The Hard SF Renaissance

by David G. Hartwell

  She met his eyes. “Your purpose. I’m only a—not even a guide, really. Gaia’s voice to you? No, just a, an undertone of her, if that.” The smile that touched her lips was somehow forlorn. “I suspect my main reason for existing again is to keep you company.”

  He laughed and offered her a hand, which for a moment she clasped tightly. “I’m very glad of the company, eccentric Miss Ashcroft.”

  Her smile warmed and widened. “Thank you, kind sir. And I am glad to be … alive … today. What should we do next?”

  “Visit some living history, I think,” he said. “Why not Hellenic?”

  She struck her palms together. “The age of Pericles!”

  He frowned. “Well, I don’t know about that. The Peloponnesian War, the plague—and foreigners like us, barbarians, you a woman, we wouldn’t be too well received, would we?”

  He heard how she put disappointment aside and looked forward anew. “When and where, then?”

  “Aristotle’s time? If I remember rightly, Greece was peaceful then, no matter how much hell Alexander was raising abroad, and the society was getting quite cosmopolitan. Less patriarchal, too. Anyhow, Aristotle’s always interested me. In a way, he was one of the earliest scientists.”

  “We had better inquire first. But before that, let’s go home to a nice hot cup of tea!”

  They returned to the house at the same moment as they left it, to avoid perturbing the servants. There they found that lack of privacy joined with exhaustion to keep them from speaking of anything other than trivia. However, that was all right; they were good talkmates.

  The next morning, which was brilliant, they went out into the garden and settled on a bench by the fish basin. Drops of rain glistened on flowers, whose fragrance awoke with the strengthening sunshine. Nothing else was in sight or earshot. This time Christian addressed the amulets. He felt suddenly heavy around his neck, and the words came out awkwardly. He need not have said them aloud, but it helped him give shape to his ideas.

  The reply entered directly into their brains. He rendered it to himself, irrationally, as in a dry, professorish tenor:

  “Only a single Hellenic milieu has been carried through many generations. It includes the period you have in mind. It commenced at the point of approximately 500 B.C., with an emulation as historically accurate as possible.”

  But nearly everyone then alive was lost to history, thought Christian. Except for the few who were in the chronicles, the whole population must needs be created out of Gaia’s imagination, guided by knowledge and logic; and those few named persons were themselves almost entirely new-made, their very DNA arbitrarily laid out.

  “The sequence was revised as necessary,” the amulet continued.

  Left to itself, that history would soon have drifted completely away from the documents, and eventually from the archeology, Christian thought. Gaia saw this start to happen, over and over. She rewrote the program—events, memories, personalities, bodies, births, life spans, deaths—and let it resume until it deviated again. Over and over. The morning felt abruptly cold.

  “Much was learned on every such occasion,” said the amulet. “The situation appeared satisfactory by the time Macedonian hegemony was inevitable, and thereafter the sequence was left to play itself out undisturbed. Naturally, it still did not proceed identically with the historical past. Neither Aristotle nor Alexander were born. Instead, a reasonably realistic conqueror lived to a ripe age and bequeathed a reasonably well constructed empire. He did have a Greek teacher in his youth, who had been a disciple of Plato.”

  “Who was that?” Christian asked out of a throat gone dry.

  “His name was Eumenes. In many respects he was equivalent to Aristotle, but had a more strongly empirical orientation. This was planned.”

  Eumenes was specially ordained, then. Why?

  “If we appear and meet him, w-won’t that change what comes after?”

  “Probably not to any significant extent. Or if it does, that will not matter. The original sequence is in Gaia’s database. Your visit will, in effect, be a reactivation.”

  “Not one for your purpose,” Laurinda whispered into the air. “What was it? What happened in that world?”

  “The objective was experimental, to study the possible engendering of a scientific-technological revolution analogous to that of the seventeenth century A.D., with accompanying social developments that might foster the evolution of a stable democracy.”

  Christian told himself furiously to pull out of his funk. “Did it?” he challenged.

