Fata Morgana

by Steven R. Boyett

  The workers stopped when the airmen entered the room.

  “Everybody,” said Wennda, “this is Captain Farley, Lieutenant Broben, and Sergeant Proud Horse. Please don’t let us interfere with your work.”

  The workers nodded uncertainly and resumed their tasks, but they continued to glance at the strangers. Broben watched a man wearing work gloves remove a newly minted length of fabric and carry it to another contraption. The fabric was threaded onto a compact rack like the film on a movie projector and fed into the gizmo, which buzzed and thrummed. Broben looked around at all the jury-rigged piping and stopgap release valves. He wondered how often things blew up around here.

  Across the room Wennda was talking to a wiry, scruffy-looking man who was frowning at the three crewmen. The man pulled a cellophone from his pocket and snapped it taut. He tapped it and his frown deepened. Then he shrugged and crumpled it again. Wennda smiled and squeezed his arm.

  “Palto is looking at the task schedule,” she told Broben and Martin. “Lieutenant, you said you have inventory-storage experience?”

  “I can drive the wheels off of one of those little forklifts, if that’s what you mean,” Broben said.

  The dour man, Palto, raised an eyebrow. “Can you repair one?”

  “I can sure give it a shot.”

  Palto nodded doubtfully.

  “Sergeant Proud Horse wants to try something with a bioprinter,” said Wennda.

  “I do?” said Martin.

  “He’ll explain it to you,” said Wennda. “We have to get to a meeting with the commander right now.”

  “Don’t set anything on fire,” said Farley.

  “Sure thing, boss,” said Broben. “You kids scram. And remember, no fighting in the clinches.”

  Farley scowled. “If they give you a hard time,” he told Palto, “you’ve got my permission to feed ’em to that thing.” He nodded at the machine that turned powder into fabric lengths.

  “The reverter is more efficient,” Palto said. Farley didn’t think he was joking.

  *

  Palto brought Broben to Samay, the woman he’d seen driving the little forklift. She was at least ten years older than Broben and intimidatingly knowledgeable about her work. She demonstrated the forklift’s steering and hydraulics, and Broben was startled when she turned it by leaning in the direction she wanted to go. She stopped the vehicle, slid it sideways, and turned while moving in a sideways drift.

  Broben whistled. “So I guess now women can parallel park,” he said.

  There was no engine. Each wheel was its own motor. Power came from rechargeable batteries printed onto thin sheets. Broben couldn’t even have imagined such a thing, let alone repaired it. But the problem wasn’t that the loader wouldn’t go, it was that the lifting arms were stuck in place.

  “Our lives depend on machines,” Samay told Broben as she opened a service panel on the faulty vehicle. “We’ve either kept them running for nearly two hundred years, or we’ve used them for parts like recombinant genes.” She showed him a scrawl on the inside of the panel lid. “Every machine is an heirloom, with its own genealogy of repair records, good wishes, names scrawled on parts. I often encounter notes written by people I knew as a little girl, on machines I’m working on. Or notes from people they knew when they were children. All of them are long gone, but the thing itself is still here. So to maintain these machines is to commune with those ingenious and determined people. And so to love the machine itself. Do you see?”

  Broben gaped at her. “Holy jumpin’ jeez,” he said. “A city full of Wen Bonnikers.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “He was a guy who loved machines like you do. But he sure couldn’t have put it like that.”

  Samay was patient with Broben after it became clear she was talking to a man who understood machines and respected them, and not to some savage. Miniaturization, hard plastics, lightweight alloys all impressed him, but he wasn’t awed by them. Electronics was foreign to him, but it wasn’t magic. It was just something he didn’t understand yet.

  But he would not stop calling his teacher Sammy.

  “My name is Samay,” she told him for the third time. She opened a side access panel on the loader.

  “Yeah yeah,” he said, waving it away. “Don’t make a federal case out of it.”

  “Samay. Why won’t you say it right?”

  “Look,” Broben confided, “I’m already trying to get used to learning repairs from a dame. Throw me a bone here.”

