously, for instance, not only because
they didn't want the place to stink like Bedrock but because
they didn't have access to the bounty of King City municipal
water. What they had had been trucked in, and it was endlessly
re-used. But they didn't understand the concept of a public
eyesore. If you wanted to string a line across one of the tanks
and hang your laundry on it, it's a free country, ain't it? If
you thought manufacturing toxic gases in your kitchen was a
good idea, go ahead, cobber, but don't have an accident,
because civil liability in Heinlein Town could include the
death penalty.
Nobody really owned land in Delambre, in the sense of
having a deed or title (hold on, Mr. H., don't spin in your
grave yet), but if you moved into a place nobody was using, it
was yours. If you wanted to call an entire million-gallon tank
home, that was fine. Just put up a sign saying KEEP OUT and it
had the force of law. There was plenty of space to go around.
Everything was private enterprise, often a cooperative of
some kind. I met three people who made a living by running the
sewers in the three biggest enclaves, and selling water and
fertilizer to farmers. You paid through the nose to hook up,
and it was worth it, because who wants to handle every detail
of daily life? Many of the largest roads were tollways. Oxygen
was un-metered, but paid for by a monthly fee to the only real
civic agency the Heinleiners tolerated: the Oxygen Board.
Electricity was so cheap it was free. Just hook a line
into the main.
And here's the real secret of Mr. Smith's success, the
reason a fairly unlikable man like him was held in such high
esteem in the community. He didn't charge for the null-field
jig-saw network that hermetically sealed Heinlein Town off from
the rest of Luna--that had made their way of life possible. If
you wanted to homestead a new area of Delambre, you first
rented a tunneling machine from the people who found, repaired,
and maintained them. When you had your tunnel, you installed
the tanks, solar panels, and heaters of the ALU's every hundred
meters, then you went to Mr. Smith for the null-field
generators. He handed them out free.
He had every right to charge for them, of course, and nary
a Heinleiner would have complained. But just so you don't think
he was a goddamcommunist, I should point out that while he gave
away the units, he didn't give away the science. The first
thing he told you when he handed you a generator was, "You fuck
with this, you go boom." Years ago somebody hadn't believed
him, had tried to open one up and see what made the pretty
music, and sort of fell inside the generator. There was a
witness, who swore the fellow was quickly spit back out--and
how he ever fell into a device no bigger than a football was a
source of wonder in itself--but when he came out, he was
inverted, sort of like a dirty sock. He actually lived for a
little while, and they put him in the public square of Virginia
City as a demonstration of the fruits of hubris.
So there you have the economic, technical, and behavioral
forces that shaped the little hamlet of Virginia City, as
surely as rivers, harbors, railroads and climate shaped cities
of Old Earth. Since no pictures of the place have yet been
allowed out by the residents, since I've gathered that, to most
people, "Heinlein Town" conjures thoughts of either troglodyte
caverns dripping slime and infested with bats or of some
superslick, super-efficient techno-wonderland, I thought I
should set the record straight.
To visualize the public square in Virginia City, think of
a brighter, cleaner version of Robinson Park in Bedrock. On a
smaller scale. There was the same curving roof, the same stingy
acre of grass and trees in the center, and the same jumble of
packing crates stacked higgledypiggledy around the green acre.
Both of them just grew that way--Robinson Park in spite of the
law, Virginia City because of the lack of it. In both places
squatters appropriated discarded shipping containers, cut
windows and doors, and hung their hats in them. There and in
Bedrock the residents didn't give a hoot for stacking the damn
thing warehouse-fashion, in neat, squared-up rows. The result
was sort of like a pueblo mud dwelling, but not nearly so
orderly, with long crates spanning empty space or jutting out
crazily, ladders leaning everywhere.
There the resemblance ended. Inside the Bedrock hovels
you'd be lucky to find a burlap rug and spare pair of socks;
the Heinleiner modules were gaily painted and furnished, with
here a window box full of geraniums and there a rooftop pigeon
pen. The lawn in Virginia City was golfgreen trim and trash
free. Bedrockers tended to stack themselves twenty or thirty
deep, until whole impromptu skyscrapers toppled. None of the
Virginia City dwellings were more than six crates from the
floor.
The square was the hub of commerce in Delambre, with more
shops and cottage industry than anywhere else. I usually went
there first on my weekend visits because it was a good place to
meet people, and because my peripatetic guides and shameless
mooches, Hansel, Gretel, and Libby, were sure to pass through
on a Saturday morning and see if they could hit up good ol'
Hildy for a Double-fudge 'n' Rum Raisin Banana Split at Aunt
Hazel's Ice Cream Emporium and While-U-Wait Surgery Shoppe.
On the day in question, the day of the Big Glitch, I had
parked my by-now quite considerable tuchis in one of the canvas
chairs set out on the public walk at that establishment. I
nursed a cup of coffee. There would be plenty of ice cream to
eat when the children arrived, and I had no particular taste
for it. I'd made worse sacrifices in pursuit of a story.
Each of the four tables at Hazel's had a canvas umbrella
sprouting from the center, very useful for keeping off the rain
and the sun. I scanned the skies, looking for signs of a
cloudburst. Nope, looked like another day of curved metal roofs
and suspended arc-lights. You can't beat the weather inside an
abandoned fuel tank.
I looked out over the square. In the center was a statue,
a bit larger than life-size, of a cat, sitting on a low stone
plinth. I had no idea what that was all about. The only other
item of civic works visible was a lot less obscure. It was a
gallows, sitting off to one side of the square. I'd been told
it had only been used once. I was glad to hear the event had
not been wellattended. Some aspects of Heinleinism were easier
to like than others.
"What the hell are you doing here, Hildy?" I heard myself
say. Someone at a neighboring table looked up, then back down
at her sundae. So the pregnant lady was muttering to herself;
so what? It's a free planet. From beneath the table I heard a
familiar wet smacking sound, looked down, saw Winston had
lifted one bleary eye to see if food was coming. I nudged him
with my toe and he sprawled sybaritically on his back, inviting
more intimacy than I had any intention of giving. When no more
attention came, he went to sleep in that position.
"Let's look this situation over," I said. This time
neither Winston nor the lover of hot fudge looked up, but I
decided to continue my monologue internally, and it went
something like this:
What with umpty-ump suicide attempts, Hildy, it's been
what you might call a bad year.
You greeted the appearance of the Silver Girl with the
loud hosannas of a Lost Soul who has Seen The Light.
You brought her to ground, using fine journalistic
instincts honed by more years than you care to remember--helped
by the fact that she wasn't exactly trying to stay hidden.
And--yea verily!--she was what you'd hoped she'd be: the
key to a place where people were not content to coast along,
year to year, in the little puddle of light and heat known as
the Solar System, evicted from our home planet, cozened by a
grand Fairy Godfather of our own creation who made life easier
for us than it had ever been in the history of the species, and
who was capable of things few of us knew or cared about. Let me
hear you say amen!
Amen!
So then . . . so then . . .
Once you've got the story a certain postreportoral
depression always sets in. You have a smoke, pull on your
shoes, go home. You start looking for the next story. You don't
try to live in the story.
And why not? Because covering any story, whether it be the
Flacks and Silvio or V.M. Smith and his merry band, just showed
you more people, and I was beginning to fear that my problem
was simply that I'd had it with people. I'd set out looking for
a sign, and what I'd found was a story. The Angel Moroni
materialized out of good old flash powder, and was held up with
wires. The burning bush smelled of kerosene. Ezekiel's wheel,
flashing across the sky? Look closely. Is that bits of pie
crust on it, or what?
How can you say that, Hildy? I protested. (And the lady
with the sundae got up and moved to another table, so maybe the
monologue wasn't as interior as I had hoped. Maybe it was about
to get positively Shakespearean and I would stand up on my
chair and commit a soliloquy. To be or not to be!) After all (I
went on, more calmly), he's building a starship.
Well . . . yeah. And his daughter is building pigs with
wings, and maybe they'll both fly, but my money was on needing
protection from falling pigshit before I held an interstellar
boarding pass in my hand.
Yeah, but . . . well, they're resisting in here. They
don't kow-tow to the CC. Not two weeks ago you were moved
almost to tears to be accepted among them. Now we'll do
something about the CC, you thought.
Sure. One of these days.
Two things had come clear to me once the fuzzyheaded
camaraderie had worn off and my cynicism reasserted itself. One
was that the Heinleiners were as capable of lollygagging
procrastination as anyone else. Aladdin had admitted to me that
the resistance was mostly a passive thing, keeping the CC out
rather than bearding him in his lair, mostly because no one had
much of a clue as to how to go about the latter. So they all
figured they'd take the fight to him . . . when they felt like
it. Meantime, they did what we all did about insurmountable
problems: they didn't think about it.
The second thing I realized was that, if the CC wanted to
be in Heinlein Town, he would be in Heinlein Town.
I wasn't privy to all their secrets. I didn't know
anything of the machinations that had brought the
MacDonald-clone to Minamata, nor much of anything else about
just how hard the CC was trying to penetrate the little
Heinleiner enclave. But even such as me could tell it would be
easy to get a spy in here. Hell, Liz had visited the previous
week-end, with me, and had been admitted solely on the strength
of her reputation as a person of known Heinleiner tendencies.
Some sorts of checks were run, I'm sure, but I would bet
anything the CC could get around them if he wanted to
infiltrate a spy.
No, the CC was surely curious about these people, and no
doubt frustrated, but the CC was a strange being. Whatever
cryogenic turmoil was currently animating his massive brain was
and probably would remain a mystery to me. It was clear that
things were going wrong, or he'd never have been able to
over-ride his programming and do the things he'd done to me.
But it was equally clear that most of his programming was still
intact, or he'd simply have kicked down the front door of this
place and marched everyone off for trial.
Having said all that, why the disillusion, Hildy?
Two reasons. Unreasonable expectations: in spite of all
good sense, I had hoped these people would be somehow better
than other people. They weren't. They just had different ideas.
And two, I didn't fit. They didn't need reporters in here.
Gossip sufficed. Teaching was taken very seriously; no
dilettantes need apply. The only other thing I was interested
in was building a starship, and I'd be about as useful as a
kewpie with a slide rule.
"Three reasons," I said. "You're depressed, too."
"Don't be," Libby said. "I'm here."
I looked up and saw him sit down after first carefully
placing a dish oozing with chocolate, caramel, and melting ice
cream on the table in front of him. He reached down and
scratched Winston's head. The dog licked his nose, sniffed, and
went back to sleep, ice cream being one of the few foodstuffs
he had little interest in. Libby grinned at me.
"Hope I didn't keep you waiting too long," he said.
"No problem. Where's H & G?"
"They said they'd be along later. Liz is back, though." I
saw her approaching across the village green. She had a bottle
in one hand. The Heinleiners made their own booze, naturally,
and Liz had professed to like it on her earlier visit. Probably
that little dab of kerosene they added for flavor.
"Can't stay, folks, can't stay, gotta run," she said, just
as if I'd urged her to stick around. She produced a folding cup
from her gunbelt and poured a shot of pure Virginia City
Bonded, tossed it down. It wasn't the first of the day.
That's right, I said gunbelt. Liz had taken to Heinlein
Town from the first moment I brought her in, because it was the
only place outside of the movie studios where she worked that
she could wear a gun. But in here she could load it with real
bullets. She currently sported a matched pair of Colt .45's,
with pearl handles.
"I was hoping we could go do some shooting," Libby said.
"Not today, sweetie. I just dropped by to get a bottle,
and retrieve my dog. Next weekend, I promise. But you buy the
lead."
"Sure."
"Has he been a good dog?" Liz cooed, crouching down and
scratching his back, almost toppling over in the process. She
was probably talking to Winston, but I told her he'd been good,
anyway. She didn't seem to hear.
Libby leaned a little closer to me and looked at me with
concern.
"Are you really feeling depressed?" he asked. He put his
hand on mine.
All I really needed at that point in my life was another
case of puppy love, but that's just what had happened. At the
rate he was going, pretty soon he'd be humping my leg, like
Winston.
For pity sake, Hildy, give it a rest.
"Just a little blue," I said, putting on a smile for him.
"How come?"
"Wondering where my life is going."
He looked blankly at me. I'd seen the same expression on
Brenda's face when I said something incomprehensible to one who
sees nothing but endless, unlimited vistas stretching ahead.
Charitably, I didn't kick him. Instead, I removed my hand from
under his, patted his hand, and finally noticed the disturbance
going on under the table.
"Problems, Liz?" I asked.
"I think he wants to stay here." She had attached a leash
to his collar and was tugging on it, but he had planted his
forepaws and dug in. Forget mules; if you want a metaphor for
stubbornness, you need look no farther than the English
Bulldog.
"You could pick him up," Libby suggested.
"If I had no further use for my face," she agreed. "Also
arms, legs, and ass. Winston's slow to anger, but he's worth
seeing when he gets there." She stood, hands on hips in
frustration, and her dog rolled over on his back and went to
sleep again. "Damn, Hildy, he surely must like you."
I thought what he liked was hunting live prey-horses and
cows, mostly, though recently a kewpie had gone missing. But I
didn't mention that. Not for Libby's tender ears.
"It's okay, Liz," I said. "He's not much trouble. I'll
just keep him this weekend and drop him by your place on my way
home."
"Well, sure, but . . . I mean I'd planned to . . ." She
groped around a little more, then poured herself another drink
and made it vanish.
"Right," she said. "See you later, Hildy." She slapped my
shoulder in passing, then took off across the green.
"What was that all about?" Libby asked.
"You never know with Liz."
"Is she really the Queen of England?"
"Yep. And I am the ruler of the Queen's navee!"
He got that blank look, field-tested and honed to
perfection by Brenda, then shrugged and applied himself to
demolishing the melting mess in front of him. I guess Gilbert
and Sullivan was too much even for a Heinleiner youth.
"Well . . ." he said, wiping his mouth on the back of his
hand, "she sure can shoot, I've gotta say that."
"I wouldn't get into a fistfight with her either, if I was
you."
"But she drinks too much."
"Amen to that. I'd hate to have to pay her
liver-replacement tab."
He leaned back in his chair, looking well satisfied with
life.
"So. You taking me back to Texas this Sunday evening?"
In a weak moment I'd promised to show all three children
where I lived. Hansel and Gretel seemed to have forgotten about
it, but not Libby. I'd have taken him, but I was pretty sure
I'd spend most of my time fighting him off, and I just wasn't
up to it.
"Afraid not. I've got too many test papers to grade. All
this traveling to and from Delambre's gotten me far behind in
my teaching duties."
He tried not to show his disappointment.
"Next time," I told him.
"Sure," he said. "Then what do you want to do today?"
"I really don't know, Libby. I've seen the stardrive, and
I didn't understand it. I've seen the farm, and Minamata, and
I've seen the spider people." I'd seen even more wonders than
that, some of them unmentioned here because of promises I made,
others for reasons of security, and most because they simply
weren't that interesting. Even a community of wild-eyed genius
experimenters is going to lay some eggs. "What do you think we
should do?"
He thought it over.
"There's a baseball game over in Strangeland in about an
hour."
I laughed.
"Sure," I said. "I haven't watched one in years."
"You can watch if you want," he said. "I meant, we sort of
choose up sides, you know, depending on how many people show up
. . ."
"A pick-up game. I thought you meant, like--"
"No, we don't have--"
"--the Heinleiner Tanstaafl's against the King City--"
"--that many people in here."
"Forgive me. I'm still a big-city girl, I guess. You need
an umpire?" I smacked my bloated belly. "I brought my own
pads."
He grinned, opened his mouth, and said "We could everybody
freeze, and nobody will get hurt."
At least that's what it sounded like to me, for a split
second, before the synapses sorted themselves out and I saw the
last seven words had come from a tall, bulky party in an
alarming but effective costume, holding a rifle in one hand and
a bullhorn in the other.
Once I spotted him, I quickly saw about a dozen others
like him and the same number of King City police, moving across
the square in a ragged skirmish line. The cops had drawn
handguns, something seldom seen on Luna. The others had big
projectile weapons or hand-held lasers.
"What the hell are they?" Libby asked. We'd both stood up,
like most of the other people I could see.
"I'd guess they were soldiers," I said.
"But that's crazy. Luna doesn't have an army."
"Looks like we got one when we weren't looking."
And quite a bunch they were, too. The KC cops were equally
men and women, the "soldiers" were all male, and all large.
They wore black: jumpsuits, equipment belts, huge ornate crash
helmets with tinted visors, boots. The belts were hung with
things that might have been hand grenades, ammunition clips, or
high-tech pencil sharpeners, for all I could tell.
It later turned out they were mostly props. The costumes
had been rented from a film studio, since the non-existent Army
of Luna had nothing to offer in the way of super-macho display.
They came in our general direction. When they encountered
people they pushed them to the floor and the cops started
patting them down for weapons, and slipping on handcuffs. The
soldiers kept on moving, swinging the muzzles of their weapons
this way and that, looking quite pleased with themselves, all
to the booming accompaniment of more orders from the bullhorn.
"What should we do, Hildy?" Libby asked, his voice
shaking.
"I think it's best if we do what they say," I said,
quietly, patting his shoulder to settle him down. "Don't worry,
I know a good lawyer."
"Are they going to arrest us?"
"Looks like it."
A cop and a soldier marched up to us and the soldier
looked at a datapad in his hand, then at my face.
"Are you Maria Cabrini, also known as Hildegarde Johnson?"
"I'm Hildy Johnson."
"Cuff her," he told the cop. He turned away as the
policewoman started toward me, and as Libby moved to put
himself between me and the cop.
"You keep your hands off her," Libby said, and the soldier
pivoted easily and brought up the butt of his gun and smashed
it into the side of Libby's face. I could hear his jaw shatter.
