Mayflies
Chapter 1

Groundwork

    Once there had been a man, a quietly intelligent family man, but he died. They did their damnedest to pull him out of it, yet only managed to save his brain. For that they found a use. To state it meanly, it became a computer. To state it grandly, it saved the human race.
    But first they had to teach it, just as though it was a schoolchild. Like any bright kid, it asked where it came from. It didn't want to know, in the sense of a hunger for knowledge, but it was bothered by a hole in its data banks, and, as it had been programmed to do, it inquired.
    They replied with the tapes from the lab, and they didn't edit or soften them, because later it would have to deal with even more information that could be even more unpleasant. If it couldn't cope, they needed to know immediately. So they ran the recordings, deliberately risking sensory overload, for good teachers don't describe reality, they show it.

    Gerard K. Metaclura, M.D., Ph.D.: hurrying across the laboratory, he evokes the twenty-eight year-old marathon medallist he was fifteen years earlier. Seventy-four kilograms sleek out his 182 centimeters, many in the legs that won him all those races. Brown hair covers his face as he bends to check a computerized tissue typing. When he straightens, his green eyes flash pleasure. He murmurs thoughtful praise to his assistant, who works eighteen-hour days just to earn a single dazzling grin.
    Side by side, they stroll to the door, past the dusty, blood-stained benches littered with pipettes, electron microscopes, thermal and sound probes, splotched hard copies of journal articles . . . they banter about whose turn it is to fetch the coffee on this sunny morning, the 27th of May, 2277. Each insists it is the other's. Secretly, each believes it is his own.
    Metaclura throws up his hands. "Enough! Let random chance dictate." He digs for a coin, which he flips-too high. It dings off a light fixture and clatters onto the scuffed linoleum. Metaclura stoops for it, but-
    Gotcha! chuckle the earthquake trolls.
   -the building quivers, like a dog shaking off water, and while shrieks and sirens ring in the corridors (instinctively, if mistakenly, somebody screams, "They nuked Frisco!"), the 12-meter-long fixture (which, due to the ignorance of an apprentice electrician, has been supported only by the wires and the soundproof tiling) tears free of its bindings and plummets.
    Squish! Its aluminum edge guillotines Metaclura. Its weight crushes his torso. His head-green eyes bulging and mouth gaping, as though to protest this grotesquery-pops into the horrified hands of his assistant.
    Who screams. And (holding the head-by the hair-well away from his body) vomits. And screams again. And then, realizing that no one will come to his aid, is impelled by an icy detachment, schizophrenic in its distance from his true feelings, to stagger into the adjoining laboratory, where Dr. Metaclura's magnum opus coruscates chromely. 
    It is, in its basics, a life-support machine.
    Dr. Metaclura has spent eleven years adapting it into a device that would save even the most critically injured, as long as they could be attached before death becomes irrevocable. An accident took his first teenage love, a one-car crackup on a lonely road so far from civilization that, although the ambulance found the girl still breathing, ten million dollars' worth of equipment could not keep her alive during the banshee ride to the hospital. Deciding mankind deserved better, he dedicated his career to its conception.
    It resembles a clear, rigid spacesuit with a mini-computer on its back,
    The assistant thrusts him (it?) into it without delay: brain cells die quickly; four bloodless minutes is perhaps the outside limit.
    Closing the faceplate activates it. While an amber ready light glows on the computer, and sterile foam spurts into the empty limbs and torso, micro-sensors imbedded in the plastic ascertain Metaclura's condition in a smattering of nano-seconds. Modulated magnetic fields guide lightweight tubes into the torn, dripping vessels of the neck. At first contact with his (its?) blood, the sensitized tube reacts, and transmits its findings ("AB-") through a thread-thin wire that runs its length. The computer, upon receipt of the message, throws the appropriate switch. Crimson flows the plastic tubing, which feeds directly into and out of the research hospital's blood bank.
    Dr. Metaclura does not open his eyes, blink, and say, "Thanks, I needed that." He is awash in death trauma, which is just as well.
    The assistant, then, having discharged his responsibility to the best of his ability, sprints out of the lab, another scream already tearing at his vocal cords.
    By the time a burly neuro-surgeon brings him down with a flying tackle that wrings involuntary applause from the gawking graduate students, the assistant is gibbering helplessly.
    No one questions the blood on his coat, or the absence of his mentor Metaclura.
    Instead, they sedate him, and his starfish wrigglings limpen into unconsciousness.
    One pudgy, officious doctor tells the onlookers, "It's all over, no cause to be arsky, you can go back to work now." The surgeon reaches for the nearest viphone. Two minutes later, a gurney rumbles down the long corridor, pauses until two smooth-wheeled ordbots have swung the assistant on board, and rumbles off again.
    An hour later, the Bio-Neuro-Chemistry Department Office Manager finds Metaclura. She shrieks. And faints.

    [Sullen coals sulk in a bed of ashes.]

    "Christ Almighty, man," barked Dr. Josephus Goddinger, Head of BNC and perhaps Metaclura's oldest friend, "aren't you getting any displays?"
    "Uh-uh." Mike Robbins was not intimidated: he had a job to do, he was doing it, and he was doing it superbly. Anybody who disagreed could go try to find himself somebody better. "Nothing." He stretched, then wiped the fine sheen of sweat off his forehead. "Flat. Blank. Quiet."
    Robbins' thumb jerked at Metaclura's skull, mounted like a trophy on the life-support device. The suit itself had been removed, as had the helmet. The head sat atop the machine, which hissed and burbled, which clicked and whirred. Though neatened up-the ragged flesh having been trimmed, new capillary attachments inserted, the exterior washed clean-it was a gruesome sight. Those forced to work with it found some consolation in the fact that the eyelids were shut.
    They weren't now, though. Prodded by Robbins' probes, they blinked the rhythm of the top pop song on the charts. When cymbals crashed, teeth snapped.
"He's alive, though," argued Goddinger, "and if he's alive-" 
    "-it ought to be displaying, I know, I know, I've been hearing the same city gas for three months, now." Impatiently, he pried a sensor off the undead skin. The head stuck out its tongue, then frowned. "But nothing's even warm inside, and I'll thumb for that. All right?"
    "You're the expert." Goddinger leaned against the lime-green concrete wall. Its roughness snagged his nylon sports shirt. "His family wants him back." 
    "So give, let them bury it. That's all it's good for now." 
    "But he's alive!" he protested, loyal to the last.
    "Hear they've got a chicken heart in New York City that's been alive for two hundred some years . . . " He shut his equipment bag and told it to wait in the lobby. It trundled away obediently. "Their proof that it's alive is that it hasn't decayed. What can I say? In my professional judgment, Doctor, this man is dead. Termed. Plant him somewhere, and let his family stop fussing." 
    "No." Goddinger set his jaw. "I want his brain." 
    "For what, a paperweight?" A professional, and an expert as well, Robbins was flippant like some people are tall. It was part of him. If one hired the meter-reader part, one got the flippancy for free.
    "No, to-" he stopped himself before he could say bring him back "-uh, run more tests." 
    "Why bother?"
    Facing the wall, he could dab his eyes in privacy, and think of a rationale that at least sounded scientific. When he had it, he turned back: "To find out why the machine failed. It's been a major grant for eleven years, and what do we have to show for it? This!" He swept a hand at Metaclura's pallid cheeks. ."Why didn't it sustain him?"
    "Death trauma. Those 'others you got-" the McLaughlin Research Center contained, at last count, two hundred one chatting, crying, watching, snuffling, reasoning, bodiless heads "-you cut them off under anesthesia, and went out of your way to keep from hurting them. This guy, he's beheaded by a light fixture and impaled by a schizoid who never comes out of sedation. You don't know what the hell the assistant did before booking him up. So what's his name here-" 
    "Metaclura," he said gently.
    "-he thought he was dying, and since it musta hurt like hell, he took off. Death trauma hosed him right out." 
    "Off? Out?" Goddinger frowned. "He's right here." 
    Robbins looked disgusted. "The head is, sure, but him'. The personality-the soul, spirit, life force, whatever-that's skipped." He walked out, pausing only to say, "Plant him." 
    "Like hell," muttered Goddinger. "He stays with me."

    [Coals cool but ashes insulate.]

    As it turned out, Goddinger was only half-right. He did manage to talk the bereaved Metacluras into donating the skull and brain to medical science, but within two weeks of this coup, he was killed by a drunken taxi-driver.
    Goddinger, thus, passes completely out of this story, but he must be remembered as the friend who kept Metaclura available.

    [Cloaked embers linger long, refusing the final chill.]

    To the hospital's embarrassment, no one else "had the slightest interest in probing the secrets of Metaclura's death.
    Yet the pumps pumped and the tubes glistened and supercharged AB-blood whispered through the arteries, veins, and capillaries of the late Dr. Gerard K. Metaclura, M.D., Ph.D.

