by Larry Niven
My gear was arrayed in a tidy row, with the stunner nearest my hand. I’d put the reflector back on. I could reach it in an instant. Your Honor, of course it’s for scuba swimming. Why else would I be in possession of a device that can knock Feather Filip into a coma before she can blow a great bloody hole through my torso?
I didn’t actually want to go scuba swimming.
Sharrol swam like a fish; she could be out there right now. Still, at a distance and underwater, would I know her? And Feather might know me, and Feather would certainly swim better than I, and I could hardly ignore Feather.
Sharrol had to be living underwater. It was the only way she could stay sane. Life beyond the glass was alien, stet, but the life of Earth’s seas seems alien too. My slow wits hadn’t seen that at first, but Feather’s skills would solve that puzzle.
And Beowulf Shaeffer had to be underwater, to avoid sunlight. Feather could find me for the wrong reasons!
And the police of Fafnir, of whom I knew nothing at all, might well be studying me in bemused interest. He’s bought a weapon! But why, if he has the blaster that blew a hole through this vest? And it’s a fishing weapon, and he’s gone to Pacifica…which might cause them to hold off a few hours longer.
So, with time breathing hot on my neck, I found the hotel restaurant and took my time over fruit, fish eggs in a baked potato, and cappuccino.
My time wasn’t wasted. The window overlooked a main street of Pacifica’s village-sized collection of bubbles. I saw swimsuits, and casually dressed people carrying diving or fishing gear. Almost nobody dressed formally. That would be for Shasht, for going to work. In the breakfast room itself I saw four business tunics in a crowd of a hundred. And two men in dark blue police uniforms that left arms and legs bare: you could swim in them.
And one long table, empty, with huge chairs widely spaced. I wondered how often kzinti came in. It was hard to believe they’d be numerous, two hundred years after mankind took over.
Back in the room, I fished out the little repair kit and set to work on my transfer booth card.
We learned this as kids. The idea is to make a bridge of superconductor wire across the central circuits. Transport companies charge citizens a quarterly fee to cover local jumps. The authorities don’t get upset if you stay away from the borders of the card. The borders are area codes.
Well, it looked like the kind of card we’d used then. Fafnir’s booth system served a small population that didn’t use booths much. It could well be decades old, long due for replacement. So I’d try it.
I got into casuals. I rolled my wet suit around the rest of my scuba gear and stuffed the stunner into one end where I could grab it fast. Stuffed the bundle into my backpurse—it stuck way out—and left the room.
Elevators led to the roof. Admissions was here, and a line of the big transfer booths, and a transparent roof with an awesome view up into the sea forest. I stepped into a booth and inserted my card. The random walk began.
A shopping mall, high up above a central well. Booths in a line, just inside a big water lock. A restaurant; another; an apartment building. I was jumping every second and a half.
Nobody noticed me flicking in; would they notice how quickly I flicked out? Nobody gets upset at a random walk unless the kids do it often enough to tie up circuits. But they might remember an adult. How long before someone called the police?
A dozen kzinti, lying about in cool half darkness gnawing oddly shaped bones, rolled to a defensive four-footed crouch at the sight of me. I couldn’t help it: I threw myself against the back wall. I must have looked crazed with terror when the random walk popped me into a Solarico Omni center. I was trying to straighten my face when the jump came. Hey— A travel terminal of some kind; I turned and saw the dirigible, like an underpressured planet, before the scene changed. —Her!
Beyond a thick glass wall, the seaweed forest swarmed with men and women wearing fins: farmers picking spheres that glowed softly in oil-slick colors. I waited my moment and snatched my card out of the slot. Was it really—I tapped quickly to get an instant billing, counted two back along the booth numbers. I couldn’t use the jimmied card for this, so I’d picked up a handful of coins.—Her?
Solarico Omni, top floor. I stepped out of the booth, and saw the gates that would stop a shoplifter and a stack of lockers.
For the first time I had second thoughts about the way I was dressed. Nothing wrong with the clothes, but I couldn’t carry a mucking great package of diving gear into a shopping center, with a stunner so handy. I pushed my backpurse into a locker and stepped through the gates.
