N-Space Part 5

He'd have had to check Harmon's business affairs, even without the Crosstime link. There might have been a motive there, for suicide or murder, though it had never been likely.

In the first place, Harmon had cared nothing for money. The Crosstime group had been one of many. At the time that project had looked as harebrained as the rest: a handful of engineers and physicists and philosophers determined to prove that the theory of alternate time tracks was reality.

In the second place, Harmon had no business worries.

Quite the contrary.

Eleven months ago an experimental vehicle had touched one of the worlds of the Confederate States of America and returned. The universes of alternate choice were within reach. And the pilot had brought back an artifact.

From that point on, Crosstime travel had more than financed itself. The Confederate world's "stapler," granted an immediate patent, had bought two more ships. A dozen miracles had originated in a single, technologically advanced timeline, one in which the catastrophic Cuban War had been no more than a wet firecracker. Lasers, oxygen-hydrogen rocket motors, computers, strange plastics-the list was still growing. And Crosstime held all the patents.

In those first months the vehicles had gone off practically at random. Now the pinpointing was better. Vehicles could select any branch they preferred. Imperial Russia, Amerindian America, the Catholic Empire, the dead worlds. Some of the dead worlds were h.e.l.ls of radioactive dust and intact but deadly artifacts. From these worlds Crosstime pilots brought strange and beautiful works of art, which had to be stored behind leaded gla.s.s.

The latest vehicles could reach worlds so like this one that it took a week of research to find the difference. In theory they could get even closer. There was a phenomenon called "the broadening of the bands".

And that had given Trimble the shivers.

When a vehicle left its own present, a signal went on in the hangar, a signal unique to that ship. When the pilot wanted to return, he simply cruised across the appropriate band of probabilities until he found the signal. The signal marked his own unique present.

Only it didn't. The pilot always returned to find a clump of signals, a broadened band. The longer he stayed away, the broader was the signal band. His own world had continued to divide after his departure, in a constant stream of decisions being made both ways.

Usually it didn't matter. Any signal the pilot chose represented the world he had left. And since the pilot himself had a choice, he naturally returned to them all. But- There was a pilot by the name of Gary Wilc.o.x. He had been using his vehicle for experiments, to see how close he could get to his own timeline and still leave it. Once, last month, he had returned twice.

Two Gary Wilc.o.xes, two vehicles. The vehicles had been wrecked-their hulls intersected. For the Wilc.o.xes it could have been sticky, for Wilc.o.x had a wife and family. But one of the duplicates had chosen to die almost immediately.

Trimble had tried to call the other Gary Wilc.o.x. He was too late. Wilc.o.x had gone skydiving a week ago. He'd neglected to open his parachute.

Small wonder, thought Trimble. At least Wilc.o.x had had motive. It was bad enough, knowing about the other Trimbles, the ones who had gone home, the ones drinking coffee, et cetera. But-suppose someone walked into the office right now, and it was Gene Trimble?

It could happen.

Convinced as he was that Crosstime was involved in the suicides, Trimble-some other Trimble-might easily have decided to take a trip in a Crosstime vehicle. A short trip. He could land here here.

Trimble closed his eyes and rubbed at the corners with his fingertips. In some timeline, very close, someone had thought to bring him coffee. Too bad this wasn't it.

It didn't do to think too much about these alternate timelines. There were too many of them. The close ones could drive you buggy, but the ones farther off were just as bad.

Take the Cuban War. Atomics had been used, here, and now Cuba was uninhabited, and some American cities were gone, and some Russian. It could have been worse.

Why wasn't it? How could we luck out? Intelligent statesmen? Faulty bombs? A humane reluctance to kill indiscriminately?

No. There was no luck anywhere. Every decision was made both ways. For every wise choice you bled your heart out over, you had made all the other choices too. And so it went, all through history.

Civil wars unfought on some worlds were won by either side on others. Elsewhen, another animal had first done murder with an antelope femur. Some worlds were still all nomad; civilization had lost out. If every choice was canceled elsewhere, why make a decision at all?

Trimble opened his eyes and saw the gun.

That gun, too, was endlessly repeated on endless desks. Some of the images were dirty with years of neglect. Some smelled of gunpowder, fired recently, a few at living targets. Some were loaded. All were as real as this one.

