Universe 1 - [Anthology] Read online

  Paul nodded carefully, grin concealed, and said, “And aren’t you some sort of wheel?”

  Randall laughed. “Where you been keeping yourself lately?”

  “Here and there,” said Paul. “You know how it is.”

  “I know,” Randall said. “Or did, once.” He reached inside a vest pocket and removed a damp, yellowed sheet of paper. He unfolded it tenderly. “Let’s see what sort of mistakes you’ve been making.”

  “Snooping again?” Paul knew the paper was blank, but he was used to the game.

  Randall smiled. “Why do you think I’m the First? So I can read about things in the news sheet, a month late?”

  Randall scanned the paper, frowning, the rigid lines cutting deep into the rolls of fat in his cheeks. “According to this, you seem as popular as ever in some quarters. You do not often sleep alone. Tut.”

  “And you object?”

  “Not if you continue to learn your duties as well as you have. You would have made a fine First. If I hadn’t hung around this long, taking up space, you would be First already. But your training will count, even back on Earth.” Randall smiled. The wrinkles of his skin almost concealed its paleness.

  “Huh? Look.” Paul took a ballpoint pen from the desk and let go six feet from the floor. It fell, tumbling slightly.

  “Five seconds. On Earth it would be less than one second. There’s not much spin on Zephyr, grandfather— our apparent gravity is about one twentieth Earth’s.”

  “Well-”

  “We can’t live there. We probably couldn’t walk down to collect our disability checks.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of living on Earth—”

  “So do I get a job as janitor in one of their orbiting labs?”

  “Nonsense.”

  “There’s more to it than that,” Paul said. “Nobody in the third generation wants to go back to Earth.”

  “You?”

  “I don’t give a damn.”

  “You never have.”

  “And probably never will. Not—”

  “Not while there are better things to do? Right. Politics is just a shouting contest, anyway. Wish your father hadn’t misplaced a wire getting that booster ready for the tenth planet probe—he was a born talker. He could handle Elias and his Lib friends right now, and I could rest.”

  “Libs?”

  “Sure.” Randall raised his eyebrows over the coffee cup, looking at Paul. “You don’t recognize it, do you? Same kind of yammering. Bunch of anarchists.” He paused a moment. “Say, you don’t suppose they’ve been transmitting to Earth, do you?”

  “Not likely. Why?”

  “Maybe they think there are still Liberationists back on Earth.”

  “After the Purge Year? Elias has seen the tapes, just like everybody. He knows.”

  “Well, I wonder. There was a lot of Lib talk when we were assembling the expedition—hell, the Libs even had a majority in some countries. Lot of gabble about breaking all functions down to the simplest level, no unified direction. It was just plain luck that I got the position of First in the expedition, despite all the Libs could do.” Randall’s voice pitched higher as he became more excited.

  Randall waved a hand in dismissal. He got slowly to his feet, walked to a wall cabinet and opened the top door.

  “Look,” Paul said, “you decided to expend most of our probes on the tenth planet, when we came so close. And you dropped the programmed study of Saturn, even though it had been planned from the beginning. You had freedom to do things like that. Where am I going to get a job with that kind of elbow room in it?”

  “You will adapt,” Randall said mildly. “Coffee?”

  Paul shook his head.

  “You should cultivate a few bad habits. They can sometimes be very pleasant companions.” Randall stood for a moment, staring blankly at the stained cup in his hand. A timer buzzed and he filled the cup with a brown, oily liquid.

  “What’s all this talk, Paul? It sounds like—say, were you at that kids’ tea party of Elias’s?”

  “For a while.” Paul unconsciously began to tap his knee with a forefinger.

  Randall laughed. His skin wrinkled even more. He had a way of turning a laugh into a series of harsh barks that irritated Paul after a few moments.

  “It’s funny?” said Paul.

  “Of course. My God, Elias must be the twentieth fool I’ve had to handle on this trip. On the way out, there were fifteen at least. Boredom, Paul, that’s what does it. The only solution is to keep everybody hustling, keep their hands busy, so they don’t have time to listen to idiots like Elias.”

  He laughed to himself once more and sipped some coffee.

  “This trans-Pluto shot was the only good thing the Libs ever did—God knows why. Probably wanted to draw attention away from their regime; it was running into trouble even then. So we matched velocities with this comet, hollowed out living space in the core, set up converters for methane and ammonia—all that while the Libs were being sandbagged with problems they didn’t have a prayer of understanding, the fools. And just when we got started out on the 67-year orbit, back on Earth the Libs lost their shirts. Ha!”

  Randall slapped the coffee cup decisively on the table top, slopping some over the side to form a pool at the base. He stood there for a moment, staring into space, reliving dead victories—and then sat down.

