Mindbridge Read online

  045 10,00,2 00 8.5,8.5,3.0 the Earth can stay on

  050 05,05,1 00 8.5,8.5,3.0 another planet.”

  055 00,00,0 00 7.5,7.5,3.0

  TIGHTEN TO (t=55) “This is the

  065 00,00,0 00 2.0,2.0,2.0 machine that gave humankind the stars.”

  SKEW ROLL (t = 70) “The Westinghouse

  075 00,00,0 -180 1.5,1.5,2.0 . . . Mass Spectrograph.”

  HOLD THIS (t = 72) “The two Tamers,

  CONFIGURATION TO walking together, approach

  101 00,00,0 -180 1.5,1.5,2.0 the machine. They are carrying

  great armloads of

  SLOW rock, which they dump onto

  SQUEEZE/SKEW/DROP an already-large pile beside

  102 00,00,0 175 1.4,1.4,1.9 the machine

  103 00,00,0 -170 1.3,1.3,1.9

  104 00,00,0 -166 1.2,1.2,1.8 VOICE OVER:

  105 00,00,0 -163 1.1,1.1,1.8 (t = 88) “They don’t use

  106 00,00,0 -161 1.0,1.0,1.7 the Westinghouse Mass

  107 00,00,0 -159 0.9,0.9,1.7 Spectrograph to build brick

  108 00,00,0 -158 0.9,0.9,1.6 houses. They use it to

  109 00,00,0 -157 0.9,0.9,1.6 isolate pure elements . . .

  110 00,00,0 -156 0.9,0.9,1.6 to build the machines . . .

  111 00,00,0 -155 0.9,0.9,1.6 that will turn this sterile

  112 00,00,0 -154 0.9,0.9,1.6 world. . . into a paradise

  113 00,00,0 -153 0.9,0.9,1.6 for future generations.”

  BLUR SKEW: (t = 114) “This bank of

  114 00,00,0 -098 0.9,0.9,1.6 dials and switches is a thing

  that ancient alchemists sought for

  all their lives:

  the Philosopher’s Stone.

  HOLD THIS (BEAT to t = 125) “Our

  CONFIGURATION TO interest is not in changing

  122 00,00,0 -098 0.9,0.9,1.6 base metals into gold, the

  alchemist’s dream. Rather,

  OUT AND SLIGHT UP we change rock into useful

  (clear rock pile) metals.”

  123 00,00,0 -098 1.0,1.0,1.7

  124 00,00,0 -098 1.2,1.2,1.8 While VOICE OVER talks,

  125 00,00,0 -098 1.4,1.4,1.9 the Tamers are filling the

  126 00,00,0 -098 1.7,1.7,1.9 machine’s hopper with rock.

  127 00,00,0 -098 2.1,2.1,1.9

  128 00,00,0 -098 2.7,2.7,2.0 “The Westinghouse Mass

  129 00,00,0 -098 3.5,3.5,2.0 Spectrograph has an inside

  temperature so high that

  HOLD THIS this rock is broken down

  CONFIGURATION TO into individual molecules.

  143 00,00,0 -098 3.5,3.5,2.0 It is able to sort through

  these molecules and collect

  SLOW SKEW those of any given element.”

  (to other side of machine)

  144 -096 (SAFETY NOTE: During

  145 -094 this skew the holo team

  146 -092 must be careful. Y-axis

  147 -090 cameraman must wear

  148 -088 thermal armor, as he comes

  149 -086 within two meters of the

  150 -084 machine’s exhaust beam.)

  151 -082

  152 -081 At t =156, one of the

  153 -080 Tamers sets the machine’s

  154 -079 controls.

  155 -078

  156 -077 (t =156) “Here, the

  machine is being set to

  HOLD SKEW TO produce the element silver.

  161 -077 3.5,3.5,2.0 (BEAT to t = 173) “It will

  process all that rock in

  approximately fifteen seconds.”

