The Voices of Heaven

by Frederik Pohl

  Oh, hell, you expect too much. No factory can make everything. The orbiters come pretty close, I admit; they tell me that this one's program stores contain the manufacturing doctrines for hundreds of thousands of different items. It has built-in instructions that tell it how to do everything from smelting and annealing the metals and just how and where to sputter dopant onto the electronic parts, to the kind of decorative finish to put on the cabinet. If you happened to need a hundred dozen pop-up toasters you just picked the model you preferred out of the catalogue and the factory would start pumping them out—taking the sheet metal from stock, winding the heating coils, fabricating the power lines; if it didn't have any of those things in stock it would make them out of raw materials. It would even make you one toaster if that was all you wanted; it didn't have to be mass production.

  The factory orbiter isn't magic, though. It has very limited biochemical capabilities. It can't grow living tissues. Not even single cells.

  There are lots of other things the factory can't do. It can't transmute elements. If an alloy calls for—I don't know, say it requires a little bit of bismuth—and if there doesn't happen to be any bismuth in stock—well, then it has to substitute some other element or try to replace it with whatever else it can find that will work. It might even cannibalize some bismuth from some other thing that it has already manufactured, but has a lower priority, if it has anything like that on hand. The factory is quite resourceful. All the same, its resources are not infinite, and if the factory can't do any of those things, it just can't fill that order.

  It has other limitations. Add to what I've already said were the headaches of transporting stuff to and from orbit, add in the problem of getting raw materials to it, add in the fact that the thing was now just about a hundred years old. Even self-repairing machines don't last forever, do they?

  Well, you wouldn't know whether they do or not. Take my word for it. The factory was good, but it just wasn't good enough. All I was really hoping for in the long run was that we could get enough production out of it to start making a better system somewhere else.

  When the day of the postponed meeting came, it rained again. That was bad luck, and it wasn't just sprinkles. I'm talking about a steady all-day downpour that flooded the town's streets into mud and ruled out the possibility of an outdoor meeting entirely. We had to move the meeting inside somewhere. We didn't have very many options, either. The only place that was big enough—or almost big enough—was the rickety old meeting hall.

  When I got inside it was really crowded. We were all damp and uncomfortable and, although crews had been working to strengthen the building all day, I looked suspiciously at the beams that had propped it up. The roof probably wouldn't fall in on us, though; with so many of us inside we could just about hold it up with our bare hands.

  Naturally there weren't any seats left to speak of, but Madeleine Hartly and her great-granddaughter were occupying the end of one bench. When Madeleine saw me she nudged the girl and they managed to squeeze over enough to free eight or ten centimeters. I didn't exactly sit. I perched, one buttock on the bench and the other floating in air. I didn't mind. I was all revved up with the prospect of what was going to happen, and a little discomfort didn't bother me at all.

  By then I had become a sort of local celebrity in Freehold. All around the room people were looking at me, a few with sour expressions, more nodding or waving in encouragement; a couple of rows away Theophan Sperlie had craned around to give me a thumbs-up sign. When I waved back Madeleine gave me a hooded look out of the bird's-nest of wrinkles around her bright black eyes. It seemed to me for a second that she might be going to make some remark about Theo, but all she did say was, "Are you ready for your big moment?"

  "I hope so." As a matter of fact I thought I was. I'd spent most of the afternoon rehearsing the whole project in my mind. I looked around, checking the house. Nearly everybody I'd ever seen on Pava was there, all but the littlest kids—they were all installed in a temporary crèche under the care of the slightly larger kids—but at least one person I wanted there seemed to be absent. I mentioned it to Madeleine: "I don't see Tscharka here."

  "You will. He'll be the last one to make his entrance," Madeleine predicted. Considering that she'd been sick she looked pretty sprightly, I thought. Which reminded me to ask how she was feeling; but when I did she dismissed the question.

