by John Barnes
This particular time, however, was a complete bomb. A severe snowstorm up in Oregon kept the celebrity, who everyone wanted to see, from arriving, but the weather was nice in Denver, and hundreds of people didn’t get the word until they got to the signing. Then, of course, they discovered that the only person available to sign their books was The Author Commonly Known As Who?
That very gratifying crowd, which might have bought a couple hundred books, melted like snow in a furnace. I sucked it up, got on the phone, met a couple of buddies who live downtown for sushi at the place in Writer Square where I usually do, and by nine P.M. I was at utterly loose ends, so, foolishly, I turned on the television.
As soon as I saw the news about the fireball, I started to laugh, and said aloud, “Travis will be dropping by Gunnison.” I even got out my road atlas and ruler and confirmed that the two big simultaneous fireballs were along a line that, near enough, ran through Kirtland AFB. “Don’t drop by Gunnison tonight, Trav,” I said, still shaking my head with the certainty that he would be turning up again with more preposterous stories. “Because I’m here.”
“I know, Kara told me,” a voice said from outside my door.
I opened it and there he was. “Come in and sit down,” I said, “and let me get something up from McCormicks downstairs.”
“Will the expense account allow whiskey, a piece of fish, and a mountain of potatoes?” he asked. “Don’t want you getting stuck with it.”
“Don’t fret about that. The worst that happens is I buy you a meal. And who knows. I might get a book out of this someday. At which point it all becomes research—just like taking six Detroit cops to Hooters was research.”
“Cool.”
I had them send up a bottle of Wild Turkey, two nice swordfish steaks, a big pot of coffee, and a triple of their potatoes.
And he sat down and ate and told me one more whopper.
They had learned last week that a pTh’tong n’Wi ship carrying Susan Glasgow was going to make an upper atmosphere pass to take a look at Great Sand Dunes, where Susan would record a statement, with that in the background, that she authorized them to take the sand. The ship would be passing bang over Kirtland AFB, about fifty miles up, dipping into the atmosphere and then popping out. Its cloaking was less than perfect; the pTh’tong n’Wi have a low opinion of barbarian technology, and had little reason to think anyone in our government knew anything about them.
And since we only had to shoot at one species to void all the contracts, those seemed like the fuckers to shoot at, especially since their ship also carried a human traitor.
“It was trivial, John. We just gaudeamused a ton of liquid propane, and four tons of liquid oxygen, and an empty cardboard box slightly larger in volume than either of those, in that order, blipblipblip, into the same space in the middle of the pTh’tong n’Wi ship, which meant the oxygen compressed the propane into a one-molecule-thick layer, and the cardboard box compressed the oxygen and the propane into a one-molecule-thick layer, and it was all white-hot on arrival. They never pulled back out of their upper atmosphere pass; the ship broke up and bits of it rained down all over, a few hundred miles downrange.
“And All Thumbs got the ruling from the Galactic Court, two seconds later. That’s the advantage of time travel, you know. All contracts for possession of the planet are void. It’s ours. We’re the owners, again.
“Think, maybe, we’ll take better care of it, this time?”
I poured him a big glass of whiskey, and watched while he gulped it down. No doubt there are more mature, healthy ways to respond, but I couldn’t think of any, just then.
The Gaudeamus Effect will be made public on the last day of 2010, if it hasn’t leaked out completely before. Brown Pierre’s drugs and viruses are supposedly spreading everywhere, quietly, gradually, gentling our harsh hearts. Supposedly the super-technologies like antigravity and zero-point power, and all the old Cold War secrets, will leak out soon; it’s interesting that everyone who follows intelligence history and secret weapons stories did notice a burst of leaks that began in February 2000 and shows no sign of abating, even with the change of administrations.
I am told that there is nothing intrinsically difficult about making Gaudeamus machines, large or small. In a few years, anyone will be able to blow you up, from anywhere; anyone will be able to leave a rose on your bed. Anyone will be able to have all the energy they want, make anything they want, hurt anyone they want; we will be gods. Do you suppose we can be smart enough, and gentle enough, soon enough?
