Georgia On My Mind and Other Places

by Charles Sheffield

  He was sitting with his shirtsleeves rolled up and his hands in a bowl of cold water. There were great bruises on them, from where he had hammered on the metal door, and his fingertips were bloody from tearing off the dome’s control knobs.

  “But there’s nothing to do here now,” I said. “With Marcia dead the group will break up.”

  “I hope not. I hope they will all stay here.” Tom looked at Lockyer. “The job’s not finished, is it?”

  Lockyer shook his head. “I think I know what you mean and no, it’s not finished. There is no self-contained ecosphere that can support a human population.”

  “Who cares?” My mind was boiling over with a hundred dreadful images from the interior of Habitat Nine. I couldn’t get out of my head the thought of Marcia and the others, invaded by the organisms of the habitat. Had she realized what was happening to her in those final few minutes before her mind and body succumbed? I hoped not.

  “If I have the choice,” I went on, “I’ll never look at an ecosphere again—never. Let the Ascend Forever people have their fun, but keep me out.”

  “That’s the problem,” said Tom. “We can’t stay out. No one can. We destroyed Ecosphere Nine, but this group isn’t the only one trying to create self-contained habitats. There must be a dozen others around the world.”

  “At least that,” said Lockyer. “The Habitat League used to send me newsletters.”

  “Fine.” I didn’t like the expression on Tom’s face—all the softness had gone from it. “Let them play. That doesn’t mean we have to.”

  “I’m afraid it does,” said Tom. “If the end-point for the biological forms of Ecosphere Nine is a stable attractor, it can arise from a whole variety of different starting conditions. So if people keep on experimenting, Nine can show up again. We were lucky. Nine didn’t break free and come into contact with Biosphere One—the whole Earth—but it came close. If one did get free you couldn’t sterilize the Earth the way we did with the chamber.”

  “But that seems like a case against fooling around any more with the ecospheres,” I protested. “If more habitats are made here they’ll add to the danger of a wild one getting loose.”

  Lockyer and Tom looked at each other. “She’s right, of course,” said Lockyer. “But so are you, Tom. We’re damned if we do and we’re damned if we don’t. We have to keep working, so we’ll understand ways that ecospheres can develop and learn how to handle dangerous forms.”

  “And we need to find a biosphere that people can live in in space,” said Tom. “We’re going to need it—if anything like Nine ever gets free on Earth.”

  That was two months ago. Tom, Jason Lockyer, and I went back to Washington, but only to clean up unfinished business that the three of us left behind. Then we returned to Colorado.

  Amazingly, nearly half the staff of the project elected to stay on. They are a dedicated group, putting the project ahead of everything. Even before Marcia brainwashed them, they were all space fanatics. Thanks to them, the project picked up again with hardly a hitch. Ecospheres Ten, Eleven, and Twelve are already in operation. None of them looks particularly promising—and none looks anything like Nine.

  Naturally, every aspect of ecosphere development is closely monitored. Jason Lockyer supervises every biological change and approves every technique used. It is hard to imagine how any group could be more careful.

  And Tom runs the whole show—shy, introverted, overweight Tom Walton. But he is not the man I met in his stamp shop in Washington. He has lost thirty pounds, he doesn’t stammer, he never mentions stamps. He does not have Marcia’s domineering manner, but he makes up for that with his sense of urgency. And if he pushes others, he pushes himself harder. Like Ecosphere Nine, he is still changing, developing, evolving. He will become—I don’t know what.

  I’m not sure I like the new Tom Walton—the Tom I helped to shape—as well as the old one. Sometimes I feel that I, like Marcia, created my own monster, so that now under his leadership we must all become God, the Builder of Worlds.

  And also, perhaps, their annihilator.

  (It was Jason Lockyer, the calmest and most cerebral of our group, who recalled Robert Oppenheimer’s quotation of Vishnu from the Bhagavad Gita, at the time of the testing of the first atomic bomb: “I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.”)

