by Greg Bear
I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and took a deep breath.
Voice or vid communication between Tuamotu and Mars was too expensive to be indulged in lightly. I sent text letters instead, addressing Father, Mother, and Stan, but the last letter I sent, in the beginning of our eighth month, before he slowed for Earth orbit, I addressed to Mother alone.
Dear Mom,
I've survived this far, and even enjoyed most of the trip, but I'm afraid the letters I've been sending haven't been completely open. Being away from Mars, talking with Terries, watching Bithras at work, I've become more and more aware every day how outmatched we Martians are. We are blinded by our traditions and conservatism. We are crippled by our innocence. Poor Bithras! He bumped me, as you said he would — only once so far, thank God — and he was so crude, so direct and unsophisticated — a man of his travels and broadness of mind, of his importance! A friend once told me that Martians don't educate their children for the most important things in life — courtship, relations, love — relying instead on individual discovery, which is hit-or-miss, mostly miss. On Earth, Bithras would get social-grade therapy, spend some time practicing in sims, clear his mind and improve his skills. Why does our sense of individuality prevent us from correcting our weaknesses?
I'm spending a lot of time with a young woman from Earth. She is sharp and witty, she is a thousand years old compared to me — yet she's only seventeen Earth years. On her eighteenth birthday, I'm going to go into a sim with her and explore wise old Earth through its fantasies. I don't know exactly what the sim is, but I suspect it won't make me comfortable. She will hardly think anything of it, but I'm terrified. Terrie-fied. You might be shocked, reading this, but don't think I'll be any less shocked, doing it. I have always thought myself to be stable and imperturbable, but my innocence — my ignorance — is simply appalling.
And Alice suggested I try something of this sort. I hope that legitimizes it a little in your eyes, but if not ... As Orianna — that's the young woman's name — as she says, I'm no longer a cutlet.
I sent the letter coded to our family, and before Mother had a chance to reply, on Orianna's eighteenth birthday, two days away from our transfer from the Tuamotu to a shuttle to Earth, we dived into her smuggled fantasy sim.
"Better late than never," Orianna said as we hooked our slates on a private channel, through the ship's broadband, and linked with each other and with Alice, who was willing and even eager to conduct.
"You haven't told me what it's about."
"It's a forty-character novel."
"Text?"
"Calling it a novel means it has a plot, instead of just being landscape. You're part of a flow. You can move from character to character, but the character imposes — you won't think like yourself in character, but you can watch. In other words, part of you will know you're still you. It's not a whole-life sim."
"Oh."
"You can pull out any time, and you can jump, as well."
"You've done this sim before?"
"No," Orianna said. "That's why I didn't want to just slate it. Alice can give us more protection and more detail. If there's a bug, she can pull us out gently rather than just disconnecting. A discon always gives me a headache."
It sounded worse and worse. I seriously considered backing out, but looking at Orianna, at her bright-eyed eagerness as she arranged the nano plugs, I felt a sudden burst of youthful shame. If she could do it, I could, too.
"You'll go into the staging faster than I will," she said, handing me my cable. "My cable will have to deactivate enhancements and set up cooperation links."
I placed the cable next to my temple. The tip spread to several centimeters and seized my skin, snaking to get in a position to support its own weight My arm-hair prickled. This was very like the arrangements for major therapy. Something tickled in my temple: the nano links going in through skin, skull, and cortex, pushing their leads into the proper main lines within the brain.
"What happens if this is jerked loose?" I asked, pushing the cable with a fingertip.
"Nothing. The links dissolve. Abso safe. Old old tech."
"And if there's a bug Alice can't handle?"
"She can reprogram anything in the sim. You just spend a few seconds with Alice while she figures it out."
That's right, actually, Alice said within my head.
"Wow," I said, startled. I had done LitVids with Alice, of course, but a direct link was a very different sensation.
Try talking to me without moving your lips or making a sound.
"Is this — " Is this right?
