by Larry Niven
Ah, well, he thought. Not his concern. He might mention it to Vail.
The judges began to confer. They were yards apart, but they buzzed at each other in a torrent of tiny incomprehensible voices. It was all buzzing now, rising in vehemence and falling back, while the judges blurred with internal motion.
The water seemed a little thicker. A few more fish wafted by.
The judged turned back. “We have come to a decision. We believe that it is possible to select a single sin, one unrepented in your culture. We are willing to condenm you for this one sin.”
The Eskimo leaned forward, and gave a conspiratorial wink, a thin translucent eyelid covering a tiny screaming head. “I believe that this is called ‘plea bargaining’ among your people.”
Robin Bowles nodded.
“We choose your meat-packing industry.”
Orson blinked in confusion. “Excuse me?”
“Every year, billions of animals are raised in captivity in disgraceful, barbaric circumstances, and then shunted down assembly lines-”
The air above the sins wavered, and they were in a meat-packing plant, and the smell of blood and animal fear was in the air. An endless line of steers streamed toward an iron-walled factory building.
A fluid camera movement took them into the slaughterhouse itself.
A castrated bull waited, its head in the killing-slot, a milky foam bubbling from its mouth. A robot arm pivoted, braced an automatic gun against the head of the hapless bovine. There came a brief, explosive hiss, and the cracking sound of a shot. The steer collapsed.
“This is the way that your people slaughter cows-and chickens-”
There was an immediate, accompanying image of an endless conveyer belt of chickens, each hapless fowl in its own metal collar, heading toward the decapitation machine. A nauseating, blood-spurting close-up. The chicken’s legs twitched spastically as the conveyer belt rolled on and another bird took its place.
It was a Treblinka, an Auschwitz, an infinite chorus line locked in a mechanized dance of death.
There were images of seafaring boats catching countless millions of tuna, and then those fish dumped through automatic sizing and gutting machines. The sequence culminated in a mountain of fishy refuse, guts and heads stinking in the sun. They could see it, and smell it. To Max’s right, Trianna Stith-Wood was turning green.
“To us, this is the ultimate sin. To us and to Sedna, this is abortion, and on a scale almost beyond imagination. Compare this practice with the old ways, the traditional ways,” the judges said. Suddenly there was a crisp, calm Alaskan vista. Men tracked caribou across the tundra; furred hunters crouched beside ice holes for the momentary appearance of a walrus, and then the sudden thrust of a spear-
Max could feel the howl of the wind, the adrenaline burn as the Inuit hunted in the manner of his ancestors. Something told him that yes, this was the way that these things were supposed to be, the way it should have been done, should always have been done…
They were pitching on a high sea, seized in the black grip of an angry ocean. A boat rode the water, a whalebone framework with a sealskin envelope, carrying four men. They were tough men, hardened to the elements, inured to suffering. They were staking their lives against an unpitying wasteland in hope of bringing home precious food.
They pitched and yawed, and then a flash! Just a momentary flash, and a seal broke the surface. The lead hunter made his cast, and A modern supermarket. Bovine, doughy shoppers pushed baskets down gleaming, Muzak-gentled aisles, choosing between packages of prewrapped, precleaned, prekilled meat.
The buzz was almost gone from the voice of their Eskimo judge. “Where is the threat here? Where is the life? You have lost all sense of the unity of man with his world, and of the price which is paid in blood and suffering by one creature to give life to another. And your sin is greater than this,” the Eskimo said, his voice rising.
He’s really getting into this, Max thought. Good! A demi-god should enjoy his work. Otherwise, what’s the point of demideity?
The supermarket fogged… and cleared to show a cartoon image. It was Ferdinand the Bull.
Oh yes, Max knew Ferdinand. Everyone in America and sixteen other countries knew Ferdinand, spokesbull for the Lazy Taco string of Mexican restaurants. Famous, infamous, having gone from mouthpiece for a fast-food emporium to a series of B-movie misadventures to an eventual holovision series. Ferdinand, the Lazy Bull who slyly coaxed cows into the clover and other bulls into the bullring or onto the dinner table, was instantly recognizable.
