Analog SFF, December 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "Clearly, what Jesus here needs to do,” William powered through, “is combine his message with Rome's from the start. Like I said earlier, if you incorporate science into Christianity rather than exclude it, you could have the best of both worlds. You could start the age of reason two thousand years early, and we could avoid all the wars over whose god is stronger and meaner than everybody else's."

  "Science,” Jesus said.

  "Science,” William said.

  "It's time to go,” Billy said, rising from the table.

  Jesus wasn't done, though. He and William talked deep into the night, long after the others had drifted off to bed. Billy stayed to defend the faith, but it was clear that Jesus was more interested in William's practical advice and knowledge than in Billy's memory of scripture and dogma. Billy found himself on the fringes of the conversation, tolerated but no longer included, and he even drifted off at one point, only to wake with a start when he heard Jesus say, “Yes, this scientific method sounds very much like something I've been thinking all along, but couldn't put into words. Investigate, then explain. It makes so much more sense that way."

  At last, when the sun began peeking through the windows, Jesus finally yawned and said, “Well, this has been fascinating, but I've got a temple to raid today, and you two need some sleep. Will I see you again?"

  "Probably not,” Billy said quickly. “We were just passing through."

  "Well, then,” said Jesus, “I'm glad we met when we did. I wish you well in your travels.” With that he got up and tottered off into the back of the inn.

  Billy was in no better shape, but he pulled William to his feet and the two of them staggered out into the dawn. Only a few people were out this early, and those seemed unsurprised to see two men weaving up the street from the inn.

  "What were you thinking?” Billy demanded as he dragged his companion out of town. “Lecturing the son of God about science. You—"

  Then it hit him. “You planned this all along, didn't you?"

  William shook his head. “Not quite. My plan was to get you close to Jesus so you could come to know him as a person. I figured if you did that, there was no way you would let him die on the cross. You would rescue him, and he would go on to the scandal and obscurity that all religious leaders eventually run afoul of.” He turned to Billy, still walking, and said, “I figured Christianity wouldn't last a decade after his death if he got a chance to mess it up before he died. But when we got here, I realized I liked the guy. He's a decent sort, and he's intelligent, and his heart is in the right place. It's all the people who came after him who screwed things up. And he asked the right questions. So I decided to try a different approach."

  Billy had to will himself to unclench his fists. “Your—your arrogance is beyond comprehension."

  William nodded. “I'm sure it is. So is yours, to me. But maybe if the seeds I sewed tonight take root, we'll return to a world where science and religion spring from the same well. Where the answers to the deep philosophical questions are provisional answers, subject to change when more data comes along."

  "The nature of God is not a provisional answer,” Billy stated flatly.

  "We'll see about that,” said William. “I guess that's the core of this little experiment, isn't it?"

  Billy couldn't find the voice to answer. The two of them trudged out of town toward their hidden time machine. When they reached it, they dug it out of the sand and unwrapped its plastic shroud, then dragged it back to a spot about four feet away from where they had arrived. “That should give us plenty of room to reappear in,” William said. He gestured for Billy to step inside the cage.

  Billy turned and looked back at the city of Jerusalem. The morning breeze off the Mediterranean was blowing the smoke from the night's heating fires away, as if the hand of God were removing a lid of darkness from the town.

  "Dear Lord,” he said softly, “may some good come of this, somewhere, somehow."

  Then he entered the cage and stood there while William set up the jump. He watched William push the button, expecting the walls of the flat they had rented to blink into being around him, but instead, the desert around him merely sprouted greenery. He was standing in the midst of a lush forest, with sunlight filtering down through its canopy and birds singing merrily in its branches.

  William was already standing before him. “We seem to have made a difference,” the scientist said quietly.

  Billy's heart was pounding hard enough to make him fear for his life, but he managed to steady his voice enough to say, “So we have.” He turned once around, but he could see no sign of people anywhere. That meant practically nothing, since the forest was so thick it would have hidden a skyscraper a hundred yards away, but the stillness spooked him. Had humanity killed itself off in some titanic war a few centuries after Jesus established the doctrine of scientific revelation? Or had it learned how to live in harmony with nature, and he was now standing in the heart of a thriving metropolis?

  There was only one way to find out. Billy held out his hand to his traveling companion. “Let's go see what kind of world our savior has created."

  Copyright (c) 2007 Jerry Oltion

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  Short Story: “DOMO ARIGATO,” SAYS MR. ROBOTO by ROBERT R. CHASE

  Illustration by Vincent Di Fate

  * * * *

  The thing about the legal games is that both sides can play them....

  * * * *

  Making adjustments to the landing sequence even though I'm not fully awake yet. That's the purpose of these repeated simulations. Make the responses so automatic that I can almost do them in my sleep.

  There is also a reason why I am unconscious to begin with, though I can't think of it now. Not a problem. It's back there somewhere. It will surface if I really need it.

  Squawk of static. “You there, Calley? Rise and shine, amigo, or you and Wildcat going to splatter yourselves all over the inner solar system."

