The Best of Bova

by Ben Bova

  There was only one bell button at the door. Usually these homes were split into several apartments. This one was not. He and his dream girl would have it all to themselves.

  He sighed. He had waited so long, been through so much. And now some computer-designated girl was waiting for him. Well, maybe it would work out all right. All he had ever wanted was a lovely, sweet woman to make him feel wanted and worthwhile.

  He pressed the button. A buzzer sounded gratingly and he pushed the front door open and stepped inside.

  The hallway led straight to the back of the house.

  “In the kitchen!” a voice called out.

  Briefly he wondered whether he should stop here and take off his topcoat. He was holding a bouquet of gladiolas in one hand, stiffly wrapped in green paper. Squaring his shoulders manfully, he strode down the hallway to the kitchen.

  The lights were bright, the radio blaring, and the kitchen was filled with delicious warm aromas and sizzlings. The woman was standing at the range with her back to him.

  Without turning, she said:

  “Put the flowers on the table and take off your coat. Then wash your hands and we’ll eat.”

  With a thrill that surpassed understanding, Henry said, “Yes, Momma.”

  JOVIAN DREAMS

  Why do human beings explore? Since long before history began to be written, humans have pushed themselves into new territories, sought new vistas, crossed deserts and oceans and chains of mountains. Why? Why have men deliberately gone into dangers that often killed them? For glory? For gain? For knowledge?

  Here is an explorer who thinks he knows why he is risking his life in the globe-girdling ocean of our solar system’s largest planet.

  But he learns better.

  Floating in the submersible’s artificial womb, deep in Jupiter’s planet-girdling ocean, Po Han dreamed of his martyred ancestor, Zheng He.

  Forty years before Columbus was even born, Zheng He commanded the Ming emperor’s mighty treasure fleets. He had sailed ships crewed by thousands of men across the wide Pacific and Indian Oceans, he had established trading posts among the primitives of North and South America and the kingdoms of Africa’s east coast. He had explored Australia and the made the rulers of Indonesia kowtow to the Emperor. He had brought treasure and knowledge to China.

  But when the old emperor died the Mandarins who supervised the newly crowned child on the throne forbade all exploratory voyages, burned the treasure fleets, castrated Zheng He far more cruelly than the Arab slave traders who had emasculated him in his youth.

  In Po Han’s dream, the Mandarins of the Chinese court and the bureaucrats of the International Astronautical Authority melted together into one stern, austere figure: Po Han’s own father.

  “Give up this madness,” his father warned him. “There is nothing for you in Jupiter except pain and death.”

  Pain, yes. Po Han knew enough about pain now. He had run away from the safety of Beijing and the faculty post at the university that had been offered to him. He had flown to Jupiter to explore, to learn, to break the barriers of ignorance that lay between the humans of Earth and the gigantic Leviathans that swam the endless ocean of Jupiter.

  “I’ll show them,” he swore to himself. “I’ll make them all admit that I am the greatest explorer of them all.”

  He had to be surgically transformed. Not castrated, as Zheng He was, but altered to breathe the cold, slimy, high-pressure liquid that filled his submersible. There was no other way for fragile humans to stand the immense pressures of the deep Jovian ocean.

  So Po Han floated in the cold liquid, his lungs, every cell of his body bathed in the thick, frigid, viscous fluid that filled the submersible. He was no longer a human being, he knew. Now he was a cyborg, part man, part machine, linked to the ship’s systems by electronic connectors that allowed him to see what the sensors observed, feel the thrum of the ship’s engines as his own heartbeat, hear the weird alien calls and cackles of the Jovian creatures that lived in the worldwide ocean.

  An ocean ten times larger than the planet Earth. An ocean that had no land, no rocky shore, no sandy beach, nothing but chains of waves that surged unbroken for tens of thousands of kilometers, driven by storms that dwarfed entire worlds.

  An ocean that was getting warmer as he sank deeper. Po Han felt the rising temperature of the acid-laced water beyond the sub’s hull as heat against his own skin. He welcomed the warmth. Deeper, he directed his submersible. Deeper, into the realm of the Leviathans.

