Marooned in Realtime

by Vernor Vinge

  Beyond the door was a wide stairway. By the light of their guide’s electric flash, Wili saw that the walls were of natural rock. This was the cave system the winery signs boasted of. They reached the floor and walked across a room filled with enormous wooden casks. An overpowering but not unpleasant yeasty smell filled the cavern. Three young workers nodded to them but did not speak. The supervisor walked behind one of the casks. The back of the wooden cylinder came silently open, revealing a spiral stair. There was barely enough room on it for Jeremy to stand sideways.

  “Sorry about the tight fit,” the supervisor said. “We can actually pull the stairs downward, out of the cask, so even a thorough search won’t find the entrance.” He pushed a button on the wall, and a green glow spread down the shaft. Jeremy gave a start of surprise. “Tailored biolight,” the man explained. “The stuff uses the carbon dioxide we exhale. Can you imagine what it would do to indoor lighting if we were allowed to market it?” He continued in this vein as they descended, talking about the harmless bioscience inventions that could make so much difference to today’s world if only they weren’t Banned.

  At the bottom, there was another cavern. This one’s ceiling was covered with glowing green. It was bright enough to read by, at least where it clumped up, over tables and instrument boards. Everyone looked five weeks dead in the fungal glow. It was very quiet; not even surfsound penetrated the rock. There was no one else in the room.

  He led them to a table covered with worn linen sheeting. He patted the table and glanced at Wili. “You’re the fellow we’ve been, uh, hired to help?”

  “That’s right,” said Rosas when Wili gave only a shrug.

  “Well, sit up here and I’ll take a look at you.”

  Wili did so, cautiously. There was no antiseptic smell, no needles. He expected the man to tell him to strip, but no such command was given. The supervisor had neither the arrogant indifference of a slave gang vet, nor the solicitous manner of the doctor Paul had called during the winter.

  “First off, I want to know if there are any structural problems…Let me see, I’ve got my scope around here somewhere.” He rummaged in an ancient metal cabinet.

  Rosas scowled. “You don’t have any assistants?”

  “Oh, dear me, no.” The other did not look up from his search. “There are only five of us here at a time. Before the War, there were dozens of bioscientists in La Jolla. But when we went underground, things changed. For a while, we planned to start a pharmaceutical house as a cover. The Authority hasn’t Banned those, you know. But it was just too risky. They would naturally suspect anyone in the drug business.

  “So we set up Scripps Vineyards. It’s nearly ideal. We can openly ship and receive biologically active materials. And some of our development activities can take place right in our own fields. The location is good, too. We’re only five kilometers from Old Five. The beach caves were used for smuggling even before the War, even before the United States…Aha, here it is.” He pulled a plastic cylinder into the light. He walked to another cabinet and returned with a metal hoop nearly 150 centimeters across. There was a click as he slid it into the base of the cylinder. It looked a little foolish, like a butterfly hoop without a net.

  “Anyway,” he continued as he approached Wili, “the disadvantage is that we can only support a very few ‘vineyard technicians’ at a time. It’s a shame. There’s so much to learn. There’s so much good we could do for the world.” He passed the loop around the table and Wili’s body. At the same time he watched the display at the foot of the table.

  Rosas said, “I’m sure. Just like the good you did with the plag—” He broke off as the screen came to life. The colors were vivid, glowing with their own light. They seemed more alive than anything else in the green-tinted lab. For a moment it looked like the sort of abstract design that’s so easy to generate. Then Wili noticed movement and asymmetries. As the supervisor slid the hoop back over Wili’s chest, the elliptical shape shrank dramatically, then grew again as the hoop moved by his head. Wili rose to his elbows in surprise, and the image broadened.

  “Lie back down. You don’t have to be motionless, but let me choose the view angle.”

  Wili lay back and felt almost violated. They were seeing a cross section of his own guts, taken in the plane of the hoop! The supervisor brought it back to Wili’s chest. They watched his heart squeezing, thuddub thuddub. The bioscientist made an adjustment, and the view swelled until the heart filled the display. They could see the blood surge in and out of each chamber. A second display blinked on beside the first, this new one filled with numbers of unknown meaning.