  FASTER SKEW, SLOW

  SQUEEZE & DROP

  162 -066 3.3,3.3,1.9

  163 -055 3.1,3.1,1.8

  164 -044 2.9,2.9,1.7

  165 -033 2.7,2.7,1.6

  166 -022 2.5,2.5,1.5

  167 -011 2.3,2.3,1.4

  168 000 2.1,2.1,1.3

  169 011 1.9,1.9,1.2

  170 022 1.8,1.8,1.1

  171 032 1.8,1.8,1.1

  172 042 1.8,1.8,1.1

  173 052 1.8,1.8,1.1

  174 060 1.8,1.8,1.1

  175 067 1.7,1.7,1.1

  176 073 1.6,1.6,1.1

  177 077 1.5,1.5,1.1

  178 080 1.4,1.4,1.1

  179 081 1.3.1.3,1.1

  180 082 1.2,1.2,1.1

  181 082 1.1,1.1,1.1

  182 082 1.0,1.0,1.1

  183 082 0.9,0.9,1.1

  184 082 0.8,0.8,1.1

  HOLD THIS (t = 188) The nugget

  CONFIGURATION TO appears in the output

  187 082 0.8,0.8,1.1 hopper.

  BLUR SQUEEZE VOICE OVER: “Silver!

  188 082 0.3,0.3,1.1 (BEAT to t = 191) “Or

  any other useful metal.

  HOLD THIS “Tamer engineers will

  CONFIGURATION TO use these metals to build

  197 082 0.3,0.3,1.1 tools. . .”

  CUT TO: (t = 198) “Tools to build

  STOCK AED CUBAGE the machines for geoformy.

  44/5398/0329-0345 (Tamer “And the elements to go

  using lathe on surface of into those machines will

  unimproved planet) FADE TO: also come from the

  214 HOLD STATIC Westinghouse . . . Mass

  REPLAY OF t =30 TO Spectrometer.”

  219-221 SLOW FADE TO (t = 214) VOICE OVER:

  STOCK AED CUBAGE

  79/4760/0000-0008 (Lush “And given a year or

  landscape, double sun in sky) two...

  (DEFIANTLY)

  CUT TO: “or ten-or fifty-“

  230 (BEAT to t = 221) “There

  STOCK WEST CUBAGE will be a new world where

  PR001/0000-0010 men can live.

  (Westinghouse sigil in front of

  deepspace background. (BEAT to t = 226)

  18°/sec. skew.) “Another fresh start for humankind.”

  232 KEY IN

  WESTINGHOUSE (t = 230) VOICE OVER:

  ANTHEM “Westinghouse.

  239.240 FADE OUT.

  (t=232)“Building better worlds...

  (t=234)“For you.”

  25 - Carry the Seed

  (From Sermons from Science by Theodore Lasky, copyright © 2071, Broome Syndicate. Reprinted from the Washington PostTimes-Herald-Star-News, 25 November 2071:)

  . . . the original plan, which was to use the LMT to set up automatic geoformy apparatus on one of the terrestrial companions of 61 Cygni A. People would then be transported to the new world by a so-called “generation ship.”

  Take a cylindrical asteroid about ten kilometers long; hollow it out and geoform the inside. Spin it slowly, end over end, to produce artificial gravity. Give it a propulsion system and aim it at 61 Cygni, with several thousand people aboard. Depending on which design you used (i.e., how much money you could put into the project), the trip could last anywhere from twenty years to a thousand.

  Hence the name. Generations, dozens of them, could be born and die along the way.

  A woman named Jerry Kovaly made this cumbersome arrangement unnecessary.

  Dr. Kovaly was a biologist in charge of the life sciences phase of geoformy on 61 Cygni A, in the late 2030’s. (It was she who coined the term “xenasthenia” to describe the sudden weakness and disorientation a Tamer feels back on earth, if he’s eaten food grown from another planet’s soil, when the alien molecules slingshot out of his body.)

  61 Cygni A was an easy planet to geoform; people could walk unprotected on its surface almost from the start. It was the first planet whose native plants proved edible; it was the first planet on which a human child was conceived.

  In the course of a routine physical before her fourth jump to 61 Cygni A, it was discovered that Dr. Kovaly was several weeks pregnant. There was a slight scandal, since her husband earthside was sterile by vasectomy: he sued for and was granted a divorce when Dr. Kovaly declared her intention to go ahead and have the baby (never revealing the father’s identity).

  She also decided to give birth on 61 Cygni A, partly because her work there was in
a crucial stage, partly because the idea of being the mother of the first human born off-planet appealed to her.

  The baby, a boy, was born without any complications. A few weeks later Dr. Kovaly’s time was up for that jump. She gathered together the three others who had jumped with her, the “black box,” and her new son, and they returned to Earth.

  At slingshot time, the child disappeared.

  It was an alien artifact.