Ferdinand looked out at them and said: “Come on down to Lazy Taco. We serve the best Beeefs in the wooorld.” Suddenly he grinned stupidly and his eyes grew huge with mock surprise. “Oh! Beeef! Thass me, I theenk!”
Max was humiliated to remember the many times his sides had ached from Ferdinand’s routine.
It didn’t stop there. The parade of animals, real and cartoon, who had encouraged or begged customers to eat them over the years was long and disturbing. Foghorn Leghorn (“Ah say! This here is some mighty tasty chicken!”). Charlie the Tuna (“Sorry, Charlie”).
The parade was endless. Daffy Duck, Clarabelle Cow, Porky Pig, Chiquita Banana-Orson put his head down into his hands. “Oh, no. Even the plants. We’re screwwwwed.”
All were dancing and prancing, shaking their collective rear ends, happy happy happy to make that consummate sacrifice. Distracting consumers from the bloody reality of death.
Max felt shamed.
The four Judges of the Apocalypse looked out at them. The Eskimo figure said, “There can be no defense. You have dishonored the Inua of the creatures which give you life. Sin!”
“Sin!” said the black man.
“Sin!” agreed the white and the yellow men.
“It only remains to pronounce sentence-”
“Ah say! Now just a cotton-pickin’ minute there, boy!” The voice was Foghorn Leghorn’s, and every head snapped around
Johnny Welsh had spoken. A moment later he was hypersupercilious. “I believe this is my field of expertise-do you mind, Robin?”
“Not at all.” The distinguished actor looked both surprised and relieved. Bowles sat heavily.
Johnny paused, gathering himself. “You know-I don’t think the issue here is the killing of animals-the more people you have, the more food you need. Having babies is honored in your culture-in fact, anything that builds up the community. Am I right? Couples without children pray for babies. It’s expected that we be fruitful and multiply, right?”
The Eskimo judge nodded sagely.
“All right. The meat-packing industry is just trying to feed our babies. If we didn’t do that, that would be a sin. We want more of our babies to survive. So we have people who are doctors, and engineers, and teachers, and cops, and everything else that it takes for a society to survive. We’re like fishermen who stock the lakes, or the farms, or whatever. And we kill the animals as humanely as we can. Is there really anything more humane about dying with a spear through your guts at twenty below? A gut-shot reindeer-Trianna?”
Trianna had a plump arm up. She said, “The dietary rules in the Torah demand that kosher meat be slaughtered as humanely as possible. I’m sure that every culture has rules like that.”
Johnny beamed approval. Orson’s head was up; his eyes were unfocused.
The Oriental judge peered down at Trianna. “Not every culture. Japan differs. And where exactly does this line of reasoning lead you?”
Welsh mocked the Oriental’s tones. “It leads me to believe the issue is whether we have honored the spirits of the animals. You think that Charlie the Tuna, and Ferdinand the Bull, and Chicken Boy, and Tom Turkey and the rest are insults to their spirit.”
The judges nodded vigorously. “And so they are!”
Johnny shook his head; his cheeks jiggled. “No. You missed it. Where we come from, one of the highest forms of compliment is the joke. I know this stuff. I make my living with this stuff. Only after an actor or politi
cian has become great do we bother to make jokes about him. if there is a disaster in our lives, the first thing we try to do is find the light side. That’s how we keep things in perspective. It’s how we survive.”
Johnny was beginning to roll, and Max finally understood where he was going. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Orson relax.
“When we take a chicken, or a cow, and make a cartoon out of it, we’re giving ‘em the same treatment we give our dogs and cats. And considering that dog and cat care is a multibilliondollar industry, you’d better not even suggest we don’t love the little fuzzballs. They end up running our homes, eating our food, and breaking our hearts. Oh yeah-we know damned well how much we depend on animals for our survival.”