  "I'll be all right for a while yet," she said, "maybe. Anyway, I didn't want to miss this meeting. I think you've got the right idea, Barry. We're not getting anywhere here. You know, back on Earth they're talking again about terminating the colonies—"

  She saw the look of surprise on my face; that was one more of the things I hadn't known. "You really should try to keep up with the news," she said reproachfully.

  "I will," I promised, meaning it.

  "Anyway, they might have the right idea. It seems to me that if we don't do something radical, maybe we should just all pack up and go home."

  She startled me. "Do you mean that?"

  She thought for a moment, studying my face. Then she looked away and said gently, "Some of us should, Barry. You should. You ought to go home and get married and raise babies, and I don't think you're going to find the right person to do it with here." Although she was talking to me, she was looking right at Theophan.

  "Come on, Madeleine," I said, surprised, and a little nettled—I had my own mixed feelings about Theophan. "We weren't talking about me. I'll be fine. What I'm thinking about is the whole colony."

  "All right," she said agreeably. "That's what we're here for, anyway, and I guess we can get started now, because here comes Captain Tscharka."

  Tscharka didn't come in by himself. Jimmy Queng was with him, nodding and smiling to everyone they passed, making apologetic noises for their lateness. Tscharka wasn't smiling. He looked both grave and serene. The grave part I could understand—Tscharka didn't approve of secular town meetings in any case, and he must have known this one was not going to give him any joy—but I wondered what made him so serene.

  Naturally the Millenarists had saved Tscharka a seat up front, next to Reverend Tuchman. When they got there Tscharka sat and Jimmy Queng hopped up to the little platform.

  "Order, please," he yelled right away. "Hold it down, will you? We've got a lot of business to take care of tonight and the sooner we start the sooner we can go home." He raised his arms, making patting motions to the air, until the buzz dwindled at least to the point where we could hear the rain on the shingle roof again. Then he got started.

  "Our primary job here is to allocate supplies for the next quarter. I know we've all got requests; they're all in the datastore, and I guess you've all had a chance to see them. As usual, we want a lot more than we can get—I estimate we can't hope for more than thirty percent of the total requisition list."

  He was grinning as he said it. Not many people in the audience were smiling back; if he was looking for some expression of support he didn't get it, but he went gamely on. "For you people who came on Corsair and never took part in one of these sessions before I'll mention that that's not unusual. So that's what we have to do tonight; we need to pare the list down to what the orbiter can handle. The best way is with voluntary cuts, so I'll start. I'll waive everything on my list except for what we have to have for colony business: I need a new motor and fittings for another riverboat because the old ones are giving out. We'll just wait for everything else. Now, who'll be the next person to withdraw some requisitions?"

  Theophan jumped up. "I move we approve everybody's requisitions in full," she shouted.

  Jimmy Queng frowned, but he didn't get a chance to reproach her. All over the hall there were yells of "Second!" and "I second that!"

  "That's out of order," he said, doing his best.

  "The hell it is," she shouted. "There's a motion on the floor and it's been seconded. We can vote on it, or we can discuss it, but you can't just forget it. That's the rule; Marcus looked it up."

 
Somebody started clapping, and in a minute half the crowd was doing it. Next to me Madeleine was nodding approval. Jimmy hesitated for a moment, then gave in gracefully. "All right, the floor's open for discussion. Do you want to start, Theo?"

  "You bet!" She dodged her way through the mob to the platform and climbed up on it. "You all know that Garold Tscharka came back with a lot of antimatter. He didn't bring us much else we could use, but he did—What's the problem now, Jimmy?"

  He was shaking his head. He said, loud enough for everybody to hear, "You're supposed to limit discussion to the motion."

  "I am discussing the motion! I'm saying we've got that antimatter, and more coming whenever the next ship gets here, and we've got somebody right here in Freehold who's a trained expert and can install the fuel in the factory—that's Barry di Hoa, back there—and so there's no reason we shouldn't get it in full operation and give everybody all of their essential supplies now."

  Somebody shouted, "What about raw materials?" I couldn't see who it was, but it came from among the Millenarists clustered up front.