  The reply was calm. “Do you wish to study it?”

  Christian had not expected any need to muster his courage. After a minute he said, word by slow word, “Yes, I think that might be more useful than meeting your philosopher. Can you show us the outcome of the experiment?”

  Laurinda joined in: “Oh, I know there can’t be any single, simple picture. But can you bring us to a, a scene that will give an impression—a kind of epitome—like, oh, King John at Runnymede or Elizabeth the First knighting Francis Drake or Einstein and Bohr talking about the state of their world?”

  “An extreme possibility occurs in a year corresponding to your A.D. 894,” the amulet told him. “I suggest Athens as the locale. Be warned, it is dangerous. I can protect you, or remove you, but human affairs are inherently chaotic and this situation is more unpredictable than most. It could escape my control.”

  “I’ll go,” Christian snapped.

  “And I,” Laurinda said.

  He glared at her. “No. You heard. It’s dangerous.”

  Gone quite calm, she stated, “It is necessary for me. Remember, I travel on behalf of Gaia.”

  Gaia, who let the thing come to pass.

  Transfer.

  For an instant, they glanced at themselves. They knew the amulets would convert their garb to something appropriate. She wore a gray gown, belted, reaching halfway down her calves, with shoes, stockings, and a scarf over hair coiled in braids. He was in tunic, trousers, and boots of the same coarse materials, a sheath knife at his hip and a long-barreled firearm slung over his back.

  Their surroundings smote them. They stood in a Propylaea that was scarcely more than tumbled stones and snags of sculpture. The Parthenon was not so shattered, but scarred, weathered, here and there buttressed with brickwork from which thrust the mouths of rusted cannon. All else was ruin. The Erechtheum looked as if it had been quarried. Below them, the city burned. They could see little of it through smoke that stained the sky and savaged their nostrils. A roar of conflagration reached them, and bursts of gunfire.

  A woman came running out of the haze, up the great staircase. She was young, dark-haired, unkempt, ragged, begrimed, desperate. A man came after, a burly blond in a fur cap, dirty red coat, and leather breeches. Beneath a sweeping mustache, he leered. He too was armed, murderously big knife, firearm in right hand.

  The woman saw Christian looming before her. “Voetho!” she screamed. “Onome Theou, kyrie, voetho!” She caught her foot against a step and fell. Her pursuer stopped before she could rise and stamped a boot down on her back.

  Through his amulet, Christian understood the cry. “Help, in God’s name, sir, help!” Fleetingly he thought the language must be a debased Greek. The other man snarled at him and brought weapon to shoulder.

  Christian had no time to unlimber his. While the stranger was in motion, he bent, snatched up a rock—a fragment of a marble head—and cast. It thudded against the stranger’s nose. He lurched back, his face a sudden red grotesque. His gun clattered to the stairs. He howled.

  With the quickness that was his in emergencies, Christian rejected grabbing his own firearm. He had seen that its lock was of peculiar design. He might not be able to discharge it fast enough. He drew his knife and lunged downward. “Get away, you swine, before I open your guts!” he shouted. The words came out in the woman’s language.

  The other man retched, turned, and staggered off. Well before he reached the bottom of
the hill, smoke had swallowed sight of him. Christian halted at the woman’s huddled form and sheathed his blade. “Here, sister,” he said, offering his hand, “come along. Let’s get to shelter. There may be more of them.”

  She crawled to her feet, gasping, leaned heavily on his arm, and limped beside him up to the broken gateway. Her features Mediterranean, she was doubtless a native. She looked half starved. Laurinda came to her other side. Between them, the visitors got her into the portico of the Parthenon. Beyond a smashed door lay an interior dark and empty of everything but litter. It would be defensible if necessary.

  An afterthought made Christian swear at himself. He went back for the enemy’s weapon. When he returned, Laurinda sat with her arms around the woman, crooning comfort. “There, darling, there, you’re safe with us. Don’t be afraid. We’ll take care of you.”