  Which brings my thoughts, again and again, to Marcia. How much did she understand at the very end, as Nine took her for its own and the world around her faded? Surely she knew at least this much, that she had created a monster. But Nine was her monster, her baby, her private universe, her unique creation, and in some sense she must have loved it. Loved it so much that when logic said the ecosphere must be destroyed, she could not bring herself to do it. She must have somehow justified her actions. What did she say, what did she think, how did she feel, in those last minutes?

  I hope that I will never know.

  Afterword to “Destroyer of Worlds”

  One April day in 1989 I was driving my car around Washington, D.C., when the radio played a piece by Debussy called “The Golliwog’s Cakewalk.” Instead of listening to the music I started to ponder the word, Golliwog. It conjured up a mental image of a fuzzy-haired black-face doll, something I recalled from childhood but had not seen for at least twenty years. It occurred to me that “The Golliwog’s Something-or-other” (I was not sure of the missing word) would be an intriguing title for a story.

  At the time I was for some obscure reason reading about the history of the postal services, so my mind filled in the last word of the title as “Stamp” or “Roll” or something else Post Officeish. I wrote the story and sold it to Gardner Dozois at Asimov’s with the title “The Golliwog Roll.” Only after it was sold did someone point out to us that, although in the United States the word “golliwog” has no particular weight, in England it carries definite and unpleasant racist overtones. We changed the title, I must admit a bit reluctantly on my part, and the story became “Destroyer of Worlds.”

  A couple of years later the story was published in the Ace collection Isaac Asimov’s Earth, and in due course I received a check. The stub of the check bore this simple message: “Charles Sheffield: Destroyer of Words.” The money was nice. But why did Gardner have to tell the truth about me?

  The Fifteenth Station of the Cross

  THE RULER OF the Earth should not look like this. Weak, emaciated, yellow-faced, lolling in a wheelchair. Puladi was aware of the contradiction. Eight billion people under his absolute control; and one body which refused to do the bidding of its owner’s fierce will.

  Puladi’s internal defenses were crumbling at the same time as his external ones became more and more impregnable. He sat in a room whose outer structure justified every superlative: four hundred feet by four hundred feet, with a ceiling fifty feet high and a floor that shone glassy, empty, and impervious. The walls were plain, polished steel. Recessed fluorescents in the high ceiling illuminated every square inch with a harsh and uniform light.

  At the room’s exact center stood the metal box of the inner chamber; not small—it was forty feet across and ten feet high—but dwarfed by its surroundings. Anyone who entered the outer room must cross an unprotected sixty yards of featureless bare floor to the single and sealed inner entrance, controlled from within.

  Puladi was frowning, in thought more than in anger. He watched through concealed cameras as a white-coated woman and a tall, gray-garbed man crossed the expanse of the outer chamber and approached the inner door.

  Near their destination, they slowed. There was a muttered conversation between them, easily picked up by sensitive wall microphones. At last the man stepped reluctantly forward and rapped on the metal panel.

  Puladi touched a button, one of scores that sat in the armrests of his padded chair. The views of the outer room vanished from the bank of screens on the wall in front of him. The door slid open.

  The tall man entered, stooping and blinking as his eyes began to adjust from the outside glare to
a dim-lit interior. He caught a glimpse in the background of the rear of the room, with its bed and medical station, its food and disposal system. Then his eyes were drawn to the slight figure before him, sitting in the wheeled chair and propped on a pile of soft cushions and water pillows.

  “Dr. Salino, is it not?” Puladi’s voice was weak, but full of a chilly authority. “I assume that you have the results.”

  “Yes, Excellency.”

  “No title. I do not use one. I am Puladi. The tests—what do they show?” And, when Salino shook his head but did not speak, “Sit down. I command it. And talk.”

  The tall man did not so much sit, as collapse back into a hard chair half a dozen feet from Puladi’s own. He raised his hands to his face, and they were trembling. “Excellency—Puladi. There is bad news. The worst news. It is spreading. Again.”

  “I suspected as much. How long?”

