The Best of Gregory Benford

by David G. Hartwell

  Teri did a little angling on the variances they needed and in return they were real nice. We got invited to a few great parties up in the hills. Glitzy affairs, some big media people flown in to spice things up. And that’s when we got the word. Their secret is, they speed up the whole thing. It’s entirely natural, no funny chemicals or anything. Purely electrical and a little hormone tinkering, straight goods.

  What they do is, they take a little genetic material from Teri and me, they put it in a blender or something, they mix it and match it and batch it. There’s this thing called inculcated growth pattern. Just jargon to me, but what it means is, they can tune the process, see. Nature does it slow and easy, but GeneInc can put the pedal to the metal. Go through the prelim stages, all in the lab.

  Yeah, you got it fella, you can’t see Teri pushing around a basketball belly, can you? That’s why it’s like GeneInc was tight wrapped—for lives like ours, lives on the go.

  We did it. Yeah! Really.

  So she goes in one Friday, right after a big staff meeting, and with me holding her hand she has the implantation. She overnights in the clinic, watching a first-run movie on a big plasma screen. A snap, she said.

  Next day she’s home. We have dinner at that great new restaurant, T.S. Eliot’s, you really got to try the blackened red fish there, and all she’s got to do is take these pills every four hours. Three weeks like that, she’s growing by the minute. Eats like a horse. I tell you, we had a running tab at every pasta joint within five blocks of the condo. She’s into the clinic every forty-eight hours for the treatments, smooth as a press release. Teri’s clicking right along, the kid’s growing ten times the normal rate.

  Before I can get around to buying cigars, zip, here’s a seven-pound wonder. Great little guy. Perfect—my eyes, her smile, wants to eat everything in sight. Grabs for the milk supply like a real ladies’ man. And no effects from the GeneInc speedup, not a square inch less than A-max quality.

  You hear all kinds of scare talk about gene-diddling, how you might end up with a kid from Zit City. Well, the Chicken Littles were wrong-o, in spades. We figure we’d handle things from there. Maybe send out the diapers, hire a live-in if we could find a nice quiet illegal—Teri could handle the Spanish, y’see. We had the right vector, but we were a tad short on follow-through. Teri started getting cluster headaches. Big ones, in technicolor. So I filled in for her. Read some books on fathering, really got into it. And I’m telling you, it jigsawed my days beyond belief.

  Face it, we have high-impact lives. I gave up my daily racquetball match—and you know how much of a sacrifice that was, for a diehard jock like me, high school football and all. But I did it for the kid.

  Next, Teri had to drop out of her extra course in fastlane brokering, too, which was a real trauma. Bottom line-wise, y’see.

  I mean, we’d practically spent the projected income from that training. Factored it into our estimated taxes, even. I’d already sunk extra cash into a honey of a limited partnership. It had some sweetheart underwriting features and we just couldn’t resist it.

  Man, crisis time. If she didn’t get her broker’s license on schedule, we’d be stretched so thin you could see through us. She couldn’t link into the course on home computer, either. Software mismatch or something, and by the time she got it translated she was too far behind in the course.

  See what I mean? Bleaksville. But we were committed parents. We believe in total frankness, upfront living. So we went back to GeneInc and had a talk with one of their counselors. Wonderful woman. She takes us into a beautiful room—soft lighting, quality leather couch, and some of that classy Baroque trumpet music in the background. Just the right touch. Tasteful. Reassuring. Money always is.

  She listens to us and nods a lot and knows just what we’re talking about. We trust her, almost like it was therapy. Which I guess it was. And we let it all spill. The irritations. Man, I never knew a little package could scream so much. Feeding.

  No grandparents closer than three thousand miles, and they’re keeping their distance. Got their retirement condo, security compound, walls all around it, a rule that you can’t bring a kid in for longer than twenty-four hours. Not exactly Norman Rockwell, huh? So no quick fix there.

  And the kid, he’s always awake and wanting to play just when we’re stumbling home, zombies. Whoosh! So you cram things in. We had trouble syncing our schedules. Lost touch with friends and business contacts. See, I spend a lot of time on the horn, keeping up with people I know I’ll need sometime. Or just feeling out the gossip shops for what’s hot. Can’t do that with a squall-bomb on my knee.

  Teri had it even worse. She’d bought all the traditional mother package and was trying to jam that into her own flat-out style. Doesn’t work. No way!

  The usual way to handle this would be for somebody to lose big, right? Teri drops back and punts, maybe. Stops humping so hard, lets up. So maybe a year downstream, some younger beady-eyed type shoulders her aside. She ends up targeted on eternal middle-management. The desert. Oblivion. Perpetual Poughkeepsie.

