The Depths of Time

by Roger MacBride Allen

  “Shortly thereafter, the greenhouse effect will reach the runaway stage, and it will become too hot for unprotected humans in most regions. We’ll need cooling suits and respirators, but we could still extract oxygen from the air and find water to drink. Is that uninhabitable? About five to ten years after that, my hunch is that the weather patterns will have become so violent that only reinforced structures will survive for any length of time. But, inside such a shelter, people could live and work quite comfortably. Is that uninhabitable? You could define any of those stages as uninhabitable. Choose which one you will.

  “We could maintain a human presence on the planet even if all the oxygen came out of the atmosphere,” Vandar went on. “We could build reinforced domes over the cities and dig underground warrens. We’d certainly have to call the planet uninhabitable by then, but people could still inhabit this world.”

  “There’s no way we can build enough domed cities in time,” said Neshobe. “And even if we did, it would be bloody hell maintaining their internal environments.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Vandar said mildly. “I quite agree. Sealed domes and underwarrens are not sustainable unless they are very carefully managed. They are difficult to establish and maintain even under the best circumstances— and we will not have the best of circumstances by any means.”

  “Where do you make your last stand?” Koffield asked. “How long and how hard will you fight against an unbeatable enemy? And how much effort do you put into the final redoubt that might survive, and how much into the outer defenses that will certainly fall?”

  “You talk as if we are going into a war, Admiral Koffield.”

  “You—we—are in a war, Madam Kalzant. A war against a planet that was forced to support life against its will. It is counterattacking, and it will, eventually, win, though it might allow you to retain small enclaves, reinforced sealed domes and warrens, here and there—if you decide it is worth fighting hard enough, and intelligently enough, merely to win such a limited and qualified victory.”

  “Madam Kalzant,” said Parrige, “I think I see the point that these gentlemen are trying to make. It is a question of resource management and allocation.”

  Neshobe glared at Parrige, then back toward Koffield and Vandar, both of whom were nodding their agreement. They had gone mad. All of them had gone mad and decided to gang up on her. Oxygen levels, war, management and allocation theory—it was all so much gibberish.

  Ashdin cleared her throat timidly and spoke. “Madam— Madam Kalzant, if I might?”

  “Oh, please, go ahead.” Neshobe slumped back in her chair. If they were looking toward Ashdin as the voice of reason, then things were becoming dire indeed.

  “I know I’m not much at policy or strategy or any of that,” Ashdin said. “I get fascinated by old stories, people out of the past, that sort of thing. Oskar DeSilvo is one of my interests. Another is the fall of Glister, the real story behind all the legends and myths.” She turned to Koffield. “I doubt you’ve had the chance to learn much about what happened on Glister. It happened decades after your disappearance. The long and the short of it was that Glister came up against the same sort of climatic crisis we are facing here today. They had bad weather, extinctions of species, algae blooms, air-quality deterioration, oxygen levels dropping. So they worked hard to stabilize the situation, as we have, investing a lot of time and money. Things kept getting worse. The planetary government announced a crash program, top priority, to provide respirators for every citizen, and sealant and partial-pressure-oxygen injectors for every building and residence, a stopgap until the atmospheric reoxygenation project could be brought on-line.

  “But the reoxygenation program never worked very well. It slowed the decline in oxygen levels for a while, but never was able to stop the decline, let alone reverse it.

  “So the government decided to build temporary domes over the largest cities and provide what they called enhanced sealing for outlying houses. And of course people weren’t willing to wait for the government to do the job while the air itself was going bad—there were all sorts of private projects as well—all of them top priority, all of them rush jobs. Then the weather turned worse, and all sorts of corrosive compounds started precipitating out of the air, raining down on the domes, damaging them.

  “There were unprecedented extremes of cold and heat, the weather patterns became completely unpredictable, and the storms grew more and more violent as the whole planet fell out of equilibrium. There were all sorts of plans put forward to build reinforced domes and underground habitats, all sorts of brilliant evacuation schemes worked out—but nothing could be done. The other, earlier crash programs and rush projects had used up all the money, time, and resources. They had expended all their energies before the real crisis hit.”

