Avram died on May 8th, 1993, just fifteen days after his seventieth birthday, in his tiny dank apartment in Bremerton, Washington. He closed his eyes and never opened them again. There was a body, and a coroner's report, and official papers and everything: books closed, doors locked, last period dotted in the file.
Except that a month later, when the hangover I valiantly earned during and after the memorial was beginning to seem merely colorful in memory rather than willfully obtuse, I got a battered postcard in the mail. It's in the file with the others. A printed credit in the margin identifies it as coming from the Westermark Press of Stone Heights, Pennsylvan shouldre television—ia. The picture on the front shows an unfrosted angel food cake decorated with a single red candle. The postmark includes the flag of Cameroon. And on the back, written in that astonishing, unmistakable hand, is an impossible message.
May 9, 1993
To the Illustrissimo Dom Pedro, Companero de Todos mis Tonterias and Skittles Champion of Pacific Grove (Senior Division), Greetings!
It's a funny thing about that Cave parable of Plato's. The way it works out and all. Someday I'll come show you.
Years have passed with nothing further... but I still take corners slowly, just in case. All corners. Anywhere.
* * *
Less Stately Mansions
By Rob Chilson | 5751 words
Rob Chilson's novels include Men Like Rats, Black as Blood, and The Shores of Kansas. He considers himself a Midwesterner and a country boy and he notes that he first read about HILE in 1966, whereupon his pack-rat mind tucked it away for later use.
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, "The Chambered Nautilus"
THEY CAME FOR JACOB MANNHEIM while he was in the potato field.
He was kneeling, feeling the soil where the potatoes had been harvested—dark, friable, still faintly damp. It smelled rich, and the earthworm in the handful was long, strong, and vigorous. Good.
Straightening, he caught a splash of light from an oncoming aircar, gold and red. The extra-brain tattooed under his scalp had received no greeting, no request-for-permission. It was an official visit.
So they've come at last.
He had only a few minutes. Jacob strode a couple of meters to where one of the agrirobots floated swiftly across the soil, the clever mechanical fingers at its stern deftly detaching the potatoes from the roots, sucking them up and passing them on to the harvester van that floated alongside. The flying fingers gave a final churn to the soil as the robot passed.
Jacob bent and peered at the potatoes: red, large and small, healthy. He didn't turn until the aircar came to hover above the loose soil where the potatoes had been.
"Uncle Jake!"
It was the voice of his grandnephew, Albrecht Jala. It would be. But it was a man in blue, in an official cap with an insignia in gold, who first stepped down onto the ground.
"Albrecht?"
His grandnephew's face appeared, sideways and reddened, either with emotion, or, more likely, the effort of ducking out the aircar's low door. His hussy of a wife, Tomoko, followed, her shoes and silk-clad legs incongruous above the brown soil.
Jacob nodded to them. "With you in just a moment," he muttered. Turning away, he thought, so they finally got up the nerve.
A sharp command delivered through his extra-brain caused the nearest agrirobot to pause, and down the field, a dozen others in echelon also paused. Each was a flattened cylinder three meters long by one and a half wide by one thick. Aft and underneath each had a plethora of grab hands for the tasks it—and its attachments—could perform.
This halt caused the crows who had been attacking the churned soil to arise, flapping and cursing him in raucous voices. Commands had to be given to the robots verbally for security, and Jacob raised his voice over those of the crows.
He gave them commands for the continued harvesting of the field and the setup for the next day's work, not knowing how long he'd be gone. Not strictly necess wondered what acy bANDs soon asary—the robots were more intelligent than any human—but he was all too aware that these days he was alone on the farm.
Jacob Mannheim faced his collateral offspring and the... regional marshall, he saw, reading the hat.
"Don't believe we've been introduced," he said, stepping toward the marshall, hand out. "Jacob Mannheim."
"Deputy Ali," said the lawman, shaking.
"So you're here to arrest me?" Ironically.
"Oh, no! Of course not. It's just that, uh...."