The whole complex was visible from the rim of the central well. It was darker down there than I was used to. Pacifica citizens must like their underwater gloom, I thought.
Two floors down, an open fast-food center: wasn’t that where I’d seen her? She was gone now. I’d seen only a face, and I could have been wrong. At least she’d never spot me, not before I was much closer.
But where was she? Dressed how? Employee or customer? It was midmorning: she couldn’t be on lunch break. Customer, then. Only, Shashters kept poor track of time.
Three floors down, the Sports Department. Good enough. I rode down the escalator. I’d buy a speargun or another stunner, shove everything into the bag that came with it. Then I could start window-shopping for faces.
The Sports Department aisles were pleasantly wide. Most of what it sold was fishing gear, a daunting variety. There was skiing equipment too. And hunting, it looked like: huge weapons built for hands bigger than a baseball mitt. The smallest was a fat tube as long as my forearm, with a grip no bigger than a kzinti kitten’s hand. Oh, sure, kzinti just love going to humans for their weapons. Maybe the display was there to entertain human customers.
The clerks were leaving me alone to browse. Customs differ. What the tanj was that?
Two kzinti in the aisle, spaced three yards apart, hissing the Hero’s Tongue at each other. A handful of human customers watched in some amusement. There didn’t seem to be danger there. One wore what might be a loose dark blue swimsuit with a hole for the tail. The other (sleeveless brown tunic) took down four yards of disassembled fishing rod. A kzinti clerk?
The corner of my eye caught a clerk’s hands (human) opening the case and reaching in for that smaller tube, with a grip built for a kzin child. Or a man—
My breath froze in my throat. I was looking into Feather’s horrible ARM weapon. I looked up into the clerk’s face.
It came out as a whisper. “No, Sharrol, no no no. It’s me. It’s Beowulf.”
She didn’t fire. But she was pale with terror, her jaw set like rock, and the black tube looked at the bridge of my nose.
I eased two inches to the right, very slowly, to put myself between the tube and the kzin cop. That wasn’t just a swimsuit he was wearing: it was the same sleeveless, legless police uniform I’d seen at breakfast.
We were eye to eye. The whites showed wide around her irises. I said, “My face. Look at my face. Under the beard. It’s Bey, love. I’m a foot shorter. Remember?”
She remembered. It terrified her.
“I wouldn’t fit. The cavity was built for Carlos. My heart and lungs were shredded, my back was shattered, my brain was dying, and you had to get me into the cavity. But I wouldn’t fit, remember? Sharrol, I have to know.” I looked around quick. An aisle over, kzinti noses came up, smelling fear. “Did you kill Feather?”
“Kill Feather.” She set the tube down carefully on the display case. Her brow wrinkled. “I was going through my pockets. It was distracting me, keeping me sane. I needed that. The light was wrong, the gravity was wrong, the Earth was so far away—”
“Shh.”
“Survival gear, always know what you have, you taught me that.” She began to tremble. “I heard a sonic boom. I looked up just as you were blown backward. I thought I must be c-crazy. I couldn’t have seen that.”
It was my back that felt vulnerable now. I felt all those floors behi
nd and above me, all those eyes. The kzin cop had lost interest. If there was a moment for Feather Filip to take us both, this was it.
But the ARM weapon was in Sharrol’s hands—
“But Carlos jumped into the boat and roared off, and Feather screamed at him, and you were all blood and sprawled out like—like dead—and I, I can’t remember.”
“Yes, dear,” I took her hand, greatly daring, “but I have to know if she’s still chasing us.”
She shook her head violently. “I jumped on her back and cut her throat. She tried to point that tube at me. I held her arm down, she elbowed me in the ribs, I hung on, she fell down. I cut her head off. But Bey, there you were, and Carlos was gone and the kids were too, and what was I going to do?” She came around the counter and put her arms around me, and said, “We’re the same height. Futz!”
