The Memory of Whiteness

by Kim Stanley Robinson

  dent and margaret

  “I want to visit some of the really ancient structures,” Dent said to Margaret over another dinner. They dined together now almost every night; it was a habit neither of them discussed. “The Pyramids, Karnak, the Great Wall, Easter Island.…”

  “I don’t know. The United Nations Cultural Affairs Organization is our host, and they’re providing all of our surface transportation.”

  “We’re landing at Cyprus, aren’t we? So maybe we could make it on our own down to the Nile Valley, eh?”

  “Maybe. Those distances are a lot larger than you’re used to, Dent. It depends on how much time we have, and how much money. Basically, it’s up to the U.N.”

  “The U.N. has the Earth—” Dent made a closing motion with his hand.

  “That’s right.”

  “That might make it difficult for any work we want to do to investigate the Greys—our Greys, I should say.”

  Margaret nodded. “Karna and Yananda will take care of it. You’ve been retired from active duty.” She gave Dent a hard look, half annoyed, half amused, and he cringed a little. “No more shooting your own side.”

  “They were standing right next to each other!”

  Margaret rolled her eyes. “Karna’s got professionals for help if he needs it. You can keep joining the strategy sessions.” She got up to leave. “I think I may know what’s going on, anyway. We’ll see soon enough.”

  As she walked away Dent stared after her, frowning. Dear Reader, you remember when we first met Dent Ios—when he was the Exemplar of Contemplation—when being “retired from active duty” was the definition of his goal in life. And yet now he frowned; he thought; one might even say plotted; and when he left the commons, he headed for Orion’s library.

  approaching: the forms

  Through the window in the empty Rigel Room Dent watched the blue-and-white ball, now taking up most of the visible space. They were in orbit, over the Pacific Ocean. In orbit: they were a little moon of the Earth. Cloud patterns looked like they were painted on the water, and served to show how thin even the Earth’s atmosphere was. After living with Uranus in the sky it seemed to Dent that the Earth was not, after all, very large. But the gas giants were gas, while the Earth here was like a big terra. When he considered it in that way it suddenly ballooned into something immense; the Pacific, for instance; that was a lot of water. Was there as much water as that in all the rest of the solar system? Tortuga, the Fortunate Isles, Europa … he quoted the old haiku,

  “So much to take in

  In this dewdrop of a world

  And yet—and yet—”

  and watched as the Hawaiian Islands passed below, like green beads on a blue plate. The world.

  Delia entered the room and joined him. “Look at all the spaceships!”

  “Um,” said Dent; he hadn’t noticed. Over the horizon in the black of space there were lines of silver and bronze blips, line after line like the rings of Saturn. “Crowded.”

  “Except for around Mars and Jupiter, this is the most crowded space anywhere. They even have collisions.”

  “I heard about that one,” Dent said vaguely.

  Delia cleared her throat. “Are you wondering what it’s going to be like down there?”

  Dent smiled. Who had been wondering? “Sure.”

  “Me too. We’re not going to any of the places I visited when I was young.”

  “Too bad. You should travel to some of them.”

  “Yeah. But Margaret says we have to go where they tell us.”

  “Um.” The west coast of North America rolled slowly over the horizon, down ahead of them. They watched it silently. “It looks pretty … intimidating,” Delia said.

  Dent watched the Sierra Nevada, tiny white rumples in a brown-green blanket, near the edge of the continent there. That range of rumples was nine hundred kilometers long—longer than the diameter of his home world Holland! Maybe the Earth did look large enough to satisfy him. (That was America down there, America.) Dear Reader—you who may live in a cave, or a closet, you who may have spent all your life on one planet—you may not have any immediate analogy for the sensation Dent felt at that moment. To be looking at the home you have never seen before.… But all of us have felt the sudden tension, the rush of adrenaline which comes when we know we must face the unknown; imagine such a situation from your own past fully enough, and your diaphragm will tighten, your pulse will accelerate, in a ghost of the original apprehension—and then you will know what Dent felt looking at the Earth.

