Hella

by David Gerrold

  A few more minutes of chatter channel conversation back and forth, a little discussion of the roads into the canyons, and how soon we could get over the first pass, and the second as well, a few more comments about the weather, the temperature and the wind and the possibility of rain, and then finally, the inevitable, “Okay. Let’s roll.”

  We took it slow at first, letting all the drivers settle into their positions. Most of the trucks would be on auto-pilot, they didn’t need drivers, but there were places where individual crossings would require careful supervision, so every truck had its own team on the bridge.

  I brought up an echo of Lilla-Jack’s display so I could pretend I was driving. We had the video from the convoy that had carried the summer harvest south, and we overlaid that on our own real-world view, so we could see the most recent recordings of the road ahead. It would tell us what to expect and we could also notice what changes had occurred since that video was made. If we saw broken branches or fallen trees, then we would know that dinosoids had passed and might still be in the area. On the displays above that, we could see what the roller-bots were encountering ahead of us, or we could switch to an aerial view from the umbrella. No convoy had been caught by surprise in years.

  The first hour was pretty familiar terrain to most of the drivers, but Lilla-Jack kept everyone on high alert anyway. No surprises. We rolled south through the jumble, a place where time-rounded rocks poked up through the grass. They looked like broken fingers.

  None of the places on Hella are named after people. Not yet. The First Hundred established that rule. They didn’t want half the places on the planet named after them. They said they wanted names to represent the spirit of the place. They were quite adamant about it. They didn’t want to have future generations saddled with shallow memorials for people they didn’t know or barely remembered. They made a rule for themselves that they wouldn’t name any place after any living person, and they would wait until fifty years after the person’s death so that at least two more generations of people could decide if that person’s contributions had been lasting enough or important enough to deserve the honor. This was because some people’s contributions were never known until many years later, like Nikolai Tesla and Alan Turing, and that sometimes those contributions ended up being much more important than anyone might have realized at the time. And places on Hella could only be named after people who had actually lived on Hella. Anyway, that’s why we didn’t have Mount Miller-Gibson, not yet, or McCain Valley or the Ahrens Islands. Honors not only have to be earned, they have to stand the test of time.

  With Lilla-Jacks’ permission, I climbed into the back and took a nap. Waking up so early had left me tired. Migration always upsets my sleep cycle. Mom says that because humans evolved on Earth, our biology is hardwired to the Terran calendar. Our bodies want to operate on a twenty-four-hour day-night cycle, the monthly cycle, and even the annual cycle of the seasons.

  Hella has three moons. One big one and two smaller ones that if they were combined would mass more than the big one. Someday all those moons will probably collide and be one big moon, but right now they’ve slowed the planet’s rotation so the days are very long by Earth standards. So we rise at dawn, have breakfast, work for three hours, have first lunch, work another three hours, nap for four during the heat of midday, have second lunch, work three more hours, have first supper, work for another three, have second supper, relax for a bit, then go to bed for a few more hours and get up and work for a few hours in the middle of the night, with appropriate breaks for meals, and then back to bed until dawn. It sort of works out. Every team gets to figure out their own best work-schedule. Mom says that eventually humans will adapt to the Hellan day-night cycle, but it could take ten or twenty or a hundred generations.

  Some people say they like having eighteen hours of daylight. It makes them feel like they’re getting a lot more work done every day. But not everybody. Mom says that the same people who liked to complain that there weren’t enough hours in a day back on Earth are now complaining that there are too many hours in a day here. By evening they’re exhausted.

  But there’s another question to ask that nobody can answer yet. Does the longer day lengthen the human lifespan? Or shorten it? We just don’t know. We might not know for generations.

  * * *

  —

  I must have been more tired than I thought. When I finally woke up, Lilla-Jack’s second-in-command, Ginnie was already passing out sandwiches for second lunch, and the second shift was on the bridge. First shift would sleep through midday, then take over in the afternoon. Third and fourth shifts would drive through the night. The convoy had to average two hundred klicks a day. Under the best possible conditions, it was possible for a single truck to make the trip in eight days, but no convoy had ever done it in less than ten and that was a long time ago when there weren’t as many people, and they didn’t need as many trucks.

  Unless you have a job on the vehicle itself, there’s not a lot to do on the trip. It’s only fun for the first twenty minutes or so, then it gets boring. The scenery is pretty much the same for the longest time. Grass, rocks, trees, some thick forest, more trees, more grass, some hills, more rocks. Eventually, we head up into some mountains and through a couple of passes. The road has been widened by years and years of traffic. The trucks have good suspension, so the ride isn’t too rough, but the roads are still unpaved, the terrain is uneven, and there are occasional fallen rocks or trees that have to be grappled out of the way. We didn’t run into many because the harvest convoy had done a good job of prepping what we call “the highway.”

  There’s talk on the Council that it’s time to open a second route south. There’s too much at stake to risk everything with this single lifeline. And Jamie says that most people agree, but the most feasible second route would add almost a week of travel time unless we dig a tunnel, and that part still hasn’t been decided. A tunnel through Ugly Mountain could take as long as six years and maybe the resources could be better spent elsewhere? Maybe the new colonists will feel it’s worth the effort. Maybe they’ll supply enough manpower to make it happen.

