Sundiver

by David Brin

  “You leave my family out of this! I only want to know why it’s necessary to wait until Thursday to find out what all of this is about!”

  Again, the Kanten hesitated.

  “There are . . . aspects of this matter which would best not be spoken over the ether. Several of the more thalamic of the contesting factions in your culture might misuse the knowledge if they . . . overheard. However, let me assure you that your part would be purely technical. It is your knowledge we wish to tap, and the skills you have been using at the Center.”

  Bull! Jacob thought. You want more than that.

  He knew Fagin. If he attended this meeting the Kanten undoubtedly would try to use it as a wedge to get him involved in some ridiculously complicated and dangerous adventure. The alien had already done it to him on three occasions in the past.

  The first two times Jacob hadn’t minded. But he’d been a different sort of person then, the kind who loved that sort of thing.

  Then came the Needle. The trauma in Ecuador had changed his life completely. He had no desire to go through anything like it again.

  And yet, Jacob felt a powerful reluctance to disappoint the old Kanten. Fagin had never actually lied to him, and he was the only E.T. he’d met who was unabashedly an admirer of human culture and history. Physically the most alien creature he knew, Fagin was also the one extraterrestrial who tried hardest to understand Earthmen.

  I should be safe if I simply tell Fagin the truth, Jacob thought If he starts applying too much pressure I’ll let him know about my mental state—the experiments with self-hypnosis and the weird results I’ve been getting. He won’t push too hard if I appeal to his sense of fair play.

  “All right,” he sighed. “You win, Fagin. I’ll be there. Just don’t expect me to be the star of the show.”

  Fagin’s laughter whistled with a flavor of woodwinds. “Do not be concerned about that, Friend-Jacob! In this particular show no one will mistake you for the star!”

  The Sun was still above the horizon as he walked along the upper deck toward Makakai’s quarters. It loomed, dim and orange among the sparse clouds in the west—a benign, featureless orb. He stopped at the rail for a moment to appreciate the colors of the sunset and the smell of the sea.

  He closed his eyes and allowed the sunlight to warm his face, the rays penetrating his skin with gentle, browning insistence. Finally, he swung both legs over the rail and dropped to the lower deck. A taut, energized feeling had almost replaced the day’s exhaustion. He began to hum a fragment of a tune -- out of key, of course.

  A tired dolphin drifted to the edge of the pool when he arrived. Makakai greeted him with a trinary poem too quick to catch, but it sounded amiably nasty. Something about his sex life. Dolphins had been telling humans dirty jokes for thousands of years before men finally started breeding them for brains and for speech, and began to understand. Makakai might be a lot smarter than her ancestors, Jacob thought, but her sense of humor was strictly dolphin.

  “Well,” he said. “Guess who’s had a busy day.”

  She splashed at him, more weakly than usual, and said something that sounded a lot like “Br-r-a-a-a-p you!”

  But she moved in closer when he hunkered down to put his hand into the water and say hello.

  2. SHIRTS AND SKINS

  The old North American governments had razed the Border Strip years ago, to control movements to and from Mexico. A desert was made where two cities once touched.

  Since the Overturn, and the destruction of the oppressive “Bureaucracy” of the old syndical governments, Confederacy authorities had maintained the area as parklands. The border zone between San Diego and Tijuana was now one of the largest forested areas south of Pendleton Park.

  But that was changing. As he drove his rented car southward on the elevated highway, Jacob saw signs that the belt was returning to its old purpose. Crews worked on both sides of the road, cutting down trees and erecting slender, candy-striped poles at hundred-yard intervals to the west and east. The poles were shameful. He looked away.

  A large green and white sign loomed where the line of poles crossed the highway.

  New Boundary: Baja Extraterrestrial Reserve

  Tijuana Residents Who Are Non-Citizens

  Report to City Hall for Your Generous

  Resettlement Bonus!

  Jacob shook his head and grunted, “Oderint Dum Metuant.” Let them hate, so long as they fear. So what if a person has lived in a town his entire life. If he hasn’t got the vote, he’s got to move out of the way when progress comes along.