  “Yeah, it’s scary,” he finally said to Delia. “It’s big.”

  Eventually Delia left, and Dent stood in the room alone. In a little less than an hour he looked down on Europe, the cradle of technological man … another rumpled range of white-capped mountains showed him where Switzerland and Germany were. Munich was down there somewhere, then. And the Telemann Works were just outside Munich. And down to the south, around the curve of the cloud-wrapped ball, in the eastern end of the Mediterranean … Cyprus. Dent frowned. There was a good piece of the globe between them. On the other hand, he could see both at once.… He would have to wait and consider his new plan further.

  Karna and Yananda entered the room and Dent jumped back guiltily. “Look,” he said, “there’s where we’re going to land!” They looked at him curiously, stared out the window.

  “Yes, I suppose it is,” Karna said.

  Dent muttered a quick excuse and hurried out of the room.

  land ho!

  Then they were on their way down. Margaret took charge of the boarding of the shuttle, and everyone in the group obeyed her orders submissively, glad to become children for the return home.

  Imagine it, Reader! The shuttle rocket drops like a dart, it hits the atmosphere and begins to vibrate madly, the windows burn fiery orange and there is a roar that drowns all other sound; your little cylindrical compartment is washed of color, the windows blaze, you shake and bounce under the onslaught of air; and in each accelerated heartbeat you drop thousands of feet closer to home, the root of every story you know. Imagine the fear of it, the steep exhilaration!

  When the windows cleared a ragged cheer competed with the roar. The ocean was still far below them, but it filled one half of the sky, it was almost flat. The shuttle continued to vibrate; Margaret felt as if they were moving at a speed faster than she had ever experienced. She knew it wasn’t so, but her senses would not be denied. The ocean was a new blue; the white clouds were distinctly above it now, casting shadows on the minutely wave-textured surface. The people sitting in the center seats stood to see out the windows. Dent leaned over Margaret, hand on her shoulder, and she pushed Johannes’s head to the side somewhat, so that others could see past him.

  “Land ho,” muttered Johannes, looking forward at an angle only he had. Margaret could see only the blue horizon, now perfectly flat.…

  “North Africa,” Johannes said. Margaret leaned and saw the coastline to the right, suddenly curving. “That must be Tunisia,” Dent added. “That’s where Carthage stood, right down there.”

  “Landing off Cyprus in fifteen minutes,” said a voice on the intercom. “Please be seated and fasten all safety belts.”

  “Surely we’re going too fast!” Dent said.

  “Just vibration,” Margaret replied. “Besides, we land going about four hundred k’s an hour.”

  “The impact must be something.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  They were in the clouds, in thick white shifting mist. Then out again, just over the blue sea. Suddenly the roar got louder, the rocket tilted back, and with a thump they hit. Again the windows were white, this time a dim subaqueous blur, like thick clouds. They slowed, stopped. Rocking on water, they looked out at blue sky. Weak cheers. Margaret unbuckled herself and stood.

  “It’s heavy!” someone said.

  Margaret considered it. She did feel heavier than usual. “Earth’s gravity is more than one gee,” she said, and laughed.
The others joined her, and nervous laughter rang in the compartment. “No wonder they’re all so short!” Dent said, and the laughter redoubled, it filled them all, Johannes was giggling, Karna roared, Delia and Marie-Jeanne leaned against each other.…

  Soon they were moving, yawing slightly. Cyprus appeared in the windows to the left. Olive green scattered over a brown slope: an island tall as a mountain, big as a world.

  Then they were entering a harbor. Tall metal-hulled sailing ships rocked slightly in their wake. Dirty water reflected brown hillsides. Gray stone walls were topped with flags.

  The shuttle stopped. A door at the back purred open. Johannes stood and walked to the door—looked around at his company—stepped up and out. Margaret followed.

  It was hot. The sun was a fierce blaze overhead, too bright to look at directly, although Margaret tried as soon as she was outside. It was just as the books said. A dry wind struck them like the air from an opened oven. Dust filled Margaret’s nose, she had to squint to see through bouncing red-blue afterimages. The harbor of Kyrenia extended arms of land around them, brown hills covered by olive trees. In the wind the trees’ leaves flashed olive-silver, silver-olive. “Come on,” said Margaret to Johannes, who had stopped before her. “Walk down onto that dock, there’s a welcoming committee for you.”

