George Zebrowski (9 page)

I want to live after all
, he concluded.

On the dream world he found, and lost, Grazia three times.

One hundred kilometers long, the asteroid had been motorized and brought in from the outer solar system more than a thousand years ago. It had been bored, hollowed and honeycombed in thousands of places, creating chambers of safety for the dreamers, who lived an endless succession of dream sequences. This subculture believed in the biological history of the body and old brain — letting that history of layered impulses, instincts and images bubble to the surface of their dream lives in violent, often cruel fantasies —

— Grazia came to him in his tomb, opened the sleep crypt and asked him why he was fleeing from all that was alive. She took his hand and together they were borne up through a long tunnel, emerging at last in a sunny landscape of trees and gentle hills.

The earth smelled of flowers and dirt. Here a stiff-winged blackbird swooped toward them, seized Grazia by the torso and nearly cut her in two, carrying the remains off into the blue, cloudless sky —

TRY AGAIN.

— They waited in a garden, she looking up at the sky where the hot sun rode. Slowly its light increased, suffusing the entire sky, until the nova’s heat blew away the planet’s atmosphere, melting the flesh from their bodies, leaving for an instant two skeletons embracing —

AND AGAIN.

— He had come back in time to run toward the cliff edge. High over the sea, Grazia’s glider was dropping toward the wall face, gaining speed as it approached the air currents near the shore. He stopped at the edge and started to wave her off, but the craft continued its approach until the sudden downdraft tumbled it out of control, smashing it up against the wall, sending it finally to the rocks and breakers below. Giant crabs scurried as the ocean retreated, and he watched them pry the body out of the cockpit and pick it clean, leaving the skeleton to bleach in the sun —

TRY AGAIN?

No
, he said within himself, I’m not suited to this kind of life, I’ll never be able to make it work.

WE ARE SORRY, they said, and let him go.

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“The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.”

— Byron

RAFAEL KURBI arrived at New Mars with only the clothes he was wearing and his identity disk. When the shuttle from the starship touched down at Port Deimos, the captain told him over the intercom to stay in his cabin.

A few minutes later a man came to see him.

“Rafael Kurbi?” the man asked as the door slid shut behind him.

“Yes,” Kurbi said and got up from his bunk.

“My name is Rensch, port commissioner for New Mars. Why are you coming here?” The man spoke Federation, but with a harsh accent that made the words startlingly unfamiliar. He was of middle height, with closely cropped black hair, slightly gray at the temples; his hands were gnarly, thick-boned. He looked at Kurbi with eyes that seemed to hide amusement, perhaps even contempt.

“To live, maybe,” Kurbi said. Suddenly he became aware of his disheveled state. He needed clean clothes, a bath and a shave. The starship had not been a luxury vessel. A pervert from Earth, Rensch was probably thinking.

“Why? A Federation citizen of your rank and wealth? What would you want here? Are you an intelligence operative? I don’t mind, personally and officially, but I would like to know.” He ran his hand through his coarse hair and scratched the back of his head.

“What would you know about me?” Kurbi asked, immediately regretting the challenging tone of the question. “I want to live here a while, see a little of how you live,” he added before the other could answer.

“I know that you are from Earth itself, rather than from the urban ring, that you are a relatively unmodified human type, unlike the extravagantly doctored ringers. This will make you less of a curiosity to our people. Will you make official trouble if I turn you away?”

For a moment there was silence as Kurbi looked into Rensch’s face. “Do you have that right?” Kurbi asked. “I’m sorry, Commissioner,” he added quickly, “I shouldn’t have asked that — no, I won’t make any trouble for you, but I hope you will let me stay.”

Rensch considered for a moment. “You’ll have to work here,” he said. “We don’t sell much in goods or services and we don’t exchange much credit with Earth — we trade mostly, for what the star freighters bring a few times a year. We’re mostly self-sufficient, but improvements from the Federation have helped increase our population and it’s getting harder to stay that way. Many of our people feel threatened.”

“How do you mean?”

“Their way of life.…”

“What can I work at?”

