Tomorrow's Alternatives

by Roger Elwood

  "Eight ship-days. We were worried."

  "You look exactly as I though you would look," she says. "Your face is hard. But not a dark face. Not a hostile face."

  "Do you want to talk about where you went, Noelle?"

  She smiles. "I talked with the—angel."

  "Angel?"

  "Not really an angel, year-captain. Not a physical being, either, not any kind of alien species. More like the energy-creatures Heinz was discussing. But bigger. Bigger. I don't know what it was, year-captain."

  "You told me you were talking with a star."

  "—a star!"

  "In your delirium. That's what you said."

  Her eyes blaze with excitement, "A star! Yes! Yes, year-captain! I think I was, yes!"

  "But what does that mean: talking to a star?"

  She laughs. "It means talking to a star, year-captain. A great ball of fiery gas, year-captain, and it has a mind, it has a consciousness. I think that's what it was. I'm sure, now. I'm sure!"

  "But how can a—"

  "The light goes abruptly from her eyes. She is traveling again; she is no longer with him. He waits beside her bed. An hour, two hours, half a day. What bizarre realm has she penetrated? Her breathing is a distant, impersonal drone. So far away from him now, so remote from any place he comprehends. At last her eyelids flicker. She looks up. Her face seems transfigured. To the year-captain she still appears to be partly in that other world beyond the ship. "Yes," she says. "Not an angel, year-captain. A sun. A living intelligent sun." Her eyes are radiant. "A sun, a star, a sun," she murmurs. "I touched the consciousness of a sun. Do you believe that, year-captain? I found a network of stars that live, that think, that have minds, that have souls. That communicate. The whole universe is alive."

  "A star," he says dully. "The stars have minds.”

  "Yes."

  "All of them? Our own sun too?"

  "All of them. We came to the place in the galaxy where this star lives, and it was broadcasting on my wavelength, and its output began overriding my link with Yvonne. That was the interference, year-captain. The big star, broadcasting."

  This conversation has taken on for him the texture of a dream. He says quietly, "Why didn't Earth's sun override you and Yvonne when you were on Earth?"

  She shrugs. "It isn't old enough. It takes—I don't know —billions of years until they're mature, until they can transmit. Our sun isn't old enough, year-captain. None of the stars close to Earth is old enough. But out here—"

  "Are you in contact with it now?”

  "Yes. With it and with many others. And with Yvonne."

  "Yvonne too?"

  "She's back in the link with me. She's in the circuit." Noelle pauses. "I can bring others into the circuit. I could bring you in, year-captain."

  "Me?"

  "You. Would you like to touch a star with your mind?"

  "What will happen to me? Will it harm me?"

  "Did it harm me, year-captain?"

  "Will I still be me afterward?"

  "Am I still me, year-captain?"

  "I'm afraid."

  "Open to me. Try. See what happens."

  "I'm afraid."

  "Touch a star, year-captain."

  He puts his hand on hers. "Go ahead," he says, and his soul becomes a solarium.

  Afterward, with the solar pulsations still reverberating in the mirrors of his mind, with blue-white sparks leaping in his synapses, he says, "What about the others?"

  "I'll bring them in too."

  He feels a flicker of momentary resentment. He does not want to share the illumination. But in the instant that he conceives his resentment, he abolishes it. Let them in.

  "Take my hand," Noelle says.

  They reach out together. One by one they touch the others. Roy. Sylvia. Heinz. Elliot. He feels Noelle surging in tandem with him, feels Yvonne, feels greater presences, luminous, eternal. All are joined. Ship-sister, star-sister: all become one. The year-captain realizes that the days of playing go have ended. They are one person; they are beyond games.

  "And now," Noelle whispers. "Now we reach toward Earth. We put our strength into Yvonne, and Yvonne—"

  Yvonne draws Earth's seven billion into the network.

  The ship hurtles through the nospace tube. Soon the year-captain will initiate the search for a habitable planet. If they discover one, they will settle there. If not, they will go on, and it will not matter at all, and the ship and its seven billion passengers will course onward forever, warmed by the light of the friendly stars.