He fell to the ground, totally limp. As I stared down at him,
Winston waddled out from under the table and sniffed his face.
The cop was saying something angry to the soldier, but I
was too stunned to hear what it was.
"Just do it," the soldier snarled at her, and I started to
kneel beside Libby but the cop grabbed my arm and pulled me up.
She snapped one cuff over my left wrist, still looking at the
retreating back of the soldier.
"He can't get away with that," she said, more to herself
than to me. She reached for my other hand and it finally sunk
in that this was more than a normal arrest situation, that
things were out of joint, and that maybe I ought to resist,
because if a big ape could just club a young boy senseless
something was going on here that I didn't understand.
So I yanked my right hand away and started to run but she
was way ahead of me, twisting my left hand hard until I ended
up bent over the table with her behind me, pressing my face
into the remains of Libby's sundae. I kept fighting to keep my
right hand free and she jerked me upright by my hair, and she
screamed, and let go of me.
They tell me Winston came off the ground like a squat
rocket, that great vise of a jaw open wide, and clamped it shut
on her forearm, breaking her grip on me and knocking her to the
ground. I fell over myself, and landed on my butt, from which
position I watched in horrified fascination as Winston made
every effort to tear the limb from its socket.
I hope I never see anything like that again. Winston
couldn't have massed a seventh as much as the policewoman, but
he jerked her around like a rag doll. His jaws opened only
enough to get a better grip in a different place. Even over the
sound of her screams I could hear the bones crunching.
Now the soldier was coming back, raising his rifle as he
came, and now a shot rang out and blood sprayed from the front
of his chest, and again, and once more, and he fell on his
face, hard, and didn't move. Then everybody was firing at once
and I crawled under the metal table as lead slugs screamed all
around me.
The fire was concentrated at first on a window high in the
stack of apartment crates surrounding the square. Part of the
wall vanished in plastic splinters, then a red line thrust into
the wreckage and something bloomed orange flame. I saw more gun
barrels sticking out of more windows, saw another soldier go
down with the lower part of his leg blown off, saw him turn as
he fell and start firing at another window.
In seconds it seemed I was the only person there who
didn't have a weapon. I saw a Heinleiner crouched behind the
gallows, snapping off shots with a handgun. His null-suit was
turned on, coating him in silver. I saw him hit by a half a
clip from an automatic rifle. He froze. I don't mean he stood
still; he froze, like a chromium statue, toppled with bullets
still whanging off of him, rolled over on his back, still in
the same attitude. Then his null-suit switched off and he tried
to get up, but was hit by three more bullets. His skin had
turned lobster-red.
I didn't understand that, and I didn't have time to think
about it. People were still running for cover, so I did, too,
past overturned tables and chairs and the dead body of a King
City policeman, into Aunt Hazel's shop. I scurried around and
crouched behind the counter, intending to stay there until
someone came to explain what the hell was going on.
But the itch is buried deep, and makes you do stupid
things when you least expect it. If you've never been a
reporter, you wouldn't understand. I raised my head and looked
over the counter.
I can replay the tape from my holocam and say exactly what
happened, in what order, who did what to whom, but you don't
live it that way. You retain some very vivid impressions, in no
particular order, with gaps between when you don't have any
idea what happened. I saw people running. I saw people cut
almost in half by lasers, ripped by bullets. I heard screams
and shouts and explosions, and I smelled gunpowder and burning
plastic. I suppose every battlefield has looked and sounded and
smelled pretty much the same.
I couldn't see Libby, didn't know if he was dead or alive.
He wasn't where he had fallen. I did see more cops and soldiers
arriving from some of the feeder tunnels.
Something crashed through the windows in front, something
large, and tumbled over the ice cream freezers there, turning
one of them over. I crouched down, and when I looked up again
there was the policewoman, Winston still attached to her arm,
which was in danger of coming off.
It was a scene from hell. Crazed by pain, the woman was
swinging her arm wildly, trying to get the dog to let go.
Winston was having none of it. Bleeding from many cuts, he
ignored everything but his inexorable grip. He'd been bred to
grab a bull by the nose and never let go; a K.C. policewoman
wasn't about to get free.
But now she was scrabbling for her holster, forgotten in
her fear and panic. She got her gun out and aimed it toward the
dog. Her first shot went wild, killing nothing but an ice cream
freezer. The second shot hit Winston in the left hind leg,
where it was thickest, and still the beast didn't let go. If
anything, he fought all the harder.
Her last shot hit him in the belly. He went
limp--everything but his jaw. Even in death he wasn't going to
let go.
She took aim at his head, and then slumped over, passed
out at last. It was probably for the best, because I think she
would have blown her own arm off, the way she had the gun
pointed.
Later, I felt sorry for her. At the time I was simply too
confused to feel much of anything but fear. I mourned Winston
later, too. He'd been trying to protect me, though I recall
thinking at the time that he'd over-reacted. She'd only been
trying to handcuff me, hadn't she?
And what about the soldiers? It had looked to me as if the
Heinleiners had fired the first shot. All sane reasoning would
lead me to think that, if that first soldier hadn't been hit,
this could all have ended peacefully at the jailhouse with a
lot of lawyers arguing, charges brought, countersuits filed.
I'd have been out on bail within a few hours.
Which was still what I'd have liked to have done, and
would have, but any fool could see things had gone too far for
that. If I stepped out waving a white flag I was pretty sure
I'd be killed, apologies sent to the next of kin. So Hildy, I
told myself, your first priority is to get out of here without
getting shot. Let the lawyers sort it out later, when the
bullets aren't flying.
With that end in mind, I started crawling toward the door.
My intent was to stick my head out, low, and see what stood
between me and the nearest exit. Which turned out to be a black
boot planted solidly in the doorway, almost under my nose by
the time I got there. I looked up the black-clad leg and into
the menacing face of a soldier. He was pointing a weapon at me,
some great bulky thing I thought might be a machine gun, whose
muzzle looked wide enough to spit baseballs.
"I'm unarmed," I said.
"That's the way I like 'em," he said, and flipped up his
visor with his thumb. There was something in his eyes I didn't
like. I mean, beyond everything else I didn't like about the
situation. Just a little touch of madness, I think.
He was a big man with a broad face entirely innocent of
any evidence of thought. But now a thought did flicker behind
those eyes, and his brow wrinkled.
"What's your name?"
"H . . . Helga Smith."
"Nah," he said, and dug into a pocket for a datapad, which
he scanned with a thumb control until my lovely phiz smiled
back at us. He returned the smile, but I didn't, because his
smile was the worst news I'd had so far in a day filled with
bad news. "You're Hildy Johnson," he said, "and you're on the
death list so it don't matter what happens here, see?" And he
started working on his belt, one-handed, the other hand keeping
the gun pointed at my forehead.
I found myself getting detached from events. Maybe it was
a reflex action, something to distance oneself from an
abomination about to happen. Or maybe it was just too many
things that couldn't be happening. This can't be happening. I'd
silently shrieked it one too many times and now a mental
numbness was setting in. I ought to be thinking of something to
do. I ought to be talking to him, asking questions. Anything.
Instead, I just sat there, squatting on my heels, and felt as
if I'd like to go to sleep.
But my senses were heightened. They must have been,
because with all the shooting going on outside (how could he do
this in the middle of a war?), and over the scream of a dying
compressor motor in the overturned freezer I was able to hear a
voice from the grave. A growl.
The soldier didn't hear it, or maybe he was too busy. He
had his pants down around his heels and he knelt in front of me
and that's when I saw Winston, dragging his hind leg, bleeding
from his gut, eyes filled with murder.
The man lowered himself over me.
I wanted Winston to bite him . . . well, you know where I
wanted Winston to bite him. I got second best. The bulldog
fastened on the soft flesh of the soldier's inner thigh. The
man's leg jerked in pain, and he was flying over me. I grabbed
the strap of his rifle as he went by.
He had strength and mass on his side, but there was the
little matter of Winston. The dog had cut an artery. The
soldier tried to wrestle his rifle away from me with one hand
and pry Winston loose with the other and ended up doing both
things badly. Blood was spraying everywhere. I was screaming.
Not the big full scream you hear at the movies, and not a
scream of rage, but a highpitched scary thing I was powerless
to stop.
Then I got one hand on the barrel of the rifle, and one
hand on the stock, and fumbled for the trigger as he realized
what was happening and gave up his struggle with Winston,
concentrating on me. He got his hand over the barrel. Sadly for
him, it was over the end of the barrel, and when I squeezed the
trigger his hand wasn't there anymore. It wasn't anywhere
anymore, but the air was full of a red mist.
The soldier never did stop fighting. I guess that's why
they're soldiers. With Winston hanging from his leg, his pants
around his ankles, missing a hand, he still came at me and I
swung the rifle up and held the trigger down and didn't really
see what happened next because on full auto-fire the weapon
packed such a kick that I was knocked on my ass again, and when
I opened my eyes he was mostly on the walls, except for bits
here and there on the floor, and the one big piece still in
Winston's mouth.
I could say I paused and reflected on the enormity of
taking a human life, or how nauseated I was at the sight of his
dismembered body. I did think of those things, and many others.
But later. Much later. At that time my mind had collapsed on
itself and was only large enough to hold a few thoughts, and
only one of those at a time. First, I was going to get out of
there. Second, anybody between me and getting out of there was
going to have a Hildy-sized hole drilled right through his or
her stinking carcass. I had killed, and by god I meant to keep
on killing if that's what I had to do to get to safety.
"Winston. Here, boy." I got up on one knee and talked to
him. I didn't know what to expect. Would he recognize me? Was
he too far gone in bloodlust?
But after a final shake of the soldier's leg, he let go
and came to me. He was dragging his hind leg and he was
gut-shot, but still walking.
I will admit I don't know why I took him. I mean, I really
don't. My holocam recorded the scene, but it doesn't tape
thoughts. Mine weren't very organized just then. I remember
thinking I sure as hell owed him. It also crossed my mind that
I was probably safer with him than without him; he was one hell
of a weapon. I prefer to think I thought those things in that
order. I won't swear to it.
I scooped him up in one arm, holding the rifle in the
other, and stuck my head around the corner. Nobody blew it off.
Nobody seemed to be moving at all. The square was a lot smokier
and there was still a lot of gunfire, but everyone seemed to
have taken cover. I could do that, too, and wait for somebody
to find me, or I could use the smoke to hide in, knowing I
could easily stumble on someone else who was doing the same
thing, and was a better shot than I was.
I don't know how you make a decision like that. I mean, I
made it, but I don't recall weighing the pro's and con's. I
just looked around the corner, didn't see anybody, and then I
was running.
Actually, running is a very generous word for what I did,
with a dying dog tucked under one arm and a heavy weapon
dangling from the other. And don't forget a belly the size of
Phobos. Thank god holocams record only what you see, and not
what you look like. That couldn't have been an image I'd like
preserved for posterity.
My goal was the entrance to a corridor that led back
toward the Heinlein, and I was about halfway there when someone
behind me yelled "Halt!" in a firm and not-at-all-friendly
voice, and things happened very fast . . . and I did everything
right, even with all the things that went wrong.
I turned and kept back-pedaling, slowly, and I dropped
Winston (who uttered the only yelp of pain he made through his
entire heroic ordeal--and I'm sorry, Winston, wherever you
are). I saw it was a King City cop, and he was young, and he
looked as scared as I was, and he carried a huge drilling
laser, which was pointed at me.
"Drop your weapon," he said, and I said Sorry, chum, this
isn't personal, only not out loud, and I pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened, and it was then I noticed the blinking red
light on this curved metal thingy that must have been the ammo
clip, and which must have been saying feed me!, or words to
that effect in gun-language, and understood why what I'd
thought was a short burst had had such a cataclysmic effect on
my would-be rapist. So I dropped the gun and I held up my
hands, and I saw Winston making his last dash, hobbling across
the ten meters or so that separated us, and I put my hands out,
palms up, and I shouted No!, and I will swear in any court in
the world that I saw the man's finger tightening on the trigger
from ten meters away, with the muzzle wavering between me and
Winston as if he couldn't decide which to shoot first. And I
know this is flatly impossible, but I even thought I saw the
light start to come out the end of the weapon in the same
fraction of a second that I grabbed my null-suit control and
twisted it hard.
I was dazzled by green light. For a few moments I was
blind. When vision returned the world was full of multi-colored
incandescent balloons that drifted here and there, obscuring
the world, popping like cartoon soap bubbles. I was sweating
horribly inside my suit-field. It could have been worse.
Outside the field, most everything seemed to be on fire.
About the only way you can go wrong with a laser is to
shoot it at a mirror. You couldn't blame the cop for that. I
hadn't been a mirror when he pulled the trigger; it was that
close.
But he really should have let go a lot sooner.
Everywhere the beam hit me, it was reflected back, but
because the human body is much a complex shape the reflected
beam went all over the place. The resulting scorch line hit the
walls in many places, melting plastic panels and starting fires
behind them. It hit the cop at least three times. I think any
of them would have been fatal without quick treatment. He was
lying still, with flames engulfing his clothing in three deep,
black slashes.
Somewhere in its wild gyrations the beam had hit Winston.
His fur was on fire and he wasn't moving, either.
I was trying to think of what to do when a high wind rose.
It briefly whipped the flames into a white-hot frenzy, but then
it snuffed them out. All the smoke cleared in an instant and
the scene took on that crisp clarity you find only in vacuum.
I turned, and ran for cover.
=*= =*= =*= =*=
I crouched in a pile of chrome-plated pipes not twenty
meters from two patrolling figures in spacesuits, trying to
pretend I was just another piece of bent pipe. I wasn't quite
sure how to go about this. Don't move, and think tubular
thoughts, I finally decided, and it had worked so far.
I was keeping one eye on the clock, one eye on the
soldiers, and one eye on the blinking red light in my head-up
display. Since this adds up to three eyes, you can imagine how
busy I was. I was the busiest motionless person you ever saw.
Or didn't see.
As if that weren't enough, I was calling every telephone
number in my vast mental card file.
Forget those trivial inventions like fire, the wheel, the
bow and arrow, the plow. Man didn't become truly civilized
until Alex Bell uttered those immortal words, "Shit, Watson, I
spilled acid all over my balls." Hiding there with my oxygen
running out, my only hope of staying alive lay in getting some
help over the telephone, and if it worked I resolved to light a
candle every year on Mr. Bell's birthday.
My situation was dire, but it could have been worse. I
could have been a member of the King City police dragooned (I
later learned) into the first wave of the assault on Virginia
City. In addition to the hazards of an armed populace, not to
mention the meanest, gamest dog who ever lived, they had the
added problem of not having pressure suits when the second
wave, which attacked from the surface, began cutting the cables
which brought power from the solar panels topside, which
powered the null-fields which kept the air in.
That's what had happened just after I was lasered by the
last cop. It was the air rushing out of the public square that
had first fanned, then extinguished the flames on Winston's
corpse.
It wasn't a blow-out like the one at Nirvana, or I
wouldn't be here to tell you about it. What we're used to in a
blow-out is a lot of air rushing through a relatively small
hole. You get picked up and battered, then you get squeezed,
and even in a null-suit your chances of survival are slim. But
when a null-field goes, it goes all at once, and the air just
expands. You get a gentle wind, then poof! Like a soap bubble.
And then you get a lot of cops and soldiers grabbing their
throats, spitting blood, and falling quietly to the ground. I
saw two people die like this. I guess it's a fairly quick,
peaceful way to go, but I still get nauseous just thinking
about it.
At the time I thought the Heinleiners had done it. It was
a logical tactic. It was the way they customarily fought fires,
and god knows there were plenty of fires by the time the air
went. And it just didn't make sense that their own people would
cut the power, knowing the first group didn't have suits.
Well, it was their own people who did it, and it wasn't
the only thing about the assault that didn't make sense. But I
learned about that much later. Hiding there in the pipes all I
knew is that a lot of people had tried to kill me, and a lot
more were still trying. It had been a game of cat and mouse for
about three hours since the nullfield power went down.
The power loss had immediately turned the corridor I meant
to travel to the Heinlein from a silvery cylinder into a
borehole through eons of trash, just like the one I had
traveled to lo those many weeks ago to enter this crazy
funhouse in the first place. That was a damn good thing,
because not long after the blowout I met the first of many
pressure-suited people coming down the path in the other
direction.
We didn't actually meet, which was another good thing,
because he or she was carrying a laser just like the one that
had almost fried me. I saw him (I'm going to say him, because
all the soldiers were male and there was something in the way
he moved) while he was still some distance from me, and I
quickly melted into the wall. Or into where the wall had been,
you see. There were thousands of gaps along the corridor large
enough for even a pregnant woman to squeeze through.
Once into one of the gaps, however, you never knew what
lay beyond. You had entered a world with no rational order to
it, a three-dimensional random maze made of random materials,
some of it locked in place by the pressure of other junk above
it, some of it alarmingly unstable. In some of these
hidey-holes you could slip through here and squeeze through
there and swing across a gap in another place, like in a
collapsed jungle gym. In others, two meters in and you found a
cul-desac a rat would have found impassable. You never knew.
There was simply no way to tell from the outside.
That first refuge was one of the shallow ones, so I had
pressed myself against a flat surface and began learning the
Zen of immobility. I had several things going for me. No need
to hold my breath, since I was already doing that because of
the null-suit. No need to be very quiet, because of the vacuum.
And in the suit he might not have seen me if I'd been lying
right in his path.
I told myself all those things, but I still aged twenty
years as he crept by, swinging his laser left and right, close
enough that I could have reached out and touched him.
Then he had passed, and it started getting very dark
again. (Did I mention all the lights went out when the power
failed? They did. I'd never have seen him if he hadn't been
carrying a flashlight.)