  Maria Theresa Gonzales. The sweetest voice conceivable to a boy a million kilometers from home. In my imagination, I see her in the communications center trailer, dedicated to the mission but eager to get off shift so she can work out to deal with what she imagines to be her weight problem. I shake my head, aware that I am just about to drift off. I try to answer, but my mouth is so dry that my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. Something between a grunt and groan emerges.

  The numbers on the radar altimeter flicker too quickly to be read. I extend my hand to the control console. It feels like a block of wood, only now I am getting the pins and needles sensation as the blood flow returns. I flex my fingers to get more feeling into them. Hitting the wrong buttons now would be disastrous.

  Here's the reason for the simulation. 2009 AP15 orbits the Sun at something like twenty-five kilometers per second depending on its position in its very elliptical orbit. Escape velocity from Earth is 11.2 kilometers per second and I will actually be going about thirteen kilometers per second. That may sound like I have a lot of delta vee to make up, but Earth itself orbits the Sun at twenty-nine kilometers per second in pretty much the same direction and plane as the asteroid. So I actually have to dump velocity by doing clever things with my launch time and slingshotting around the Moon, as well as the brute force expenditure of propellant.

  When I get in the vicinity of the asteroid, I have to dock with it—I say “dock” rather than “land” because the surface gravity is nearly nonexistent. Since it has a six-hour rotational period, I descend in a controlled spiral, so as not to skip across the surface like a stone across a pond.

  This could all be done by a computer program. There is a reason I have to do so much of it manually. That is something else I know that I know, even though I can't remember it right now.

  I look up from the illuminated instrument panel, currently the only source of light in the cockpit, to check my approach through the window. The asteroid looks different from previous simulations. There is also a real surprise: an
other spacecraft, which, as I stare at it, is descending to the opposite side of the asteroid. The simulation team has never pulled that on me before.

  "...still getting high hibernadol readings from his breath.” Maria is talking to someone in the trailer, apparently unaware that the mike is still on. “His body metabolized it more slowly than Doc Samuels predicted. Heart beat suggests he's conscious, though he hasn't responded to me yet."

  I lick my lips to say something when an alarm goes off. Between watching the mystery spacecraft and listening to Maria, I have allowed the Wildcat to drift from the descent path. I feather the main engine to slow the rate of approach. The vibration is enough to shake loose the Saint Christopher medal Maria stuck on my instrument panel. It slams itself to the deck between my knees and then, as the engine cuts off, lazily bounces up, twinkling in the instrument lights as it spins.

  Free fall! This isn't a simulation. This is the real thing. If I screw up, Wildcat and myself may smash ourselves into space debris. The beanstalk may never be built. Leastwise, not by my people.

  "Whoa! Big pulse rate jump.” J. P. Fetterman's deep voice has more spontaneous emotion than I have ever heard before. “You okay, son?"

  I suck on the water tube inserted on the left side of my mouth. This time I get some words out. “A little busy just now minding your investment, J. P. Chat later."

  Lightly, lightly, I touch the engine two more times until all lateral movement ceases and the rate of approach has slowed to less than a meter per second. There is a dull thump as landing struts swing out from the side of the craft.

  When we make contact, I hardly notice it except for being pressed into my seat for an instant. Safety straps keep me from bouncing up a second later. The landing struts collapse part way into themselves to absorb the shock of contact. With surface gravity so low, the last thing we want is for the Wildcat to bounce all over the surface or even into orbit.

  Everything settles down in the cockpit. When I see that the tell-tales are green, I zip on my pressure suit gloves and snap the helmet shut. It feels like two hands pressing on my ears as the suit pressurizes. Then I press the button to suck all the air out of the cabin.

  "Not to push you or anything...” J. P. begins.

  "...but we are on a timeline,” we say together. There is a five second pause as the signal bounces back and forth. “Right,” J. P. says in the tone that is as close as he gets to apologetic. “Take the time to do everything right."

  I unfold from the pilot's seat. My whole body feels the way my hands did earlier. Numbness gives way to a dozen varieties of pain and other discomfort. Strategically placed electrodes have stimulated major muscle groups while I slept, but muscles have already begun to atrophy, and bones to lose calcium. I stand for the first time in more than three weeks, brace my feet against the deck, and twist open the overhead hatch. It swings open, carrying me up and out. Not wanting to catapult into orbit, I grab an exterior rung and then hand over hand down the side of the Wildcat until my feet touch the surface. I reach down and gather powdery regolith into the palm of my right glove.

  On cue, the required legalese begins to scroll across my helmet display. “I, James Calley, pursuant to Article III, Section 5, of the Treaty on Principles Governing the Use and Exploitation of Near Earth Objects, do hereby assert right of ownership over 2009 AP15 for the Beanstalk Development Corporation."

  Just that easily, I assert J. P. Fetterman's claim for a four-kilometer asteroid.

  * * * *

  "You know how to get ten billion dollars?” J. P. asked me, early in our relationship. “Well, you gotta start with a billion.” This was neither a wisecrack nor a Zen koan. It was a succinct statement of a basic principle: once you have your first million, or billion, the second comes a lot easier. Aristotle was just wrong. Money does breed, at least when you have enough of it.

