H'ard Starts: The Early Waldrop, page 19
Robert said, “I doubt I dance as well as your robot.”
“Oh,” said the girl, “I’m sure you do.”
The waltz surged above them, and they danced.
They talked.
“I’m the girl from the future,” she said.
“Yes,” he answered. “And I am Robert van Patten, from the past.”
“My name is Gini. They are calling me Gini-in-the-machine. Or Gini-from-the-future.”
They danced, and the waltz ended.
The lights lowered with the passing of a few minutes while other songs played, and they danced to them.
“Let’s go out onto the patio,” she said.
They walked through the soft-glowing room of moving shapes, out into the world of stars and flowers. As they passed through the door, the robot hummed after them.
“The garden is lovely,” she said. The staff of Returnee Station had not let any of the revived into this portion of the grounds before tonight. It was to be a new thing in a world full of surprises. The air smelled of twenty, thirty species of flowers, though men could distinguish only a few when near them. Other people moved through the garden on the walks, dark shapes in dim light. The music floated through the doors from the ballroom. There were two fountains, near the entrances. Cedars of Lebanon stood high around the outside garden wall. The stars blazed overhead, and the moon had not yet risen.
The only sound was of their walking and the pulsing of the robot following a few steps behind.
“I never imagined this,” Robert said.
“I should think not,” answered Gini. “You have no history of it.”
“And you do?”
“Dimly. We were not a world which lived on our past. But it was quiet,” said Gini. “Until the last year and the plague from the stars. Then we had to learn our history all over again, because there was no future for Earth.”
She was beautiful.
“Would you like a dr– some refreshments?” asked Robert van Patten.
“Yes,” she said. Immediately the robot turned to go inside.
“Allow me,” said Robert.
“Very well,” said Gini.
Robert turned to go.
“Do they ever call you Bobby?” she asked.
“They did. Why?”
“I was wondering. Please get the drinks.”
He went inside.
She trembled slightly in the garden breeze.
“Robot,” she said. “I think he is Bobby-from-the-freezer.”
“Yeah.”
“Robot, I’m so afraid.”
“Yeah.”
Robert found the workings of the Station fascinating. During the next day after the dance, he studied everything the staff did. He caught the pattern from the comments of the workers, from the instructional tapes and shows, from the oral history which his room insisted he listen to. He heard, not the tapes themselves, but the direction of the tapes, the way they were put together.
Here is what he realized.
Returnee Station was one of many on the continent. The returnees like himself were rich, or had been rich in previous lives. Some would leave here not rich at all, but comfortable. Sometimes the trusts had been used up before a cure for the particular discomfort had been discovered. Not poor, though. No one left poor. It was a changed world. A poor man would not make it, not be allowed to make it.
Rather, some would not leave rich.
There had been disasters in the years between Robert’s encryptment and revival. The world population had gone down, at last, from birth control, from disease, from famine.
The Returnees faced a future which stretched before them in a golden horizon. It was the best possible time to live, in many ways. In others, it was not. Man had colonized Mars early in the century Bobby died. But that was about all. And the colonies slowly dwindled, until very few were left. Man had not set out for the stars in the four hundred years Robert van Patten had slept. It seemed a shame to him.
But why go to Mars, humans had reasoned, when whole areas of their nice Earth had been eased of their population burden? When whole countries which had been choked under people and farmed-out lands were recovering from centuries-old barrenness? When deserts were opened?
So man has lost the urge for space, thought Bobby. He had been young in his first life, and had not had a chance to do anything. Perhaps in this one … he had money. His family had used the right trusts for him, the kinship ties were strong. There would be many things a rich man, with a new life, could do in this world, as soon as he got used to it.
He listened to the teacher-robot explain the uses of credit and international exchange on the New Asian continent, and found his mind wandering, back to the dance; the girl Gini-in-the-machine, her robot. He wondered why she looked at him so when he told her they sometimes called him Bobby. She had asked. Hadn’t she?
And why, when she was beautiful, and young, did she dance with him all night? And why had he not seen her all day, though he had called?
His heart clutched there. It was the ugliness again. He had almost forgotten it in his new life. He was not nice to look at. He had never developed other than a sexual interest in women. He had been young, rich, busy. And he had been ugly.
He had not been shy with women. Ugly people can afford to be forthright, brash. The worst they can be called for it is ugly.
He got up from the bed, went to the mirror. He looked at himself closely, for the first time. His hands on the desk looked like naked sea urchins, stripped of spines. His skin was white, with lighter marbling. He could sun himself. But then he would only be dark and ugly. Quasimodo, he thought. Richard III. Ugly.
She came to the room an hour later, crying. Her robot came into the room and stood by the door behind her.
He had been asleep, and when she knocked, he awakened and opened the door. And she came in.
“What is it? May I help you?”
“I need to talk to you, Bobby-fr– ”
“Would you like to talk here?” he asked. “The staff will not like you being out of your room. Especially here. They certainly know you are here and will come soon.”