A number of these were about to go off by accident.

A proportion of these were pointed, in deadly coincidence, at Gene Trimble.

See the endless rows of Gene Trimble, each at his desk. Some were bleeding and cursing as men run into the room following the sound of the gunshot. Many are already dead.

Was there a bullet in there? Nonsense.

He looked anyway. The gun was empty.

Trimble loaded it. At the base of his mind he felt the touch of the handle handle. He would find what he was seeking.

He put the gun back on his desk, pointing away from him, and he thought of Ambrose Harmon, coming home from a late night. Ambrose Harmon, who had won five hundred dollars at poker. Ambrose Harmon, exhausted, seeing the lightening sky as he prepared for bed. Going out to watch the dawn.

Ambrose Harmon, watching the slow dawn, remembering a two-thousand-dollar pot. He'd bluffed. In some other branching of time, he had lost.

Thinking that in some other branching of time, that two thousand dollars included his last dime. It was certainly possible. If Crosstime hadn't paid off, he might have gone through the remains of his fortune in the past four years. He liked to gamble.

Watching the dawn, thinking of all the Ambrose Harmons on that roof. Some were penniless this night, and they had not come out to watch the dawn.

Well, why not? If he stepped over the edge, here and now, another Ambrose Harmon would only laugh and go inside.

If he laughed and went inside, other Ambrose Harmons would fall to their deaths. Some were already on their way down. One changed his mind too late, another laughed as he fell.

Well, why not?

Trimble thought of another man, a nonent.i.ty, pa.s.sing a firearms store. Branching of timelines, he thinks, looking in, and he thinks of the man who took his foreman's job. Well, why not?

Trimble thought of a lonely woman making herself a drink at three in the afternoon. She thinks of myriads of alter egos, with husbands, lovers, children, friends. Unbearable, to think that all the might-have-beens were as real as herself. As real as this ice pick in her hand. Well, why not?

And she goes out to a movie, but she takes the ice pick.

And the honest citizen with a carefully submerged urge to commit rape, just once. Reading his newspaper at breakfast, and there's another story from Crosstime: They've found a world line in which Kennedy the First was a.s.sa.s.sinated. Strolling down a street, he thinks of world lines and infinite branchings, of alter egos already dead, or jailed, or president. A girl in a miniskirt pa.s.ses, and she has nice legs. Well, why not? .

Casual murder, casual suicide, casual crime. Why not? If alternate universes are a reality, then cause and effect are an illusion. The law of averages is a fraud. You can do anything, and one of you will, or did.

Gene Trimble looked at the clean and loaded gun on his desk. Well, why not?

And he ran out of the office shouting, "Bentley, listen. I've got the answer!"

And he stood up slowly and left the office shaking his head. This was the answer, and it wasn't any good. The suicides, murders, casual crimes would continue.

And he suddenly laughed and stood up. Ridiculous! n.o.body dies for a philosophical point! .

And he reached for the intercom and told the man who answered to bring him a sandwich and some coffee.

And picked the gun off the newspapers, looked at it for a long moment, then dropped it in the drawer. His hands began to shake. On a world line very close to this one. . .

And he picked the gun off the newspapers, put it to his head and fired. The hammer fell on an empty chamber.

fired. The gun jerked and blasted a hole in the ceiling.

fired. The bullet tore a furrow in his scalp.

took off the top of his head.

Grendels wandered around outside the fences, gorged on meat, their bellies full. They watched one another suspiciously. Something happened- Cadmann, watching with professional Interest, still couldn't tell what sparked it, but two grendels blurred into speed, speed, pa.s.sed each other, curved back in a mist of pink blood, attacked like a pair of enraged buzz saws. pa.s.sed each other, curved back in a mist of pink blood, attacked like a pair of enraged buzz saws.

THE LEGACY OF HEOROT (with Jerry Pournelle and Steven Barnes), 1987 .

From A GIFT FROM EARTH Hank Stine and I were budding writers together. We planned to write GIFT together, but other projects forced him to drop out. Matt Keller's peculiar psychic power was Hank's idea. He forced me to face the implications, the social and s.e.xual problems of a man with "Plateau eyes."