  Samay pulled a board from a slot in the access panel. To Broben it looked like a road map. “A dame is a woman?” she asked.

  “Yeah. You know, a broad. A skirt. Not that anybody here ever heard of a skirt.”

  She frowned at the panel and slotted it back. “Women don’t teach engineering and mechanics where you come from?”

  “Huh? No, women can teach whatever they want to, I guess.” Broben shrugged. “Mostly they don’t learn it in the first place.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why in the world would they want to? What would they do with it?”

  Samay didn’t hear a bit of condescension in Broben’s tone. The man was genuinely puzzled. “So where you come from,” she said, “I wouldn’t want to do something that I’ve done here for most of my life?”

  Broben thought about it. “It’s like this,” he said. “There’s things men do and things women do. Some places just belong to them, see? And if you go to ’em, you feel like you’re trespassing. Like if I was to knit a sweater, or something, people would start to wonder if I was a little confused. Follow?”

  “No. I don’t follow.”

  “Well, maybe it don’t matter. ’Cause to be honest with you the war’s got everything pretty shook up and turned around back home. Like for instance, our crate was put together by girls. Our bomber.”

  “Your aircraft was built by children?”

  “What gave you that idea? It was built by dames, like I said. Girls.”

  “But—” She shook her head. “Never mind. Your warplane was built by women.”

  He nodded proudly. “Built in half a day by a whole platoon of Rosie Riveters.”

  “So necessity is removing social sanctions,” she said.

  “What’s that in English?”

  “A war of survival changes cultural priorities,” Samay explained. “It strips us down to fundamentals.”

  “What if I don’t want to be stripped to my fundamentals?”

  “You don’t have a choice. The scale of your war demanded that your society’s priorities change to accommodate it. Women entering the technical labor force. A nonprofessional military.”

  “Maybe so,” said Broben. “But at least it hasn’t got so bad that dames have to join the army and start shooting people.” He shook his head. “Women are the ones we’re supposed to protect, not the ones doing the protecting.”

  Samay laughed and turned back to the loader. “Our military has as many women as men,” she said, folding down another panel. This one housed rows of little rectangles. “I did my five years.”

  Broben looked confounded. “You were in the army?” He mimed firing a rifle.

  She nodded as she pulled a tool from a holder and used it to pull out one of the rectangles. “I still am, if they need me. Everyone is.” She held the rectangle up to the light and squinted at it. “We’re only eleven hundred people,” she told Broben. “It’s no more unnatural for me to serve than it is for your women to build warplanes. We’re all protecting what we believe in.”

  “Well, I believe in dames.”

  She laughed and put the rectangle back in place. “I’ll make you a prediction,” she said. “When your war ends, those kinds of things won’t go back to the way they were before it started.”

  “Ah, that’s a sucker bet. I mean, how can they? Winning changes things.”

  “I’m not talking about victory. I’m talking about unwritten rules. The ways you live. Work. Mate. Your women won’t go back
to—what was it? Fabricating sweaters?” She shook her head. “Oh, some will, of course. Maybe most. But some are going to want to keep making aircraft. Or fly them. And some of those will try to figure out how to make them better. Make them more efficient, produce them more efficiently.” She grinned at the look on Broben’s face. “I predict much change in your future, lieutenant.”

  “Sister, there’s already been too much change in my future.”

  She laughed. Broben asked what she was looking for in the little rectangles. “Broken circuits,” she replied.

  “They’re some kind of fuses?” he said.

  “And relays, yes.”

  “Try pushing on them.”

  She looked skeptical but humored him, quickly pushing all the little plastic rectangles in the fuse box. She stopped at one and frowned. She glanced at Broben, reached to the loader’s dashboard, and moved a joystick. The forklift rose.

  Broben looked smug. “You’ll get my bill,” he said.

  She held out a felt-tip pen and indicated the fusebox panel. “Sign,” she said.

  “You fixed it, not me,” Broben protested.

  She shook the pen. “You’re part of it now,” she said. “Sign your name.”

