by Joe Haldeman
“Wish you were here at five,” Mavis says. “Instead of me.”
“That’s what he said. Real mess?”
She nods, keeps nodding. “One on the bottom cut right down the middle. Even got blood on the glass. Everybody else fell all over. Coordinator and two others were unconscious anyhow. Still don’t know what happened.”
“Geoformy team?”
“E Eridani. 05:27:14. Their fucking MS coming in right on top of them, 03:29 slack. Had to steam and bake.”
“That’s only a two-twenty cycle.”
“Don’t I know?” Her voice is thin, strained. “Fucking autopsy made me hold. Wanted the cadaver. Almost didn’t make it, steamed one of the loading crew, pretty bad I think. Cycled out with nine seconds slack at that.”
“Too close. Better file a report.”
“Bet your cock I’ll file a report. Six,” she says, automatically, as double chimes announce the hour. “Fucking autopsy acts like they run the place.”
“Want a pill?”
“Took one six minutes ago. I’ll be all right.”
He checks down through the eleven missions they’ll be doing together. “Anybody standing by for the Ag Group samples?”
“No. They called last night, we’re supposed to store. Runner coming at nine.”
“Tell the loading crew about the squeeze on this food shipment?”
“Oh, yeah. Better call again. I prepared them at four but they maybe brought in some new people after the five-twenty-seven. One for sure.”
Arnold places the call. “Whole new crew, as a matter of fact.”
“What about the one I steamed?”
“He’s alive,” Arnold lies instantly. She can find out later. “Fair condition.”
“Hated to do that.”
“They get paid for it.” He points through the window. “There’s our breeders.”
“Thirty seconds early.”
“Twenty-five,” he corrects.
The loading crew has already brought out the floater, now standing upright, centered over the LMT crystal. The three Tamers approach it.
Arnold switches his throat mike to broadcast inside the chamber. “Hey, you guys.” They wave.
“Don’t climb up there yet. Just have to hang on for seven minutes. I’ll drop the cylinder in five; that’ll give you two minutes fourteen seconds slack. Plenty of exercise.”
“Wish they’d do a double shot on these,” Mavis says. Not much volume tolerance.”
“Can’t do it for Tau Ceti,” Arnold says.
“That’s right, I forgot. Too much water, big fish.”
They wait in silence for a few minutes. Then Arnold tells the breeders to climb aboard and he swings the control keyboard over onto his knees. He rests his fingers lightly on the eight emergency keys: SPILL, FILL, HALF SPILL, HALF FILL, BAKE, STEAM, MEDICAL, KILL MISSION.
There are twenty-four secondary buttons on the three rows underneath. His right forefinger automatically touches the one that used to say DROP CYL. The letters have been worn off the button. The only other secondary whose letters have been worn off is AUTOPSY.
“Why do they have both of us on?” Arnold says. The usual combination is an experienced controller in prime, with a new one in backup.
“The Groombridge thing.”
“Ah.” The breeders in place, Arnold drops the cylinder. His finger rests lightly on the KILL MISSION button. He doesn’t launch the LMT, of course-that requires timing to within a hundred-thousandth of a second-but he can kill the jump if he gets a distress signal from inside the cylinder.
The cylinder rises automatically. “Gone.” He swings the keyboard away and looks at her. “What Groom-bridge thing?”
“Don’t you even read the papers?”
“No.”
“They found these creatures that let people read minds. Little squirmy-“
“Oh, yeah. I saw on the cube, that doctor. Claimed one of them made him cut his throat.”
“That’s it. And killed another doctor. They don’t understand quite what happened.”
Arnold shakes his head. “As if the world wasn’t a dangerous enough place already. If they want to play with those things, they ought to go to Groombridge and do it.”
“Yeah,” Mavis says. “Scientists.”
30 - Nine Lives
(From Mlndbridge: A Preliminary Evaluation, Jameson et al, AED TFX, Colorado Springs, 2052:)
The first experiments with the Groombridge bridge ended in tragedy; the second series began without tragedy.
