Dancing With Myself

by Charles Sheffield

  Back I went to the innermost chamber, slamming the external lock. I sagged against it as it clanged tight. Suddenly I felt safe.

  But how safe? For all I knew the rest of GOG had been destroyed completely by Phase Two of Germani’s experiment. After I had felt reality crumble and fission and fragment, it was hard to know what was left.

  I went to the display screens and turned them on with frozen fingers. They showed news broadcasts beamed up from Earth. At least that much of GOG was working. I flicked from channel to channel, expecting every one to have live coverage of the experiment.

  There was nothing, not a single mention. Finally I discovered a news show with one small item about Vilfredo Germani. He had just announced that he would seek government permission to perform some type of experiment on the Glory Of God space habitat. The show was mostly interested in the protests of Madison’s old followers.

  That had happened nine months ago. I remembered the event. Yet here I was, alive, breathing. Nine months ago neither Vilfredo nor Celia Germani knew that I existed.

  A frightening realization crept into my mind. No one knew I was here. I was alone on GOG, without food or water. I could not survive for nine months, not even for one month. Even a crash rescue operation would take longer than that to reach me.

  I switched off the display screens and moved to a chair.

  Action, not panic. There was an answer, and it was here in the chamber with me: the Schindler hibernation unit. It could sustain me almost indefinitely, until a Shuttle could be sent from Earth.

  But first I had to remove Eric’s body and dispose of it. I moved across to the unit, studying it for the first time since I had re-entered the chamber. I stopped in shock. The chamber was active. A heartbeat trace showed, forty beats a minute. Body temperature, sixty-eight degrees. Light but steady breathing.

  I thought I had killed Eric—surely I had killed him. But my brother had returned from the dead. Vengeance is mine.

  I shivered. After a moment, rational thought returned. There must have been a flicker of life in him when I left, and the hibernation unit had done what it was supposed to do for a sick occupant. It had taken the steps necessary for survival.

  I hesitated for no more than a moment. What I had done once, I could do again; this time, more thoroughly. Eric would have to die.

  Action. I seized the door and canceled the lock, noting the warning message—PREMATURE OPENING MAY BE A LIFE-THREATENING ACT—that appeared on the display. A flurry of activity came from the units monitors, determined to sustain the life within in every way possible.

  I ignored the messages and the sensor readings. If it came to a fight between me and the hibernation unit, I was sure I could win. I knew more roads to death than it knew to life.

  I heaved the heavy door open. As I did so it occurred to me that Eric was not dead only because I had never killed him. I laughed at the logic of it. If all that the Germani experiment had done was to throw me back nine months, Eric at that time was still alive. But that could be changed.

  I peered inside the unit. And then I could no longer act. I knew I could not win. Reality was not that simple.

  I could not win. I cannot win, no matter how long I stay here, no matter what I do within this chamber. The quantum dragons, the razor claws that rend the fabric of reality, are too complex. They have won already.

  Thomas Madison, the prophet that Eric and I designed together, is no more. A long time ago it had been a joke between us: would he be the incarnation of our ideas, or would I? It had been decided by the toss of a coin, the simplest chance event. Eric became Thomas Madison.

  That Thomas Madison is gone now. And Eric may be dead, or perhaps in this Universe he never was. But the living, breathing face that stares peacefully from the hibernation tank is familiar to me, so familiar.

  It is my own.

  afterword: nightmares of the classical mind

  This story developed directly from the article that precedes it. The quotation at the beginning of both, from the works of Ilya Prigogine, seems equally apt for either. And although the one is presented as simple fact and the other as no more than fiction, many people may find the idea of a religious leader who amasses fifty billion dollars from ignorant followers far easier to believe than the counter-intuitive strangeness of quantum theory.