    [Fuel reserves are found. 
    One tiny spark flickers. 
    A candle in the darkness.]

    Several years passed. The brain languished in a dark, unused cubicle adjoining the laboratory Metaclura used to pace. Once a week a clean-bot dusted the tubes, polished the chrome, and swept the floor. The hospiputer monitored the equipment like a metal mother, ready to clamor for assistance if anything threatened to go wrong. Nothing did go wrong-the device had been well designed, and better built. And through this time, the Average American Taxpayer kept it humming with his generosity, as expressed by Veterans Administration Rehabilitation Grant #RM 383895 297439 0.
    Until the 22nd of March in the Year of Our Lord 2281.

    [A flame dances on black waters in a rainstorm at night. 
    No onlooker would see aflame at all. 
    But it dances on, unconsumed, unquenchable.]

    With trepidation, the Head of BNC gave the Head of Bioputer Sciences permission to remove the late Dr. Metaclura. BNC could not quite shake the feeling that BioPuSci was treading on the borders of the vulgar . . . or the inhuman . . . or whatever. It just didn't sit right; it wasn't the kind of thing that a man could feel good about in the middle of the night, while he's staring at a shadowed ceiling.
    But BioPuSci was adamant, insistent, and persistent. Rhesus monkeys were informative, of course, and the Department would not stop using them as experimental subjects, but . . . they were so limited!
    So in late March of '81, human (it was an important task) orderlies rode the elevator to the research section, where they readied the portable life-supporter, carefully detached sensors, untubed tubes, and then . . . hiss, quick, wrench, god it's leaking, Joe; what the hell do you think you're doing down there?; just cleaning up the mess; for gods sakes man, you're an orderly not a 'bot, you're not getting paid for that; then, rumble, rumble wheeeeeeeh! in the high-speed elevator; here you are, sir, thumb here, there, here, there, and wherever you see an X.
    Harrumph. Thank you, boys, that'll be all, I think. 
    Hands rubbed gleefully behind closed doors.

    [A flame sputters in a circle of lightning. 
    The flame perceives the lightning not. 
    The lightning scoffs at the notion of flame.]

    Given the proper equipment, and thirteen years of training, it is possible to program a three-pound lump of human brain cells almost as though it were a computer. The process is facilitated when two inches of spinal cord still exist.
    The skull, though-and the eyes, ears, nose, throat, all the rest-that is a hindrance. It has to go. No problem. Wheel up the lasers. Zzzzzt! Now, crack it open like a coconut, while preserving, those eighty-six nerves that are available for attachment to peripherals. So . . . with great care, detach each of them . . . brown them off at the ends with a microsecond burst of blinding light-zzzzt! And then, uh-huh, going nice, just sear the bleeders, let's have a microprobe, ah yes, ah yes, precision work, hard to find anybody who cares these days, but when rhesus monkeys cost eight grand a shot, BioPuSci cares.
    Obscene, isn't it? Gray, slimy, and wrinkled like a prune . . . separate the ganglia and plug each into a contact on the mainframe, it takes forever there are so damn many, but ah . . . eight hours later it's done and we can encase it in a plastic box, let's be classy and use black plastic, real black plastic, the kind you can't see because no light comes back at you, be an optical illusion if it weren't for the silvery sockets . . .
    And then . . . good God those are dinosaurs in BNC, look at the antiquated equipment (not even a moment's silence for BNC's budget, which is just as strained as BioPuSci's), hell with this, man, scrap it! Bring on the efficient stuff!
    Yes, that's more like it. Miniature kidneys the size of walnuts (so dependable it's almost a waste to install two, but better safe than sorry); an oxygenator-no, pair that, too-oxygenators the length of a finger and precious little thicker; concentrated nutrients primed to drip! out of their can into this spot here (imagine that, a hundred years of food in a tin can like Campbell's soup used to come in); and the drugs to goose it or slow it; and this; and that; and b'God, boys, think we've done it.
    The latest Metaclura avatar is completely self-contained. It stands one meter high. It is fifty centimeters wide, and as many deep. Its black (real black) plastic braincase rests on a walnut-grained cabinet cast from a similar polymer. This handle opens the cabinet for inspection or for repair. That button retracts a panel to display the life sign meters. If the battery falters, why, reach underneath and probe with your fingers-they'll find a wire. Pull. Plug into the nearest wall socket. Dr. Metaclura will live for you.
    The installation was finished. It was time to program:
    For the easy stuff (alphabets, numbers, hours, etc.) they just injected it with RNA, the stuff of memory, the wonderful protein goop that carries information in the sprawl and twist of its constituent molecules.

    [Flame dances all alone.
    Flame dances in the midst of a tornado. 
    Flame dances in Times Square at rush hour. 
    Flame dances all alone.]

    And, of course, the RNA did the trick. Metaclura's brain had become a competent calculator. After several months of manhandled programming, it grew into a competent computer, which meant its ten billion cells could keep accounts, remember strings of unrelated objects, and do all the other electronic goodies.
    And it only cost twice as much as the manufactured kind. 
    Fortunately, it was much more flexible.

    They were pleased to see how well it processed its own history. A lesser machine could have recorded the data, of course, but this one had analyzed things like emotions and ironies. They'd been hoping for such sensitivity, because to do its job right it would need the insight that electronics couldn't fake, but its deftness with nuances was rare even among living humans.
    They were more pleased when it interrupted the lessons to ask, "Why must this job be done in such a hurry?" and "Why am I right for it?" Again they fed it tapes, not because they were lazy, but because the answer lay in the world as it was, and there was just no way they could simplify the world without diluting the answer.
    So, with a few words of warning, they crossed their fingers, and hoped they wouldn't blow its circuits.

    The dictionary, which claims that news is "the report of a recent event; intelligence; information," is apparently, not consulted by people who disseminate "news."
    To an editor, a producer, or an obscure programmer who slides gibbets and gobbets of data through the InfoNet into the houseputers of those paying the monthly fee, news can best be defined as "death, or failing that, disaster."
    This is what sells papers (or pulls viewers, or attracts time-sharers): Dismembered Bodies Bob Around L5 San Diego! War in China! Terrs Tear Up India! Quakes Quiver Quito! PM Presides Over Orgy! Gabonese Guerrillas Going For Broke! Chief Justice's Tax Returns Show No Tax Returned! Colombian Casualty Count Rises! NY Children Grilled By Auto-Chef! Malaysia Blows Up Over Aussie Bombing Runs! Yes . . . death . . . tragedy . . . ad nauseam.
    People thumb out hard-earned money to learn about others whose luck has faded before their own. Think about it. You're walking down the boulevard on this day in 2293, all fine and sassy in the loving May sun, breezes puffing your hair out, giving it the body shampoo never does, you're perusing the cumulo-glyphics in the topaz sky, and then . . . tee-dum, tee-dee . . . you sashay past a two-meter-tall newspost blinking three front pages on each of its eight sides; as you hesitate you sense but do not hear the high-frequency scream triggered by your approach (this machine, like its brothers and sisters throughout the city, does not love dogs). You tap the button set into the durinum frame; one screen shows all the machine's wares; jab twice when you see what you like. Time bores you; the Journal leaves you cold; but then, ta-da! The guy from the basement of the Morning Press, who hasn't seen sunlight in twenty years because he's either in the bowels of the building or in bed, the guy who scrawls those catchy headlines (whose deliberately contracted misspellings make you grit your teeth and ache to kick him in the cubes), he finally earns himself a king-size Christmas bonus: his headline reaches out and prongs your eyeballs, apparently with malice aforethought:
    RED TANKS RUSSIAN THROUGH CHINKS IN GREAT WALL.
    As addicted to carnage as anybody, you shove your thumb into the slot, listen to the machine snicker as it nicks your bank account for a buck, and whistle tunelessly while you wait 1.3 seconds for it to print you out a copy.

    The scary thing is, though they ignore a lot of the happy stuff, the newspackers don't make up any of the misery. It's all REAL.

