FSF, April 2008

by Spilogale Authors

  Still, there was nothing to be done for it. She resigned herself to that absurd table, on this ugly ship, in this godawful time and place. Oh, the incongruity, and she repressed either a smile or a groan—she could not decide which. And the decisions. Fish or meat? White wine or red? Kill myself, or somebody else?

  Some time must necessarily pass between the perception of unhappiness and its being given utterance. Certain individuals seem scarcely to hesitate between the two; others, however long they may live, do not live long enough to find their voices. Amy, like most people, occupied a position between these poles of almost reflexive complaint and mute abiding wretchedness; but she tended toward the latter extreme. It had taken her many days, or several weeks, or a few months—she considered each unit of time measurement to see which cast her situation in the light least unflattering to herself—to determine that she was more miserably unhappy than she had ever imagined possible. She had always accepted, at least in theory, that people were responsible for their own happiness; she had set aside that responsibility because other possibilities seemed more pressing, seemed worthier; early on, it had seemed to her that her own best prospect for happiness inarguably lay in her being somehow indispensable to Cutsinger. There was The Work to consider, The Great Adventure, the bold new chapter to be written in the annals of science, in which she did not wish to appear as an unsympathetic character.

  But no more. If it had taken her a long time, “four hundred million years and some months,” as she bitterly put it to herself, to acknowledge her own intense dissatisfaction, she was ready to express it and to want to alleviate it. On their way from the mess, she told Cutsinger without preamble that she was taking some time off, at least a day, maybe two days, maybe more, she didn't know but she was definitely going ashore, she needed time to herself, she was going crazy—she had thought it out during the night, composed what she had to say, mentally rehearsed it, but all her preparation came to nothing, or, rather, she achieved her end but at the cost of further damage to her self-esteem. Like an avalanche, unstoppable, relentless, it impelled her forward and almost immediately downward into trembling and tears. He only looked at her in astonishment tinged with horror, his expression eloquent with the unspoken question: Where did this come from? Crying and shaking, she saw him glance toward the porthole. Beyond lay the limitless sky, the unpredictable sea, the septic, treacherous world. She heard him say, “Yes, yes, of course, by all means, go,” granting her leave not because he suddenly understood how she felt but because he wanted to avoid a scene.

  She saw him shiver there, and again, later, in the boat bay. The boat bay was a large steel grotto, and Cutsinger was visibly uncomfortable there: any moment, the great gate might swing open, exposing him to the external world. Her composure somewhat restored by his swift acquiescence—though she knew that it had been given not out of understanding and compassion, but to avoid being embarrassed by a public display he patently considered to be out of character for her—Amy nodded to him, then stepped down into the boat and found a place for her sea bag and herself among the carefully stowed crates and equipment.

  In the instant that the boat moved out of the boat bay, into the sunlight, she felt as though the weight of the ship had been lifted from her shoulders. Light reflected from the surface of the water dazzled her. The bluejackets themselves were much improved in this natural illumination: pallid drones no more, they appeared fresh, vital, even beautiful.

  On impulse she spoke to the nearest of them. “The water looks very inviting.” The young man seemed almost startled. She ventured a smile.

  "Uh, I don't think so, ma'am. It's not safe."

  "Why not?"

  "Sea scorpions,” he said, “and other things, ma'am. Well, so I hear."

  The boat touched the crude jetty, and after a moment's hesitation the bluejacket to whom she had spoken offered a hand to help her out. Here she looked back once at the gray ship sitting in the bay and realized with a start that this was her first sight of it as an entire object, rather than as an environment, since before the transfer. The sight of it called up a memory which she could not quite give form in her mind; she knew only that it was unpleasant, whatever it was, and shrugged it away. She wanted to bring no unhappiness ashore with her.

