Rainbow Mars

by Larry Niven

  “And Leviathan’s nervous output was masking the signal.”

  “Sure enough, it was. The moment he was dead the NAI registered another signal. I followed it to—” Svetz jerked his head. They were floating the whale out of the extension cage. “To him.”

  * * *

  Days later, two men stood on one side of a thick glass wall.

  “We took some clones from him, then passed him on to the Secretary-General’s Vivarium,” said Ra Chen. “Pity you had to settle for an albino.” He waved aside Svetz’s protest: “I know, I know, you were pressed for time.”

  Beyond the glass, the one-eyed whale glared at Svetz through murky seawater. Surgeons had removed most of the harpoons, but scars remained along his flanks; and Svetz, awed, wondered how long the beast had been at war with Man. Centuries? How long did sperm whales live?

  Ra Chen lowered his voice. “We’d all be in trouble if the Secretary-General found out that there was once a bigger animal than this. You understand that, don’t you, Svetz?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Good.” Ra Chen’s gaze swept across another glass wall, and a fire-breathing Gila monster. Further down, a horse looked back at him along the dangerous spiral horn in its forehead.

  “Always we find the unexpected,” said Ra Chen. “Sometimes I wonder…”

  If you’d do your research better, Svetz thought …

  “Did you know that time travel wasn’t even a concept until the first century Ante Atomic? A writer invented it. From then until the fourth century Post Atomic, time travel was pure fantasy. It violates everything the scientists of the time thought were natural laws. Logic. Conservation of matter and energy. Momentum, reaction, any law of motion that makes time a part of the statement. Relativity.

  “It strikes me,” said Ra Chen, “that every time we push an extension cage past that particular four-century period, we shove it into a kind of fantasy world. That’s why you keep finding giant sea serpents and fire-breathing—”

  “That’s nonsense,” said Svetz. He was afraid of his boss, yes; but there were limits.

  “You’re right,” Ra Chen said instantly. Almost with relief. “Take a month’s vacation, Svetz, then back to work. The Secretary-General wants a bird.”

  “A bird?” Svetz smiled. A bird sounded harmless enough. “I suppose he found it in another children’s book?”

  “That’s right. Ever hear of a bird called a roc?”

  BIRD IN THE HAND

  “It’s not a roc,” said Ra Chen.

  The bird looked stupidly back at them from behind a thick glass wall. Its wings were small and underdeveloped; its legs and feet were tremendous, ludicrous. It weighed three hundred pounds and stood nearly eight feet tall.

  Other than that, it looked a lot like a baby chick.

  “It kicked me,” Svetz complained. A slender, small-boned man, he stood stiffly this day, with a slight list to port. “It kicked me in the side and broke four ribs. I barely made it back to the extension cage.”

  “It still isn’t a roc. Sorry about that, Svetz. We did some research in the history section of the Beverly Hills Library while you were in the hospital. The roc was only a legend.”

  “But look at it!”

  Svetz’s beefy, red-faced boss nodded. “That’s probably what started the legend. Early explorers in Australia saw these—ostriches wandering about. They said to themselves, ‘If the chicks are this size, what are the adults like?’ Then they went home and told stories about the adults.”

  “I got my ribs caved in for a flightless bird?”

  “Cheer up, Svetz. It’s not a total loss. The ostrich was extinct. It makes a fine addition to the Secretary-General’s Vivarium.”

  “But the Secretary-General wanted a roc. What are you going to tell him?”

  Ra Chen scowled. “It’s worse than that. Do you know what the Secretary-General wants now?”

  People meeting Ra Chen for the first time thought he was constantly scowling, until they saw his scowl. Svetz had suspected Ra Chen was worried. Now he knew it.

  The Secretary-General was everybody’s problem. A recessive gene inherited from his powerful, inbred family had left him with the intelligence of a six-year-old child. Another kind of inheritance had made him overlord of the Earth and its colonies. His whim was law throughout the explored universe.

  Whatever the Secretary-General wanted now, it was vital that he get it.