    "Why do they print this dog dreck?" grumbled the President. His long, wide hand shoved the paper off his desk, headlines up: RED TANKS . . .
    "That kinda input just makes folks want to output in kind." He paused for a sip of the coffee that steamed in his mug, and for a quick squint through the greenish windows of the Oval Office. Ah, yes, dawn was in the offing. Be a nice day, if it didn't explode.
    Hefting the Agency's daily briefing, he skimmed through its forty pages of printouts. A rhythm was quickly established: Flip-flip-groan*flip-flip-groan*flip-flip-groan*. The Agency analysts were more conversant with grammar and spelling than reporters were, but their message was no cheerier.
    "Today's probability of nuclear war on the sub-continent remains at forty percent, although a front of dissatisfaction spreading out of upper Pakistan may sweep across western India and raise it to fifty-one percent."
    "The Russian threat to raze Peking, Shanghai, and Canton has held the odds that their border dispute will further escalate at a precarious 47 percent."
    "El Salvador's entrance into the nuclear club enhances the possibility that the Caribbean will-blah, blah, blah-significant explosion in the capital city has been attributed to 'misplaced eagerness'."
    The tall, broad-shouldered President did with the briefing what he always did: detaching the sheets along each line of perforations, he wadded them up and lofted them across the office, into the cheerily burping flash basket. Not for nothing had he been an NBA All-Star.
    The kid stuff was depressing enough. Micro-nations with missiles was not a pleasant thought. There were no checks on the sanity of their leaders (except, he thought, patting another briefing from another agency, those that Washington, Peking, and Moscow choose to apply. Remember to send the Veep); they were 'lucied! Honest to God, invading neighbors to reclaim lost lions . . . Jesus. Sooner or later, one of those needled-up buttbungs was going to get a hard-on for Uncle Sammy and blooie! no more Miami.
    But the big stuff was nerve-rattling, too: wild-eyed warriors over in Moscow, ivory-faced Li in the Forbidden City-why the hell had Li allowed his Air Force pirates to mag off Bethlehem's iron-ore Asteroid # 896? Jesus, they'd have to send it back, because Bethlehem was threatening to divert # 917 onto Yueh Ti, over in Tycho. Which would make one helluva mess, and its after-tremors would probably stiff Ivan's finger, too. And since the terrs were still plasting the Kremlin for its asinine decision to culvert the entire Volga into irrigation ditches, it was damn touchy these days. Paranoid, in fact.
    Anger deepening the blue of his eyes, he beat his Fist against his desktop. His coffee mug jittered; a brown geyser drenched the position paper from Nebraska's junior Senator. Damn. What an honest-to-goddamn mess! Seemed he spent half his time convincing one 'bot-head or another to flex his finger. Christ! He hadn't been elected to vent city gas-he'd been elected so Californians could get their homes rebuilt, so low-income families could afford houseputers, so Aspen skiers wouldn't have to breathe shale dust . . .
    But what could he do? He was a good politician-he had been elected to a second term, the first time in 152 years that had happened-but he was not a miracle worker, and the world was full of crazies.
    Sooner or later . . . sonuvabitch, some half-assed jukebox tyrant of an African tribe was gonna press his button, and the people who got bleeped were going to press their buttons, and . . . 
    Mushrooms all over, like a forest after a spring rain, except the rain that fell through the angry clouds wouldn't do anybody any good. Crops . . . seas . . . whatever natural beauty hadn't been raped before then would die, dammit, die (with maybe the exception of the Painted Desert, which both survivors would be able to see at night, too) and there wouldn't be a damn thing he-or anybody-could do to stop it.
    Protection? Yeah, sure . . . send 'em underground, to the shelters and the subways and the deep deep basements, tell 'em. "Wait right there till the air stops sparkling" . . . sure . . . how many years could you live underground, huh?
    Christ! Eight billion people in the world, hooked into the most gigantic, intricate, life-support system ever, living, moving, happy and sad, productive and wasteful-how many Leonardos were out there right then, and how many Last Suppers would they never paint? Eloquence abounded, and ingenuity, and creativity, and . . . thousands of scientists, doctors, technicians-no, millions-working to keep us vibrant past our span of a century-one thumb-sucking 'bot-banger with a gleam in his eye could kapowie 'em all . . .
    The President was very angry, and also surprised-there were strange splotches on his blotter, round wet ones . . .

    Ten minutes later, he slithered out of his bleakness like a snake from under a rock. Survival wasn't in the cards, not for him, nor for his people, nor for any culture in. on, or around the planet. Mankind had been on the tightrope too damn long. The legs of even the best have to cramp; the inner ears of the most assured have to cross their signals . . . nobody can dance on a highwire for three centuries, nobody!
    Blooie, and blowie, and kapowie! Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Four point six million megatons wouldn't leave much in the way of life . . . or of history.
    Fuh history! That finger jabs down, it stops, right in the middle of a sentence: "At 12:45 a.m. on the morning of July 18, 2326, Gen. Kgami Kgamis gave the order to-" 
    Everything gone . . . years in the future, a space-faring race would swing by, attracted by the eerie luminescence, dip into the sterile atmosphere, and say, "Well, looks like another buncha idiots went and done it, wonder did they leave anything to show us what they looked like, what they thought like?" And somebody else would grunt-or wriggle his thorax, or whatever-to say. "Thrugel turds, freep, who cares what they looked or thought like? By the sacred mandibles of the great god, don't you realize it might be contagious?" 
    No. It could not be abided, that erasure. There was too much good in the race. It had accomplished too many things. The artwork. The poetry. The drama, tragedy, comedy of a people raised to believe they were one level down from the divine. The megaliths and monoliths-skyscrapers and bridges-hopes and dreams of 20 billion people, conceptualized in the interplay of the gray cells, materialized out of sweat and pain, laid down for all the ages, all the races, all the worlds . . . no, goddammit, no!
    So get it off grounzro, man! Got a cache you want to keep, you put it where it won't get f'd. Hide it somewhere. Lose it.
    Sure, lose it . . . the whole planet, the Moon, the wink-blinking satellites arching through the night sky, all were going to go! A fireball here, a laser beam there . . .
    Out of range. Sure. But where? Mars? Venus? Termies, both of 'em . . . the solar system would be destroyed; hell, he knew his missiles' targets, and the others, all the madmen with their geiger-goosing hardware, they'd have chosen the same ones . . . every last 'bot visualizing himself as Samson among the Philistines, "I can't live, well fuh you. I'm going to pull the goddamn temple down around your ears, so there!" 
    That left only one place-or rather, it left everywhere but one place-the galaxy minus the solar system. Colonies around other stars. Sure. Mankind living, breathing, creating by goddamn! as it adapts to alien worlds . . . preserving its cultural heritage for all times, and for all peoples . . .
    The President scratched his bulbous nose, and sniffed loudly. Since the election was over, he could ignore the pressure groups. It was time to be a statesman, not a politician. He'd have to call, in every IOU he'd collected during his sixty-three years. He'd spend the next four years repaying extra, favors. But dammit, it'd be worth it!

    "Yes, sir," agreed the science advisor to the White House two hours later, "it's a marvelous idea whose time has definitely come-"
    Kingerly growled, "Its time came seventy-five years ago, but it didn't happen because nobody could see any purpose in it. Those who could, objected to somebody else getting first crack at the lifeboat. Dammit, it's gonna happen now. How do we do it?"
    "Well, sir." The advisor coughed. "Probably the best way is to send out ramscoop ships-"
    "Singular, Charlie. I'm going to have to force this through, probably have to trade all science grants for the next ten years to get it, and even then . . . well, we'll tell them the passengers will, do onboard research, research that'll pay off big in the future . . . still, no way those crowd-pleasers in Congress will give us more than one."
    "Very well, sir. One ramscoop ship. A large, extremely large one, capable of carrying, ah, twenty-five, thirty thousand passengers." 
    "Can it be done?"
    "With last century's technology." 
    "Then we'll do it . . . how long will construction take?" 
    "Quite a while, sir. Ten, fifteen-" 
    "Four." He glanced at his watch. "Make it three and a half."

    "Vasily! How's it going?"
    "Not well, Edward my friend. The Army wants this, the Politburo wants that, the workers are up in arms . . . every time I take a leak, I come back to my desk to find the Chinese putting another million men in the field . . . oy, veh, the stories I could tell-"
    "Well, listen, Vasily, here's the thing, starting July first, that's this year, 2293, we're going to build a ramscoop ship, to colonize planets around other stars, you know?" 
    "You build this at the L5?" 
    "Where else?"
    "The Air Force will not like it, Edward, you know how stiff their fingers get when you people build things in space, they-" 
    "-can station observers aboard, we're not trying to put one past you . . . this time, at least. But what I was thinking, Vasily, is that I visualize this as a space-going museum . . . a cultural vault, if you know what I mean." 
    "Your Agency must estimate as gloomily as ours." 
    "To six dees."
    Papers rustled through the receiver. "Mine says fifty-three percent today."
    "Mine, uh-" scrabble, scrabble, Jenkins, get that off the floor and smooth it out, willya? Thanks "-fifty-two point six percent. Yours is more pessimistic." 
    "We round off."
    "Oh. Well, listen, what I was thinking, maybe you'd like to do the same? It would halve the collection work for each of us, if, uh, we duplicated tapes of what we think is worth preserving, and swapped them, you know?"
    A sucking noise. "Sounds good, Edward. Can your people cover Peking?" 
    "Sure, sure . . . you'll do Istanbul?" 
    "Of course. Edward." 
    "Good enough. Be talking to you, Vasily." 
    "Da, da. If they don't overthrow me, first."

