by Greg Bear
These people—usually in groups of fifty or less—staked out isolated country tracts as their territory, expecting a disaster of major proportions to destroy civilization, resulting in anarchy. With their stores of food and weapons and their “strictly survival” attitude—a willingness to isolate themselves morally as well as physically—they embodied the worst aspects of what Orson Hamill has called “the conservative sickness of the twentieth century.” There is no room here to analyze the causes of this sickness, where individual power and survival counted above all other moral considerations and where the ability to destroy was emphasized over any nobility of spirit, but the ironies of the outcome are rich.
The “retreatists” were right—and wrong. The catastrophe did come, and much of the world was destroyed, but even in the Long Winter that followed, civilization did not crumble into complete anarchy.
Indeed, within a year, highly cooperative societies emerged. The lives of one’s fellows became almost infinitely precious—and all of the Death’s survivors became fellows. Love and support of neighboring groups were essential, for no single group had the means or the stamina to survive long without aid. The retreatist enclaves—heavily armed and viciously indiscriminate about how they defended themselves or whom they killed—soon became targets of hatred and fear, the sole exceptions to this new perception of brotherhood.
Within five years after the end of the Death, most of the retreatist enclaves had been sought out and their half-crazed members killed or captured.
(Unfortunately, many isolated “survivalist” [q.v.] communities were also included in the sweep. The distinction made between these branches with similar inclinations is a historical one, and was ignored by the authorities of that time.) Many of the retreatists were put on trial for crimes against humanity—specifically, for refusing to participate in the recovery of civilization. In time, these purges extended to all who advocated the right to bear weapons, and even, in some communities, to all who favored high technologies.
Those military personnel who had survived were forced to undergo social reconditioning.
The landmark trial of 2015—where high-ranking politicians and military officers of both the Eastern and Western blocs were accused of crimes against humanity—capped this grim but not-unexpected reaction against the horrors of the Death.
It didn’t seem real. She closed her book and shut her eyes.
Here she was, reading a book about events that hadn’t taken place—yet—and had happened in another universe.
She swallowed the lump in her throat. If it was real, and if it was going to happen, then something should be done. She leafed through the appendices.
On page 567, she found what she was looking for. Every city in the world that had been bombed was listed in the next two hundred pages, with approximate casualties and deaths.
She searched for California and found it: twenty-five cities, each receiving from two to twenty-three warheads. Los Angeles, twenty-three, spaced over a two-week period.
(“Spasm,” an asterisked footnote commented.) Santa Barbara, two.
San Francisco—including Oakland, San Jose and Sunnyvale—twenty over a three-day period. San Diego, fifteen. Long Beach, ten. Sacramento, one, Fresno, one.
Vandenherg Space Operations Center, twelve evenly spaced al0ng the coastal strip.
Air bases hit in or near the cities, including civilian airports which could be used for military purposes: fifty-three. All space centers around the world had been destroyed, even in noncombatant countries (again the footnote: “Spasm”).
Patricia felt dizzy. The book seemed to recede from her.
There was no tunnel vision, no loss of sensation, just a kind of isolation. She was Patricia Luisa Vasquez, twenty-four, and because she was young she would have a long time to live. Her parents, because she had known them all her life, would not die for a very long time—an inconceivably long time. And Paul—because they had just begun knowing each other, because he was the one man she had met who had even tried to know what she was about—Paul would be safe, too.
And all of them lived in zones that would be (might be) vaporized from the face of the Earth.
It was simple, really. She would take this book with her when she left, which would be soon, days perhaps. She would take it back to Earth and show people. (Perhaps something like that had already been done.) And if the universes were close enough that a similarity in immediate futures was possible, then people would be forced to act.
Faced with the prospect of nuclear war, people would start disarming, start apologizing, Jesus, I’m sorry we came so close; let’s take this as a blessing and—”Oh, CHRIST!” She closed the book and stood.
Lanier walked with her through the decrepit park near the library.
She cried for five minutes, then pulled herself together.
The questions she wanted to ask were so difficult to express in words.
And if she knew the answers, she might go mad ...
“Has anyone made comparisons? I mean, between their history and our own?” she asked.
“Yes,” Lanier said.. ”I have, and so has Takahashi.”
“He knows as much as we do?”
Lanier nodded.
“What did you find? I mean, are the universes similar?”
“The differences in the history records are small enough that they can be interpreted as differences of fact between two sources. No major differences. Until the Stone.”
“And the situations these books describe they sound like what’s happening on Earth, now, don’t they?”
“Yes.”
“The Little Death didn’t teach anybody a thing?”
“Perhaps not.”
She sat beneath a dead tree, on a concrete planter wall. ”Do they know, down on Earth?”
“Eleven people know, here and there.”
“What are they doing about it?”
“All that they can,” Lanier said.
“But the Stone can change things. It’s the crucial difference. Isn’t it?”
“We hope so. In the next few weeks, we’ll need all the answers we can get—to questions about alternate time-lines, universes, where the Stone came from. Can you help?”