  The supervisor continued for ten or fifteen minutes, examining all of Wili’s torso. Finally, he removed the hoop and studied the summary data on the displays. “So much for the floor show.

  “I won’t even have to do a genopsy on you, my boy. It’s clear that your problem is one we’ve cured before.” He looked at Rosas, finally responding to the other’s hostility. “You object to our price, Mr. Rosas?”

  The undersheriff started to answer, but the supervisor waved him quiet. “The price is high. We always need the latest electronic equipment. During the last fifty years, the Authority has allowed you Tinkers to flourish. I daresay, you’re far ahead of the Authority’s own technology. On the other hand, we few poor people in bioresearch have lived in fear, have had to hide in caves to continue our work. And since the Authority has convinced you that we’re monsters, most of you won’t even sell to us.

  “Nevertheless, we’ve worked miracles these fifty years, Mr. Rosas. If we’d had your freedom, we’d have worked more than miracles. Earth would be Eden now.”

  “Or a charnel house,” Rosas muttered.

  The supervisor nodded, seemed only slightly angered. “You say that even when you need us. The plagues warped both you and the Authority. If it hadn’t been for those strange accidents, how different things would be. In fact, given a free hand, we could have saved people like this boy from ever having been diseased.”

  “How?” asked Wili.

  “Why, with another plague,” the other replied lightly, reminding Wili of the “mad scientists” in the old TV shows Irma and Bill watched. To suggest a plague after all the plagues had done. “Yes, another. You see, your problem was caused by genetic damage to your parents. The most elegant countermeasure would be to tailor a virus that moves through the population, correcting just those genotypes that cause the problem.”

  Fascination with experiment was clear in his voice. Wili didn’t know what to think of his savior, this man of goodwill who might be more dangerous than the Peace Authority and all the Jonque aristocrats put together.

  The supervisor sighed and turned off the display. “And yes, I suppose we are crazier than before, maybe even less responsible. After all, we’ve pinned our whole lives on our beliefs, while the rest of you could drift in the open light without fearing the Authority…

  “In any case, there are other ways of curing your disease, and we’ve known them for decades.” He glanced at Rosas. “Safer ways.” He walked part way down the corridor to a locker and glanced at a display by the door. “Looks like we have enough on hand.” He filled an ordinary looking glass bottle from the locker and returned. “Don’t worry, no plague stuff. This is simply a parasite—I should say a symbiont.” He laughed shortly. “In fact, it’s a type of yeast. If you take five tablets every day till the bottle’s empty, you’ll establish a stable culture in your gut. You should notice some improvement within ten days.”

  He put the jar in Wili’s hand. The boy stared. Just“—here, take this and all your problems will be gone by morning—” or in ten days, or whatever. Where was the sacrifice, the pain? Salvation came this fast in dreams alone.

  Rosas did not seem impressed. “Very well. Red Arrow and the others will pay as promised: programs and hardware to your specifications for three years.” The words were spoken with some effort, and Wili realized just how reluctant a guide Miguel Rosas had been
—and how important Paul Naismith’s wishes were to the Tinkers.

  The supervisor nodded, for the first time cowed by Rosas’ hostility, for the first time realizing that the trade would produce no general gratitude or friendship.

  Wili jumped down from the table and they started back to the stairs. They had not gone ten steps when Jeremy said, “Sir, you said Eden?” His voice sounded diffident, almost frightened. But still curious. After all, Jeremy was the one who dared the Authority with his self-powered vehicles. Jeremy was the one who always talked of science remaking the world. “You said Eden. What could you do besides cure a few diseases?”

  The supervisor seemed to realize there was no mockery in the question. He stopped under a bright patch of ceiling and gestured Jeremy Sergeivich closer. “There are many things, son. But here is one…How old do you think I am? How old do you think the others at the winery are?”

