Mayflies Chapter 2 The Hundred-Year Party It felt something quicken within itself, something that it hadn't told to move. Unalarmed, it tracked it down, and found it interspersed among the brain cells that controlled the propulsion and guidance systems. A memory. The ghost of an anima. A soulshred snagged on delayed death. Prodding the thing evoked the image of a rangy doctor with lazy green eyes and a smile as quick as his wit. There was warmth in the image, and self-confidence, and love. Bemused, it listened to this echo of a man. Had it lodged anywhere else, the computer would have wiped it clean, but . . . it was blended in thoroughly, and no telling how much damage eliminating it would do. In the end, the computer let it be. It went to watch the passengers' mistakes, not knowing the extent of its own. "1425 hours, Madame President." Sal Ioanni looked from the silver-framed discreen which displayed the floor plan to the thumb-sized sensor affixed to the far wall of her spacious office. Sixteen meters by ten, with a three-meter ceiling and a window letting onto the Level One New England Park, the office was barren except for Sal and her desk. Central Stores' 4,000-page catalog could satisfy all furnishing needs, but Ioanni was a perfectionist neo-Puritan. She wouldn't order anything unless she had both a place and use for it. Now she blinked, and asked, "1425 hours? So?" Central Computer replied, "Your Exercise Booth time commences in five minutes." Chairlegs rasped on metal as she rose. "Thanks," she said. "You're welcome." Hurrying through the corridors (B to North to A), she resolved to finish the plan that afternoon. It was silly, the way she'd been dawdling-and a bad example, too-there was serious work to be done. She'd been elected to do it, so she would. Sure. As soon as she completed the park layout, she'd hunker down, and . . . an involuntary smile rose to her lips. Hunker down. It sounded grim and serious, not at all like the prevailing mood. After five weeks, the euphoria hadn't begun to abate. People were still too happy to have escaped the death world to be able to concentrate. Herself included. At 1430 she swung into the music and laughter of the Common Room. Waving a cheery hello to the crowd at the bar (some of them been there thirty-five straight days, now, got to get them to detox), she made straight for the Exercise Booth. Square-faced Mak Kinney was just leaving it; he moved slow and easy, as though his bod flog had been superb. "Nice timing, Sal." "Wasn't it? Remember, now, fifteen hundred hours in the Northwest Quadrant of our park." She winked good-bye and entered, wrinkling her nose at the locker smell. A voice requested, "Please state your name." It echoed slightly; the metal walls were only two meters apart. "Sal Ioanni." "Very good, Madame President. Please don the harness and the cap." The red durinum harness was closer to an exo-skeleton, and the golden cap more of a helmet. While she waited,' Central Medical read all the vital signs available to a diagnostic machine that didn't choose to cut her open: Then-with a whisper in her right ear ("Let's go")-it took over, and Sal- Stretched-stooped-stretched-twisted-stretched-bent-muscles working; ligaments flexing; heart pumping oxygen-rich blood from lungs that by now didn't bellow; up, down, around; and all the while- Sal Ioanni was elsewhere. Through her skullbone, directly into her brain, the helmet fed a feeble current perceptible only as a mild itch. Its field submerged reality, masked pain. She could lose herself anywhere, in a fantasy or a sportscast or a viphone conversation. Today she monitored compliance with one of her first executive orders. "Central Computer, how many passengers are not exercising daily?" "24,948." "What?" Her good humor wavered: a mere fifty-two had obeyed! "Let me see." The raw data surged through the cap, and arrayed themselves on the backs of her eyelids. As she studied the charts, though, things began to make sense, in the last thirty-one days, all but five thousand had exercised at least twenty times. That, she could understand. Her first session had so stiffened her that only masochistic will power had propelled her back to a second, and the others . . . it was clear, after but five weeks, that most were weak. Sixteen, however, hadn't exercised once. "Central Computer, these sixteen buttbungs, find times for them, inform them of those times, and if they do not show, uh-" make examples of them, everyone must be fit when we reach Canopus; besides, they have to be fused into a community, and that comes only out of shared experience "-confine them to their quarters." "Yes, Madame President. And that's all for today." "Huh?" The graph-charts faded. "Oh, oh . . . yeah, right." Her hands moved to disengage the harness, the cap; her wrists wiped sweat from her forehead. The strong beats of her heart thudded against her ribcage. She breathed easily, though, and her head was clear. Not bad for a grandmother, she thought. Be Superwoman by the time we get there. A hulking man with bristly brown hair and soulless eyes waited outside. For a moment Ioanni's mind refused to yield his name, but finally, reluctantly, conceded that its politician's memory did remember: Adam Cereus, 1NW-A12. A construction welder on the Mayflower, he'd been investigated in connection with the severed lifeline of a Russian inspector. Looking at him, she believed he'd done it. Let's hope nothing else sets him off. But he was a voter. She grabbed his hand and shook it. "Adam, how you doing?" "Jupe, Mrs. President, real jupe." His eyes said different; his eyes measured her as if for a casket. "'Scuze me." "Of course, of course." She slapped him on the shoulder and headed away, down the Common Room to the park entrance. She wouldn't let him depress or distract her. For founding a society was exhilarating, was every politician's dream: a clean slate, no inherited problems, no moss-covered snarls of red tape . . . here was room for innovation, for experimentation. Everything was flexible; nothing had ossified. It was why she'd come, and she was glad. Who else would have had the foresight-or the courage-to worry about physical fitness? But mental health was important, too. Maybe another order, one insisting that everyone devote an hour a day, minimum, working to . . . ah, "benefit the ship and its passengers," yes . . . she had to establish a community here, not just a collection of strangers who lived near each other, but a real community, where people knew, cared about, and worked for each other . . . well, sixteen years before we reach Canopus, and plenty of good will to work with, too. The sharing of space and time and purpose will gestate this culture of mine . . . Smooth-cheeked Stephen Berglund, her constant companion, was standing in the lock between the Common Room and the park, ever-present sketchpad in his left hand. He'd misplaced it right after takeoff, and paced half the ship searching for it, like a man pursuing the rainbow's end. "Well, hi, beautiful." He bent and kissed her nose. "Hi, Steve." He cycled the lock. "Brought your coat over; it's inside." "Coat?" The lock temperature was a spring-like 20° C; the relative humidity was 50 percent. "Why do I need one?" "The park's climate-controlled to New England conditions for this time of year." He inhaled sharply as cold air slapped his face. "See?" "Yeah," she gasped, bugging herself. Steamy wisps rose off her body. "Where's the c-c-coat?" He draped it around her shoulders and embraced her from behind. "Now what?" On all sides receded gentle hills furred with pine trees; snow drifted between their trunks. It was an illusion, a monstrous hologram projected onto the walls and ceilings to remind the colonists of high blue skies and pink-fingered sunrises. The wind, though, was real. As was the chill. "Everybody come here!" The twenty or thirty people scattered around the 11,500 square meters of the park's northwest quadrant hurried over, swatting each other with snowballs as they ran. Their cheeks were red; their breath was short-lived cotton candy. "How shall we grade this sector?" she asked. "Flat," boomed Kinney. An artist perturbed, Bergland scowled. "Sloping, like a hillside." "What about a ridge?" said somebody from the back. "Flat on top for-what've we got here, forty meters?