Hank may therefore be responsible for "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" and other horrors including the "organ bank problem." Following the implications of an a.s.sumption is a science fiction writer's basic skill. If you predict the automobile, you must predict the traffic jam too.

Hank and I did collaborate nonetheless. There was a story I couldn't sell. I showed it to Hank Stifle and asked if he could do something with it. He could: he put an ending on it and called it "No Exit," and sold it to Ted White at Amazing/Fantastic, Amazing/Fantastic, for what he says was the grubbiest, filthiest check he had ever seen. In Plateau my optimistic tendencies were already showing. Observe the environment! Houses grow themselves. Carpets ("indoor gra.s.s") renew and clean themselves. Crops don't need tending. Things are not what they seem: the center of government is not just a big building, but t for what he says was the grubbiest, filthiest check he had ever seen. In Plateau my optimistic tendencies were already showing. Observe the environment! Houses grow themselves. Carpets ("indoor gra.s.s") renew and clean themselves. Crops don't need tending. Things are not what they seem: the center of government is not just a big building, but two landing craft embedded in architectural coral. There are serfs and lords-crew and colonist-but the colonists have civil rights and access to technology and news from other worlds. landing craft embedded in architectural coral. There are serfs and lords-crew and colonist-but the colonists have civil rights and access to technology and news from other worlds.

As for the organ bank problem. Earth has already sent them the solution! A GIFT FROM EARTH EARTH is about revolution in fairyland. is about revolution in fairyland.

Graduates of Cafe School in Carpinteria, where I attended high school, will recognise scenery and events on this alien world. The fogs are common on the Mesa. I saw the shadows and the rainbow halo one midmorning in eleventh grade. The apple juice incident is notorious.

Why is a second novel harder to write than the first?

You can take forever to write the first novel, and some do; it's only a d.a.m.n hobby. But the first novel makes you a writer, writer, and then you expect yourself to and then you expect yourself to produce. produce. GIFT had me worried. There GIFT had me worried. There are are one-shot novelists. one-shot novelists.

It's the last time, so help me, that I ever started a novel without novel without an an ending in mind. ending in mind.

Later, they stood at the edge and looked down.

Often Jesus Pietro had watched groups of children standing fearful and excited at the void edge, looking down toward the hidden roots of Mount Lookitthat, daring each other to go closer-and closer. As a child he had done the same. The wonder of that view had never left him.

Forty miles below, beneath a swirling sea of white mist, was the true surface of Mount Lookitthat the planet. The great plateau on Mount Lookitthat the mountain had a surface less than half the size of California. All the rest of the world's surface was a black oven, hot enough to melt lead, at the bottom of an atmosphere sixty times as thick as Earth's.

Matthew Keller had committed, deliberately, one of the worst of possible crimes. He had crawled off the edge of the Plateau, taking with him his eyes, his liver and kidneys, his miles of blood tubing, and all twelve of his glands-taking everything that could have gone into the Hospital's organ banks to save the lives of those whose bodies were failing. Even his worth as fertilizer, not inconsiderable on a three-hundred-year-old colony world, was now nil. Only the water in him would someday return to the upper world to fall as rain on the lakes and rivers and as snow on the great northern glacier. Already, perhaps, he was dry and flaming in the awful heat forty miles below.

Or had he stopped falling, even yet?

Jesus Pietro, Head of Implementation, stepped back with an effort. The formless mist sometimes brought strange hallucinations and stranger thoughts-like that odd member of the Rorschach inkblot set, the one sheet of cardboard which is blank. Jesus Pietro had caught himself thinking that when his time came, if it ever came, this was the way he would like to go. And that was treason.

"So you're a miner now?"

"Right, and regretting it every waking hour. I rue the day Earth sent us those little snakes."

"It must be better than digging the holes yourself."

"Think so? Are you ready for a lecture?"

"Just a second." Hood drained his gla.s.s in a heroic gesture. "Ready."

"A mining worm is five inches long and a quarter inch in diameter, mutated from an earthworm. Its grinding orifice is rimmed with little diamond teeth. It ingests metal ores for pleasure, but for food it has to be supplied with blocks of synthetic stuff which is different for each breed of worm-and there's a breed for every metal. This makes things complicated. We've got six breeds out at the mine site, and I've got to see that each breed always has a food block within reach."