Orson leapt up. “Snow Goose’s father showed us implements, utensils that had carved images of animals. Out of proportion, almost grotesque. What we would call ‘caricatures.’ I submit to you that these advertisements are our offerings to the Inua. They are our way of giving affectionate respect. And more than that, we don’t just make one or two little carved-bone items. We send these images out to billions of people. Every day we pay more honor to the Inua of the animals than the Inuit peoples did in a century. We are absolutely in the spirit of the Eskimos, and we say that you have lied, and stolen, and tricked your way into the balance of power. We ask the Gods, whatever they be, to look into our hearts. Every time we say grace, every time we make a joke, every time somebody works overtime to make a little more money so he can spend two hundred bucks on sushi for four, it’s a tribute. I call this whole damn thing a mistrial.”
The judges seemed frozen. Only their faces were in motion but their features were little lost sins randomly a-crawl. Then the judges began to come apart. One buzzing voice spoke, the voice of west/white/Europe. “No-you are lying… we have the right of inheritance! We have that right!”
The ocean above them swirled, the water beginning to boil, and the walls dissolving too. Piece by horrid piece, Sin City was falling apart. The water boiled more swiftly. They clung to the strands of hair, dug in their tiny claws; the current took them away.
Then all was hidden in a wash of bubbles.
It felt like Sedna’s scalp was sagging beneath Max. Then the bubbles cleared, and he saw. He was in a bubble and the bubble was rising. The other Gamers were rising around him, each in his own bubble.
Welles sat back and relaxed-the rest of it was programmed. He pushed himself away from the console and yawned, suddenly aware of the massive energy output of the past forty minutes.
He heard a patter of applause and turned to see Dr. Vail’s slender, sardonic figure at the door of the control room, a beer in each hand. “Thirsty?”
“Unbelievably.” Welles snatched one before Vail could blink, and downed half before coming up for air. “Ahhh. I pay belated honor to the Inua of the beer.”
“That was nicely done,” Vail said. “And we’ve almost completed our programming.”
Welles made puppy eyes. “Does that mean I can start killing them? Please, sir. Just a few of ‘em. For their own good.”
He drank in haste, then called up an image from the Tunnels, the subterranean world beneath the Gaming areas. A cluster of uniformed men and women were working hydraulic lifts, switching supports and props under the Gamers so that they could make their ascent.
“I still can’t believe how many Gamers don’t care how we do it.”
Vail sipped his brew, watched the screen, lips curled with gentle humor. “I’ll bet you read magic books when you were a kid, and told everybody how the lady turns into a tiger.”
“Better. There was an old magician in town. He put on shows in a magic shop, and on Saturday night, he’d get drunk. He’d screw up his timing, and you could see the rabbit peeking out of his coat. I loved it.”
“The fact that the old man had lost it?”
Welles took another drink. “Is that wrong? He’d lost it just enough so that I could see how the miracle was done. Maybe some of the other people laughed, but I thought: ‘He used to be great. Now he’s just good.”
He drained his beer and tossed it. “Hell. Anybody can be good. It only takes practice. But looking at that old man, for the first time in my life I thought that maybe I could be great…” He rubbed his eyes, then looked at Vail with sudden suspicion. “Are you working on my Psych evaluation?”
“Tut-tut,” Vail said innocently. “Just curious. Just curious.”
Max looked down through the water, and he saw Her.
Sedna. Eskimo, or Inuit, and beautiful. The encrustations around her face were cracking and chipping away, revealing smooth brown flesh beneath.
She was still burdened by her load of sins, but many of them were breaking free, unable to maintain their hold.
Sedna had a chance. The universe was coming back into balance. The Paija beaten, the angakoks could cleanse Sedna if the road remained clear…
Above them, far above them, light sparkled and shimmered on the surface of the water.
Chapter Twenty-Two
SKYHOOKS
A rocket rose up the sky… up the dome of Gaming A, off to Alex Griffin’s left. At first the launch looked normal enough. But stratospheric winds twisted the vapor trail into a bizarre knot of subliminal skywriting, and the oversized Phoenix craft still hadn’t tipped over to make orbit. It was roaring straight up. The flame died, but the tiny silver dot kept rising. if something else didn’t happen it would presently come roaring straight down.
Alex had come in in the middle of something. Seeking enlightenment, he plucked earphones from a rack.
“ Rockets are inefficient. Even fusion rockets, even antimatter rockets are wasteful compared to most of the machines in common use.. to a zapcar, for instance. A zapcar uses only stored electricity. Its reaction mass is the road beneath the wheels and the planet Earth beneath the road.
