by Damon Knight
“Maybe we take a vote?”
“Listen, I see a problem here. Suppose we do fire somebody, aren’t they going to go straight to the police and spill the whole thing?”
“Akh. Maybe we should give this up.”
“No, wait a minute. Right now, we haven’t got anybody that’s going to screw up that badly, so it isn’t a problem. But let’s swear an oath. No matter what happens, I mean, unless somebody murders somebody, we don’t go to the police. One for all and all for one.”
“I don’t see it. The manager, never mind if it’s me or not, he has to hire and fire. Otherwise you’ve got committee meetings all the time and nobody knows where they are. I wouldn’t take the job that way, I’d go somewhere else and the hell with it. If you’re right, if nobody here is going to screw up and have to get fired, okay, you’re right. If you’re wrong, then I have to fire them. If you don’t like that, then you can elect a new manager. That’s okay with me, but until then, I’m the manager, I manage.”
“Is he turning into a prick already?”
“Maybe. Let’s watch him and see.”
Everybody was in a good mood that night, and they were playful and solicitous with the customers. The ambience was great; the candles on the tables had never looked so good. When the waiters went around and asked, “Everything okay?” the response they got was enthusiastic. “Listen,” said Phillips to Carpenter in the kitchen, “if we keep this up, we got a gold mine.”
“Sure, but whose?”
“Trust me.”
The next morning Phillips wrote a net message to the home office: LIMONI RAN AMOK, TRIED TO DESTROY KITCHEN. STAFF CHOSE PHILLIPS TO TAKE OVER. PLEASE CONFIRM.
“What if they don’t?” Balter asked.
“Well, fine, if they send in another manager and he’s an asshole, we throw him out too. Listen, we can keep this up till Christmas.”
President Otis took office in January, 2009. In his inaugural address he said in ringing tones, “I did not come here to preside over the dissolution of the Union. Stand tall, America!” Only about half the senators and a third of the representatives were present to hear him. Two of the major holo networks carried his address live; one of the others was covering a solar sled race in Finland, another a nude performance of La Bohème live from La Scala; a third was in the middle of a marathon James Bond festival.
Harriet Owen had seen it coming. Her contacts at Peace and Justice had warned her not to expect her funding to be renewed. “Otis’s people have other priorities,” they said, “and besides, the money just isn’t there.” Hank Harmon had wept openly on the holo. “I don’t even know if there’s going to be a two hundred twentieth Congress,” he said. “It’s the end of the world, Harriet.”
Almost a quarter of CV’s support staff melted away at Honolulu. Owen gave notice of dismissal to the rest, except for a skeleton crew, and delivered the children into the custody of the Philippine Child Services Division to await pickup by their parents or other relatives. She turned over the laboratory animals to the University of Manila, and gave the department of psychology as much equipment as they were willing to take.
She said good-bye to her staff one by one. She noticed that there was a distant look in their eyes when she spoke to them; they were already thinking of where they were going next. Although they said some conventional things, it was apparent to her that leaving CV was just an incident to them, not a calamity. She took a last look at Sea Venture, lying at anchor in the harbor the white hull was streaked and shabby; it looked obsolete already.
When she got home, she found that the storage shed in which she had left all her furniture had been burglarized. Most of her friends had left the Centers for Disease Control; those few who remained did not seem especially glad to see her. She sent out resumes to several public-sector research institutions, but nobody called her in for an interview.
When Geoffrey got home, the voices in his head had stopped. They took him to a hospital and had the implant removed, but he was still a difficult, moody child. He took a dislike to his sister Victoria, then a year old. He stole things, told lies, and was insolent to his parents. “I hate the whole world,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because it’s stupid.”
How could we have______Impossible; we didn’t
prevented this?____know enough.______We stopped as
Yes, but it was too late______________soon as we saw what
for these few. They will_______was happening.
always yearn for the sibs
we couldn’t give them.___*Sorrow.*
28
Caroline Bates went to work as a rigger on the Star Towers Project in 2010, when she was twenty-three. She lived weightless in the crummy for five years, with seven hundred others, mostly men. They all moved into the completed shell as soon as it began to rotate, and helped to install plumbing, wiring, and other utilities under gradually increasing gravity. She survived all this; some were not so lucky.
A good friend of hers, Larry Kleinsinger, had been working on the skeleton of Sphere A when a weld parted under tension and a structural member sliced through his leg. They heard him scream; then the sound stopped abruptly. The meds who brought in his exsanguinated body said that his helmet mike had been turned off.
The timing had been about right for him to be the father of the embryo she had aborted two weeks ago, and she couldn’t get that out of her mind. It didn’t make sense, because a woman could not give birth in space—the facilities didn’t exist, and the contract specifically excluded it—but she wished she still had that kid. She put a message in the net to her mother, and her mother sent back: “Why are you still up there Caroline? I don’t understand it, what is there for you with all that danger. Bill asks about you a lot. Come home honey I worry about you all the time.” Her mother was a widow with a bad heart and a drinking problem. Bill was Caroline’s ex; they had planned to go to space together, but he had flunked construction school. Neither one of them had ever been as tough as she was, she realized, in any way.