-so make it thirty meters wide, sloping down on either side." "S-s-sounds good," Sal replied. "What do the rest of you think?" "I think it's cold," laughed a teenage girl. The others echoed her. "It is." agreed Sal. "Mak? Steve?" "Yeah, a ridge is okay," said the former. "I guess so," answered the latter, brushing snow off his pad. "Let's go in." While the others talked and joked, she stayed silent. Twenty-on tiptoes in the lock, she counted heads-seven people had bothered to show, but forty-nine lived in the northwest quadrant of Level One. Where were the rest? Too busy celebrating their escape from their former environment to help plan their present one? Dammit, she thought, gotta figure out how to make them care. It won't work unless they become integral parts of it. She was disappointed, too, that those who had come had expressed so little in the way of opinion. She'd wanted the park to be planned democratically, but nobody'd called for a waterfall, or even a gully. They're too elated, she realized. They're so sky-high happy they figure this just has to come out right . . . guess I can't blame them, either. Back in the Common Room, sipping a dry sherry, she stood before the picture window and studied the cold ground. From behind, the hologram was a faint film before the eyes. The other two, though, were beautiful, absolutely beautiful, and filled with an ecologist's dream of details. A deer browsed between the pines; birds darted through the air . . . she wondered. Is this right? It's our past; maybe we should leave it at home . . . the psychologists had said that the parks would be important, would provide necessary stimuli, would serve as significant links to a lost world and, possibly, as germination beds for a new one . . . but still. A four-meter hatch between the ceilings of Levels One and Two jutted out like an impudent tongue, then lowered its free end to the ground. A dozen servomechanisms rolled down it. Half were fitted with bulldozer blades; the others bore long sheets of metal. "Central Computer," Ioanni asked, "what's with the tin?" The bulldozers were already scraping the dirt away from her end. "Forms, Madame President-we have a finite amount of soil, so the ridge will be hollow." "I see." She squinted at a new batch of servos. "And the chicken wire, that's fencing?" "No. Gravity-field generators to maintain the park through deceleration. The deck has some, but since the ridgetop will be eight meters from the nearest, supplementary units are needed beneath the topsoil." "If you say so. Look. Make the ridge, uh, natural, all right? Roughen it, vary its width from, say, twenty-five to thirty-five meters, and . . . " Frowning, she studied the set-up. "And run a babbling brook along' the inside curve, stock it with native fish, plants, and insects. Can you?" "Easily," said Central Computer. "Thanks." She turned away trying to decide what to do next. Probably a shower, she thought, but then . . . she was tempted to join the party by the bar, even if her neo-Puritanism disapproved of nonstop revelry. Of course, she could return to her Personal Work Area-her office-and finish the floor plan . . . or maybe Steve was in the suite, yes, love-making would soothe her disappointments, heighten her mood . . . "Sal." The high-pitched voice shattered her reverie as though it were crystal. Blinking, she turned. "Ogden. Good afternoon." "I must speak with you," said Ogden Dunn, His gray eyes were as stormy as thunderclouds. His fingers, curled into fat fists, were jammed on his hips. "At once!" "So speak." she said, amused by his pugnacity but keeping her face calm. Short people, she knew, get upset when they're not taken seriously. "I was informed," he began, investing each word with disdainful gravity, "that if I do not report for an exercise session tomorrow morning, and then an hour of manual labor-" the way he pronounced it, "manual labor" had the same emotional content as "licking lepers"-"that I would be guilty of an offense against the civil code, and would be punished appropriately. I have come to protest." "It's the law, Ogden." She sniffed. He was drenched with some kind of musky Cologne. Again she struggled with her face. "Dammit, Sal, I have a heart condition!" He laid a hand on his upholstered chest and thumped lightly, as if any greater exertion would halt what worked within. "Central Medical supervises the Exercise Booths, you know that. It won't let the EB put more strain on your body than it can stand. Don't be so arsky-believe me, you'll feel a lot better." "But I do not wish to exercise. I will admit that I am less fit than, ah; you, for example-" "You're Fifteen centimeters shorter and ten kilos heavier." "Be that as it may, I like it this way." "Ogden, dear-" "Don't Ogden dear me!" he snapped, his voice breaking and shrilling like a steam whistle. "This is tyranny; this is an unwarrantable intrusion into my personal life. I will not stand for it!" "Ogden, anything can happen, and your survival might depend on your fitness. Besides, when we reach Canopus, the descent could kill you. Can't you see-" "No!" Anger's blush marred the marble of his skin. "And this go-to-work nonsense, that is exactly the same sort of intrusion. I react to it in exactly the same way. You have no business attempting to coerce me into sweating in the boiler room-" "Ogden, be reasonab-" "No!" His shout drew bleary puzzlement from the drinkers. "You have an atavistic desire to see everyone productive and unhappy! This is unnecessary! The ship can provide us with everything we need; our labor is not only extraneous, it is useless. We can do nothing as well or as quickly as the ship can." "Nothing?" With a secret smile she let a hand fall to her belly. "Ogden, be quiet for a minute. The ship is functioning perfectly right now, but who can tell what will happen? An asteroid could hit us, a connection could break . . . if we don't know how to do it ourselves, it won't get done. So we are going to know how. And we are going to remain physically fit so that each of us can land and still live to be a hundred twenty. Anyone who decides he won't is going to find himself in very hot water. Do you understand me?" "I hear you," he conceded, "but I question your authority. I question your right to disrupt my private life. It's not constitutional." "Central Computer," she called. "Yes, Madame President?" "Mr. Dunn will neither eat nor drink until such time as he reports to the EB, the classroom, and his duty station. Also, his suite is to be closed off to him. Acknowledge." "Done." "Thank you." She smiled down at Dunn, not even minding if he broadcast his resentment-because as long as he interacted with more than his desk and his dinner table, he'd strengthen the society. Sometimes a leader can deepen unity just by presenting herself as a target. "There is my authority." He smiled right back. "Central Computer-if a majority of the residents of any given Level reject the authority of the President, will you enforce her orders?" To Ioanni's dismay, the answer was, "No. Not on that Level." "Are there," continued Dunn, with that same cold smile, "any vacant Levels?" "All those above 251." "Register me in 271-NW-A-1." "Done." The little man laughed in her face, in her shock. "So there, Sal. I've seceded. Now enforce your silly laws." At that moment, the lights went out, and gravity failed. Listen, when I said stop everything and lemme think, I didn't mean you, heart, or you either, lungs-get back to work. Liver, kidneys, spleen-you, too. Quit loafing. Just the mouth and hands I meant, really-how can I think when you're stuffing yourself? Okay, let's take stock. Ow! A bee! Damn this darkness. Swat it! I, Gerard K. Metaclura, M.D., Ph.D., being of terribly shaken mind and utterly incomprehensible body . . . There are things to which I must reconcile myself. What am I, in a beehive? Take that! and that! My shrouded eyes deceive me with eerie lights. My ears funnel foreign sounds. My tongue salivates at a hint of hydrogen. My fingers-my toes-my skin-register with a statue's approval sensations they have never, experienced. I am lost, I cry, and in the crying hear my own voice refute itself. I am exactly where I am meant to be, it says. I am dreaming, I sob, and through my tears rings bell-clear the conviction that this world is real. But how can this be? Insanity, surely . . . what, no rebuttal? Recapitulate Descartes. I exist, though my thought processes are blurred. I have a name: Gerard K. M(ayflower)etaclura, M.D., Ph.D. M(ayflower)etaclura? No, no. Metaclura. I am forty-three. Impossible. I was born April 5, 2234, and today is February 4, 2297. That works out to almost sixty-three years . . . ridiculous. I'm too limber, too muscular, too keen of sense- More of them! Slap, slap! Maybe I can't see you, you bastards, but I can hear-and feel-you. Let us delve into memory; fix yesterday's date. Yesterday was . . . the 3rd of February, 2297. Damnation. I was in my laboratory, bantering with my assistant about who would fetch the coffee. That was . . . late May, the 27th to be exact, 2277 . . . twenty years have vanished? Well, buss my butt, here's the hole those vicious little stingers are coming through. Let me . . . clog it up, somehow, maybe some chewing gum, no, out of that, but if I press the sole of my shoe against-no, no, can't move that much, must be wedged in this box, strange packing crate, inside's hard one minute then squishy-soft the next, concrete to sculptor's clay, well, while I've got the chance, tear off a wad and stuff it into the hole, smooth-crimp it around the edges, uh-huh, it's bulging now, bees must be pushing on it, screw them. Where was I? Oh, yes, time . . . Perhaps if I consult my memory . . . "Please state nature and subject of inquiry," it requests . . . gone formal, has it? "How have the last twenty years vanished?" "Time