The second Groombridge expedition brought back eight untouched bridges. We had assembled twenty-three people who were among the most gifted psychics in the world: their control scores on the standard Rhine tests averaged from 413.7 to 499.9.
This last score belonged to the amazing Jerzy Krzyszkowiak, the only person in history who could reliably perform feats of telekinesis. In our laboratory he was able to exert several grams’ pressure on the pan of an evacuated analytical balance, for hours at a time, the balance being out of his sight in an adjacent room.
The twenty-three psychics had chosen seven of their number at random to be privileged with the experience of primary contact (all having agreed that Krzyszkowiak should be among the “lucky” eight). Eight more were chosen for secondary contact.
These sixteen entered the Groombridge chamber at 14:36 on 27th November 2051.
Within seven minutes, half of them were dead.
( see attached graph1.jpg )
Every person who experienced primary contact was killed by it. None showed any symptoms of distress until the first died, little more than a minute after touching the bridge. All experimenting stopped while the two attending physicians went to his aid. Then the other primaries died, one by one.
Analyzing the tapes of the tragedy, we found a direct relationship between the individual’s psychic ability and the length of time he or she survived after primary contact. The accompanying table and graph illustrate this relationship.
The first person ever to make primary contact was the Tamer Hsi Ch’ing, who survived for three hours and forty minutes. If we assume that his Rhine score was 100 (there are no data), then his death agrees with this exponential curve.
Secondary contact proved to have no ill effects, as was also true in the first set of experiments.
Several theories have been advanced to account for this “reflex killing” on the part of the bridges. In the previous section we described the unfortunate demise of Robert Willard, and the bridge’s attempt on the life of this author when we tried to dissect the creature prior to its “slingshot” transformation. The reflex in this case is understandable in terms of self-preservation. But it is less easy to explain the reflex killing of primaries, and the obvious relationship between time-lag-to-death and Rhine potential.
A theory first advanced by Hugo Van der Walls takes into account the fossil evidence of . . .
31 - Crystal Ball I
No one alive in 2051 will ever understand the Groom-bridge bridge.
The truth was deduced in 2213 by a woman who happened to be the great-great-great-great-grandniece of Jacque Lefavre (no great coincidence: half the planet was at least that closely related to him). Her name is difficult to translate, since her language was partly telepathic, but it was something like “Still Cloud Yet Changing: Anthropologist.”
Still Cloud was investigating some unspectacular ruins left on a planet circling Antares, remnants of an extinct nonhumanoid race that had been studied extensively in the previous generation. These ruins had just been discovered, but Still Cloud studied them for years without any significant findings.
This race worshipped an ugly creature whose name we may translate as God, who supposedly lived inside the planet. An odd feature of their religion was that they believed that every inhabited planet had its own God-yet the race did not have space travel. Nowhere could she find that they had any concrete evidence that life existed on other worlds; it was simply an article of
faith.
Eventually Still Cloud uncovered a palace that belonged to the planet’s highest religious leader. Underneath the palace was a labyrinthine system of tunnels, one of which led to a chamber, or apartment, that still gleamed with luxury after a quarter of a million years of abandonment: the place where God lived.
What she and other investigators had taken as myth and metaphor was actual fact: their God was an immortal, omnipotent creature who had descended from heaven to live under the earth and rule their lives and destinies. It was the representative of a race that once ruled this corner of the galaxy with benign, but absolute, authority.
In the apartment was a machine that functioned as a library. It was still in good working order; immortals build things to last. In it there was a reference to the star humans called Groombridge 1618, and to the telepathic creatures that lived there.
This immortal race had constructed the Groom-bridge bridge for its own amusement. It served as a scorekeeper in a decades-long game that involved the precise matching of emotional states. The planet Groombridge had been subjected to a kind of reverse geoformy: its ecology simplified so that none of the indigenous fauna would interfere with the game.