  “And we’re in the first stages of doing the same thing,” said Neshobe. “So what do we do? Yesterday we were trying to get through a spell of bad weather. This morning the planet is doomed. Yesterday we were going to have to work hard if we were going to get the climate back the way we want it. Now it turns out we can’t repair the ecosphere no matter how hard we try. Even if we make an all-out effort, the best we can hope is to maintain the unsatisfactory status quo, at the cost of making the end come faster.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Those are the essentials of the situation,” Koffield said.

  “Then what?” Neshobe demanded. “What do we do?”

  “Evacuate the planet,” Norla Chandray suggested.

  Neshobe looked at Chandray in irritated astonishment. How long had Chandray been on Solace? Twelve hours at most? Easy enough for her to suggest planetary evacuation. It wouldn’t be her world, wouldn’t be her family uprooted after a hundred or more years, wouldn’t be her forced to abandon all her possessions without a chance to—

  But then Neshobe remembered just how much Chandray and Koffield had been forced to give up, how much had been stolen from them. Not just their worlds, but their times. Their homes had ceased to exist, just as surely as the homes of the Glisterns had been destroyed.

  Still and all, even if Norla Chandray was due a bit of respect, and even sympathy, that did not mean her idea had any merit. “Evacuate them to where?” she asked.

  “To orbiting habitats, or maybe to Greenhouse,” Chandray replied.

  “All the orbital habitats are at or beyond their preferred population points,” Raenau said. “Several are refusing all new arrivals. You’ve just seen what it’s like on SCO Station.”

  “The habitats are at their preferred population points,” Vandar put in, rapidly working his scriber over his data-page. But that’s not the same as their carrying capacity. Let’s see.” He brought up the data he wanted on his page and read it over. “According to this, there are just about three-point-two million people on the planet, and roughly the same number—about three-point-one-five million—in the various habitats throughout the Solacian system. They’re the ones orbiting the planet, the asteroid miners, the free-stellar-orbit habs, everything. The combined certified carrying capacity of the various habitats is slightly over four million.”

  “That sounds as if there’s at least some room for an orderly initial evacuation,” said Parrige.

  “And we can always build more habs,” said Ashdin.

  Neshobe struggled to control her temper. Parrige and Ashdin were the two persons at the table least qualified on the subject of space habitats. Ashdin she could almost excuse, but Jorl Parrige should have known better. “It’s not quite that simple,” she said.

  “Obviously it would not be simple or easy,” Parrige said, “but if we have excess capacity there, and people who need new homes here, surely it makes sense to match them up.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” said Raenau.

  “Indeed?” Parrige asked, bristling a bit at the station commander’s insolence.

  Neshobe let out a weary sigh. Parrige was a valuable advisor, and a good friend, but the very traits that made him valuable often made him infuriatin
g. When it came to policy, to big ideas, he thought in numbers, in theory, in absolutes. If the numbers said a thing could be done, he tended to assume not only that it could be done, but that it should be done—even to assume it would be done. But Raenau was out of line talking to a Grand Senyor that way. “Perhaps, Commander Raenau, you could be a bit less succinct,” she said. “Explain, please, why doesn’t it make sense.”

  “Carrying capacity means the maximum possible number of people that could be supported in an emergency, if another hab was evacuated, or whatever,” he said. “It’s the absolute, worst-case, brick-wall limit. Carrying capacity assumes all systems are functioning—no accidents, no breakdowns. It’s how many people a habitat could sustain if everything worked perfectly and everyone went on short food rations, power rationing, water rationing, everything rationed. So you tell me, Senyor Parrige, how many habitats would be willing to take on their maximum possible population load in the form of half-starved, uneducated, indigent, disease-ridden dirtsiders who know nothing of habitat life and have no skills that are of much use in space? Could you force them if they refused? And if you used force on one hab, what would happen on all the others? And even if all the habitats did go along with you, how many would collapse because something did go wrong and there were no resources available to see the system through while repairs were made?”