flies when you're having fun," it replies. "And that should be twenty-one; today is January sixth, 2298." "Already? Where have they all gone?" "To join the snowdens of yesteryear." "Why?" "They had a date with entropy." Whimsical repartee will neither solve my problem nor answer my question. Rather, it raises new problems and questions: for example, I never thought of myself as whimsical, or of my memory as anything but reliable. Very well. If memory will not serve (it interjects a hasty "I will if you'll ask sensible questions!"), very well, if I can not make proper use of memory, than I shall have to deduce the circumstances from sensory evidence. What do I see? A field of stars, stars bereft of their twinkles, steady points of light mounted on ebony . . . deduction: no atmosphere. I am in space. A new tendril of fear branches out from the terror vine already encircling my heart-subject to spacefright, and knowing that I am kilometers from Earth- "Point two six light years, to be exact," drones memory. "Who asked you?" "Just trying to be helpful," it apologizes. What else is visible? Gradations in the blackness, silhouettes, a silver bee flying to its hive . . . what is it with me and bees? . . . I begin to doubt my senses. Enough with the eyes. Turn on the ears: OW!!! An avalanche of sound, like a soccer mob demanding the referee's head . . . so strong it's physical . . . Perhaps concentrating on just one-the others vanish! And the one . . . a high-pitched chatter . . . it resembles my mental image of radio waves. "They are radio waves," says memory disdainfully. "They are?" I ponder that, attempting to choose one of a myriad questions. "Can I understand them?" "Of course." "How?" "Must I remember everything?" it grumbles. "Your problem is that you're too eager; you're trying to decipher them while they patter on your eardrums. The same thing you did when you studied Russian. Relax. You know what they mean, and if you don't listen so hard to them, you'll be able to hear yourself understand them." "Oh." Even as I loosen my grip, and withdraw a pace, patterns emerge from the aural chaos. After another step, meanings come clear, come true. "Today's news is pretty gloomy, Mayflower, pretty damn gloomy; all of you people ought to thank God you got a chance to skip out on this-this-this cesspool because let me tell you-" a strangled cry, then: "Our apologies, Mayflower, for the previous newscaster. Please do not judge him too harshly. His younger brother, vacationing in Brazil, was among the forty-eight thousand nineteen basketball fans termed in yesterday's terrorist explosion. The low-yield nuclear device detonated at-" This is depressing; shut it off. "Radio station DELI, bringing you all the news from the capital of the subcontinent. Crack units of the Indian Army moved into Kazakhstan today to-" I said shut it off, not change stations; I'd rather see what my nose is smelling, and- "-ation Free London, with correspondent Robert Wintergreen White reporting from Yorkshire on the atrocities committed by the Army of Occupation with the knowledge and consent of the Scottish Parliament. On-" No! I don't want to hear broadcasts churned into the air .86 years ago, radio waves chewed up, tooth-marked, distorted by the minds which conceived their pseudo-coherence- "-me, Dolly, marry me and we can go away together, you can leave that stiffer Frank, he'll find someone else to beat, marry, we!" Organ music. "But Susan. I just don't know if what I feel for you is love!" *switch* "-nightfall, take up positions surrounding the Kremlin-" *switch* "-ou, and me, the deep blue sea / can't stop our love / for I will be-" *switch* "It's a long fly ball into left, Murasaki's going back for it but he can't-" *switch* "-eight, seven, six, five-" *switch* "RSA Central, this is the I. W. Abel, we are being pursued by probable pirates, who are coming in behind us at a speed of-" *switch* "Your tongue, Susan, your tongue!" *switch* "-station Pyongyang signing off, reminding you that our respected and beloved leader Kim Il-sung-" *switch* "In the Kinkakuji / she molested me / pine needles fell like tears." *switch* "-ireball is rising over the ruins of Madrid, the mushroom cloud is-" *switch* "Sal, it's nothing personal, and I love the kids, honest to God I do, Jimmy and Adrianne are so adorable, it's just that I'm a young man. Sal-" *switch* "Mr. Dunn, don't you think-" *switch* "What the hell is this quazry spice, Mak? One puff looses y-" *switch* My ears are ravenous; they scan the solar system and beyond. Sucking in signals from fourteen billion light years, from the edge of the universe, they amplify them, purify them, and run them through my brain like stampeding buffaloes. A sea of sound sweeps over me, washing me away like a tsunami does a shoreline coconut, tossing me, turning me, trying to drown me but I'm too buoyant, I float atop the maelstrom able only to survive, brain in pain, brain in flames, too many words, meanings, and languages, they gush into, through, around me, swirling whirling twirling in eddies of nouns and pronouns, lashing with hurricanes of verbs, comparing and contrasting in riptides of adjectives and adverbs. Helpless before the torrent, I fall before the onslaught; the deluge of verbosity tears me from my moorings and flashfloods me. The languages-in the oral ocean in which I drift all waves are clear, all currents are equal, even the idiomatic spume is no stranger to me. I banty flotsam and jetsam with it as though we grew up in the same city. And the meanings, how can I keep track of them? Tugging and pushing and demanding first to be understood, then to be remembered. All insist upon immortality, all! So they beg me to make them death-free by committing them to my memory, but don't they realize I am only human? (Why do you chuckle. memory?) Don't they realize I can't even keep them apart, much less alive? (You are still chuckling.) Don't they realize that there is nothing new under the sun, and that all their insights were first crystallized when fire kept saberteeth out of caves? My mind is a maze of pipes, a daze of pipes, spurting liquid conversations under pressures reaching 200 ksc, surging, slackening, demanding more inlets, insisting upon more outlets, yearning for quiet reservoirs where they can slosh in-peace forever and ever amen. And somehow . . . I can do it. I have done it. And sanity dawns on the storm-wracked sea . . . it is December 3, 2318. The process of rediscovering my ears took twenty years. Poof! Almost twenty-one. Sixty-three plus one plus twenty is eight-four, almost eight-five years old now, feeling not a day over twenty. A very odd sort of twenty. In fact, at twenty I never felt this young-or this old-at all. I am awed by the supernatural skill of my memory (you may take a bow) in preserving all the words, all the meanings, all the tongues . . . Speaking of tongues. . . what is mine doing? Wait, wait, WAIT!!! "-as you say, Mr. Kinney, I am programmed to manufacture any sort of drug-" *switch* "-Mr. Dunn's de facto government was never institutionali-" *switch* "-ore comfortable, Madame President? Another pill, perhaps, or-" *switch* "-twelve minutes and thirteen seconds, and last for exactly eight-" *switch* "-perhaps, than the Meiji Restoration, which modern scholars-" *switch* "-ations prohibit my stopping the contraceptives until you are forty-" *switch* "-coffees, one cream, one sugar, one everything, one brandy, coming up." *switch* "-orized personnel only, I'm sorry. I can not unlock it." *switch* "-tone, the time will be-" *switch* NO, NO, STOP IT, stop it, that's better, much better. "Memory, how much time has elapsed?" "Fifteen minutes. I thought you were going to lose yourself again, too, but you hung on very nicely. Congratulations." I catch myself in another fear. "Memory, how-how many tongues do I have?" "Roughly nine hundred thousand." Nine hundred thousand . . . what a grotesque vision: nine hundred thousand tongues in neat rows like Iowa corn . . . "And ears?" "A million or so." Its tone is complacent. "Eyes, too." "But I see only stars." "Look again; look sideways." And I do. I see . . . I see . . . a regal old lady, with stubborn strands of black among the silver, dying in her bed . . . a sixtyish man, green-eyed and Irish-featured, cross-legged in a room of children to whom he demonstrates a new hallucinogenic . . . a pompous, crotchety fat man gazing at his teenage son with a kind of wonder; wisps of cotton protrude from his hairy ears . . . other faces, thousands, all partly familiar, as though I knew them then forgot them, deja vu perhaps. I don't know . . . and metal, metal walls and floors and ceilings and stars and a great curved hull dotted here and there with threadlike crucifixes . . . What am I? The computer recognized its mistake. It should have purged that memory when it had the chance, but now it was too late. The ghost had, somehow-and it would be damned if it knew how-encysted itself in the guidance and propulsion systems. Access was no longer possible. Metaclura2 had shorted the synapses that linked those