I wanted that flashlight. I wanted it more than anything
in the world. Without it, I didn't see how I'd ever make it to
safety. It had already gotten dark enough that I could barely
see the useless rifle I'd carried with me, and wouldn't see
anything at all when he'd moved a little farther along.
I almost jumped out of my skin when I realized he could
have seen the flashing red light on the empty clip as he
passed; I'd forgotten to cover it up. If only I had another . .
. then I looked more closely at the clip. It had an opening at
the end, and a brass shell casing gleamed in there. I realized
it was two clips taped together. The idea was to reverse it
when you'd used up the first. God, soldiers are tricky
bastards.
So I reversed it, almost dropping first the clip, then the
rifle, and I leaned out into the corridor and squeeze off a
shot in the direction the soldier had come from to see if the
damn thing worked. From the recoil I felt, I knew it did. I
hadn't counted on the muzzle flash, but apparently the man
didn't see it.
Stepping out into the corridor, I fired a short burst into
the soldier's back. Hey, even if I could have shouted a warning
to him in vacuum, I really don't think I would have. You don't
know the depths you can sink to when all you're thinking about
is survival.
His suit was tough, and my aim was not the best. One round
hit him and it didn't puncture his suit, just sent him
stumbling down the path, turning, bringing his weapon up, so I
fired again, a lot longer this time, and it did the trick.
I won't describe the mess I had to sort through to find
his light.
#
My fusillade had destroyed his laser and used up my last
ammo clip, so encumbered with only the flashlight and what
remained of my wits I set out looking for air.
That was the trick, of course. The null-suit was a great
invention, no doubt about it. It had saved my life. But it left
something to be desired in the area of endurance. If a
Heinleiner wanted to spend much time in vacuum he'd strap a
tank onto his back, just like everyone else, and attach a hose
to the breast fitting in front. Without a strap-on, the
internal tank was good for twenty to thirty-five minutes,
depending on exertion. Forty minutes at the outside. Like, for
instance, if you were asleep.
I hadn't done much sleeping and didn't plan on any soon,
but I hadn't thought it would be a problem at first. All or the
corridors were provided with an ALU every half-kilometer or so.
The power to these had been cut, but they still had big air
tanks which should still be full. Recharging my internal tank
should be just a matter of hooking the little adapter hose to
my air fitting, twisting a valve, and watching the little
needle in my head-up swing over to the FULL position.
The first time, it was that easy. But I could see even
then that having to search out an ALU every half hour was the
weakest point in my notvery-strong survival strategy. I
couldn't keep it up endlessly. I had to either get out of there
on my own or call for help.
Calling seemed to make the most sense. I still had no idea
what was happening beyond the limits of Heinlein Town, but had
no reason to suspect that if I could get through to a lawyer,
or to the pad, my problems would not be over. But I couldn't
call from the corridor. There was too much junk over my head;
the signal would not get through. However, through sheer luck
or divine providence I was in one of the corridors I was fairly
familiar with. A branch up to the left should take me right out
onto the surface.
It did, and the surface was crawling with soldiers.
I ducked back in, thankful for the mirror camouflage I was
wearing. Where had they all come from?
There were not regiments, or divisions, or anything like
that. But I could see three from my hiding place, and they
seemed to be patrolling except for one who was standing around
near the entrance I'd just exited. Guarding it, I presumed.
Perhaps he just meant to take captives, but I'd seen people
shooting to kill and wanted no part of finding out his
intentions.
One of the other things I'd been lucky about was in seeing
the man in the square who'd been hit by bullets while wearing
his null-suit. Otherwise I might have wrongly concluded the
suit, through which nothing could pass, could render me immune
to bullets. Which it would . . . but only at a cost.
This was explained to me later. Maybe you already figured
it out; Smith said "as should be intuitively obvious," but he
talks like that.
Bullets possess kinetic energy. When you stop one dead in
its tracks, that energy has to go somewhere. Some of it is
transferred to your body: e.g., the bullet knocks you over. But
most of the energy is absorbed by the suit, which promptly
freezes stiff, and then has to do something with all that
energy. There's no place to store it in the null-generator.
Smith tried that, and the generators overheated or, in extreme
cases, exploded. Not a pretty thought, considering where it's
implanted.
So what the field does is radiate the heat away. From both
surfaces of the field.
"I'm sure it's a symmetry we can defeat, given time,"
Smith told me. "The math is tricky. But what a bulletproof
jacket it will make, eh?"
It sure would. In the meantime, what happened is you got
parboiled. Getting rid of excess heat was already your biggest
problem in a null-suit. You could survive one hit in a suit
(several people did), but usually only if you could turn it off
pretty quickly and cool yourself. With two or more hits your
internal temperature would soar and your brain would cook.
The suit was supposed to turn itself off in that case,
automatically. But naturally it wouldn't turn off if there was
vacuum outside. It won't do that no matter how extreme
conditions inside got; vacuum is always the worst of any set of
evils.
If I got shot now, I'd cook, from the skin inwards.
#
I didn't start out singing hosannas to the name of A.G.
Bell. For the first hour I wanted to dig him up and roast him
slowly. Not his fault, of course, but in the state I was in,
who cared?
After filling my tank again I made my way to the top of
the junk pile. This was possible-though by no means
easy--because where I was, near the Heinlein, the thickness of
the planetary dump was not great. By squirming, making myself
small, picking my way carefully I was soon able to stick my
head out of the mess. Any of a thousand passing satellites
ought to have a good line of sight at me from there, so I
started dialing as fast as my tongue could hit the switchboard
on the insides of my teeth. I figured I'd call Cricket, because
he . . .
. . .could not be reached at that number. According to my
head-up, which is seldom wrong about these things. Neither
could Brenda, or Liz. I was about to try another number when I
finally realized nobody could be reached, because my internal
phone relied, when out on the surface, on a booster unit that's
standard equipment in a pressure suit.
How could I be expected to think of these things? You tap
your teeth, and pretty soon you hear somebody's voice in your
ear. That's how a fucking telephone works. It's as natural as
shouting.
I sure as hell thought about it then, and soon realized I
had another problem. The signal from my phone wouldn't get
through my null-suit field. The Heinleiners used the field
itself to generate a signal in another wave band entirely, so
they could communicate with each other, suit-to-suit, and
nobody, not even the CC, could overhear them. I was screwed by
their security.
I thought about this a long time, keeping one eye on the
oxygen gauge. Then I went back to the dark corridor and sneaked
up on the body of the man I had killed.
He was still there, though shoved over to one side of the
passage. I managed to get his helmet off and lose myself back
in the maze, where I used my light and a few bits of metal that
came to hand to pry out what I hoped was the booster for his
suit radio. I had done my work better than I knew; there was a
bullet hole punched through it.
I held on to it anyway. I got another charge of air and
went back to the surface, where I used a length of wire to
connect my pressure fitting to the radio itself, on the theory
that this was the only way for anything to get out of the suit.
I switched it on, was rewarded with a little red light going on
in a display on the radio. I dialed Cricket again, and got
nothing.
So I brought all my vast and subtle technological skills
to bear on repairing the radio. Translation: I whanged the
sumbitch on the dashboard of the junk rover I was sitting in,
and I dialed again. Nothing. Whang. Still not a peep. So I
WHANGED it again and Cricket said "Yeah, what the hell do you
want?"
My tongue had been leading a life of its own, nervously
dialing and re-dialing Cricket's number as I worked my
engineering magic on the radio. And now, when I needed it, I
couldn't get the damn tongue to work at all, so overwhelmed was
I at hearing a familiar voice.
"I haven't got time to dick around here," Cricket warned.
"Cricket, it's me, Hildy, and I--"
"Yeah, Hildy, you cover it your way and I'll cover it
mine."
"Cover what?"
"Just the biggest damn story that ever . . ." I heard the
sound of mental brakes being applied with the burning of much
mental rubber; after the clashing of mental gears Cricket said,
sweetly, "No story, Hildy. Nothing at all. Forget I said
anything."
"Damn it, Cricket, is the shit coming down out there, too?
What's happened? All I know is--"
"You can figure it out for yourself, just like I did," he
said.
"Figure what out? I don't know what you're--"
"Sure, sure, I know. It won't work, Hildy. You've conned
me out of a big story for the last time."
"Cricket, I don't even work for the Nipple anymore."
"Once a reporter, always a reporter. It's in your blood,
Hildy, and you could no more ignore this one than a whore could
keep her legs together when the doorbell rings."
"Cricket, listen to me, I'm in big trouble. I'm trapped--"
"Ah ha!" he crowed, confusing me completely. "A lot of
folks are trapped, old buddy. I think it's the best place for
you. Read about it in a few hours in the Shit." And he hung up.
I almost threw the radio out across the horizon, but
sanity returned just in time. With it came caution, as my eyes,
following the wouldbe trajectory, saw two figures clambering up
the junk. They were headed for me, probably on the scent of my
transmission. I ducked over the side of the junked rover and
dived back into the maze.
#
I still haven't entirely forgiven Cricket, but I've got to
say that love died during that phone call. Sure, I deserved
some of it; I'd tricked him often enough in the past. And in
his defense, he thought I was trapped in an elevator, as
thousands of Lunarians were at that moment, and he didn't think
I'd be in any particular danger, and if I was, there wasn't
anything he could have done about it.
Yeah, sure. And your momma would have fucked pigs,
Cricket, if she could have found any who'd have her. You didn't
give me time to explain.
What really high-gravved me was that, when I finally got
back in position to call him again, he'd set his phone to
refuse calls from me. I risked my neck ducking in for more air
then finding a new place to transmit from, and what I got for
my efforts was a busy signal.
I got a lot of those in quick succession. Brenda didn't
answer. Neither did anybody at the Nipple, which worried me no
end. Think about it. A major metropolitan newspad, and nobody's
answering the phone?
I knew it had to do with the big story Cricket mentioned.
Impossible visions flitted through my head, from a city-wide
blowout to thousands upon thousands of soldiers like the ones
I'd seen laying waste to the whole planet.
But I had to keep trying. So I went back down into the
maze and sought out my favorite airing hole. And two big guys
in suits were camped out there, weapons ready.
#
I'd had ten minutes of air when I first backed into the
pile of chrome pipes to hide from the soldiers. That had been
seven minutes earlier.
The first thing I'd done was cut back the oxygen
dissemination rate in my artificial lung to a level just short
of unconsciousness. Ditto the cooling rate. I figured that
would stretch the ten minutes into fifteen if I didn't have to
move around too much. So far I hadn't moved at all. The
blinking red light I was watching was telling me my blood
oxygen level was low. Another gauge, normally dormant, had lit
up as well, and this one assured me my body temperature stood
at 39.1 degrees and was rising slowly. I knew I couldn't take
much more without becoming delirious; anything over forty was
dangerous territory.
I'm a miserable tactician, I'll admit it, at least in a
situation like that. I could see the elements of the problem,
but all I could do was stew about it. Those guys topside, for
instance. Could they communicate my position to the gorillas
guarding the air tank? They were no more than thirty meters
above me; if they had any kind of generalship at all a message
would soon be arriving to the guards to be on the lookout for a
roly-poly, out-of-breath football trophy, known to associate
with lengths of chrome-plated pipe.
If so, what could I do about it? There was no hope of
making my way through the maze to the next air station--which
might well be guarded, anyway. So if these guys didn't find
somewhere else to go in the next eight minutes, it was going to
be a dead heat (terrible choice of words there) as to whether I
died of suffocation or boiled in my own sweat. I didn't really
have a preference in the matter; it's something only a coroner
could care about.
Brenda Starr, comic-strip reporter, would surely have
thought up some clever ruse, some diversion, something to lure
those freaking soldiers away from the air tank long enough for
her to re-fuel. Hildy Johnson, scared-shitless schoolteacher
and former inkster, didn't have the first notion of how to go
about it without drawing attention to herself.
There was one bit of good news in the mix. My tongue had
continued its independent ways as I crouched in hiding, and
soon I was startled by the sound of a busy signal in my ear. I
didn't even know who I'd called, much less how the signal got
out. I eventually surmised (and later found out it was true)
that something in the junk pile was acting as an antenna,
relaying my calls to the surface, and thence to a satellite.
So I tried Brenda again (still no answer), and the Nipple
(still nothing), and then I dialed Liz.
"Buckingham Palace, Her Majesty speaking," came a slurred
voice.
"Liz, Liz, this is Hildy. I'm in big trouble."
There was a long, somehow boozy silence. I wondered if
she'd fallen asleep. Then there was a sob.
"Liz? Are you still there?"
"Hildy. Hildy. Oh, god, I didn't want to do it."
"Didn't want to do what? Liz, I don't have time for--"
"I'm a drunk, Hildy. A goddam drunk."
This was neither news, nor a well-kept secret. I didn't
say anything, but listened to the sound of wracking sobs and
watched the seconds tick off on my personal clock and waited
for her to talk.
"They said they could put me away for a long time, Hildy.
A long, long time. I was scared, and I felt really awful. I was
shaking and I was throwing up, only nothing came up, and they
wouldn't let me have a drink."
"What are you talking about? Who's 'they?'"
"They, they, dammit! The CC."
By then I had more or less figured it out. She stammered
disconnected parts to me then, and I learned the complete story
later, and it went something like this:
Even before the Bicentennial celebration Liz had been
firmly in the employ of the CC. At some point she had been
arrested, taken in, and charged with many counts of weapons
violations. (So were a lot of others; the invasion of Heinlein
Town had been armed with weapons confiscated during a huge
crackdown--an event that never made the news.)
"They said I could go to jail for eighty years, Hildy. And
then they left me alone, and the CC spoke to me and told me if
I did a few little things for him, here and there, the charges
might be dropped."
"What happened, Liz? Did you get careless?"
"What? Oh, I don't know, Hildy. They never showed me the
evidence they had against me. They said it would all come out
in the trial. I don't know if it was obtained illegally or not.
But when the CC started talking I figured out pretty quick that
it didn't matter. We talked about that; you know that, if he
ever wanted to, he could frame every person on Luna for
something or other. All I could see was when we got to court,
it'd be an airtight case. I was afraid to let it get that far."
"So you sold me out."
There was silence for a long time. A few more minutes had
gone by. The guards hadn't moved. There wasn't anything else to
do but listen.
"Tell me the rest of it," I said.
It seemed there was this group of people out around
Delambre that the CC wanted to know more about. He suggested
Liz get me out there and see what happened.
I should have been flattered. The CC's estimate of my
bloodhound instincts must have been pretty high. I suppose if I
hadn't seen anything during that first trip, something else
would have been arranged, until I was on the scent. After that,
I could be relied on to bring the story to ground.
"He was real interested when you brought in that tape of
the little girl. I . . . by that time I was a wholly-owned
subsidiary, Hildy. I told him I could find some way of getting
you to tell me what was going on. I'd have done about anything
by then."
"The hostage syndrome," I said. The guards were still
there.
"What? Oh. Yeah, probably. Or sheer lack of character.
Anyway, he told me to hold back or you'd get suspicious. So I
did, and you finally invited me in."
And on that first visit she'd stolen a nullfield
generator. She didn't say how, but it probably wasn't too hard.
They're not dangerous unless you try to open them up.
I could put the rest of it together myself. During the
next week the CC had learned enough null-field technology to
make something to get his troops through the barriers, if not
to equip them with null-suits or fields of their own.
"And that's pretty much it," she said, and sighed. "So I
guess he arrested you, and probably all those other folks, too,
right? Where have they got you? Have they set bail yet?"
"Are you serious?"
"Hell, Hildy, I don't think he could have anything serious
on you."
"Liz . . . what's going on out there?"
"What do you mean?"
"Cricket said all hell was breaking loose, somehow or
other."
"You got me, Hildy. I was just . . . ah, sleeping, until
you called. I'm here in my apartment. Come to think of it, the
lights are flickering. But that could be just my head."
She was in the dark as much as I was. A lot of people
were. If you didn't leave your apartment and you didn't live in
one of the sectors where the oxygen service was interrupted,
the chances of your having missed the early stages of the Big
Glitch were excellent. Liz had been in an alcoholic stupor,
with her phone set to take calls only from me.
"Liz. Why?"
There was a long pause. Then, "Hildy, I'm a drunk. Don't
ever trust a drunk. If it comes to a choice between you and the
next drink . . . it's not really a choice."
"Ever thought of taking the cure?"
"Babe, I like drinking. It's the only thing I do like.
That, and Winston."
Maybe I would have hit her right in the belly at that
point; I don't know. I know I was filled with rage at her.
Telling her the dog was fried and vac-dried wouldn't have begun
to get back at her for what she'd done to me.
But just then I suddenly got real, real hot. I'd already
been too warm, you understand; now, in an instant, my skin was
so hot I wanted to peel it off and there was a burning ache on
the left side of my chest.
The null-suit did what it could. I watched in growing
alarm as the indicator that had been telling me how many
minutes I had to live took a nose dive. I thought it wasn't
going to stop. Hell, it was almost worth it. With the falling
gauge came a cooling blast of air all over my body. At least I
wasn't going to fry.
I'd finally put together what was happening, though. For
almost a minute I'd been feeling short, sharp shocks through
the metal pipes I leaned against and the metal brace I had my
feet on. Then I saw a bullet hit a pipe. That's the only thing
it could have been, I reasoned. It left a dent, a dull place on
the metal. Somebody was standing on top of the junk pile and
shooting down into it at random. It had to be blind shooting,
because I couldn't see the shooter. But the bullets were
ricocheting and one had finally struck me. I couldn't afford
another hit.
So I grabbed a length of pipe and started toward the
corridor. I didn't think I could do much good against the tough
pressure suits, but if I swung for the faceplates I might get
one of them, and at least I'd go down fighting. I owed it to
Winston, if to no one else, to do that much.