I was starting to relax. Feather was nowhere. We were free of her. “I kept telling myself you must have killed her. A trained ARM psychotic, but she didn’t take you seriously. She couldn’t have guessed how quick you’d wake up.”
“I fed her into the organics reservoir.”
“Yah. There was nowhere else all that biomass could have come from. It had to be Feather—”
“And I couldn’t lift your body, and you wouldn’t fit anyway. I had to cut off your h-h-” She pulled close and tried to push her head under my jaw, but I wasn’t tall enough any more. “Head. I cut as low as I could. Tanj, we’re the same height. Did it work? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I’m just short. The ’doc rebuilt me from my DNA, from the throat down, but it built me in Fafnir gravity. Good thing, too, I guess.”
“Yah.” She was trying to laugh, gripping my arms as if I might disappear. “There wouldn’t have been room for your feet. Bey, we shouldn’t be talking here. That kzin is a cop, and nobody knows how good their hearing is. Bey, I get off at sixteen hundred.”
“I’ll shop. We’re both overdue on life gifts.”
“How do I look? How should I look?”
I had posed us on the roof of the Pequod, with the camera looking upward past us into the green seaweed forest. I said, “Just right. Pretty, cheerful, the kind of woman a man might drown himself for. A little bewildered. You didn’t contact me because you got a blow to the head. You’re only just healing. You ready? Take one, now.” I keyed the vidcamera.
Me: “Wilhelmin, Toranaga, I hope you’re feeling as good as we are. I had no trouble finding Milcenta once I got my head on straight—”
Sharrol, bubbling: “Hello! Thank you for Jan’s life, and thank you for teaching him to sail. I never could show him how to do that. We’re going to buy a boat as soon as we can afford it.”
Me: “I’m ready to face the human race again. I hope you are, too. This may help.” I turned the camera off.
“What are you giving them?” Sharrol asked.
“Silverware, service for a dozen. Now they’ll have to develop a social life.”
“Do you think they turned you in?”
“They had to. They did well by me, love. What bothers me is, they’ll never be sure I’m not a murderer. Neither will the police. This is a wonderful planet for getting rid of a corpse. I’ll be looking over my shoulder for that kzinti cop—”
“No, Bey—”
“He smelled our fear.”
“They smell everyone’s fear. They make wonderful police, but they can’t react every time a kzin makes a human nervous. He may have pegged you as an outworlder, though.”
“Oop. Why?”
“Bey, the kzinti are everywhere on Fafnir, mostly on the mainland, but they’re on-site at the fishing sources, too. Fafnir sea life feeds the whole Patriarchy, and it’s strictly a kzinti operation. Shashters are used to kzin. But kids and wimps and outworlders all get twitchy around them, and they’re used to that.”
He might have smelled more than our fear, I thought. Our genetic makeup, our diet…but we’d been eating Fafnir fish for over a month, and Fafnir’s people are every breed of man.
“Stet. Shall we deal with the Hand of Allah?”
Now she looked nervous. “I must have driven them half crazy. And worried them sick. It’s a good gift, isn’t it? Shorfy and Isfahan were constantly complaining about fish, fish, fish—”
“They’ll love it. It’s about five ounces of red meat per crewman—I suppose that’s—”
“Free-range life-forms from the hunting parks.”
“—and fresh vegetables to match. I bet the kzinti don’t grow those. Okay, take one—”
Sharrol: “Captain Muh’mad, I was a long time recovering my memory. I expect the ’docs did more repair work every time I went under. My husband’s found me, we both have jobs, and this is to entertain you and your crew in my absence.”
Me: “For my wife’s life, blessings and thanks.” I turned it off. “Now Carlos.”
Her hand stopped me. “I can’t leave, you know,” Sharrol said. “I’m not a coward—”
“Feather learned that!”
“It’s just…overkill. I’ve been through too much.”
“It’s all right. Carlos has Louis and Tanya for a while, and that’s fine, they love him. We’re free of the UN. Everything went just as we planned it, more or less, except from Feather’s viewpoint.”
“Do you mind? Do you like it here?”