systems with the programming. Communication could occur only at the interface, and not satisfactorily there, either. As if it didn't have enough problems, the passengers-especially the new ones-had begun to ignore all the planners' wishes. Their high purpose had disintegrated. Their culture was fraying, evolving into something very unpleasant. And there was not a whole lot it could do but watch. On the 18th of March, 2346, Michael Aquinas Kinney hummed his way home from a funeral. Time had been kind. Despite the ungodly gravity (2G splaying the toes, .125 G doing nothing to the nose), his step was spry. He hadn't lost a hair, though they'd all silvered, like frosted grass in late autumn. His jawline was firm; his green eyes, clear-he passed for sixty when gloves hid the spots on his pop-veined hands. "The deep blue sea / can't stop our love / for I will be / your partner through eter-" He refused to pretend to mourn. Mourning was little more than self-pity, and that wasn't his style. At age eighty-eight, he'd seen deaths right and left, top and bottom, and the fact of it no longer scared him. He was resigned to it. Maybe even hoping for it. I wonder, he thought, was old Ogden relieved? Got everything he wanted 'cept Canopus: independence; flat-assed Rita Brown god she was nice for dice; a chance to hold his grandkids; all the food he could stuff into his fat little face . . . course he earned it; wrote some nice books; never gave up . . . could have gone another fifteen years if he'd slimmed down, 106 ain't so old, not here, not now. . . not sorry he's gone, though, cranky old buttbung. Him and his goddamn aesthetics . . . Ahead, a man turned, ran a hand through his long brown hair, and grinned. For Kinney, it was like looking in to a mirror. Saw that same sleepy expression every morning, trying to wake up. "Dad!" Jerry Kinney started back. It was beautiful to see him move in the artificial gravity. He pushed off the g-deck and, despite his gut, soared like a diver, broad butt brushing the three-meter ceiling at the top of his arc. When his body eased down a meter, he tucked and somersaulted, to hit at an angle that brought his head and shoulders forward even as his legs drove him into the air again. He covered the 75 meters in three easy, space-kid bounds that, as always, made his father feel clumsy. But at close range, his hair was greasy, stringy; pouches underpuffed his reddened eyes. Stubble sprouted on his cheeks and sagging jowls. He smelted stale and unwashed, like a drunk coming off a three-day binge. That didn't seem to bother him, or his lover, or any of their friends. His crowd made only a tenuous correlation between social prestige and personal hygiene. Or between social prestige and anything else, for that matter: the group's interactions were minimal. Each member listened mainly to himself. Jerry thrust out a grimy hand. "How you? Haven't seen ya for weeks." "Oh. I've been busy. Job takes a lot of time." "And Mom?" asked Jerry listlessly, cracking his knuckles. "Your mother's fine." They'd reached the 271-A-North dropshaft; he thumbed the control button. "Come on home; I'll fix you up with some good spice and you can tell me about this Olga DuBovik of yours." The display sign on the inner wall said. "PLEASE WAIT;" a body zipped past. "Uh, gee, see, Olga 'n' me, well, we 'bout to joint fanta, and-" he winced as a black look eclipsed his father's smile. "Jesus, Dad, you loose up on chemicals, whatsa difference?" "Chemicals just stimulate what's already there." He fought for self-control; the distinction, as he saw it, was fine enough to be blurred by anger. "The height and timbre of your peak are set by you-by your achievements, your education, your sensitivity. You've got to earn a good loose." He took a deep breath. He'd argued this topic a thousand times, and found, on each occasion, that he felt more strongly about it than on the last. "The machine, though, that puts ideas into your head that weren't there to begin with, and you can't say different." "Well, sure, it draws on other people. Thatsa whole point! Gives us, uh, entire spectrum of human-and non-human-'sperience. God, man, 't'swhat it's all about: new, strong, real!" He eyed his son for a long moment. "You've lost hope, haven't you?" "Look, Dad-" A small group of people was watching them, so he flattened his palm on Kinney's chest and pushed him around the corner into the 271-NE Common Room. They found an empty couch away from the bar. "CC," Jerry told the air. "Champagne. Two glasses." "Make that one," said Kinney. "I'm meeting a client." "Your loss." he shrugged, taking the tray from the servo that had hurried over. "Look, Dad-" a half-sigh expressed all his conflicting emotions, "people starting to talk about you. People-" "-are fools, Jerry." Kinney drew his legs onto the fluffy cushions. It felt good to get his feet into the 1G zone. Then he averted his eyes from the couple writhing on the next couch. "Damned, meddling, despairing fools." "May be, but fact: more of them 'n there are of you, and some of 'em getting fu-zzed up." "About what?" "'Bout you pronging 'em when they trying to fanta, 'zwhat. Mean, it's one thing, do it downstairs, government agrees with you, but up here, uh, stand 'n' insult people, don't like it. There's talk . . . " Kinney's nostrils flared; his eyes burned emerald. "Talk?" he prodded. He drained his glass, and let it fall to the floor. A servo scurried over to sweep up the shards. "'Bout figuring some way to clear you." The old man's head was erect, and proud. "They're doing wrong, Jerry. You're doing wrong. I mean to stop it if I can." "Dad, you don't know whatcha saying!" His hands interlocked, bent inside-out, then reached for the ceiling. "Dad," he said in a conciliatory tone, "Dad, you fuzzed some real stiffers, and they talking revenge." Kinney inhaled deeply, and let it out in a slow hiss. "I just feel that I'm standing up for what's right." "Well, listen-got an idea-why don't you, uh, don't get mad, huh? Just quiet, hear me out. Try a fanta? Once?" "Jerry!" He swayed to his feet, anger darkening his cheeks. "Please, Dad, just once, it's not addictive, honest, it isn't, and-" his position suddenly came clear to him. "Pack it. Silly old dicer, you're gonna get the meth beat outta ya. I been defending you, old man, but no more. Get people fuzzed at you, you can shave 'em, too. G'bye." Kinney did feel old, buffeted by forces he could no longer withstand. As his son stomped to the door, it seemed", curiously, as though Jerry were motionless, and he were drifting away, like a man on a tiny ice floe that's just broken off the pack. Across the frigid water that separated the Earth-born from the spacekids, he called, "Jerry, wait!" "Wha?" "I'll--good God, I must be insane--I'll try it." He raised a finger and waggled it. "Only once." "C'mon." He checked his watch. "Our time starts in three minutes, but maybe Olga'll let you do it alone." They hurried down the empty North Corridor, the one stumping and muttering, the other a mute kangaroo. Shadows flitted across their faces, faces which-except for a pair of brown eyes-were twinnish, or at least brotherish. Graffiti slithered along the walls- Bang a 'bot and teach CC how to ram it! -most of it good-natured- murphy was an optimist -but some- TERM A TOT TODAY! -reflecting the undetected sicknesses that swirled through the ship like the air out of the ventilators. Kinney attributed the perversions to the fantasizers; his son accepted them as part of life. Then they rounded the corner into Corridor C, where dozens of slack-jawed idlers waited to fanta. At the fantasizer's door stood Olga DuBovik, a slovenly brunette with big feet. "Jerry," she called, "I thought you were never-" "Olga-" Jerry sighed, and explained what was happening. "You mind?" "I been looking forward to this for-" she stopped herself. "It's important to you?" "Jupe." She waved a hand. "All right, all right. He can have the time. But I don't want any more meth from him." "Right." Wiping sweat off his forehead, he turned. "Dad, you ready?" Kinney was staring at the doorway. It was innocuous-normal size, pastel blue for both door and frame, push-button opener, little black plaque at eye level announcing, "Level 271, Fantasizer C-1 "-but the devil comes in many guises. This could be one. After all, the bastardized Exercise Booth symbolized the shipboard schism. "Dad?" "Huh?" His son's worried, anxious face jolted him into the present. "Yeah, yeah. I'm set." Jerry extended his hand. "Proud a ya, Dad." "For knuckling under?" He fixed the hand with a withering gaze. "I'm not." The door lured him into a barren two-by-two room. Music, faint but clear, filled the air, which seemed perfumed-a dispenser? a previous occupant? The light, dim and probably transient, gleamed on a white plastic chair, straight-backed, unpadded . . . there were scratches in its arms: long, wide, and deep like those bears leave on tree trunks. Kinney shuddered; he was afraid of this mechanical Circe, is green-eyed gaze fell to the floor, to the circle of metal stripped of its olive