  Harriet

  STEPHEN GOLDIN and C. F. HENSEL

  It began as a lovely day, with the smog level barely high enough to require nose-plugs. Rays of sulphur-colored sunlight bathed the walls of the plasticine skyscrapers and even partially illuminated the dark canyons between the buildings at street level. The neighborhood was a decent one, nice enough to qualify as a scenic tour area. I pushed my way impatiently past a group of pre-teens taking the cheapie state tour.

  Their guide droned on about how they might one day earn housing benefits like these if their social outputs were high enough. The spiel was trite, but the kids seemed impressed. They stared up in amazement, for this was a 16 zone; not a single edifice on the block exceeded sixteen stories, and the kids had probably never seen such small buildings before. There were even two twelves on

  the comer, and I made a note to report that. It's inefficient to waste properly zoned space.

  I walked into the stairwell of the corner building and began climbing. Every time I make a call, I promise myself to get into better condition next time. But I never seem to manage it. Even this light smog had me huffing by the time I'd reached the fifth floor, and I was exhausted when I came to the ninth. I paused for breath and then bravely started up again, for the man I was to see lived on the twelfth floor, and the neighborhood wasn't quite nice enough to rate space for such luxuries as elevators.

  I noticed that the attractive formica floors had given way to pressed sawdust after the tenth level. Even in nice areas, the higher you go, the cheaper it gets. Finally I reached the twelfth floor and quickly located the correct apartment.

  I paused for a moment in front of the door and carefully checked my make-up as I pushed the buzzer. Meeting people on my job always makes me feel curiously inadequate, so I take care to check out my appearance beforehand—especially when I'm wearing a new face, as I was this time. The auburn hair, blue eyes and straight nose looked strange, but there was no denying that they were nicer than what I'd been wearing recently.

  I was just slipping the mirror into my thigh-high hose clip when the old man opened the door. He stared at me with questioning, rheumy eyes, then exclaimed, “Harriet! This is impos . .

  “No,” I hurriedly interrupted him. “I'm not Harriet. You must be thinking of someone else.”

  He shook his head, crestfallen. “Of course you're not. Harriet's dead. Forgive me. But who are you?”

  “I'm from the government. A census taker.” It's my official title, of course, but I still damn myself for supplying the euphemism every time I use it. “May I come in? I've got some questions that must be answered and some forms for you to fill out.” I smiled and stepped forward with apparent confidence.

  “The government, oh yes, of course.” He moved back and pulled the door wide, so that I wouldn’t snag my tunic on the doorjamb.

  I looked around the apartment. The feminine influence was striking. Large open areas set off by the color scheme, the precise arrangement of the shelves, the hang of the drapes ... it was a woman’s room, a strong-willed yet sensitive woman. The room seemed to be holding its breath in constant anticipation. It wasn’t until the second glance that I noticed that it had been a long time since that woman had been here. It was a refuge out of time, preserved but not expanded upon.

  I looked back at the old man, and my eye was caught by a small ring that encircled the middle finger of his left hand. It must have been almost as old as he, for the go
ld was quite scratched and worn. It was in the shape of a serpent eating its tail; a fine piece of workmanship, and my gaze lingered on it for a moment, admiring the delicately etched scales and lusterless jade eyes of the snake.

  I shifted my briefcase from right to left hand and walked toward the couch. “If I may sit down over here, we can get on with my business.” I rather liked this new me, both personality and face. I found myself wistfully wishing that the plasto-sculptors would let me keep it. It possessed a certain charm and elegance that was remarkably effective. It seemed to exude self-confidence and its attendant beauty.

  “Perhaps,” the old man said hesitantly, “you would prefer to wait for my daughter to get home. She’s living with me at present, and she usually handles matters like this.”

  “I’m sure you can help me. It’s only a few simple questions.”

  He seemed hardly to have heard me. “I can’t get over how much you look like Harriet. She was my wife, you know.”