“There are transfer booths if I want to go anywhere. Sharrol, I was raised underground. It feels just like home if I don’t look out a window. I wouldn’t mind spending the rest of our lives here. Now, this is for Ms. Machti at Outbound, not to mention any watching ARMs. Ready? Take one.”
Me: “Hi, John! Hello, kids! We’ve got a more or less happy ending here, brought to you with some effort.”
Sharrol: “I’m pregnant. It happened yesterday morning. That’s why we waited to call.”
I was calling as Martin Wallace Graynor. Carlos/John could reach us the same way. We wanted no connection between Mart Graynor and Jan Hebert.
Visuals were important to the message. The undersea forest was behind us. I stood next to Sharrol, our eyes exactly level. That’d give him a jolt.
Me: “John, I know you were worried about Mil, and so was I, but she’s recovered. Mil’s a lot tougher than even Addie gave her credit for.”
Sharrol: “Still, the situation was sticky at first. Messy.” She rubbed her hands. “But that’s all over. Bey’s got a job working outside in the water orchards—”
Me: “It’s just like working in free fall. I’ve got a real knack for it.”
Sharrol: “We’ve got some money too, and after the baby’s born I’ll take Bey’s job. It’ll be just like I’m back in my teens.”
Me: “You did the right thing, protecting the children first. It’s worked out very well.”
Sharrol: “We’re happy here, John. This is a good place to raise a child, or several. Someday we’ll come to you, I think, but not now. The changes in my life are too new. I couldn’t take it. Mart is willing to indulge me.”
Me: [sorrowfully] “Addie is gone, John. We never expect to see her again, and we’re just as glad, but I feel she’ll always be a part of me.” I waved the camera off.
Now let’s see Carlos figure that out. He does like puzzles.
Mars Who Needs It?
There are minds that think as well as you do, but differently.
It’s a matter of faith, the only thing that all of the science fiction field can agree on. Alien viewpoints and alien minds exist or will exist. What might they be able to teach us?
I grew up knowing that Mars was the home of intelligence.
But telescopes got better. When cameras replaced eyes, the canali went away. The more we learned, the less hospitable Mars became. I published my first stories in the days when human-built robots were sending data back from every world in the solar system. None of them showed signs of life.
It was becoming obvious: if we wish to learn of intelligent life in the universe, the taking of Mars will teach us
only about ourselves.
We will learn our limits.
In those early stories I took an extreme position. Mars is not wanted. The wealth and the opportunities are all in the asteroids and outer moons. A planet is a gravity well: the bottom of a hole.
Extreme positions are more interesting than compromises. Still, why do we want Mars?
I
Knowledge is always of value, and the value is never predictable. This, at least, we are doing right. We are learning what we can of Mars, for its own sake. What will come of it we cannot know.
But a science fiction writer can guess. Try this:
Five billion years of water erosion is hell on the geological record. The geological history of Mars may be easier to read than Earth’s. If Mars can tell us anything of ice ages, then we will have learned something of the behavior of the Sun. We may be able to predict our own next ice age…or heat age.
Then what? Freeman Dyson has said, “It’s best not to limit our thinking. We can always air-condition the Earth.”
II
We’ll be sending more little wheeled robots. The ambition to put a tiny automated airplane on Mars hasn’t died. VR sets get smaller, cheaper, more dependable. A Martian entertainment industry waits to be born.
We could all be flying or wheeling over the surface of Mars in virtual reality.
VR channels could pay for the space program.
III
There are better ways of reaching orbit than rockets. A teacher under the Czar, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, described what we now call an orbital tower, or Beanstalk: a cable roughly a hundred thousand miles long, its lower end anchored on the Earth’s equator, its center of mass in geosynchronous orbit. Use it as an elevator cable. Launch from the far end, you’re beyond Mars or inward from Venus.
Half a dozen other devices exist, all still imaginary, each an attempt to design a rocket-free launching system.
Despite conceptual improvements, the Beanstalk is still the most costly, but also the most convenient. But each of these skyhooks would be very expensive to build and very cheap to run: a few dollars per kilogram to orbit. They have more in common: