by Damon Knight
“Yeah.” Harry hung his head. “This trip might be the dumbest thing I’ve done since ought five.”
“Don’t feel bad. You’ll get respect for it, just like the pilgrims do when they go to Mecca. I don’t know what your business is, but I’ll bet it will pay off.”
“Yeah. You might be right. Well, thanks for everything.”
“No problem.” She rose. “So long, lover.”
In the hotel elevator, a young man in a silver jacket got on with him. “Hi,” he said pleasantly.
“You staying here too?”
“Seems that way.” As the doors opened and Harry started to leave, the young man stuck out his hand. “Here’s something you forgot.” Harry accepted it automatically; it was a little crystic cube with an image on one side. He took one look, then barged back through the closing doors. He grabbed the young man by the shirt. “Did you cube that?” He turned the cube over in his fingers: one of the two linked figures had his face. The young man, looking startled and afraid, pulled away and swung at him. Harry took a tighter grip, hit the guy square in the nose and felt it crunch, but then the young man pulled something out of his pocket that gave him a pain in his chest greater than he had ever known. Fortunately, it didn’t last long.
By the time the general manager heard about the killing, it was too late to do anything different. Bobby Dalziel had hidden the body in a closet while he called Caroline. Together they had smuggled it into the docking elevator, put it in a sallyport and blown it out into space.
At this point, they had at least had the sense to confide in the sexual services manager. She had bucked the problem up to the GM, Edward Goodhew, who met with his executive committee in extraordinary session at about three-thirty in the morning. The committee, which had had one or two problems of this kind in the past, authorized a substantial bribe to the purser of a departing spacecraft to accept a seventy-three-kilo consignment without putting it on the manifest, and to add Harry’s name to the passenger list. The consignment was waste water in sealed carboys, just enough to compensate for Harry’s missing mass. An agent in Houston would dump the carboys, and that would be that. The records would show that Harry had disappeared after he got to Houston; with luck, he would never be seen again, and his widow would never find out what happened.
The bribe came out of the contingency fund, to be replaced from the earnings of the two employees. A smaller amount was budgeted to contrive the purser’s accidental death later on.
Bobby had acted hastily, and both he and Caroline would have to be disciplined, of course; but there had been no scandal, nothing to hurt the image of Star Towers. That was the important thing, after all. The committee members yawned and went back to their beds. Heigh-ho. Another day on the high frontier, another fifty million dollars.
31
The island of Singapore, only some 387 square miles in area, was the most valuable piece of real estate on earth. There was no room for the poor except in vertical slums managed by the government. These were in the Tanglin district, discreetly concealed by a row of high-rise government office buildings windowless on the north side. By means of shore patrols, detect-and-destroy machines at harbor and airports, and frequent sweeps, the government headed by General Sun Pak had kept the island free of symbionts. Everything impossible in the rest of the world was now possible here. Murder was common. Every taste in illicit sex could be satisfied in one or more of the city’s two thousand bordellos. One of the most famous was Evans’ Hideaway; its slogan was “Thank Evans for Little Girls.”
Here, out of cock-fighting, bareknuckle prizefighting, and Russian roulette, a new game evolved. It was described in a tourist brochure of the time:
Game is played by two brave players in Game Circus. Player are Black and Purple, or sometime White and Red. After ceremony, each player hold revolver with one bullet to other head. Computer fire both revolver. Sometime player are killed in first game, sometime still alive after twenty game. Player still alive after five game called Virtuous, after ten game Observant, after fifteen game Glorious and after twenty game Shining.
Another kind of Game, player are tied into holder. Body divided into twelve zones, one small charge explosive each zone. Computer chooses zone for each player, but nobody knows. Then one player or other can decide to press button and fire charges into body of self and other. If both player decide not, computer chooses zones again. No zone for vital organ. Doctor always present. When doctor says one player in danger of die, other player wins.
The player Norville Quinn wrote in his memoirs:
If you took the Big Game, or Head Game it was sometimes called, you had five chances out of six in each contest. It didn’t pay much at first, but if you survived the first five, it paid a little better, and then if you were still alive after ten, a lot better, and plenty of contestants retired after fifteen, with the cash awards and the presents people gave them. If you stayed in competition, you were expected to appear once a week in the prelims, then at least once every two weeks, and once every month for champions. There were ten contests every day in the Circus, and always at least one guy died, usually two, and once in a while as many as four. The fans bet their money on who would win and who would die. The big champions dressed like princes and had attendants spraying them with perfumed oil, and they always went behind a curtain with a beautiful woman before, although it was generally known that they couldn’t do anything. But they came out and strutted and puffed their chests, and the fans roared. Big money changed hands in every champion contest.
On certain holidays there were elimination contests using drugged amateurs. The contest would begin with five pairs of contestants, or sometimes seven or nine. When the first player died, the survivor of that pair would form a triad with another pair, then when the second player died, the survivor of that pair or triad would form a pair with the first survivor. With ceremonies, times out, little plays, singing and dancing, the contest would go on all day, ending when only one player was left alive. That player would be offered a place in the regular Game, but they seldom did very well.
