Mindbridge (11 page)

SQUEEZE & DROP

162
          
-066
 
3.3,3.3,1.9

163
          
-055
 
3.1,3.1,1.8

164
          
-044
 
2.9,2.9,1.7

165
          
-033
 
2.7,2.7,1.6

166
          
-022
 
2.5,2.5,1.5

167
          
-011
 
2.3,2.3,1.4

168
          
000
  
2.1,2.1,1.3

169
          
011
  
1.9,1.9,1.2

170
          
022
  
1.8,1.8,1.1

171
          
032
  
1.8,1.8,1.1

172
          
042
  
1.8,1.8,1.1

173
          
052
  
1.8,1.8,1.1

174
          
060
  
1.8,1.8,1.1

175
          
067
  
1.7,1.7,1.1

176
          
073
  
1.6,1.6,1.1

177
          
077
  
1.5,1.5,1.1

178
          
080
  
1.4,1.4,1.1

179
          
081
  
1.3.1.3,1.1

180
          
082
  
1.2,1.2,1.1

181
          
082
  
1.1,1.1,1.1

182
          
082
  
1.0,1.0,1.1

183
          
082
  
0.9,0.9,1.1

184
          
082
  
0.8,0.8,1.1

HOLD THIS
                      
(t = 188) The nugget

CONFIGURATION TO
               
appears in the output

187
          
082
  
0.8,0.8,1.1
hopper.

BLUR SQUEEZE
                   
VOICE OVER: “Silver!

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

                               
any other useful metal.

HOLD THIS
                      
“Tamer engineers will

CONFIGURATION TO
               
use these metals to build

197
          
082
  
0.3,0.3,1.1
tools. . .”

CUT TO:
                  
(t = 198) “Tools to build

STOCK AED CUBAGE
               
the machines for geoformy.

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

using lathe on surface of
      
into those machines will

unimproved planet) FADE TO:
    
also come from the

214 HOLD STATIC
                
Westinghouse . . . Mass

REPLAY OF t =30 TO
             
Spectrometer.”

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

STOCK AED CUBAGE

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

landscape, double sun in sky)
        
two...

                               
(DEFIANTLY)

CUT TO:
                        
“or ten-or fifty-“

230
                            
(BEAT to t = 221) “There

STOCK WEST CUBAGE
              
will be a new world where

PR001/0000-0010
                
men can live.

(Westinghouse sigil in front of

deepspace background.
          
(BEAT to t = 226)

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

232 KEY IN

WESTINGHOUSE
                   
(t = 230) VOICE OVER:

ANTHEM
                         
“Westinghouse.

239.240 FADE OUT.

(t=232)“Building better worlds...

(t=234)“For you.”

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

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

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

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

A woman named Jerry Kovaly made this cumbersome arrangement unnecessary.

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

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

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

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

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

At slingshot time, the child disappeared.

It was an alien artifact.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

15 Sept 2051.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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