  The fugitive lifted big eyes full of night. “Are … you … angels from heaven?” she mumbled.

  “No, only mortals like you,” Laurinda answered through tears. That was not exactly true, Christian thought; but what else could she say? “We do not even know your name.”

  “I am … Zoe … Comnenaina—”

  “Bone-dry, I hear from your voice.” Laurinda lifted her head. Her lips moved in silent command. A jug appeared on the floor, bedewed with cold. “Here is water. Drink.”

  Zoe had not noticed the miracle. She snatched the vessel and drained it in gulp after gulp. When she was through she set it down and said, “Thank you,” dully but with something of strength and reason again in her.

  “Who was that after you?” Christian asked.

  She drew knees to chin, hugged herself, stared before her, and replied in a dead voice, “A Flemic soldier. They broke into our house. I saw them stab my father. They laughed and laughed. I ran out the back and down the streets. I thought I could hide on the Acropolis. Nobody comes here anymore. That one saw me and came after. I suppose he would have killed me when he was done. That would have been better than if he took me away with him.”

  Laurinda nodded. “An invading army,” she said as tonelessly. “They took the city and now they are sacking it.”

  Christian thumped the butt of his gun down on the stones. “Does Gaia let this go on?” he grated.

  Laurinda lifted her gaze to his. It pleaded. “She must. Humans must have free will. Otherwise they’re puppets.”

  “But how did they get into this mess?” Christian demanded. “Explain it if you can!”

  The amulet(s) replied with the same impersonality as before:

  “The Hellenistic era developed scientific method. This, together with the expansion of commerce and geographical knowledge, produced an industrial revolution and parliamentary democracy. However, neither the science nor the technology progressed beyond an approximate equivalent of your eighteenth century. Unwise social and fiscal policies led to breakdown, dictatorship, and repeated warfare.”

  Christian’s grin bared teeth. “That sounds familiar.”

  “Alexander Tytler said it in our eighteenth century,” Laurinda muttered unevenly. “No republic has long outlived the discovery by a majority of its people that they could vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.” Aloud: “Christian, they were only human.”

  Zoe hunched, lost in her sorrow.

  “You oversimplify,” stated the amulet voice. “But this is not a history lesson. To continue the outline, inevitably engineering information spread to the warlike barbarians of northern Europe and western Asia. If you question why they were granted existence, reflect that a population confined to the littoral of an inland sea could not model any possible material world. The broken-down societies of the South were unable to change their characters, or prevail over them, or eventually hold them off. The end results are typified by what you see around you.”

  “The Dark Ages,” Christian said dully. “What happens after them? What kind of new civilization?”

  “None. This sequence terminates in one more of its years.”

  “Huh?” he gasped. “Destroyed?”

  “No. The program ceases to run. The emulation stops.”

  “My God! Those millions of lives—as real as, as mine—”

  Laurinda stood up and held her arms out into the fouled air. “Does Gaia know, then, does Gaia know this time line would never get any happier?” she cried.

  “No,” said the voice in their brains. “Doubtless the potential of further progress exists. However, you forget that while Gaia’s capacities are large, they are not infinite. The more attention she devotes to one history, the details of its planet as well as the length of its course, the less she has to give to others. The probability is too small that this sequence will lead to a genuinely new form of society.”

  Slowly, Laurinda nodded. “I see.”

  “I don’t,” Christian snapped. “Except that Gaia’s inhuman.”

  Laurinda shook her head and laid a hand on his. “No, not that. Posthuman. We built the first artificial intelligences.” After a moment: “Gaia isn’t cruel. The universe often is, and she didn’t create it. She’s seeking something better than blind chance can make.”

  “Maybe.” His glance fell on Zoe. “Look, something’s got to be done for this poor soul. Never mind if we change the history. It’s due to finish soon anyway.”

  Laurinda swallowed and wiped her eyes. “Give her her last year in peace,” she said into the air. “Please.”