  It was true. On the dock a clump of people were watching the rocket. Johannes walked down a broad portable stairway.

  The Terrans were short, their skin dark and wrinkled. “Welcome to Earth, Johannes Wright,” one of them said. “I am Reinhart Scriabin, United Nations Undersecretary for Cultural Affairs.”

  “Thank you for meeting us,” Johannes said. Suddenly he stopped moving toward the man; behind Scriabin stood Ernst Ekern, smiling broadly. Among the Terrans even a relatively short man like Ekern stood out. Johannes nodded to him. Bolstered by Johannes’s composure, Margaret stepped forward to shake Scriabin’s hand, ignoring Ekern. The Undersecretary introduced several of his party, while the rest of the crew descended to the dock. Then he said, “It’s been decided by the Secretary that the first concert of Holywelkin’s Orchestra will be held in Nueva Brasilia, Brazil, for the World Council of the Arts, in one week’s time. The concerts after that will be scheduled by the Secretary, at our mutual convenience.”

  “Please discuss that with our tour’s manager,” Johannes said, waving Margaret forward and introducing her. Keeping her gaze away from the smiling Ekern, she said hello and got down to business.

  walking on earth

  Dent Ios walked with difficulty through the streets of old Nicosia. Blake said the senses are the five windows of the soul; at that moment Dent felt as though his little garret slits had been hacked into gaping holes, through which the world streamed. It was too much: he wore sunglasses, his nose ran, he choked on dust, he was skittish with all the jostling in the little narrow streets … only his hearing was a match for the Earth. He heard the music of the open wind, of voices chattering in a score of languages, of trolleys clanking and birds in cages trilling. With his height advantage he could see over the tumble of dark heads to the occasional offworld tourist walking by; he nodded to them as to other swimmers in a stream. Street merchants hawking wares called to him in a liquid English that reminded him of Karna and Yananda’s speech; “Free shipping anywhere in the system! Your mother will love you always for sending her something from Earth, O Tall One!” That one almost got Dent, but he walked on. In the alleyways the wind was blocked and it was stifling hot, the air thick with the smells of sweat and cooking food and rotting vegetation and excrement and dirt. The Terrans on the street bustled about rapidly, their foreheads beaded with sweat. They were dark, darker even than Karna and Yananda, for all their lives they had been burnt by the rays of the sun. Dent could feel those rays pulsing on the back of his neck.

  Wandering out of the market he came to the edge of the U.N. district, where the streets widened and were banked by long white apartment buildings, each lined by balcony railings of black wrought iron, hanging over the sidewalks. Trolleys and electric cars buzzed by in the center of the streets. Dent joined the crowd on the sidewalk and followed one part of it north, toward the city wall. In the time of the Crusaders Nicosia had been surrounded by a thick stone wall; now only a fragment was left, just north of the center of town. Dent reached it and after paying a small fee he walked up the bowed stone steps of the battlement, inspecting the stone beside him that had been worn smooth by two millennia of passing hands. On the broad walkway at the top of the wall, scattered groups of offworld tourists stared from behind their sunglasses, taking in the view. Below the wall on each side housetop gardens were shaded by vine-covered trellises, and lemon trees in casks. Olive trees shot up like silver-green fountains blowing in the wind. In the distance mountains shimmered, brown and dusty green, and over it all the white-blue dome of the noonday sky pulsed blue and blue and blue and blue. Dent reeled over the flagstones from one stone bartizan to the next, throwing his arms wide and turning in the wind, letting it fly through him and rip at the long banners overhead and the treetops below—staring up at the sky—running his hands over the ancient stonework—hopping a little to test Earth’s intense gravity—

  “Why look! Here’s Dent Ios, drunk at midday!”

  It was Karna and Yananda, strolling the battlement together. Dent smiled and waved a hand expansively.