  "We've got them, too," Theophan boasted. "There's a big chunk of raw materials right up there in orbit. It's called Corsair."

  Well, that created a lot of noise. It annoyed me a little, too; I'd thought I'd be the one to explain the project, since I'd suggested it in the first place. Jimmy waved for order. He got a little of it, enough to be heard when he said, "We can't do that, Theo. These ships are our lifeline to Earth."

  "Corsair isn't! What did Tscharka bring us, outside of the antimatter—that nobody had asked for—and a couple dozen more mouths to feed? He could have filled that ship with things we needed, but he didn't, and that's unforgivable. He should be reprimanded. Probably he should even be relieved of his command."

  That shut everybody up. Even me; I hadn't expected Theophan to go as far as a direct challenge to Tscharka's authority. Tscharka himself, I could see by craning, wasn't showing any reaction at all. He just sat there, dignified and remote, listening and not lifting a finger to protest. Next to him Reverend Tuchman was shaking his wise old head in sorrowful disagreement, but Tscharka himself never moved.

  I couldn't tell by the expression on Jimmy Queng's face whether he was really startled or just angry, but he looked down at Tscharka. "Captain? Since you're personally involved here, do you want to respond?"

  It wasn't Tscharka who got up and ponderously climbed to the platform, though. It was Friar Tuck. His Santa Claus face beamed forgiveness as he peered past Jimmy Queng to gaze at Theophan.

  "My dear young lady," he said, "it's easy for you to criticize the captain. You weren't there. You don't know what the captain went through on the Moon. If it hadn't been for his testimony—well, and I suppose my own as well, to a lesser extent—the Tax and Budget people might very likely have terminated the colony entirely. Captain Tscharka really deserves all our thanks. He did the best he could, under worse circumstances than you know."

  Theophan was staunch. "All right, let's say you're right. Let's say that Garold was so confused and befuddled by the problems he faced on the Moon that he just couldn't remember all the things we needed. That doesn't matter anymore. What about now? We've got all that antimatter fuel, let's transship it to the factory orbiter and use it!"

  Tuchman shook his head sorrowfully. "Ah, Theo, you make it all sound so easy. Do you know what you're suggesting? Do you have any idea how dangerous transshipping those pods would be? I was talking to Barry di Hoa himself about it just recently; he told me that no one could guarantee there might not be an accident. One slip and we could lose Corsair. Maybe we'd destroy the factory orbiter too. Even that's not the worst of it; why, an accidental antimatter explosion could even endanger us here on the surface."

  That was more than I could take. I stood up and yelled, "Not if we take precautions! I did that sort of thing every day on the Moon and never had an accident!"

  Tuchman gazed out over the crowd at me, shaking his head forgivingly. "I'm sure you sincerely feel that's true, Barry," he said, "but remember on the Moon you had a whole trained support staff. Here you don't. Captain Tscharka thought of all that; that's why he left instructions for a trained team to follow on Buccaneer."

  I felt pretty sure that was another lie—for a clergyman, Friar Tuck was pretty casual with the truth—and, judging from the growling that came out of the audience, so did a lot of others.

  Theo wasn't buying it, for one. "All right," she called, "for the sake of argument, let's assume it would be sensible for us to wait to do the actual transshipping. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything tonight! There are still things we can decide on right now. For a starter, we should send Barry up to the orbiter immediately, just to make sure the job can be done. So let's quit stalling around, okay? I'm calling for a vote!"

  That caused another noisy storm. All around the building people were shouting, "Vote! Vote!" while others were calling, "No!" or yelling things I couldn't make out.

  Then Captain Tscharka moved at last. He stood up and climbed to the platform, nodding pleasantly to the others already there. He raised his hands for quiet.

  When he had it—well, almost—he began to speak. "I'm sorry that some of you think I failed you. I accept responsibility for that. However, I have another responsibility. Corsair is my ship. On Corsair I am the only authority there is. So," he added pleasantly, making eye contact all around the hall, "you see, it doesn't matter what you vote here. The safety of Corsair is in my charge, not yours. There is nothing more that needs to be said."