Human scientists were guilty of parochialism in classifying the Groombridge bridge as a physiologically simple creature. It is in fact the most complex organism ever studied-more complex than the scientists who have to dissect it by remote control.
Its true form will never be directly perceived by humans, human senses being limited to three spatial dimensions and the one-way arrow of time. The wiggly nudibranchiform creature that taught humans how to read minds is pure illusion-the simplified projection of a four-dimensional object onto three dimensions. In the same way, the projection of an unabridged dictionary onto two dimensions-its shadow-is identical to the gray rectangle projected by a blank piece of paper, and gives no clue as to the object’s complexity.
When this race of Gods decided to destroy itself, it saw no reason to tidy up beforehand. So the Groombridge gameboard remained for future, simpler, races to puzzle over.
The planet that Still Cloud studied had been dead and cold for two hundred millennia when the Gods went home to die. Home was a couple of thousand light years away, which distance they traveled instantaneously, by an application of will.
In Jacque Lefavre’s time, all that was left of the home of the Gods was a rapidly expanding nonthermal radio source called the Cygnus loop.
The light of Their passing had enabled Neanderthal men to hunt at night for several months.
32 - Help Wanted
An advertisement appearing in every major newspaper in Nevada the week of March 4-11, 2052:
DIE
FOR
MONEY
WANTED: LEGAL SUICIDES
IF you have a legal suicide permit, and can supply proof of good health and mental stability, we offer you the chance to make a unique contribution to science while leaving a sizable sum to your heirs.
PROJECT THANOS will pay up to $10,000 for qualified subjects. Amount paid will depend on the subject’s score on a battery of psychological tests. Minimum pay will be $2,500.
If interested, please write or call:
PROJECT THANOS
Box 7777
Colorado Springs
Colorado 7019464
3037-544-2063, Extension 777
33 – CHAPTER NINE
The next two years were full ones for Jacque and Carol. Together they did a couple of months’ dog-work geoformy on Procyon A, then spent six months on Earth as subjects in an intensive research project on the Groombridge bridge. They duplicated their experiment of 26 August 2051, this time with more symmetrical results.
They were getting used to living together, and talking about someday getting a contract, when Carol was tapped for her first breeding mission. Jacque applied to be father, a request which might normally be granted, but unfortunately the planet was 61 Cygnus B. AED policy on this was inflexible: no man was allowed to contribute more than .05% of a planet’s genetic pool (women were allowed .2%) in the first and second generations.
During the nine months Carol was working and getting round on 61 Cygnus B, they saw each other only once, even though she spent four of those months on Earth to minimize xenasthenia.
Jacque had shown an unusual sensitivity to the Groombridge bridge, so when the project was moved to the smaller crystal at Charleville, Australia, he went along. He shuttled back and forth several times between Charleville and Groombridge (one place as bleak as the other, he claimed), making secondary contact with bridges after the volunteer suicides touched them first.
It wasn’t pleasant, being in bridge rapport with someone who knew he was going to die. Some of them looked forward to it. Some had second thoughts. One tried to speed up the process by running into the exhaust beam of a mass spectrograph. With a GPEM suit, nothing would have happened to him. With the minimal protection they wore on Groombridge, he lived almost an hour.
Carol had a smooth delivery and the AED gave her and Jacque six weeks’ leave together. They had saved up a lot of salary, with nothing to spend it on, and decided to blow it all in Africa and Europe.
Paris was a little cool in late October, 2052, but Jacque was determined. He’d found a cafe on the Left Bank whose proprietor had set a few tables out on the sidewalk, hoping to snag a crazy tourist. Jacque pulled his collar up and poured a few more drops of water into his Pernod. When he’d been here as a little boy, you could still see the Seine, even here, across from the Louvre. Now it was wall-to-wall houseboats. It was also, the guidebooks said, an unhealthy place for tourists to be, after dark. But Jacque was protected by his Tamer uniform. Not only were Tamers supposed to be tough, but if you hurt one the AED would have you in a soft room for the rest of your life.