  A work detail fell to unloading the crates and equipment from the boat and moving them along the jetty to add them to a small mountain range of crates and equipment along the shore. Other work details, moving with all the purposefulness of social insects, were engaged in carrying away the substance of this mountain range and assembling it into Quonset huts, vehicles, machinery. There were many more people in uniform than not, she noticed, and she wondered where most of the civilian scientists had got to. Then she glimpsed, on the rocky heights behind the camp, tiny human figures making their ways, singly or in small groups, across the steep rock face, and she thought, Of course. They were getting on with what they had come here to do, while the Navy, acting in its support capacity, built a base for them.

  She realized with dismay that she did not know what to do next. She had come ashore uncommitted to any particular course of action but conscious of the need for a change of scenery, perhaps even for catharsis, and half-determined on some arduous physical recreation. She wore hiking shoes and carried in her bag, along with essential toiletries, a modest and now useless one-piece swimsuit. Aimlessly, she walked about the camp. The few civilians whom she encountered acknowledged her presence with nods and smiles but clearly had no idea who she might be; just as clearly, they were too busy to be very curious about her. The bluejackets were intent on their assigned duties; as a work detail assembled pipes into showers and erected walls around the showers, she watched, wholly fascinated, and when they stopped and stepped back to take stock of their handiwork, she looked at her watch and was astonished to see how much time had elapsed. She could almost hear Cutsinger asking her how she had spent her day ashore and almost see the contempt on his face as she fumbled for a meaningful answer. Then she told herself angrily, I'm not here for his sake.

  Still, feeling it a point of honor to prevent her excursion's reneging on its initial promise, she resumed her aimless and now slightly desperate wandering. At length she found herself picking her way up the rough slope behind the camp. She did not climb very far before settling onto a shelflike limestone projection. Despite or perhaps because of the human figures she had seen on it, the dark landscape before her looked even more forbidding close up than it had from the ship. She realized, too, how out of condition she was. Could've been using the ship's gym all this time, she thought. Nevertheless, she felt—she had to think about it for a second—good. For ever so long she had been aware of an iron-hard knot of tension at the base of her skull; now, as she began to relax, the tension yielded to a burning soreness in the muscle. It hurt, yet it made her feel better. She gazed down on the camp and its scurrying inhabitants and then out to sea. Again, the sight of the ship filled her with dread; she instantly looked away. Somewhere far out to sea, farther than she could see, the surface would be matted with graptolites drifting through planktonic soup. No scurrying there, she thought, dinner just floats by one's door.

  She felt distinctly at a loss. The idea of returning to the ship was repugnant, but not only had her plans for recreation amounted only to vague and now unrealizable notions of hiking and swimming, she had made no arrangements for accommodations. She began to realize that she was famished; she had been too upset to eat breakfast on the ship, had given no thought to eating when she escaped—and the perplexing half-memory returned for a moment, but she still could not grasp it, frowned it away, concentrated on her hunger. It was a good hunger. Eating had been a mechanical exercise for so long that she had forgotten what it was to have a real appetite. She could, she decided, probably eat at the mess tent in the camp, and she imagined other necessary facilities would be available as well. She would need a place to sleep, but finding a bunk on short notice might be an insurmountable matter. The idea of slee
ping beneath the stars briefly attracted her. Then she thought of the sea scorpions “and other things” inhabiting the area. She had seen specimens of grotesque arthropods brought aboard the ship, and it now required no great effort of imagination to conjure chitinous night-feeding predators swarming ashore—she quickly shoved the image from her mind and told herself that the creatures could not pose too much of a threat to human beings ashore. She could recall hearing no horror stories along such lines, anyway; perhaps there was nothing in camp to interest sea scorpions—not even cockroaches to eat. Yet, she concluded, discretion was undoubtedly the better part of valor.

  The camp appeared to have increased in size in the short time she had been away from it. She judged from the aroma that Navy cooks were preparing to serve the evening meal. The mess tent was full of tired, hungry bluejackets and civilians ready to call it a day. She fell into the mess line. The food was standard fare, slightly tough chicken fresh from the freezer, with side orders of reconstituted vegetables, but Amy discovered that she was ravenously hungry and ate every bite. She wished for a glass of white wine, or even, she thought with a smile, grog, whatever that might be.