  “And there’s the minor matter of transporting three million people from the planetary surface to orbit,” Neshobe said. “Dr. Vandar, I expect you could pull up the figures the fastest of anyone here. What is the maximum daily capacity of our surface-to-orbit passenger fleet? Not the theoretical capacity, but the real numbers for the real ships that are operational and available.”

  Vandar scribed over his datapage for a moment, then looked up. “Approximately six hundred fifty passengers, ma’am.”

  “Well, then,” Neshobe said, figuring quickly. “Six-fifty a day, times four hundred twenty-one days a local year. Just over two hundred seventy thousand a year. Assuming the entire passenger fleet works around the clock with no accidents or breakdowns, it will take just over eleven local years to transport the entire planetary population. As, according to Dr. Vandar’s figures, the atmosphere might be getting close to unbreathable by that time, things could be a bit awkward for the last ones to get aboard.”

  “We can build more transports,” Parrige said. “Enough to lift everyone—or nearly everyone—off the surface in time.”

  “At the same time we’re working on an all-out crash program to build more habitat capacity?” Raenau asked. “If we commit resources to building ships, how can we take the same resources and commit them to habitat construction? And how long will it take to build more ships and habitats?”

  “Ma’am, it will be difficult, and it will take time, and we will have to take great risks,” said Parrige. “But surely it can be done.”

  “It is perhaps a minor point,” said Koffield, “but the Dom Pedro IV’s primary cargo consists of fifty Habitat Seeds.”

  Raenau looked puzzled. “What’s a Habitat Seed?”

  “Mmmm? Oh. Perhaps you don’t use them anymore. Habitat Seeds are habitat-making robots. Very large and sophisticated robotic machines that are programmed to mine the raw materials for a space habitat, process the materials, and construct the hab with little, or no human intervention. They’re one-shot items, and they don’t always work. Sometimes a circuit blows out or a subsystem wears out and you’re stuck with a half-built hab. But usually they do the job.”

  “So that’s something close to fifty additional habitats that could be built,” said Vandar.

  “Possibly fewer,” said Koffield. “And they won’t be large or grand habs, and they won’t be stocked with anything. Habitat Seeds produce just the bare bones. But they’ll help somewhat, I expect.”

  “Every little bit is going to help,” said Vandar.

  “But even fifty extra habitats won’t be help enough,” Raenau said, looking at Parrige. “That moves the line up the chart, but not by enough. And life is not all lines on charts.”

  Parrige drew himself up in his chair and glared at Raenau, and then at Neshobe Kalzant. “I’m not a fool, Madam Executive. I realize there would be difficulties, immense ones. But all that is as it may be. It’s plain to see that if the planet is dying, expansion of the orbital habitats only makes sense. We could start at once to transport those in most need—those who have been hurt the worst by this slow-motion grand-scale disaster—to the spaceside habitats at once. We can build habitats for the rest in the years to come.”

  “And the ones left behind will start to tell each other they’re being abandoned while the lifeboats are pulling away,” said Raenau. “How will you handle the panic that will start the second the evacuation begins? Go out to the next rumor riot with some charts and graphs and explain that everything is going to be fine?”

  Parrige’s eyes flashed at Raenau. “There will be difficulties, but—”

  “Difficulties!” Neshobe half shouted. “You make itsound as if the difficulties are nothing but minor inconveniences. Thirty-one people died in the last spaceport riot. We probably lost two or three times that many in ground-side accidents caused by the panic at other ports. Space and stars know how many casualties there were in orbit. What sort of mob are we going to get at the spaceport when we announce that we have to evacuate the planet’s surface?”

  “Surely mob panic has no place in determining planetary policy,” Parrige said snappishly.