  “Some idiot took him diving in Los Angeles,” Ra Chen said. “He wants to see the city before it sank.”

  “That doesn’t sound too bad.”

  “It wouldn’t be, if it had stopped there. Some of his Circle of Advisors noticed his interest. They got him historical tapes on Los Angeles. He loves them. He wants to join the first Watts Riot.”

  Svetz gulped. “That should raise some security problems.”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? The Secretary-General is almost pure caucasian.”

  The ostrich cocked its head to one side, studying them. It still looked like the tremendous chick of an even bigger bird. Svetz could imagine that it had just cracked its way out of an egg the size of a bungalow.

  “I’m going to have a headache,” he said. “Why do you tell me these things? You know I don’t like politics.”

  “Can you imagine what would happen if the Secretary-General got himself killed with the help of the Institute for Temporal Research? There are enough factions already that would like to see us disbanded. Space, for instance; they’d love to swallow us up.”

  “But what can we do? We can’t turn down a direct request from the Secretary-General!”

  “We can distract him.”

  They had lowered their voices to conspiratorial whispers. Now they turned away from the ostrich and strolled casually down the line of glass cages.

  “How?”

  “I don’t know yet. If I could only get to his nurse,” Ra Chen said between his teeth. “I’ve tried hard enough. Maybe the Institute for Space Research has bought her. Then again, maybe she’s loyal. She’s been with him twenty-four years.

  “How do I know what would catch his attention? I’ve only met the Secretary-General four times, all on formal occasions. But his attention span is low. He’d forget about Los Angeles if we could distract him.”

  The cage they were passing was labeled:

  ELEPHANT

  Retrieved from the year 700 Ante Atomic, approximately, from the region of India, Earth. EXTINCT.

  The wrinkled gray beast watched them go with sleepy indifference. His air of inhuman age and wisdom was such that he must have recognized Svetz as his captor. But he didn’t care.

  Svetz had captured almost half of the animals in the Vivarium. And Svetz was afraid of animals. Especially big animals. Why did Ra Chen keep sending him after animals?

  The thirty feet of lizard in the next cage (GILA MONSTER, the placard said) definitely recognized Svetz. It jetted orange-white flame at him, and flapped its tiny batlike wings in fury when the flame washed harmlessly across the glass. If it ever got loose—

  But that was why the cages were airtight. The animals of Earth’s past must be protected from the air of Earth’s present.

  Svetz remembered the cobalt-blue sky of Earth’s past and was reassured. Today’s afternoon sky was brilliant turquoise at the zenith, shading through pastel green and yellow to rich yellow-brown near the horizon. If the Chinese fire-breather ever got out, it would be too busy gasping for purer air to attack Svetz.

  “What can we get him? I think he’s tired of these animals. Svetz, what about a giraffe?”

  “A what?”

  “Or a dog, or a satyr … it’s got to be unusual,” Ra Chen muttered. “A teddy bear?”

  Out of his fear of animals, Svetz ventured, “I wonder if you might not be on the wrong track, sir.”

  “Mph? Why?”

  “The Secretary-General has enough animals to satisfy a thousand men. Worse than that, you’re competing with Space when you
bring back funny animals. They can do that too.”

  Ra Chen scratched behind his ear. “I never thought of that. You’re right. But we’ve got to do something.”

  “There must be lots of things to do with a time machine.”

  * * *

  They could have taken a displacement plate back to the Center. Ra Chen preferred to walk. It would give him a chance to think, he said.

  Svetz walked with bowed head and blind eyes alongside his boss. Inspiration had come to him at similar times. But they had reached the red sandstone cube that was the Center, and the mental lightning had not struck.

  A big hand closed on his upper arm. “Just a minute,” Ra Chen said softly. “The Secretary-General’s paying us a visit.”

  Svetz’s heart lurched. “How do you know?”

  “You should recognize that machine in the walkway. We brought it back last month from Los Angeles, from the day of the Great California Earthquake. It’s an internal combustion automobile. It belongs to the Secretary-General.”