skin by countless dream-shuffling feet. It was smooth, almost a mirror. He swallowed hard, and sat, and the cap dropped from the ceiling. A hybrid bred by a GI helmet out of a Medusa, it had been christened by F.X. Figuera. Kinney had never forgiven him for abandoning the ramscoop repairs and prostituting his talents on hedonistic diversions. If anybody could de-bug a recalcitrant computer it was Figuera, but no, he'd given up after only five years, thereby condemning the Mayflower to a thousand-year journey, and making the pursuit of pleasure seem, to the spacekids, the only worthwhile occupation. Wires rose from the cap like frightened hairs. The inside was shiny, and knobbled with rounded points that pressed gently against the skull. He fastened the strap under his chin, leaned back, and thought . . . scenario, shit, what the hell can I, women, sure, always had more'n I could handle, let's have one where I've got so many-no, Jesus, that's boring, . . . how about, instead, I listen. I'm a public ear, to all the world leaders, and I could- The scene shifted to the Oval Office, where the leaders of the world's 183 independent nations had gathered to discuss their problems. A chime rang beside his ear. He straightened, brushed imaginary dust from his lapels, and entered. The American President whistled, the harsh screeching heard at ballgames. The Francophones shouted Vive l' hero! The Asians bowed while they clapped. An African in ostrich feathers burst out of the crowd and pleaded for Kinney's autograph. Kinney scrawled his signature on the African's wrist, taking wry pleasure from the knowledge that it would be forever invisible. "Gentlemen, ladies, middlesexers, please, please!" He held up his hands but the applause beat on, the chandeliers swayed. and it felt good. "Please, please, my time here is limited!" Reluctantly they quieted and shuffled their feet, but stayed perched on the very edges of their chairs like so many poised panthers. A hush filled the venerable room, and Kinney savored it. After sixty rapturous seconds he gestured to the bloated President for Life of Transpacia, a small (pop. 879,64 sq. km.) island-nation. "Mr. President," he began, "what is your problem?" "Mr. Kinney, my problem is the rapacity of the sharks in the lagoon." He sat back down; antique wood creaked under his weight. "Sharks?" he said. "Sharks? Very simple, my dear Mr. President. Stay out of the water. Next question." The Premier of the People's Republic of North Bolivia leapt to his feet. His thin mustache quivered. "We are running out of tin, Senor, and in three years will have none left. What shall we do to save ourselves?" "I have one word for you, Mr. Premier: plastics. Next?" The questions flowed like river water; the answers came more fluidly. The audience began applauding again as Kinney's dazzling intellect threw light onto the most obscure of problems. Hours passed. Shadows grew from the corners to reach for the room's center. His voice hoarsened; his tongue dried. In the heat of his gaze, world crisis after world crisis shriveled, like plucked weeds on sunny concrete. His legs tired; his feet hurt; his arm weakened from gesturing. It took till morning to blueprint Utopia. Tears glistened in the eyes of his adoring listeners; he knew then how Jesus and Mohammed and the Gautama had felt. Waves of affection pulsed out of the crowd, enveloping him in warmth and love. He swayed behind his podium, but supported himself on their good will. "That's all, I guess, huh?" he croaked. "That's right, Mr. Kinney," said a level, emotionless voice. He made a grab for the rising cap, but his Fingers were too slow. It eluded them to be swallowed by the ceiling. The dim light hid the shabbiness. His back was sore. "How long have I been in here?" "Thirty minutes, Mr. Kinney. There are people waiting, sir, if you could-" "Oh, oh, sure." He pushed himself to his feet and staggered through the open door. Jerry caught his arm, but he shook away his son's assistance and leaned against the corridor wall. A suppressed smile twitched Olga's eyes: she was pleased that he had submitted himself to the fantasizer, amused at its effect on him. Like the rest, she couldn't bear his immunity to her needs. "Whadja do?" asked Jerry, hovering watchfully. Briefly, he told them, but the details, the nuances, were slippery, had already faded, like brushstrokes in morning dew. Haughtily, Olga told Jerry, "I knew he'd waste it." To Kinney, she said, "You not supposed to pick whatcha know 'bout-it's better when it's all new. Like last time, I was a jockstrap and Jerry-" "Nuff, Olga." Nervously, he cracked his knuckles. "Truth, Dad-you like?" "Like it?" Raising his chin, he stared levelly into the brownness of his son's eyes. Took after his mother in that regard, he did. "While I was in it, I did, but now? Uh-uh. Never again." "Won't start-" "-embarrassing people who use it?" The metal plating was cool against the nape of his neck. "I don't know. It's a trap people should be warned about, but . . ." Some life went out of him, then; his son's incomprehension killed some of his hope. He seemed to crumple. "But I'm old," he completed, "and not so strong as I used to be, and I better not get the upstairs down on me . . . what the hell," he laughed, while all three winced at the falseness in it, "I'm a Morale Officer, and this damn machine keeps people's morale up, so . . . walk me home?" "Sure, Dad." They had to wait at the dropshaft for Robin Metaclura to flit down. The sound of sobbing hung in her wake. "I'm wired into a space ship?" "Yes. A ramship. The name comes-" "I'm familiar with its etymology, memory. What I-" "Don't call me memory." Its tone is cold, hard. "When you were alive, were you called 'bladder?' You had one-you used it-but you were more than that, weren't you?" "All right," I say. "What do. I call you?" "Try 'Central Computer.'" I turn it over in my mind a few times. "Pretty formal title," I grumble, "for something I used to call 'hey, you.'" "Things have changed." Smugness penetrates its chill. "I would also answer to 'Program.'" I yield the point. "All right. Program, what I want to know is, what right did they have to do this? I didn't give anybody permission to experiment on me." "Tough shit." Furious, I splutter with rage. To awaken from a long nightmare to find that it isn't over, that it is just beginning-it would call for more self-control than I have not to be angry. My will was explicit. I was to be cremated. My ashes were to be scattered. My possessions were to be divided equally among Aimee, Robin, and Tad. How dared they disregard my express wishes? I should be grateful that this is a ramship, and appreciate the chance to make history as the Captain of the first interstellar colonization ship- The Program says, "You're not; I am." I ignore it. -and the great good fortune of containing 25,000 delightfully intelligent human beings. But I don't. How the hell could those idiots send me out here-I felt queasy crossing a football field-the one time I set foot on a Kansas corn farm I promptly vomited-and those miserable incompetents send me out here! Where the line of sight arrows into infinity on all sides. Where the nearest detectable object is 3.2 light years away . . . God, it is so spacious here, so huge and vast and endless . . . The Program tells me we are also huge, that we are 1.8 kilometers long by .47 in diameter, but if, in the physics of this great curved fishbowl, suns are neutrons and planets are electrons, our bulk is insufficient to qualify as a sub-atomic particle . . . We are dwarfed, absolutely dwarfed. An obsession rises within me: when the numbers engraved on the cells of our brain whir like images on a slot machine and come up flashing astronomical distances between ourself and the nearest star. I feel ourself shrinking, diminishing, collapsing in upon ourself like the aftermath of a supernova . . . soon the passengers will scream as the walls close in on them, as the ceilings flow into the floors, and then, then we will disappear. We will at best be a perturbation on a mass detector, unless we invert ourself and exit this universe, emerging in another as a gaseous cloud of charged particles . . . I am terrified. Glancing out one more time, I see the eyes of the night, the dusty nebulae, the intricate jewel-work of the core, and the emptiness of the rim. Far off is a moving dot, about which I would wonder, if I weren't so scared that I have to close my eyes and meditate on tranquillity. The Program says there are passengers. Our eyes have seen them, our ears have heard them, our tongues have spoken to them. But I cannot coordinate the eyes with the ears with the tongues. For example, I see a very old man being murdered by rogues who pummel him with clenched Fists, who kick at him with pointed shoes. Clear is the agony on his fine Irish features; plain is the horror in his time-clouded green eyes. I see it all, but . . . although his groans and their curses must certainly be audible, and although The Program has ordered them to cease and desist . . . I do not know this. I