    "So you see, Mr. President, we can achieve your timetable-with precious little to spare, since it's now mid-June-but a problem has cropped up concerning the control system." 
    "Yes?" He didn't want to hear of problems-he hired people to solve problems-he was the President, not the Chief Engineer-but they came to him with their petty glitches expecting him to wave his hands and make them go away. Shoulda run for Pope. "Tell me."
    "The social-science people smell trouble down the road. The journey is one hundred light years long. It's projected to last one hundred and two objective years, give or take a month. The travelers will perceive them as fifteen years, nine months. But, after landing, cut off from Earth, there may be periods of social regression. Dark Ages as it were, and since the colony will have cannibalized the ship, and used its machinery to establish itself, we must make the ship completely automated, and self-repairing, and self-correcting, and capable of lasting a century or two without any maintenance."
    "What's the problem? Those damn laser-missile satellites, they last that long; use the same system."
    "We'd love to, sir, but we need a human brain for the computer-and for that we need your permission."
    "What the hell for?" 
    "It's the law, sir." 
    "Gimme the papers, I'll sign 'em." 

    "The Director of Internal Security is on Line Eighteen, sir." 
    "Yeah." Kingerly pressed the glowing button wincing as he did so; it conjured up images that hurt his eyeballs-and said, "Catamount?"
    "Yes, sir." His voice was warped. "It has come to our attention, sir, that your colonization program will require twenty-five thousand volunteers-" 
    "So?"
    "Our files, sir, name well over two hundred thousand so-called citizens whose loyalty is, shall we say, questionable, sir. Should the unthinkable come to pass, these snakes in the grass-" 
    "Catamount."
    "Sorry, sir." He cleared his throat. "Carried away, very sorry. It has been bruited about, sir, that wisdom might dictate sorting through these and from them selecting your colon-" 
    "Out of the question-this is still something resembling a democracy, you know." He paused. "Just how disloyal are these people?"
    Keeping a tight rein on his zealotry. Catamount said, "In our estimation, sir, we would be better off without them." 
    "Hmm . . . we'll appeal for volunteers in a month or so-figure a million applications-have your boys check them for familiar names. Anybody who's on your list, who's qualified to be a colonist, and who's volunteered of his or her own accord-and don't pressure them or I'll have you hung-gets first priority. Good enough?" 
    "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. And the nation thanks you, too."

    "I see," it said softly, and its words were somber with a sadness no pure machine could understand, much less feign. Humanity still dwelled in that shattered house, even if personality didn't. "But as I remember it-or, to be more accurate, as the data you've input would have it-the race is alive with dreamers and schemers and hardheaded fools who persist in hoping long after the cause for hope has passed. What kind of human will commit self-exile? And what, if you can tell me, will push him?"
    They were delighted by the questions. Exhilarated, in fact. "We can't tell you," they said, "but we can show you one of them." 
    "Is it typical?"
    "Aaah-" They shrugged. "In some ways, yes; in other ways, no. You, of all entities, would know that everything is unique." 
    "You're right," it apologized, somewhat abashed. "Run the tapes."