  I went into the back of the truck where a lounge had been set up for the few passengers we carried. Mostly this truck carried the road crew. If we came upon any obstacles, they would be the ones to jump out and clear the way. A few of them were playing cards. Others were sleeping. Some were answering mail or chatting with friends on other trucks or ahead at Winterland. I thought about giving Jamie a call, but my tablet said he was sleeping now, so I didn’t.

  So I curled up in a corner and started working my way through the day’s messages. There was one from J’mee that was marked private, so I read that first. J’mee was a friend of Charles Dingillian, the boy who made the music. She was a few months younger than Charles. She said that my videos were very thorough, and my messages to her were always very detailed and very carefully worded, so she was wondering if I had an implant?

  I wasn’t sure what I should tell her. I hardly ever talk about my chip. It’s a private thing, but even if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t talk about it because it makes people uncomfortable to know that I have a super-power. That’s what Jamie calls it. A super-power. I still call it the noise.

  According to Mom, back on Earth, it’s not unusual for people to have things wired into their brains so they have an always-on connection to the web. But not everybody can do it, because it’s expensive—I didn’t know that word, she had to explain money to me, which still doesn’t make sense. If there’s food enough for everybody, why can’t everybody have some? Jamie says money is a system for trading value for value, it’s a bookkeeping thing, which kinda makes sense, but then how do you get a lot of it?

  J’mee’s family had a lot of money back on Earth. Because they bought their own space on the Cascade and they were bringing a lot of their own equipment and supplies with them. Captain Skyler says it will probably be a shock f
or them to discover that they’ll have to share their resources. He says that new people are always culture-shocked after they land, for some it’s worse than others, especially those with a strong sense of entitlement.

  Anyway, J’mee said that she recognized the way I assembled my thoughts was the same way she did because she always had so much information available to her. She said that I always went into such enormous detail about everything, explaining every little part, that either I had an implant or I was compulsive, and she thought I was too smart and too nice to be compulsive. She said that she expected us to be good friends when she landed because if we communicated the same way, we would understand each other.

  Then she said something very strange. She said that once when she was in school, a boy had asked her, “What’s it like to be so smart?” And this was even before she had the implant. She said, even without thinking about it, “It’s very lonely.” But afterward when she did think about it, she realized how true it was. She said she didn’t have a lot of friends that she could talk to about smart things. She was even smarter than most of the grownups she knew. And the implant made it even worse because some people just used her as a walking wiki and forgot that she had feelings.

  I didn’t know how to answer that. I know I have a lot of trouble with other people’s feelings. I just don’t see them. Jamie explained it to me, more than once, and because I wanted to make Jamie happy, I tried very hard to understand. Jamie says that I do have the smarts to understand intellectually, even if I don’t have what he calls “empathy.”

  But I’m not sure I want any of that “empathy” stuff. The people who have it spend a lot of time being angry or frustrated or upset somehow. They spend a lot of time crying too. And sometimes they’re afraid about things that aren’t there—things that I can’t see.

  I read J’mee’s email over and over because I didn’t know how to answer it. Should I just tell her about myself? My syndrome? Or should I wait? But if someone else told her first, then would that be like I was lying to her? I’m not supposed to lie. It’s a very bad thing to give people false information because then they can’t make accurate decisions. But I didn’t want J’mee to stop liking me either. I wanted to call Jamie, but his phone said he was asleep, and there wasn’t anyone else I could talk to—except maybe the Captain. He would understand, except he was probably too busy right now to talk to me.

  I called him anyway.

  He answered immediately. “What’s up, son?”

  “There’s this girl on the Cascade. She’s very smart. She thinks I’m smart too.”

  “Well, you are.”

  “Should I tell her about me?”

  “If she’s that interested—oh, wait. I see what you mean. Hm.” He paused. A long pause. “You know what? You’re a good person, Kyle. If this girl is worth knowing, she won’t care. You know the old saying, don’t you?”

  “Which one?”

  “The one about mind and matter. ‘Those who mind don’t matter. Those who matter don’t mind.’”

  “Is that another one of those sayings you just made up?”

  “Nope. That one’s a genuine old saying. And it’s very true.”

  “Okay.”

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “How’s the trip so far?”

  “Boring.”

  “Good, that’s the way it should be. We don’t have time for any excitement. I gotta go now. Watch out for booger-jacks.”

  “There’s no such thing—” But he had already switched off.

  * * *

  —

  Finally, I wrote back to J’mee. I told her to goggle some stuff—stuff about the syndrome. It was a very short message because I didn’t know what else to say.

  There were other messages too. Milla wanted to know about Hellan art. I told her there wasn’t a lot, not yet, because not a lot of people had time for it. But that we do have some people who made photo-montages and did all kinds of tricks with high-dynamic range and infra-red and ultra-violet to make some very dramatic-looking landscapes. Was that what she meant?