  “No one made this wind!” he exclaimed to them. “It moves of its own will. It could grow in strength until it wrecked the city and killed us all, and no one could stop it.”

  “Let’s hope it’s feeling friendly,” Karna said, eyeing Yananda briefly. “Dent, what are you doing up here?”

  “I am being! Oh—sorry—this wind is in my thoughts—I am sightseeing, of course. Why, aren’t you?”

  Karna shook his head. “We’re here to meet that Charles. And—well, it would be better if he didn’t see you up here. After the way you scared him last time, he might think we were part of some conspiracy against him, and then we’d never get a chance to talk to him. You understand.”

  “Besides,” Yananda said, and then stopped himself as Karna gave him a look. But Dent got the message, and he came plummeting back to the reality of the tour and its troubles.

  “You mean … I really am to be kept from helping the investigation any more?”

  “No, of course not. You’ll be helping us when we confer with Margaret. But we’ll gather the facts in the field, Dent. That’s what we’re trained for.”

  Dent nodded, feeling affronted even as he had to admit the truth of what Karna said. He had thought to suggest his plan, but now he decided to keep it to himself. “I’ll get out of your way, then,” he said, and walked over to the battlement steps without another word. Back on the city streets he found himself becoming more and more annoyed. A part of him was happy to be out of the dangers of the action; but that part of him was slipping away; other forces in him were coming to the fore, and they wanted to help protect Johannes from his enemies.… His day of sightseeing was ruined. Every offworlder sticking out of the crowd of Terrans reminded him of the tour.

  His neck was burnt. Irritably he wiped the sweat from his forehead and returned to their hotel. “I’m just as capable as any other person, aren’t I?” he demanded of his room. He had his Thistledown account number, which he had seldom used since the early days of the tour … and a few calls gave him the addresses he needed. It was within his capability to put his plan into action by himself.…

  He could fly to Munich, and from there visit the Telemann Works. Johannes himself had given Dent the clue: “Maybe he wants an Orchestra of his own,” Johannes had said when Dent told him about Ekern and the Greys meeting at the Telemann Works on Earth. Dent had looked it up, and found that the Telemann Works was the instrument factory that had done much of the work for Holywelkin in the construction of the original Orchestra. And if Ekern was traveling there … well. Dent couldn’t be sure what that might mean. But he had his theories, his fears. And if he
could go to the Works, sneak into them somehow—find evidence of a new Orchestra—take photos of Ekern visiting—take photos of whatever work was being done for Ekern (Dent’s plan was a little vague when it came to these details).… Then he would have something to show Johannes, something to break into this deadly spiral that Johannes and his conception of the Greys had now created between them. Yes—he could do it! He could do it alone.

  In each of us the winds of motivation are aswirl. But we have run into this problem before: who among us can propose an adequate meteorology for this weather of the soul? Dent sat in his room for nearly two hours; emotions passed across his face like fronts, he even paced about once or twice in little squalls of indecision. And in the end he packed a travel bag, and called down for a cab to meet him at the front of the hotel. He wrote a short note. “Margaret—gone to Munich. Meet you in Nueva Brasilia.” He wrote “Don’t worry,” scratched it out, rewrote the note without it. Signed it. On the way to the cab he slipped it under Margaret’s door.

  the maze

  Ernst Ekern floated just underneath the surface of the rooftop pool of the Magus Diana’s villa, just outside Nueva Brasilia. He had arrived just the day before, and already he despised the heat, the humidity, the tame green jungle beyond the villa’s park, the gravity. The park itself was a hedge maze, and looking down at it from above Ekern could trace the complicated course it would lead for anyone trapped in it. He closed his eyes, memorized the pattern of hedges as best he could; no doubt Diana would have them all cast into it at some time during their stay. It was abysmally hot, windless and shimmery under the intense afternoon sun. Off in the distance the giant skyscrapers of Nueva Brasilia rose above the tamed jungle like a dream city—and so in a sense it was—dream of the U.N. aristocrats, who apparently did not mind the equatorial stew of heat.