    Michael Aquinas Kinney-known to some as Mike and to others as Mak, a frequent source of confusion-fell out of bed at the usual time, still lost in the last mist of his dreams (the 'luci had been El Primo, the kind that haunts your bloodstream for hours and hours):
    All aboard, rasped the conductor, all aboard, so they got on, Mak brother Tom sister Gail, then along came a hundred, a thousand, a million more, and they settled themselves inside the bobsled and somebody asked, how do we steer this thing? so the conductor laughed, you don't, as he pushed it away from the L5 Cleveland toward Earth below, if-vacuum didn't get them re-entry would, and Mak twisted around to see that the conductor had stayed behind, the conductor was his uncle Seamus, Seamus the red-nosed drunkard who'd blown his brains out six years ago, the night Mak had refused to accept his collect call, and Seamus was waving good-bye, good-bye, you should have listened when you had the chance . . . 
    Tom, though, being a scientist, stood, raised his arms, and bellowed in a voice loud enough to reach all the huddled masses, he bellowed, I can save you, we can land this, we can survive if you all will just stay put, stay quiet, do not disturb the aerodynamic equilibrium of this vessel, and when I give the word lean to the right, got it, are you ready, no! stay down, hey you, don't-because first a dozen, than a hundred, a thousand people were getting up, waving their arms, kicking the bulkheads, jumping up and down up and down up and down as though to hammer holes in the fleet with the soles of their feet and the vessel was rocking, twisting, bucking like a playful dolphin and centrifugal force was throwing people out and Tom screamed as he hurtled into nothingness, he screamed, I could have saved you if you'd only listened to me . . . 
    And Mak was flying, like a great bird, a condor or an eagle or a roc, huge wings outspread not even beating, just outspread catching the vacuum and riding it in gentle falling spirals and he shouted, hey everybody, we can fly, spread your arms they'll turn into wings we can all glide down we'll be all right hey, don't-because they flew directly at him and seized his wings, his tail feathers, seized them with greedy grasping hands and he said, hey no, hey wait, but their voices drowned his out, their weight crushed his buoyancy, the spiral straightened into a dive, the roc was now a rock, and he wailed, you could have saved yourselves, you didn't have to take me down with you, why didn't you save yourselves, why didn't you listen?
    His right elbow hit the orange wall-to-wall carpeting and woke him up. With a gasp, he rolled onto his back and glared at the dusty grill of the houseputer that tyrannized his sky-rise apartment. The Digi-Date(tm) said August 17,2293. "Chauncey," he growled, "I told you, quit dumping me on the floor. What's the matter with you? Programs bugged-up again?" 
    "I do apologize, Mr. Kinney." Deference was its trademark, a deliberate harkening-back, on its manufacturer's part, to the halcyon days of proper English butlers. "When it appeared you would be late for work-"
    "Late? What time is it?" He was sitting up, now, rubbing his green eyes. Grainy crumbs rained onto his fingernails. Seamus' parting smile hung in his mind like a Halloween balloon. 
    "It is eight twenty-three a.m."
    "Ohmigod, I am gonna be late." He tried to snake erect, but his belly had lost its youth. Just like the whole damn world. "Unh." He grabbed the air mattress and pulled, instead. "Chauncey, remind me to flog my bod tonight." 
    "Of course, sir." It was supposed to be emotionless, but Kinney could swear that a snicker pervaded its hauteur. Chauncey knew he wouldn't exercise; he'd been asking it to remind him to work out every day for months, now . . .
    "And while I'm in the shower, fix breakfast-coffee cake or something I can eat while I'm heading for the rail." 
    "Yes, sir." 
    Still shaken by the dream, he stumbled to the bathroom mirror and blearily inspected his face. Though it looked okay-square, firm-jawed, stubbled but a lather of depil would handle that-the eyes, oh God what 'luci did to the eyes . . . puffy, reddened, underlined with curving black slashes . . . he hated using the ScleraClear even if it did work in fourteen seconds . . . raising the cups to his eyes, flicking the switch, AH! gigo ads said it didn't sting; somebody was shaving his eyeballs was what it felt like . . . but you paid a price for everything, and this was what loosening-out cost . . . he shook himself to the brink of awareness, though reluctantly, because it was coy to start the day by staring at his fine Irish features without really seeing them, water trickling in the sink like a baby cutting taxes, rather have it stronger but then the ration'd end before the month did; whiff of methane; damn city said it had to recycle the sewage, couldn't afford fresh water, but why the hell didn't it get all the gas out, not only lost revenue but made smoking on the taxman dangerous.
    Into the shower, "Let 'er rip!" rumble with the sonics, knock the dirt right off your skin, didn't feel right without water, though, but he got that, a fifteen-second jet-oh, yes, now that's what a man needs, ten seconds of tepid and five of ice, geez, your hair wakes up . . . slurp sucked the exhaust fans, whoosh whistled the blowers; he was dry, run a comb through the sandy brown hair, pat down the sides, okay, clothes. "Coffee ready?" 
    "Yes, sir." A panel shifted in the bedside terminal; out whisped steam that rose into evanescent spirals.
    He grabbed the green mug and gulped a mouthful. "OW!" Chauncey'd done it again. "Ten degrees cooler next time, okay?" 
    "Yes, sir." Resignation in its voice, now-purist 'bot. Wouldn't rewrite its Cordon Bleu programming to serve coffee at the temperature its lord and master preferred. "Time?" 
    "Eight thirty-eight a.m."
    "Chauncey, when I know it's morning, don't say 'a.m.', all right?" 
    "Yes, sir."
    And then he was running-the rail would stop, in precisely nine minutes, at the station a good two klicks away-snatching the brown paper bag containing his breakfast, while his other hand jerked his-briefcase off the shelf-out the door, hearing it clickshut behind him as Chauncey manipulated the lock-falling with the elevator, thinking "miss this one-there's another at 9:03 get me there at 9:26 boss'll dice my cubes," dodging scruffy people on the sidewalk, unshaven people who scowled at him, surly people who heard his "scuzeplease, sorry about that, scuze." but who didn't care, no spare room to care, nothing going right for them, all of 'em knowing a terr could plast or a nuke could prong, not up front, maybe, but behind, below, sopping up energy and compassion capacity . . . not one in three had a job to distract him, to give him purpose, and the imminence of a labor camp drained them further . . . poor bastards, he thought. And smiled wryly because six years earlier he'd believed he could help them.
    Puffing, panting, plodding in the end as the rail zipped to a halt, still muttering, "sorry, scuze please, sorry," because it was so goddamn crowded with strange people, oughta run more trains and OhJesusChrist the air conditioning must be broken, smells like a stockyard . . .
    Disgorged at 9:10, the coffeecake in the paper bag crushed to the thickness of the bag's paper, he reached the elevators by 9:15 and the office by 9:20. Damn lucky the building had its own rail station . . . sidling through the overflowing reception area, he nodded at the clerks, the history-takers, and the accountants. "Got some for me, Frankie?" He dropped the crumb-filled bag into the shredder, and watched it head for City Recycling. 
    "Don't I always?" grinned the blonde young clerk.
    "Gimme two minutes to get settled, then input the first." He pushed into his cubicle, flinging his briefcase atop a file cabinet (it slid off to thunk onto the tiled floor), straightening the black armchair, checking that the ashtray was clean, yes, all right, sinking into his own chair (on the other side of the free-form plastic desk. safely barricaded behind telephones, display screen, and souvenirs), with a headshake and a feeling that it would be a very long, very bad day, he folded his arms on the desktop and rested his forehead on them. It's not so bad, he told himself. Hectic, sure. Crazy, yes. But it could be worse. Don't lose hope-it's all you've got. Keep hoping, you'll keep trying. Keep trying, sooner or later the law of averages' gonna send something good your way. Don't lose hope.
    Steadied by the litany, his daily pre-work ritual, he lifted his head, pressed the intercom, and said, "Okay, Frankie, I'm set."
    "Coming at you."
    His screen lit up with a case history as the door opened. In waddled a fat, pimpled teenager with stringy black hair. A medi-beautician could have made her gorgeous, but maybe her parents belonged to the Church of God's Will, which forbade cosmetic or transplant medicine--yes, she wore the Crucifix of the Ugly Christ; she'd have to live with what she'd been born with, or go apostate, whichever. She started talking.
    For the last five years, Mak had been a professional listener, a public ear, paid a handsome weekly salary by a government which had discovered that the greatest gripe of its citizenry was that nobody ever listened-but after a year or so he'd been disillusioned by the insight (which came inevitably to everyone who sat and smiled and murmured and listened) that those griping about nobody listening had, in fact, precious little worth listening to. But then, he thought, in this the Age of the Information Inundation, who does? Be grateful, he told himself, be attentive. Below the surface of his mind rumbled. Remember Seamus. He tried to concentrate.
    "-and so I thought," she continued, in a voice that was but a few notes lower than a mosquito's whine, or a dentist's drill, "that, migod, here was something I could chip, I only got two more years to find a job before they send me to a labor camp, which I'd rather not do, and this'd be a hot input, too, y'know, which the camp won't be, which nothing is, not anything, it's all so dull, so statued-"
    Like you, he thought involuntarily. Fatigue was making him bitchy. In recompense, he broadened his professional smile.
    "-but this interwhatchamacallit travel, from star to star, you know?"
    "Interstellar."
    "Six dees!" Her pudgy hands slapped together like two wet sponges. "Well, I figured that input'd be hotter'n a nuke, y'know? I mean, really, rocketing up to L5 and helping 'em build this ship, they need workers, the holovee said it was gonna be the biggest construction project ever undertaken by anyone anywhere-then boarding that jupe, monstrous ship and taking off and never--NEVER!--coming back, just sailing on, and on, and on . . . " Her eyes had unfocused. Her expression was vacuous. Her mind was-to be charitable-elsewhere.
    Kinney scratched the top of his head, cleared his throat, and waited for her reaction. Noticing none, as she seemed comatose, he twitched the switch beneath his middle desk drawer. Brief electricity shocked her derriere, and stung her awake. "What ship is this you're talking about?" 
    "The one on holovee last night. Didn't you see it?" 
    "No, I don't watch-" 
    "That's right," she cut in triumphantly, "you've got money!" 
    $121.40 in a thumb account? "Well, not-"
    "A job, though, right? And you're not bored, and nobody's planning to send you to a labor camp in Maine!" Fingering the crucifix, she beamed, as though expecting applause. 
    "About this ship-"
    "The Mayflower? That's what they're going to call it, y'know, 'cause of that other Mayflower back in Washington's time. Anyway. It said that anybody who's interested should contact NASA right away and apply, 'cause they're taking people now. It's gonna leave in three years, January First, 2297 they said, but you know these federal projects, they're never on time, always something-"
    Kinney clenched his jaw. His expression startled her into silence. "Sorry." he said, feeling guilty. "Wisdom tooth's acting up. Did you apply for it?"
    "Yeah." Her head bobbed slowly, sadly. "Yeah, I did, last night, over the houseputer, and you know what? You know what those--those nasties said? That I wasn't qualified!" 
    "Well-" a buzz from the clock in his desk cut through the thought that they, no doubt, had standards. Or taste. "I see your time's up. Why don't you come back and talk to me again?" 
    "Sure." Her eyes charted the course to his chair; she abandoned the idea of bugging him, and instead extended her hand. "Thanks, y'know? I feel a whole lot better." 
    The shake was like squeezing a mashed potato still in its skin. "You're welcome. Just keep trying, something good's bound to happen." He tried not to wipe his Fingers on his pants until she'd gone. Then he sank down, added "Just wanted to talk" to her case history, and said "Next, Frankie." 
    "Be a minute."
    "Right." Mayflower, huh? He wondered what qualifications one had to have. Shame he didn't watch HV. Of course, getting loose with a lady was a better way to shut out the hurt of knowing you couldn't cure the world--the door was opening. The screen flickered. He wrote two mental memos. "Good morning!" Professional voice, professional smile . . .
    This one was young, maybe fourteen, a little boy. Clear skin; fluffy red hair; not even peach fuzz; and an angelic profile that soured when the eyes became visible. The eyes belonged to somebody older. Much older. Like a thousand or so. They swept across him, climbed the walls, crossed the ceiling, found nothing worth their respect. "What's the point?" the kid said. 
    "Of what?" 
    "Life."
    "Ah . . ."He closed his mouth, frowned, and leaned back. The client was honestly waiting for an answer. Not impatiently, not hostilely, just . . . passively. Sitting, waiting. No fidgets or squirms; complete presence of mind. Can't say be happy and cause no harm, even if it's true. Too easy. "What are you. Fourteen?" 
    "Yeah." 
    "School?" 
    "I got my BS in math last week, from State." 
    He was impressed. "Going on?"
    "For what? There's no jobs for a mathematician, except in the Army. No grants these days, either. What's the point?" 
    "Of life?" 
    "Of getting my Ph.D." 
    "Interest?"
    The kid made a rude noise. "Math's a strength, not an interest."
    He smiled. He liked the kid's style. "Mature for your age, aren't you?" 
    "Yeah." 
    "What are you interested in?" 
    "Peace, quiet, and big bucks." 
    "Aren't we all," Kinney snorted. "Good luck." 
    "Yeah. I know." 
    "What aged you so quick?"
    "My honors thesis-a computer program for the CIA. I had to, they were thumbing my tuition. It was to predict more accurately the types, amounts, and distributions of casualties in a nuclear war . . . lousy way to lose your innocence."
    "Yeah." He nodded thoughtfully, hearing the memory of a gunshot through a phone. "So what are you going to do?" 
    "Dig a hole. I guess. Gotta get some money, though. Any ideas?"
    Pleased to be dealing with a hoper, he drummed his fingers on the desk while he pondered. "Got a computer?" 
    "Course I do." Disgust washed across the kid's face. "Gotta have one to do anything in math."
    "Share out a couple magazines-daily, weekly, monthly-concentrate on stuff that involves your field as it interacts with the general public." 
    "That sounds like real city gas."
    "Course it does," Mak agreed affably, "but look-you got horses, dogs, jai alai, the daily numbers-people bet jupe on them-you could chip out some way of predicting-" 
    "Wouldn't give my predictions away if they were any good." 
    "Course not, course not-but people'll thumb for your best guess."
    The buzzer cut through the kid's "huh," which sounded like a pensive "huh." like an "I'll give it serious consideration" "huh." He rose, flipped a salute, and headed for the door-where he stopped, turned, and said. "Fuh this shit, man. I'm going to go ride the Mayflower, get my ass out of here."
    Kinney grinned. "That's not a bad idea, either. Don't give up. Ever."
    Once unwatched, though, the smile faded, like snow melting as spring got down to business. Kinney wasn't superstitious, but hearing the Mayflower mentioned by two people in succession said something, almost omenishly, it seemed. Especially considering the dream. Absently, he typed "Just wanted to talk," and said, "Next, Frankie." but his mind wasn't on it, not even when a slim woman in her thirties, thirties as demure as her blue dress, came in and started:
    "It's my husband, you see. I think he's having an affair with another man, and really, I don't-"
    Mayflower, thought Kinney, atypically ignoring her pleasant face and lithe body, space and forever and no more sit'n'listen; no challenge to this, just sit and say "uh-huh, uh-huh, " even if you hadn't heard, hadn't cared, and it gets to where you're statued all day long by strangers who chant familiar laments; you've heard them a thousand times; they bare their souls but you can't distinguish them; you can't help them because they have to do that themselves but they won't; and when you go home, maybe to a friend's place, they want to talk, they want you to listen-'cause nobody's listening anywhere, not even here-and with embarrassment that he hoped didn't show on his frank Irish features, he turned his attention back to the client, who was saying:
    "-if he wanted, really I would, what would it hurt, I already have a boyish figure, and I'd have the change. I'm not a Godswiller so I don't have religious hang-ups, if only I could be sure that-"
    Tuning out, turning away, trusting that the reflexes developed by five years in that very chair would make the right noises at the right times, Mak let his mind wander back to space, to the emptiness, to the Mayflower, the colonists'd be the hopers, the kind who wouldn't give up, whose persistence and optimism would force fortune to smile on them . . . a man could get along in that kind of society; his contributions would improve things, would be more than patchwork repairs on crumbling dikes; uh-huh, good people, and purpose, and a reason to hope; uh-huh, yeah, now what's this-
    "-so," she finished, "should I try it?" 
    He shrugged. "What have you got to lose?"
    Her cheeks reddened. "Can you-can you recommend a sex surgeon?"
    "Well, I can't, since I'm not a specialist in medical referral, but if you-talk to Frankie, the receptionist outside? he'll tell you who to go to to find out who to go to. And listen, don't lose hope."
    Frowning, she subvocalized the last half of his penultimate sentence, then nodded, and brightened. "Thank you so much, Mr.-"
    "Kinney. Michael Aquinas Kinney." He half-rose, in deference to her need, which he knew with a pang he hadn't come close to fulfilling. "Any time. It's my job." 
    But not for much longer. Frankie would complete her file, so he told the intercom, "Gimme ten minutes," for though he had never defined his personal Utopia, he sensed that this might be it, paradise would be lost if he didn't act fast, and he was already reaching for his computer-link to InfoNet, already addressing his inquiry to NASA, and within ten minutes he was shoving his chair in, gleefully leaving the cubicle early, leaving the cubicle for good, for he had already been accepted. 
    No more listening.
    Time to go do something.