  I did know, but I kept silent. I also didn’t mention that STEPHEN GOLDIN and C. F. HENSEL | 106

  I had been purposely bio-sculpted to resemble her, to put him more at ease. Instead, I said in my best business-like voice, "If we could get down to business, Mr. Rogers?”

  "Certainly, Ms ...” I gave him my name, but he shook his head. "Do you mind if I call you ‘Harriet? You do look so much like her.”

  I was a trifle annoyed. I didn’t particularly want him identifying with me, considering what I was there to do. But our orders are to make it easy, so I simply shrugged and said, "If you wish.” I pulled out a pin and some punch tape, hoping that I could finish quickly and get out of there. It was a lonely apartment, permeated with ancient memories.

  "Harriet,” the old man mused, holding the name on his tongue to savor its sweetness. "She was so wonderful. She used to . . . .” He started guiltily and apologized, "I don’t want to bore you.”

  Call it vicarious living, if you like, but it’s the only kind I seem to be able to have any more, so once again I gave in to emotionalism. I decided to hear out his piteous reminiscences. For piteous I was sure they would be. I smiled, no longer disingenuous, for I felt a queer kinship with this antique remnant of lost and lonely humanity. "Please go on. Since you’ve made me, in a way, her namesake, I’d like to know what sort of a woman she was.”

  "There’s really not much to tell,” he sighed, "now that she’s gone. She was as beautiful inside as she was outside. I’ve tried to keep the apartment just the way it was when she died, as a kind of remembrance. My daughter hates it—says we should modernize it, bring it into the twenty-second century. But I couldn’t destroy all I have left of Harriet.”

  "This room can’t be all that you have,” I insisted. "There must be memories.”

  A far away look appeared in his eyes. "Indeed there are.”

  "Then tell me about them.”

  And he did. From the depths of his withered soul came the words that were close to song as he recalled his lost and lovely Harriet. Images swirled on images, and light upon shadow, as his mind wandered the happy roads of nostalgia, entrancing me with a hypnotic beauty. Caught by surprise, I entered a world I hadn’t known existed. I swam the deceptively deep currents of his mind, and Ariel sang of full fathom five in the back of my mind as I heard his tale of lost love and loneliness. I had thought myself completely beyond such pity, but I was wrong, for now I listened and I shared the warmth of a humanity that had not been mine for longer than I cared to remember.

  An hour passed, or was it two? He smiled. “You are a lot like her. I mean, more than just physically. She, too, was a person I could just talk to. She’d always listen and comfort me with silent kindness. Yes, you and she are a lot alike.”

  I reddened and bowed my head, so he wouldn’t see my shame in the comparison.

  “Why,” he laughed eagerly at the discovery, “you even blush like she did.” An excited smile came to his face, as he suddenly thought of something. “Here.” He took the magnificent serpent ring from his finger and proffered it. “I’d like you to have this. It’s solid gold and the stones are real jade. It’s worth quite a bit of money now. I have no one else to give it to.”

  I shook my head vigorously. “What about your daughter?” I suggested.

  “We don’t get along too well any more,” the old man said sadly. “She’s almost forty and still not married. She’s got a fiance, but she obviously can’t move into his bachelor dorms, and there just don’t seem to be any apartments available these days. She’s tried to get me to move to one of those old folks’ communities, but I couldn’t leave here. Harriet and I spent more than half our lives together here.”

  Again he pushed the ring at me. “I can’t take it,” I said, my voice wavering. “We’re not allowed....”

  "Please take it.. . Harriet.”

  His eyes pleaded, and I couldn’t say no. I let him slip the ring on my finger without a word. It was too loose, but it didn’t seem to matter.

  "Good,” he said. "You know, I gave that ring to Harriet when we first got engaged.”

  So help me, there was an actual tear in my eye. Me, the cold business-woman, the picture of efficiency. Straining to change the subject, I blurted, "Your daughter wasn’t always so argumentative, was she?”