  “I’ll show them all,” he muttered, his voice strangely deepened by the liquid in which he floated.

  The first glimpses that automated probes had relayed back to the scientists in orbit around Jupiter were discounted as sensor errors. Living creatures as big as earthly cities? Impossible. But the cameras and sonars of the probes told the same story. Enormous Jovians swimming in that enormous ocean. Lordly beasts as huge as mountains.

  The probes caught only glimpses of the Leviathans. The machines could not go deep enough, down to the depths where these creatures swam, because their communications systems blanked out at such tremendous depths and pressures. Humans had to go, but to do so meant that the humans had to be surgically altered, become more than human. Or perhaps less.

  “There’s no guarantee that we can return you to normal, once you’ve undergone the surgery,” said the station’s chief scientist.

  Thinking of Zheng He and his own father, Po Han had agreed to the surgery.

  “People have died down there,” the chief scientist warned. “Others have returned crippled.”

  Po Han did not care. He had cut off the umbilical cord that connected him to home, to family, to Earth. “I am willing to accept the risks,” he said simply.

  Now, floating in this utterly alien man-made womb, he burned with eagerness to show the world the greatness of his courage, his daring. I will be famous! I’ll show them all!

  And then his heart leaped. Off in the distance, deeper than he was cruising, a shadowy shape glided through the ammoniated water. Blinking, Po Han calibrated the distance and size of the shape. It’s enormous! Bigger than Beijing!

  Deeper he pushed himself. The submersible groaned under the increasing pressure that Po Han felt squeezing him in a pitiless vise.

  “I can stand the pain,” he said to himself. “I’ll show them. . . show them all.”

  The immense Jovian turned toward him, and Po Han saw that it was followed by others. Dozens more. He couldn’t breathe; the pressure was crushing him. It took nearly half an hour for the gigantic beast to cruise past him. Po Han saw hundreds of eyes along that enormous flank turning toward him, focusing on him.

  He shuddered.

  And then the Leviathan’s side lit up with a brilliant red display. Po Han goggled at it. A picture, an image of his own submersible. Down to the last sensor pod, every detail perfectly displayed.

  All the other Leviathans flashed the same image.

  “They’re communicating!” Po Han realized. “They’re trying to communicate with me!”

  They are intelligent! Po Han knew it with undeniable certainty. An intelligent alien species.

  For countless hours Po Han swam with these gentle giants in his pitifully tiny submersible. And his own fears, his own ambitions, his own resentment of his father and all the others faded into nothingness.

  A new resolve filled him, a new dream. “You will show me, great ones,” he whispered. “I will learn from you.”

  In the presence of the Leviathans, the humble dream of gaining new knowledge had taken hold of him and would never let go again.

  BRILLO

  It all started with a pun.

  For more than a quarter-century Harlan Ellison has been one of my cherished friends, even though he lives on the West Coast and I on the East. For the first few years of our comradeship, Harlan occasionally sighed wistfully that he had never been published in the pages of Analog Science Fiction magazine.

  Analog, you see, was the m
ost prestigious magazine in the field of science fiction. It was (and still is) a bastion of “hard” science fiction, the kind of stuff that I write and Harlan does not. But Harlan saw his problem as deeper than that. He felt that the magazine’s editor, John W. Campbell, Jr., would never publish a story written by Harlan Ellison—for personal reasons, including differences in personality, outlook, and foreskins.

  Campbell was the giant figure of the field in those days, and had been since he had become editor of the magazine in 1937, when it was called Astounding Stories.

  It was now the late 1960s. Even though I assured Harlan that Campbell would buy any story he liked, no matter who wrote it, Harlan remained convinced that John would never publish a story he had written. So Harlan and I concocted a plot. We would write a story together, put a penname on it, and sell it to Campbell.