  I said the story rose from the article, and that is mainly true; but there was one other influence at work. A few years ago, Sprague de Camp’s splendid book, The Ancient Engineers, was reprinted by Dorset Press. Browsing through the new edition, I was impressed by the desire of the early Egyptian kings to build the biggest possible monuments to their own memory. All they had to work with was stone, earth, and human labor; yet they created the huge Pyramids, and used them to house their own tombs.

  I wondered, what could a modern leader, taking full advantage of television fund-raising methods and modern technology, do to match that? What would he build, and where would he build it to maximize its impact? What is today or tomorrow’s equivalent of the Egyptian sarcophagus?

  At that point I had a sudden vision of a monstrous illuminated cross, sweeping around the planet in sun-synchronous evening orbit. That at once became GOG, the Glory Of God, a vast crucified Christ figure. My own deep suspicion of the motives of all televangelists did the rest.

  I find this a most unpleasant tale, told by an awful person. When it was first published in Asimov’s magazine I asked that the first page contain a disclaimer, pointing out that I was not to be confused with the narrator of the story. I would just like to repeat that statement here.

  .

  ——————————————————————————————————

  story: the double spiral staircase

  Seventy degrees. February 1st in Washington. It had no right to be so warm and pleasant. But who was going to complain?

  Not Jake Jacobsen. A Waldorf salad, a flounder shipped over fresh that morning from the fishing boats on Maine Avenue, a medium steak, a couple of drinks—well, make that three or four, enough to get a nice little buzz on but not enough to show—and then a leisurely stroll across the Mall back to Independence Avenue; that was what today’s blue skies demanded. That was what they got. As he walked, skirting the banners and noisy fervor of a group of Animal Rights Activists, he thought of the old Navy traditions; of raging seas, salt pork and weevil-filled hard tack, foul water, shipwreck, starvation and scurvy. Things had improved quite a bit in two hundred years.

  In fact, the only thing missing now was a cigar, a nice Havana Corona.

  He vowed to remedy that, as soon as he was back in his office. Smoking was illegal in government offices, but RHIP.

  He didn’t wear his uniform in the daytime (no point in rubbing it in with the old staff, they still resented the change) but the guards on the front entrance saluted him anyway. As they should. They were all Navy now. He returned the salutes automatically, and walked to the elevators that would take him to the seventh and highest floor, up to his corner office that looked north toward the green expanse of the Mall.

  Now there was one hell of a contrast. He had been five years locked up in the windowless bowels of the Pentagon, designing the master plan, choreographing industry and OMB and congressional support. And then, at last, had come the exquisitely timed coup—there was no other word for it—that brought the agency under Navy’s wing, and him his third star and the position of NASA Administrator.

  In fact, he thought as he left the elevator, today’s lunch could well be thought of as a small celebration. It was six months to the day since the Act had gone into effect, just two months since his hearings had confirmed him in this job. The war was certainly not over—the damned Air Force would never stop trying to take the lead role in space, he knew that. There were tough times ahead, but he had won the first two battles.

  Admiral Jacob Jacobsen pushed open
the door of his office, walked to his desk without looking around him, and sat down.

  And at that point all of his lunchtime euphoria evaporated.

  Someone was already there, in the Important Visitor’s seat. There, despite his sternest orders that no one, not even his own wife (hell, least of all his wife) was to be permitted entrance to his office without his approval. And he would certainly never have approved the admission of the scruffy object who sat opposite him.

  It had to be that witless oaf Trustrum again, the worst apology for an aide that a man ever had to endure, ignoring direct orders and letting people in using his own sadly inadequate judgment.

  Jacobsen thought for a wistful moment of the Old Navy. Not everything today was an improvement. Two hundred years ago he would have had Trustrum flogged for such a gross failure to obey orders. Today, with NASA’s insistence on retaining some elements of civilian function, about all he could do was to put an unfavorable and strongly worded memo into Trustrum’s personnel file when what he really wanted was to have the man keelhauled and hung from the yardarm. But Trustrum’s wife was the Vice President’s cousin, and even a memo would probably be pulled before it got into the record. Christ. Everyone was somebody’s cousin, or uncle, or bed-mate, or best college friend. Sometimes he felt that the whole of Washington was glued together into one vast, incestuous, and inefficient snotball.