  Discounting the greenish light that made everyone look dead, Wili tried to guess. The skin was smooth and firm, with just a hint of wrinkles around the eyes. The hair looked natural and full. He had thought forty before. Now he would say even younger.

  And the others they had seen? About the same. Yet in any normal group of adults, more than half were past fifty. And then Wili remembered that when the supervisor spoke of the War, he talked like an oldster, of time in personal memory. “We” decided this, and “we” did that.

  He had been adult at the time of the War. He was as old as Naismith or Kaladze.

  Jeremy’s jaw sagged, and after a moment he nodded shyly. His question had been answered. The supervisor smiled at the boy. “So you see, Mr. Rosas talks of risks—and they may be as great as he claims. But what’s to gain is very great, too.” He turned and walked the short distance to the stairs door—

  —which opened in his face. It was one of the workers from the cask room. “Juan,” the man began, talking fast, “the place is being deep-probed. There are helicopters circling the fields. Lights everywhere.”

  16

  The supervisor stepped back, and the man came off the spiral stair. “What! Why didn’t you call down? Never mind, I know. Have you powered down all Banned equipment?” The man nodded. “Where is the boss?”

  “She’s sticking at the front desk. So are the others. She’s going to try to brazen it out.”

  “Hmm.” The supervisor hesitated only a second. “It’s really the only thing to do. Our shielding should hold up. They can inspect the cask room all they want.” He looked at the three Northerners. “We two are going up and say hello to the forces of worldwide law and order. If they ask, we’ll tell them you’ve already departed along the beach route.”

  Wili’s cure might still be safe.

  The supervisor made some quick adjustment at a wall panel. The fungus gradually dimmed, leaving a single streak that wobbled off into the dark. “Follow the glow and you’ll eventually reach the beach. Mr. Rosas, I hope you understand the risk we take in letting you go. If we survive, I expect you to make good on our bargain.”

  Rosas nodded, then awkwardly accepted the other’s flashlight. He turned and hustled Jeremy and Wili off into the dark. Behind them, Wili heard the two bioscientists climbing the stairs to their own fate.

  The dim band turned twice, and the corridor became barely shoulder wide. The stone was moist and irregular under Wili’s hand. The tunnel went downhill now and was deathly dark. Mike flicked on his light and urged them to a near run. “Do you know what the Authority would do to a lab?”

  Jeremy was hot on Wili’s heels, occasionally bumping into the smaller boy, though never quite hard enough to make them lose their balance. What would the Authority do? Wili’s answer was half a pant. “Bobble it?”

  Of course. Why risk a conventional raid? If they even had strong suspicions, the safest action would be to embobble the whole place, killing the scientists and isolating whatever death seed might be stored here. Even without the Authority’s reputation of harsh punishment for Banned research, it made complete sense. Any second now, they might find themselves inside a vast silver sphere. Inside.

  Dio, perhaps it had happened already. Wili half stumbled at the thought, nearly losing his grip on the glass jar that was the reason for the whole adventure. They would not know till they ran headlong into the wall. They would live for hours, maybe days, but when the air gave out they would die as all the thousands before them must have died, at Vandenberg and Point Loma and Huachuca and…

  The ceiling came lower, till it was barely centimeters above Wili’s head. Jeremy and Mike pounded clumsily along, bent over yet trying to run at full speed. Light and shadow danced jaggedly about them.

  Wili watched ahead for three figures running toward them: The first sign of embobblement would be their own reflections ahead of them. And there was something moving up there. Close.

  “Wait! Wait!” he screamed. The three came to an untidy stop before—a door, an almost ordinary door. Its surface was metallic, and that accounted for the reflection. He pushed the opener. The door swung outward, and they could hear the surf. Mike doused the light.

  They started down a stairway, but too fast. Wili heard someone trip and an instant later he was hit from behind. The three tumbled down the steps. Stone bit savagely into his arms and back. Wili’s fingers spasmed open and the jar flew into space, its landing marked by the sound of breaking glass.

  Life’s blood spattering down unseen steps.

  He felt Jeremy scramble past him. “Your flashlight, Mike, quick.”