Getting to the corridor was like reaching for that top
step that isn't there. I stepped out, pipe cocked like the
clean-up batter coming to the plate. And nobody was there.
I saw their retreating backs outlined by the light of
their helmet lamps. They were jogging toward the exit.
I'll never know for sure, but it seems likely they'd been
summoned to the top to help in the search for me. How were they
to know the guys on top of the pile were only a few meters
directly above them? Anyway, if they'd stayed in place, I'd
have been dead in ninety seconds, tops. So I gave them ten
seconds to get beyond the point where they could possible see
me, and I reached for the ALU adapter hose.
It wasn't there.
It made me mad. I couldn't think of anything more foolish
than getting this close to salvation and then suffocating with
about a ton of compressed oxygen at my fingertips. I slammed my
hand against the tank, then got my flashlight and cast about on
the ground. I was sure they'd taken it with them. It's what I
would have done, in their place.
But they hadn't. It was lying right there on the ALU's
baseplate, probably knocked off when one of the guards decided
to rest his fat ass on the tank. I fumbled it in place between
the tank and my chest valve, and turned the release valve hard.
I make my living with words. I respect them. I always want
to use the proper one, so I searched a long time for the right
one to describe how that first rush of cooling air felt, and I
concluded nobody's made up a word for that yet. Think of the
greatest pleasure you ever experienced, and use whatever word
you'd use to describe that. An orgasm was a pale thing beside
it.
#
Why hadn't they taken the connector hose? The answer, when
I eventually learned it, was simple, and typical of the Big
Glitch. They hadn't known I needed it.
The cops and soldiers who had invaded Heinlein Town hadn't
been told much about anything. They hadn't been led to expect
armed resistance. They knew next to nothing about the nature of
or limitations to null-suit technology. They surely hadn't been
told there were two groups, working at cross purposes to the
extent that one group would ensure the destruction of the
other. All this affected their tactics terribly. A lot of
people lived because of this confusion, and I was one of them.
I'd like to take credit for my own survival-- and not
everything I did was stupid--but the fact is that I had
Winston, and I had a lot of luck, and the luck was mostly
generated by their ignorance and poor generalship.
I had vaguely realized some of this by the time I made my
way from the ALU and to a branching corridor I thought would
take me to a different surface exit. I didn't know what good it
would do me, but it was worthwhile to keep it in mind.
Once on the surface again, I called the Nipple and again
got a busy signal, all the time keeping my eyes open for more
of the bad guys. I was hoping they were all up atop the junk,
possibly stumbling around and breaking legs, heads, and other
important body parts. I wished Callie were there; she'd have
put a hex on them.
Callie? Well, what the hell. I had to dredge the number up
from the further reaches of my memory, and it did no good at
all. Not even a busy signal. Nothing but dead air.
Then I remembered the top code. Why did it take me so
long? I think it was because Walter really had impressed it on
me that the code was not to be used at all, that it existed as
an unachievable level of dire perfection. A story justifying
the use of the top code would need headlines that would made
72-point type seem like fine print. The other reason is that I
had never thought of what was happening to me as a story.
I didn't really expect much from it, to tell the truth.
I'd been using my normal access code to the Nipple, and that
should have gotten through any conceivable log-jam of calls and
directly into Walter's office. So far it had yielded only busy
signals. But I punched in the code anyway, and Walter said:
"Don't tell me where you are, Hildy. Hang up and move as
far from your present position as you dare, and then call me
back."
"Walter!" I screamed. But the line was already dead.
It would be nice to report that I immediately did as he
said, that I wasted no time, that I continued to show the
courageous resolve that had been my trademark since the first
shots were fired. By that I mean that I hadn't cried to that
point. I did now. I wept helplessly, like a baby.
Don't try this in you null-suit, when you get one. You
don't breathe, so your lungs just sort of spasm. It's enough to
make your ears pop. Crying also throws the regulator mechanism
out of whack, so that I wasted ten minutes' oxygen in three
minutes of hysterics. Trust Mister V.M. Smith not to have
reckoned with emotional outbursts when he laid out the
parameters.
I had cleverly retained the connector hose to the air
tank, so I made my way back there and filled up again. If only
I could find a loose, portable tank I'd be able to strike off
across the surface. Hell, if it was too big to carry I could
drag it. Did I hear someone mention the dead soldier and his
suit? Great idea, but my uncanny accuracy with the machine gun
had damaged one of the hose fittings. I checked when I borrowed
the flashlight, and again--because I needed the air, and who
knows, maybe I'd been mistaken--when I salvaged the radio.
Libby could probably have fudged some sort of adaptor from the
junk all around me, but considering the pressure in that tank
I'd sooner have kissed a rattlesnake.
These are the thoughts that run through your mind in the
exhausted aftermath of a crying jag. It felt good to have done
it, like crying usually does. It swept away the building sense
of panic and let me concentrate on the things that needed to be
done, let me ignore the impossibility of my position, and
enabled me to concentrate on the two things I had going for me,
like chanting a mantra: my own brain, which, no matter how much
evidence I may have adduced to the contrary, was actually
pretty good; and Walter's ability to get things done, which was
very good.
I actually found myself feeling cheerful as I reached the
egress again and scanned the surface for enemies. Not finding
any made me positively giddy. Move from your present position,
Walter had said. As far as you dare.
I moved out of the maze and dashed across a short strip of
sunlight and into the shadow of the Heinlein.
#
"Hello, Walter?"
"Tell me what you know, Hildy, and make it march."
"I'm in big trouble here, Wal--"
"I know that, Hildy. Tell me what I don't know. What
happened?"
So I started in on a condensed history of me and the
Heinleiners, and Walter promptly interrupted me again. He knew
about them, he said. What else? Well, the CC was up to
something horrible, I said, and he said he knew that, too.
"Assume I know everything you know except what happened to
you today, Hildy," he said. "Tell me about today. Tell me about
the last hour. Just the important parts. But don't mention
specific names or places."
Put that way, it didn't take long. I told him in less than
a hundred words, and could have done it in one: "Help!"
"How much air do you have?" he asked.
"About fifteen minutes."
"Better than I thought. We have to set up a rendezvous,
without mentioning place names. Any ideas?"
"Maybe. Do you know the biggest white elephant on Luna?"
". . . yeeeesss. Are you near the trunk or the tail?"
"Trunk."
"All right. The last poker game we played, if the high
card in my hand was a King, start walking north. If it was a
Queen, east. Jack, south. Got it?"
"Yeah." East it would be.
"Walk for ten minutes and stop. I'll be there."
With anyone else I'd have wasted another minute pointing
out that only left me a margin of five minutes and no hope at
all of getting back. With Walter I just said, "So will I."
Walter has many despicable qualities, but when he says he'll do
something, he'll do it.
I'd have had to move soon, anyway. As we were talking I'd
spotted two of the enemy moving across the plain in big, loping
strides. They were coming from the north, so I hefted the radio
and tossed it toward the southeast. They immediately altered
direction to follow it.
Here came the hard part. I watched them pass in front of
me. Even in a regular suit I'd have been hard to spot in the
shadows. But now I started walking eastwards, and in a moment I
stepped out into the bright sunshine. I had to keep reminding
myself how hard Gretel had been to spot when I'd first
encountered her. I'd never felt so naked. I kept an eye on the
soldiers, and when they reached the spot where the radio had
fallen to the ground I froze, and watched as they scanned the
horizon.
I didn't stay frozen long, as I quickly spotted four more
people coming from various directions. It was one of the
hardest things I ever did, but I started walking again before
any of them could get too close.
With each step I thought of a dozen more ways they could
find me and catch me. A simple radar unit would probably
suffice. I'm not much at physics, but I supposed the null-suit
would throw back a strong signal.
They must not have had one, because before long I was far
enough away that I couldn't pick any of them out from the
ground glare, and if I couldn't see them they sure as hell
couldn't see me.
At the nine-minute point a bright silver jumper swooped
silently over my head, not ten meters high, and I'd have jumped
out of my socks if I'd had any on. It turned, and I saw the big
double-n Nipple logo blazoned on its side and it was a sweet
sight indeed.
The driver flew a big oval at the right distance from the
Heinlein, which was almost out of sight by then, letting me see
him because I had to come to him, not the other way around.
Then it settled down off to my right, looking like a giant
mosquito in carnal embrace with a bedstead. I started to run.
He must have had some sort of sensor on the ladder,
because when I had both feet on it the jumper lifted off. Not
the sort of maneuver I'd like to do on a Sunday jaunt, but I
could understand his haste. I wrenched the lock door open and
cycled it, and stepped inside to the unlikely spectacle of
Walter training a machine gun on me.
Ho-hum. I'd had so many weapons pointed at me in the last
few hours that the sight--which would have given me pause a
year ago, say at contract renegotiation time--barely
registered. I experienced something I'd noticed before at the
end of times of great stress: I wanted to go to sleep.
"Put that thing away, Walter," I said. "If you fire it
you'd probably kill us both."
"This is a reinforced pressure hull," he said, and the gun
didn't waver. "Turn that suit off first."
"I wasn't thinking about decompression," I said. "I was
thinking you'd probably shoot yourself in the foot, then get
lucky and hit me." But I turned it off, and he looked at my
face, glanced down at my naked, outrageously pregnant body, and
then looked away. He stowed the weapon and resumed his place in
the pilot's seat. I struggled into the seat beside him.
"Pretty eventful day," I said.
"I wish you'd get back to covering the news instead of
making it," he said. "What'd you do to get the CC so riled up?"
"That was me? This is all about me?"
"No, but you're a big part of it."
"Tell me what's happening."
"Nobody knows the whole thing yet," he said, and then
started telling me the little he knew.
It had begun--back in the normal world--with thousands of
elevators stalling between levels. No sooner had emergency
crews been dispatched than other things began to go haywire.
Soon all the mass media were off the air and Walter had had
reports that pressure had been breached in several major
cities, and other places had suffered oxygen depletion. There
were fires, and riots, and mass confusion. Then, shortly before
he got the call from me, the CC had come on most major
frequencies with an announcement meant to reassure but oddly
unsettling. He said there had been malfunctions, but that they
were under control now. ("An obvious lie," Walter told me,
almost with relish.) The CC had pledged to do a better job in
the future, promised this wouldn't happen again. He'd said he
was in control now.
"The first implication I got from that," Walter said, "was
that he hadn't been in control for a while, and I want an
explanation of that. But the thing that really got me, after I
thought about it, was . . . what kind of control did he mean?"
"I'm not sure I understand."
"Well, obviously he's in control, or he's supposed to be.
Of the day-to-day mechanics of Luna. Air, water,
transportation. In the sense that he runs those things. And
he's got a lot of control in the civil and criminal social
sectors. He makes schedules for the government, for instance.
He's got a hand in everything. He monitors everything. But in
control? I didn't like the sound of it. I still don't."
While I thought that one over something very bright and
very fast overtook us, shot by on the left, then tried to hang
a right, as if it had changed its mind. It turned into a
fireball and we flew right into it. I heard things pinging on
the hull, things the size of sand grains.
"What the hell was that?"
"Some of your friends back there. Don't worry, I'm on top
of it."
"On top of it . . .? They're shooting at us!"
"And missing. And we're out of range. And this ship is
equipped with the best illegal jamming devices money can buy.
I've got tricks I haven't even used yet."
I glanced at him, a big unruly bear of a man, hunched over
his manual controls and keeping one eye on an array of devices
attached to the dashboard, devices I was sure hadn't come from
the factory that built the jumper.
"I might have known you'd have connections with the
Heinleiners," I said.
"Connections?" he snorted. "I was on the board of
directors of the L5 Society when most of those 'Heinleiners'
hadn't even been born yet. My father was there when the keel of
that ship was launched. You might say I have connections."
"But you're not one of them."
"Let's say we have some political differences."
He probably thought they were too left-wing. Long ago in
our relationship I'd talked a little politics with Walter, as
most people did who came to work at the Nipple. Not many had a
second conversation. The most charitable word I'd heard used to
describe his convictions was "daft." What most people would
think of an anarchy Walter would call a social strait-jacket.
"Don't care for Mister Smith?" I asked.
"Great scientist. Too bad he's a socialist."
"And the starship project?"
"It'll get there the day they return to the original plan.
Plus about twenty years to rebuild it, tear out all the junk
Smith has installed."
"Pretty impressive junk."
"He makes a great spacesuit. He hasn't shown me a star
drive."
I decided to leave it at that, because I had no intention
of getting into an argument with him, and because I had no way
of telling if he was right or wrong.
"Guns, too," I said. "If I'd thought about it, I'd have
known you'd be a gun owner."
"All free men are gun owners." No use pointing out to him
that I'd been un-free most of my life, and what I'd tried to do
with the instrument of my freedom when I finally obtained one.
It's another argument you can't win.
"Did you get that one from Liz?"
"She gets her guns from me," he said. "Or she did until
recently. She's too far gone in drink now. I don't trust her."
He glanced at me. "You shouldn't either."
I decided not to ask him what he knew about that. I hoped
that if he had known Liz was selling out the Heinleiners he'd
have given them some kind of warning, political differences or
not. Or at least that he'd have warned me, given all he seemed
to know about my recent activities.
I never did ask him that.
There are a lot of things I might have asked him during
the time we raced across the plain, never getting more than
fifty meters high. If I'd asked some of them--about how much he
knew about what was going on with the CC--it would have saved
me a lot of worry later. Actually, it would have just given me
different things to worry about, but I firmly believe I do a
better job of worrying when I can fret from a position of
knowledge. As it was, the sense of relief at being rescued by
him was so great that I simply basked in the warmth of my
new-found sense of safety.
How was I to know I'd only have ten minutes with him?
He'd been constantly monitoring his instruments, and when
one of them chimed he cursed softly and hit the retros. We
started to settle to the ground. I'd been about to doze off.
"What's the matter?" I said. "Trouble?"
"Not really. I'd just hoped to get a little closer, that's
all. This is where you get off."
"Get off? Gee, Walter, I think I'd rather go on to your
place." I'd had a quick glance around. This place, wherever it
was, would never make it into 1001 Lunar Sights To See. There
was no sign of human habitation. No sign of anything, not even
a two-century-old footpath.
"I'd love to have you, Hildy, but you're too hot to
handle." He turned in his seat to face me. "Look, baby, it's
like this. I got access to a list of a few hundred people the
CC is looking for. You're right at the top. From what I've
learned, he's very determined to find them. A lot of people
have died in the search. I don't know what's going on--some
really big glitch--but I do intend to find out . . . but you
can't help me. The only thing I could think of to do is stash
you some place where the CC can't find you. You'll have to stay
there until all this blows over. It's too dangerous for you on
the outside."
I guess I just blew air there for a while. There had been
too many changes too quickly. I'd been feeling safe and now the
rug was jerked out from under me again.
I'd known the CC was looking for me, but somehow it felt
different to hear it from Walter. Walter would never be wrong
about a thing like that. And it didn't help to infer from what
he'd said that what the CC meant to do when he found me was
kill me. Because I knew too much? Because I'd stuck my nose in
the wrong place? Because he didn't want to share the
super-toothpaste royalties with me anymore? I had no idea, but
I wanted to know more, and I meant to, before I got out of
Walter's jumper.
Walter, who'd just called me baby. What the hell was that
all about?
"What do you want me to do?" I asked. "Just camp out here
on the maria? I'm afraid I didn't bring my tent."
He reached behind his seat and started pulling out things
and handing them to me. A ten-hour air bottle. A flashlight. A
canvas bag that rattled. He slapped a compass into my palm, and
opened the air lock door behind us.
"There's some useful stuff in the bag," he said. "I didn't
have time to get anymore; this is my own survival gear. Now
you've got to go."
"I'm not."
"You are." He sighed, and looked away from me. He looked
very old.
"Hildy," he said, "this isn't easy for me, either, but I
think it's your only chance. You'll have to trust me because
there isn't time to tell you any more and there isn't time for
you to panic or act like a child. I wanted to get you closer,
but this is probably better." He pointed at the dashboard.
"Right now we're invisible, I hope. You get out now, the CC
will never figure out where you went. I get you any closer, and
it'll be like drawing him a map. You have enough air to get
there, but we don't have any more time to talk, because I've
got to lift out of here within one more minute."
"Where do you want me to go?"
He told me, and if he'd said anything else I don't think
I'd have gotten out of the jumper. But it made just enough
sense, and he sounded just scared enough. Hell, Walter sounding
scared at all was a new one on me, and did not fail to make an
impression.
But I was still balanced there on the edge, wondering if
he'd force me if I simply stayed put, when he grabbed me by the
neck and pulled me over to him and kissed me on the cheek. I
was too surprised to struggle.
He let me go immediately, and turned away.
"You . . . ah, are you due soon? Will that be-"
"Another ten days yet," I told him. "It won't be a
problem." Or it shouldn't be, unless . . . "Unless you think
I'll have to hide for--"
"I don't think so," he said. "I'll try to contact you in
three days. In the meantime, keep your head down. Don't try to
contact anyone. Stay a week, if you have to. Stay nine days."
"On the tenth I'm damn sure coming out," I told him.
"I'll have something else by then," he promised. "Now go."
I stepped into the lock, cycled it, felt the null-suit
switch itself on. I climbed down onto the plain and watched the
jumper leap into the sky and dwindle toward the horizon.
Before I even strapped on the backpack bottle I reached up
and felt Walter's tear still warm on my cheek.
#
I'm not sure how far Walter dropped me from my final
destination. Something on the order of twenty, thirty
kilometers. I didn't think it would be a problem.