  And he stepped down from the platform and threaded his way to the doorway. Jillen Iglesias hesitated, then got up to follow him.

  I had a sudden worrying suspicion that this had been all prearranged; maybe all two hundred or so of the Millenarists were going to take off with Tscharka, and then maybe Jimmy Queng would make that a pretext for trying to call the meeting off one more time.

  That didn't happen, though. Most of the other Millenarists muttered angrily and worriedly to each other, but they stayed in their seats.

  "Wait a minute! We're not through!" Theophan shouted after Tscharka.

  He didn't wait. He didn't pay any attention to her at all. Jillen opened the door for him, and the two of them stepped outside into the dwindling rain.

  That quieted everybody down for a moment again, until Theo shouted, "We don't need Tscharka here to vote." Then there was a roar of, mostly, agreement.

  Queng bowed to the inevitable. "All right," he said, "we'll go on with the meeting, but we'll do it properly. Everybody who wants to be heard will get a chance, if it takes us all night."

  It didn't. For a while there I thought it might, though, as one person after another got up to put his own two cents in. A lot of the comments were adverse—mostly from Millenarists, it seemed to me—saying, really, we ought to take advice from experts like the captain, above all we should be absolutely sure that whatever we did was prudent. But they were a minority. There were a lot more voices raised to say we didn't have a choice. Our needs were too great. We needed better roads, so we needed bulldozers to build the roads—and machine tools to make the bulldozers on the factory satellite. We needed instruments. We needed nursery facilities to breed new varieties of crop plants. We needed ten thousand things we didn't have, and any way we could get them was the right way, even if it meant destroying Garold Tscharka's precious Corsair.

  As a matter of fact, even the party lines didn't hold. One or two of the Millenarists themselves got up to demand newer and better—and most of all more—equipment so they could do their jobs; they were as fed up with the constant shortages as anybody else.

  It took another couple of hours to get all the talking done. But everything ends, if you just wait long enough, and finally Jimmy Queng raised his hand.

  "Let me put it like this," he said. "Is it the sense of the meeting that, first, we send Barry di Hoa up to check the orbiter; and, second, if it turns out that it is feasible and safe to do so, then to install
antimatter fuel to expedite its function; and finally, if necessary, to consider scrapping Corsair for raw materials?"

  "Not consider! Do it!" someone yelled, but Jimmy was determined.

  "We can't make that decision now," he said. "Leave it as an open option. As to the rest of it—?"

  The roar that answered him was pretty nearly unanimous. "So be it," he said. "I'll talk to the captain about when the shuttle will be available for you, Barry—and meanwhile the meeting is adjourned. Let's go home."

  The "go home" part was easy for him to say, and he did leave the hall then, along with about half the Millenarists. It wasn't easy for me. People crowded around me. Some wanted to shake my hand. Some asked for details about my qualifications to handle antimatter fuel. Some just wanted to wish me luck. It all took time, and Theophan, Marcus, Jacky Schottke and I were almost the last ones out of the meeting hall.

  Theophan paused outside the door to give me a happy hug. "We did it, Barry," she said. "God, this stuff wears me out. Talk, talk, talk—but it was worth it."

  Marcus gave a faintly disapproving cough—about the hug, I supposed. "At least the rain's stopped," he pointed out. He sounded as though he wanted to be thanked for it.

  Jacky Schottke didn't speak. He was gazing up at the sky, as though he were listening for something. There was nothing up there that I could see, although the clouds were beginning to break.

  "Well, good night," Theophan said, yawning. "Tomorrow I'll get on Jimmy Queng's case and make sure he sets a date for you to go up in the shuttle—"

  Jacky stirred. "I don't think so," he said.

  At first I didn't know what he was talking about. Then I heard the sound he had been listening for—a growing roar, loud but distant. I thought for a minute it might be thunder. Then I just hoped it was.