  “Probably a lot of Libs left in this rock, too. Passed the same garbage on to their sons, waiting to—well, doesn’t matter. They haven’t got any choice.”

  “No choice?” Paul said. He had heard the song and dance about the Libs before; it didn’t even register.

  “The tenth planet, boy,” Randall said with a grin.

  “Omega.”

  “Yes, Omega, end point—but that’s not official, just a name we slapped on it. Have to let Earth do that.”

  “We found it, we name it.”

  “Maybe. It was just blind luck that we came so close to it. Too close, though, as it works out.”

  “Huh?”

  “We lost orbital velocity when we passed through Omega’s gravitational field. Zephyr isn’t on its original ellipse any more. When we approach the sun this time, we’re not going to make the turn out at Venus’s orbit. We’ll zip right in, past the orbit of Mercury. We’ll be so close to the sun our ice mantle will boil away in one go.”

  Paul leaped to his feet—and then, wonderingly, sat down again. He had felt a sudden, desperate loss, and for the life of him he could not understand why.

  “Quite a change in the orbit,” Randall went on.

  “No moon,” Paul said.

  “Right, Omega had no moon, so there was no way to get a precise measurement of its mass. Without that, we couldn’t estimate the angular momentum we’d lost with respect to the sun. It wasn’t until we got a good referent on the Jupiter-Earth-sun triangle that we knew for sure.”

  “We’ll fry,” Paul said.

  “Certainly. If we stayed.” In the silence that followed Randall drained his cup, not noticing the rigid set of Paul’s face. After a moment Paul relaxed and shrugged and said:

  “So it goes. I guess I’d better sweep the corridors tonight. I’ll need the experience.”

  “I’ve got good contacts on Earth, old friends. I’ll get you a decent position. I’ve started looking into it already. The rest of the expedition might not do so well, but my own grandson will—”

  “Yes, what about the rest of them? Why hasn’t this been announced?”

  “I don’t want a panic. It’s easier to deal with Elias and his crowd than it is to handle this rock when it’s full of jittery people.”

  “Maybe so,” Paul said. “I think I’ll have some of that coffee now. And a cigarette, too—might as well pile it on.” There was a note of tension in his voice. Randall, smiling, did not catch it.

  * * * *

  Central Computing: three levels in, sensor heart, pulse-taker of a west wind.

  Paul asked: define m, catalog submatrix,
sum rule for parameter range zero point three to one four point five, call subroutines alpha overgroup thine, plot hemispherically, display, execute, charge: able baker charlie.

  The first time, he made an error. The silicon-germanium-tellurium gestalt cogitated, conjured, went back to his instructions to verify. Yes; wrong. The light green screen displayed, in typewriter script, swive thee.

  Paul corrected the programming fault, entered it again. The question now read in English: “What is the mass of the solid, usable material within practical distance of Zephyr? Time average required for next month over all known orbits. Display the result as an integrated sum over a range of geometrical surfaces.”

  The machine pondered, collected; the result came. Paul watched the neat hemisphere form and made a few notes. He logged the information and began to set up a complex rate equation, using the data already acquired.

  “My, at work as well as play,” Zanzee said. She walked down the narrow aisle between computer readout stations. (The room was among the first bitten out of the rock, done in a hurry, and thus crowded.) Her chocolate-colored skin looked freshly scrubbed. “Where do you find the time?”

  Paul waited for a set of numbers to be punched out. He sat on a stool, legs awkwardly crossed. With elaborate casualness he looked up. “Haven’t seen you for a while. How’s it going?”

  “As usual. Your own work?”—pointing and reaching— “or more—”

  “Private,” said Paul, scooping up the notes. “Self-education.”

  “All.” She arched an eyebrow. “A grandson of the First takes time for research?”

  “Not research. Amusement.”

  Paul moved to tilt against the console behind him— not a hard operation in low gravity, even on the sticklike furniture—and watched her. Her hips were even fuller than he remembered. No freckles, a real sister, but, yes, very fine.

  “Want to share a room again?” he said. “I’m free.” It was direct, but what the hell—

  “I’m sure you are. I’m not.” She looked away, at the next console booth.

  “Get free.”

  “I’m getting pregnant.”

  “Dumb. You’ll have enough trouble readjusting to Earth without a kid; your first, at that.”

  She turned abruptly, black hair swirling out and slowly falling back into place. Paul had always liked that hair; he had even liked the frown she made—it looked like a child’s impression of an adult getting angry.

  “We’re not going back. You’d know that if—”

  “Yeah, maybe we’re not,” Paul said languidly.

  “You—” She stalled for a moment, the edge of her attack blunted. He had always enjoyed playing such games with her. “You’d care about it if you ever grew up. You weren’t planning to settle here, ever. So you don’t mind if we go back to Earth. It just means more territory for your—”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Oh! Compared to you, Elias is a prince. He acts; he’s not afraid.”