During the first decade much attention was focused on space. The manned Martian expedition of 2004 returned safely, but brought little scientific information. The unmanned Jupiter probe, which began to return data in 2007, was more successful, revealing hitherto unknown facts about the giant planet. New McMurdo Base on the Moon was established in 2010. The first space colony was completed in 2015, but the planned microwave solar energy system was plagued by accidents and failures.
Other advances in science and technology led to unexpected changes in social habits. Molecular storage and retrieval went into commercial use in 2002, making possible nanominiaturization of computers. This in turn brought about a radical reshaping of the educational system.
As a consequence of improved geriatrics and longevity techniques, in 2007, life expectancy of male infants at birth in the United States and Western Europe rose to ninety-one years, and of females, one hundred three.
Coded stimulation of visual centers in the brain, with input from holocameras, enabled the blind to see normally. A device to monitor consciousness was developed for medical use in 2010. By the use of special lenses, it enabled the operator to see a faint pinkish glow around the head of a conscious patient. Later it was discovered by curious researchers that consciousness was shared by mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, arachnids, plants, and some stones. A new game, Chessex, combining elements of chess and checkers, swept the world in 2017. Body dyes combined with new superlight fabrics were popular in the New Sunbelt and in domed cities.
A new class of antinarcotic neurotransmitters, introduced into food and water in the remaining large cities, effectively wiped out the drug traffic in 2008. A totally effective contraceptive method for both men and women was developed in 2009. By the following year, most epidemic diseases, including all venereal disease, had been wiped out except for laboratory specimens.
Sexual intercourse as a performance art form began
to gain respectability in 2012. The grand prize in the first All-Europe Tournament was awarded to a married couple from Brussels, Robert-Luc and Jeanne Dufour.
In a related development, mind-to-mind communication was made possible by computer-controlled readouts of one brain and stimulation of another. Monitoring by this means enabled the judges to be sure the reactions of tournament contestants were genuine.
A new process made it possible to recover sound recordings from the past. Most of them were banal or incomprehensible; for instance, Napoleon was heard to say, “This is inferior shit.”
In 2013, a consistent theory of synchronicity was based on the laws of chaos.
“Free systems,” artificial intelligences not bound to any circuitry, were in use by 2019.
Tailored food plants requiring no care were introduced into wastelands and abandoned cities in 2020.
All this was taking place simultaneously with the social and economic changes brought about by the McNulty’s Symbiont, to which we must now return…
The Twenty-first Century,
by A. R. Howarth and Lynette Ford
A man walked into White Cloud Outfitters in Seattle and started looking over the racks of jeans at the front of the store. He was poorly dressed and wore a backpack. Grace Timmons, the manager, watched him go into the dressing room with three pairs of jeans and come out with two, which he brought to the counter.
Timmons took the card he handed her, put it into the scanner and looked at the readout. “It says here this card was canceled last June,” she said. “Denver Co-op? Did they kick you out?”
“Let’s say I left.”
“And you haven’t hooked up with anyone since?”
“No. I hurt my back.”
“I’m sorry to hear it. What kind of work did you do before?”
“Construction.”
“No office skills?”
“No.”
“I understand the toy factory down at the end of Western Avenue is hiring. Maybe you could get a job doing light assembly.”
“Look, I don’t have to do anything.” He turned to leave.
“Just a moment. You know, of course, that your picture is in the computer.”
“So what? You can’t put me in jail.”
“No, but two or three sturdy young lads could throw you in the river. I’m not saying that would happen, but think about it. Good day.”
Bubbles of memory… This is Kim at fifteen, when she gained all that weight. This is her mother, that same year, with her hair dyed red. Isn’t that a funny hat? This is Cletus Robinson of Savannah at the age of seven. The squint was corrected by an operation the following year. This is President Otis before his heart attack. This is Emelia Switt writing the first sentence of her first novel. This is a rabbit named Bunny, the pet of Olivia Eveling of Okemos, Michigan. This is Dan Cowper out hunting with his dog. The dog’s name is Bruce. They didn’t catch anything that day, but the cold autumn air was great, and there was a fine sunset. This is Regina Dingwall on her eightieth birthday, surrounded by her five living children, seventeen grandchildren, and three greatgrandchildren. Regina was part of the problem, but we forgive her. This is Norbert Spanbogen getting laid in New Orleans. He came down with the clap shortly afterward. This is Miss McDevitt finding something nasty in her weather shoes. This is Arpad Adjarian resigning his commission. Some of his relatives have emigrated to France, and he intends to join them. This is John Stevens working on his book of translations. His hair is white.
From the time Kim was nine or ten, Stevens had fallen into the habit of taking her with him on occasional business trips. He took her to museums and zoos, arboretums, amusement parks, restaurants; he liked to watch her when she saw new things. A complicity grew up between them. Once she asked, “Do you think people should tell the truth?”
