Crisis!

by James Gunn

  Crisis

  James Gunn

  To

  Ben Bova and Stanley Schmidt,

  editors of vision

  Preface

  The novel Crisis! started out to be a television series. Back in the mid-1970s a television series called The Six-Million-Dollar Man was ranked in the top half-dozen most popular shows on American television. It was broadcast on NBC, and CBS wanted a science-fiction television series that might compete for the same audience. Since I was going to be in Los Angeles, my Hollywood agent asked if I had any ideas that could be developed into such a series. “Sure,” I said, agent and I had a meeting with CBS executives in which I described my idea for a television program in which a man from the future is sent back to deal with problems of our times that are going to turn the future into an unlivable hell. But each time the man from the future intervenes to solve a problem, or, more accurately, help others solve the problem, he forgets who he is and what he has done. He has to leave messages for himself. And I outlined the plot of “Child of the Sun."

  The CBS executives seemed to like the idea, but I never heard any more from them about it. After a couple of months I decided that since I had done all the work of planning the episode, I might as well turn it into a story. I wrote “Child of the Sun,” and Analog published it in March of 1977. The following year it was reprinted in Donald A. Wollheim's The 1978 Annual World's Best SF and I got a letter from a production company at Universal Studios asking if the television and motion-picture rights were available. The production company bought a year's option. I exchanged several letters with the producer about developing the idea into a possible television series, including outlining some twenty other pressing problems that could be turned into series episodes.

  As it happened, the production company at Universal was disbanded before the year was over, and the option was allowed to lapse. Several years later, after I had written and published half a dozen other books, I decided to return to the situation behind “Child of the Sun,” with the thought that its television potential might have been handicapped by the inability of producers to believe that other dramatic episodes were possible. I turned to the crisis mentioned in the note read by Bill Johnson in “Child of the Sun"—"You have just saved the world from World War III, and you don't remember....” Now, it was easy enough to write that kind of one-sentence statement for “Child of the Sun,” but I didn't have the least idea how to save the world from World War III. One of the principles of writing I have learned, however, is that the most difficlt problems make the best stories. So I wrote “End of the World,” saved the world from World War III, and it was published in Analog.

  I followed that up in fairly short order with “Man of the Hour,” “Touch of the Match,” “Woman of the Year,” and “Will of the Wisp,” all of them published in Analog. Along the way I set myself other problems. One of the first, as early as “Child of the Sun,” was to write everything as if it had been filmed by a camera: nothing was to be subjective. That way, I thought, potential producers could not fail to perceive its cinematic qualities, and, in any case, doing it this way represented a technical challenge. I also included a dramatic opening situation, that in televisin terminology is called a “teaser,” and an identifying series scene for each story. In this book those became “Prelude: Man in the Cage."

  The second challenge I posed to myself was a minor one, to make all the titles match; all the titles have the same pattern—the blank of the blank"—and that took some thought, particularly for the last one: challenges get increasingly difficult as they stack up. Then I looked at Bill Johnson's predicament and asked myself why he believes those messages he finds, and in one episode he questions the messages and his own sanity, and decides to seek psychological help and get cured.

  I also took up what I considered to be the major problems facing humanity today. Nothing easy. After world war came the energy shortage, political leadership, terrorism, over-population, and pollution. I had to come up with reasonable solutions for all of these, not that Bill Johnson could solve by himself but that he could persuade others to solve because it was in their best interests, and the interests of all humanity, to address. I had mentioned to CBS when we discussed a possible series that there had been too many television shows in which the world had been saved for the rest of us by heroes like the Six-Million-Dollar Man or James Bond or Superman; what I wanted to create was a series in which there were no heroes, just someone so obscure he bears the most common two names in many telephone books, who would act as a catalyst to initiate reactions and show others (including readers and, I hoped, viewers) that it was everybody's responsibility to do what was right for humanity and a livable future.

  I don't know whether I succeeded, either in the solution of the problems or the message to the readers. Crisis! was published as a novel by Tor Books in 1986. It may say something about the state of science-fiction criticism that no review mentioned the camera's eye viewpoint or the titles or the narrative strategy.

  And no producer called to ask about the television rights, even though the contents page clearly labels the parts of the novel “episodes."

  That's another problem to solve, though not one, I think, for Bill Johnson.

  James Gunn

  Prelude

  Man in the Cage

  He never knew whether he was troubled by memory or nightmare.

  Every few days he dreamed about a pendulum. It swung back and forth like the regulator of a clock. He sensed the movement and he heard a sound not a tick but a swoosh, as if something were moving rapidly through the air. At first he had only a vague impression of things, but gradually details came into focus. The pendulum arm, for instance, was more like a silvery chain with wires running through it down to the weight at the end.

  Then scale became apparent. The entire apparatus was big. It swung in a cavern whose sides were so distant they could not be seen, and the wires were thick, like bus bars. The weight was a kind of cage, and it was large enough to hold a person standing upright. Somewhere, far beyond the cavern, unpleasantness waited. Here, there was only hushed expectancy.

