IGMS Issue 23

by IGMS

  "Whatever's most fuel efficient," I say. "Whatever keeps us going the longest."

  About thirty passengers care enough to gather in one of the cars to listen to my theory.

  "The pickup truck was doing just fine as it drove along the highway," I say. "But when it turned onto the road to cross the tracks, it froze. And that made me wonder what was different between the highway and the road."

  "Speed," says Varney. "They dropped below some critical threshold and that caused them to freeze."

  "It's like that movie with the bus," says a passenger near the back of the car.

  "Speed," says Varney.

  "No," I say, "It's not speed. It --"

  "Yes, it was," says Varney. "Sandra Bullock and Keanu -- "

  "I mean it's not speed that's important. It's direction." I point toward the front of the train. "As long as we're moving west, we're okay. The truck turned north when it got off the highway, so it wasn't moving west any more. That's why it froze."

  "I'm not saying you're wrong," says Dawn, "but why should it make any difference which direction we're going?"

  "I think we can all agree that something's gone wrong with the physics we're used to." Nobody objects, so I continue. "And everybody's probably heard about time being another dimension. Well, the simplified explanation for what I think's happened is that the time dimension has lined up with a space dimension." I point to the rear of the train. "That's the past . . ." I swing my arm toward the front of the train again. ". . . and that is the future. To keep moving through time, we have to keep moving west."

  I hope that Varney won't argue with the simplified explanation, but he doesn't fail to disappoint.

  "Why would going west --" he says.

  "Look, I'll be happy to discuss the more technical aspects with anyone who wants," I say. "The point is as long as we're moving west, we're safe."

  "What happens when the train runs out of fuel?" asks Dawn.

  "We've got several hours before we'll have to cross that bridge," I say. "Till then, we just have to hope this wrinkle straightens itself out first."

  Satisfied there's no immediate danger, most of the passengers disperse. Dawn and a handful of others stick around to hear me discuss General Relativity with Varney, and how Earth's rotation is dragging the partially collapsed local spacetime in an eastward direction, and how only by resisting that drag are we able to move through time.

  "We've got a serious problem," says Varney quietly as he slides into the seat next to me.

  "I know that," I say. We've evacuated all the passengers into the front two cars and disconnected the rest, although there was some grumbling about lost luggage. Jorge thinks we've dumped enough weight to get us to Salt Lake City without refueling. Once we get there, though, the problem is how to get fuel into the train without stopping. I haven't even started thinking about what happens when we run out of track.

  "We can't get over the mountains," says Varney.

  "I'm sure Jorge factored the mountains into his fuel calcul --" I say.

  "No," says Varney, and he holds out a portable GPS mapping unit. "I've been looking at our route on this, and there are times when the track turns north, even a little bit east, as it goes through the mountains. When that happens, game over."

  I take a moment to ponder the implications. "So we abandon the train, steal some cars, and find another route over the mountains."

  Varney gives me a sour look. "Just because I was wrong about the black hole doesn't mean I'm stupid. I've checked the major roads. All of them wind around the wrong way at some point. And even in a Jeep, you can't just four-wheel across the Rockies."

  I slump back. "So there's no way out."

  "What do you mean?" Varney frowns at me. "Marine Corps astronaut -- doesn't that mean you were a test pilot? Let's grab a plane and fly!"

  "I . . ." My stomach knots at the thought of flying, particularly over the same mountains where I'd crashed. I wrench my thoughts away from Miriam and say, "I was a pilot, yes. And you're right, it's our only option."

  Near Fort Morgan, Jorge slows the train so we can hop off. Only twenty-one of us are brave enough to do so. The rest will continue on the train and hope for a miracle.

  Even though Denver International Airport is about fifty miles southwest of us, as long as we have some westward motion, we'll keep moving forward in time. But while the fittest of us might somehow manage to walk the whole way without stopping, some -- like Varley -- definitely will not. We need to steal some vehicles.