“ There are ways to send spacecraft into the solar system without burning tremendous masses of onboard fuel. Collectively these devices are called ‘skyhooks.’ None have been built. Some of them won’t work. But we only need one that does…”
Ten-person carts were available, but not many were in use. The majority of guests were spaced around the rim of the dome in little clumps, watching, but also pressing the flesh, meeting contacts, making deals.
High on the dome, the rocket was still rising.
Peripheral vision caught something coming from Alex’s right. It drifted across the sky toward the rising spacecraft, like a widemouthed predator of the deep, long and narrow like an eel, with luminous markings… no. He could see stars through it. The crisscrossed lines he had thought were markings were it. It was just a net, a net of superconducting wire, shaped by magnetic fields into a bizarre large-mouthed eel drifting on great square fins that must be solar power collectors.
“ The Starwhale is no more than an orbiting rail gun, but it will serve our purpose. To put a spacecraft into orbit costs fuel. We’d find it much cheaper merely to fire a craft two hundred miles straight up. At that point-”
The Starwhale ate the spacecraft.
The ship was tiny. It entered the mouth of the net at tremendous speed… at five miles per second or better, if the Starwhale was in orbit. The Starwhale was much bigger than Alex had thought, and moving much faster.
The ship slowed and came to a halt before it reached the tail. “ We can catch it, accelerate it to orbit, and leave it there. Or we can continue accelerating the ship-” It sped back toward the mouth of the beast. “- up to another five miles per second, to send it to the moon, or Mars, or the asteroids.
“ Of course we must steal kinetic energy from the Starwhale. But if we can catch incoming ships to decelerate them-”
A ship entered the Starwhale’s tail at meteoric speed, slowed near the mouth, sped back down the long, long torso, left the tail, and began to fall toward Earth. “- ships carrying cargo from Mars or the asteroids, we can put the kinetic energy back!”
Most of those in Gaming A w
ere listening to the presentation. Alex Griffin wasn’t, and he didn’t believe Harmony was. He had come in late and he felt a little lost, but the presentation wasn’t his prime motive here.
Alex had avoided Thadeus Harmony for the past half-hour. It was no mean trick. The big man had stalked him purposefully. Alex had declined to answer three phone messages, and ducked out of the back of his office once. It was easy to guess what Thadeus wanted, and Alex wasn’t prepared to give it.
“ The Beanstalk was the earliest skyhook conceived,” the narrator’s voice said. “ It would be the most useful, and the most expensive.
“ A satellite orbiting 22,300 miles above the Earth’s equator will circle the Earth in the same time it takes the Earth to turn, in twenty-four hours. It remains in orbit above one point on the Earth’s equator.” A glowing, dotted line painted itself wide around a huge blue and white Earth. “ Suppose we were to put a space station at geosynch… ” A classic wheel-shaped space station appeared, with a green-skinned giant atop it. “… and let down a line to the Earth’s surface.” The giant flung coils of heavy rope downward. Maybe it was vine; the giant was garbed in leaves. “ It would fall, of course.” The weight of thousands of miles of vine dragged the startled giant off the station and down. He became a streak of meteor flame.
Two more giants popped up on opposite sides of the space station. They hurled lines inward and outward. “ We must extend another line outward for ballast, to keep the center of mass at geosynch… ”
Alex spotted Kareem Fekesh without difficulty. The dark, slender, elegant sheik was the still center of a flow pattern of supplicants from a score of factions seeking a word with him. His man was letting few of them through… that was Razul, recovered nicely from his Battling Robots duel. Fekesh was watching the artificial sky. Neither Razul nor Fekesh appeared to have noticed Alex Griffin.
The green giants’ line had mutated, had become one smooth, continuous tether. Capsules ran up and down its length in faintly visible nets of magnetic force, elevator cars running with no cables. “ Of all of these proposed skyhooks, the Beanstalk is the most difficult to build. It must stand the greatest stresses. But the Beanstalk can lift cargo from ground to orbit, and fling them out to the stars, for the cost of the electricity, a few dollars a pound.