  In his dream he could see only the glittering chain and the cage; it swung back and forth, and at the end of each swing, where the pendulum should have slowed before it started its return, the cage blurred as if it were swinging too fast to be seen.

  At this point he always realized that the cage was occupied. He was in the cage. And he understood that the pendulum marked not the passage of time but a passage through time.

  The dream always ended the same way: the cage arrived with a barely perceptible jar, with a cessation of motion, and he woke up. Even awake he had the sense that somewhere the pendulum still was swinging, he still was in the cage, and eyes were watching him—or perhaps a single eye, like a camera, that revealed to him a scene of what might be....

  Episode One

  End of the World

  He was lying on his right side, his right leg drawn up, his right arm stretched out, his left arm lying along his side and hip. Another wide bed was beside him, its slick, dark-green spread unwrinkled, its pillow-bulges intact against the dark wood of the headboard. Beyond the bed was a small desk with a straight chair in front of it. To its left was a six-sided pedestal table made of dark wood; armchairs on wheels and covered with green plastic stood on either side. Beyond that was a window sealed from the outer light or dark by heavy drapes and curtains, but a line like bright silver ascended vertically where they failed to meet.

  The man rose to a sitting position, his knees drawn up. A television set stood in the corner, its large blank eye challenging him to fill it with pictures and meaning. A dresser with two sets of three drawers was against the wall at the foot of the beds, above it a wide mirror. The room was hotel standard.
Farther to the left would be a bathroom with a tub that could be turned into a shower by closing a curtain or plastic doors, a stool, and a broad, imitation-marble lavatory with a mirror above. If this were a better-than-average hotel, the bathroom would have an anteroom with an open closet facing a wet bar; on the bar would be a plastic tub, which could be filled with ice from a machine down the hall, and four plastic glasses sealed into polyethylene bags.

  All of this the man should have known but didn't. Instead he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stretched his arms high above his head in an instinctive gesture of loosening sleep-tightened muscles. When he stood up, he was of medium height. He was pleasant looking, but nothing more, and slender; he had brown, curly hair and dark eyes and skin that looked evenly tanned. He gazed around him with the innocent absorption of a newly born infant and then his eyes stopped at a slip of white paper stuck to the right-hand side of the dresser mirror. He stood up and looked at it. “Read the letter in the top right-hand drawer,” it said.

  The man stood naked in front of the mirror and looked down at the drawer as if he didn't want to open it. Finally he moved his hand forward and pulled on the handle. A long white envelope lay just inside the drawer, crosswise, the return address of a hotel on its upper left-hand corner. The man reached into the drawer and removed the envelope. He tore it open. Inside were two sheets of hotel stationery with black hand-lettering on them.

  “Your name is Bill Johnson,” they read. “You have just saved the U.S. space program from termination, and you don't remember. You can find references to the political decisions in newspapers and magazines, but you will find no mention of the part you played.

  “For this there are several possible explanations, including the likelihood I may be lying or deceived or insane. But the explanation on which you must act is that I have told you the truth: you are a man born in a future that has almost used up all hope; you were sent to this time and place to alter the events that created that future.

  “Am I telling the truth? The only evidence you have is your apparently unique ability to foresee consequences—it comes like a vision, not of the future because the future can be changed, but of what will happen if events take their natural course, if someone does not act, if you do not intervene.

  “But each time you intervene, no matter how subtly, you change the future from which you came. You exist in this time and outside of time and in the future, and so each change makes you forget.

  “I wrote this letter last night to tell you what I know, just as I learned about myself a few weeks ago in a similar manner, for I am you and we are one, and we have done this many times before...."

  The letter was signed “Bill Johnson."

  The man in the room found a pen on the desk and wrote “Bill Johnson” under the name on the letter. The signatures looked identical. He took the letter into the bathroom, tore it into small pieces, let the pieces flutter into the toilet bowl, and flushed them away. After he had finished showering—he did not need to shave—he collected a few toilet articles in a small plastic bag he found on the lavatory, and brought them to the dresser. The drawers were empty. In an imitation-leather suitcase resting on a rack beside the dresser he found clean underwear.

  A shirt, a jacket, and a pair of pants were hanging in the closet. He put on the clothing along with the brown shoes that were on the closet floor.

  In the pocket of the coat he found a billfold: in the billfold were one hundred and forty-three dollars, a Visa charge card, and a plastic-encased social security card. The last two bore the name of Bill Johnson. On the dresser were a few coins, a plastic door-entry card, and a black pocket comb. He put them in his pants pockets. Finally he faced the cyclopean stare of the television set in the corner and pushed buttons until he found the one that turned it on. In a moment the screen was filled with the face of a news announcer, replaced occasionally by films and maps, but the controlled hysteria of the announcer's voice continued without interruption or variety, except when his voice and face were replaced by those of other reporters equally panicky and equally professional.