  The tall man shook his head again, but said nothing.

  “Ernesto Salino. Look at me.” Puladi’s eyes were brown and glowing. It was said that no one could encounter those dark orbs without feeling fear. Salino looked, and at last Puladi nodded.

  “Good. I asked a question: How long do I have? And before you answer, let me inform you of one thing. You have heard, I am sure, that people are afraid to give me bad news. It is true that I do not welcome it. Who does? But the fate of one who gives me such news is as nothing, compared to the fate of any man or woman who lies to me. So speak—and be assured that there will be no third asking of my question.”

  “You have about one month. Three at most.” Salino’s voice was faint and husky. “That is of course with regular transfusions, with everything that we know how to do.”

  “What about the research program?”

  “I reviewed it this morning. Too slow, even with every resource poured into it. I think that in fifteen years, perhaps even in ten, there will be a successful treatment and cure. Horst Calvin believes that he is making real progress. But today—”

  “Today, I have a month. Can you guarantee that?”

  “No. Nor can any human. But it is our best estimate.”

  “Our estimate?”

  “Mine. And Dr. Vissarion’s.”

  “Who is, I assume, waiting outside to hear the result of this meeting. As your superior, did she order you to come in and tell me about the results and unfavorable prognosis, rather than doing it herself?”

  “Sir—”

  “Did she?”

  “Yes, Puladi. She commanded it.”

  “Very good. You are learning to tell the truth.” Puladi lifted his gaze away from the tall doctor, and seemed to speak into the air above his chair. “Ekaterina Vissarion should have come in herself. That means she has not been doing her duty. I do not wish to see her again.”

  “Oh! P-P—”

  “Not you, Salino.” Puladi’s piercing eyes returned to the other man. “The guards will not remove you. In fact, I will be seeing you frequently, since you have just become my senior physician. Administrator Kelb will provide you with a complete briefing on your duties, later today.” He held out a wasted right arm. “Meanwhile, you will complete my treatment. And you will also return here at this time tomorrow. You must keep up my strength, because I have much work to do.” As Salino stood up and nervously gripped the proffered arm, Puladi continued in a musing tone: “Fifteen years, you say. Fifteen years from now, Dr. Salino, do you really think there will be a cure?”

  Salino nodded. “Yes, Puladi.”

  “Thank you. That is most interesting. Continue.”

  As the perfusion IV attached itself to his right arm, Puladi’s left hand began to dance across the keys in the arm of the chair. Data bank linkages flickered on the forty screens that covered the wall in front of him. He seemed to be seeking something very specific. Directories with the titles “BREAKTHROUGH AREAS,” “PRIORITIES,” “CHRONIC ANOMALIES,” “TEMPORAL RESEARCH,” and “FUNDING STATUS” flashed into existence on five screens. As the cursors moved through them, other screens provided real-time images from half a dozen research laboratories. Puladi merged six files. A new directory, “CHRONOCLASTIC FLOW” suddenly popped up on all screens simultaneously. Puladi grunted. He became fully absorbed in reviewing its subdirectories.

  Ernesto Salino breathed a prayer of thanks as he bent to his task. At last, with those eyes off him and Puladi focused elsewhere, he had some hope of performing competent medical work.

  Twelve hours later, Rustum Belur sat facing Puladi. He was weary, nervous, and utterly bewildered. He had left the Calcutta lab tired after a long day’s work, eaten a light dinner, and gone straight to bed. Two hours later he had been roused, forced to dress, and flown on a high-speed personal transport halfway around the world. Now he was meeting a man he had never in his life expected to encounter—the reclusive figure who ran the world.

  And that man seemed to be dying. Puladi was terribly thin, jaundiced in complexion, and apparently too weak to move from his chair.

  “Help you?” Belur said again. “Excellency—”

  “Puladi,” whispered the man standing behind him. It was Administrator Kelb, the burly, lion-faced man who had brought him into the room. “Puladi must be called only Puladi.”