  "Oh, no. She used to be the most darling little girl the world has ever known. I remember once, when she was about five or six, she was going to the birthday party of a little boy who lived across the courtyard. Halfway there, she tripped in a puddle and got mud all over her party tunic. She knew she shouldn’t go in a dirty tunic, so she took it off. There she stood, for all the world to see, naked in the middle of the courtyard.” The old man paused, and a sharp crack of laughter burst from his skinny chest. I laughed along with him.

  NOW!

  "You even laugh like she did,” he was saying. Instead of answering I activated the battery I had and, leaning forward, tenderly pushed the hair away from his forehead.

  He stiffened and fell forward onto the coffee table, dead. But a smile was engraved forever on his ancient features.

  I left then, carefully closing the door behind me. The apartment belonged to someone else now, and they wouldn’t want their property disturbed.

  The snack shop was dim. I suspect that’s why my client had asked me to report there. Somehow, people seem to think that darkness assuages guilt.

  I looked around, peering over the heads of the citizens scheduled for free time on this shift. Because of the nature of my job I can’t be properly scheduled and, looking around at these happy, regulated people, I regretted it. I blinked as my eyes became accustomed to the light, and I saw the client. She had managed to snag two seats in the corner. She didn’t look very prepossessing: thin, weedy, dressed in a severe tunic that accentuated her fortyish figure. I wondered how she had managed to rout the competition for that extra seat. On the table, there were several empty glasses. That fit the pattern I’d expected, and I nodded to myself. Alcohol, too, assuages guilt. I know.

  I walked briskly over and stood beside her without saying a word. It took a moment for her to look up at me. When she did, I could see that her eyes were glazed over, but whether from alcohol or tears, I couldn’t tell.

  She didn’t recognize me for a second. When she did, she blurtingly invited me to take the empty seat. Silently, I did.

  For years, it seemed, we sat there, staring at one another across the table. She obviously wanted me to speak first. I refused to give her the satisfaction. Finally, she broke the silence. “It’s over, isn’t it?”

  “He’s dead, if that’s what you mean.” I enjoyed the shocked expression on her face. “The body will be disposed of before your return. The apartment is vacated.” I’ve found it easier on myself if I’m blunt.

  She looked down at her lap. “You needn’t put it that way,” she complained, wringing her hands frantically. “It makes it sound so ... so inhuman.”

  “It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”


  “No!” she almost shrieked. Her voice rose on a sudden note of near hysteria, and she was oblivious to the people who turned their heads to look. “I didn’t want it that way. But he wouldn’t leave that mausoleum. Don’t you see, this is my last chance to get a husband. I need that apartment. There’s no room anywhere these days. Why wouldn’t he move to the retirement village? I didn’t want to have him killed.”

  I just stared at her.

  She became quieter. “And . . . and then there’s the population explosion . . . you know, the old should make room for the younger people. It’s their duty, they’ve already lived their lives. It’s not fair. I'm entitled to my chance.”

  I’d read our ads, too. They were designed for people like her. “May I see your credit card, please?”

  “What? Oh ... oh yes.” She fumbled through her stocking pocket and fished out her Universal Credit Card. While she was working on another drink, I calmly jotted down the price, including tax, on a sales slip. “Would you like to check my addition?” I asked.

  “I’m sure it’s all right.” She was beginning to resume what must be her normal stuffy manner. “It was painless, wasn’t it?”

  “Absolutely,” I said without looking up. I didn’t want to see the greedy expression in her eyes that I could hear in her voice, so I concentrated on copying her serial number onto the slip. “At the proper moment, I activated a device that destroyed his brain tissue. His sensory apparatus was the first to go—shorted out the nerves. He couldn’t feel a thing. I’ll need your signature on the bottom here.” I handed her the charge slip.

  She scribbled “Lisa Rogers” hurriedly along the line and handed it back. “This is deductible, isn’t it?”

  I wanted to spit at her. Instead, I said, “Yes, Miss Rogers, government-administered euthanasia is completely tax deductible.” I returned her card, along with a carbon of the sales slip., “You can use this as a receipt.”