  Getting “enough” is the problem and is directly relevant to J. P.'s difficulty with constructing a space elevator. Once the elevator is built, anyone who uses it will be, in the words of Robert A. Heinlein, halfway to anywhere in the solar system. Space travel will become a money-making proposition as costs plummet. The problem is that this “technological tower of Babel” (as it has been termed by a certain televangelist) cannot be built from the ground up. It has to be let down from heaven. Even with scramjet launchers, lifting enough mass into geosynchronous orbit to make an elevator nearly thirty-six thousand kilometers long will take more than Bill Gates-type wealth.

  With a space elevator, one could become unimaginably wealthy—only it takes nearly unimaginable wealth to build the elevator.

  This was only an academic problem until three different laboratories came up with ways of spinning out 99.99 percent defect free buckytubes of arbitrary length. Now there was a material that could be braided into cables strong enough to support a space elevator. Bright people all over the world began to concentrate on how the construction could be made affordable.

  Since they were so bright, many of them came up with the same solution. Why go to all the trouble and expense shipping mass up from Earth when the raw material was already up there, just floating by? Earth-crossing asteroids contained everything needed. All you had to do was find the right one, the sort that chips off carbonaceous chondrite meteors, nudge it a little bit to get it into high Earth orbit, and set up a factory.

  Observations were refined, calculations performed, presentations made. It was still going to be capital intensive, but it would not be prohibitive. Multi-billionaires consolidated assets and prepared for a race. The space faring nations were too involved trying to salvage their social programs in the midst of a population implosion to be major players themselves. However, everyone agreed that the race needed rules. “We do not want near Earth space to resemble Dodge City,” the French ambassador observed.

  There were consultations. Negotiations. Compromises. Finally, a set of protocols matured into a treaty that everyone could more or less live with.

  I thought it all unnecessary, especially when I launched and everyone else was scheduled to be at least a week behind. Only now there are two of us here, so maybe I was wrong.

  * * * *

  The real work begins. Microgravity makes it hard, complicated, and boring. Suffice to say that after ten hours I have hauled an ion drive from Wildcat's storage hold to the edge of a crater, embedded it in the slope, and turned it on. If our astronomers are right, all rotation will stop in about six months. Then, when J. P.'s second set of wranglers come out here in the Cayuse, they will find it much easier to install their set of engines to nudge the asteroid into synchronous Earth orbit.

  I make my way back to the Wildcat, pressurize the cabin, and strip off my space suit. Drops of sweat detach themselves from my forehead and hang in the air. I snag them with a towel, then wash myself as best I can with alcohol wipes. My hands tremble with fatigue. The work itself might not have been too strenuous for a man in good shape, but I have just come out of three weeks hibernation in microgravity. Weakened muscles are feeling the strain.

  I sag into the pilot's seat. I am hungry in a distant way. I think I will do something about it after I close...

  * * * *

  "Sorry to wake you up, Jimbo, but you have another little job to do.” There is a false heartiness to J. P.'s voice, and there is something else about it that isn't false exactly, but sounds definitely odd. I have completed the mission profile. There should be nothing more for me to do other than run some last minute checks before heading back to Earth.

  "You have a neighbor a little more than two clicks over on the far side. I'd like you to pay a visit."

  If I keep my eyes closed, maybe I can convince both of us that I am still asleep. “Not protocol,” I croak.

  This is the absolute truth. As the race was heating up, there appeared to be a real possibility that three contestants might have ships on 2009 AP15 at the same time. Given how much success would mean to the winner and how great the financial penalty of failure would be
to the losers, it had been decided to minimize temptation to all parties by keeping them apart. Especially since the prospector had to return to Earth alive to perfect his claim. When that provision had been made part of the treaty, the idea had been to discourage heroic sacrifices on the part of countries and companies that did not really have space faring capability. The realization that this might provide an incentive to sabotage and even murder came later.

  I am about to drift off again when J. P.'s response comes through. “Changed circumstances. Look around and give me a report."

  There is something very serious about his voice. I imagine him fiddling with his string tie, the way he does when he gets nervous. General weakness reminds me that it is three weeks since I had anything to eat. I pull out a bulb of Nutrasoup and stick it in the microwave for a minute.

  "Might help if you were to tell me what I'm looking for.” The microwave chimes. I take out the bulb and twist open the straw. Tasting slightly like a salty beef stew, Nutrasoup has all the proteins, vitamins, and electrolytes my body needs, while being digestible enough not to tie my abused intestinal system in knots.

  "S'pose it might, but I can't say. Sometimes you just have to hold your cards and hope for the flop."

  Now I am really concerned. J. P. may be a hard man, but he is not, by his own lights at least, an unreasonable one. He makes a point of explaining his view of the big picture so all his people will understand their place in it. For him to withhold information at a time like this goes against every business practice he believes in.

  "I'm suiting up.” Since it hasn't had time to dry out, it feels like putting on hockey gear that has been crammed into a too-small gym locker.

  "Thanks, Jimbo. Maria is sending your directions now. A map will show you the easiest way to the landing site."

  Alert enough to know that I am not really alert, I go through all the suit checks slowly. I recharge my suit jets. I have already expended more air that way than the mission profile called for. Not dangerously low yet.