“You need to know why the Stone is here, and how similar the universes might be, to decide whether we’re going to have a war on Earth?”
Lanier nodded. ”Very important.”
“I don’t see how any results I get can be detailed enough.”
“Hoffman believes that if anyone can tell us, you can.”
Patricia nodded and looked away. ”Okay. Can I make conditions?”
“What sort of conditions?”
“I want my family evacuated. I want some friends taken into the countryside, put under protection. Put where the generals and politicians will be.”
“No.” He walked around the tree slowly. ”I’m not angry with you for asking, but no. None of us has asked for anything like that. Thought about it, certainly.”
“Do you have family?”
“A brother and a sister. My parents are dead.”
“Wife? No. You’re single. A girl friend, fiancé?”
“No major attachments.”
“So you can be more objective than I can,” Patricia said angrily.
“You know that has nothing to do with it.”
“I’m going to work up here, for you people, and wait until my parents, my boyfriend, my sister, all the people I love die in a disaster I already know about?”
Lanier stopped before her. ”Think it through, Patricia.”
“I know, I know. There are hundreds of people aboard the Stone. If we all know and ask, things go haywire. That’s why the libraries are off limits.”
“That’s one reason,” Lanier said.
“And to keep the Russians from knowing?”
“That too.”
“How smart.” Her voice was soft, just the opposite of what he had expected. She sounded rational and if not cal
m, not terribly upset, either. ”What happens when I get mail from home?” she asked. ”What if I don’t write back?”
“It won’t matter much, will it? The dates are only a few weeks away.”
“How will I feel, getting letters? How will I be able to work?”
“You’ll work,” Lanier said, “knowing that if we get the answer soon enough, we might be able to do something about it.”
She stared hard at the ground with its dry, yellow grass.
“They said shuttle landing areas were bombed. In that book.”
“Yes.”
“If it happens, we’ll be stuck up here, won’t we?”
“Yes. Most of us. We won’t want to go back soon, anyway.”
“That’s why you’ve started farming. We won’t get anything from Earth for ... how long?”
“If there’s a war, and it’s as described, perhaps thirty years.”
“I ... I can’t go into the library now. Is that all right, if I stay out here for a while?”
“Sure. Let’s return to the first chamber and have dinner. And remember—I’ve had to live with this information for some time now. There’s no reason you can’t, as well.”
She got to her feet without responding. Her legs and hands were steady. She was in amazingly good shape, considering.
“Let’s go,” she said.
Chapter Eleven
The travelers gathered by the truck two hours into the morning shift, looking like nothing so much as a bunch of backpackers about to set off on a hike. The truck was very full after loading.
Patricia sat between Takahashi and a brawny mohawked marine named Reynolds. Reynolds was armed with an Apple and a compact machine pistol. Carrolson sat beside the driver, American navy lieutenant Jerry Lake, a tall outdoorsy-looking fellow with sand-colored hair.
Lake glanced over the back of his seat to see that everything was in order, nodded to Takahashi and smiled at Patricia. ”My men have orders to protect Miss Vasquez at all costs. So don’t run away without permission.”
“Yes, sir,” Patricia said quietly. Takahashi—short, half Japanese, well muscled, with close-cropped black hair and large self-assured green eyes, returned Lake’s nod. Takahashi was the only one wearing Earthside clothes—a cotton shirt, windbreaker and denim pants.
“Dispensation,” he had explained back by the tent. ”I’m allergic to the dye in the overalls.”
Lake urged the truck forward. Carrolson checked off their equipment as Farley read a slate list.
The truck carried a total of eight passengers, four military men and four “principals,” as Carrolson referred to the scientists and Patricia.
Patricia kept her eyes on the seat in front of her. In her pocket was a letter from Paul, delivered to her in the first chamber the shift before.
Dear Patricia, Wherever you are, my mystery woman, I hope all is well.
Life here is mundane—especially when I think of where you might be.. I keep in touch with your folks—Rita’s a doll and Ramon and I have had some pretty good conversations. I’ve learned a lot about you behind your back. Hope you don’t mind. My applications to Prester and Minton (two software manufacturers) have been processed, I hear, but things are on hold until the Defense Platform appropriations bill passes. There’s some talk about a filibuster and that could screw things up for months.
Enough talk of that. I miss you desperately. Rita asked me if we were going to get married and I kept mum, just as you want. I do want to; you know that. I don’t care how weird you are, or where you are right now; just come back and give me a nod. We’ll find our own home.
Don’t be too stubborn this time. Well, enough of this; you probably have other fish to fry, and my particular floppings and slappings on the bank—where you have beached me with your line—are just distractions. (Now, you know I can’t end a letter without something clumsy and confusing.) I love you. Neat, prim kisses.
Paul
She had typed up a long, self-censored reply, showed it to Carrolson for approval, and had it sent Earthside on the next OTV. Surprisingly, writing the letter had been easy. In it, she said all the things she knew Paul would want to hear, all the things she thought needed to be said if, indeed, Paul was going to be dead in a few weeks.
Not that she had really accepted that possibility. If she had, she wouldn’t be as calm as she was.