“I know. No. Let’s go down to the beach.”
“Very well.”
They left his room, and Dr. Samond met them in the hallway.
“Well, hello,” he said. “Up late, aren’t you? You’ve both got busy days ahead of you. I suggest you get rest.”
“We – ” said Robert. “We’re going down to the lake for a walk.”
Doctor Samond, who treated them both once a week, looked at him. “Well, I’m sure it would be all right for you to go, Mr. van Patten. But Gini is under orders to get rest and have regular medications.”
“I want to go for a walk,” said Gini. “I have my robot. If anything goes wrong, I shall send for you.”
The doctor looked from one to the other.
“Gini. You present us with a special case. You are not like other Returnees. We do not want anything happening to you.”
He looked at Robert.
“Nevertheless,” said Robert, “we are going for a walk.”
The doctor stepped aside. “Have a pleasant evening,” he said.
The beach was a kilometer away. The sand ringed a bay that had once been part of an ocean, but which was now landlocked, and for a century. The wind was cool.
“Why don’t they leave me alone,” said Gini, between her teeth.
“Do they bother you?”
“All the time. I’m a person, like them, just like you!”
“They haven’t especially bothered me,” he said, then quickly added, “but you’re special to them. You came from the future. You know the history of our future. They need you.”
“To find out what they’ll do wrong?” She looked at him.
“Well, perhaps,” he said. Why me?
“I haven’t told them much of anything, yet.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m afraid they’ll change things.”
“What things?”
They stopped then, and sat on a ramp overlooking the bay. Far off were the lights of the city which they had not yet visited, but which looked very pretty at night. There was a high dome there, and a low skyline.
The robot whirred to stop behind them.
Robert held Gini’s hand.
She looked at him. “The things which happened. The story of you and I. The story of Bobby-from-the-freezer and Gini-in-the-machine.”
He looked at her, her shining hair the wind blew, her pale hands, her face.
“You and I?”
She laid her head on his hand where it rested on the rail. He felt a tear go down his fingers.
“You are Bobby-from-the-freezer,” she said. “And I’m – I’ve got to be Gini-in-the-machine. We will kill the Earth.”
“What do you mean?” He thought he knew then didn’t.
“We, we had a legend in our time,” she said. “Of the man from the far past who had been revived. Bobby-from-the-freezer. You. And I. Gini.”
She quit crying. She looked at him, and in the light her eyes shone like oil.
“We will be together. We will leave the Station together. We will restart colonization of the planets. We’ll reach the stars. Because of you, your wealth, your riches. And we’ll die together out in the stars. That will happen.”
“But … but what’s wrong with that?” He couldn’t think. His mind refused to work in webs, in nets, growing outward.
“The plague. The plague, Bobby-from-the-freezer. We start the colonies, we give humanity the stars. We die, but the planets live on, the settled places grow, expand. One of the ships brings back the plague, in the time I came from. Man will live on among the stars. But everyone on Earth dies. Everyone. And I come back here, just before the end … and this is where it starts again.”
“I don’t understand,” he said finally.
“Oh, I don’t either.” She began to cry.
“What if we don’t do it?” he asked.
She looked at him. “All the time I was growing up, I lived with the name Gini. Like in the legend. I never thought much of it – the story of Bobby-from-the-freezer and Gini-in-the-machine. It was old. Like a fairy tale, it was made into shows. They’ll love us. They will admire us. This generation will pass on, not knowing we’ll kill all life on Earth in four hundred years. We … ”
“You want something?” asked the robot.
“No, thank you.” She patted the smooth metal of its side. “He’s been my only help,” she said to Robert. “I couldn’t have made it without him. I wouldn’t have known what to do.”
Robert looked at the small robot. “What did he tell you to do?”
“He told me to do what I had to. He knew all this was upsetting me. He only wants me happy.”
Robert looked up at the stars in the cold bright sky. He held Gini close to him. What should he do? Why should he be the one, they be the ones, to act out this playlet written in the future? What if he walked away? What if they left, but went somewhere else, if they never went towards the stars?
“It wasn’t easy,” said Gini. “It wasn’t easy to come back here. When my uncle started to send me … I – I think I knew. I think he realized he was sending back the doom of the Earth. He … he never let it bother him. He wanted me to live. He knew this was the one time, the one place that could surely save me. It … it wasn’t easy, Robert.”
She had her head on his hand again. The wind was making him shiver. He kissed her quickly. It surprised him. It surprised her.
“Do you know what I’m thinking?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, with conviction.
He stared at her a moment. “What, then?”
“That you will go to the doctors and have them make you handsome,” she said, as if by rote.
“Was that part of the legend?”
“Yes.”
“Will I do it?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I will love you as you are.”
He stood and kissed her again, silhouetted against the bay and the city. The wind was cold. The robot lifted itself to its wheeled position.
“Let’s go,” he said.
She took his hand.