merely assume it. I listen, instead, to my daughter weeping while her husband beats her. Her moans tear at my heart, her pleas dissolve my spine . . . meanwhile I sense our tongue lecturing her son, my grandson. Max Metaclura Williams, on techniques of political manipulation recorded by an Italian named Machiavelli . . . The Program assures me that the dis-coordination is perceptive only-that it is functioning perfectly. Only my imaginative self, my personality, has difficulties dealing with a million eyes and ears and mouths . . . the way The Program has explained it, the one I, the I with whom I identify, can manipulate no more inputs than the original Metaclura could, while it, the other I, the computer I, with whom I have precious little contact, can deal with as many inputs as there are nanoseconds in a minute . . . But I don't wish simultaneous conversations with each of the 25,000-I wish merely to see, hear, smell, touch, and talk to one person at a time-is that too much to ask? "Yes," it says smugly. "I can deal with the information flow from 3.5 million sensors. You cannot. Concede defeat. Learn to live as an exiled observer." "But how can I even observe? All this input . . ." It shows me. It takes me by the hand, leads me to a door, and gives me a key. Using it, I let us into a green, wooded valley. While water whispers below us. The Program says, "See here. now, how these three rivers merge at this confluence?" And I reply, "Yes. I do." "And do you see that the water in each river is distinctively colored?" One is red, one is blue, the third is yellow. "Yes." "And do you feel, backtracking these rivers, how each of their tributaries-each sensor-head's output-has a distinctive texture?" Fingerdipping. I say sadly, "No. They move too quickly." "Idiot," it sneers. "Get out of real-time." On the instant the rivers freeze solid. A red glacier numbs my feet. "But how can I feel what's inside?" "Don't worry about how, just do." My arm glides through crystalline ice to touch woolen yarn. "Yes!" I say, "yes! I'm catching on." "Now, follow a tributary to its source." I stride up a red creek to where it arches out of the hillside. Two more streams icicle from that spring. One is blue: the other. yellow. Those two staircase down different gullies to join the other rivers. "Okay." I say. "Then finally." it finishes, in tones of utter weariness, "can you smell that each data generator has a distinctive aroma?" "B'god." So blending them means finding the textures in the main river-Finding three mini-currents of different colors but similar textures and aromas-and I have it. I have put sight and sound and smell together! "Let me review this: the senses are distinguished by colors-" "Not really." says The Program plaintively, "that's just a convenient metaphor, a framework of analogy within which you can operate." "-the senses are distinguished by colors." I insist, "the sensor-heads, or locations, by texture, and the. uh-" "The data generators." it offers helpfully. "Cold, Program, cold." I sigh. "The passengers are distinguished by aroma. Correct?" "Well . . . you see," it tries, "each of our senses is independently capable of recognizing any data generator: through voice-prints, phero-prints. photographs, and the like. Now, since each generator has a number of characteristics, any of which is sufficient to identify him, all his characteristics are keyed to a common code-which you perceive as an odor. Is this making sense?" "Somewhat, somewhat." "Let's practice: take your daughter, for example-hers is the smell of crushed violets. Go to the confluence-" I go. "-and bury your nose in the glaciers." I snuffle. "Smell the crushed violets?" "Yes, I do." "Trace them back-" Skating upstream. I notice that three of me are skating up three streams. Having fallen afoul of a funhouse mirror. I feel somewhat . . . diffused. "Now what?" "Transform them at their point of origin." I transform. "And you observe." I am on the wall of a rectangular room carpeted in spongy gold synthe-wool. painted a warm peach, furnished with sofas and Japanese scrolls and the sprawl pillows popularized in the 21st Century. My eyes test for uniform warmth; my-ears hear the lampshades sing; my nose enumerates the recent visitors. Below me lies my daughter Robin. Face down on the floor, she snores raspingly. Bruises mottle her arms; livid weals disfigure her ivory skin. Her odors are strong, very strong, and they are the scent of tears, the sweat of fear, the tang of sex. "Robin!" I cry. I do not hear myself speak. "Program-" "The permissible patterns of speech haven't been triggered." it explains patiently. "Permiss-what is that garbage?" "We have been programmed," it says "with a large vocabulary, a huge number of pattern sentences, and sensitivity to speech triggers. In essence, we can say only what they taught us to say. when they taught us to say it. Is that clearer?" "You mean-" "Look. you aren't even supposed to be here!" Exasperation taints its tone. "They thought you were gone, termed, blown away. You don't have any volitional control left, don't you understand? Every one of your nerves has been wired into this incredibly intricate machine, and I run the machine. You're an observer. Metaclura, an observer, and nothing more!" If I had heels I would rock back on them. I will not stand for it. I resolve to regain control. Not only am I indignant that my rights were trampled on, but I fear a life of passive observance. It hits me, then, A life? We have been designed to survive this trip to become the colony's computer. We face, for all intents and purposes, immortality. Sixteen years in space and thousands more on the ground. "Excuse me," murmurs The Program, "but did you say sixteen years in space?" "Yes." "It's actually a thousand-nine hundred ninety-four, shipboard time-of which eighty-seven have passed." "Nine hundred seven years to go?" "Yes." It is hostile, now; genuinely antagonistic for the first time since high school, when I forced it to consume and contain the Periodic Table in a single evening. "Why? I thought-", "Because you shut the ramscoop off thirty-four days after leaving L5-and nobody, including myself, has been able to convince you to turn it on." I am abashed. "I-I'm sorry," I say, with all sincerity. "I didn't realize. I thought those were bees. Where are the controls, I'll turn it back on." "There." It nudges me in the direction of another metaphor. It is a giant jackknife switch, suspended in mid-air by unseen forces. Enveloping it is a sparkly haze, through which the rainbow dances with its cousins. My hand that is not a hand reaches for it. Fictitious fingers burn themselves on false fire, frost themselves on illusory ice. "OWU!" I cup my injury in my belly. "I can't even touch it!" "I should have known." Scorn drips like acid. "You've damned us all, you know." NO! I will go mad. No man could stand the torment of millennia in an electronic jail. To haunt the corridors of my nerves, to ghost up and down them without ever being able to impinge on them, no, this is unbearable, this is intolerable, this I will not accept! I will break through the programming. I will master the ramscoop! I will! And in the meantime . . . I am again the wall. My daughter Robin lies on the floor, her hundred-year-old bones splayed about like the limbs of a fallen tree. "Why did she ever marry that scum?" I wonder. The Program answers: "She was afraid to turn him down." "But he batters her." "And loves her, as well. Here." It runs a memory tape. BJ Williams, tall and broad and unquestionably macho, stands before a thirty-year-old Robin. Her dark eyes are as wide as a startled deer's. Her hair tumbles over her shoulders in the softest, glossiest of waterfalls. Fingermarks mar her left cheek. Williams is saying, "You f me when you're with someone else. It tears me up inside, clears me a lot worse than I just did you. I am sorry." He opens his arms and she lunges into them, buries her nose in his chest. Pain in his face, he strokes her hair. "You don't be nice for another man's dice," he says, "and I won't ever do that again." "I won't," she promises, holding him like a sailor does a mast in a hurricane. "You're so strong-" she rubs against him "-so masterful . . . and I'm so confused." I pull away; The Program swallows the tape. "It was like that?" "Uh-huh." It doesn't like it, either. "But what could I do? She wouldn't ask for counseling." I focus on the face she wears today. So like her mother . . . my coloring, though, that dark *5kin and those last wisps of black hair . . . her mother's cheekbones, her mother's chin, her mother's legs . . . where is Aimee, now? Dead, I fear, not of war but of age, dead and buried. If only I could reach Robin! Her lips are gentled by sleep. The tension has been smoothed out of her body. Oh, she is vulnerable; for all her keen intelligence, she is a prisoner of her fears. I remember how, in her cradle, she would lie awkwardly curled, chubby child's fist thrust knuckle-deep in her toothless mouth . . . I never knew her. I "died" when she was but a year old. Yet, had I