  Besides being a terrible shock to Dr. Kovaly-she had been nursing the child at the time-the disappearance was scientifically and philosophically mystifying. Careful of the embryo’s health, Dr. Kovaly had not eaten any native food while pregnant, nor drunk any native water. So the molecules that passed into the embryo through her placenta were all Earth-molecules. The baby, made completely of Earth-stuff, should have stayed on Earth.

  Dr. Kovaly went back to 61 Cygni A and deliberately got pregnant again. She gave birth on schedule. But this time-in an action some people condemned as heartless-she left the baby outside the black-box radius when she returned to Earth.

  And the infant stayed on 61 Cygni A, permanently. The first human to be a bona fide citizen of another planet.

  So there was an easy alternative to the generation ship. The AED began recruiting large numbers of women . . . a policy the AED first characterized with the motto “Carry the Seed.” A combination of ribald backlash and sarcastic comment made them drop the motto immediately.

  But the policy still stands. The AED recruits three times as many female Tamers as male, and requires that they bear a minimum of two children on two different planets (and two more, if they want to extend their enlistment to “full career” status).

  Genetic analysis is one of the most hard-to-pass tests that a potential Tamer must face. Any genetic predisposition toward diseases on the AED blacklist will fail a candidate, no matter how well-qualified he or she may be otherwise. And careful genealogies are kept on all geoformed planets: theoretically, no pairings are allowed between people more closely related than third cousin. This has not yet become a problem, since first-generation citizens of the Worlds are de facto employees of AED, intensely loyal, and dependent on the Agency from cradle to grave.

  At this writing, there are 7,498 Worlds citizens, mostly first generation (the number is expected to double every decade or so for some time). The oldest is, of course, Primus Kovaly, who at the age of thirty-one has fathered five children. Reportedly he has resisted the temptation to name any of them Secundus.

  26 - Autobiography 2051

  (From Peacemaker: The Diaries of Jacque Lefavre, copyright © St. Martin’s TFX 2131.)

  15 Sept 2051.

  No entries for two weeks, been busy. Will try to get it all down.

  61 Cygni B is an interesting place, more temperate than Earth, mostly forest and ocean. Gus and I made the jump in shirtsleeves with a two-man floater, Gus holding the black box. Considering how peaceful the planet is, we could hardly have landed in a worse situation.

  We appeared about a meter over the surface of an ocean, and were immediately dashed by a huge wave. A storm was in progress. Both of us managed to hang on to the floater while it bobbed around in the foam, but it seemed to take forever to get aboard it. Like trying to reboard a capsized canoe.

  I did finally get aboard and strapped in. Then I helped Gus up; once he was in the saddle I raised the windshield and we were off. Wanted to get above the storm before locking in on the homing beam. Took a long time because the winds were powerful and unpredictable, but eventually we were in the sunshine and locked in, about 800 kilometers (it turned out) from Starbase.

  We flew for almost four hours. Only one sun was up, and we got thoroughly chilled. Occasionally we passed over islands (including one perfectly round atoll), but otherwise there wasn’t much to see.

  Starbase is a little more than one kilometer inland, built on the bank of a wide slow river, surrounded by a sort of pine forest. Most of the buildings are made of logs and the streets are of crushed shell. A quiet, orderly place except for the children, of which there are thousands. It was early afternoon when we landed, though, and most of the youngsters were napping.

  We floated down into a square in the middle of the town, where two people were playing a kind of bowling game. They didn’t seem surprised to see us, but pointed out the AED headquarters for us. It was a little cabin on the other side of the square, and the administrator wasn’t in (home for lunch and siesta). But he’d left a note pegged to the door that told us where our mates were.

  The couple in the square sent us off in opposite directions: Gus toward a woman named Hester and me toward Ellen. We tried not to move with unseemly haste.

  Ellen was waiting for me with a pot of herb tea and the disconcerting news that she was a little off schedule. According to her morning checkup, we’d have to wait at least eight hours.

  We drank the tea and talked for a while. Ellen was in planetary atmospheres, specializing in tertiary weather control (so she could get a job on Earth if she got tired of being a Tamer). This would be her fourth and last child; the AED let her have it on 61 Cygnus B so she could take part in raising her eldest daughter.

  I couldn’t pronounce her last name, which was African and had a strange “click” in the middle of it (her grandfather was a black American, descended from slaves, who fought in the second Revolution).