And I still have no idea whether Travis Bismarck was telling me the truth. If he was, I’ll know on February 4, 2011, I guess. But I wish there were some sign I could look for before then, something to tell me that Brown Pierre is working his voodoo on us, that the new technologies are leaking out to make the world cleaner, safer, easier to live in.
Travis said they were going to try to avoid highly dramatic events.
The first sign, perhaps, across the next few years, will be when things unexpectedly start to break for the better, instead of the usual mix of good breaks and bad breaks. Normally every decade has some bursts of hope, and almost all of them then fizzle, like Martin Luther King, glasnost, Cory Aquino, cold fusion, moon missions, Star Wars movies, techno, the Nuclear Freeze—all those within my lifetime. Usually things like that fizzle; even if they turn out pretty well, they’re never what they should have been. If all of a sudden, stuff starts to go better than you hoped it might, that might be a sign.
Would it be cheating, the equivalent of lowering the bar or taping the bathroom scale, if we all quietly, covertly, in our own ways and with our own gifts, tried to make things go a little better than might be hoped for?
Next time I take Travis on a long drive, I think I’ll ask.
Excerpt from an undated “Page 3” of a letter in Travis Bismarck’s handwriting, on a page torn out of a steno pad. I think he was writing to me about some book of mine before 1995. Usually he writes to me every time he reads one of my books. I wish I could find the rest of his letter, but it probably went into some box that got thrown away. I don’t really remember. I’ve asked Travis, and he doesn’t remember writing it.
So, John, looks to me like another way that there’s two kinds of people. 1. People who read too much to have interesting lives. 2. People who read too little to notice how interesting their lives are. And in real life they’re never the same people. That’s why people love stories about Zen masters & Einstein & wizards & Old Coyote & poets & saints & beats & hobos. It’s also how we know that most of them are fictional. Especially fucking Einstein.
ALSO BY JOHN BARNES FROM TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES
ORBITAL RESONANCE
A MILLION OPEN DOORS
MOTHER OF STORMS
KALEIDOSCOPE CENTURY
ONE FOR THE MORNING GLORY
EARTH MADE OF GLASS
APOSTROPHES AND APOCALYPSES
FINITY
CANDLE
THE RETURN (with Buzz Aldrin)
THE MERCHANTS OF SOULS
THE SKY SO BIG AND BLACK
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As usual, this book incurred some debts on its way to its (very late) birth. I’d like to thank (in roughly alphabetical order):
Travis Bismarck, with whom I spent a lot of time.
Robert Brown, C. E. Myers, and William Sanders, for an enlightening conversation about guns and assholes.
Kara Dalkey, for letting herself appear under her own name here, and for much idea-jamming in the development stages, and because never once did she throw Travis out in the snow, despite everything. Frankly, being Kara, probably she just couldn’t.
Tim Edwards, for his very generous sharing of his time and collected materials.
Ashley Grayson, my agent, for, during the entire time I was working on this, beginning every question about this book with “when” and never with “if you ever …”
The fabulous staff at Great Sand Dunes National Park, for never onc
e saying “Now, that’s a dumb question.”
Judy Messoline, of the UFO Ranch (it’s on Colorado 17, just north of Hooper), for one of the most enjoyable interviews I’ve ever had, and for many interesting insights.
Patrick Nielsen Hayden, my editor, for a generous and extremely patient spirit.
Jes Tate, my research assistant, for superb wide-ranging library work, for being much better at interviewing and photography than I am, for the fun of her company on the research trip to the San Luis Valley, and most especially for not going home with Travis, no matter how much she’d been drinking.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
GAUDEAMUS
Copyright © 2004 by John Barnes
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
eISBN 9781429970624
First eBook Edition : May 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Barnes, John, 1957—
Gaudeamus / John Barnes.—1st ed. p. cm.
ISBN 0-765-30329-9
EAN 978-0765-30329-5
1. Science fiction—Authorship—Fiction. 2. Human-alien encounters—Fiction. 3. Time travel—Fiction. 4. Inventions—Fiction. 5. Novelists—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3552.A677G38 2004
813’.54—dc22
2004048095
First Edition: November 2004