The stars were waiting, and death among them. Earth would die, but mankind would live on throughout the galaxy. He was Bobby-from-the-freezer. She was Gini-in-the-machine.
My Sweet Lady Jo
His name, according to the birth certificate, was Edward Smith. He was left at the hospital by “Mrs. Smith” when she left for parts unknown. He was raised in the Sylacauga Home on 12th Street in Birmingham, Alabama.
The child was precocious, else he wouldn’t have been noticed. Psychologists were led to believe that his mother and father were both of genius level. He hadn’t gotten brains behind a truck-stop café. What led “Mrs. Smith” to leave a newborn child alone in the maternity ward of a great metropolitan hospital was unknown.
Suffice it to say that by the age of twenty-seven, Edward NMI Smith was appointed director of public information of the Space Science Services Administration. The youngest, and brightest, man ever placed so high within the government. At the time, he was unhappily married, the father of one child; a very lonely man.
The year he took the directorate, the first men came back from the stars. They had gone to Alpha Centauri twenty-six years before, accelerating to near-light speeds for the middle third of their journey. They got there in twelve years. Sixteen years after the first ships left, a message dropped out of the clear sky one night.
Seven of the original nine ships made the trip. For the duration, the crews remained awake like any other spacecraft crew. They guided the great craft through the darkness, monitoring those colonists they carried frozen in hopes of finding a new world orbiting the nearest star.
Alpha Centauri IV, named Nova Terra (of course), had been found in short order. Less gravity, more sunlight, less oxygen, more nitrogen. A good world.
The message came from the new transmitter on Nova Terra. The radio station had been broadcasting four years when its first message reached the Earth, and it would be another four before they knew whether Earth had received it. The distances immense, the blackness deep, the stars bright.
Meanwhile, two and a half years after the settlement of Nova Terra, an expedition headed back. Due to the time lag between broadcast and reception, the message of their departure from Nova Terra was received eighteen and a half years after the ships left Earth. Someone quickly figured that the ships had been on their way back four years already, and would arrive in another eight.
The message said, “Two ships to return to Earth. Methods developed here allow crews to sleep in shifts. Some colonists returning. See you in twelve years.”
Eight years later the ships coasted into solar orbit a few hundred miles above the Earth. At night, they were brighter than Venus, brighter than the space stations wheeling near them; two new stars on the zenith.
Ed Smith, the new director of information of the Space Science Services Administration, and his team were on Station No. 3 to meet the first men and women to return from the stars.
“Mom Church! Any time now,” said Newton Thornton, looking at the clock on the wall.
“Easy, Newton,” I said. “This is the Station’s moment of glory. First they’ve had since the starships left almost three decades ago. You can’t blame them for taking a little longer in decompression than they have to.”
“I know that, Mr. Smith,” he said, “but damn, they’re sure taking their time.”
“Well, we’ll have them long enough,” I said.
The doors opened and out they came, the station’s director striding before them like head lion of the pride.
His glad hand came out almost automatically. “Mr. Smith, the head of Space Services information, ladies and gentlemen. Mr. Smith, the crew and colonists from Nova Terra.”
I made an impatient little bow. Several of the crewmen returned the bow, stiffly, formally. Two of the women curtsied.
We all broke into smiles.
Commander Gunderson was breathing smoke from the cigar as if it were air. “You’d be surprised to know,” he said, “that tobacco will not grow well on the areas of Nova Terra we settled. Most of the soil is too acid. Of course, that was … what? twelve years ago. Place may have more tobacco than North Carolina by now.” He breathed more of the cigar smoke.
“I hope so,” said Newton. “Carolina doesn’t have any.”
“What?”
“Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, lost more than three quarters of their crops eleven years ago. New fungal disease. Spread quickly. Spores in the ground so thick the land still can’t be used for years. What tobacco is raised is now done in Arizona, New Mexico and parts of the California plains … still partly desert land when you left,” said Newton.
“I’ll be damned,” said Gunderson. Weariness crossed his face. “It’ll take a while to get used to things … you know.” He stared at the burning ash of his cigar. “I went out as a colonist. Twenty-six years ago. That’s a long time. Decided that, even with my Services training, it’d be better for me to go out asleep. Just in case they ever wanted to come back, and the crews didn’t want to make another twelve-year trip.” He rubbed his graying hair.
“The crewmen who went out … they aged. I didn’t. I thought I’d be like them on this trip back. That was before we developed the rapid cryogenics that allowed the crew to sleep in shifts. I’ve only been up seven months, since we left Nova Terra.
“I knew there’d be people who’d want to come back. It’s not adventure out there, you know. It’s hard work.”
He put out the stub of the cigar very carefully.
“Hell, I’ve only aged three years and seven months since I left Earth twenty-six years ago. Course, I was old when I left.”
Thornton laughed.
Commander Gunderson became serious. “There are some people who only aged three years,” he said. “Some of the colonists went out asleep. They’ve come back asleep. They were only up three years. They didn’t like what they found there any more than they liked what they left.”
