Far Thoughts and Pale Gods

by Greg Bear

  We were still innocent and did not know that the price of freedom—of individuality—is attention to politics, careful planning, careful organization; philosophy is no more a barrier against political disaster than it is against plague.

  Think me naive; I was. We all were.

  I entered the reception area, a cubicle barely four meters square, with a man behind a desk to supplement an automated appointments system.

  “Good day,” the man said. He was perhaps fifty, gray-haired, blunt-nosed, with a pleasant but discriminating expression.

  “Mickey Sandoval,” I said. “I have an invitation from the president.”

  “Indeed you do, Mr. Sandoval. You’re about three minutes early, but I believe the president is free now.” The automated appointments clerk produced a screenful of information. “Yes, Mr. Sandoval. Please go in.” He gestured toward a double door on his left, which opened to a long hallway. “At the end. Ignore the mess, please; the administration is still moving in.”

  Boxes of information cubes and other files lined the hallway in neat stacks. Several young women in Port Yin drabs—a style I did not find attractive—were moving files into an office along the hallway by electric cart. They smiled at me as I passed. I returned their smiles.

  I was full of confidence, walking into the attractive, the seductive and yet trivial inner sanctum. These were all doubtless Logologists. The council presidents could choose all staff members from their own BM if they so desired. Binding multiples worked together; there would never be any accusations of nepotism or favoritism in a political climate where such was the expected, the norm.

  Fiona Task-Felder’s office was at the end of the hall. Wide lunar oak doors opened automatically as I approached, and the president herself stepped forward to shake my hand.

  “Thanks for shuttling in,” she said. “Mr. Sandoval—”

  “Mickey, please,” I said.

  “Fiona to you, as well. We’re just getting settled here. Come sit; let’s talk and see if some sort of accommodation can be reached between the council and Sandoval.”

  Subtly, she had just informed me that Sandoval was on the outs, that we somehow stood apart from our fellow BMs. I did not bristle at the suggestion. I noted it, but assumed it was unintentional. Lunar politics was almost unfailingly polite, and this seemed too abrupt.

  “Fruit juice? That’s all we’re serving here,” Fiona said with a smile. She was even more fit-looking in person, solid and square-shouldered, hair strong and stiff and cut short, eyes clear blue and surrounded by fine wrinkles, what my mother had once called “time’s dividends.” I took a glass of apple juice and sat at one end of the broad curved desk, where two screens and two keyboards waited.

  “I understand the installation is already made, and that Cailetet is beginning its work now,” the president said.

  I nodded.

  “How far along?” she asked.

  “Not very,” I said.

  “Have you revived any heads?”

  That set me aback; she knew as well as I, she had to know, that it was not our plan to revive any heads, that nobody had the means to do so. “Of course not,” I said.

  “If you had, you’d have violated council wishes,” she said.

  From the very beginning, she had me off balance. I tried to recover. “We’ve broken no rules.”

  “Council has been informed by a number of syndics that they’re concerned about your activities.”

  “You mean, they’re worried we might try to bring more corpsicles from Earth.”

  “Yes,” she said, nodding once, firmly. “That will not be allowed if I have anything to do with it. Now, please explain what you plan to do with these heads.”

  I was aghast. “Excuse me? That’s—”

  “It’s not confidential at all, Mickey. You’ve agreed to come here to speak with me. A great many BMs are awaiting my report on what you say.”

  “That isn’t what I understood, Fiona.” I tried to keep my voice calm. “I’m not here testifying under oath, and I don’t have to reveal family business plans to any council member, even the president.” I settled more firmly into my seat, trying to exude the confidence I had already scattered to the winds.

  Her face hardened. “It would be simple courtesy to your fellow BMs to explain what you intend to do, Mickey.”

  I hoped to give her a tidbit sufficient to put her off. “The heads are being preserved in the Ice Pit, in the void where my brother does his work.”

  “Your brother in-law, you mean.”

  “Yes. He’s family now. We dispense with modifiers.” When talking with outsiders, I might have added.

  She smiled, but her expression was still hard. “William Pierce. He’s doing BM funded research on extremely low temperatures in copper, no?”

  I nodded.

  “Has he been successful?”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “It’s simple coincidence that his facilities are capable of preserving the heads.”

  “I suppose so, yes. My sister probably would not have brought them to the Moon otherwise. I think of it more as opportunity than coincidence.”

  Fiona instructed the screens to bring up displays of lunar binding multiples who were pushing for an investigation of the Sandoval corpsicle imports. They were platinum names indeed: the top four BMs, except for Sandoval, and fifteen others, spaced around the Moon, including Nernst and Cailetet. “Incidentally,” she said, “You know about the furor on Earth.”

  “I’ve heard,” I said.

  “Did you know there’s a ruckus starting on Mars now?”

  I did not.

  “They want Earth’s dead kept on Earth,” the president said. “They think it’s bad precedent to export corpsicles and make the outer planets responsible for the inner’s problems. They think the Moon must be siding with Earth in some fashion to get rid of this problem.”

  “It’s not a problem,” I said, exasperated. “Nobody on Earth has made a fuss about this in decades.”