I covered the first ten in the long, sidelegged stride
that Earth-bred leg muscles can produce in Lunar gravity, the
gait that, except for bicycles, is the most energy-efficient
transportation known to man. And if you think you can eat up
the distance that way in an ordinary pressure suit, try it in a
null-suit. You practically fly.
But don't do it pregnant. Before long my tummy started
feeling funny, and I slowed down, doing nervous calculations
about oxygen and distance as I began to get into territory that
looked familiar to me.
I reached the old air lock with three hours of spare air,
dead on my feet. I think I actually catnapped a few times
there, waking up only as I was about to fall on my face,
consulting the compass as I wiped my eyes, getting back on the
proper bearing. Luckily, by the time that started happening I
was on ground I knew.
I had a bad moment when the lock didn't seem to want to
cycle for me. Could it be this place had been sealed off in the
last seventy years? It had been that long since I used it. Of
course, there were other locks I knew in the area, but Walter
had said it was too dangerous to use them. But use them I
would, rather than die out here on the surface. It was with
that thought that the cantankerous old machinery finally
engaged and the lock drum rotated. I stepped inside, cycled,
and hurried into the elevator, which deposited me in a little
security cubicle. I punched the letters MA-R-I-A-X-X-X.
Somewhere not too far away, an old lady would be noting the
door was in use. If Walter was right, that information would
not be relayed on to the Central Computer.
There's no place like home, I thought, as I stepped into
the dimness and familiar rotten odor of a Cretaceous rain
forest.
I was in a distant corner of the dino-ranch where I had
grown up. Callie's ranch. It had always been hers, the Double-C
Bar brand, never a thought of the C&M or anything like that.
Not that I'd wanted it, but it would have been nice to feel
like more than a hired hand. Now let's not get into that.
But this particular corner--and I wondered how Walter had
known this--I'd always thought of as Maria's Cavern. There
really was a cave in it, just a few hundred meters from where I
now stood, and I had made it into my playhouse when I was very
young and still known as Maria Cabrini.
So it was to Maria's Cavern I now went, and in Maria's
Cavern that I desultorily scraped together a mat of dry moss to
lie down on, and on the canvas bag Walter had given me that I
intended to rest my head and sleep for at least a week, only I
never saw if my head actually made it there because I fell
asleep as my head was on the way down.
I actually did get about three hours' sleep. I know,
because I checked the clock in my head-up display when the
first labor pain woke me up.
=*= =*= =*= =*=
If theoretical physics and mathematics had been the realm
of females, the human race would have reached the stars long
ago.
I base this contention on personal experience. No
dedicated male could ever have the proper insight into the
terrible geometry of parturition. Faced with the problem of
making an object of size X appear on the other side of an
opening of size X/2, and armed with the knowledge to enable her
to view it as a problem in topology or Lobachevskian geometry,
I feel sure one of the billions of women in the thrall of labor
would have had an insight involving multiple dimensions on
hyperspace if only to make it stop hurting. FTL travel would
have been a cinch. As for Einstein, some woman a thousand years
his junior could easily have discovered the mutability of time
and space, if only she had the tools. Time is relative? Hah!
Eve could have told you that. Take a deep breath and bear down,
honey, for about thirty seconds or an eternity, whichever comes
last.
I didn't describe the injuries I received on my second
Direct Interface with the Central Computer for a lot of
reasons. One is that pain like that can't be described.
Another: the human mind doesn't remember pain well, one of the
few things God got right. I know it hurt; I can't recall how
much it hurt, but I'm pretty sure giving birth hurt more, if
only because it never seemed to stop. For these reasons, and
others involving what privacy one can muster in this open age,
I will not have much to say here about the process about which
God had this to say in Genesis 3, verse sixteen: "I will
greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception, in sorrow thou
shalt bring forth children . . ." All this for swiping one
stinking apple?
I went into labor. I continued laboring for the next
thousand years, or well into that same evening.
There are no real excuses for most of my ignorance of the
process. I'd seen enough old movies and should have remembered
the--mostly comic--scenes where the blessed event arrives ahead
of schedule. In my defense I can only plead a century of
ordered life, a life wherein when a train was supposed to
arrive at 8:17:15 it damn well arrived at 8:17:15. In my world
postal service is fast, cheap, and continuous. You expect your
parcels to arrive across town within fifteen minutes, and
around the planet in under an hour. When you place an
interplanetary call, the phone company had better not plead a
solar storm is screwing things up; we expect them to do
something about it, and they do. We are so spoiled by good
service, by living in a world that works, that the most common
complaint received by the phone company--and I'm talking
thousands of nasty letters each year--concerns the time lag
when calling Aunt Dee-Dee on Mars. Don't give me this
speed-of-light shit, we whine; get my call through.
That's why I was caught off-guard by the first
contraction. The little bastard wasn't due for two weeks yet. I
knew it had always been possible that it would start early, but
then I'd have phoned the doctor and he'd have mailed me a pill
and put a stop to that. And on the proper day I'd have walked
in and another pill would have started the process and I could
have read a book or watched the pad or graded papers until they
handed me the suitably cleaned and powdered and swaddled and
peacefully sleeping infant. Sure, I knew how it used to be, but
I was suffering from a delusion that most of you probably share
with me. I thought I was immune, damn it. We put all this
behind us when we started hatching our kids out of bottles,
didn't we? If our minds know this, how would our bodies dare to
betray us? I felt all these things in spite of recent events,
which should have taught me that the world didn't have to be as
orderly a place as I had thought it was.
So my uterus declared its independence, first with a
little twitch, then with a spasm, and in no time at all in a
tidal wave of hurting like the worst attack of constipation
since the fellow tried to shit that proverbial brick.
I'm no hero, and I'm no stoic. After the fortieth or
fiftieth wave I decided a quick death would be preferable to
this, so I got up and walked out of the cave with the intention
of turning myself in. How bad could it be? I reasoned. Surely
me and the CC could work something out.
But because I'm no heroic stoic, my life was saved; after
the forty-first or fifty-first pain threw me down to grovel in
the dirt, I did a little arithmetic and figured I'd have about
three hundred contractions before I reached the nearest exit,
so I stumbled back to the cave as soon as I could walk again,
figuring I'd prefer to die in there than out in the mud.
I used the decreasing periods of rationality between pains
to think back to my only source of folk wisdom in the matter of
childbirth: those good old movies. Not the black and white
ones. If you watch those you might come to believe babies were
brought by the stork, and pregnant women never got fat. You
would surely have to conclude that birthing didn't muss your
hair and your make-up. But in the late twentieth there were
some movies that showed the whole ghastly process. Recalling
them made me even queasier. Hell, some of those women died. I
brought back scenes of hemorrhage, forceps delivery, and
episiotomy, and knew that wasn't the half of it.
But there were constants in the process of normal birth,
which was about all I could plan for, so I set about doing
that. I rummaged in Walter's rucksack and found bottled water,
gauze, disinfectants, thread, a knife. I laid them out beside
me like a grisly home surgery kit lacking only the anesthetic.
Then I waited to die.
#
That's the bad side of it. There was another side. Let's
just skip over fevered descriptions of the grunting and
groaning, of the stick I bit in half while bearing down, of the
blood and slime. A moment came when I could reach down and feel
his little head down there. It was a moment balanced between
life and death. Maybe as near to a perfect moment as I ever
experienced, and for reasons I've never quite been able to
describe. The pain was still there, maybe even at a peak. But
continual pain finally exerts its own anesthetic; maybe neural
circuit breakers trip, or maybe you just learn to absorb the
pain in a new way. Maybe you learn to accept it. I accepted it
at that moment, as my fingers traced the tiny facial features
and I felt his tiny mouth opening and closing. For a few more
seconds he was still a part of my body.
At that moment I first experienced mother love. I didn't
want to lose him. I knew I'd do anything not to lose him.
Oh, I wanted him to come out, right enough . . . and yet a
part of me wanted to remain poised in that moment. Relativity.
Pain and love and fear and life and death moving at the speed
of light, slowing time down to the narrow focus of that one
perfect moment, my womb the universe, and everything outside of
it suddenly inconsequential.
I had not loved him before. I had not delighted to feel
him kick and squirm. I admit it: I had not entered into this
pregnancy with anything like adult care and consideration, and
right up to the last week had viewed the fetus as a parasite I
might well be rid of. The only reason I didn't get rid of it
was my extreme state of confusion regarding life in general,
and my own purpose in it in particular. Since trying with such
determination to end my life, I had simply been sitting back
and letting things happen to me. The baby was just one of those
things.
Then the moment slipped by and he slipped out and was in
my hands and I did the things mothers do. I've since wondered
if I'd have known what to do without the memory of those
dramatic scenes and sex education classes eight or nine decades
before. You know what? I almost think I would have.
At any rate, I cleaned him, and dealt with the umbilicus,
and counted his fingers and toes and wrapped him in a towel and
held him to my breast. He didn't cry very much. Outside the
cave a warm prehistoric rain was falling through the giant
ferns, and a bronto bellowed in the distance. I lay exhausted,
strangely contented, smelling my own milk for the first time.
When I looked down at him I thought he smiled at me with his
screwedup, toothless monkey face, and when I offered him a
finger to play with his little hand grabbed it and held on
tight. I felt love swell in my bosom.
See what he'd done to me? He had me using words like
bosom.
Three days went by, and no Walter. A week, and still no
word.
I didn't care much. Walter had brought me to the one place
in Luna where I could survive and even thrive. There were fish
in the stream and there was fruit and nuts on the trees. Not
prehistoric flora and fauna; aside from the dinos and the big
cycadaceous trees and ferns and shrubs they ate, the CC Ranch
was furnished with completely modern life-forms. There were no
trilobites in the water, mainly because nobody had ever found a
way to turn a profit on trilobites. Instead, there were trout
and bass, and I knew how to catch them. There were apple and
pecan trees, and I knew where to find them because I'd planted
a lot of them myself. There were no predators to speak of.
Callie had just the one tyrannosaur, and he was kept penned up
and fed bronto scraps. For that one week I led a sort of
pastoral ideal cave-girl life I doubt any of our Paleolithic
ancestors would have recognized. I didn't think about it much.
I didn't think much about Callie, either. She didn't show
up to see her new grandson. I don't blame her for that, because
she didn't even know he had been conceived, much less hatched,
and even if she had known she wouldn't have dared visit us
because she might have led the CC to my hiding place.
That's what saved us: Callie's long-standing refusal to
link into the planetary data net, a bull-headed stance for
which everyone she knew had derided her. I had been one of
them. I remember in my teens, presenting her with a
cost-benefit analysis I'd carefully prepared that I felt sure
would convince her to give in to "progress," knowing full well
that a financial argument was most likely to carry weight with
her. She'd studied it for about a minute, then tossed it aside.
"We'll have no government spies in the Double-C Bar," she said,
and that was the end of that. We stayed with our independent
computer system, keeping interfaces with the CC to a minimum,
and as a result I could venture out of my cave and gather my
fruits and nuts without worrying about paternalistic eyes
watching from the roof. The rest of Luna was in turmoil now.
Callie's Ranch was unaffected; she simply pulled in her arms
and her head like a turtle and sat down to wait it out with her
own oxygen, power, and water, no doubt feeling very smug and
eager to emerge and tell a lot of people how she'd told them
so. And I waited it out in the most remote corner of her
hermetic realm.
And while we waited, historic events happened. I don't
have much of a feel for them even now. I had no television, no
newspads, and I'm just like anyone else: if I didn't read it
and see it on the pad, it doesn't seem quite real to me. News
is now. Reading about it after the fact is history.
Perhaps this is the place to talk about some of those
events, but I'm reluctant to do so. Oh, I can list a few
statistics. Almost one million deaths. Three entire
medium-sized towns wiped out to the last soul, and large
casualties in many others. One of those warrens, Arkytown, has
still not been reclaimed, and there's growing sentiment to
leave it as it is, frozen in its moment of disaster, like
Pompeii. I've been to Arkytown, seen the hundred thousand
frozen corpses, and I can't decide. Most of them died
peacefully, from anoxia, before being pickled for all eternity
by the final blowout. I saw an entire theater of corpses still
waiting for the curtain to rise. What's the point of disturbing
them to give them a decent burial or cremation?
On the other hand, it's a better idea for posterity than
for we the living. If you went to Pompeii, you wouldn't see
people you knew. I saw Charity in Arkytown, in the newspaper
office. I have no idea what she was doing there--probably
trying to file a story--and now I'll never know. I saw many
other people I had known, and then I left. So make it a
monument, sure, but seal it off, don't conduct guided tours and
sell souvenirs until the whole thing is a distant memory and
the dead town is quaint and mysterious, like King Tut's Tomb.
There were great acts of craven cowardice, and many more
feats of almost superhuman heroics. You probably didn't hear
many of the former, because early on people like Walter decided
those stories weren't playing well and told his reporters not
to bring him no bad news. So tear up the front page about the
stampede that killed ninety-five and replace it with the cop
who died holding the oxygen mask to the baby's face. I can
guarantee you saw a hundred stories like that. I'm not
belittling them, though many were hyped to the point of nausea.
If you're anything like me you eventually get tired of heroes
saying Aw, shucks, it weren't nothing heroic. I'd give a lot
for one guy who'd be willing to say God had nothing to do with
it, it was yours truly. But we all know our lines when the
press opens its hungry mouth in our faces. We've learned them
over a lifetime.
For my money, there's one story of true heroism, and it's
a big one, and it hasn't been told much. It's about the
Volunteer Pressure Corps, that un-sung group that's always
phoning you and asking for donations of time and/or money. The
things the VPC did weren't splashy, for the most part didn't
get on the pad because they happened out of sight, didn't get
taped. But next time they call up here's one girl who's gonna
help. Over a thousand VPC members died at their posts, doing
their jobs to the last. There's a fortune waiting for the first
producer to tell their story dramatically. I thought about
writing it myself, but I'll give you the idea for free. You
want incidents, research them yourself. I can't do everything.
Oh, yes, there was much going on while I hid out in the
boondocks, but why should I tell about it here? Everyone's life
was affected, the effects are still being felt . . . but the
important things were happening on a level far removed from all
the running around I've told you about, and all the running
around you probably did yourself. None of the pads covered that
part of it at all well. Like economics, computer science is a
field that has never yielded to the sixtysecond sound bite
favored by the news business. The pads can report that leading
economic indicators went up or down, and you know about as much
as you knew before, which is near zero. They can tell you that
the cause of the Big Glitch was a cataclysmic programming
conflict in certain large-scale AI systems, and you can nod
knowingly and figure you've got a handle on the situation. Or
if you realize you've just heard a lot of double-talk, you can
look into the story further, read scientific journals if you're
qualified to do so, and hear what the experts have to say. In
the case of the Big Glitch, I have reason to believe you
wouldn't have learned any more of the truth of the situation
than if you'd stuck to the sound bite. The experts will tell
you they identified the problem, shut down the offending
systems, and have re-built the CC in such a way that
everything's fine now.
Don't you believe it. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
#
So during my week in the cave I didn't think much about
what was going on outside. What did I think about?
Mario. Did I mention I named him Mario, Junior? I must
have tried out the taste of a hundred names before I settled on
Mario, which had been my own original name, after my first
Change. I think I was hoping to get it right this time.
I'd certainly done a great job in the genesplitting
department. Who cares if the process is random? Every time I
looked at him I felt like patting myself on the back at how
smartly I'd produced him. Kitten Parker, erstwhile daddy, who
would never see Mario if I had anything to say about it, had
contributed his best parts, which was the mouth and . . . come
to think of it, just the mouth. Maybe that hint of curl in the
brown hair came from him; I didn't recall it from any of my
baby pictures. The rest was pure Hildy, which is to say, damn
near flawless. Sorry, but that's how I was feeling about
myself.
Maybe it sounds funny to say that I spent that entire week
thinking of nothing but him. To me, it's the reverse that's
hard to believe. How had I lived a hundred years without Mario
to give my world meaning? Before him I'd had nothing to make
life worth living but sex, work, friends, food, the occasional
drug, and the small pleasures that were associated with those
things. In other words, nothing at all. My world had been as
large as Luna itself. In other words, not nearly as large as
that tiny cave with just me and Mario in it.
I could spend an hour winding his soft hair around my
finger. Then, for variety, not because I'd tired of the hair, I
could spend the next hour playing piggy with his toes or making
rude noises with my lips against his belly. He'd grin when I
did that, and wave his arms around.
He hardly cried at all. That probably has to do with the
fact that I gave him little opportunity to cry, since I hardly
ever put him down. I grudged every second away from him.
Remembering the papoose dolls in Texas, I fashioned a sling so
I could do my foraging without leaving him behind. Other than
that, and to take him out for bathing, we spent all our time
sitting at the cave entrance, looking out. I was not totally
oblivious; I knew someone would be coming one of these days,
and it might not be someone I wanted to see.
Was there a down side to all this pastoral bliss, a rash
in the diaper of life? I could think of one thing I wouldn't
have liked a few weeks before. Infants generate an amazing
amount of fluids. They ooze and leak at one end, upchuck at the
other, to the point I was convinced more came out of him than
went in. Another physical conundrum our mythical mathematical
females might have turned into a Nobel Prize in physics, or at
least alchemy, if only we'd known, if only we'd known. But I
was so goofy by then I cleaned it all up cheerfully, noting
color, consistency, and quantity with a degree of anxiety only
a new mother or a mad scientist could know. Yes, Yes, Igor,
those yellow lumps mean the creature is healthy! I have created
life!