  After a second, light filled the stairs. If any Peace cops were on the beach looking inland…?

  It was a risk they took for him.

  Wili and Jeremy scrabbled back and forth across the stairs, unmindful of the glass shards. In seconds they had recovered the tablets—along with considerable dirt and glass. They dumped it in Jeremy’s waterproof hiking bag. The boy dropped a piece of paper into the bag. “Directions, I bet.” He zipped it shut and handed it to Wili.

  Rosas kept the light on a second longer, and the three memorized the path they must follow. The steps were scarcely more than water-worn corrugations. The cave was free of any other human touch.

  Darkness again, and the three started carefully downward, still moving faster than was really comfortable. If only they had a night scope. Such equipment wasn’t Banned, but the Tinkers didn’t flaunt it. The only high tech equipment they’d brought to La Jolla was the Red Arrow chess processor.

  Wili thought he saw light ahead. Over the surf drone he heard a thupthupthup that grew first louder and then faded. A helicopter.

  They made a final turn and saw the outside world through the vertical crack that was the entrance to the cave. The evening mist curled in, not as thick as earlier. A horizontal band of pale gray hung at eye level. After a moment, he realized the glow was thirty or forty meters away—the surf line. Every few seconds, something bright reflected off the surf and waters beyond.

  Behind him Rosas whispered, “Light splash from their search beams on top of the bluff. We may be in luck.” He pushed past Jeremy and led them to the opening. They hid there a few seconds and looked as far as they could up and down the beach. No one was visible, though there were a number of aircraft circling the area. Below the entrance spread a rubble of large boulders, big enough to hide their progress.

  It happened just as they stepped away from the entrance: A deep, bell-like tone was followed by the cracking and crashing of rock now free of its parent strata. The avalanche proceeded all around them, thousands of tons of rock adding itself to the natural debris of the coastline. They cowered beneath the noise, waiting to be crushed.

  But nothing fell close by, and when Wili finally looked up, he saw why. Silhouetted against the mist and occasional stars was the perfect curve of a sphere. The bobble had to be two or three hundred meters across, extending from the lowest of the winery’s caves to well over the top of the bluff and from the inland vineyards to just beyond the edge of the cliffs.

  “They
did it. They really did it,” Rosas muttered to himself.

  Wili almost shouted with relief. A few centimeters the other way and they would have been entombed.

  Jeremy!

  Wili ran to the edge of the sphere. The other boy had been standing right behind them, surely close enough to be safe. Then where was he? Wili beat his fists against the blood warm surface. Rosas’ hand closed over his mouth and he felt himself lifted off the ground. Wili struggled for a moment in enforced silence, then went limp. Rosas set him down.

  “I know.” Mike’s voice was a strangled whisper. “He must be on the other side. But let’s make sure.” He flicked on his light—almost as brightly as he had risked in the cave—and they walked several meters back and forth along the line where the bobble passed into the rocks. They did not find Jeremy, but—

  Rosas’ flash stopped for a moment, freezing one tiny patch of ground in its light. Then the light winked out, but not before Wili saw two tiny spots of red, two…fingertips…lying in the dirt.

  Just centimeters away, Jeremy must lie writhing in pain, staring into the darkness, feeling the blood on his hands. The wound could not be fatal. Instead, the boy would have hours still to die. Perhaps he would return to the labs, and sit with the others—waiting for the air to run out. The ultimate excommunication.

  “You have the bag?” Rosas’ voice quavered.

  The question caught Wili as he was reaching for the mangled fingers. He stopped, straightened. “Yes.”

  “Well then, let’s go.” The words were curt. The tone was clamped-down hysteria.

  The undersheriff grabbed Wili’s shoulder and urged him down the jumble of half-seen rocks. The air was filled with dust and the cold moistness of the fog. The fresh broken rock was already wet and slippery. They clung close to the largest boulders, fearing both landslides and detection from the air. The bobble and bluffs cut a black edge into the hazy aura of the lights that swept the ground above. They could hear both trucks and aircraft up there.