“You’ll have to work for food and lodgings. You’ll start here in the port, helping to unload what the shuttle brings down. When you’re done, come to me and I’ll see what else I can do. If I can’t find much, you’ll have to leave when the freighter goes.”

“I’ll be working for you, then?”

“I’m your boss as long as you’re in the port.”

“I hope you can help me — because I want to see more of your world. By the way, where can I stay?”

“There are a few rooms behind my office — you can stay there. Come with me now.”

Kurbi followed him out of the cabin, down the shuttle’s central passageway to the open lock, where a ramp led down to the unloading dock. Rensch started down ahead of him, but Kurbi paused for a moment to look out at New Mars. The port was a vast machine of black and silver metal, squatting under a sky of low, driving clouds; a drizzly rain floated down and the air smelled of ozone.

He went down the ramp to where Rensch was waiting for him.

“This is the only port we have,” the commissioner said loudly. “The rest of the planet is agricultural — about twenty million people, but thinly scattered across a large land surface, three continents, all joined by passable land bridges.”

“You were born here?” Kurbi asked.

“Yes — we wouldn’t stand for Federation officials here.”

Rensch turned and led the way across the slippery surface of the dock to a small building a hundred meters away. There was a hand-operated glass door. Inside, his office was lit by old-style fluorescent tubes; the desk and chairs were wrought iron. The commissioner crossed the room and opened a green wooden door.

Kurbi followed and looked inside.

“There’s a bunk and toilet,” Rensch said.

The light in the small room was dim and there was no window, only a ventilation louver. The toilet seemed to be a simple flush device which used water; the bunk was long and narrow.

“It’ll do,” Kurbi said.

“There’s no other place I can put you right now.”

Rensch went back to his desk and sat down behind it. Kurbi followed him and sat down in one of the crude iron chairs facing the desk. The black metal was cold to the touch.

“We’re not a rich planet,” Rensch said, “as you can see. And we’re not about to open to tourism.”

“These chairs are handmade?”

“Yes — why?”

“Why don’t you import high-energy generating plants, computers and autocybers, and cut down on human effort?”

“Mr. Kurbi,” Rensch said, “— you don’t mind if I use that form of address —”

“Not at all.”

“ — you see, we don’t believe in life without work. I mean work that supports life, not leisure work as you would know it; we don’t believe in working so well that we make ourselves obsolete …”

“Excuse me, Commissioner,” Kurbi said, “but your hard accent and occasional unfamiliar words make it hard for me to follow you. Could you speak more slowly?”

“Yes — stop me when I use a local word. Yes — our history is made of the lives of people who came here after seeing what leisure had done to worlds nearer Earth. We work all our lives and our lives are filled up.”

“Do you think this way?”

“I’ve had contact with offworlders. To be honest, they interest me, which is why I agreed to let you stay even though you will not fit in.…” He trailed off and was silent.

“When do I start?” Kurbi asked, trying to be cheerful.

“You’ll have some machinery to help with the lifting, and a few co-workers, but be prepared for sore muscles during the first few weeks. Do you really want to do this?”

“I’ll stay as long as you’ll have me,” Kurbi said.

In the first two weeks he worked under the port, in the first level below the surface, where a conveyor belt brought cargo from the shuttle as well as from ocean-going ships. Here he picked up crates with a small pincer truck and drove them to one of several warehouses near the edge of the port. There were a hundred workers toiling with him, each operating a truck.

Two men worked directly with him. One was a tall, white-haired man named Den, who was only nineteen years old, and the other was a thin, olive-skinned man with three fingers missing from his left hand. At first both men limited themselves to smiling at Kurbi; later they started to ask questions.

“Why work, offworlder?” Den asked one morning.

“I need to.”

Den shrugged.

“How did you hurt yourself?” Kurbi asked the two-fingered man.

“Machine,” he said and spat as he positioned a crate on Kurbi’s pincer lifts.

“What’s your name?”

“Two-Fingers, what else. Two will do.…”

Den laughed nearby.