Jacob took pity on him. "Of course. My would-be heirs brought you along in case I don't come quietly." He turned to Albrecht. "So you think I'm crazy, do you?" Dry tone.
Albrecht had been sculpted to handsomeness once on a time, but good living had blurred the doctor's work. Now his face was blotchy, he was positively fleshy, and he needed to regenerate his hair. Tomoko's looks were equally blurry; her hair had gone to a dishwatery blond. Inadequate gening, or too much recoloring? Jacob didn't know or care.
"Well, you're certainly not acting very sensible about this, Uncle Jake!"
"A deal like this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!" Tomoko said. "You'd have to be crazy to pass it up!"
"It's not just yourself you're cheating, Uncle Jacob," Albrecht said, reproachful. "It's the whole family."
"Yeah, it's not fair to us!"
Jacob decided that Albrecht hadn't been bullied into coming; he'd volunteered. His grandnephew didn't like him, Jacob knew. That was nothing, you can't choose your relatives. As long as Albrecht had been polite to him, he'd been polite right back. Greed had brought out all his vindictiveness.
Tomoko didn't like anybody, so far as Jacob could tell.
"So you've set up a mental competence hearing." Jacob shrugged.
"You realize that you have the right to counsel," Deputy Ali said hastily. "You can refuse the hearing itself absent testimony of incapacity—"
Jacob gave him a sour grin, shaking his head. "Naw, let's get it over with. Why make them strain themselves, thinking stuff up? And just to make you feel better, I've already consulted counsel."
Albrecht snorted again. Tomoko tossed her thick mane and in a bored nasal whine, said, "Okay okay, let's get going, shall we? We do have an appointment. We have to be there by fourteen-thirty."
Jacob nodded, unhappy. He looked at Albrecht's fancy car, hovering patiently above the dirt. "Will I need to pack anything?" He feared they'd keep him overnight. An old man likes his own bed best.
"No, should have you back tonight," Ali said.
Relieved, Jacob nodded. "Good. Let me call Sam Nganya." He turned away to use his extra-brain. The conversation was brief: "Sam, it's me. They've come for me. Appointment at fourteen-thirty."
"I'll be there."
Jacob disconnected and turned to the marshall. "Do me a favor. Let's you and me go in my car. All that nagging at me would upset me in my highly nervous state," he said, tipping his head ironically toward Tomoko.
For the first time the deputy's official mien broke. He almost smiled. "Right, sir, no problem."
Nodding to Albrecht and Tomoko, Jacob stepped past them to enter the lounge at the rear of the car. Here he found another relative, peered at her in the dimmer light within.
"Linda?"
"Yes," she said.
Linda Minetti, his grandniece Danika's daughter. She aimed a rather tremulous smile at him and took his hand.
Danika had been one of the grandnieces who most enjoyed summers at the farm, and Linda in her turn rarely missed at least a couple of weeks with him. All the nieces and nephews had made a tradition of vacations, or parts of vacations, on the farm. So had his gra
ndchildren, once upon a time.
"Sorry to see you, under the circumstances," Linda said.
"It's a pleasure to me, whatever the circs," Jacob told her. "I'm kinda looking forward to it."
The others disposed themselves and the car took off, its gravitronic motors silent|up re the ruins—. Linda chattered about the harvest.
The potato field, Mercer 27, shrank below them, and Jacob felt a surge of pride and rueful joy as he looked across his land. For many generations the Mannheims had bought "what joins mine" until Mannheim Farms now covered much of the northern part of the old province of Missouri, lapping over into what had been Iowa. Mercer had once been a "county."
The fields from the air were a series of contours kilometers long. Generations ago the ancient farmers had come to this rolling, nearly treeless land with their earthmovers and their HILE plans. Now water-retaining soil berms a meter to a meter-and-a-half high curved off to the horizon. Worldwide, millions of square kilometers, most of Earth's arable land, had been thus hilescaped.
The farmers had reshaped the Earth.