  Johnson listened and watched for half an hour, sitting on the edge of the bed, occasionally looking as if he were seeing more than appeared on the front of the glass tube. Finally he turned the set off, went to the dresser, picked up his suitcase, and walked to the door. He looked back. Except for the unmade bed and the imprint of his body on the side of the other, both of which soon would be removed, the room bore no trace of his existence.

  He walked down the carpeted hallway, his footsteps as distant as the future, into the broad lobby. Sunlight slanted brilliantly through the distant glass doors, but reached only a few feet into the space. Elsewhere a subdued lighting from scattered lamps set by overstuffed chairs and sofas almost disguised the fact that the lobby was deserted.

  At the front desk a dark-haired clerk who looked to be of draft age was listening to a portable radio. “Russian forces continue to assemble at the Iranian border near the Kazakhistan city of Ashkhabad and the Afghanistan city of Herat. The President has placed the U.S. military forces on full alert. Aircraft-carrier task forces are steaming at top speed toward the Arabian Sea from bases in the Pacific, and the Mediterranean fleet has put out from bases in Italy. Rumors persist that the President has been on the hotline to Moscow several times, but that mounting threats rather than conciliation have been the only result...."

  Johnson tapped on the desk with his hotel key, and the clerk, noticing him for the first time, gave an apologetic smile. “Sorry,” he said. “People have a hard time keeping their mind on business these days."

  “I know."

  “You're checking out?"

  “Bill Johnson,” he said.

  The clerk leafed through a metal file and drew out a bill. “You're paid up,” he said.

  “May the future be kind,” Johnson said, and picked up his bag and walked through the lobby into the blinding sunlight.

  * * * *

  The nearby airport was packed with people twitching like a netful of newly caught mackerel. Lines jiggled in front of every airline counter. People moved from one to another as the fortunes of one line moved it forward and difficult problems or difficult customers delayed another.

  Johnson took his place in one line and remained patiently in it as the line slowly moved forward to break against the counter like a wave in slow motion. Words of protest and pleading and anger reached Johnson as he neared the front. The man and woman just ahead of him took a long time insisting that they had to get home, that they had children there and they had to get them out of town before the bombs fell, that they had tickets assuring them of a place on this flight. The ticket agent was blond and round-faced and a sweater. In other times he might have been jolly and sympathetic, but now he was frowning, and sweat gathered on his forehead and ran down the wrinkles and dripped on the counter while he explained with a calm close to fury that military passengers had first priority, that the government had recalled every military person on leave and called up everyone from the Reserve, and that the airline would get them the first available seats. When he reached the head of the line, Johnson put down his small suitcase and said quietly, “That's good enough for me—the first available seat to New York.” He handed over his credit card. His actions and words were like the first layer of pearl around an irritant.

  The agent looked at him incredulously and then his anger began to leak away. He laughed. “There may be a special flight out of here about four in the morning. Otherwise it may be tomorrow night before I can get you onto anything."

  “Whatever you can do. I'll wait as long as necessary."

  The agent laughed again. “You're the kind of customer I can do business with, Mr....” he looked at the credit card, “...Johnson. We really shouldn't accept credit cards, you know. If the bombs drop there could be an electromagnetic pulse, an EMP, that could wipe out all the computer records in the country."

  “If the bombs drop, money and checks w
on't be much better,” Johnson said lightly. “You have to go on as if disaster weren't going to happen. That's our only chance of preventing it."

  The agent looked thoughtful. “That's right,” he said. The line was stirring impatiently, and some customers were complaining to the air around them at the nerve of some people and the chitchat when everybody else was in a life-and-death hurry, forgetting that they, in their turn, would take as long as they considered necessary. The agent tapped his computer keys, made out a charge slip, and handed ticket and charge slip to Johnson. “No use asking you for seating preference. That's a luxury we can't afford any more,” the agent said while Johnson was signing the charge slip and recovering his charge card.

  Johnson picked up his ticket and his suitcase and turned away. “May the future be kind,” he said.

  “Yeah,” the agent replied before turning to the next desperate customer.

  The rest of the day, except for a few visits to the restaurant, the water fountain, and the men's room, Johnson spent staring out the broad windows at the airport runways. He did not stare the way the others did, like grackles turning their mad yellow eyes toward a falling sky, but like a member of the audience who knows when the curtain will fall.

  Airplanes taxied to the head of runways like crippled albatrosses and sat for minutes that turned into hours as they waited their turn. More airplanes descended from the sky and sandpapered their tires across broad concrete before bellowing to speeds slow enough to turn onto ramps. Then the first airplane in line would swing onto the runway and start accelerating before quite lined up and, gathering speed, lift its improbable nose into the air, and the giant weight of the great machine would follow, and it would climb.

  One would arrive and one depart, and then two would arrive and one depart, then two depart and one arrive, persistently, hypnotically, interminably. The sky was cloudless and blue as if it had no thoughts different from the ones it had mused upon for eons past, of birds and clouds and smoke, of rain and hail and sleet and snow.