  Tijuana, Honolulu, Oslo, and half a dozen other cities were to be included when the E.T. Reserves expanded again. Fifty or sixty thousand Probationers, both permanent and temporary, would have to move to make those cities “safe” for perhaps a thousand aliens. The actual hardship would be small, of course. Most of Earth was still barred to E.T.’s, and non-Citizens still had plenty of room. The government offered large reparations as well.

  But once again there were refugees on Earth.

  The city suddenly resumed at the southern edge of the Strip. Many of the structures followed a Spanish or Spanish-Revival style, but overall the city showed the architectural experimentation typical of a modern Mexican town. Here the buildings ran in whites and blues. Traffic on both sides of the highway filled the air with a faint electric whine.

  All over the town, green and white metallic signs, like the one at the border, heralded the coming change. But one, near the highway, had been defaced with black spray paint. Before it passed out of sight, Jacob caught a glimpse of the raggedly written words “Occupation” and “Invasion.”

  A Permanent Probationer did that, he thought. A Citizen wasn’t likely to do anything so kinky, with hundreds of legal ways to express his opinion. And a Temporary Probie, sentenced to probation for a crime, wouldn’t want his sentence lengthened. A Temporary would recognize the certainty of being caught.

  No doubt some poor Permanent facing eviction, had vented his feelings, not caring about the consequences. Jacob sympathized. The P.P. was probably in custody by now.

  Although he was not particularly interested in politics, Jacob came from a political family. Two of his grandparents had been heroes in the Overturn, when a small group of technocrats had succeeded in bringing the Bureaucracy tumbling down. The family policy toward the Probation Laws was one of vehement opposition.

  Jacob had been of a habit, the last few years, of avoiding memories of the past. Now, though, an image came forcefully to mind.

  Summer school in the Alvarez Clan compound in the hills above Caracas . . . in the very house where Joseph Alvarez and his friends had made their plans thirty years before . . . there was Uncle Jeremey lecturing while Jacob’s cousins and adopted cousins listened, all respectful expressions on the outside and seething summer boredom within. And Jacob fidgeted in the back corner, wishing he could get back to his room and the “secret equipment” he and his stepsister Alice had put together.

  Suave and confident, Jeremey was then still in early middle age, a rising voice in the Confederacy Assembly. Soon he would b« leader of the Alvarez clan, edging aside his older brother James.

  Uncle Jeremey was telling about how the old Bureaucracy had decreed that everyone alive would be tested for “violent tendencies” and that all who failed would from then on be under constant surveillance—Probation.

  Jacob could remember the exact words his uncle had spoken that afternoon, when Alice had come sneaking into the Library, excitement radiating from her twelve-year-old face like something about to go nova.

  “. . . They went to great efforts to convince the populace,” Jeremey said in a low rumbling voice, “that the laws would cut down on crime. And they did have that effect. Individuals with radio transmitters in their rumps often think twice about causing trouble to their neighbors.

  “Then, as now, the Citizens loved the Probation Laws. They had no trouble forgetting the fact that they cut through every traditional
Constitutional guarantee of due process. Most of them lived in countries that had never had such niceties anyway.

  “And when a fluke in those laws allowed Joseph Alvarez and his friends to turn the Bureaucrats themselves out on their ears—well, the jubilant Citizens just loved Probation testing even more. It did the leaders of the Overturn no good to push the issue at the time. They were having enough trouble setting lip the Confederacy. . ..”

  Jacob thought he would scream. Here was old Uncle Jeremey gabbing on and on about all that old nonsense, and Alice—lucky Alice whose turn it was to risk the oldsters’ ire and listen in on the tap they’d placed on the house deepspace receiver—what was it she had heard!

  It had to be a starship! It would be only the third of the great slow vessels ever to come back! That was the only possible explanation for the call up of the Space Reserves OF for all the excitement in the east wing, where the adults kept their labs and offices.

  Jeremey was still expounding on the public’s continuing lack of compassion, but Jacob neither saw nor heard him. He kept his face rigid and still as Alice leaned over to whisper—no, gasp in her excitement—into his ear.