Very good. Relax.
Do you approve of this sort of thing?
My entire existence is rather like a sim, Casseia.
I told my mother we'd do this. I don't know what she'll think.
I still saw through my eyes. Orianna had put on her cables and closed her eyes. A muscle in her cheek twitched.
"Ready," she said out loud.
Sim will begin in three seconds.
I closed my eyes. For the first time in my life, I had the sensation of closing my ears, my fingers, my body, as well. A creator credit icon — three parallel red knife slashes rising from a black ground, representing no artist or corporation I was familiar with — then total darkness.
When I opened my eyes again, I had a new set of memories. In medias res, along with the memories came a new set of concerns, worries, things I knew I had to do.
It was so smooth I hardly felt the shift.
I became Budhara, daughter of the Wahabi Arabian Alliance family Sa'ud, heir to old Earth resource fortunes. I knew somewhere that Budhara had never lived — this was fiction — but it didn't matter. Her world was real — more real than my own, with the intensity possible in exaggerated art. My part in her life began fifty years in the past, and moved with undiminished vividness through seven episodes, ending on her deathbed ten years in the future.
There was intrigue, double-dealing, betrayal, sex — though very discreet and not very informative — and there was a great deal of detail about the life of latter-day Wahabis in a world full of doubters. Budhara was not a doubter, but neither did she conform. Her life was not easy. It did not feel easy, and the intensity of her misery at times was mitigated only by my awareness that it would have an end.
Her death was startling in its violence — she was strangled by her lover in a fit of inferiority — but it was no more revelatory than the sex. My body knew it was not dead, just as it knew it was not really having sex.
After, my mind floated in endspace, gray and potent, and I felt Orianna there. She said, "Anybody you saw, you can become. Up to four per session, with a thinker driving."
"How long have we been in sim?" I asked.
"An hour."
It had seemed much longer. I could not really guess how long. But I thought we had not met in the sim, and all I could think to say, in the gray-ness, was, "I thought we were sharing."
"We did. I was your last husband."
"Oh." The flush began. She had switched sexes — she had known me. I found that intensely unsettling. It called so many of my basics into question.
"We can switch to another location, as well . . . connect with Budhara through western channels. She can become a minor character."
"I'd like to be her parrot," I joked.
"That's outer," Orianna said, meaning beyond the sim.
"Then I'd like to go Up," I said, not using the correct term, but it seemed right.
"Surface coming," Orianna said, guiding me out of the gray. We opened our eyes to the cabin. Being tens of millions of kilometers between worlds seemed boring compared to Budhara's life.
I whistled softly and rubbed my hands together to assure me this was reality. "I'm not sure I ever want to do that again," I said.
"Yeah. It's something sacred the first time, isn't it? You want to go back so bad. Real seems fake. It gets easier to pull out later, more perspective, otherwise these would have been negged by law years ago. I
don't do lawneg sims."
"Lawn-egg?" I asked.
"Outlaw. Illegal."
"Oh." I still wasn't thinking clearly. "I didn't learn much about Earth."
"The Sa'ud dynasty is pretty withdrawn, isn't it? Down fortune fanatics, nobody needs their last drops of oil, really top for sim fiction. Budhara's my favorite, though. I've been through two dozen episodes with her. She's strong, but she knows how to bend. I really enjoy the part where she petitions the Majlis to let her absorb her brothers' fortunes . . . after their death in Basra."
"Admirable," I said.
"You don't look happy?"
"I'm just stunned, Orianna."
"Wrong choice?"
"No," I said, though it had been an obtuse choice, to say the least. Orianna, despite her sophistication, was still very young, and I had to be reminded of this now and again. "But I was hoping to learn more about mainstream Earth, not the fringes."
"Maybe next time," she said. "I have some straightforward stories, even travelogs, but you can get those on Mars ..."
"Maybe," I said. But I had no intention of trying another.
On Earth, billions of people devoured sims every day, and yet I could not rise clear-headed from a cheap romance.