  He stared at the stranger slumped in the chair opposite. The man was overdressed for the warm weather, in thick and shapeless woolen trousers and a heavy, leather-patched tweed jacket. He was also short and stooped and thin to emaciation, with an unhealthy pallor and jutting cheekbones. His remaining hair was combed forward in an unsuccessful attempt to disguise creeping alopecia, and his brown eyes bulged out like a dyspeptic frogs. And, unless Jacobsen’s nose was playing tricks, the man smelled. No, he didn’t smell, he stank. Of something worse than body odor.

  Jacobsen grabbed a cigar from the humidor, lit it hurriedly, and put up a defensive smokescreen between them. He leaned far back in his seat.

  “I’ve no idea who you are, Mister, or why you’re here, but you can just answer me one question. How in the name of Nelson did you talk that jackass Trustrum into letting you into my private office? And when you’ve answered that, you can get the hell out of here.”

  The stranger didn’t blink. He held up his hand and displayed a Naval Academy class ring. “I showed Trustrum your picture, Porky. Your picture and mine, next to each other—in the year book. That was all it took.”

  “Porky! Nobody’s called me that for—” Jacobsen leaned forward, peering more closely at the others protruding eyeballs. “Jesus Christ. The year book. Buggsie. Bug-eyes Bates? Is it really you? For God’s sake, what happened? You look like hell.”

  The other man frowned. “Same thing as happened to you, old buddy. We got old. Take a peek in the mirror, you don’t look too hot yourself. I bet your blood pressure is double your IQ. And that’s not styrofoam stuffed down your suit, it’s a hundred pounds of lard. But we’ll not get much done if we sit here trading smart-ass insults, the way we did in the old days. Don’t you have the graciousness to offer a cigar to a classmate and a might-have-been—except for what you did, Porky—fellow matelot? Remember that?”

  Buggsie Bates leaned forward and helped himself to a cigar as he spoke. He didn’t light it, but sat there smiling an inscrutable smile.

  Jacobsen cleared his throat.

  “Hey, Buggsie, that was a long time ago. We were all young and wild. Nobody meant you any harm. I’m damned sure I didn’t.”

  “Mebbe. But you doped her up and knocked her up and put her in my bed. And you went on and got the three stars, while I just got the shaft.” Bates waved the cigar in a circular motion in the air. “It’s all right, Porky. No need to start hunting for the panic button, I’m not here to settle thirty-year-old scores from Academy days. And I’m going to give you more stars than you ever dreamed of. When they canned my ass from the Navy, that turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. I’d have made a terrible middy.”

  “You were already pretty bad.” Jacobsen’s curiosity was roused. “Buggsie, what happened to you? I know you left the Navy, but where did you go? You disappeared. I mean, if you’re out on the street, I’ll be glad to do what I can to…you know, you smell like—God, I don’t know what. You smell like—no offense now—like you’ve been rolling around in a pile of ape-shit.”

  “Not too far from the truth. Add in bear-shit, and you’re close.” From the smile on Bates’s face, the insult didn’t worry him. Already, in less than five minutes, the two men had dropped right back into the easy relationship that had ended thirty years earlier. “Thanks for the offer of help, Porky, but I don’t need it. In fact, I’m here to do you a favor. A big one.” Jake Jacobsen peered at Bates from beneath his most prominent feature, bushy eyebrows that together with his porker’s nose and ample belly were the delight of the political cartoonists. “Yeah, sure. Buggsie, the last person who told me he’d come to do me a big favor is doing five years in Leavenworth instead. If you’re working for a lobbyist, leave now. You can keep the cigar for old times’ sake.”