  Feeling oddly as if he were setting his name to some historical document, Broben signed.

  *

  Much change in your future, lieutenant.

  Broben wound through the maze of stacks, preoccupied with unaccustomed notions. Microminiaturization. Servo motors. Printed circuits. Printed batteries. Gyro steering. Women in the work force who weren’t secretaries or schoolteachers. Women who built cars. Who repaired cars. Owned repair shops. Managed auto factories. Hell, you’d have to come up with a new word for that one; they sure as hell wouldn’t let you call them foremen.

  A war of survival changes cultural priorities.

  Sammy didn’t know the half of it. In Mobile, Alabama, Negroes were building warships right alongside white men. A lot of people weren’t thrilled about it, but everyone knew it had to be done. And after the war was over, were they supposed to lay down their wrenches and go back to saying Yassuh, Missah Benny, like Shorty imitating Rochester? Because at that point that’s what it would be: Imitation.

  Hell, maybe it always was.

  The war had yanked America out of the sinkhole of the Great Depression and initiated the biggest tooling-up the world had ever seen. You got so lost in its mass of cogs that you couldn’t see the greater machinery that enabled it. Unheard-of levels of production, transportation, technology. Change. A country suddenly more powerful and resourceful than even its own people had realized.

  And how was that gonna play out after Hitler ate a lead sandwich? Would America say Yassuh, Missah Benny after this was over?

  Broben didn’t think so.

  It loomed before him, all that change. Its scale and its extent were unforeseeable, but it was big and it was certain and it would touch almost everything before this war was settled.

  Sammy was right. There would be no going back.

  Broben realized he’d been wandering aimlessly among the Fabrication stacks and workers. He grinned sheepishly and waved at the staring people and made his way back to the room with the Magic Jumpsuit Machine, where Martin stood before the humming contraption, deep in discussion with that hobo-looking guy, what was his name? Bigtoe? Palo Alto?

  Palto, that was it. Martin and Palto stood side by side, looking down at one of those World’s Fair television gizmos people here pulled from their pockets like road holes in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Martin was holding out a cigarette and pointing to it as if explaining it to the man. He broke off when he saw Broben coming toward them. “You all right, lieutenant?” he asked.

  “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Martin shrugged. “I don’t know. You just look like a faraway fella.”

  “I been working on a forklift,” said Broben. “What’re you two talking about? It looked very significant.”

  Martin smiled. “Mr. Palto here was explaining how the printer works.” He indicated the jumpsuit-making machine still buzzing along. “That’s what he calls it, a printer. I was asking if it could make things besides those jumpsuits.”

  “You looking to buy someone a dress?”

  Martin looked embarrassed. “Well, that bunch really seemed to have fun playing stickball yesterday, so I figured there’s ways we can help around here that aren’t just work. Mr. Palto says if we can make up for the calories, they can probably print up some baseball gloves.”

  Broben was incredulous. “You want to make ball gloves?”

  “They don’t seem to require much material,” said Palto. “We don’t have anything like bovine leather, of course, but we have excellent synthetics. Nylon polymers, lightweight carbon filament. We do need an example to scan so that we can make a fabrication template.”

  “How’s that again?” said Broben.

  “They need a glove for a model,” said Martin.

  “Oh. Well, that’s a shame. It was a great idea, chief.”

  Martin darkened. He reached back and pulled something from his waistband and held it out, not looking at Broben.

  Broben stared at it in wonder. “You brought your glove?” he asked.

  Martin looked at the floor and shrugged. “The captain said bring what we needed.”

  Broben laughed all the way back to the dorm.

  eighteen

  Shorty and Boney watched the technician, whose name was Berne, pull a clear wad from a jumpsuit pocket and set it on the table. He smoothed it out and it went rigid. He tapped it and it glowed white.

  “You don’t have an extra one of those laying around, do you?” Shorty asked.

  Berne scowled and put a finger to his lips. “Start hash folder request,” he told the device.

  “Folder name?” the rectangle asked.

  “Solar array sub schematics.”