  “What’ll we do?”

  “Go in and show him around. Pray he doesn’t insist on being taken back to Watts, August eleventh, twenty Post Atomic.”

  “Suppose he does?” If they boiled Ra Chen for treason, they would surely boil Svetz too.

  “I’ll have to send him back if he asks it. Oh, not with you, Svetz. With Zeera. She’s black, and she speaks American. It might help.”

  “Not enough,” said Svetz, but he was already calmer. Let Zeera take the risks.

  They passed close by the Secretary-General’s automobile. Svetz was intrigued by its odd, angular look, its complex control panels, the shiny chrome trim. Someone had removed the hood, so that the polished complexity of the motor was open to view.

  “Wait,” Svetz said suddenly. “Does he like it?”

  “Will you come on?”

  “Does the Secretary-General like his automobile?”

  “Sure, Svetz. He loves it.”

  “Get him another car. California must have been full of automobiles on the day before the Great Quake.”

  Ra Chen stopped suddenly. “That could be it. It would hold him for a while, give us time…”

  “Time for what?”

  Ra Chen didn’t hear. “A racing car…? No, he’d kill himself. The Circle of Advisors would want to install a robot chauffeur-override. Maybe a dune buggy?”

  “Why not ask him?”

  “It’s worth a try,” said Ra Chen. They went up the steps.

  * * *

  In the Center there were three time machines, including the one with the big extension cage, plus a host of panels with flashing colored lights. The Secretary-General liked those. He smiled and chuckled as Ra Chen led him about. His guards hovered at his shoulders, their faces stiff, their fingernails clicking against their gunbutts.

  Ra Chen introduced Svetz as “my best agent.” Svetz was so overwhelmed by the honor that he could only stutter. But the Secretary-General didn’t seem to notice.

  Whether he had forgotten about seeing the Watts Riot was moot; but he did forget to ask on that occasion.

  When Ra Chen asked about cars, the Secretary-General smiled all across his face and nodded so vigorously that Svetz worried about spinal injury. Faced by a vast array of choices, five or six decades with dozens of new models for every year, the Secretary-General put his finger in his mouth and considered well.

  Then he made his choice.

  * * *

  “‘Why not ask him? Why not ask him?’” Ra Chen mimicked savagely. “Now we know. The first car! He wants the first car ever made!”

  “I thought he’d ask for a make of car.” Svetz rubbed his eyes hard. “How can we possibly find one car? A couple of decades to search through, and all of the North American and European continents!”

  “It’s not that bad. We’ll use the books from the Beverly Hills Library. But it’s bad enough, Svetz…”

  * * *

  The raid on the Beverly Hills Library had been launched in full daylight, using the big extension cage and a dozen guards armed with stunners, on June third, twenty-six Post Atomic. Giant time machines, crazy men wearing flying belts—on any other day it would have made every newspaper and television program in the country. But June the third was a kind of Happy Hunting Ground for the Institute for Temporal Research.

  No Californian would report the raid, except to other Californians. If the story did get out, it would be swamped by more important news. The series of quakes would begin at sunset, and the ocean would rise like a great green wall …

  Svetz and Ra Chen and Zeera Southworth spent half the night going through the history section of the Beverly Hills Library. Ra Chen knew enough white American to recognize titles; but in the end Zeera had to do all the reading.

  Zeera Southworth was tall and slender and very dark, crowned with hair like a black powder explosion. She sat gracefully cross-legged on the floor, looking very angular, reading pertinent sections aloud while the others paced. They followed a twisting trail of references.

  By two in the morning they were damp and furious.

  “Nobody invented the automobile!” Ra Chen exploded. “It just happened!”

  “We certainly have a wide range of choices,” Zeera agreed. “I take it we won’t want any of the steam automobiles. That would eliminate Gugnot and Trevethick and the later British steam coaches.”

  “We’ll concentrate on internal combustion.”

  Svetz said, “Our best bets seem to be Lenoir of France and Marcus of Vienna. Except that Daimler and Benz have good claims, and Selden’s patent held good in court—”

  “Dammit, pick one!”