Every drop that fell on even the slightest slope was caught and absorbed by the soil. Long shallow lakes of water backed up behind the HILE terraces after a rain, to be absorbed.
Not all the land in sight was Mannheim land. Much was parkland—also hilescaped—with interspersed communities. Long windbreaks of trees, they were, with houses and lawns and winding paved pathways at the tops of the slopes. Mannheims had lived in the local communities time out of mind till two generations back. Jacob had heard his grandfather talk of dances when he was young. But the Mannheims had scattered.
Both of Jacob's sons had emigrated to a space colony. Taking his grandchildren with them.
Rueful joy indeed. He'd known neither of the boys wanted the farmer's life. But he'd hoped for his grandchildren. Well. They'd all gone. That left him only his nieces and nephews, and now his grandnephews and grandnieces.
None were farmers. They wanted only money from the land.
All were silent in the aircar, Jacob being perhaps most at ease, merely sad. The house soon came in view.
Mannheim Farms might have been mistaken for a community, buildings within a windbreak of trees on the top of the slope. But these buildings were mostly barns and storage bins. About one of the latter the harvest vans swooped and departed, like wasps about a fallen apple.
"I won't be but a minute," he said, and hurried into the empty, echoing farmhouse.
He hadn't known what to expect, and had packed an overnight bag. Glad I won't need that, he thought, changing into formal garments. Marshall Ali joined him in his aircar, and Jacob verbally instructed it to take them to St. Louis.
Jacob Mannheim sat musing over Earth as they flew toward his hearing.
They cruised at low altitude across the great NorthAm continent of Old Earth, an ancient land well worn now by the thousands of generations of humans, walking soil fed from the soil, who had had their brief hours in the light before returning to the soil. Mellow was this land, the steep slopes sculpted over generations into seeming dunes of green. From this altitude no footprints could be seen, but the footprints of all those generations were everywhere evident.
The rough green of farm fields was less common than the smooth green of great lawns, of endless parkland bright with autumn's flowers. Here and there clumps of trees surrounded clumps of houses—dwellings, occasionally a small office building, a factory, a cluster of shops. Their windows twinkled, their roofs gleamed, in the verdant land. Green and pleasant was Old Earth in the afternoon.
The Night was coming. All this was to be given to the ice.
Jacob Mannheim cast a brooding glance at the Sun. No human eye could tell the difference, but it was dimmer, and generation by generation it would dim still more. Already the glaciers were growing in the north, and on high mountains. Winters were a touch cooler than the world was used to.
For generations they'd fought the warming of the globe, had held it to a tolerable level. Now that long battle was over, and the grim war against the cold night had begun. In not many generations, they for hundreds of years. c" meetingb b said, the Mannheim Farms would be under a kilometer of ice.
"All because they can't enforce the damn law," Jacob growled.
Marshall Ali had caught his glance at the Sun.
"Well, that's Earth law," he said tolerantly. "Not binding on the colonies. Not unless they sign the Accords."
"Or have repudiated them."
Ali shrugged. "What can we do? They outnumber us. Considering the state of Earth's economy, it's generous of them to buy out people willing to emigrate. Those in nonessential occupations."
"Like farming."
Most food these days was produced in food factories fed from pond scum grown in sewage-reclamation plants. Natural food like his potatoes was a luxury item, reserved for feasts. Or exported to the colonies as an ever-higher-priced luxury.
Despairing, he said, "Doesn't anyone love the land anymore? How can anyone leave—this—" His gesture took in the smiling pleasant park below—this, their native world—the home of humanity—the only beautiful planet in the known cosmos?
"It could be like this for generations yet. And if they would only enforce the law—"
"I agree. I'm not emigrating. But I'm not having children either," Ali said.
So he'd surrendered. Jacob was still shaking his head when they slanted down to St. Louis. That had been a sprawling city generations ago, when there were cities; built at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, when there'd been a Missouri and a Mississippi river.