  “Puladi, there must be some mistake. I cannot help you. I am not a physician—I am a physicist.”

  “I know what you are.” Puladi seemed almost too frail to talk. “You are Professor Belur, of the Calcutta Institute for Advanced Studies. You are the originator of the theory of chronoclastic flows. You are also, according to the research data banks, the creator of a machine that can develop and exploit such flows. True, or false?”

  “True. It is called the Chronoclast. But the machine—”

  “Is now being brought here, from your laboratory. You have used it to transport objects, living and nonliving, through time. True, or false?”

  “True. Small objects, and small creatures.”

  “But that is not, as I understand it, a basic limitation?”

  “No. It is a function of available energy supply, and the chronoclastic rigidity coefficients—which determine how difficult it is to fracture time, locally. Puladi, I do not understand—”

  “You will. When the Chronoclast arrives, you will give me a demonstration. Meanwhile, tell me this. Would it be possible to carry an individual, together possibly with a piece of medical equipment, through time; for, let us say, fifteen years?”

  “A human being? Sir, we have never attempted anything so big. The risk, to that person—”

  “Answer my question, if you please.” Puladi’s eyes seemed to glow with light and draw Belur into them.

  The professor sank back in the chair. “A human, across fifteen years? We have never carried anything for more than two years—and nothing bigger than a few grams. The energy goes as the cube of the mass, and it is quadratic in the transport time. It might deplete the local chronic supply. And it would need huge power.”

  “Assume that the whole of the world’s energy is available to you.”

  “Then it can probably be done.” Belur was silent for a few seconds, and when he spoke again his voice was stronger. “I will be more definite. It can be done. There is only one possible complication. The chronoclastic viewer allows us to look to an exact moment of time, but in the time-transport process itself there is a slight uncertainty. You might find that you aim to carry something across two years exactly, but the Chronoclast will bring it from two years plus or minus a few hours.”

  “That is no problem. I have one other question. Can you identify a specific individual.”

  “Certainly, if you know what he or she looks like, and you can tell me where to look, and when to look. That is the whole purpose of the chronoclastic viewer—to see and specify just what is to be transported.”

  “So now I can answer your question, by telling you exactly how you must help me. Once we have provided an adequate energy supply for your equipment, I will give you sufficient information
for you to identify an individual—almost certainly, it will be a physician, Dr. Horst Calvin. I will also give you the precise coordinates of his laboratory office. You will then operate your Chronoclast to bring him here, from a time fifteen years in the future, together with any necessary medical—”

  “The future.” Rustum Belur jerked upright.

  “Correct. I assume that the Chronoclast operates as easily on the past or the future?”

  “No! Bringing something from the future is impossible. The future is—” Belur waved his arms in the empty air around him “—the future is not real. It represents only potentialities, endless new possible branches every second. Only the past is real. Only the past is accessible to the Chronoclast. My reports make all that very clear. You don’t know what you are talking about, if you suggest that something might be brought from the future.”

  Kelb, standing behind Rustum Belur, growled and grabbed the professor by the shoulders. “Puladi, I’ll get him right out of here. The guards will take care of him.”

  “Not yet. Not quite yet. Belur, are you sure that your reports clearly indicated that the Chronoclast has access only to the past?”

  “I swear it. On my life.”

  “On your life it will be. But I have been a careless reader. Or perhaps I have been guilty of wishful thinking. Leave him alone, Kelb. And sit down, Belur. When the equipment arrives, I still want to see that demonstration.”

  He lifted his arm, and stared at its veined skin and prominent bones. “And now I need time to think. Perhaps I will still want to use the Chronoclast. When high probability options vanish, it is time to consider long shots.”

  The prototype Chronoclast, fully assembled, had proved too big for the inner chamber. But Puladi would not allow it to be moved far away. It had been put together in the outer room, and sat as a dull jumble of gray and green that sprawled across fifty feet of floor. The transport chamber stood at its edge, a horizontal cylinder ten feet long and six feet high. Thick cables snaked to it from an augmented power supply.