  "Why, hello!"

  She looked up and saw the man who had been head of the sleep-disorder center at Cornell University's New York Hospital in Westchester County.

  "Do you mind if I join you?"

  "Please do."

  He sat opposite her and began to saw at his chicken.

  "Do you mind my asking,” Amy said, “what you are doing here? The night I met you, on the ship, you said something about observing the observers."

  "Actually, I am building the case that the clocks and calendars and other time-keeping devices on which we depend, back in the twenty-first century, and which we have imported into this Paleozoic environment, aren't just useless here, but injurious."

  "How so?"

  "The Siluro-Devonian year is about four hundred days long. The Siluro-Devonian day is about twenty-two and one half hours long. It's all wrong for our human bodies, which evolved during Quaternary time. The dominant time cycle of our bodies is the circadian rhythm. From the Latin words circa, approximately, and dies, day. For most of us the circadian cycle is twenty-five hours long, plus or minus a quarter of an hour. This body clock is located in the brain's hypothalamus, lying above the roof of the mouth. But we also have a weekly cycle of internal rhythms regulating rise and fall of heartbeat and blood circulation, our immune system's response patterns, changes in body chemicals. When we ignore or abuse these rhythms in the course of twenty-first-century life—and we do it all the time, obeying the clock on the wall instead of the clocks in our bodies—we feel the effects of sleep deprivation. We have the Monday morning blues and get drowsy in the afternoon. We suffer from sleep disorders and depression. We become irritable and clumsy and, well, stupid. Then we compound our problems by trying to offset our fatigue by using drugs and alcohol. We take stimulants to keep ourselves awake during the workday, and drink or take sleeping pills to knock us out at night so we can get up the next morning and take more stimulants. It's very unhealthful."

  He looked at her as he chewed. Then: “May I ask what you are doing here?"

  "Everybody here knows what he's doing here,” Amy said, “except me."

  After dinner, she said good night to the sleep-disorder specialist and returned to the communal tent where she had managed to secure a place to pass the night ashore. She sat outside on a campstool and admired the emerging stars for a time. The whole camp seemed to droop in the still, humid twilight. Without warning, a large, somehow familiar shape emerged from the gathering shadows. At first it struck Amy that one of the smaller tents had decided to go for a walk. Then the apparition resolved itself into the author. He drew up before her and favored her with a clearly tipsy grin.

  "I think,” she told him, “you had better sit down. You're leaning well out of plumb, you know. Another few degrees of tilt out of true, and you're going to roll down into the bay."

  "Drink?” he said, holding up a bottle of Scotch.

  Amy thought it over for two seconds before answering, “Don't mind if I do.” She fetched plastic cups and another camp stool from within the tent; the author sat down like an elephant taking a load off all four feet and poured Scotch into the cups.

  "Here's to Robert Heinlein,” he said as they clicked cups.

  "Who?"

  "Twentieth-century science-fiction author."

  "Ah."

  "Yep.” He popped the syllable from his mouth and raised his cup again. “And all the rest of them, too. Clarke, Asimov, Bradbury. Here's to the by-God living literature."

  "So,” Amy said after half a minute had passed, “do you, as a sci-fi writer, find it hard to come up with story ideas?"

  "Probably no more than anyone did back in the space age. When events catch up with fiction, you just have to push on a little farther out in front."

  "And do you write happy endings?"

  "When I can. All stories, all kinds of stories, are about people trying to be happy. A few of them manage to pull it off. But you know what's disheartening about science fiction?"

  "What?"

  "What's disheartening is when events don't bother to catch up. I expected us to have colonies on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn by now. Research stations. I mean, things like that were supposed to happen in my lifetime. And we'd go on from there. Ever onward and outward. Eventually, somehow or other, Einstein be damned, we'd whip together some warp-drive thingumatron and leave the solar system behind, spread throughout the galaxy. Manifest destiny."