"It doesn't sound too complicated. Can't they find their own food?"

"In theory, sure. In practice, not always. But that's not all. What breaks down the ores is a bacterium in the worm's stomach. Then the worm drops metal grains around its food block, and we sweep them up. Now, that bacterium dies very easily. If the bacterium dies, so does the worm, because there's metal ore blocking his intestines. Then the other worms eat his body to recover the ore. Only, five times out of six it's the wrong ore."

"The worms can't tell each other apart?"

"Flaming right they can't. They eat the wrong metals, they eat the wrong worms, they eat the wrong food blocks; and when they do everything right, they still die in ten days. They were built that way because their teeth wear out so fast. They're supposed to breed like mad to compensate, but the plain truth is they don't have time when they're on the job. We have to keep going back to the crew for more."

"So they've got you by the gonads."

"Sure. They charge what they like."

"Could they be putting the wrong chemical cues in some of the food blocks?"

Matt looked up, startled. "I'll bet that's just what they're doing. Or too little of the right cues; that'd save them money at the same time. They won't let us grow our own, of course. The-" Mart swallowed the word. After all, he hadn't seen Hood in years. The crew didn't like being called names.

"Time for dinner," said Hood.

They finished the beer and went to the town's one restaurant. Hood wanted to know what had happened to his old school friends, or schoolmates; Hood had not made friends easily. Matt, who knew in many cases, obliged. They talked shop, both professions. Hood was teaching school on Delta. To Matt's surprise, the introverted boy had become an entertaining storyteller. He had kept his dry, precise tone, and it only made his jokes funnier. They were both fairly good at their jobs, and both making enough money to live on. There was no real poverty anywhere on the Plateau. It was not the colonists' money the crew wanted, as Hood pointed out over the meat course.

"I know where there's a party," Hood said over coffee.

"Are we invited?"

"Yes."

Matt had nothing planned for the night, but he wanted rea.s.surance. "Party crashers welcome?"

"In your case, party crashers solicited. You'll like Harry Kane. He's the host."

''I'm sold.''

The sun dipped below the edge of Gamma Plateau as they rode up. They left their bicycles in back of the house. As they walked around to the front, the sun showed again, a glowing red half-disk above the eternal sea of cloud beyond the void edge. Harry Kane's house was just forty yards from the edge. They stopped a moment to watch the sunset fade, then turned toward the house.

It was a great sprawling bungalow, laid out in a rough cross, with the bulging walls typical of architectural coral. No attempt had been made to disguise its origin. Matt had never before seen a house which was not painted, but he had to admire the effect. The remnants of the shaping balloon, which gave all architectural coral buildings their telltale bulge, had been carefully sc.r.a.ped away. The exposed walls had been polished to a shining pink sheen. Even after sunset the house glowed softly.

As if it were proud proud of its thoroughly colonist origin. of its thoroughly colonist origin.

Architectural coral was another gift of the ramrobots. A genetic manipulation of ordinary sea coral, it was the cheapest building material known. The only real cost was in the plastic balloon that guided the growth of the coral and enclosed the coral's special airborne food. All colonists lived in buildings of coral. Not many would have built in stone or wood or brick even were it allowed. But most attempted to make their dwellings look somewhat like those on Alpha plateau. With paint, with wood and metal and false stone-sidings, with powered sandpaper disks to flatten the inevitable bulges, they tried to imitate the crew.

In daylight or darkness Harry Kane's house was flagrantly atypical.

The noise hit them as they opened the door. Matt stood still while his ears adjusted to the noise level-a survival trait his ancestors had developed when Earth's population numbered nineteen billion, even as it did that night, eleven point nine light-years away. During the last four centuries a man of Earth might as well have been stone deaf if he could not carry on a conversation with a thousand drunks bellowing in his ears. Matt's people had kept some of their habits too. The great living room was jammed, and the few chairs were largely being ignored.

The room was was big, and the bar across from the entrance was enormous. Matt shouted, "Harry Kane must do a lot of entertaining." big, and the bar across from the entrance was enormous. Matt shouted, "Harry Kane must do a lot of entertaining."

"He does! Come with me; we'll meet him!"