  Since we lived so far apart, in those days before home computers and modems and fax machines, work on our story progressed slowly. We decided it would be about two police officers: one very human and one a robot that was programmed to know only the law and infractions thereof. No human traits such as mercy or judgment. Casting about for a name for the robot, I punned: “Brillo—that’s what we should call metal fuzz.” (In those days “fuzz” was a slang word for “police.”)

  Although he denies it vigorously to this very day, Harlan laughed uproariously at my pun, and we agreed to title the story “Brillo.”

  Then came the writing. I flew out to the West Coast on other business, and Harlan and I arranged to meet one evening to start writing the story. We had already exchanged notes about the major characters and the background setting. This one evening would be devoted to writing as much of the story’s first draft as we could.

  I finished my day’s work and arrived at Harlan’s home in Sherman Oaks near sunset, ready to work. But Harlan was ready for dinner, instead. He took me, and his friend, Louise Farr, to a Cecil B. DeMille-type restaurant somewhere deep in Beverly Hills. The place was jammed. It looked like a mob scene out of The Ten Commandments. Not to worry. The maitre d’ spotted Harlan in the crowd and personally ushered us to the best table in the place. No waiting. He even sent over a complimentary bottle of fine red wine.

  It was nearly ten o’clock by the time we got back to Harlan’s place and down to work. Only to discover that we both had the runs. Something in the food had afflicted us sorely.

  But we are professional writers. We wrote the first draft of our story, one painful paragraph at a time. One paragraph was about as long as either one of us could stay out of the bathroom. We would meet each other in the hallway between the john and the typewriter.

  By dawn’s bleary light we were exhausted, in more ways than one. And we had roughly five thousand words of first draft on paper.

  I flew back to New England. Months passed.

  At the Cleveland airport, as I was waiting for my plane home after another business trip, I was paged. None other than Harlan, who excitedly read me the fifteen-thousand word second draft of “Brillo,” while my plane was loaded up and taxied off without me.

  It was beautiful and I told Harlan so. It is essentially the story you will read here.

  “Campbell will love it!” I said.

  “It’s too good for Campbell!” Harlan replied. “Let’s send it to Playboy!”

  Playboy paid ten times what Analog did. We are, as I pointed out earlier, professional writers. So we instructed our mutual agent to send “Brillo” to Playboy.

  More months passed. It is now Christmas Eve. I am sitting in my office at the laboratory, where I worked as the manager of the marketing department (i.e., resident science-fiction writer). Four P.M. and already pitch dark outside. Snow is sifting past my window. The office Christmas party is about to begin.

  My phone rings. Harlan.

  Not only has Playboy rejected our story (they had published a story about a robot the year before, and felt that was as far out as they could go then), but our mutual agent automatically sent the manuscript to the next best market—John W. Campbell Jr.—with Harlan’s name still on it! (And mine too, of course.)

  Harlan was in despair. He knew Campbell would tear the manuscript into tiny pieces and dance a Highland fling on the scraps. Would I call John and put in a personal word for the story? I told Harlan that John Campbell would never be swayed by pleading; either he liked the story or he didn’t.

  But Harlan pleaded with me, so I reluctantly phoned Campbell’s office, hoping deep in my heart that he would not be there.

  He was there. “Oh, it’s you,” he said. My heart sank.

  But then John proceeded to tell me that he had just read “Brillo” and wanted to buy it. He even explained what the story was really about, something that he was certain its authors did not understand. (John was like that. Often he was right.) He asked for a couple of very minor revisions, but he wanted to publish “Brillo”!

  I got off the phone as gracefully as I could and quickly dialed Harlan. For some devilish reason I decided to give Harlan somewhat the same treatment Campbell had just given me.

  “Harlan, it’s me. Ben.”

  A dull, dispirited grunt.

  “I . . . uh, I talked with John.”

  A moan.

  “And he . . . well, he’s read the story . . .”

  A groan.

  “And, uh . . . well, what can I say, Harlan? He wants to buy it.”

  For several seconds, there was no sound whatever from Harlan’s end of the phone. Then a squawk that could have shattered diamond.