  “. . . Aliens, Jacob! They’re bringing extraterrestrials! In their own ships! Oh, Jake, the Vesarius is bringing home Eatees!” ‘

  It was the first time Jacob had ever heard that word. He had often wondered if Alice was the one to coin it. ‘At ten years of age, he recalled, he had wondered if “eatee” implied that someone else was to be designated “eaten.”’

  As he drove above the streets of Tijuana, it occurred to him that the question still hadn’t been answered.

  In several major intersections one corner edifice had been removed and a rainbow-colored “E.T. Comfort Station Kiosk” installed. Jacob saw several of the new low open-decked busses equipped to carry humans and aliens who slithered, or walked three meters tall.

  As he passed City Hall, Jacob saw about a dozen “Skins” picketing. At least they looked like Skins: people wearing furs and waving toy plastic spears.

  Who else would dress that way in this sort of weather?

  He turned up the volume on the car’s radio and pressed the voice-select.

  “Local news,” he said. “Key words: Skins, City Hall, picketing.”

  After only a moment of delay a mechanical voice spoke from behind the dashboard with the slightly flawed inflection of a computer-generated news report. Jacob wondered if they’d ever get the voice tone right.

  “Newsbrief summary.” The artificial voice had an Oxford accent. “Precis: today, January 12, 2248, oh-nine forty one, good morning. Thirty seven persons are picketing the Tijuana City Hall in a legal manner. Their registered grievance is, summarized in abstract, the expansion of the Extraterrestrial Reserve. Please interrupt if you wish a fax or verbal presentation of their registered protest manifesto.”

  The machine paused. Jacob said nothing, already wondering if he wanted to hear the rest of the precis. He was already well acquainted with the Skins’ protest against the implication of the Reserves: that some humans, at least, weren’t fit to associate with aliens.

  “Twenty-six of the thirty-seven members of the protest group carry probation transmitters,” the report continued. “The rest are, of course, Citizens. This compares to a ratio of one probationer per hundred and twenty-four Citizens in Tijuana in general. By their demeanor and dress the protestors can be tentatively described as proponents of the so-called Neolithic Ethic, colloquially, ‘Skins.’ As none of the citizens has invoked privacy privilege, it can be said for certain that thirty of the thirty-seven are residents of Tijuana and the rest are visitors . . .”

  Jacob stabbed the cutoff button and the voice died in mid-sentence. The scene at City Hall had long ago passed out of sight and it was an old story anyway.

  The controversy over the expansion of the E.T. Reserve reminded him, though, that it had been almost two months since he last visited his Uncle James in Santa Barbara. The old bombast was probably up to his protruding ears, by now, In lawsuits on behalf of half of the probies in Tijuana. Still, he would notice if Jacob left on a long trip without saying good-bye, either to him or to the other uncles, aunts, and cousins of the rambling, rambunctious Alvarez clan.

  Long trip? What long trip? Jacob thought suddenly. I’m not going anywhere!

  But that corner of his mind he’d set aside for such things had caught scent of something in this meeting Fagin had called. He felt a sense of anticipation, and simultaneously a wish to suppress it. The feelings would have been intriguing, if they weren’t already so familiar.

  He rode on for a time in silence. Soon the city gave way to open countryside, and traffic reduced to a trickle. For the next twenty kilometers he drove with the sunshine warm on his arm and a pattern of doubts playing tag in his mind.

  In spite of the restlessness he had felt recently, he was reluctant to admit that it was time to leave the Center for Uplift. The work with dolphins and chimps was fascinating, and far more equable (after the first tumultuous weeks during the Water-Sphinx affair) than his old profession as a scientific-crime investigator had been. The staff at the Center was dedicated and, unlike so many other scientific enterprises on Earth these days, they had high morale. They were doing work that had tremendous intrinsic value and would not be made instantly obsolete when the Branch Library in La Paz became completely operational.