  Neshobe restrained herself, fighting off the impulse to stand up, cross around the table, grab her old advisor by the shoulders, and give him a good hard shaking. Instead, she held her voice in rigid control and spoke in words as cold and flat as she could find. “Senyor Parrige,” she said, “it is time and past time for you, and everyone else here, to understand that we are dangerously close to the point where mob panic is planetary policy. People are frightened now. When this news gets out, they’ll be terrified, and angry.”

  “Of course they will be!” Parrige half shouted. “I’m terrified, here and now. But as Dr. Ashdin and Admiral Koffield have just gotten through pointing out, if we approach things in a cautious, gradualist way, we are doomed.” Parrige paused a moment, and took a deep breath before starting to speak again, in lower, calmer tones. “We will squander our time and resources on laudable but ultimately futile efforts like stabilizing Lake Virtue. Commander Raenau is right. We can’t go to the ragged edge of carrying capacity on the habs. Admiral Koffield and Dr. Ashdin are right to say we can’t proceed in a gradualist way. And you are right, Madam Kalzant, when you say that I am casually suggesting that we do the impossible.

  “But I’m right too.” Parrige frowned and shook his head. “I know how bad the orbital-habitat situation is. I know the risks of using all available carrying capacity. But we are growing weaker, not stronger. We are expending our resources, not marshaling them. If it is difficult to act decisively now, it will only become more difficult later on, and then more difficult still, until action becomes utterly impossible.”

  Neshobe looked at Parrige in surprise. It was nothing like him to express himself so emphatically.

  Admiral Koffield cleared his throat and spoke in a quiet voice. “I’ve heard that politics was the art of the possible. But evacuating the planetary population is politically impossible. The people on the ground will panic. The more they understand they have to leave, the worse the situation will become. Panic, rumor, riot, profiteering, corruption— there will be no end to it. The people in the space habs won’t want to let them in. But, even if evacuation isn’t possible, it is absolutely necessary.”

  Neshobe let out a deep breath. “Then we must make it possible. Maybe, just maybe, if we educate the public, convince them that the situation is bad, but that if there is time, there will be a chance for an orderly evacuation.”

  “Yes,” said Parrige. “That is the way.”

  “But before we start pointing the way,” Neshobe said, “we mus
t be sure we are convincing. We have to show them something we don’t have. Proof.”

  “But, Madam Executive,” said Vandar, “we have Admiral Koffield’s preliminary work and my mathematical analysis of it.”

  “That’s a start, yes, so far as it goes,” Neshobe said, “but it is by no means enough. A crackpot admiral from a hundred years back—and one whose very name is, forgive my bluntness, a curse word for many of our citizens— appears from out of nowhere telling some crazy story about how his magical formula proves We’re all doomed. No. I’m sorry, Admiral Koffield. We can’t even begin to let the news out with your name attached to it. Our Glistern refugees and descendants would reject it out of hand.”

  Koffield shook his head sorrowfully. “It’s incredible. I must admit that I thought the one bright spot in my being marooned was that people would have forgotten by now. A century and a quarter later, I’m still a monster to them because of Circum Central? Even after their planet died?”Vandar looked at Koffield in surprise. “But don’t you— no, of course, you’ve only been here a brief time, and it’s not the sort of thing someone would tell you in casual conversation. The Glisterns blame you for the death of their planet.”

  Koffield stared at Vandar in astonishment. “But that’s absurd! How could anything I did have caused the collapse of their climate?’’

  Vandar turned his hands palms up and gestured hopelessly. “You’re quite right that it’s absurd—but they blame you all the same. Someone on Glister dug up an old saying, a proverb, from near-ancient Earth: ‘For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of the shoe, the horse was lost. For want of a horse, the battle was lost. For want of the battle, the kingdom was lost. All for the want of a nail.’ The legend says that the ships you stranded were carrying vital supplies, special equipment, powerful terra-forming technology that would have stabilized the climate and prevented the collapse. What, exactly, was aboard changes from one version of the story to the next. They call you the man who stole the nail.”