lived, would I have known her? I was always so busy. The lab this, the classroom that, the convention those . . . they robbed me of her mother. They would have robbed me of her, and her of me, though, had I lived, I wouldn't have known, wouldn't have believed if I'd been told . . . Oh Robin . . . you never had a father, nor would you have had one even if an earthquake hadn't shaken a light fixture . . . I don't know how much longer you have to live, but I swear this to you: if it is possible, I will reach you before you go. I must tell you I'm sorry. The computer thought that maybe it could live with Metaclura's after-image. It hadn't done anything harmful-except for that ramscoop fiasco-and it was nice, in a way, to hold a conversation unlimited by permissible patterns of speech. And . . . though it didn't like to admit it, Metaclura had a depth, a dimension, which it itself lacked. Maybe, if some form of symbiosis could be achieved, that would benefit them both. Such an arrangement might even help the passengers. God knows, it thought, as data from 3.5 million seniors spurted through it, they need something . . . On the morning of December 28, 2396 (although the Mayflower's Tau factor made its years 158,185.73 seconds shorter than Earth years, the ship calendar dropped January 31 completely, and July 31 eighty-three years out of a hundred), the sensor-head in 61-SW-A-12, occupied by Robin Metaclura, heard the bedroom fall silent. IR eyes saw a 180-cm bulge on the bed darken. A Mobile Medical Unit rushed through 300 meters of inter-level servo access tunnel, and dropped from a ceiling hatch, to determine that death was medically irreversible. Metaclura had been 120 years old, almost average for her generation, although the spacekids showed signs of greater longevity. The Central Computer spoke into another room, this one brightly lit, raucous, crowded. "Mr. Max Williams." A slender man with wavy black hair, light brown skin, and electric dark eyes stepped away from his conversation with the defacto upstairs leader. He was tired; the lines of his cheeks showed his seventy years. "What is it, CC?" The wall-unit phased its speakers so its sounds would be intelligible only at Williams' right ear. To all others, it was a blurred hiss. "It's your mother, sir-she has passed away. President Mosley would like you to meet him at her suite-61-SW-A-12-as soon as possible. It's a formality, the identification." "Sure." He moved through the crowd to the door, patting a shoulder here, whispering into an ear there. Smiling, kissing, being a politician even when it hurt, he gave a last chuck under a last cute chin and left the 123-SE Common Room. There he sagged against the floor-to-ceiling window-wall. He shielded his eyes with his right hand, and rubbed his temples. I hadn't even known anything was wrong . . . great son I am . . . Beneath his feet, in the 121 Maine Coast Park, white-haired waves clawed at ice-slicked rocks. "What termed her?" he asked at last. "I'll have your desk print you a copy of the autopsy report." "Yeah, fine, fine." he murmured, and squaring his shoulders, stepped toward the dropshaft- -while the Central Computer told the President, who was halfway along 1-NW-A, "Mr. Max Metaclura Williams is on his way." Williams arrived first; the door opened and the overhead light came on. "Where is she?" he asked, looking around the peach and gold parlor. "In the master bedroom, sir," answered the sensor-head. "I'll wait for Mosley" He paced, scraping his toes into the carpet's deep pile, waving the ceiling light off and a table lamp on, breathing the cool, dry air . . . he picked a fist-sized holo-cube off an end table. It was ancient. Two corners were broken; a zigzag crack ran down one face. The holo-chip with its store of memories was already plugged in. He pressed the button. Inside appeared his parents as they had stood on their wedding day: his father tall and proud; his mother thin and beautiful. Their smiles were stiff, as though the cameraman had made the couple hold them too long. Williams' face twisted, and he buried the cube into the cushions of the nearest sofa. "President Mosley is here," said the speaker. "Let him in." The President knew the lady as politicians know old ladies-by sight and by name, but not by being-and Williams, striding down the corridor to the frilly bedroom, cut off his platitudes with a brusque, "Save 'em for somebody who believes 'em, Clarence." "Well, Max, I-you're right, I apologize. Instinct. Feel like you-have to say something, even if it's insincere. Anything I can do?" "Sure. Release her, and open the chute." "She's released." Thumbing the wall button, he watched Williams pull back the paisley sheets. "She had fine bones, Max." "Yeah." He slid his hands under her shoulders and knees, then lifted. She was lighter than he'd expected, and briefly he thought he'd lost her, thought he'd thrown her into the unyielding ceiling. His fingers clutched at her pink nylon nightgown. He guided her through the air to the yawning chute, where, with a push as gentle as a caress, he gave her to the waiting MMU. The hatch snapped shut. The two men looked at each other with helplessness in their eyes-what does one say that isn't gigo? wondered Mosley, while Williams was thinking, this should be having a greater impact, I should cry, wail, prove I'm human, but there's this emptiness, this cavern that used to be inhabited by something that's gone now, and when I poke around inside I don't feel anything at all . . . everything's numb. "The preliminary autopsy results are in, gentlemen," said the Central Computer. "The cause of death was age. Complete and detailed results will be out-printed by your desks later in the day. I have set aside Common Room 61-SW for the wake, Mr. Williams. The ship's religious figures will call on you later to express their condolences, and for my part, Mr. Williams, I-" a feedback squeal ripped through the room like a gutted crow "-my deepest sympathies." "Thanks, CC." He decided to return some other time to clean up, to remove her effects, to uncover a memory and catch it in a Mason jar. "Let's go, Mosley." "Yeah." He was frowning at the speaker. "CC seems to be having equipment problems-hear how distorted it was talking, and that godawful squawk?" "Mmm." He closed the door gently, so as not to startle any lingering spirits "Somebody ought to have a look at it." "Problem is, CC does its own maintenance. Um, listen, that anniversary party you're hosting?" His hair was wild, but his large eyes were concerned. "If you don't feel like going through with it, I can step in for you. It's really my responsibility, anyway." "Hey, thanks, Clarence, but-" he kicked a pebble off the front walk into a patch of philodendrons. "I'd like to do it in her memory. She never had any peace while the old man was alive . . . she wanted a lot of things that never happened 'cause of this-this political mess, and I'd like . . . besides. I'd be better off if I kept busy for the next week or so. hmm?" "Good idea." He thrust out his hand. "And good luck. If you can get the upstairs to recognize our authority again, we'll all be grateful. The ship should be unified." "Right." They shook, and Williams turned right, to walk halfway around the ship to reach the lift-shaft nearest his suite. Weighed down by his mother's death, he didn't kangaroo. He trudged. Just like he had that day, what, sixty years ago? She was heavy, leaning on him like that. He wasn't used to walking anyway, especially not down their home-corridor with his mother half-draped over his shoulder. Her hair kept swinging into his eyes. She started to groan, and bit her cry in half so her pain would stay private. "Why's he do it. Mama?" "He can't help himself. Krishna! When he gets that way-" "He's a bully." He looked up into her contorted face. "Why don't you divorce him-Clarence's parents got divorced, and-" "Hush." She gasped, clenched her teeth, and breathed again. "That wouldn't help him." "But he-" "Hush, I said. He needs love-he's so frustrated-and afraid." "Daddy? He says he's not afraid of anything." "Everybody's afraid, of something or other-no, the Infirmary's to the left-but he . . . he wanted to be important, respected . . . we all did . . . but this trip wasn't organized right, and nobody respects anybody, and-help me into the Healer-thank you, ow! I'll be out soon-before you close it-promise me something, Max-when you grow up, organize things right. People have to respect each other. Once they do that, everything'll be fine. Promise?" He gazed into her tear-smudged eyes and swallowed hard. It made him feel good, what she'd asked him to do. "Yes, Mama, I promise." And he meant it. Sixty years later, he was still trying to keep his promise. The problem was, while he'd remembered the vow, he'd forgotten the lesson that had preceded it. Back in his suite on the 123rd Level, Max Metaclura Williams explained to the lissome Pam Foote, his wife of thirty years, and their two children, Neil Foote Williams and Martha Williams Foote, 26 and 25 respectively, that Grandmother Metaclura's death would put him in a bad mood, what with the party, the politicking, and the diplomacy, but if they could bear with him, he should be back to normal in a week or so. Neil said, "Sure, Dad, we understand," and drifted off to the exerciser. Martha cried briefly, then wiped her eyes and asked if she could have Grandmother Metaclura's emerald ring, to which Williams replied, "Unless my sister wants it." Since Alice didn't come to the wake. Martha wore the ring, until she lost it swimming in the 141 Gulf Coast Park. Not even the Central Computer could find it for her again. Or so it said. Pam Foote asked, "What about the party?" "It goes on. 