  Even with everyone eerily frozen around us, stealing a car is not simple. Unoccupied cars generally don't have keys in them, and none of us knows how to hotwire. Since we can't stop moving west, even for a moment, that rules out all cars not facing west. If a car were moving west, though, it would keep moving through time, which means we only have access to cars that are stopped, which means they're either parked or their brakes are on -- neither of which is helpful if you need to keep moving.

  We end up stealing tractors instead of cars, because we find them in fields with the keys still in them. With a large group, pushing a small tractor to get it moving through time isn't all that hard. Once it's moving, the engine will start.

  Eventually we have six tractors, led by one with a bulldozer blade, trundling across Colorado farmland.

  Dawn is squeezed on the tractor seat beside me. I haven't been this close to a woman since Miriam died. She's staring up at the sky and I admire the smoothness of her neck. I yank my gaze away as she looks at me.

  "There's something bothering you," she says. "Something you haven't told us."

  "What makes you say that?" I ask.

  "You tense up anytime someone mentions the plane."

  Miriam had been annoyingly perceptive, too. "Stealing a plane that can carry all of us won't be as easy as stealing a tractor."

  "Uh-huh," Dawn says. After moment, she adds, "Are you really a pilot?"

  I let out a long breath. "Used to be. Last time I flew was three years ago, just me and my wife and some friends in a small plane, coming back from Vegas. The engine died, so I crash-landed our plane on a snow-covered slope in the Rockies. I was injured. My wife pulled me out of the plane and then went back inside for someone else. The plane slid down and off a cliff. They couldn't get to the bodies until spring. Since then, I haven't had the nerve to fly. Any more questions?"

  I've found that being cold and blunt about what happened usually makes people shut up or change the subject. Dawn looks at me for a moment, then says, "You blame her, don't you?"

  "What?" I feel sudden anger at Dawn for daring to continue talking about it.

  "For leaving you and going back in the plane." Dawn's voice is matter-of-fact. "You blame her for dying."

  I hop off the tractor to walk alongside. Dawn takes over steering, but she doesn't say anything.

  The wind blows in from the east and off into the west. After a few minutes, it chills my anger, and I climb onto the tractor again and squeeze onto the seat next to Dawn. Our hands touch as I take over the wheel.

  Denver International Airport is no good. All the parked planes are west of the runways. So we keep going southwest, to Centennial airport in Highlands Ranch.

  There we get lucky, and find a Beechcraft 1900 east of the runway. It's a twin-prop plane with room for nineteen passengers, and with careful coordination of ropes attached to slow-moving tractors, we start moving it west. And while I may not know how to hot-wire a car, I can hotwire a plane.

  Dawn sits with me up front. She squeezes my hand and says, "I'm here for you."

  I throttle up and we accelerate down the runway. I don't like the fact that we're taking off with the wind rather than into it, but there's no choice.

  And that's the thought that gets me through the panic as we take off. There's no choice -- I have to do this.

  And I do.

  The strong tailwind extends our range, but eventually I don't want to push our luck too far and take us down when fuel starts getting l
ow. We land without incident, on I-15 about 40 miles north of Cedar City, Utah. The southbound lanes are clear of cars because the Interstate is really headed more southwest than south, so any cars that had been on this stretch would have kept going forward.

  I keep the plane rolling while everyone else climbs out, then I follow.

  "Everyone keep an eye out for tractors," I say, setting an easy walking pace. No need to wear anyone out.

  Dawn takes my hand as we trudge along the highway. I don't pull away.

  Less than five miles down the road, we lose someone: Jana McFarren, a fifty-five-year-old grandmother who'd been visiting her grandkids in Chicago. She's at the back of our group when she exclaims, "Oh!"

  It's the last thing she says.

  I look back over my shoulder in time to see her toppling forward, arms stretched out to break her fall. She hits the ground and just stops, frozen in time.

  Next to me, Dawn slows and turns to see what's happened. I grab her arm and keep pulling her forward.