When the interior work was done in Sphere A and progressing in Sphere B, Caroline’s supervisor called her in. “Bates, we’re phasing out some construction people, as you know, and your name is on the list. Sorry about that, but we can offer you a permanent job here in services. The pay and benefits will be good.”
“What kind of services?”
“Escort.”
“You mean you want me to be a hooker? No, thanks. I don’t even like this place anymore. I’ll take my pay and go home.”
“All right, if that’s your decision.” The supervisor hummed two notes at his console. “After we pay your transportation Earthside and various termination fees, you’ll owe us seven hundred thousand dollars and change. Stick your thumb here and I’ll have it taken out of your Earthside account.”
“Wait a minute. I owe you for transportation? The contract says you send me home free any time after five years.”
“You’ll have to take that up with the legal department.” The supervisor blanked his screen and began humming again.
She requested an appointment with Legal, and was told to go to Room 305 in Sphere B, Building 1. It was in the Services section; the name on the door was Ruby Maxwell. Inside was a plump, dark woman in her forties. “Is this the legal department?” Caroline asked.
“No, it isn’t, but sit down anyway. I understand you have some problem with your contract.”
“Yes. Here’s my copy. I marked the clause about free transportation.”
“Uh-huh.” Ms. Maxwell tapped keys, turned her screen around. “This is their copy. You see here, clause forty-one, where it says they can send you home free if they so desire. You got to realize, the longer they keep you working here, the more money they make on their investment.”
“I understand that, but I’ve got a contract.”
“Sweetie, you ain’t got jack shit until they say so. What you going to do, sue the Company? Get serious. You know how many l
awyers they have?”
Caroline was silent.
“Look at it another way,” said Maxwell quietly. “If you tell I said this, I will call you a liar. They don’t want to spend the money to send you home Earthside until they got all the good out of you. If they see you are not going to cooperate, it might be cheaper to space you out. It has happened before. You understand what I’m saying? You got to be nice to them, or otherwise they not going to be nice to you.”
They sent Caroline to charm school for a month, where she had her hair restyled, her ears pierced and her eyebrows shaped, learned makeup and perfume, got a new wardrobe to be paid for out of earnings, learned to walk and sit and hold a drink. By then the hotels in Sphere A were already in business, although construction was still going on in B.
Then they took her to an operating room, and when she woke up she had two neat little incisions in her belly and a neat little plastic button in the top of her skull. She felt sore inside. “What did they do to me?” she asked the nurse.
“Tied off your tubes, honey.”
The next day two men led her into a small room and strapped her into a chair under a black box with a dangling cord. The two men left; a technician came in, wearing an atmosphere suit. He had a vial in his gloved hand.
“Now this is just a little demonstration,” he said. “You’re not going to like part of it, but you’ll like the other part a lot. First I’m going to show you what will happen if you screw up, and then what will happen if you don’t.” He opened the vial and with a glass rod put a single drop on her wrist. A pain like nothing she had ever experienced swept through her; she heard herself screaming.
Then a touch of coolness on her wrist, and the pain was gone. “That’s all of that, baby,” said the technician. “Now here’s the good part.” He brought the cord down from the machine and plugged it into her head. Bliss. Bliss. Bliss.
The memory of it was so strong that she blinked dreamily at him when he put his face close to hers. “Now listen. Can you hear me?”
“Mm-hm.”
“You’ll get that once a day if you behave yourself and meet your quota, understand? If you don’t behave yourself, you won’t get it, and if you really screw up, you’ll get the other. So I’m sure you’ll be a good girl.”
“Oh, yes,” she said.
She learned to retreat somewhere inside and not pay much attention. Some of her Charlies were gorks, but some were friendly and fun to kid around with. If she rolled five stunts a day on her own, or eight if there were that many referrals, the rest of her time was her own. She was popular enough to get top dollar; ten percent of her fees went into her Earthside account, and although she knew they would not let her go until she lost her looks, in all probability by then she would have put away at least two million dollars; even with inflation, that would be enough to live on comfortably for the rest of her life.
Bobby Dalziel was a slender young man who worked in the recording booth when there were ballets or sports events in the docking chamber. In between, he rolled stunts for the services department. Caroline saw him with Charlies a few times, and then they got to know each other. Bobby had a scheme he wanted to try out on her. They talked about it in Bobby’s bedroom; the rooms where they took Charlies had eyes and ears, of course, but workers’ bedrooms didn’t. “I don’t know if it would work,” he said, “but if it did, it would be enough to get us both out of here, and I want to get out.” Caroline turned him down at first; then she listened. She wanted to go home, too, and it was nice to have something to dream about.
The political problems associated with the Standing Wave Transport project proved to be more daunting than the engineering ones. Nevertheless, by the spring of 2015, agreements had been signed with all the countries laying claim to Antarctica. Gravitometric and seismographic readings had found a suitable site on the high plateau within half a mile of the Pole.