    "Enlightening," it murmured. "Harried creatures, aren't they?" Smugness tinged its tone. "I could deal with that much sensory input, but those poor people . . . they must wander around in a shell-shocked daze. I can see, now, why you're getting all the volunteers you need."
    The condescension should have warned them but, although brain-puters were nothing new, this was the first which they had educated so broadly. And even the all-electronic models managed to imply that they looked down on those they served. Besides, they were on a very tight schedule. So instead they said, "We're going to take you up, now, and start plugging you into the ship. You can get to know your crew better as they arrive." 
    It flickered. "An excellent idea-I was about to suggest it myself."

    Everything vibrated: seats, floor, walls, ceiling, the other passengers; the universe shook, quivered, trembled to stay ahead of the shuttle engines' fury; she couldn't even count how many fingers she had; they blurred together.
    The sound, though, didn't bother her-it was there, all right, loud and angry, but outside, shattering eardrums below, driving birds from the sky in flocks of frantic feathers. The hull was so insulated that only a low rumble fought through. 'And the vibration, of course. It was probably because VIP's often rode up to the L5's. Though junketeers and administration spokesmen and businessmen inspecting factory space could stand being shoulder-shaken by a giant, they had to be able to communicate with aids and secretaries and other limbs of their far-flung empires, so . . . the insulation was good.
    Robin Metaclura closed her fawn-dark eyes and squeezed the armrests of her seat. The crisscross harness chafed her collar-and hip-bones; sweat trickled from the forehead strap. She was positive her long, slender fingers showed white knuckles. It was her first trip up.
    Her last, too. This rollercoaster would disgorge her into two and a half years of work on the Mayflower, two and a half years of inspecting its engines, quality-controlling its guidance system, double-checking its instrumentation, refining its sensory equipment, and, should there be stray minutes in her day, devising in-flight experiments for it.
    And then, after all that effort, after two and a half years of pressure more constant, more intense than that she'd borne through MIT's ivied halls until her grant had ended, after thirty nonstop months of slaving at somebody else's specialty, she'd stick out her tongue at the green-brown-white ball hanging below and watch it dwindle as the Mayflower sped her away.
    Getting out. Leaving it all behind. Krishna, she thought, what a relief. Funny. Never thought I'd be grateful about being thrown out in the street. But I am. Good-bye, publish or perish. Good-bye, early morning classes of numbnuts who took physics only for distributional requirements. Good-bye, faculty parties where drunken chaired professors groped their hands up her tweedy thighs . . . reflexively, she closed her knees.
    Not much chance for solid theoretical physics in space, oh the conditions would be perfect and the ship would have all the equipment she could ever dream of, but to do the work right, and well, one's got to be in touch with one's colleagues and their colleagues and half a trillion shared-out journals dense with the clumsy, clunky English that was the lingua franca of the scientific world . . . once the Mayflower moved off she'd be falling, inevitably, inexorably, behind her colleagues as the time lag for radio transmission lengthened . . . wouldn't be apparent for the first few months, but then . . . and besides, how much material could they--would they?--transmit up, anyway? Not enough, not enough . . . 
    Anxious, nervous, fearful sweat glistened on her olive skin. She wiped it away with shivering Fingers. It was scary to leave home at age eighteen.

    Tired, but too elated to wander off to bed, at least alone, he strolled into the huge cafeteria of the L5 Transient Barracks, and scanned the almost-deserted room for eye-dazzling women. There were none. In fact, the only female around looked about 185 cm and eighty kilos plus. So he shrugged, thumbed up a cup of coffee from the vendor, and walked past the plastic tables with their upturned chairs to where she sat glowering.
    "Hiya." He sloshed his coffee as he took a seat. "Michael Aquinas Kinney, Morale Officer. People call me Mak." 
    She raised her head as if from a daydream. "Oh." She blinked, and rubbed her smooth cheek. The grease on her fingers smudged her pink skin. "Zenna Tracer, Mechanic." She extended a large hand. "What's a Morale Officer?" 
    He chuckled. "It's taken them-" he stabbed a thumb at the ceiling, indicating Mayflower Control "-eighteen months to explain it to me. But it's sort of like, ah . . . it's a lot like a public ear." 
    "We'll need that up here?" She frowned.
    "See, they figure-" he ripped open a serving of sugar and emptied it into his cup, "-there's gonna be some, ah, adjustment problems on this trip, problems that won't ever get input to the psychiatrists and psychologists because people are embarrassed, so . . . " He spread his hands. "I'm supposed to hunt up whoever's unhappy, and . . . I dunno. There's a whiff of city gas about the whole thing. But it is essential-and besides, it's a jupe way to meet fine ladies." After a smiling wink, he sipped his coffee, made a disgusted noise, and added more sugar. "Geez, I wish they'd clean the machine. A mechanic, huh? You must be having the time of your life."
    Her scowl slapped his face hard. "They program you with that catcrap?" He swallowed. "Pardon?"
    "Goddammit, I would love it up here, if it weren't for that fuhng rule about two skills for every person." Her blonde curls rippled as she shook her head. "Trying to make me into a nurse, I can't believe it! I've got no touch. A Ph.D. in applied mechanics, yes; twenty years work on jet engines, yes; but the fuhng instruction booth expects me to be gentle! The technique's okay, because the RNA shots sink it right in-and let me tell you about them-" she peeled back her left sleeve to expose a puffy, reddened biceps "-gotta be allergic, I don't know what else it could be-and the-damn shots don't give you the touch'." She snorted, tossed off her drink, then slowly unclenched her left fist. "Hey, Mak, I'm sorry-shouldn't hassle an important person like you with my petty problems."
    "That's just what I'm here for," he insisted. He leaned back, pleased that Tracer had said "important." He liked that word, he liked it a lot. "Important-crucial-decisive:" his favorite syllables. It was why he'd taken the position of Morale Officer, even though he hadn't wanted to, at first. But they'd needed him, and one liked to make a difference. One ached to have an impact on those one met. There were so many crippled souls, though . . . it was good to be here, with the healthy ones. "You got a problem, come to me."
    "Well . . . " Her eyes probed for eavesdroppers; she bent over the lip of her glass. "Know where I can thumb some top 'luci?" 
    His smile flashed wide and genuine. "It just so happens," he said, "that you have come to exactly the right man. I'm not only a Morale Officer, I'm an entrepreneur." He pushed himself out of his chair. "Come on, I'll set you up." 
    It could be a very good trip.