  "We have to help her," says Dawn, struggling against my grip.

  "We can't," I remind her. "We can't go back for anyone."

  She stops resisting, and the twenty of us continue in silence.

  Except for Varney, who sidles up to me and says, "Leave no man behind, huh?"

  "Shut up," I say. After a moment, I add, "You take the lead. I'll bring up the rear, just in case." I slow down to let everyone else pass me.

  Through various stolen methods of transportation, we travel steadily west. All the while, we try to figure out what to do when we reach the Pacific.

  Jana's the only one we lose by accident. Five people just decide to stop and hope everything unfreezes on its own eventually.

  A couple miles past Barstow, Varney figures out why a sailboat is the perfect solution. "The wind can't blow to the east," he says. "It would stop in time. Therefore, the air has no choice but to move west. That's why the wind blows constantly to the west."

  That's when we start planning to steal a large sailboat once we reach the Pacific.

  We're at Oceanside Harbor. I kiss Dawn for luck, and then she and the rest run on ahead. Their role is to cut the ropes holding our target sailboat to the dock and then clamber aboard and try to unfurl as much sail as possible while moving toward the bow of the boat, to the west.

  My job is to plunge our commandeered Greyhound bus into the water just behind the boat, causing a shock wave to give the boat enough forward momentum that we'll have more time to get the sails out.

  Once I see everyone's close enough to the boat, I gun the Greyhound's motor and aim it at the right spot behind the boat. Just as I jump out to run to catch the boat, the bus jolts as it hits something. I manage to hit the dock running, but I'm off balance.

  The bus slides into the water as planned, and a surge pushes the sailboat westward.

  As I fall, I see the sailboat pulling away, speeding up even as I slow down. I find comfort in the fact that I will freeze forever watching Dawn and the others sail away into the west. My final duty is done.

  I come to a stop --

  Then the boat disappears and my arms feel like they're being yanked out of their sockets. I'm being dragged along the dock.

  "Got him!" It's Varney's voice.

  I twist my neck to see who's pulling me. A tall, muscular man with a thinner version of Varney's face has my right arm. And pulling my left arm is Dawn -- hair cropped short, skin deeply tanned, glasses gone, but definitely Dawn.

  They help me to my feet and we continue running toward the end of the dock. A powerboat putters slowly alongside, with someone I don't recognize at the helm.

  "Jump in," says Dawn, and I do. She and Varney join me. The boat speeds up.

  My mind finally catches up with the fact that I'm not frozen. "How?" I ask. "How'd you manage to come back for me?"

  "We didn't," says Varney. "Going back's impossible."

  "We kept going west," Dawn says. "Eventually, that brought us back here, and that gave us the chance to pick you up."

  "But . . ." I look at the interior of the powerboat. "You've got no supplies, and this boat will run out of fuel."

  "Relax. We're going to meet the flotilla." Varney smiles as he leans back in his seat. "We've got 836 people now -- 837, including you -- and if today's operations went well, over 50 sailboats. We've got it under control. And wait till you hear about our plan to rescue a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that's frozen near Hawaii."

  Obviously, a lot has changed while I was frozen. I look at Dawn sitting beside me, and I wonder if her feelings have changed, too.

  Dawn must have sensed my apprehension, because she leans into me. "Don't ever make me leave you behind again," she says.

  We kiss as the boat continues into the west.

  InterGalactic Interview With Larry Niven

  by Darrell Schweitzer

  * * *

  SCHWEITZER: What do you think is the most fruitful area for science fiction speculation right now?

  NIVEN: I'd have to say exoplanets. Mind you, I don't dig very deep into medical speculation, or other areas of science. I prefer astrophysics. Exoplanets keep turning up and they're wonderful.

  SCHWEITZER: I think there are now over a thousand of them known. What I wonder is why more science fiction writers don't seem to be excited about them. You'd think we'd be seeing an explosion of outward-looking, space-oriented SF, and we're not. Any ideas?