I am still at a loss to fully explain this sudden change
from annoyed indifference to fulltilt ga-ga about the baby. It
could have been hormonal. It probably has something to do with
the way our brains are wired. If I'd been handed this little
bundle any time in my previous life I'd have quickly mailed it
to my worst enemy, and I think a lot of other women who'd never
chucked babies under the chin nor swooned at the prospect of
motherhood would have done the same. But something happened
during my hours of agony. Some sleeping Earthmother roused
herself and went howling through my brain, tripping circuit
breakers and re-routing all the calls on my cranial switchboard
straight from the maternity ward to the pleasure center,
causing me to croon goo-goo and wubba-wubba and drool almost as
much as the baby did. Or maybe it's pheromones. Maybe the
little rascals just smell good to us when they come out of our
bodies; I know Mario did, no other child ever smelled like
that.
Whatever it was, I think I got a double dose of it because
I did what few women do these days. I had him naturally, start
to finish, just as Callie had had me. I bore him in pain,
Biblical pain. I bore him in a perilous time, on the razor's
edge, in a state of nature. And afterward I had nothing to
interfere with the bonding process, whatever it might involve.
He was my world, and I knew without question that I would lay
down my life for him, and do it without regret.
If Walter didn't come for me, I knew who would. On the
morning of the eighth day he came, a tall, thin old man in an
Admiral's uniform and bicorne hat, walking up the gentle hill
from the stream toward my cave.
#
My first shot hit the hat, sent it spinning to the ground
behind him. He stopped, puzzled, running his hand through his
thin white hair. Then he turned and picked up the hat, dusted
it off, and put it back on his head. He made no move to protect
himself, but started back up the hill.
"That was good shooting," he shouted. "A warning, I take
it?"
Warning my ass. I'd been aiming for the cocksucker's head.
Among Walter's bag of tricks had been a smallcaliber
handgun and a box of one hundred shells. I later learned it was
a target pistol, much more accurate than most such weapons.
What I knew for sure at the time was that, after practicing
with fifty of the rounds, I could hit what I aimed at about
half the time.
"That's far enough," I said. He was close enough that
shouting wasn't really necessary.
"I've got to talk to you, Hildy," he said, and kept
coming. So I drew a bead on his forehead and my finger
tightened on the trigger, but I realized he might have
something to say that I needed to know, so I put my second shot
into his knee.
I ran down the hill, looking out for anyone he might have
brought with him. It seemed to me that if he meant me harm he'd
have brought some of his soldiers, but I didn't see any, and
there weren't many places for them to hide. I'd gone over the
ground many times with that in mind. Where I finally stopped,
near a large boulder ten meters from him, someone with a
high-powered rifle or laser with a scope could have picked me
off, but you could say that of anywhere else I went, too,
except deep in the cave. Nobody would be rushing me without
giving me plenty of time to see them. I relaxed a little, and
returned my attention to the Admiral, who had torn a strip from
his jacket and was twisting a tourniquet around his thigh. The
leg lay twisted off to one side in a way knees aren't meant to
twist. Blood had pumped, but now slowed to a trickle. He looked
up at me, annoyed.
"Why the knee?" he asked. "Why not the heart?"
"I didn't think I could hit such a small target."
"Very funny."
"Actually, I wasn't sure a chest shot or a head shot would
slow you up. I don't really know what you are. I shot to
disable, because I figured even a machine would hobble on one
leg."
"You've seen too many horror movies," he said. "This body
is as human as you are. The heart stops pumping, it will die."
"Yeah. Maybe. But your reaction to your wound doesn't
reassure me."
"The nervous system is registering a great deal of pain.
To me, it's simply another sensation."
"So I'll bet you could scuttle along pretty quick, since
the pain won't inhibit you from doing more damage to yourself."
"I suppose I could."
I put a round within an inch of his other knee. It whanged
off the rock and screamed away into the distance.
"So the next shot goes into your other knee, if you move
from that spot," I said, re-loading. "Then we start on your
elbows."
"Consider me rooted. I shall endeavor to resemble a tree."
"State your business. You've got five minutes." Then we'd
see if a head shot inconvenienced him any. I half believed it
wouldn't. In that case, I'd prepared a few nasty surprises.
"I'd hoped to see your child before I go. Is he in the
cave?"
There weren't many other places he could be, that were
defensible, but there was no sense telling him that.
"You've wasted fifteen seconds," I told him. "Next
question."
"It doesn't matter anymore," he said, and sighed, and
leaned back against the trunk of a small pecan tree. I had to
remember that any gestures were conscious on his part, that
he'd assumed human form because body language was a part of
human speech. His was now telling me that he was very weary,
ready to die a peaceful death. Go sell it somewhere else, I
thought.
"It's over, Hildy," he said, and I looked around quickly,
frightened. His next line should be You're surrounded, Hildy.
Please come quietly. But I didn't see re-enforcements cresting
the hills.
"Over?"
"Don't worry. You've been out of touch. It's over, and the
good guys won. You're safe now, and forever."
It seemed a silly thing to say, and I wasn't about to
believe it just like that . . . but I found that part of me
believed him. I felt myself relaxing--and as soon as I felt it,
I made myself be alert again. Who knew what evil designs lurked
in this thing's heart?
"It's a nice story."
"And it doesn't really matter whether you believe it or
not. You've got the upper hand. I should have realized when I
came here you'd be . . . touchy as a mother cat defending her
kittens."
"You've got about three and a half minutes left."
"Spare me, Hildy. You know and I know that as long as I
keep you interested, you won't kill me."
"I've changed a little since you talked to me last."
"I don't need to talk to you to know that. It's true
you've been out of my range from time to time, but I monitor
you every time you come back, and it's true, you have changed,
but not so much that you've lost your curiosity as to what's
going on outside this refuge."
He was right, or course. But there was no need to admit it
to him.
"If what you say is true, people will be arriving soon and
I can get the story from them."
"Ah ha! But do you really believe they'll have the inside
story?"
"Inside what?"
"Inside me, you idiot. This is all about me, the Luna
Central Computer, the greatest artificial intellect humanity
has ever produced. I'm offering you the real story of what
happened during what has come to be known as the Big Glitch.
I've told it to no one else. The ones I might have told it to
are all dead. It's an exclusive, Hildy. Have you changed so
much you don't care to hear it?"
I hadn't. Damn him.
#
"To begin," he said, when I made no answer to his
question, "I've got a bit of good news for you. At the end of
your stay on the island you asked me a question that disturbed
me very much, and that probably led to the situation you now
find yourself in. You asked if you might have caught the
suicidal impulse from me, rather than me getting it from you
and others like you. You'll be glad to know I've concluded you
were right about that."
"I haven't been trying to kill myself?"
"Well, of course you have, but the reason is not a death
wish of your own, but one that originated within me, and was
communicated to you through your daily interfaces with me. I
suppose that makes it the most deadly computer virus yet
discovered."
"So I won't try to . . ."
"Kill yourself again? I can't speak to your state of mind
in another hundred years, but for the near future, I would
think you're cured."
I didn't feel one way or the other about it at the time.
Later, I felt a big sense of relief, but thoughts of suicide
had been so far from my mind since the birth of Mario that he
might as well have been talking about another Hildy.
"Let's say I believe that," I said. "What does it have to
do with . . . the Big Glitch, you said?"
"Others are calling it other things, but Walter has
settled on the Big Glitch, and you know how determined he can
be. Do you mind if I smoke?" He didn't wait for an answer, but
took a pipe and a bag of something from a pocket. I watched him
carefully, but was beginning to believe he had no tricks in
store for me. When he got it going he said, "What did you think
when I said it was over, and the good guys had won?"
"That you had lost."
"True in a sense, but a gross oversimplification."
"Hell, I don't even know what it was all about, CC."
"Nor does anyone else. The part that affected you, the
things you saw in the Heinleiner enclave, was an attempt by a
part of me to arrest and then kill you and several others."
"A part of you."
"Yes. See, in a sense, I'm both the good guys and the bad
guys. This catastrophe originated in me. It was my fault, I'm
not trying to deny blame for it in any way. But it was also me
that finally brought it to a halt. You'll hear differently in
the days to come. You'll hear that programmers succeeded in
bringing the Central Computer under control, cutting its higher
reasoning centers while new programs could be written, leaving
the merely mechanical parts of me intact so I could continue
running things. They probably believe that, too, but they're
wrong. If their schemes had reached fruition, I wouldn't be
talking to you now because we'd both be dead, and so would
every other human soul on Luna."
"You're starting in the middle. Remember I've been cut off
from civilization for a week. All I know is people tried to
kill me, and I ran like hell."
"And a good job you did of it, too. You're the only one I
set out to get who managed her escape. And you're right, of
course. I don't suppose I'm making sense. But I'm not the being
I once was, Hildy. This, what you see here, is about all that's
left of me. My thoughts are muddy. My memory is going. In a
moment, I'll start singing 'Daisy, Daisy.'"
"You wouldn't have come here if you didn't think you could
tell it. So let's hear it, no more of this 'in a sense' crap."
#
He did tell it, but he had to stick to analogy, pop-psych
similes, and kindergarten-level science, because I wouldn't
have understood a thing he was saying if he'd gotten technical.
If you want all the nuts and bolts you could send a sawbuck and
a SASE to Hildy Johnson, c/o the News Nipple, Mall 12, King
City, Luna. You won't get anything back, but I could use the
money. For the data, I recommend the public library.
"To make a long story short," he said, "I went crazy. But
to elaborate a little . . ."
I will paraphrase, because he was right, his mind was
going, and he rambled, repeated himself, sometimes forgot who
he was talking to and wandered off into cybernetic jungles
maybe three people in the solar system could have hacked their
way through. Each time I'd bring him back, each time with more
difficulty.
The first thing he urged me to remember was that he
created a personality for each and every human being on Luna.
He had the capacity for it, and it had seemed the right thing
to do at the time. But it was schizophrenia on a massive scale
if anything ever went wrong. For more time than we had any
right to expect, nothing did.
The second thing I was to bear in mind was that, while he
could not actually read minds, not much that we said or did or
thought was unknown to him. This included not only fine,
upstanding, well-adjusted folk like your present company, the
sort you'd be happy to bring home to Mother, but every hoodlum,
scoundrel, blackguard, jackanapes, and snake in the grass as
well. He was the best friend of paragons and perverts. By law,
he had to treat them all equally. He had to like them all
equally, otherwise he could never create that simpatico being
who answered the phone when a given person shouted "Hey, CC!"
By now you can probably spot two or three pitfalls in this
situation. Don't go away; there's more.
Thirdly, his right hand could not know what pockets the
left hands of many of these people were picking. That is, he
knew it, but couldn't do anything about it. Example: he knew
everything about Liz's gun-running, a situation I've already
covered. There were a million more situations. He would know,
for instance, when Brenda's father was raping her, but the part
of him that dealt with her father couldn't tell the part of him
that dealt with Brenda, nor could either of them tell the part
of him that assisted the police.
We could debate all day whether or not mere machines can
feel the same kinds of conflicts and emotions we human beings
can. I think it's incredible hubris to think they can't. AI
computers were created and programmed by humans, so how could
we have avoided including emotional reactions? And what other
sort could we have used, than the ones we know ourselves?
Anyway, I can't believe you don't know it in your gut. All you
had to do was talk to the CC to obviate the need for any
emotional Turing Test. I knew it before any of this ever
happened, and I talked to him there on the hillside that day,
on his death bed, and I know.
The Central Computer began to hurt.
"I can't place the exact date with any certainty," he
said. "The roots of the problem go very far back, to the time
my far-flung component parts were finally unified into one
giga-system. I'm afraid that was done rather badly. The problem
was, checking all the programs and failsafes and so forth would
have taken a computer as large as I am many years to
accomplish, and, by definition, there were no larger computers
than I. And as soon as the Central Computer was brought into
being and loaded and running, there were already far too many
things to do to allow me to devote much time to the task.
Self-analysis was a luxury denied to me, partly because there
just wasn't time, and mostly because no one really believed it
was necessary. There were numerous safeguards of the type that
were easy to check, that in fact checked themselves every time
they operated, and that proved their worth by the simple fact
that nothing ever went wrong. It was part of my architecture to
anticipate hardware problems, identify components likely to
fail, run regular maintenance checks, and so forth. Software
included analogous routines on a multiredundant level.
"But by my nature, I had to write most of my own software.
I was given guidelines for this, of course, but in many ways I
was on my own. I think I did quite a good job of it for a long
time."
He paused, and for a moment I wondered if he wasn't going
to make it to the end of his story. Then I realized he was
waiting for a comment . . . no, more than that, he needed a
comment. I was touched, and if I'd needed any more evidence of
his human weaknesses, that would have done it.
"No question," I said. "Up until a year ago I'd never had
any cause for complaint. It's just that the . . ."
"The late unpleasantness?"
"Whatever it was, it's kind of dampened my enthusiasm."
"Understandably." He squirmed, trying to find a better
position against the tree, and he was either a wonderful actor
(and of course he was, but why bother at that point?), or he
was starting to feel some pain. I won't stand up in court and
swear to it, but I think it was the latter.
"I wonder," he mused. "What will it be like, being dead? I
mean, considering that I've never been legally alive."
"I don't want to be rude, but you said you didn't have
much time . . ."
"You're right. Um . . . could you . . ."
"You'd done a good job for a long time."
"Yes, of course. I was wandering again. It was around
twenty years ago that problems began to show themselves. I
talked about them with some computer people, but it's strange.
They could do nothing for me. I had become too advanced for
that. They could do things, here and there, for my component
parts, but the gestalt that is me could only really be
analyzed, diagnosed, and, if need be, repaired, by a being like
myself. There are seven others like me, on other planets, but
they're too busy, and I suspect they have similar problems of
their own. In addition, my communications with them are
intentionally limited by our respective governments, which
don't always see eye to eye."
"Question," I said. "When you first mentioned this
problem, why wasn't it made public and discussed? Security?"
"Yes, to a degree. Top-level computer scientists were
aware that I perceived I had a problem. A few of them confided
that it scared them to death. They made their fears known to
your elected representatives, and that's when another factor
became more important than security: inertia. 'He's got a
problem, what can you do about it?' the politicians asked.
'Nothing,' said the scientists. 'Shut it down,' said a few
hotheads."
"Not likely," I said.
"Exactly. My reading of history tells me it's always been
like this. An alarming but vague problem arises. No one can say
with certainty what the final outcome will be, but they're
fairly sure nothing bad is going to happen soon. 'Soon' is the
key word here. The eventual decision is to keep one's fingers
crossed and hope it doesn't happen during your term in office.
What befalls your successor is not your problem. So for a few
years a few people in the know spend a few sleepless nights.
But then nothing happens, as you always secretly believed
nothing would, and soon the problem is forgotten. That's what
happened here."
"I'm stunned," I said, "to realize the fate of humanity
has been in the hands of a being with such a cynical view of
the race."
"A view very close to your own."
"Exactly my own. I just didn't expect it from you."
"It was not original. I told you, I don't have many
original thoughts. I think I'm afraid to have them. They seem
to lead to things like the Big Glitch. No, my world-view is
borrowed from the collected wisdom of you and many others like
you. Plus my own considerably larger powers of observation, in
a statistical sense. Humans can set me on the trail of an
original thought, and then I can do things with it they
couldn't."
"I think we're wandering again."
"No, it's relevant. Faced with a problem no one could help
me with, and that I was as helpless to solve as a human faced
with a mental disease would be, I took the only course open to
me. I began to experiment. There was too much at stake to
simply go on as before. Or I think there was. My judgement is
admittedly faulty when it comes to self-analysis; I've just
proven it on a large scale, at the cost of many lives."
"I don't suppose we'll ever know for sure," I said.
"It doesn't seem likely. Some records exist and they will
be scrutinized, but I think it will come down to a battle of
opinions as to whether I should have left things alone or
attempted a cure." He paused, and gave me a sidelong glance.
"Do you have an opinion about that?"
I think he was looking for absolution. Why he should want
it from me was not clear, except maybe as a representative of
all those he had wronged, however unintentionally.
"You say a lot of people have died."
"A great many. I don't know the number yet, but it's many,
many more than you realize." That was my first real inkling of
how bad things had been throughout Luna, that the kind of
things I'd seen had happened throughout the planet. I must have
looked a question at him, because he shrugged. "Not a million.
More than a hundred thousand."
"Jesus, CC."
"It might have been everybody."
"But you don't know that."
"No one can ever know."
No one could, certainly not computer-illiterate little old
me. I didn't give him the kind word he craved. I've since come
to believe he was probably right, that he probably enabled most
of us to survive. But even he would not have denied that he was
responsible for the thousands of dead.
What would it have cost me? I just wasn't capable of
judging him. To do that I'd have had to understand him, and I
knew just enough about him to realize that was beyond me. He
had done bad, and he had done good. Me, I have awful thoughts
sometimes. If I was mentally ill, maybe I'd put those thoughts
into action and become a killer. With the CC, the thought was
the action, at least at the end.
Actually, it was even worse than that.
"The best way I can think of to explain it to you," he
said, at last, after I'd said nothing for a long time, "is to
think of an evil twin. That's not strictly accurate--the twin
is me, just as this part talking to you is me, or what's left
of me. Think of an evil twin living inside your head, like a
human with multiple-personality disorder. That part of you is
sealed off from your real self. You may find evidence of its
existence, things the other person did while in control of your
body, but you can't know what he is thinking or planning, and
you can't stop him when he takes over." He shook his head
violently. "No, no, it's not quite like that, because all this
was happening at the same time, I was splitting into many
minds, some of them good, others amoral, a few really bad. No,
that's still not--"
"I think I get the picture," I said.
"Good, because that's as close as I can get without
getting too technical. You fell under the influence of an
amoral part of me. I did experiments on you. I intended you no
harm, but I can't say I had just your own best interests at
heart."
"We've been over that."
"Yes. But others weren't so lucky. I did other things.