Now the name merely indicated a thicker sprawl of buildings of all types, mingled in a manner that seemed higgledy-piggledy, but was in fact carefully planned to appear artless. Here and there a building floated on gravitronic motors amid the lazy-moving aircars. Here was the AdCen, the Administrative Center of MidAm.
One of the smaller buildings was the Judiciary Center for MidAm. They landed on its roof. Sam Nganya was waiting, and shook with them all, even Tomoko. Neither Albrecht nor his wife, Jacob was pleased to see, was in any way embarrassed or abashed.
The relatives and Sam were peeled off into a waiting room. Following Marshall Ali, Jacob wondered ironically about the conversation in that room. None, he thought, or at least no general conversation.
Ali left him with the examiners.
Smiling, friendly young men and women—no. Some were middle-aged. Everybody's young compared to me, Jacob thought.
"You're in good time, Mr. Mannheim," said a motherly youngish woman. "I take it you're ready?"
"Ready to get it over with," he told them.
Jacob had read up on the process and was surprised by none of it. The major part consisted of them putting a helmet on his head, then showing him still or moving images of various things: babies, snakes, kittens, spiders, flowers, and so on. Also with the helmet they played sounds of various sorts, including soothing words in threatening tones and threatening words in soothing tones. This part took most of an hour. Then for half as long they asked him odd questions at seeming random: how much did he read (a lot), what were his favorite games (none), was he married (widowed), kids (yes, two), occupation, age, what he thought of the price of eggs, of bread (he had no idea what the prices were, he just bought them without looking), did he know his rights under the Charter (you bet he did), and so on.
Not a single question about people out to get him, plotting against him, or the like.
He took the helmet off with relief. The motherly woman smiled at him and said, "You have no organic mental dysfunction, nor do we see signs of any inorganic dysfunction—no mental disturbance such as, for instance, paranoia."
So they had been looking for it. "So if I'm dysfunctional it's just because I'm a bullheaded old fart?" he asked.
The smile broadened. "Unscientifically but aptly put," she said.
If I were twenty years younger —he thought.
She gestured to t
he door, where an unusual number of shouldre the ruins—Marshall Ali waited. "If you'll go with the marshall—"
Ali led him to a courtroom. An honest-to-God courtroom, with dark wood paneling, a barrel-vaulted ceiling, a judge's high bench, a jury section, a witness chair, the whole kaboodle. Jacob hadn't really believed they still existed. He was delighted with it, felt the weight of the generations of humanity on Old Earth.
The judge was another of those disconcerting young women with a touch of gray in her hair, not motherly at all. She sat at a small table, not behind the bench. She was toying with a gavel the size of a pen, with a diminutive head. Sam Nganya chatted with her. Another man sat with them; he was introduced as Jamal Poonai, Plaintiff's counsel. As Jacob was shaking his hand, the relatives were ushered in. Linda gave him a small smile.
They were seated around the table, Ali with them. The judge got up to serve them coffee, dim sum, and crullers with her own hands. For some minutes they chatted, the judge carrying the burden. She was pleasant despite the air that advised you to pull nothing on her. The only other official was apparently some sort of recording clerk.
Before even Tomoko showed visible signs of restlessness, the judge, who had introduced herself as Judy Malmstrom, said, "We should get started. Erika tells me we're recording. This is the time and place heretofore designated as for the mental competency hearing of Jacob Mannheim, who is in court at this time." She read off case and docket numbers, needing no notes of course because it was already in her extra-brain.
"The technicians assure me that Jacob suffers from no organic dysfunction, and their report is entered into the record as Exhibit A. Does Plaintiff wish to question this testimony?"
"No, Your Honor," Jamal Poonai said.
"The technicians also found no symptoms of inorganic mental dysfunction, no sign of incompetence in particular. Exhibit B. Do you wish to challenge this?"
It was the whole point of the rigmarole. Jacob sat back and watched, enjoying the expressions of poorly suppressed greed on Albrecht and Tomoko's faces. Linda seemed embarrassed and wouldn't meet his eye.
F&SF July/August 2011 Page 20