  Charles thanked me for introducing him to the people who could play instruments. They were already talking about a combined concert. As soon as they decided what music to play, everybody could begin rehearsing their parts. They wouldn’t be able to rehearse as a group until after they all landed, however. Even in low orbit, there would be enough of a time-delay that it would be impractical to try rehearsing together.

  Trent had decided he wanted to work in the hydroponic and aeroponic gardens. He had read about a man named Luther Burbank who developed new species of potatoes and lilies and other plants. It was very slow work and required a lot of patience, but he felt it was also very spiritual work too. I didn’t know what he meant by that, but I wrote back and told him that I knew we needed a lot more people to work on the farms, so he would probably get his wish.

  Gary said he liked animals because they were a lot easier to deal with than people. I had to agree with that. He wanted to work with Hellan animals, but he knew he’d have to start with Earth animals first. So he wanted to know about the kennels at Winterland. Even though most of our protein is tank grown, we still kept real animals as a control, as a source of genetic raw material, and as an opportunity to develop new breeds better suited for Hella. I told Gary we needed people to build more tanks, because bacon was still a luxury.

  And Chris wanted to work with the mapping teams. He said that would probably get him onto the drive-arounds a lot faster than anything else. He asked me about my drive-around and I told him everything I could. I gave him my raw data too, so he could see that there’s a whole lot of boring between the bits of interesting and exciting.

  There was also a note from Captain Boynton on the Cascade, thanking me for all my videos and all my emails too—what he called “your generous sharing with the colonists on the starship.” He said my notes and comments were very much appreciated.

  Finally, there was a message from the mysterious Harlie. No last name, just Harlie. He said he had looked at all my videos and read all my notes and even some emails that others had shared with him. He said he wanted to know me better and thought that we would probably have some very interesting conversations. But he didn’t say much about himself, and he didn’t have a biography in any of the downloads. I sent an email to Captain Skyler, asking him if he knew anything about this person, Harlie, but I didn’t expect a quick answer.

  After I finished all that, I went topside to the observation deck and peered out at the passing forest. A flock of redbirds screeched and flew up into the sky. Our passage had disturbed them. They circled uncertainly for a bit, then headed west toward a quieter roosting place.

  Later, the trucks had to detour around a column of army spiders. One army spider is a hungry little thing the size of a man’s hand. A million army spiders is a swath of naked ground thirty meters wide. If this were an emergency, we would have driven right across them, with little risk to ourselves. But experience had taught the convoy teams that crunching across a column of army spiders isn’t good for the treads of the Rollagons, so we went around.

  Army spiders don’t build permanent nests. Like almost everything else on Hella, they’re nomads always keeping a few days ahead of the weather. Sometimes the dinosoids use the barren swaths as a highway through the jungle. Sometimes we do too, but only if we know we’re not going to run into anything else on the spider trail.

  We turned loose a couple of skyballs to track the column. It was routine for convoys to scatter skyballs and scuttle-bots, especially when traveling through mostly unexplored areas. Long-range skyballs could stay aloft almost forever, watching the land. They could track a herd or follow a flock. A scuttle-bot could climb a tree and anchor itself, just listening and watching, sniffing and measuring, constantly reporting back. Usually scuttle-bots worked in teams,
with one on the ground and several more at various heights all the way up to the canopy. This gave us a vertical picture of life in the forests. Scuttle-bots were good at moving very slowly, so they could position themselves to peer down into the nests of silverbirds or hang themselves overlooking the clefts and buttresses in cathedral trees to study the bat-things that roosted there.

  The skyballs and bots would recharge themselves by spreading moth-like wings a few hours a day and sucking up sunlight. They could stay out in the wild for months, even years. Some scuttle-bots were twenty years old and still broadcasting. Everything linked up in ad hoc networks, reporting back to the nearest relay stations or even satellites overhead. But even with this daily avalanche of information—all these sounds and sights and smells and measurements of everything—Hella was still a landscape of almost daily surprises.

  Around 1430, the convoy slowed and halted. The road crew got ready to jump out to deal with a fallen Atlas branch. It was only a branch, but Lilla-Jack said it was already bigger than any Earth tree. The crew had to wait until two women in power suits, armed with shoulder-mounted railguns, stomped out to help. The rear hatches of the suits were airlocked to the sides of the truck for quick access, but it still took a few minutes to get the drivers sealed in and the suits powered up. When they finally detached, the road crew exited their own airlock. The suits stood guard while the crew studied the problem.

  After a bit of calculation and discussion of methods and equipment, the road crew attached a pulley to an Atlas trunk on the side of the road. Others unreeled a length of cable from the front of the truck, looped it through the pulley, and secured it with several heavy straps wrapped around the middle of the branch. On their signal, Lilla-Jack put the truck in reverse. As she backed up, the branch pulled sideways and out of the way. The suits had to help guide the lagging end. But it was a long branch and Lilla-Jack had to drive a long way in reverse, so the suits and the crew hooked onto convenient sideboards and rode back on the outside of the truck.