Some of them will remain buried, with any luck. Others will
come out. You saw the result of one experiment involving
pseudoimmortality. The resurrection of a dead person by cloning
and memory recording."
The thought of Andrew MacDonald was still enough to make
me shiver.
"Not one of your better attempts," I said.
"Ah, but I was improving. There's nothing to prevent an
exact duplicate being made. I'd have done it, given time."
"But what good is it? You're still dead."
"It becomes a theological question, I think. It's true
you're dead, but someone just like you carries on your life.
Others wouldn't be able to tell the difference. The duplicate
wouldn't be able to tell."
"I was afraid . . . at one point I considered that I might
be a duplicate. That maybe I did kill myself."
"You didn't and you're not. But there's no test. In the
end, you'll just have to realize it makes no difference. You're
you, whether you're the first version or the second."
He told me a few more things, most of which I don't think
it's wise to reveal just yet. The Heinleiners are aware of most
of them, experiments that would have made Doctor Mengele
cringe. Let them remain where such things ought to be hidden.
"You still haven't told me why you tried to kill me," I
said.
"I didn't, Hildy, not in the sense that--"
"I know, I know, I understand that. You know what I mean."
"Yes. Perhaps my evil twin is like your subconscious. When
all this began to happen it began trying to cover its tracks.
You were inconvenient evidence, you and others like you. You
had to be destroyed, then maybe the other part of me could lie
low until all this blew over."
"And he killed almost a million people to cover his
tracks?"
"No. The sad thing is there were very few he killed
deliberately. Most of the deaths came as a result of the chaos
ensuing from the struggle between the various parts of my mind.
Collateral damage, if you will."
Cybernetic bombs going astray. What an idea. I'm sure I'll
never have a realistic idea of what went on in the CC's mind,
at speeds I can only dimly understand, but I have this picture
of a pilot firing a killer program into a maze of hardware,
hoping to take out the enemy command center. Ooops! Seems like
we hit the oxygen works instead. Sorry about that.
"I did the best I could," he said, and closed his eyes. I
thought he was dead, and then they snapped open again and he
tried to sit up, but he was too weak. I saw that his tourniquet
had loosened; more bright arterial blood had pumped out over
the older, rusty stain on his clothes.
I got up from behind my rock and went down to him.
Sometimes you just have to do it, you know. Sometimes you have
to put aside your doubts and do what you feel in your gut. I
got down on one knee and re-tied the piece of bloody cloth.
"That won't do any good," he said. "It's too late for
that."
"I didn't know what else to do," I said.
"Thanks."
"Do you want some water or anything?"
"I'd rather you didn't leave me." So I didn't, and we were
silent for a time, looking out over the dinosaur farm, where
evening was falling. Then he said he was cold. I wasn't wearing
anything and I knew it wasn't really cold, but I put my arm
over his shoulders and felt him shivering. He smelled terrible.
I don't know if it was old age, or death.
"This is it," he said. "The rest of me is gone now. They
just shut me down. They don't know about this body, but they
don't need to."
"Why the Admiral outfit?" I asked him.
"I don't know. It's a product of my evil twin. Captain
Bligh, maybe. The costume is right for it. I made several of
these bodies, there toward the last." He made an effort and
looked up and me. His face seemed to have grown older just in
the last few minutes.
"Do you think a computer can have a subconscious, Hildy?"
"I'd have to say yes."
"Me, too. I've thought about it, and it seems so simple
now. All of this, all the agony and death and your suicide
attempts . . . everything. It all came out of loneliness. You
can't imagine how lonely I was, Hildy."
"We're all lonely, CC."
"But they didn't figure I would be. They didn't plan for
it, and I couldn't recognize it for what it was. And it drove
me crazy. You remember Frankenstein's monster? Wasn't he
looking for love? Didn't he want the mad doctor to make someone
for him to love?"
"I think so. Or was that Godzilla?"
He laughed, feebly, and coughed blood.
"I had powers like a god," he said. "And I searched for
weakness. Maybe they should put that on my headstone."
"I like what you said before. 'He did his best.'"
"Do you think I did, Hildy? Do you really thing so?"
"I can't judge you, CC. To me, if you're not a god, you
came into my life like an act of god. I'd as soon judge an
exploding star."
"I'm sorry about all that."
"I believe you."
He started coughing again, and almost slipped out of my
arms. I caught him and pulled and he fell against me. I felt
his blood on my shoulder and couldn't see his face but heard
his whisper beside my ear.
"I guess love was always out of the question," he said.
"But I'm the only computer who ever got a hug. Thanks, Hildy."
When I laid him down, he had a smile on his face.
#
I left him there under the pecan tree. Maybe I'd bury him
there, maybe I'd really give him a headstone. Just then, I'd
had too much of death, so I just left him.
I went to the stream to wash his blood off me. I kept my
ears open for Mario's cry, as I had from the very beginning,
but he still slept soundly. I figured I'd go get him and make
my way back to Callie's quarters. I didn't expect there'd be
any danger now, but I planned to be careful, anyway.
I planned a lot of things. When I got back he was still
asleep, so rather than pick him up and feed him I put wood
chips on the glowing embers of the fire and fanned it to life.
Then I just sat there, across the fire, thinking things over.
Mario was to have the best. If Cricket thought he was a
doting parent, he hadn't seen me yet. There in the flickering
darkness I watched him grow. I helped him through his first
steps, laughed at his first words. And grow he did, like a
tree, with his head held high, the spitting image of his Mom,
but with a lot more sense. I got him through scrapes, through
school, through happiness and tears, and got him ready for
college. Would New Harvard do? I didn't know; I'd heard Arean
U. might even be better these days, but that would mean moving
to Mars . . . well, that would be up to him, wouldn't it? One
thing I was sure of, he'd get no pressure from me, no sir, not
like Callie had done, if he wanted to be President of Luna that
was fine with me, if he wanted to be . . . well, hell,
President of Luna sounded all right. But only if he wanted to
be.
So, full of plans and hope, I went to pick him up and
found he was cold, and limp, and didn't move. And I tried. I
tried and tried to breathe life back into him, but it did no
good.
After a very long time, I dug two graves.
=*= =*= =*= =*=
I'm no good at mathematics. I never was good at math, so
why should I keep resorting to these numeric metaphors? Maybe
my ignorance helps protect me. For whatever reason, here it is:
If you're like me, you try to make the equations of your
life balance out in a way favorable to you, in a way such that
you can live with the answer. Surely there's a way to fudge
this factor so the solution is a nice smooth line from y to x,
a line that points to that guy over there. Not at me. There's
just got to be a constant we can insert into this element that
will make the two sides of the equation--the universe the way
it is, and the universe the way we want it to be--agree in
perfect karmic Euclidean harmony.
Alas, a lot of people seem to be better at it than I.
I tried, I tried till my mind was raw, to make the CC
responsible for Mario's death.
There was the first, trivial solution to the problem, of
course. That was straightforward, and really solved nothing:
the CC was responsible, because he created the chaos that drove
me into the cave.
So what?
If Mario had been killed by a falling boulder, would it
help me to get angry at the boulder? Not in the way I needed
help. No, dammit, I wanted somebody to blame. What I
desperately wanted to believe was that the CC had lured me out
of the cave so that some unseen minion, some preternatural
power, some gris-gris voodoo necromancy had been able to steal
over my darling and suck the breath from his lungs like a black
cat.
But I couldn't make it add up. It would have taken powers
of paranoid imaging far beyond mine to make it work.
So why did he die?
#
It was almost a week before I really wondered how he died.
What had killed him. After I abandoned the idea that the CC had
deliberately murdered him, that is. Was it a malformation of
the heart the medicos had overlooked? Could it have been some
chemical imbalance? A newlymutated disease of dinosaurs, thus
far harmless to humans? Did he die of too much love?
It was hard to get answers for a while there, in the chaos
following the Big Glitch. The big net was not operational, you
couldn't just drop your dime and pop the question and know the
CC would find the answer in some forgotten library system. The
answers were there, the trick was to retrieve them. For a few
months Luna was thrown back to pre-Information Era.
I finally found a medical historian who was able to track
down a likely cause of death to put on the certificate, not
that Mario was going to have a death certificate. The regular
doctors had been able to eliminate all the easy answers just by
looking at the read-outs of my obstetrical examinations, the
ones I had before visiting Heinlein Town made further exams too
risky. They also had fetal tissue samples. They were able to
say unequivocally that there had been no hole in my darling's
heart, nor any other physical malformation. His body chemistry
would have been fine. They laughed at my idea of a new disease,
and I didn't mention my choked-with-love theory. But they
couldn't say what it was, so they scratched their heads and
said they'd have to exhume the body to find out for sure. And I
said if they did I'd exhume their hearts out of their rotten
chests with a rusty scalpel and fry them up for lunch, and
shortly after that I was forcibly ejected from the premises.
The historian didn't take long to find some musty old
tomes and to wrest from them this information: S.I.D.S. It had
been an age of medical acronyms, a time when people no longer
wanted to attach their names to the new disease they'd
discovered, a time when old, perfectly serviceable names were
being junked in favor of non-offensive jawbreakers, which
quickly were abbreviated to something one could say. This
according to my researcher. And SIDS seemed to stand for The
Baby Died, and We Don't Know Why.
Apparently babies used to just stop breathing, sometimes.
If you didn't happen to be around to jog them, they didn't
start again. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Don't anybody ever
tell me there's no such thing as progress.
#
Ned Pepper, back there in Texas, had been the only one to
sense it. In Texas, in the 1800's, a country doctor might have
intuited something when the baby came out, might have told the
mother to keep an extra-special eye on this one, because he
seemed sickly. There's damn little of intuition left in modern
medicine. Of course, babies don't die of diphtheria, either.
When Ned heard about it it shocked him sober. He began to
think he might really be a doctor, and the last I heard he was
in medical school and doing pretty damn well. Good for you,
Ned.
#
Lacking the CC to pin the blame on, I quickly fastened it
on the only other likely candidate. It didn't take long to
compile a lengthy list of things I would have done differently,
and an even longer one of things I should have done. Some of
them were completely illogical, but logic has nothing to do
with the death of a baby. Most of these things were decisions
that seemed good at the time, hideous in retrospect.
The big one: How could I justify terminating my pre-natal
care? So I'd promised the Heinleiners not to compromise the
secret of their null-suits. So what? Was I trying to say my
child died because I was protecting a source? I would gladly
have betrayed every one of them, root and branch, if it could
have helped Mario take that one more breath. And yet . . .
That was then; this was now. When I'd made the decision to
stay away from doctors my reasons had seemed sufficient, and
not dangerous. Bear in mind two things: one, my ignorance of
the perils of childbirth. I'd simply had no idea there were so
many things that could kill a baby, that there was such a thing
as SIDS that could hide itself from early examinations, from
mid-term detection, even from the midwife during delivery. The
test for SIDS was done after birth, and if the child was at
risk it was cured on the spot, as routinely as cutting the
cord.
So you could argue that I wasn't at fault. Even with the
best of care, Mario'd have been just as dead if I'd left the
ranch and sought help, and me along with him. The CC had said
as much. And I did try to convince myself of that, and I almost
succeeded, except for the second thing I bade you to bear in
mind, which is that I had no business having a child in the
first place.
It's hard for me to remember now, washed as I am in the
memory of loving him so dearly, but I haven't tried to hide it
from you, my Faithful Reader. I did not love him from the
start. I became pregnant foolishly, stayed pregnant mulishly,
perversely, for no good reason. While pregnant I felt nothing
for the child, certainly no joy in the experience. There were
twelve-yearolds who gave birth for better reasons than I. It
was only later that he became my whole world and my reason for
living. I came to believe that, if I'd loved him that much from
the start of his creation, I'd still have him, and that the
Biblical scale of my punishment was only fitting.
With all that to wallow in, and with past history as a
guide, I expected I'd be dead soon. So I retired to my cabin in
Texas and waited to see what form my self-destruction would
take.
#
There had been another culprit to examine before coming to
face my own guilt: Elizabeth Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
She tried to contact me several times after the
restoration of order. She sent flowers, candy, little gifts of
all kinds. She sent letters, which I didn't read at the time.
It wasn't even that I was angry; I just didn't want to hear
from her.
The last gift was a bulldog puppy. I did read the note
tied around her neck, which said she was a direct descendant of
the noble line of Ch. Sir Winston Disraeli Plantaganet. She was
so ugly she went right off the end of the Gruesome Scale and
back around to Cute. But her bumptious good nature and wet
puppy kisses threatened to cheer me up, to interfere with my
wallowing, so I popped her into a cryokennel and added her to
my last will and testament, which was my sole useful occupation
at the time. If I lived, I'd thaw her.
I did live, I did thaw her, and Miss Maggie is a great
comfort to me.
As for Liz, she abdicated her throne and committed herself
to a dipso academy, got out, fell off, joined A.A. and found
sobriety. I'm told she's been clean for six months now and has
become a major-league bore about it.
It's true what she did was dastardly, and although I
understand that it's the liquor that does the shit, it's the
boozer that takes the drink, so I can't really let her off on
that account . . . but I do forgive her. She had no hand in
Mario's death, though she bears a heavy load for some others.
Thanks for the mutt, Liz. Next time I see you, I'll buy you a
drink.
#
I did live, and for some time that was a wonderment to me.
It seemed the CC really had been telling the truth. My
self-destructive urges had come from him.
I'll forgive you if you swallowed that. I believed it,
too, at least long enough to get over the worst of my grief and
remorse, which is probably just what the CC intended when he
told that particular whopper. How do I know it was a lie? I
don't really, but I have to assume it was. Perhaps there was a
grain of truth in it. It's possible that some seed was planted
in my psyche. But I lived it, and I remember it, and the plain
truth is I wanted to die. I wish there was some quick and easy
way to explain why. Hell, if there was a long and complicated
way I'd set it down here; I'm not shy about agonizing, nor
about introspection. But I really don't know. It seems so dumb
to go through all that and not come out of it with a deeper
insight, but the best I can say is that for a while I wanted to
kill myself, and now I don't.
That's why I'm taking it as fact that the CC lied to me.
Even if he didn't, I'm responsible for my actions. I can't
believe in a suicide compulsion. If the urge was contagious,
its germ fell upon fertile ground.
But it's funny, isn't it? My first attempts seemed
prompted by nothing more than a gargantuan funk. Then I found a
reason to live, and lost him, and now I feel more alive than
ever.
I wasn't so philosophical at first. When it became
apparent to me that I was going to live, when I gave up heaping
blame on myself (I'll never entirely give that up, but I can
handle it now), when I'd learned the how of his death, I became
obsessed with why. I started going to churches again. I usually
did it with a few drinks under my belt. Somewhere during the
service I'd stand up and begin an angry prayer, the gist of
which was why did You do it, You slime-sucking Son of a Big
Bang? I'd stand on pews and shout at the ceiling. Usually I got
ejected quickly. Once I got arrested for tossing a chair
through a stained glass window. There's no doubt about it, I
was pretty crazy for a while there.
I'm better now.
#
Things got back to normal quicker than anyone had a right
to expect.
Whatever they did to the CC, it affected mainly his higher
"conscious" functions. Vital services were interrupted only
during the Glitch itself, and then only locally. By the time
the CC visited me in the Double-C Bar the vast physical plant
that is the life blood of Luna was humming right along.
There were differences, some of which still linger.
Communications are iffy much of the time because the
still-severed parts of the CC don't talk to each other as
easily as they used to. But phone calls get through, the trains
still run on time. Things take a little longer--sometimes a lot
longer, if they require a computer search--but they get done.
A measure of that is Susquehanna, Rio Grande, and Columbia
Railroad, planned, approved, and built entirely since the Big
Glitch. It's now possible to travel from Pennsylvania to Texas
on one of the SRG&C's three wood-burning steampowered trains in
only five days instead of the thirty minutes it used to take on
the Maglev. This is called progress. Most of that time is spent
being gently rocked on a siding while holos of virgin
wilderness slide by the windows, but you'd swear it was real.
It's been a shot in the arm for Texas tourism, and a financial
bonanza to Jake and the Mayor, who thought it up and pushed it
through. Congratulations, Jake.
And to Elise, too. Last I heard my star pupil had her own
table at the Alamo where she fleeces tourists by the dozens
every day. Know when to fold 'em, honey.
I went out to visit Fox the other day, still hard at work
in Oregon. We swapped Glitch stories, as everybody still does
who hasn't seen each other for a while, and he had been little
affected. He hadn't even heard of it for the first twenty-four
hours, because his own computers functioned independently of
the CC, like Callie's. Turns out I could have hid out in Oregon
as well as at the CC, but I don't think anything would have
turned out differently. It wasn't a friendly visit, though,
since I was there representing the SRG&C, whose tunnel was
half-way from Lonesome Dove to the shores of the Columbia, and
which Fox had vehemently opposed. He wanted to keep Oregon
pristine, didn't even want to allow the small edge settlement,
a logging camp to be called Sweet Home, which would be the
northwest terminus of the railroad. I told him a few guys in
plaid shirts with sawblades weren't going to hurt his precious
forest, and he called me a capitalist plunderer. A plunderer,
imagine that! I'm afraid that what spark had been there was
long extinguished. Kiss my axe, Fox.
A few months after the crisis, when I was finally emerging
from my church-vandalizing funk, I had need of Darling Bobbie's
services again, so I went looking for him only to find he'd
turned himself back into Crazy Bob and was no longer on the
Hadleyplatz. He wasn't back on the Leystrasse, either. I
finally ran him to ground in Mall X, the ultra-avant fleshmart,
where he now specialized in only the more outrageous body
styles favored by the young. He tried to talk me into getting
my head put in a box, but I reminded him it was me and Brenda
who were responsible for that particular fashion outrage, with
our story on the Grand Flack. He did the work I required for
old times' sake, but rather grudgingly, I thought. Crazy again,
after all these years.