  She was intelligent and attractive, and under other circumstances I would have enjoyed her company very much. She sensed my agitation, though, and suggested I take a stroll around Starbase: see the sights and come back in the evening.

  The pills they give you to prepare for a breeding mission are supposed to maximize sperm count and motility, but as a side effect they induce a powerful and tenacious state of priapism. So being alone with a beautiful woman whom you can’t touch is rather unnerving.

  I wandered around town for a few hours, plenty of time to see everything. In a nursery playground I saw a little black girl, about six, who might have been Ellen’s daughter. I wondered whether they had invented terms for relationships like “the man who is my brother’s father but otherwise not related.” Stepfather seems inadequate.

  Outside of town I inspected the power station and logging camp, then borrowed a boat to row out into the river. Went back to the logging camp and helped a woman saw down a large tree. My time on the planet was costing the AED more than ten dollars a minute; they might as well get some work out of me.

  Around dusk I went back into town. This time of year, it never got really dark, because 61 Cygni A came up about the time B set. It didn’t provide much heat, but was a good deal brighter than the full moon.

  I found the planet’s only tavern, a small adjunct to the adults’ dining area. It was almost full, with five patrons. One of them was Gus.

  He had accomplished his mission, of course. Hester was out on the river, checking crab pots; she was going to meet him here for the night’s party (everybody coming to watch us disappear). I started to tell him about my problems with Ellen, but he said he knew. The whole town knew.

  The only drink was a strong sour beer that they served with ice, flavored with fruit juice. If you drink it fast enough and are careful to avoid the aroma, it’s sort of like a Berlinerweiss. We started talking about that, naturally enough in German, and stayed in German when the conversation shifted to women, our four barmates in particular. And that’s what started the trouble.

  The German was the last straw, anyhow. I haven’t felt so edgy since school days, what with the physical discomfort, anxious clockwatching, drugs screwing up my hormones . . . and comparing my wretched state to Gus’s obvious comfort. And suspecting that I was the object of a certain amount of ribald speculation by the adults on the planet, ninety percent of whom were female.

  Gus has that irritating Germanic habit of constantly correcting your grammar while you’re trying to talk, muttering the proper forms sotto voce. It got me rattled; in the course of assembling a complicated sentence I mana
ged to use the wrong mood, and put the primary verb phrase in the wrong place, with the wrong declension.

  He laughed.

  I slugged him.

  He was more startled than injured. I hit him on the shoulder, not too hard, but neither of us was accustomed to three-fourths gravity, and the blow was sufficient to tip his chair back. His Tamer reflexes took over; he twisted out of the chair, made a soft landing on fingertips and toe, and sprung back up.

  I got out of my chair to help him, anger gone as quickly as it came. He looked at me in a puzzled way and explained that he hadn’t been laughing at my German, which wasn’t bad for one so out of practice, but at the unconscious pun I’d made on the verb schiessen. I apologized and laughed at the joke and tried to explain my mental state. He understood perfectly, he said, but was distant. I wondered what kind of report he was going to file.

  An hour early, Ellen came to the tavern door and signaled me. We hustled back to her cabin. She proved to be a tender and humorous lover. My own performance was remarkable in certain unsettling ways, but she was accustomed to that. She said we would have to get together under more conventional circumstances one day.

  And remarked wistfully that two of her three previous mates didn’t live long enough to keep their appointments.

  Our going-away party was fun, but it was a little strange to be at an affair where most of the people were pregnant (the seven men who were stationed there semipermanently all wore vasectomy bracelets and a haggard look). The steamed “crabs”-if you can call something with twelve legs a crab-were exotic and delicious, a rare treat for the natives as well as for Gus and me. The children eat them all the time, but the adults have to strictly limit their intake of alien protein. Otherwise the slingshot xenasthenia can be fatal.

  At the appointed time we jumped back to Colorado Springs. After a short debriefing we went our separate ways.

  There was a note from Carol in my box, saying she had rented a cottage in Nassau for a couple of weeks. I was to call if I didn’t want to come; she would find another companion.

  There was a Denver-Miami flight leaving the next hour. I managed to get on it, then chartered an aged floater to Nassau. I’d telephoned from Miami, so she was waiting for me at the Paradise Island heliport.

  Tamers don’t make quite enough to stay on Paradise Island, not by an order of magnitude. We took a jinriksha to the place she’d rented on Nassau proper.