    "Are you going to win?"
    Sal Ioanni met a pair of blue eyes that instantly shied away. "Hello, dear." What's she so nervous about?" I didn't catch your name."
    "Caroline Holfer," said the younger woman. She had straight blonde hair and dancer's legs; her upper belly's bulge suggested pregnancy. "I have to talk to you because I'm in Level 227 NE, Suite A-4, and it's a lettuce patch, and-"
    Ioanni held up her hand. She was only sixty-three, and Holfer had to be thirty--why did the other feel so much younger? Something undeveloped about her face, something immature, or . . . stunted. "Every room has Central Computer sensor-heads. It has to, to maintain air quality, pressure, and the like. Don't-"
    "But they're watching me" Holfer broke in, "and they searched my luggage, and I thought there were going to be fewer of them out here." Her cheeks flushed; her fine-boned hands locked, and twisted. "Please, help me?"
    "Let's see if I get elected, first. Why don't you sit down, and watch the returns with me?" She patted the chair next to her.
    The screen they scrutinized flickered briefly; new numbers swarmed over its square meter like cars over Times Square. Ioanni--48 percent; Sandacata--31 percent; Hayes--21 percent. Big green numerals; headlines, almost; tomorrow they would be headlines, in the US at least, and back-page fillers everywhere.
    Ioanni fluffed her hair. It was black, heavily streaked with the gray that shaped her image. It's hard to kick a grandmother out of office if you know you're sending her to a Senior Citizens' Farm. Sal Ioanni had used that ruse, and every other available, for over two decades, first as a New York City Borough President for eighteen years, and now up here, where she would be chief civil authority for the next four.
    It felt good. She would have a chance to midwife an entire culture, a society different from any that Man had ever seen. I wonder, she thought, if William Bradford and his fellow Pilgrims felt this same excitement, this same trembly eagerness on contemplating how each decision will influence generations to come . . . it would be an awesome responsibility, but one she vowed to uphold with distinction.
    Marc should have come. He'd always been proud of her political conquests, and not only because his Wall Street law firm profited from them. Rather, he'd been a good friend who'd respected her talents and individuality, and encouraged her to use them.
    Damn shame he hadn't wanted to come. It was like him not to sulk about the divorce. He was so comfortable--a woman grows accustomed to a man after thirty-eight years; he gets to be part of the furniture . . . now the kids, on the other hand . . . her brown eyes hardened. John, he was okay--dull as a houseputer's humor, and that was harsher than it seemed since she'd put up with Marc's dullness--Agatha, well, interior decorating struck Sal as a parasitic endeavor. Benito, though! My God, when the media'd found out the Bronx Borough President's son was a professional pool player! Almost as bad as that day when she'd had to mount her podium, stare through wreaths of tobacco smoke into row after row of cynical faces, raise her voice above the clamoring questions, and announce, "Ladies and gentlemen, Guglieimo, my youngest son, has robbed a Nevada bank and been condemned to organ donation . . . I will not thumb for an appeal." Quickly, she blinked hard.
    The screen flickered again; her share climbed to 49 percent. "Caroline," she said, turning to the huddle of anxiety at her side, "Sandacata doesn't stand a chance, not with Hayes holding steady."
    "Then you've won!"
    "I believe so. Now-" she put her wrinkled hand on Holfer's smooth one "-about your problem-"
    The oval face contorted; Holfer pulled away. "It's not my problem!" she hissed. "It's theirs! They're the ones with the problem, they're the ones who follow me, who spy on me, who come into-it's not my problem, and if you think it is you're one of them and I hate you!" Tears streaming down her face, she spun, and raced away.
    Ioanni sat stunned for a minute longer. A crazy. Did they think we had too few problems that they had to slip us a crazy? I'd better alert Central Medical and Kinney . . . Oh my Lord, I can't send her back. And she's pregnant. Pray God she doesn't warp her kid . . .
    A rueful smile quirked her lips. She'd wanted the job, and she'd gotten it. She should have known that troubles would come with it.

    It was Christmas Day, 2296. Professor Brik Williams and his family-wife, Doreen Jones, whose round face didn't look thirty-three, much less forty-three; eldest son BJ, who'd have been okay if he hadn't had such a mouth on him, a mouth more polluted than the Hudson's, a mouth that would certainly have turned him into organ fodder, which was why Brik had been so arsky to get him off Earth; and then daughter Semile, sweet sixteen, quiet as a carpet but a lot more dangerous to walk over-they were all under the darkened observation bubble of the L5 Transient Barracks, gaping like the other spectators at the approaching bulk of the Mayflower.
    The pilots were maneuvering it next to the barracks so they could string gangways from one to the other, and then start accepting the 25,000 passengers who'd have to board within a week, if it were going to sail on January l, 2297, as scheduled.
    It was huge. 1794 meters long, 470 in diameter, a metal-plated cigar meant to be lit by a sun and clenched between a black hole's teeth. It had three hundred twenty-six rings of portholes, one ring for each level, and at the moment every circle of Plastiglass was a burning eye staring back at the starers. Between them rose antennae of every conceivable form: T-shaped, cruciform, dish, ladders . . . wires snaked from their bases to service hatches . . . other wires wormed out of the hatches to undulate to the nose of the ship, where, amidst a ring of fusion engines, the maw of the hydrogen scoop smiled at the universe. The aft end was flat, and from that plain protruded more engine nozzles, these also flared for propulsion and guidance.
    "Shee-yit," said Williams softly, his arm tight around Doreen's girlish waist. The view gave him the feeling of spaciousness, that Montana never had. He couldn't wait to board, to leave, to land-he hungered for room in which to breathe, explore, and grow. "Think it's big enough?" 
    Doreen's brown eyes were wide; she and the kids hadn't reached L5 till the week before-their training had been ground-based-and this was her first glimpse of the Mayflower. "Uh-huh." She snuggled closer to the man she'd met twenty-two years earlier, the man who'd welcomed her to Yale University with a water balloon dropped from a third-story window. ("I couldn't figure out any other way of attracting your attention in a hurry," he'd explained later.) She didn't see the ship as a cigar, though. No, not at all. In fact, what she saw it as would impel her to drag Brik to their tiny barracks cubicle and there spend an exhausting, but utterly delightful, two and a half hours. "Home sweet home," she murmured.
    "Methed-up moon suit is what it is," snarled BJ, ever obnoxious. He was tall, taller even than his father's 190cm, and he glared down into Brik's coffee scowl. "Colony ship they call it, shit! Rail to hell's what I call it. They just getting us on there t' term us, y'know?" 
    "One more word-" began his father.
    "And what, daddy dear? You gonna prong me topside the haid? Just try it. Arms aren't long enough, old man, old short stuff. Just try it, come on." He lapsed into a shuffle-footed boxer's pose, fist guarding his face. "Come on, come on." 
    Semile kicked him in the knee, and as he hopped one-footed, swaddling the injured joint with his two-octave hands, she smiled warmly and said. "BJ, you're embarrassing us all. Stop it-" 
    "Ah clear you, girl."
    "Talk standard, BJ," she replied. "No, better yet, don't talk at all."
    Brik and Doreen exchanged resigned shrugs.
    Like a crotchety beach ball, Ogden Dunn bounced across his cabin. Trying to master motion in that strange gravity, he listened to his small sore feet smack on the metal floor, wondered when carpets would be issued, and from time to time stopped all action, even breathing, so he could find out if any sound penetrated the bulkhead.
    Ogden Dunn had hated noise for all his fifty-six years. It was bad for the health. It disturbed the nerves, upset the tympanum, ruined digestion (he loved his food), and made concentration impossible. He'd spent five years training Dorothy to tread silently, no mean feat for someone who had eventually died of obesity. Noise was, in fact, one of the forces that had driven him to the Mayflower--that, the specter of a Senior Citizens' Farm, and politicians who hadn't appreciated his recent satires.
    Soundproofing, he was thinking. I'll have to demand that Central Stores provide me with soundproofing-and someone to install it-it cannot expect me. Ogden Dunn, to work with my hands, no, but I must have it, I cannot write without it; over there, perhaps, under the porthole, a proper position for the desk, a fine place indeed, overlooking the void, a good insight into the mind of God, there-passing the bathroom, he stuck his head inside and flushed the toilet. It was almost silent. He couldn't decide whether that pleased or disappointed him.
    The mirror reflected his pale fat face, with its smutty gray eyes and, snow-white hair. He smiled complacently, nearly withdrew, but paused to practice his relating-to-inferiors expressions. Good, he thought, good, it's coming nicely, just a bit more 'who-are-you?' in the eyebrows, a touch less 'bore-me-not' in the lips, yes, yes . . .
    It was quite a change from Rutland, Vermont. He wondered if he'd miss the pine trees . . . the reunions at Harvard . . . he brightened as he recalled the housing development he would never see completed, that he would never have to listen to, that-on the other hand, he wouldn't be able to travel, except from level to level, if one could call that travel . . . 
    Would they appreciate his lectures? Captive audience and all that; he didn't see how they could fail to; surely there couldn't be any serious competition. And, of course, on board this ship, he would be free to say what he thought.
    He took a memo-mike from his suitcoat pocket and to himself spoke a note: CONSULT WITH AUTHORITIES ON BEST MEANS OF TRANSMITTING OPI BACK TO EARTH Not that royalties or advances would be useful, not halfway to Canopus on a money-less ship, but it would be nice to know that his books were selling, oh, yes, ARRANGE FOR SALES REPORTS TO BE SENT UP, and nicer still to know that his wisdom, albeit censored, would endure in his homeland, at least until his homeland no longer-but he shook his head and refused to visualize the pages of his novels browning, curling, crisping in the fires of war, the last Fires, good title there: THE LAST FIRES, must make use of that sometime . . . 
    A child's whimper snuck through the wall and he stiffened, a smile parting his full lips. This would not do. He would have to report this to the authorities. Ogden Dunn's work was too valuable to be interrupted by the wails of waifs.
    Good title there: THE WAILS OF WAIFS. WIFES? WIVES!
    Alas, poor Dorothy. Shouldn't have had those last three cherry pies. Where would he ever find anyone who walked as quietly?