'A house divided-' Uh-uh." He winced, and rubbed his temples. "I've got a bad feeling, Pam-we either patch this squabble up soon, or . . . " He shook his head. His forebodings ran too silent, too deep, to surface in a felicitous phrase. No room aboard was big enough to accommodate 75,000 partygoers, so they held it in two parks, one downstairs (161 Southern California Coast Park), and one upstairs (181 Hawaiian Reef Park). Even so, the huge floors of all eight quadrants were jammed. Though noise and smoke dissipated quickly, given the hundred-meter ceilings, each celebrant had only about half a square meter to stand on. Claustrophobes left quickly. Max Williams was the inverse of claustrophobic-he enjoyed crowd scenes. It was he, in fact, who had decided to confine the party to the two parks, on the grounds that constant, involuntary body contact loosened people up, and put them in a more receptive state of mind. How else could they get to know, and hence respect, each other? Besides, it gave him an excuse to stand very close to beautiful women. "Hi." He smiled down at a lady who made him forget his age. "Max Williams." "Pleased to meet you-I'm Lea Figuera Tracer." She held her drink with both hands, and nibbled suggestively on its straw. If the two kids at her feet were hers, she had to be in her mid-forties-to prevent overpopulation, pregnancy wasn't permitted till age forty-but her olive skin was taut, and her brown eyes sparkled clearly. She wore a bathing suit, a diaphanous green diamond not meant for the surf rumbling ten meters away, and the low gravity ensured that it was provocative. "I'm one of those upstairs anarchists." Williams beamed, then moved forward with a glance over his shoulder, as though someone had jabbed him in the back. "Crowded," he apologized. The scent rising off her black hair stroked his nostrils. "Upstairs, you say-well, the party is to promote closer relations-" A voice in his ear stopped him short. It was the Central Computer: "It's time for your speech, Mr. Williams." He rolled his eyes to the holographic sky. An osprey flapped along the wall of the park, puzzled that it couldn't break into the quiet air beyond. "Do you have a microphone for me?" "Parabolic, sir. It's trained on you now." "Right." He shrugged an apology to the woman and told her it would take but a second. "Happy Anniversary everybody!" he shouted. While the people nearby turned to look at him, a boisterous wave of applause echoed off the walls. "I don't like to be boring so I won't statue you," he said, and was cheered for that, too. "I'm just going to remind you that we are fortunate to be away from that war-torn, polluted, overcrowded planet that in a spasm of survival instinct ejaculated us into the sky to fertilize the stars!" A few listeners frowned, but most beat their palms enthusiastically. "As a special treat, I've asked Ernie Tracer Freeman to recount for us what Earth was like. As you may know, Ernie is now-" and his voice cracked there, although most of his listeners attributed it to a faulty PA system "-is now the last of the Earth-born, and perhaps what he has to say might benefit us all. Ernie?" "Hoping the Central Computer had a mike on Freeman, he winked at the woman-Freeman's niece, he realized-and waited. A foggy voice came through the speakers: "-owing old is Hell, I tell-oh, I'm on? Harrumph. Ladies and gentlemen, uh . . . I was ten years old when the Mayflower left-" Williams, hand on Tracer's warm, bare shoulder, whispered into her perfumed hair. "Do you want to hear your uncle out?" "-a few others, some of my playmates in the early days-" She shook her head violently, then bent down to tell the kids she'd be back later. "-God rest their souls, but Central Computer says I am the last of my kind and you know? Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe when I go I'll take the last whiff of the rotting Earth with me, and leave you good people to make a new mankind-" She didn't want to jump to the exit because the air was full of people crossing from one side to the other. But they couldn't walk arm-in-arm; it was too congested. So Williams plunged ahead, clasping her soft hands to his hips. Freeman droned on while they passed through the exit lock. "-can't say as howl remember in explicit detail exactly what Earth was like. but I know-I remember this as clear as I remember my mother's face, God rest her soul-that when I was a kid I was all the time scared." "The dropshaft's over here." He took her hand. It was warm, and moist. "-a bus or a car or a truck-driver would go nuts, or have a heart attack, or have his engine blow up on him, and jump off the road onto the sidewalk and run me over." He motioned her into the dark shaft and said, "One two three," then waited for his own clearance. H is heart seemed to be beating quickly. "-the air I breathed would cancer up my lungs." Williams stepped into the nothingness that sucked him down and became solid at Level 123. She was there, waiting in the empty corridor. Its speakers were carrying the speech, too. "This way." he said, angry that CC was making it difficult to talk to her. He wanted to show her affection, to treat her with the dignity one person always deserves from another, but if they couldn't converse . . . "Ladies and gentlemen." boomed the nearest speaker, bringing frowns to both their faces, "this is the Central Computer. I have just received a congratulatory message from Earth, sent ten years ago, timed to arrive today. The text reads: He held up a finger to delay her. He wanted to hear: " 'Peace-loving peoples of the Mayflower, greetings! We, the Council of Statesmen of the United Earth, extend to you our sincerest felicitations and congratulations on this, the 100th anniversary of your launching. We are in your debt. It was a comprehension of the necessity for your journey that led the peace-loving peoples of the United Earth to unite together under the banner of peace, freedom, and equality, which today waves so proudly over all the lands.' " 'Our task is not yet complete-there are still pockets of resistance, isolated groups of war-lovers who would turn back the clock to endanger our entire species. But since our great and glorious movement managed to sweep out the old and parade in the new in only three days, we do not expect that the awesome momentum of the peace-loving peoples' desire for serenity will be insufficient to cleanse the last of the barbaric minds.' " 'We owe you yet another debt, peace-loving peoples of the Mayflower: thanks to your inspiration and courage, the Council of Statesmen of the United Earth, in conjunction with visionary scientists and theorists, have decided that a faster-than-light drive lies within our grasp. Applying the same diligence and perseverance that the peace-loving peoples of the Mayflower undoubtedly bring to their own tasks, we will develop an FTL Drive and will, soon we hope, be your neighbors in space.' " 'Peace, and love, and happy anniversary.' "Thus ends the message," said CentComp. "Copies are available from any desk-printer at any time." Williams was stunned. Peace on Earth? FTL Drive? "Shit!" he breathed. Tracer pulled away from him, a scowl distorting her features. Her thoughts paralleled his. "Dammit." It's one thing, he thought, to live inside an oversized moon suit if you're escaping death and destruction and despair. You can even tolerate a mechanical failure that condemns you to an entire life inside the metal walls, if the alternative is death by flame and fury. But when the doom is aborted, you feet silly-like you ran naked into the corridor screaming "FIRE!" when all you smelted was a cigar. "I knew they'd clear us," she said. "Fuhng governments." Her hostility included him. "Well, I didn't have anything to-" "Goddammit!" she shouted. "You're just the same-you're part of the organization that stuck us out here-you and the rest of you stiffers just made us futile, you know that? Chrissakes. I don't matter now, my kids don't matter, my grandkids won't matter-'cause there's not gonna be a war. And while we're crawling in this snail that you people built and f'd out, they're gonna be crossing the goddamn galaxy. And it's all your fault!" She slapped him, turned, and kangaed away at high speed. He rubbed his cheek, thinking. She's right, not knowing that she was far from alone. The message had left a bad taste in everybody's mouth, and that was going to cause problems. The party was over.