  A grid of labeled icons appeared on the sheet. Berne began scrolling through it by flicking his finger. He tapped an icon and another row of icons opened up beneath it.

  “Shoot,” said Shorty, “I was hoping it’d be a picture phone again.”

  “I was only talking to the Library,” Berne said. “There’s no avatar.”

  Shorty looked at Boney, who shrugged. “I guess they didn’t want to be seen,” Shorty said.

  “There is no they,” Berne said testily. “The Library’s an AI. Central data core.”

  “Can you pick up a good swing program?”

  “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Shorty put his hands on top of his head. “Man oh man. We made it to you people just in time.”

  “Maybe we could focus a little,” Berne suggested.

  “How do they get parts in that thing?” Shorty persisted. “It’s thinner than paper.”

  “And you can see through it,” Boney pointed out.

  Berne glanced up at them and sighed. “It’s a holofilament weave embedded in memory polymer,” he said wearily. “Happy now?”

  “It remembers for you?”

  “The polymer doesn’t remember anything except that it’s a polymer. The filament does the processing. You can’t see it because it’s too thin. Right now it’s just a dumb terminal. The data core does the processing and the com panel displays the result. That’s what I’m doing now.” He scowled. “What I’m trying to do,” he amended.

  “Jeez, get all touchy,” said Shorty. “I just like knowing how things work.”

  “Why don’t I just tell you that it’s magic, so we can get on with what you came here for.”

  Shorty looked at Boney. “He don’t like us vewwy much, do he?” he said in Bugs Bunny’s voice.

  “He doesn’t know us,” said Boney.

  “I don’t know you,” Berne agreed. “I’m sure you’re model citizens, and you’re very good at—at whatever it is you do.”

  Shorty saluted. “Radio Operator First Class, mac, and don’t you forget it.” He hooked
a thumb at Boney. “Sergeant Mullen there’s the best bombardier in the Army. He’s dropped down more chimneys than St. Nick.”

  “Once again I have no idea what any of that means.”

  “It’s magic,” said Boney.

  Berne laughed despite himself and tapped another icon. “Fair enough,” he said. “But I’m good at what I do, too. And so are about twenty other people who’ve worked on the eleven o’clock panel. We didn’t just sit here in the dark for an hour a day for the last eight years, you know. We’ve tested circuits and debugged environment code and spectrographed gases in the induction coils. I’ve crawled around on the dome more than once. We’ve tried everything we could think of, and we can’t find anything wrong.”

  “You have to try things you didn’t think of,” said Boney.

  “I’m so eager to hear your outside perspective.”

  “We just want to help, if we can.”

  Berne folded his arms. “You know,” he said, “after we exhausted all the obvious and logical solutions, we started holding weekly group sessions to come up with the most ridiculous fixes we could think of. Lightning rods and noble gases. We still conference if someone gets some new idea.”

  “Sounds like you’ve covered all your bases,” said Boney.

  Berne looked at him and spread his hands helplessly. “Whatever that means,” he said.

  “And he thinks we got nothing to teach him,” said Shorty.

  Berne looked sour. “I don’t think it’s very likely that two—let’s call you well-intended strangers—who think my com panel is the voice of God, are going to figure out what’s wrong with a two-hundred-year-old inductive laminate geothermal helio cell.”

  “We might,” said Boney.

  “You don’t even know what it is. Much less how it works.”

  “You give it juice, it turns the juice into light,” said Shorty. “Somewhere something wore out or came loose. You find out where and you fix it or replace it. Sha-zam, everybody’s back to working on their tan before lunch.”

  “God,” said Berne.

  Shorty grinned. “Maybe we’ll strike oil,” he said. “Besides, what else you got to do?”

  “Would you like a list?” Berne shot back. But he showed them wiring diagrams and circuit schematics. He tried to explain the diagnostic software and the routines that regulated sequencing and illumination. He gave up when he realized they didn’t even understand what software was. They thought the holofilament schematics were a wiring diagram. These people were savages. Analog savages.