  “He’s buying it?” All sorts of screeching and howling noises that might have been some exotic form of merriment. “He’s buying it?”

  So we had a happy Christmas and “Brillo” was published in the August 1970 issue of Analog. Harlan still thinks that Campbell thought I had done most of the writing. As you will clearly be able to see, “Brillo” is written in Harlan’s style, not mine. John Campbell was smart enough to know the difference—and not care.

  Like several other tales in this book, “Brillo” deals with the differences between what we say we want from the criminal justice system and what we really want. The differences between the everyday pieties that we all give lip service to, and the realities of how we actually behave toward the police.

  Oh, yes! After the story was published, Harlan and I were approached by certain parties who wanted to turn “Brillo” into a TV series. That project ended in a plagiarism suit that terminated only after four years of lawyers and a month-long trial in a Federal District courtroom in Los Angeles. I can’t tell you much about the case, because one of the terms of the eventual settlement was that neither Harlan nor I can write or speak about it—unless we are asked direct questions.

  So read “Brillo.” And ask me questions.

  Crazy season for cops is August. In August the riots start. Not just to get the pigs off campus (where they don’t even happen to be, because school is out) or to rid the railroad flats of Rattus norvegicus, but they start for no reason at all. Some bunch of sweat-stinking kids get a hydrant spouting and it drenches the storefront of a shylock who lives most of his time in Kipps Bay when he’s not sticking it to his Spanish Harlem customers, and he comes out of the pawnshop with a Louisville Slugger somebody hocked once, and he takes a swing at a mestizo urchin, and the next thing the precinct knows, they’ve got a three-star riot going on two full city blocks; then they call in the copchoppers from Governor’s Island and spray the neighborhood with quiescent, and after a while the beat cops go in with breathers, in threes, and they start pulling in the bashhead cases. Why did it get going? A little water on a store window that hadn’t been squeegee’d since 1974? A short temper? Some kid flipping some guy the bird? No.

  Crazy season is August.

  Housewives take their steam irons to their old men’s heads. Basset hound salesmen who trundle display suitcases full of ready-to-wear for eleven months, without squeaking at their bosses, suddenly pull twine knives and carve up taxi drivers. Su
icides go out tenth storey windows and off the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge like confetti at an astronaut’s parade down Fifth Avenue. Teenaged rat packs steal half a dozen cars and dragrace them three abreast against traffic up White Plains Road till they run them through the show windows of supermarkets. No reason. Just August. Crazy season.

  It was August, that special heat of August when the temperature keeps going till it reaches the secret killcrazy mugginess at which point eyeballs roll up white in florid faces and gravity knives appear as if by magic, it was that time of August, when Brillo arrived in the precinct.

  Buzzing softly (the sort of sound an electric watch makes), he stood inert in the center of the precinct station’s bullpen, his bright blue-anodized metal a gleaming contrast to the paintless worn floorboards. He stood in the middle of momentary activity, and no one who passed him seemed to be able to pay attention to anything but him:

  Not the two plainclothes officers duckwalking between them a sixty-two-year-old pervert whose specialty was flashing just before the subway doors closed.

  Not the traffic cop being berated by his Sergeant for having allowed his parking ticket receipts to get waterlogged in a plastic bag bombardment initiated by the last few residents of a condemned building.

  Not the tac/squad macers reloading their weapons from the supply dispensers.

  Not the line of beat cops forming up in ranks for their shift on the street.

  Not the Desk Sergeant trying to book three hookers who had been arrested soliciting men queued up in front of NBC for a network game show called “Sell A Sin.”

  Not the fuzzette using a wrist bringalong on the mugger who had tried to snip a cutpurse on her as she patrolled Riverside Drive.

  None of them, even engaged in the hardly ordinary business of sweeping up felons, could avoid staring at him. All eyes kept returning to the robot: a squat cylinder resting on tiny trunnions. Brillo’s optical sensors, up in his dome-shaped head, bulged like the eyes of an arcromegalic insect. The eyes caught the glint of the overhead neons.