  “Just a minute, sir.” Zeera alone retained some semblance of calm. “This Ford might be the best we’ve got.”

  “Ford? Why? He invented nothing but a system of mass production.”

  Zeera held up the book. Svetz recognized it: a biography she had been reading earlier. “This book implies that Ford was responsible for everything: that he created the automobile industry singlehanded.”

  “But we know that isn’t true,” Svetz protested.

  Ra Chen made a pushing motion with one hand. “Let’s not be hasty. We take Ford’s car, and we produce that book to authenticate it. Who’ll know the difference?”

  “But if someone does the same research we just—oh. Sure. He’ll get the same answers. No answers. Ford’s just as good a choice as anyone else.”

  “Better, if nobody looks further,” Zeera said with satisfaction. “Too bad we can’t take the Model T; it looks much more like an automobile. This thing he started with looks like a kiddy cart. It says he built it out of old pipes.”

  “Tough,” said Ra Chen.

  * * *

  Late the next morning, Ra Chen delivered last-minute instructions.

  “You can’t just take the car,” he told Zeera. “If you’re interrupted, come back without it.”

  “Yes, sir. It would be less crucial if we took our duplicate from a later time, from the Smithsonian Institution, for instance.”

  “The automobile has to be new. Be reasonable, Zeera! We can’t give the Secretary-General a second-hand automobile!”

  “No sir.”

  “We’ll land you about three in the morning. Use infrared and pills to change your vision. Don’t show any visible light. Artificial light would probably scare them silly.”

  “Right.”

  “Were you shown—”

  “I know how to use the duplicator.” Zeera sounded faintly supercilious, as always. “I also know that it reverses the image.”

  “Never mind that. Bring back the reversed duplicate, and we’ll just reverse it again.”

  “Of course.” She seemed chagrined that she had not seen that for herself. “What about dialect?”

  “You speak black and white American, but it’s for a later period. Don’t use slang. Stick to black unless you want to impress someone white. Then speak white, but speak slowly and carefully
and use simple words. They’ll think you’re from another country. I hope.”

  Zeera nodded crisply. She stooped and entered the extension cage, turned and pulled the duplicator after her. Its bulk was small, but it weighed a ton or so without the lift field generator to float it. One end glowed white with glow-paint.

  They watched the extension cage blur and vanish. It was still attached to the rest of the time machine, but attached along a direction that did not transmit light.

  “Now then!” Ra Chen rubbed his hands together. “I don’t expect she’ll have any trouble getting Henry Ford’s flightless flight stick. Our trouble may come when the Secretary-General sees what he’s got.”

  Svetz nodded, remembering the gray-and-flat pictures in the history books. Ford’s machine was ungainly, slipshod, ugly and undependable. A few small surreptitious additions would make it dependable enough to suit the Secretary-General. Nothing would make it beautiful.

  “We need another distraction,” said Ra Chen. “We’ve only bought ourselves more time to get it.”

  Zeera’s small time machine gave off a sound of ripping cloth, subdued, monotonous, reassuring. A dozen workmen were readying the big extension cage. Zeera would need it to transport the duplicate automobile.

  “There’s something I’d like to try,” Svetz ventured.

  “Concerning what?”

  “The roc.”

  Ra Chen grinned. “The ostrich? Svetz, don’t you ever give up?”

  Svetz looked stubborn. “Do you know anything about neoteny?”

  “Never heard of it. Look, Svetz, we’re going to be over budget because of the roc trip. Not your fault, of course, but another trip would cost us over a million commercials.”

  “I won’t need the time machine.”

  “Oh?”

  “But I could use the help of the Palace Veterinarian. Have you got enough pull to arrange that?”

  * * *

  The Palace Veterinarian was a stocky, blocky, busty woman with muscular legs and a thrusting jaw. A floating platform packed with equipment followed her between the rows of cages.

  “I know most of these beasts,” she told Svetz. “Once upon a time I was going to give then all names. An animal ought to have a name.”