A completely assembled SWT device was flown to the site in a Douglas supertransport and installed there in a prefab hut. Thereafter all materials and personnel were transferred directly to the site from Greenland, and the work went rapidly. A second and much bigger prefab building was put up next to the first one. In the second building, heat from solar collectors in Greenland was used to melt the ice down to bedrock; pumps carried the water away. More buildings were added for construction machinery, a dormitory and messhall. While construction proceeded, another site was prepared on longitude 68°W. to serve South America, then two more on longitudes 30°E. and 148°W.: these would serve Africa and Australia.
The first experimental SWT tube line, between Bogotá and New York, went into service on May 1, 2017.
29
The idea of a weekend on Star Towers came to Harry Conlon in connection with his upcoming tenth anniversary. Harry was a large ham-listed man who had made it big in ceramic pipe—well, not exactly big by Texas standards, but not so bad, either, for a guy who could barely read the sports. Jolene, his third and best-looking wife, already had enough jewels and furs to hide her completely from sight; and besides, nobody either one of them knew had ever been to Star Towers, and this would be something to talk about—a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
When he mentioned the trip casually to friends, as he found increasingly frequent occasion to do, he noticed that their eyes bugged involuntarily; that was very gratifying, and he began to think he had made an upscale decision. It turned out that Jolene had to have new jewels and furs for the trip, in order not to disgrace him in front of all those billionaires, but as Harry said, it was only money. He got a big juicy kiss for that, and Jolene did one or two things that night that she didn’t usually do.
They flew to Houston, stayed in a hotel overnight, and the next morning, after indoctrination, medical checkups and parasite screening, they put on their special shoes and filed aboard the spacecraft with a few hundred other people, a very select bunch, naturally: distinguished-looking men, most of them past middle life, and women dressed to destroy, even though they all wore slacks or culotte dresses. “Isn’t that what’s-her-name, the holo star?” Jolene whispered excitedly. “And that one, I know I’ve seen his face—is he a senator or what? Look at the rock his wife has on her finger!”
Harry squeezed her arm, and she squeezed back. He figured he was going to get his money’s worth just in accelerated female gratitude and affection, but the next part was not so great. An attendant strapped them into reclining seats which reminded Harry unpleasantly of dental chairs, between plastic curtains that were like the way they curtained somebody off in the hospital when they were about to die. Harry’s heart was hitting him in the chest; he began to feel he had made a serious mistake.
The holos on the ceiling lit up and showed the head of a young woman, who said, “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Hi-lift Five, Flight Nineteen to Star Towers. My name is Wendy, I’m your chief cabin attendant. We are now in final preflight check mode, all systems are go, and we will lift off in approximately two minutes. While we are waiting, I would like to point out some of the features of your accommodations aboard. The controls of your holos are in the left-hand armrest of each acceleration couch, along with controls for lights and ventilation, and the call button for the cabin attendants. The controls of the couch itself are in the right-hand armrest, where you will also find headphones for your holos and music, a box of tissues, and a small white envelope for your use in case you should experience stomach uneasiness in flight. Reading matter is stored in the wall cabinet at the head of every couch, and in this cabinet you will also find a mesh bag containing the loose articles and jewelry which you surrendered prior to boarding. Please use these articles with caution and do not let them escape while we are in zero gravity. Also in the wall cabinet you will find complimentary toiletries, stationery and postcards, and hairnets for use in zero gravity conditions. Once we have gone through the powered phase of our flight, cabin attendants will assist you with any difficulties you may have. As soon as the countdown begins, pleas
e make sure that your couch is in the fully extended position, that your belts are fastened, and that you are lying comfortably with your head straight, your legs slightly apart and your arms on the armrests. Thank you, and enjoy your flight.”
Harry noticed that she hadn’t said anything about what to do in an emergency. What did that mean, that if there was an emergency, there wasn’t anything to do? After a pause, a man’s voice said on the loudspeakers, “Prepare for lift-off. Cabin attendants, take your couches.” Then the countdown, “five, four,” and the whole thing, while Jolene was yelling, “Harry, I want to get off!” and then a roar that shook his back teeth like castanets, and a leaden weight falling over his whole body. Out of the corner of one eye he could see that Jolene’s face was all pulled out of shape, like his; her mouth was stretched open sideways, exposing her teeth like a dead rat’s, and her boobs were flat as cow pies. Harry blacked out for a minute. When he came to, the roar had stopped, and now the weight was gone—all the weight. He felt like the cabin was falling, even though he knew it wasn’t, and he grabbed the armrests in a death-grip.
“Well, folks,” the Captain’s voice was saying, “that’s it for now. We’ll be performing an orbital correction in about an hour. Until then, move around the cabin if you want, but please keep your feet on the floor and don’t try to float around in the cabin. When you are in your seats, please keep your belts fastened.”
Beside him, Jolene was throwing up. The steward came by with a little vacuum cleaner, and handed her some tissues afterward. Then it was Harry’s turn, but at least he got the barf-bag over his mouth first.
That was the way it went. Even when they weren’t sick, their faces were flushed and puffy, and their noses were stopped up. Harry got over the idea that he was falling after the first hour or so. But there were retching sounds from somewhere in the cabin pretty much all the time, and unless a person kept their headphones on they couldn’t help being reminded, so he and Jolene didn’t say more than two words to each other, and neither of them could face the idea of lunch.