Allen and I stood in Bithras's cabin. "I hate this time," Bithras told us, staring at himself in mirror projection. "In a few days it won't be exercise. It will be a damned ball and chain. And I don't mean just the weight, though that will be bad enough. They expect so much out of us. They watch us. I am always afraid some new technology will let them peek into my head while I sleep. I will not feel comfortable until we are on our way home again."
"You don't like Earth," Allen said.
Bithras glared at him. "I loathe it," he said. "Terries are so cheerful and polite, and so filled with machinery. Machinery for the heart, for the lungs, nano for this, refit for that — "
"Doesn't sound so different from Mars," I said.
Bithras ignored me. His basic conservatism was surfacing, and he had to let it out; better this way, I thought, than that he should bump me again. "They never let a thing alone. Not life, not health, not a thought. They worry it, view it from so many perspectives ... I swear, not one of the people we talk to is an individual. Each is a crowd, with the judgment of the crowd, ruled by a benevolent dictator called the self, unsure it is really in charge, so cautious, so very bright."
"We have people like that on Mars," Allen said.
"I don't have to negotiate with them," Bithras said. "You've chosen your immunizations?"
Allen made a face and I laughed.
"You rejected them all?"
"Well," Allen said, "I was considering letting in the virus that gives me language and persuasion ..."
Bithras stared at us, aghast. "Persuasion?"
"The gift of gab." Allen said.
"You are fooling with me," Bithras said, pushing back the mirror. "I will look awful. But that matters little, considering they will look so good, even at my best I would look awful. They expect it of Martians. Do you know what they call us, when they are not so polite?"
"What?" I asked. I had heard several names from Orianna: claytoes, tunnel mice, Tharks.
"Colonists," Bithras said, accent on the middle syllable.
Allen didn't smile. It was one word never heard on Mars even in its correct pronunciation. Settlers, settlements; never colonies, colonists."
"A colony, they say," Bithras continued, "is where you keep your colons."
I shook my head.
"Believe it," Bithras said. "You have listened to Alice, you have listened to the people on this ship. Now listen to the voice of true experience. Earth is very together, Earth is very sane, but that does not mean Earth is nice, or that they like us, or even respect us."
I thought he might be exaggerating. I still had that much idealism and naivete. Orianna, after all, was a friend; and she was not much like her parents.
She gave me some hope.
The cylinders were pulled in and stowed along the hull. The spinning universe became stable. Much of our acquired velocity spilled quickly at two million kilometers from Earth; we lay abed in that time under the persistent press of two g's deceleration.
This far from Earth, home planet and moon were clearly visible in one sweep of the eye, and as the days passed, they became lovely indeed.
The Moon hung clean silver beside the Earth's lapis and quartz. There is no more beautiful a world in the Solar System than Earth. I might have been looking down on the planet billions of years ago. Even the faint sparks of tethered platforms around the equator, sucking electric power from the Mother's magnetic field, could not remove my sense of awe; here was where it all began.
For a moment — not very long, but long enough — I shared the Terracentric view. Mars was tiny and insignificant in history. We shipped little to Earth, contributed little, purchased little; we were more a political than a geographic power, and damned small at that: a persistent itch to the mighty Mother, who had long since drawn a prodigal daughter Moon back to her bosom.
Orianna and I spent as much time staring at the Earth and Moon as we could spare from going through customs interviews. I finished filling out my immunization requests, to block the friendly educations of tailored microbes that floated in Earth's air.
I was excited. Allen was excited. Bithras was dour and said little.
Five days later, we passed through the main low-orbit space station. Peace III, and made our way on a liner through thick air and a beautiful sunset, downward to the Earth.
Even now, at a distance of sixty years and ten thousand light-years, my heart beats faster and my eyes flow with tears at the memory of my first day on Earth.