Lanier was on his way to Earth by now. Patricia envied him.
She would rather be on Earth, waiting to die, than up here, facing what she knew.
No, that wasn’t really true. She closed her eyes and cursed herself.
This was the most responsibility she had ever had. She had to overcome her crazy grief and fear and work as best she could to prevent.
And she almost hated herself for it—she was working.
Her mind was in the state, finally. Solutions were starting to come to her, presenting themselves like suitors, all formally dressed in equations, each rejected when its inadequacies became apparent.
Takahashi seemed a bright and conscientious fellow, but Patricia hadn’t felt like talking as the expedition had gathered, and so she knew little about him. Takahashi and Carrolson would be her seconds in almost everything from now on, Lanier had said.
The road ended fifty kilometers from the base camp. The truck lurched into a shallow gully, its rubber-tired band-metal-spoke wheels making their queer singing noise on the dirt. The forward aspect of the corridor didn’t change as they advanced.
The southern cap receded slowly, steadily, and became less overwhelming. Patricia didn’t feel comfortable angling for a view, however, so she caught only brief glimpses as they traveled.
Carrolson, Farley and Takahashi played chess on a slate as Patricia watched inattentively.
“Halfway,” Lake said two hours later. The chess players recorded their moves and cleared the slate as the truck slowed and came to a smooth stop. The doors slid aside and the marines climbed down with groans of relief. Patricia slid after them and stood on the dry dirt, stretching and yawning.
Carrolson came around from the opposite side of the truck, water cooler in hand, and poured drinks into their cups. ”All the luxuries,” she said.
“Beer?” Reynolds asked.
“Sacrificed to science,” Carrolson said. ”Anybody hungry?”
Patricia removed a sandwich from the kit and walked with Takahashi a few dozen meters away from the truck. For a time, she had felt a floating sense of anxiety and nausea, but that had dissipated. How could there be anything to fear in an endless stretch of desert, devoid even of insects? The very blandness was comforting, a blank slate.
“‘The sea was wet as wet could be, the sand was dry as dry,’’ she said.
“Indeed,” Takahashi agreed. She squatted on the dirt and he sat beside her, folding his legs into an easy lotus. ”Do you know why I’m along on this trip?”
His approach was awkwardly direct. She looked away from him. ”No doubt to keep an eye on me.”
“Yes. Lanier said you should be observed diligently. How are you holding up?”
“Well enough.”
“The library ...” He lowered his voice and stared back at the cap. “It isn’t easy.”
“Pretty soon I’m going to feel like a royal princess, surrounded by retainers.”
Takahashi chuckled. ”It won’t get that bad. I’ll keep Lanier’s worries in check. But I have to ask one important question. Can you work?”
Patricia knew precisely what he meant. ”I am working. Right this minute.”
“Good.” No more needed to be said on that topic.
She plucked a branch of scrub to see if the growth differed from the variety near the camp. It didn’t—small leaves, waxy surfaces. Even the dry grass was the same. ”Not a garden spot,” she said. ”At least I expected some more dwarf forests.”
“It gets worse,” Takahashi said.
“Have you ever considered how much dirt they had to bring into the corridor?” she asked, sta
nding up. She had taken only a few bites from her sandwich. She hadn’t been hungry for two days. ”If the dirt is about a quarter kilometer deep.”
“So we estimate from sounding,” Takahashi said.
“And let’s say the corridor is a billion kilometers long ...”
“Why that figure?”
“Just a guess,” she said. ”That makes about forty billion kilometers of dirt.”
“If we broke the Earth down and paved the corridor with it—crust, magma and core—we could cover about thirty billion kilometers.”
Takahashi poked his finger into a sandy patch.
“What if they have mountains farther on? Even more dirt and rock required, then.”
“That’s possible,” Takahashi said. ”But the big question is, Where did they get it all? And don’t forget the air. It’s about twenty kilometers deep, so that would make ... one point six trillion cubic kilometers of air, at just over a gram a liter—”
“You’ve worked all this out before.”
“Of course. Many times. Rimskaya started it, and the statistics people carried on. I kibitzed. So many questions about logistics and design. How does the air get renewed in the corridor? The Stone’s regeneration ponds couldn’t possibly keep up with it, not if there’s any sizable population of animals farther on. So maybe there’s just enough air to last a few thousand years.”
“That doesn’t seem right,” Patricia said. ’”Whoever—or whatever—set this up, designed it for eternity. Don’t you get that feeling?”
“Sometimes. Doesn’t mean it’s a valid assumption.”
“Still, there must be some kind of corridor maintenance system.”
Takahashi nodded. ”Rimskaya theorized there would be openings in the corridor even before we discovered the wells.” Carrolson joined them.
“Ever notice what the corridor smells like?” she asked.
Patricia and Takahashi shook their heads.
“Smells just like before a storm. All the time. But the ozone levels aren’t very high. Another mystery.”
Patricia sniffed the air. It smelled fresh, but not like a brewing storm.
“I was raised in storm country,” Carrolson said defensively. “That’s the smell, all right.”