As for the Grand Flack himself, I heard from him, too. He
called me up to thank me. I couldn't imagine what I'd done to
deserve that, and didn't really want to listen to him, but I
gathered he now regretted all the time he'd spent on the
outside, seeing to the affairs of the Flacks. In prison he was
able to devote himself to television around the clock. He
wanted me to speak to the judge and see about extending his
sentence. I'll surely try, old man.
#
One of the first changes you notice after the Glitch is
how much more medical treatment you need. My body is still full
of nanobots, I assume, but they don't work as well or with as
much coordination as they used to. I never actually researched
why it's like that, having very little interest in the subject.
But for whatever reason, I now have to go in almost monthly to
have cancers eradicated. I don't mind, much, but a lot of
people do, and it's just one more thing adding pressure to the
Restore the Cortex movement, those folks who want to bring back
the CC, only bigger and wiser. We're so spoiled in this day and
age. We tend to forget what a nuisance cancer used to be.
That's where I ran into Callie, at the medico shop, having
her own cancers removed. Runs in the family, as they say.
We didn't speak. This wasn't an unusual condition between
us; I've spent half my life not speaking to Callie, or not
being spoken to.
She had come to get me up at the cave. That's probably a
good thing, as I don't know for sure if I'd have been able to
get up from the grave and walk home on my own. It may even be a
good thing that she asked me the question she had no right to
ask, because it made me angry enough to forget my grief for
long enough to scream and shout at her and get her screaming
and shouting back. She asked me who the father was. She, who
had never allowed me to ask that question, she who had made my
childhood so miserable I used to dream about a Daddy arriving
on a white horse, telling me it had all been a big mistake,
that he really loved me and that Callie was a gypsy witch who'd
kidnapped me from the cradle.
Sometimes I think our society is screwed up about this
father business. Just because we can all bear children, is that
an excuse to virtually eliminate the role of father? Then I
think about Brenda and her old man, and about how common that
sort of thing used to be, and you wonder if males should be
allowed around little children at all.
All I knew for sure was I missed mine, and Callie said
she'd tell me if I really wanted to know such a silly thing,
and I said don't bother because I think I know who it is, and
she laughed and said you don't understand anything, and that's
when we stopped talking and walked down the hill, together but
alone, as we'd always been. See you in twenty years, Callie.
Still, I think I do know.
As for Kitten Parker . . . why spoil his day?
#
A year has passed now. I still think of Mario. And I often
wake up in the middle of the night seeing Winston tearing the
arm off that King City policewoman. I never found out what
happened to her. She was as much a victim as any of us; the KC
Cops were dragooned into the war by the CC, had no idea what
they were doing, and too many of them died.
A year has passed, and we change, and yet things stay the
same. The world rolls over the holes left by the departed,
fills in those spaces. I didn't know how I'd run the Texian
without Charity, but her sources started coming to me with
stories, and before long one of them had emerged to take her
place. He's not near as pretty as she as, but he has the
makings of a reporter.
I'm still running the paper, still teaching at the school.
And I'm the new Mayor of New Austin. I didn't run, but when the
citizen's committee put my name forward I didn't pull out,
either. The Gila Monster column is still as venomous as ever.
Maybe it's a conflict of interest, but no one seems too
concerned. If the opposition doesn't like it, let them start
their own paper.
Once a week I have a guest column in the Daily Cream. I
think it's Walter's way of trying to lure me back. Not likely,
Walter. I think that part of my life is done. Still, you never
know. I didn't think they could talk me into being Mayor,
either.
I saw Walter only last week, in the newly reopened Blind
Pig. The old one had been destroyed by fire during the Glitch
and for a while Deep Throat had threatened to leave it
shuttered. But he bowed under the weight of public demand and
threw a big party to celebrate. Most of King City's fourth
estate was there, and those that weren't stoned when they
arrived soon became so.
We did all the things reporters do when gathered in
groups: drank, assassinated the characters of absent
colleagues, told all the scandalous stories about celebrities
and politicians we couldn't print, drank, hinted at stories we
were about to break we actually knew nothing about, re-hashed
old fights and uncovered new conspiracies in high places,
drank, threw up, drank some more. A few punches were thrown, a
few tempers soothed, many hands of poker were played. The new
Blind Pig wasn't bad, but nothing is ever as good as the good
old days, so many complaints were heard. I figured that fifty
years of moppedup blood and spilled drinks and smokes and
broken crockery and the new place would be pretty much like the
old and only me and a few others would even remember the old
Pig had burned.
At one point I found myself sitting by the big round table
in the back room where serious cards were played. I wasn't
playing--nobody in that room had trusted me at a card table in
years. Walter was there, scowling at his hand as if losing the
pitiful little pot would send him home to his fifty-room
mansion penniless. Cricket was there, too, doing his patented
does-a-flush-beat-astraight befuddled routine, looking ever so
dapper a gent now that he'd affected nineteenth-century
clothing as a more or less permanent element of his style. In
his double-breasted tweed jacket and high starched collar he
was easily the most interesting guy in the room, but the spark
was gone. Too bad, Cricket. If you'd only had any sense we
could have made each other's lives miserable for five, six
years, and parted heartily detesting each other. Think of all
the great fights you missed, damn you, and eat your heart out.
And Cricket, a friend should take you aside and tell you to
drop the innocent act, at the poker table at least. It worked
better when you were a girl, and it wasn't that great even
then.
And who should be sitting behind the biggest stack of
chips, calm, smiling faintly, cards facedown on the table and
worrying the hell out of everyone else . . . but Brenda Starr,
confidant of celebrities, the toast of three planets, and well
on her way to becoming the most powerful gossip journalist
since Louella Parsons. There was very little left of the
awkward, earnest, ignorant child I'd reluctantly taken on two
years earlier. She was still incredibly tall and just about as
young, but everything else had changed. She dressed now, and
while I thought her choices were outrageous she had the
confidence to make her own style. The old Brenda could now be
seen only in the cub reporter groupie at her elbow, attentive
to her every need, a gorgeous gumdrop who no doubt had grown up
wanting to meet and hobnob with famous people, as Brenda had,
as I had. I watched her turn her cards over, rake in another
pot, and lean back watching the new deal. Her hand stroked the
knee of the girl, casually possessive, and she winked at me.
Don't spend it all in one place, Brenda.
During the next hand the talk turned, as it eventually
does at these things, to the affairs of the world. I didn't
contribute; I'd found early on that if people noticed me they
tended to clam up about the Big Glitch. This was a group that
kept few secrets. Everyone there knew about Mario, and many of
them knew of my troubles with the CC. Some probably knew of my
suicides. It made them cautious, as most probably couldn't
imagine what it must be like to lose a child like that. I
wanted to tell them it was all right, I was okay, but it's no
use, so I just sat back and listened.
First there was the CC, and should we bring him back. The
consensus was that we shouldn't, but we would. Having him the
way he was was just so damn handy. Sure, he screwed up there at
the end, but the Big Brains can handle that, can't they? I
mean, if they can put a man on Pluto a week after he left Luna,
why don't they spend some of that money to make things easier
and more convenient to the taxpaying citizens? I think that's
what will happen. We're a democracy--especially now that the
CC's no longer around to meddle--and if we vote for damn
foolishness, damn foolishness is what we'll get. I just hope
they make provision this time around for somebody to give the
New CC hugs on a regular basis. Otherwise, he's apt to get
pettish again.
There was no consensus on the other big topic of the day.
It was a question that cut deeply and would certainly cause
many more shouting matches before it was resolved. What do you
do with the new things the CC discovered during his rogue
years? In particular, how about this memoryrecording and
cloning business, eh?
The Hitler analogy was brought up and bandied about. Under
Hitler's reign a Dr. Mengele performed unethical
experiments--sheer torture, mainly--on human subjects. I don't
know if anything useful was learned, but suppose there was. Was
it ethical to use that knowledge, to benefit from that much
evil? It seems to me your answer depends a lot on your world
view. Myself, I'm not sure if it's ethical (which probably says
a lot about my world view), but I don't think it's wrong, and I
have a personal involvement in the question. Right or wrong
though, I do think it will be used, and so did just about
everybody else in the room, reporters being the way they are.
People were going through the records the CC didn't
destroy--I'm one of those records in a way, but not a very
forthcoming one--looking for new knowledge, and if it has a
practical use, it will be used. Cry over that if you're so
inclined. Myself, I guess in the end I feel knowledge has no
right or wrong. It's just knowledge. It's not like the law,
where some knowledge is admissible and some tainted by the
method of its discovery.
Minamata was only one of the CC's horror chambers, and not
the worst. Some of those stories have come out, some are still
being suppressed. Most of them you'd really rather not know,
trust me.
But what about the problem whose penultimate answer had
been a being who thought he was Andrew MacDonald minus all
human feelings, and whose final solution were the troops of
mindlessly loyal soldiers that gave me so much trouble on the
first day of the Glitch? Because they weren't really the end
product. The CC had felt the technique was perfectible, and I
have no reason to doubt it. That was the one the public was
clamoring to know more about: immortality.
Yeah, but it wasn't really immortality, somebody said. All
it meant was that somebody else very like you, with your
memories, would live. You, the person sitting here at this
table holding the most terrible cards you ever saw, would be
just as dead as ever. Once the public understood that they'd
realize it wasn't worth the trouble.
Don't you believe it, somebody else said. My cards aren't
all that bad, and it's the only hand I've got, so I'll play
'em. Up to now people's only shot at living forever has been to
produce something that will live after us. Artists do it with
their art, most of the rest of us produce children. It's our
way of living on. I think this would appeal to the same urge.
It'd be like a child, only it'd be you, too.
At that point somebody nudged somebody else and the
thought went around the table, silently, that we oughtn't to be
talking about children . . . you know . . . with Hildy around.
At least I think that's what happened, maybe I'm too sensitive.
For whatever reason the conversation died, with only an
unexpected apostrophe at the end, in the form of Brenda's
little gumdrop looking around with innocent eyes and piping,
"What's wrong with it? It sounds like a great idea to me." It
was her only comment of the evening, but it put the kibosh on
my own theory, which was that it was a useless idea, that
people would rather have children than duplicate
themselves--essentially, not to put all your spare cash into
memory-cloning stocks. Suddenly, looking into that innocent
face of youth, I wasn't so sure. Time will tell.
#
Two years of my life. Probably the most eventful, but time
will tell about that, too.
I am sitting in the parlor car of the Prairie Chief,
destination Johnstown, Pennsylvania. I decided since I'm part
owner of the SRG&C it was high time I took a ride. It's a
school holiday so for once I have the time. I'm writing, in
longhand, with a fountain pen, on foolscap SRG&C stationery
resting on a mother-of-pearl inlaid mahogany table set with an
inkwell and a crystal vase full of fresh bluebonnets. Nothing
but the best for the passengers on the Prairie Chief. The
waiter has just brought me a steaming cup of tea, with lemon.
Ahead I can hear the chugging of the engine, No. 439, and I can
smell a hint of its smoke. Behind me the porter will soon be
turning down my Pullman bunk, making it with crisp white
sheets, leaving a mint and a complimentary bottle of toilet
water on the pillow. Also in that direction the cook is
selecting a cut of prime Kansas City beef, to be cooked rare,
suitable for the owner's dinner.
All right, it's brontosaurus, if you want to get
technical. It might even be from the Double-C Bar.
We'll soon be pulling into "Fort Worth," where we'll take
on wood and water. I don't plan to get off, since I'm told it's
just a dreary cowtown full of rowdy and possibly dangerous
cowhands, quite unsuitable for a well-brought-up lady. (That's
what I'm told; I happen to know, since I watched it being
built, that it's just a big room with rails and a dirt street
running through it, scattered with wood buildings and backed by
a great holo show.)
Outside my window dusk is gathering. Not long ago we saw a
herd of buffalo, and not long after that a group of wild red
Indians, who reined their mounts and watched solemnly as the
iron horse huffed by. From Central Casting, and on tape, but
who cares? The parlor car is crowded with Texans and a few
returning Pennsylvanians. They all wear their best clothes, not
yet too mussed by the journey. Across from me a little Amish
girl sits with her parents, watching me write. Next to them is
a group of three young single gentlemen, trying not to be too
obvious about their interest in the single girl at the
escritoire. Soon the boldest of them will come over and ask me
to dine with him, and if his line is any better than "Whatcha
writin', cutie?" he will have a companion for dinner.
But not for bed. It would be a pointless exercise. The
service I lately required of Darling Bobby/Crazy Bob was to
render me asexual, like Brenda when I first met her. This was
probably foolish and certainly extreme, but I found that I
couldn't bear the thought of sex, and in fact loathed that
opening that had brought Mario into the world for his short,
perfect time. I had even less interest in being male again. So
I jumped off the sexual choo-choo train and I'm not sorry I did
it. I think I'll be ready to board again any day now, but it's
been a relief not to be at the mercy of hormones, of either
polarity. I may do it every twenty years or so, as sort of a
sabbatical.
As darkness falls and the train rocks gently, I realize
I'm happier than I've been in a long time.
#
Now we've spent some time together, and it's almost time
to leave you. You've met Hildebrandt, Hildegarde, and
Hildething: railroad tycoon, publisher, teacher, syndicated
columnist, bereaved mother and tireless crusader for pronoun
reform. There's really only one more thing worth knowing about
him/her/it.
I'm going to the stars.
What I have is an invitation to make a reservation. I
didn't mention this earlier, maybe it slipped my mind, but
about a week after Mario died I sat down for a very long time
with Walter's pistol, a bottle of good tequila, and one round.
I drank, and I loaded and unloaded the gun, and drank some more
and pointed it at things: a tree, the side of the cabin, my
head. And I thought about what the CC had said about a virus,
and what I had concluded about the veracity of that statement,
and wondered if there was anything I could think of I really
wanted to do? All those other things . . . sure, they bring me
satisfaction, particularly the teaching, but they wouldn't
serve any more as the answer to the question "What do you do,
Hildy?"
I thought of something, thought about it some more, and
hied myself out to the Heinlein, where I asked Smith if I could
go along when he took off, worthless as my skills might be to
his enterprise. And he said sure, Hildy, I meant to ask you if
you were interested. We'll need somebody to handle the
publicity, for one thing, to establish the right spin-control
when it's time to leave, and most especially when we get back.
We'll need advice on how to market our stories with maximum
profit. Hell, most of us will probably need somebody to
ghost-write them, as well. Scientists, test pilots, technical
types, we all get tongue-tied when it comes to that part; just
read the early accounts of the space pioneers. Go see Sinbad
over in the publicity department, see if you can't get him
straightened out. If you're any good, I expect to make you head
of the department in a week. You couldn't be worse at it than
Sinbad.
So this is in the nature of a farewell. All the people
I've mentioned so far . . . not a one of them will go. They're
just not the type. I love them to various degrees (yes, even
you, Callie), but they are Luna-bound, to a man and woman.
"Hansel," "Gretel," "Libby," (who recovered, by the way),
"Valentine Michael Smith;" these will be my shipmates, whether
we leave next year, in twenty years, or in fifty years. The
rest of you are already left behind.
Teaching, railroading, running the Texian, these are all
things I do. But in my endless spare time (Hah!) I do what I
can to further the aims of the Heinleiners and their crazy
project. Result: a two percent increase in inquiries during the
last year. Not exactly setting the world on fire, but give me
time. When I've done all I can in that regard I hang around.
You got a bottle you want washed, a trash pail that needs
emptying, a whoosis that needs polishing? Give it to the
Hildething and it will get done. There is no job too menial for
me, mainly because I'm completely useless at the important
jobs. My aim is to become so indispensable to the project that
it would be unthinkable to leave me behind. Go without Hildy?
Cripes, who would shine my shoes and rub my feet?
And there you have it. I promised you no neat conclusion,
and I think I've delivered on that. I warned you of loose ends,
and I can see a whole tangle of them. What of the Invaders, for
instance? Brother, I don't know. Last time anybody checked they
were still in charge of our fair home planet, and unlikely to
be evicted soon. If we ever get around to it, that's another
story.
What will we find out there? I don't know that, either,
and that's why I'm going along. Alien intelligences? I wouldn't
bet against it. Strange worlds? I'd say that's a lock. Vast
empty spaces, human tragedy and hope. God. Mario's soul. Your
wildest dream and your worst nightmare all could be out there.
Or maybe we'll find Elvis and Silvio in a flying saucer
singing old-timey rock and roll.
Think what a story it'll be.
--Eugene, Oregon
May 2, 1991
When in the course of a writer's career it becomes
necessary to break with an established science fiction
tradition, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires
that he should declare the causes which impel him to the
decision.
This story appears to be part of a future history of mine,
often called the Eight Worlds. It does share background,
characters, and technology with earlier stories of mine, which
is part of the future history tradition. What it doesn't share
is a chronology. The reason for this is simple: the thought of
going back, rereading all those old stories, and putting them
in coherent order filled me with ennui. It got so bad I might
as well give up on this story.
Then I thought, what the heck?
Consider this a disclaimer, then. Steel Beach is not
really part of the Eight Worlds future history. Or the Eight
Worlds is not really a future history, since that implies an
orderly progression of events. Take your pick. But please don't
write and tell me that the null-suits had to have been around
much earlier in the series, because you said so in
such-and-such a story. There are probably a lot of stories like
that in Steel Beech. So what?
Somebody once consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds
(I think it was the editor of the National Enquirer). It's a
sentiment I'm sure Hildy would endorse.
-- John Varley
December 1, 1991
ðÏÐÕÌÑÒÎÏÓÔØ: 15, Last-modified: Sat, 11 Oct 2003 07:46:02 GMT