  But most important, he had made friends, and those friends had been supportive during the last year or so as he began the slow process of knitting together the schismed portions of his mind.

  Gloria especially. I’m going to have to do something about her if I stay, Jacob thought. And more than the comradely heavy breathing we’ve done so far. The girl’s feelings were becoming obvious.

  Before the disaster in Ecuador, the loss that had brought him to the Center in the first place seeking work and peace, he would have known what to do and had the courage to do it. Now his feelings were a morass. He wondered If he would ever again consider more than a casual love relationship.

  It had been a long two years since Tania’s death. It had been lonely, at times, in spite of his work, his friends, and the ever fascinating games he played with his mind.

  The ground became hilly and brown. Watching the cacti go by, Jacob sat back to enjoy the slow rhythm of the ride. Even now, his body swayed slightly with the motion as if he were still at sea.

  The ocean glistened blue beyond the hills. The nearer the curving road took him to the meeting place, the more he wished he was aboard a boat out there: watching for the first hunched back and raised fluke of the year’s Grey Migration, listening for the whale’s Song of the Leader.

  He rounded one hill to find the parking strips on both sides of the road lined solid with little electric runabouts like his own. On the crests of the hills up ahead were scores of people.

  Jacob pulled his vehicle over into the automatic guideway on the right, where he could cruise slowly and take his eyes off the highway. What was going on here? Two adults and several children unloaded a car by the left side of the road, taking out picnic baskets and binoculars. They were clearly excited. They looked like a typical family on a weekday outing, except that all of them wore bright silver robes and golden amulets. Most of the people on the hill above them were similarly garbed. Many had small telescopes, aimed up the road at something that was obscured from Jacob’s view by the hill on the right

  The crowd on that hill wore their caveman gear with panache. These Compleat Cro-Magnons compromised. They had their own telescopes, as well as wristwatches, radios, and megaphones, to back up their flint axes and spears.

  It wasn’t surprising that the two groups settled on opposite hilltops. The only thing that the Shirts and Skins ever agreed on was their hatred of the Extraterrestrial Quarantine.

  A huge sign spanned the highway at the crest between the two hills.

  BAJA CALIFORNIA EXTRATERRESTRIAL

  RESERVE

  Probationaries N
ot Admitted Without

  Authorization

  First Time Visitors Please Stop At The

  Information Center

  No Fetishes Or Neolithic Garments

  Please Check “Skins” in at Information Center.

  Jacob smiled. The “papers” had had a field day with that last command. There were cartoons on every channel, which depicted visitors to the Reserve being forced to peel off their dermis, while a pair of snakelike E.T.’s looked on approvingly.

  The parked cars jammed together at the top. When Jacob’s car reached that point, the Barrier came into view.

  In a wide swatch of barren ground that stretched from east to west, another line of barber poles ran, this one complete. The colors had faded from many of the smooth posts. Dust coated the round lamps that capped the tops.

  The ubiquitous P-trackers acted here as a visible sieve, allowing Citizens to pass freely in and out of the E.T. Reserve but warning probationers to stay out, and aliens to stay within. It was a crude reminder of a fact that most people carefully ignored: that a large part of humanity wore imbedded transmitters because the larger part didn’t trust them. The majority didn’t want contact between extraterrestrials and those deemed “prone to violence” by a psychological test.

  Apparently, the Barrier did its job well. The crowds on both sides grew thicker up ahead, and the costumes wilder, but the mob stopped in a clump just north of the line of P-posts. Some of the Shirts and Skins were probably Citizens, but they kept on this side with their friends—out of politeness or perhaps as a protest.

  The crowds were thickest just north of the Barrier. Here the Shirts and Skins shoved signs at quickly passing motorists.

  Jacob kept in the guideway and looked about, shading his eyes from the glare and enjoying the show.

  A young man on the left, wrapped in silver sateen from throat to toe, held up a placard that said, “Man-kind Was Uplifted Too: Let Our E.T. Cousins Out!”

  Just across the roadway from him a woman held a banner tacked to a spearshaft: “We did it Ourselves . . . Eatees off Earth!”