  Objects appeared in the room behind the doorway. “Here are food, wine, clean water,” said the unheard voice. “Advise her to return downhill after dark, find some friends, and lead them back. A small party, hiding in these ruins, can hope to survive until the invaders move on.”

  “It isn’t worthwhile doing more, is it?” Christian said bitterly. “Not to you.”

  “Do you wish to end your investigation?”

  “No, be damned if I will.”

  “Nor I,” said Laurinda. “But when we’re through here, when we’ve done the pitiful little we can for this girl, take us home.”

  Peace dwelt in England. Clouds towered huge and white, blue-shadowed from the sunlight spilling past them. Along the left side of a lane, poppies blazed in a grainfield goldening toward harvest. On the right stretched the manifold greens of a pasture where cattle drowsed beneath a broad-crowned oak. Man and woman rode side by side. Hoofs thumped softly, saddle leather creaked, the sweet smell of horse mingled with herbal pungencies, a blackbird whistled.

  “No, I don’t suppose Gaia will ever restart any program she’s terminated,” Laurinda said. “But it’s no worse than death, and death is seldom that easy.”

  “The scale of it,” Christian protested, then sighed. “But I daresay Wayfarer will tell me I’m being sloppy sentimental, and when I’ve rejoined him I’ll agree.” Wryness added that that had better be true. He would no longer be separate, an avatar; he would be one with a far greater entity, which would in its turn remerge with a greater still.

  “Without Gaia, they would never have existed, those countless lives, generation after generation after generation,” Laurinda said. “Their worst miseries they brought on themselves. If any of them are ever to find their way to something better, truly better, she has to keep making fresh starts.”

  “Mm, I can’t help remembering all the millennialists and utopians who slaughtered people wholesale, or tortured them or threw them into concentration camps, if their behavior didn’t fit the convenient attainment of the inspired vision.”

  “No, no, it’s not like that! Don’t you see? She gives them their freedom to be themselves and, and to become more.”

  “Seems to me she adjusts the parameters and boundary conditions till the setup looks promising before she lets the experiment run.” Christian frowned. “But I admit, it isn’t believable that she does it simply because she’s … bored and lonely. Not when the whole fellowship of her kind is open to her. Maybe we haven’t the brains to know what her reasons are. Maybe she’s explaining them to Wayfarer
, or directly to Alpha,” although communication among the stars would take decades at least.

  “Do you want to go on nonetheless?” she asked.

  “I said I do. I’m supposed to. But you?”

  “Yes. I don’t want to, well, fail her.”

  “I’m sort of at a loss what to try next, and not sure it’s wise to let the amulets decide.”

  “But they can help us, counsel us.” Laurinda drew breath. “Please. If you will. The next world we go to—could it be gentle? That horror we saw—”

  He reached across to take her hand. “Exactly what I was thinking. Have you a suggestion?”

  She nodded. “York Minster. It was in sad condition when I … lived … but I saw pictures and—It was one of the loveliest churches ever built, in the loveliest old town.”

  “Excellent idea. Not another lifeless piece of archive, though. A complete environment.” Christian pondered. “We’ll inquire first, naturally, but offhand I’d guess the Edwardian period would suit us well. On the Continent they called it the belle époque.”

  “Splendid!” she exclaimed. Already her spirits were rising anew.

  Transfer.

  They arrived near the west end, in the south aisle.

  Worshippers were few, scattered closer to the altar rail. In the dimness, under the glories of glass and soaring Perpendicular arches, their advent went unobserved. Windows in that direction glowed more vividly—rose, gold, blue, the cool gray-green of the Five Sisters—than the splendor above their backs; it was a Tuesday morning in June. Incense wove its odor through the ringing chant from the choir.

  Christian tautened. “That’s Latin,” he whispered. “In England, 1900?” He glanced down at his garments and hers, and peered ahead. Shirt, coat, trousers for him, with a hat laid on the pew; ruffled blouse, ankle-length gown, and lacy bonnet for her; but—“The clothes aren’t right either.”