  “So Elias is going to be the father?”

  “No!”

  “Pity. That’s just what Earth needs, more like Elias.”

  “But we aren’t going—”

  “Oh yes. Forgot.”

  “Paul.” Zanzee’s mood suddenly changed; the fire left her eyes. “We know each other.”

  “To say the least.”

  “No, I mean . . . emotionally, not the other.”

  He nodded, wondering why women—no, girls—never liked precise nouns.

  “Your support would mean—”

  Paul stood up, righting the stool. “Why, Zanzee”— he did a little two-step shuffle, waving his hands—”you know I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout politics.” He made a flourish, folded his notes and tapped them into his right breast pocket, and was gone.

  Paul slept alone that night. And dreamed, so:

  A corridor, endless. Above, it is raining. The rain slaps against the roof of the corridor, beating out little tunes, and the corridor leaks, and the rain deftly drips inside. There are buckets to catch it, but they are out of place, and the rain falls unimpeded to the floor.

  His nose to the floor, wet and muddy, the black ghost prowls the corridor, sniffing. The ghost is thin, tall; a black veil covers his face and his hands are actually paws, like an African monkey seen in a frozen 3D scan, or a large ape.

  The black ghost ripples, and looks for an end to the corridor. He has searched for many decades (perhaps seven), but the corridor is endless, as is the rain.

  The corridor is saturated. Paint peels. Flakes of gray cling to the robes of the black ghost, and he breathes heavily.

  The corridor ends.

  Below is nothing; ahead, above: nothing. Warm comfort of the corridor behind. The ghost faces the void, staring, shivers. Rubs his eyes; Paul’s eyes; back to ghost eyes, wet from the rain.

  A red halo-

  Central Computing—

  For man can rhyme

  The tick of time.

  Black ghost, white ghost: grapple, tear gobbets from each other’s bodies. Shriek in the tumbling darkness. Aged white ghost, spinning madly away with arms wrapped—

  * * * *

  Opening his eyes, Paul rolled over. He faced Elias.

  “What the hell do you want?”

  “Paul, are you alone?”

  “No, I’m playing cards with five Chinamen.”

  “I—”

  “Well?”

  “Your grandfather—he’s called Earth. The ships are on their way and they have added boosters. They’ll arrive in weeks, two weeks.”

  Paul rolled out of bed. His room was bare, naked; walls of slate gray, a single shelf of microfilm canisters the only decoration. The first three volumes on the shelf were: Being and Nothingness, Soul on Ice, Swann’s Way.

  Paul said, “And?” with a touch of weariness.

  “We’ve got to stop him. This’ll be the end of everything. He must’ve heard of our plans. Did you tell him? Not deliberately, I mean, just let it slip out.”

  “I didn’t have to.”

  “Oh. Uh . . . well, we can’t go back to Earth. We’ll be nothing there.”

  “I will. Even Randall will, but he doesn’t know it. They’ll probably grant youa priesthood.”

  “Can’t we forget—?” Elias held out his hands, and Paul was surprised to see they were quivering. “We have to-”

  “What are your plans?” Paul picked up a box of dried apricots from the end of the shelf, sat down on the bed and began eating them. (Adream: had it been about brown, soft Zanzee? Probably not. Too old for that kind of dream.)

  “I’m going to position my men around. We’ll take the main points, the shuttle tube, hydroponics, internal maintenance, communications, computing. When the ships get here, they will have no choice. Either leave us alone, or wait for us to surrender. They can’t get through a mile of ice.”

  “And only a few at a time can come up the tube,” Paul said.

  “Right,” Elias said, forcing a harsh note into his voice.

  “You’ll kill my grandfather?”

  “No, never! There’s no need for that. We’ll only, well, hold him. Until things are safe.”

  “Until he dies?” (About Melinda? Brown freckles, red hair?)

  “No. Just until Earth decides to leave us alone.”

  “If you free him, you’re a fool. Randall is still the First and he has a lot of support. The older people like him, and they want to go back. Hell, I like him myself. He’d make two of you. At least.”

  “Together, we can handle him.”

  Paul laughed then. He’d been saving it since he woke up, and now he laughed directly in Elias’s face.

  After a moment Paul said: “Randall asked me to keep this secret from you, but I guess I can’t any more. We can’t stay here. I know you don’t understand things like orbital dynamics, but—well, Zephyr will come closer to the sun this time than before. The layer of ice will boil away. We’ll have no more raw materials for our hydroponics tanks, no
more fusion fuel, and we’ll fry.”

  “Are you . . . sure?”

  “Positive.” (White ghost? Black ghost?) “I checked it myself.”

  “Then...”

  “Then you’d better pack your bags.”

  Was Elias going to sob? The great prophets of the past had wept frequently.