  "Not so manifest if you're a physicist."

  He looked at her curiously. “Ever visit one of the space stations, back, you know, home?"

  "No."

  "Well, I did. There're rides at Disney World that're more exciting. Same here."

  "Even so. There can't be too many sci-fi writers who can say they've actually done any of the things they like to write about. Space travel, now time travel. Time travel in heavy quotes. You're like a hero in one of your own stories, almost."

  "I hope not!” He scowled. “Willingly or otherwise, writers tend to buy into myths about writers. Fitzgerald bought into the myth of writer as drunkard and drank himself to death. Hemingway bought into the myth of writer as man's man. He hunted and fished and boxed and finally blew his own head off. And here I'm a space-traveler and a time-traveler. Space travel's always held much greater fascination for me than time travel. In or out of heavy quotes. Because space travel was possible. Time travel was impossible. All you physicists said so yourself. And, you know, I think—and there're folks I know at NASA and the Jet Propulsion Lab and places who think so, too—the discovery of the spacetime anomaly's the worst thing that ever happened. Just an absolute goddamn disaster."

  "You're trampling on my field now,” she warned, but gently.

  "No offense. But the human race was meant to go to the stars. Not sideways in time."

  "Meant to? Manifest destiny again?"

  "Priorities. We've got our priorities all wrong. There must be some happy balance between the hopes of the future and the realities of the present. We just don't seem to be able to achieve it. And another thing. Time travel's too private. Everybody and his dog could watch those rockets take off. People come from all over. It was for everybody. But time travel? Feh! It's like when they stopped public executions and did it behind prison walls, in seclusion. Like they were ashamed of it."

  The author looked uncomfortable with his own analogy but was slightly too inebriated to figure out why. He pressed on.

  "The combined pressure of expanding population, diminishing resources, and simple human curiosity—aspiration, whatever you want to call it—was supposed to launch us at the stars and the future. Instead, we're mucking around here in the so-called prehistoric past and haven't even started planning habitats for ourselves at El-Four and El-Five. Most people just can't see the point any more. There's a push on for a land rush into Paleozoic ti
me. Never mind the lack of soil, plant cover, animals. Even some of my colleagues think it's an excellent idea. Hell, one of them told me, this world is practically terraformed already—we can import the plants and animals we need. Oh, the geoscience types would still be able to study their creatures in special preserves. But they can't, they mustn't be greedy. The Paleozoic's a distraction from our true destiny. One giant step sideways."

  "There's another way of looking at it,” said Amy. “From the very first, we physicists explained over and over again that we're not talking about time travel, but about traveling from one universe to another.”

  "It's hard to give up the stars. It isn't just the funding, though it is the funding, of course. It's the public imagination. Such as it is. People can't seem to hold more'n one great big idea in their minds at a time. Space travel or time travel. Well, we already have time travel, or the closest thing to it. And the idea's also started to penetrate that we'll never get to even the nearest star fast enough, soon enough, to suit anybody. Stars are unreachable unless we're willing to spend thousands and even tens of thousands of years traveling interstellar distances at a crawl."

  "Don't use that accusing tone with me,” Amy said. “It's not physics’ fault there's no way to exceed light speed."

  "You people could at least have the decency to find some kind of short-cut in spacetime. A gateway through hyperspace via black holes."

  "We certainly know now that spacetime anomalies exist, but whether we'll ever find one that can take us to the stars—it may be a chimera. Like El Dorado. Or, more aptly, like the Northwest Passage. Not to belittle the effort behind this expedition, particularly since some of it was my own effort, but it's nothing compared to getting people to Mars and back. This world for all practical purposes is the Earth, complete to potable water, breathable atmosphere, UV-screening ozone layer, and fifteen p.s.i. at sea level. You can go into the jump station in Houston at nine o'clock in the morning and eat lunch at noon in Gondwana and be back home in time for dinner at six."