  “So what’s causing the fuss now?” she asked.

  I tried to think my way through to a civil answer. “We think Task-Felder is behind it,” I said.

  “You accuse me of carrying my BM’s interests into the council with me, despite my oath of office?”

  “I’m not accusing anybody of anything,” I said. “We have evidence that the representative, the … the … United States national assembly representative from Puerto Rico—”

  “Congressional representative,” she corrected.

  “Yes … You know about that?”

  “He’s a Logologist. So is most of Puerto Rico. Are you accusing members of my religion of instigating this?”

  She spoke with such complete shock and indignation that I thought for a moment, could we be wrong? Were our facts misleading, poorly analyzed? Then I remembered Janis Granger and her tactics in our first interview. Fiona Task-Felder was no more gentle, no more polite. I was here at her invitation to be raked over the coals.

  “Excuse me, Madame President,” I said. “I’d like for you to get to your point.”

  “The point is, Mickey, that you’ve agreed by coming here to testify before the full council and explain your actions, your intentions, everything about this mess, at the next meeting, which will be in three days.”

  I smiled and shook my head, then brought up my slate. “Auto counselor,” I said.

  Her smile grew harder, her blue eyes more intense.

  “Is this some new law you’ve cooked up for the occasion?” I asked, trying for a tough and sophisticated manner.

  “Not at all,” she said with an air of closing claws on the kill. “You may think what you wish about Task-Felder BM, or about Logologists—about my people—but we do not play outside the rules. Ask your auto counselor about courtesy briefings and formal council meetings. This is a courtesy briefing, Mickey, and I’ve logged it as such.”

  My auto counselor found the relevant council rules on courtesy briefings,
and the particular rule passed thirty years before, by the council, that mandated the council’s right to hear just what the president heard, as testimony, under oath. A strange and parochial law, so seldom invoked that I had never heard of it. Until now.

  “I’m ending this discussion,” I said, standing.

  “Tell Thomas Sandoval-Rice that you and he should be at the next full council meeting. Under council agreements, you don’t have any choice, Mickey.”

  She did not smile. I left the office, walked quickly down the hall, and avoided looking at anyone, especially the young women still moving files.

  “She’s snared her rabbit,” Thomas said as he poured me a beer. He had been unusually quiet all evening, since I had announced myself at his door and made my anguished confession of gross ineptitude. Far worse than being blasted by his rage was facing his quiet disappointment. He seemed somehow deflated, withdrawn, like an aquarium anemone touched by an uncaring finger. “Don’t blame yourself entirely, Micko. I should have guessed they’d try something like this.”

  “I feel like an idiot.”

  “That’s the third time you’ve said that in the past ten minutes,” Thomas said. “You have been an idiot, of course, but don’t let that get you down.”

  I shook my head; I was already down about as far as it was possible to fall.

  Thomas lifted his beer, inspected the large bubbles, and said, “If we don’t testify, we’re in much worse trouble. It will look as if we’re ignoring the wishes of our fellow BMs, as if we’ve gone renegade. If we do testify, we’ll have been maneuvered into breaking the BM’s sacred right to keep business and research matters private … and that will make us look like weaklings and fools. No doubt about it, she’s pushed us into a deep rille, Mickey. If you had refused to go in, and had claimed family privilege, she’d have tried something else …

  “At least now we can be sure what we’re in for. Isolation, recrimination, probable withdrawal of contracts, maybe even boycott of services. That’s never happened before, Micko. We’re going to make history this week, no doubt about it.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  Thomas finished his glass and wiped his lips. “Another?” he asked, gesturing at the keg. I shook my head. “Me neither,” he said around a restrained belch. “We need clear heads, Micko, and we need a full family meeting. We’re going to have to build internal solidarity; this has gone way beyond what the director and all the syndics can handle by themselves.”

  I flew back from Port Yin, head cloudy with anguish. It seemed somehow I had been responsible for all of this. Thomas did not say as much, not this time; but he had hinted it before. I halfway hoped the shuttle would smear itself across the regolith; that the pilot would survive and I would not. Then, anguish began to be replaced by a grim and determined anger. I had been twisted around by experts; used by those who had no qualms about use and abuse. I had seen the enemy and underestimated the strength of their resolve, whatever their motivations, whatever their goals. These people were not following the lunar way; they were playing us all, all of the BMs—me, Rho, the Triple, the Western Hemispheric United States, the corpsicles—like fish on a line, single-mindedly dedicated to one end. The heads were just an excuse. They had no real importance; that much was obvious.

  This was a power play.

  The Logologists were intent on dominating the Moon, perhaps the Earth. I hated them for their ambition, their evil presumption, for the way they had lowered me in the eyes of Thomas.

  Having erred on the side of underestimation, I was now swinging the opposite direction, equally in error; but I would not realize that for a few more days yet.

  I came home, and knew for the first time how much the station meant to me.

  I met a Cailetet man in the alley leading to the Ice Pit. “You’re Mickey, right?” he asked casually. He held a small silver case in front of him, dangling from one hand. He seemed happy.

  I looked at him as if he might utter words of absolute betrayal.