The caller worked into his belt buckle sounded three short zips: signal to call Colorado Springs. He’d been called a dozen times in France; various people were going over his Charleville report. They usually called around dinner time.
He carried his drink into the cafe and got the bartender’s attention. “Ou se trouve le téléphone?”
The bartender reached under the bar and produced an ancient handset, with a screen instead of a cube, and asked whether it was a local call. Jacque said no, but collect. He nodded and unlocked it. Jacque punched up 3037-544-2063.
The switchboard plugged him into Operations, but he got a holding pattern with a SECURITY DAMPER message. This antique didn’t have a sight-and-sound focus, so he compromised by carrying it into the farthest corner before thumbing the COMMENCE button.
The message snapped off and John Riley’s face appeared. It wasn’t routine, then. Jacque had a sinking feeling that his vacation was over.
“This is a recording,” Riley said.
“All Earthbased Tamers are recalled to Colorado Springs. Immediately. This is the single most important thing that has ever happened to the Agency. And that is putting it very mildly.
“Stay on the line. If you’re calling long distance, you’ll be switched to the transportation operator. Otherwise-be here as soon as possible. Main amphitheater.”
Riley faded and was replaced by Mike Sohne, a drinking buddy of Jacque’s, who looked harried.
“Mike! What’s up?”
Half-second lag; satellite relay. “Oh. Hi, Jacque. Don’t know, guess I’ll find out when you do. The place is in an uproar, everybody running around and nobody talking. We had a long-range probe come back all deaders, that’s all I know. Don’t even know that for sure. . . . You’re in Paris?”
“That’s right.”
“Lucky son of a bitch. Look, you have to be here by 1300. That’s 2000 Greenwich, 2100 your time.”
“Two hours?” Jacque checked his watch. “You’ve-“
“That’s right. One hour fifty minutes.”
“You’ll have to start without me, then. End without me, too: I can’t get a flight out-“
“Uh-uh, Jacque. Just get your
ass over to Orly. Is Wachal with you?”
“No, she’s out shopping somewhere.”
“I mean is she in Paris.”
“Oh, sure. I just don’t know-“
“She must’ve got one of the other operators, then. Get over to Orly as fast as you can and wait for her.
Or she’ll wait for you. You’re reserved on pad thirty-nine, that’s a suborbital express.”
“But Mike, look . . . all of my stuff is back at the hotel-my fucking passport! I can’t-
“Don’t worry about it, we’ll clean up after you. I punched up the travel budget here and got all nines. What hotel?”
“Uh . . . Studio Etoile, just a second.” He pulled a matchbook out of his pocket. “That’s 32-754-69-31, got it?”
“Okay. Passport . . . You don’t know your number?”
“No.”
“No matter, I’ll give them a picture. When you get to Orly, go to the departures wing and find out who’s in charge.”
“All right.”
“See you in a couple of hours. Endit.”
“Endit,” Jacque said to the empty screen.
Jacque and Carol were sitting in the amphitheater in Colorado Springs. “Oh, did you find that dress you wanted?”
“Suit, not dress. No, the ones I liked cost too much. If I’d known we were coming back today I would’ve bought one.”
“Yeah.” There were four or five hundred people in the hall, murmuring. “I would’ve drunk faster.”
“You drank fast enough. You still smell like a licorice factory.”
“Love it.” A woman came out on the stage and set up a podium. “Feeling better?”
“No.” She was taking hormones to suppress lactation. She was dizzy and her breasts ached. “Free fall didn’t help.”
A shimmering cube appeared around the podium. A white blob in the center shrank to a sharp point, and the cube disappeared: holo projectors focused. John Riley came out and put a couple of sheets of paper on the podium. The crowd fell silent.