I remember in a series of vivid still frames the confusion of the customs area on Peace III, passengers from two crossings floating in queues outlined by tiny red lights, Orianna and I bidding our quick farewells, exchanging personal reference numbers, mine newly assigned for Earth and hers upgraded to an adult status, unrestricted; promising to call as soon as we were settled, however long that might take; transferring Alice Two by hand from the niche on Tuamotu; promising the customs officers she contained no ware in violation of the World Net Act of 2079, politely refusing under diplomatic privilege the thinker control authority's offer to sweep her for such instances we might not be aware of; obtaining our diplomatic clearances under United States sponsorship; crossing the Earthgate corridor filled with artwork created by the homeworld's children; entering the hatch of the transfer shuttle; taking our seats with sixty other passengers; staring for ten minutes at the close-up direct view of Earth; pushing free of the platform, descending, feeling the window beside my seat become hot to the touch — the thick ocean of air buffeting us with enough violence to make me grab my seat arms, red rabbit coming home, heart pounding, armpits damp with expectation and a peculiar anxiety: will I be worthy? Can Earth love me, someone not born in Her house?
The sunset glorious red and orange, an arc like a necklace wrapped around the beautiful blue and white shoulders of Earth, seen through flashes of fierce red ionization as we bounced and slowed and made our descent into a broad artificial lake near Arlington in the old state of Virginia. Steam billowed thick and white as we rolled gently on our backs, just as the first astronauts had rolled waiting for their rescue. Arbeiter tugs as big as the Tuamotu floated on the rippling blue water . . . Water! So much water! The tugs grabbed our transfer shuttle in gentle pincers and pushed us toward shore terminals. Other shuttles came in beside us, some from the Moon, some from other orbital platforms, casting great clouds of spray and steam with their torch-gentled impacts in the huge basin.
Allen held my hand and I clutched his, made dear siblings by wonder and no small fear. Across the aisle from us, seated beside a padded and restrained Alice, Bithras stared grimly ahead, lost in thought.
Now our work really began.
We were not just Martians, not mere red rabbits on an improbable playtrip. We were
symbols of Mars. We would be famous for a time, wrapped in the enthusiasm of Earth's citizens for Martian visitors. We would be hardy settlers returning to civilization, bringing a message for the United States Congress; we would smile and keep our mouths closed in the face of ten thousand LitVid questions. We would make gracious responses to ridiculous inquiries: What is it like to come home? Ridiculous but not so very ridiculous; Mars was truly my home, and I missed him already in this wonderful strangeness, but . . .
I knew Earth, too.
Leaving the shuttle, we installed Alice on her rented carriage, and she tracked beside us.
Almost all of us chose to walk between the oaks and maples, across meadows of hardy bluegrass, all first-time Martians breathing fresh open air. We wandered through Ingram Park, named after the first human to set foot on Mars, Dorothy Ingram. Dorothy, I know how you felt. I tasted the air, moist from a recent shower, and saw clouds rolling from the south rich with generous rain, and above them the blue of kitten's eyes, and no limits, no walls, no domes or glass.
I know you. My blood knows you.
Allen and I did a little waltz on the grass around Alice's carriage. Bithras smiled tolerantly, remembering his own first time. Our antics confirmed Earth's status as queen. We were drunk with her. "I'm not dreaming?" Allen asked, and I laughed and hugged him and we danced some more on the grass.
Bichemistry served us well. We stood upright under more than two and a half times our accustomed weight, we moved quickly on feet that did not strain or ache — not for a while, at any rate — and our heads remained clear.
"Look at the sky/' I crowed.
Bithras stepped between us. "The eyes of Earth," he said. We sobered a little, but I hardly cared about LitVid cameras recording the arriving passengers. Let Earth hear my joy.
My body knew where I was. It had been here before I was born. My genes had made me for this place, my blood carried sea, my bones carried dirt, from Earth, from Earth, my eyes had been made for the bright yellow daylight of Earth's days and the blue of the day sky and the nights beneath the air-swimming light of Moon and stars.