  NIVEN: I've done a little of it. There was speculation in one of the magazines about other Earths. It seems that Earth is at the lower end of the range of possible masses. Earthlike environments will be on planets two or three or four times the size of Earth. Some of them will have formed out where water is frozen, and they will have water shells tens of miles thick with exotic forms of ice at the bottom.

  SCHWEITZER: Not very useful for human colonization.

  NIVEN: No. It doesn't sound like they'd have land masses. But that's easy enough. I'd give them a life form that forms floating coral islands.

  SCHWEITZER: Are you writing anything like this?

  NIVEN: I did that in a short story, but I could do more of it. There's lots of room.

  SCHWEITZER: There seems to be a malaise over science fiction today. A lot of SF writers seem to be losing interest in other planets and outer space at precisely the moment when these are the most exciting. I am wondering what is going on.

  NIVEN: I wonder what is going on too, but the truth is I can't read everything, so I have no reason to think that what I am reading is representative. I read collections of the best short stories of the year and keep up that way. There are some good writers out there. There is some speculation on planets, although the really ambitious writers seem to go right to the end of the universe.

  SCHWEITZER: I wonder if the public might not be just taking space travel for granted. How old do you have to be now to remember when there were no spaceships?

  NIVEN: I think you've almost put your finger on the solution, that space travel is being taken for granted. It is the immense expense that is being taken for granted, the loss of the ability to visit other planets as human beings. Writers have to go through too much planning and thinking and research to come up with something that would even make the trip. There's less story left in the end.

  SCHWEITZER: Isn't that essentially the writer's job? Where is the new Hal Clement, who would be doing all this at vast length?

  NIVEN: A writer's job is whatever he will accept as his job. The writers of today are choosing from wherever the inspiration comes from. They don't plan out where they are going, most of them.

  SCHWEITZER: In a conversation with a magazine editor who will remain nameless, I remarked that he needed more explicitly science-fictional imagery on his covers. How about a spaceship? He replied that he didn't want people to think the magazine was devoted to nostalgia, as if the future is behind us now. So, is the culture itself losing its interest in the future?

  NIVEN: The culture itself is fac
ing the fact that spacecraft cost tax money. Too many boondoggles already. We have lost faith that we can search the universe easily. That is, some of us have. The rest, they go as far as we went, and then keep on going. There is a speculation, a lot of science being done on the beginning and ending of the universe. If you go far enough, you find yourself facing the expansion of the universe, dark energy increasing our expansion rate. Some writers are very ambitious, and it will take that kind of ambition to do realistic interstellar travel.

  SCHWEITZER: I wonder how we can encourage this. Maybe it is a sign of my age, but a lot of science fiction seems less exciting now. I have a feeling that a lot of people are quitting, turning their backs on the possibilities precisely when they shouldn't. I don't see as much space advocacy either. I might reasonably ask whatever happened to the L-5 Society.

  NIVEN: I believe you're right. We're losing our urge. And yet the reasons to go to space have become more by one. Meteorite impacts are a certain threat. Stopping the next giant meteor is very likely to require men in space. We don't know exactly what we're going to find.

  SCHWEITZER: It used to be argued that you could go into space and get rich.

  NIVEN: I think somebody is going to go into space and get rich. What I really think is that somebody needs to demonstrate that it can be done within the next few years. Up to now it is certainly true that the only people who have gotten rich out of space are the people who build the spacecraft. That's not the way you got rich off voyaging to the New World.

  SCHWEITZER: But there was something in the New World which you could immediately steal, that is to say Aztec gold. We don't have the equivalent of that for space. You'd have to voyage someplace else and then work for it.

  NIVEN: Right. Nothing to steal on the Moon, and nobody to stop you from taking anything you like. Getting water on the Moon is another matter. I was told this for my sense of proportion. If you were to find concrete on the Moon, it would be worth mining the concrete to get the water out of it.