  “We’ve just investigated one of your heads,” he said, only slightly put off by my expression. “You’ve been shuttling, eh?”

  I nodded. “How’s Rho?” I asked, somewhat irrelevantly; I hadn’t spoken to anybody since my arrival.

  “She’s ecstatic, I think. We’ve done our work well.”

  “You’re sticking with us?” I asked suspiciously.

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “You haven’t been recalled by your family syndics?”

  “No-o-oo,” he said, drawling the word dubiously. “Not that I’ve heard.”

  The families were being incredibly two-faced. “Just curious,” I said. “What’s it going to cost us?”

  “In the long term? That’s right,” he said, as if the reason for my surliness had finally been solved. “You’re financial manager for the Ice Pit. I’m sorry; I’m a bit slow. Believe me, we’re interested in this as a research project. If we perfect our techniques here, we can market the medical applications all over the Triple and beyond. We’re charging you expenses and nothing else, Mickey. This is platinum opportunity.”

  “Does it work?” I asked, still sullen.

  He thumped the case. “Data right here. We’re checking it with history on Earth. I’d say it works, yes. Talking with the dead—I don’t think anybody’s done that before!”

  “Who was it?” I asked.

  “One of the three unknowns. Rho decided we’d work with them first, to help solve the mystery. Please go right in, Mickey. Nernst has designed a very nice facility. Ask questions, see what they’re doing. They’re working on unknown number two right now.”

  “Thanks,” I said, wondering what distortion of protocol could lead this man to invite me into my own BM’s facility. “I’m glad it’s working.”

  “All right,” the man said, with a short intake of breath. “Must be off. Check this individual out, correlate … on our own nickel, Mickey. Good to have met you.”

  I stopped at the white line and called for access.

  “Goddamn it, yes!” William’s voice roared from the speaker. “It’s open. Just cross and stop bothering me.”

  “It’s me, Mickey,” I said.

  “Well then, come and join the party! Everybody else is here.”

  William had locked himself in the laboratory. Three Onnes and Cailetet techs were on the bridge standing well away from the force disorder pumps, chatting and eating lunch. I passed them with casual nods.

  William sounded in no mood for visitors—this time of day was usually his phase of most intense activity. I swung onto the lift and descended to Rho’s facility, twenty feet below the laboratory. The Ice Pit echoed with voices from above and below; the sounds seemed to come from all directions as I descended in the open lift, first to the right, then the left, canceled, returned, grew soft, then immediate.

  Rho came through the hatch at the top of the chamber and rushed forward excitedly. “William’s pissed, but we’re leaving him alone, mostly, so it’ll pass.” She fairly brewed over with enthusiasm. “Oh, Mickey!” She threw her arms around me.

  “What?”

  “Did you hear upstairs? We tuned in to a head! It works! Come on in. We’re working on the second head now.”

  “An unknown,” I said with polite interest, her enthusiasm not infecting me. (How much could I blame her for these problems?)

  “Yes. Another unknown. I still can’t get a response from the StarTime trustees. Do you think they’ve lost all their backup records? That would be something, wouldn’t it?” She ushered me down the hatch into the chamber. Within the chamber, all was quiet but for a faint song of electronics and the low hiss of refrigerants.

  I recognized Armand Cailetet-Davis, the balding, slight-figured powerhouse of Cailetet research. Beside him stood Irma Stolbart of Onnes, a lunar-born reputed superwhiz whom I had heard of but never met: thirty or thirty-five, tall and thin with reddish brown hair and chocolate skin. They stood beside a tripod-mounted piece of equipmen
t, three horizontal cylinders strapped together, pointed at the face of one of the forty stainless steel boxes mounted in the racks.

  Rho introduced me to them. Penetrating my dark mood, I felt a small thrill at the confirmation, the solid realization, of what was actually going on here.

  “We’re selecting one of the seventy-three known natural mind languages,” Armand explained, pointing at a thinker prism in Irma Stolbart’s hands. She smiled, quick glance at me, at Armand, distracted, then continued to work on her thinker, which was about a tenth the size of William’s QL and easily portable. “We’ll test some uploaded data for patterns—”

  “Patterns from the head,” I said, stating the obvious.

  “Yes. A male individual, age sixty-five at death—apparently in good condition considering the medical standards of the time. Very little deterioration.”

  “Have you looked inside?” I asked.

  Rho lifted her brows. “Brother, nobody looks inside. Not by actually opening the box. We don’t care what they look like.” She laughed nervously. “It’s not the head that interests us, it’s the mind, the memory—it’s what’s locked up in the brain.”

  A soul?

  Now I was shivering from fatigue, as well as something like superstitious awe. “Sorry,” I said to nobody in particular. They ignored me, concentrating on their work.

  “We find northern Europeans tend to cluster in these three program areas,” Stolbart explained. She showed me a slate screen on which a diagram had been sketched. The diagram showed twelve different rectangles, each labeled with a cultural-ethnic group. Her finger underlined three boxes: Finn/ Scand/ Teut/. “Mind-memory­ storage languages are among the genetic traits most rigidly adhered to. We think they change very little across thousands of years. That makes sense, considering the necessity of immediate infant adaptation to its milieu.”