Kurbi looked forward to driving out of the long tunnel onto the surface, where the giant iron-work warehouses stood under a cloudy sky. The sun came out in his third week, a double star more white than yellow, but it warmed him in the afternoons when he grew damp from the port’s cold, basement world.

At the end of each day he ate with Rensch in the office. Food was brought in from the workers’ kitchen by one of the cooks; the meal usually included green vegetables, a piece of meat and bread. Rensch brewed a black tea himself, which Kurbi came to depend on to get him going in the cold mornings.

The commissioner would always be looking at him when they ate.

“You expect something from me, don’t you?” Kurbi chewed his food and waited for an answer.

“I don’t think I understand you, Kurbi. Have you come here to be as far away as you can from your past life?”

“You understand me,” Kurbi said and took a sip of tea.

“Is it working?”

“I think so — otherwise I would have left.”

“May I ask …”

“I loved someone very much — she died.”

“That is why you came here?”

“You don’t think it’s enough, do you? You don’t have to answer. I loved her too much, it might be said. But she should not have died. Isn’t death frightening to you here?”

Rensch drained his tea and put the cup carefully down on his desk. “I know enough, Mr. Kurbi, to know that you would think of us as superstitious in our view of death. No, death is a way to a greater life. We believe in a merciful God.”

Kurbi swallowed a mouthful of bread. “I had heard — how do you manage it?”

Rensch was not offended by the skepticism of the question. “The universe would be meaningless,” he said, “if it were not a prelude to something else. Nature is a place of testing and achievement — even you believe in achievement. Otherwise life, especially immortal life, would be pointless and empty, a vastness of stars and matter and life … simply existing in a mindless process.”

“You’ve been in space?” Kurbi finished the last piece of meat and took a sip of tea.

“Yes.” He shrugged. “In any case, that is how most of the people here see things.”

“And you?”

“I don’t know. I am sure that your worlds are not committing suicide every day — they live and achieve, that much I know.”

Outside, the rain came down in a sudden rush. Kurbi suddenly appreciated the pot of warm tea on Rensch’s desk, and the indoor companionship of another who seemed to be interested in serious questions.

“I’d like to see the countryside,” Kurbi said.

“I can probably get you a vehicle — no, that’s no good, you would have to abandon it when you ran out of fuel. We refine our own, but there are severe limits. Anything advanced, you see, would change us. It might be best for you to rely on your feet; you’ll see more that way. Better still, ride our freight line. It’s limited, but it will get you across the continent. Also, if you stick to the line, we’ll know where you are. You might get stuck somewhere.”

There was a silence between them. “What’s your first name?” Kurbi asked.

“Nicolai — a few people call me Nico, usually when they want something.”

Kurbi became aware of voices outside, workers going home in the rain. He turned around in his chair and saw rubber-draped shapes passing the glass door.

Turning back to Nicolai, Kurbi asked, “Why, then, does this port exist? From what you say the industry here is not what you want.”

“True — there are those who would like to close the port down. They want to do without the conveniences we import or manufacture here. Without the rail line, our growing rural population would have no relief in time of natural disaster, or famine, or when the need for medical care arises. Happily, we are part of the Federation, so those of us with traditional ideas cannot enforce them. The port stays because too many of us need its imports and industry, whether we like it or not. The port also stands as a way into another kind of life for the young, and it will affect individuals of each generation.…”

“It seems to affect you.”

Nicolai sighed. “It’s hard not to think of the number of worlds beyond this sky, especially when they send ships that you can see and touch. Maybe those worlds know something we don’t. It’s startling for me to think that on many worlds people die only when they want to. There are those here who don’t believe this.”

“What is the life span here?”

“Very low — one hundred thirty Earth years is the upper limit, but it can be as low as thirty-five in bad places.”

“And people accept this, knowing that they might live longer?”

“They do. You see, they don’t know anything, they only hear it’s possible to live longer. I believe that people want to die, not only because they look forward to another life, but because life tires them out.” Nicolai took a deep breath. “I can see a time when I may want to leave, Rafael.”