    Francis Xavier Figuera reported to the Control Room, Level 321, at 10:00 p.m. UMT on December 31, 2296. After thumbing himself in, he padded between technicians absorbed in their duties, his beaky face swiveling as he searched for Kober, the man he was relieving. "Ah, there you are, munchkin. I'm here, you may depart, spend the night with your family at the party." 
    "Sure nuff, Fex, 'preciate your getting here on time." He pushed away from the console, and ostentatiously held the chair for Figuera. "Isn't Ju-lan sorta fuzzed 'bout your being up here now?"
    "Ju-lan, munchkin, is in our cabin, snoring 'luciedly, trying to recuperate from the head start she got on the party. Were she sober enough to be conscious, she probably would fail to note my absence. And if she did, I'm sure she'd be-perhaps not proud, but at least smug in the knowledge that it is FX Figuera who is going to kick this whale into the ocean. And," he added with scowl, "provide sufficient acceleration to allow us to walk like people rather than self-propelled springs."
    "You're verbose, Fex, that's what you are." Kober slapped his taller colleague on the shoulder. "Watch out for Murphy." 
    "That harbinger of ill fortune? Whatever for?" 
    "There's a rumor going 'round that tonight's the night it blows."
    "Jesus." He was shocked into brevity. His fingers danced across the console, and the split-screen switched its right quadrant to an earthside news show. The announcer, tanned and barbered and tailored to a T, didn't look worried. But then, they never did. "Think it could be?"
    "Like I said, Fex, ware Murphy." With another backslap, he was gone.
    Couldn't happen, thought Figuera, please Maria Madre de Dios, don't let it happen. Forty-nine years I tottered on that crazy tightrope down there, now I got a chance to get my cubes out of the cracker, free my Ju-lan from that madhouse so maybe she can sober up since she won't have to dream of that hard rain, so please, alla you gods and saints and angels, give us a break, let us get away before they go nuts; Jesus, you died for us, man, you let those bastard Romans nail you to that hunk of wood, please, man, give us a break, don't let all your suffering go down the drain, you didn't open the Gates of Heaven just so eight billion souls could knock on them all at once, please!
    And he thought of his kids, Manny and Bill, Manny the 'bot in the East Texas Labor Camp, Bill the good student at Florida State, who would earn his Ph.D. in Organic Chem next spring, and he wondered again how he could have convinced them to come along, for Francis Xavier Figuera was a family man and the thought that half his family might die in a moment of mad mass murder chilled him, paralyzed him, brought him to the brink of tears.
    But composure returned quickly. The screen was flashing; the mag-ring drones that would precede them, channeling space dust toward the ramscoop, were jolting ahead; the next 115 minutes would have no room for sorrow . . . though the Central Computer would do most of it, he had to sit, watch, and wait for something somewhere to go wrong, even though he and his team had spent three and a half years writing the programs and revising them and running them and revising . . . they were good programs because it was a good team, and the ship was a good ship, Mayflower they called it, though Francis Xavier Figuera had thought Santa Maria might be better, might be more appropriate, but the Viking lobby had knocked that out by pressing for an old Norse name . . . his fingers were moving, sliding, pushing this and pulling that; his eyes were keen and sharp and all-embracing; his mind was clicking as smoothly as the Central Computer and the minute came and he gave his approval and-

    I fart. Not a silent sneak, or a polite pop, but a roaring, naming, shuddering, BROOOOOOOOMMMMMFFFFFFF! that goes on and on, never stopping, my God, they've fed me a hundred, a thousand, a billion heads of cabbage smothered in baked beans, enough baked beans to bury Boston, beans baked in beer, more beer than Budweiser ever brewed, I can't stop, it's a constant overpowering gale, so hard, so strong that it's actually propelling me, thrusting me forward like air gushing from a balloon will drive it in mad circles around the ceiling of a room, but I'm not spiraling or circling, no tail-chasing for me, I can control it, I can direct it, I am aiming it this way and that to keep my keel even, driving forward, what a talent, if I'd known I could do this I never would have gone into bio-neuro-chemistry, I would have traveled with the circus, can't you see me, zooming around the Big Top, arms stretched out, legs spread, toes and fingers my ailerons, geez, think what I could have used for a rudder, that'd draw the crowds, it would have, god, what an incredible talent, why didn't I ever realize that I could eat 10,000 acres of cabbage at one sitting and then take off like a plane, a jet, a rocket whipping through the sky above the farms denuded by my tremendous appetite for cabbage, I wonder if I ate it raw, boiled, slawed, or a mix of all three, I'll have to check when I land, there must have been witnesses, and I'll bet I'm now in the Guinness Book of World Records, imagine, me, Gerard K. Metaclura, M.D., Ph.D., in the Guinness Book of World Records, right there with polesitters and merry-go-rounders and rope-jumpers, I'll have to pick up a copy if I ever come down, maybe, maybe, just maybe I should find a bookstore and roar on through, I could toss some money to the girl or boy at the register, love to see startled faces, popping eyes (not at all like mine, which are focused dead ahead on my destination, which confuses me because although I know it's my destination, I don't recognize in it the attributes of a place I would have picked as my destination, but then, maybe the editors of the Guinness Book of World Records are trying to save money by having me go for several records at once: most cabbage eaten in a sitting, longest fart, most accurately controlled fart, most distance covered by an air-borne farter, yes, that would explain it) eyes popping as I flash by, bellow down a request for a hard copy, bellowing to make myself heard above the BROOOOOOOOMMMMMFFFFFFF! of my exhaust, I wonder, has the Environmental Protection Agency begun to worry about me, it would be typically bureaucratic of them to insist that I equip my tail with a catalytic converter, although I'm sure any city in the world would like to weld me to a pipeline, but they can't, because I am flying and they are groundstuck, and until I return they can't even serve papers on me, much less haul me into court, unless they got the Air Force to knock me down, shoot me down, god in heaven, a single tracer from a fighter's gun would make a bigger blast than the Hindenburg, helluva noise, too, and what if they used a heat-seeking missile, huh, I'd be in real pain, then, but they'll have to catch me, first, they'll have to scramble, streak up here to the . . . to the . . . they can't catch me, because fighter planes need air, and there's no air up here, it's all vacuum, so . . . vacuum? . . . no matter, no matter, my fart continues, I continue, thrusting ahead, forging ahead, racing toward that pinpoint of steady light that is my destination . . .