“Always? No.”
“Why not?”
“Because sometimes the truth just makes people unhappy. I try to tell you the truth, though, because I want you to trust me.”
“Do you love Mama?”
“Yes, I love your mother.”
“Then why do you go away with Signorina Lamberti?”
“I love your mother, but I like other women, including Signorina Lamberti. Teufelsdreck.”
“What does that mean?”
“Devil’s dirt. It means that I am annoyed.”
He knew she was unhappy at school. He had had many talks with teachers, and the trouble was not academic. “She just doesn’t seem to warm up to the other children,” the teachers said. Contrasting this with her evident pleasure in his own company, Stevens was secretly flattered. He thought of her as a companion, someone to whom he could be more and more open as she grew into maturity.
When she was fifteen, Kim started gaining weight. Her boyishness disappeared; she became oblong in silhouette. Julie took her frantically to one doctor after another; Kim resented the examinations and the diets which never did any good. She grew more withdrawn, even from Stevens. Her grades declined. When she was sixteen, after many conferences with Julie, Stevens took her out of school and let her study by holo. She spent most of her time in her room, or walking alone with her dog, a golden retriever who had never liked Stevens, in the woods behind their house in Ontario.
“What’s going to become of her?” Julie said. “In a year or two she ought to be going out with boys, dating.”
“That will come soon enough,” Stevens said. He could not hide his disappointment. His bright companion was gone; in her place there was a bloated, unattractive teenager. More and more often he remembered his own bitterly unhappy childhood. “She’ll grow out of it,” he said.
Every now and then he saw something about Palladino in the net. There was one incident that suggested that his former employers might have taken his advice: a waiter had spilled a plate of lasagna on Palladino’s head in a Berlin restaurant. Then nothing. In the holo, Palladino seemed to have put on some flesh. His skin was smooth, shining; he looked like a happy Buddha.
There had not been a reliable census anywhere in the world since the turn of the century, but some analysts, working from satellite data, had estimated that world population was down to 3.5 billion. Stress on the environment had abated somewhat during the last decade, and there were even signs that ocean biota were recovering. Atmospheric pollution was markedly better, but the damage to the ozone layer was apparently irreversible; climatic changes and flooding of coastal cities had caused much hardship.
Since the early teens, national governments had been falling apart. Quietly, without any fuss, states, provinces and prefectures stopped paying much attention to the central government. By 2020 there really wasn’t any Spain, only Catalonia, Andalucía, and so on, and there was no France, only Normandy, Brittany, and the other old kingdoms. Yugoslavia and the RSFSR broke up into ethnic territories. In North America, first the southern states seceded, then the eastern, then the western. The new political units were just the old ones which had always clung to their identity, but even these could not stop the tide of dissolution. Smaller and smaller units took their place: counties, subprefectures, townships, villages. What government remained was organized by volunteers; when people saw a need for something, sometimes (not always) it got done.
Many things that had required national funding and control could not be done. Weapons stockpiles rusted in place; the orbits of the abandoned space stations decayed. Highways and bridges fell into disrepair. Harbors silted up. Airports were abandoned. It was a good thing that the SWT network now covered most of the Earth, because there was no other easy way to get around anymore.
The jails had emptied long ago and the wardens had taken up other occupations. Even local ordinances could not be enforced with any regularity, because an offender could get into a SWT capsule and be three thousand miles away in twenty-two seconds.
All the nightmares of the doom-criers were coming to pass. Respect for authority and tradition was gone; people were looking out for themselves and thei
r families. Taxes could not be collected. Industries closed down; schools closed, churches and government offices stood empty.
According to some, hosts of unborn children were adrift through the atmosphere, keening their regret. Millions of little Anthonys and Marys, Gretchens and Borises, were lost forever. Among them were three notable musicians, two poets, seven ax murderers, six mathematicians, four actors, ten baseball players, ten presidents, and a great number of basically undistinguished people. They were not born. They did not add their bulk to the human mass. They did not send their feces into the rivers and oceans. The wind did not even whisper their names.
Stevens had foreseen the panic that came when the stock exchanges closed down, and had stockpiled as much food as he could; he had also converted his holdings into gold and precious stones, which still had a fairly stable value.
Kim left home when she was eighteen to join a commune in Kathmandu, and a year later she married a former CV inmate, Geoffrey Barlow-Geller. Stevens realized that the reason for his own marriage no longer existed, and he contemplated a separation; then Julie became gravely ill.
In 2020 her condition was diagnosed as systemic lupus erythematosus. She underwent a cloned kidney transplant at Smith Memorial Hospital in Toronto, where her recovery was slow. The medical bills came to over two million new dollars. Stevens sold all that he had.
It was out of the question for him to look for a job; there were no jobs even for younger people with work histories. In March he went to the director of the Toronto Moneyless District and asked to be accepted as a member.
“And what can you contribute, Mr. Kauffman?” she asked. “You realize that at this stage we have to worry about such things.”