  “No lobbyist, Porky. I don’t really work for anyone, at least no one you’d recognize. You’ve moved up in the world, but so have I. After I got kicked out I did what I should have done anyway. Went to college—serious science college, not tin soldiers—and did a Ph.D., then moved west for a faculty position. Big man on campus. Full chair and tenured position now, at Simi Valley State.”

  “But you smell.”

  “There’s a big animal experiment lab, and I spend time in it. Like they say, shit sticks.” He lit his cigar, and nodded his head in satisfaction at the aroma.

  Jacobsen pulled his desk calendar over to him and stabbed at it with a thick finger. “I don’t have much time to chat, Buggsie.” His voice was apologetic. “I have a meeting downstairs in fifteen minutes. Why did you come here?”

  Bates was peering unashamedly at the calendar, reading it upside-down. “SETI. You’re going to talk about the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence?”

  “Sort of. There’s been a two-day meeting on the fifth floor, all the big names. I met ’em. They’re a bunch of dumb turkeys. So I’m going to drop the big one on them today, tell ’em their budget just went bye-byes.”

  “You’re cutting them out?”

  “To zero. They’re not even going in below the line. It’s a new ball game here, Buggsie. Since Navy took over this place, we’re cutting out all the chicken shit and doing what we should have been doing in space for the past thirty-five years. Consolidating our position. Building space infrastructure and the permanent supply ports. Making a policy, and a real space program. You know, I’d give half my pension for a cheap space transportation system, but over the years we’ve pissed away billions on third world training programs and space telescopes and listening for little green men. And what do we have to show for it? You tell me. Well, all that stopped when I got the job.

  “Here.” Jacobsen stared at Bates with sudden suspicion. “You’re not one of them, are you? That SETI crowd?”

  “Not any more. I was interested for a while, and I guess I owe them something, because they got me interested in finding and deciphering hidden messages.” Bates was rummaging around in the pocket of his tweed jacket. “That’s certainly not why I’m here. I didn’t know anything about your meeting, but I’m going to make it very easy for you to break the news to them. SETI just became irrelevant. Take a look at this.”

  He was holding a small oval cylinder of white plastic, the size of a packet of cigarettes. The curved top was featureless except for a stud that could be moved to five positions along a sliding scale, and a round dial like a tiny watch face in the center. Bates leaned forward and placed the unit on the desk in front of Jacobsen. He put his hand flat on top of it.

  “Ready?” He moved the s
tud to the first position, then pulled his hand clear. The cylinder rose to eye level and hovered there, two feet above the top of the desk. “Position one. Stasis mode, I call it. It’s set to cancel and return to position zero—off—after thirty seconds, but that’s programmable. If you want it to, it will hover indefinitely long at any height.”

  Jake Jacobsen’s eyes were bulging more than Bates’s ever did.

  “Or it will do this,” said Bates. “Position two. Constant velocity.”

  He reached out to the little unit and moved the stud one notch farther along the scale. At a steady foot per second, the white plastic rose until it reached the soundproofed ceiling and remained there, pressing gently upwards. Jacobsen stared up at it, mouth gaping open.

  “It’s smart enough to know there’s an obstacle,” continued Bates, “so it just stays there without exerting any upward force. If the ceiling weren’t in the way, it would keep on moving up at the same speed until cut-off time is reached. Then—depending how it’s programed—it will either stay where it is, or return at once to the starting point.”

  As he finished speaking the smooth-sided box drifted downwards until it was sitting on the desk top. Jacobsen reached out a pudgy hand and touched the side of the cylinder tentatively, as though it might be red-hot.

  “It’s not some sort of trick, is it? I mean, it really did what I saw it do.”

  “I’m not a hypnotist or a magician, if that’s what you mean. You ought to know me better than that. And it’s not a trick. It does what you saw.”

  “Then…” Jacobsen picked up the flattened white cylinder and put it on the palm of his hand, gauging the weight.