  Or else I lower my revs. Shy off the background briefings, drop off the party committee, don’t sniff around for possible comers to get tight with. You know how it is. The long slide.

  What? Ol’ buddy, you’re dead on—not my scene. But listen, my real concern wasn’t my job, it was our relationship. We really work at it. Total communication takes time. We really get into each other. That’s just us.

  So the lady at GeneInc listens, nods, and introduces us to their top drawer product line. Exclusive. Very high tech. It blew us away. Freezeframe, they call it.

  Look, the kid’s going to be sleeping ten, twelve hours a day anyway, right? GeneInc just packs all that time into our workweek. Rearranges the kid’s schedule, is basically what it is. Simple electronic stimulus to the lower centers. Basic stuff, they told me, can’t damage anything. And totally under our control!

  When we want him, the kid’s on call. Boost his voltage, allow some warmup. Presto! See, he’s running at low temperature during the work day. Helps the process. So we come dragging home, have some chardonnay to unwind, catch the news. When we’re ready for him we hit a few buttons, warm him up and there he is, bright and agreeable ’cause he’s had a ton of extra sack time. Can’t get tired and pesky.

  I mean, the kid’s at his best and we’re at peak, too. Relaxed, ready for some A-plus parenting.

  Well, we took the Zen pause on the idea, sure. Thought it over. Teri talked it out with her analyst. Worked on the problem, got her doubts under control. And we went for it.

  Little shakedown trouble, sure, but nothing big. GeneInc, they’ve got a fix for everything. We boost him up for weekends, when we’ve got space in our lives. Quality time, that’s what the kid gets.

  We’ve set up a regular schedule. Weekdays for us, weeknights and weekends for him. You might think that would mean he grows slower or something, right? No!

  GeneInc’s got an add-on you wouldn’t believe—Downtime Education, they call it. While he’s sleeping through our days, Downtime Ed brings him up to speed on verbals, math, sensory holism, the works. Better than a real teacher, in many ways.

  So we feel that—oh yeah, the invitation. You got it already?

  It’s for his big blast. Combo first birthday party and graduation from third grade. We put him on the inside track, and he’s burning it up.

  We couldn’t be happier. Our kind of kid, for sure. Pretty soon we’ll integrate him into the GeneInc school for accelerated cases, others like him. All of them have sharp parents like us.

  There’s a whole community of these great kids springing up, y’know. They’re either in Downtime, learning up a storm, or getting online, first class attention in Freezeframe weekends.

  I tell you, Jason, these kids are going to be the best. They’ll slice and dice any Normkid competition they run into. And us—it’s like a new beginning. We get to have it all and we know the kid’s not suffering. Just the opposite.


  He’ll have a high school diploma by the time he’s ten. He’ll be a savvy little guy. And we’ll load on all the extras, too. Emotional support, travel, the works. We’ll have him on tap when we want him. That’ll stretch out his physical childhood, of course, but speed up his mental growth. Better all round, really, ’cause Teri and I totally like him.

  See, that’s the hidden leverage. We want to spread him over more of our lives, keep him for maybe thirty years. Why not have one really top of the line kid, enjoy him most of your life? Efficient. Helps on global population, too.

  So look, I got to trot. Map’s on the back of the invitation, come and enjoy. No need for a present unless you want to. Teri’ll love seeing you again.

  And while you’re there, I can show you the GeneInc equipment. Beautiful gear, sharp lines. Brochures, too. I’ve got a kind of little franchise agreement with them, getting in on the ground floor of this thing.

  What? Well, that’s not the way I’d put it, Jason. This is a class product line. Calling it a Tupperware party—hey, that’s way out of line.

  We’re talking quality here. You’ll see, just drop on by. No obligation. Oh yeah, and I got some great cabernet you should try, something I picked up on the wine futures market.

  My God, look at the time. See you, ol’ buddy. Have a nice day.

  Proselytes

  (1988)

  It was the third time something had knocked on the door that evening. Slow, ponderous thuds. Dad answered it, even though he knew what would be standing there.

  The Gack was seven feet tall and burly, as were all Gacks. “Good evening,” it said. “I bring you glorious word from the stars!”

  It spoke slowly, the broad mouth seeming to shape each word as though the lips were mouthing an invisible marble. Then it blinked twice and said, “The true knowledge of the universe! Salutations of eternal life!”

  Dad nodded sourly. “We heard.”

  “Are you certain? I am an emissary from a far star, sent to bring—”

  “Yeah, there’s been two others here tonight already.”

  “And you turned them away?” the Gack asked, startled.

  Junior broke in, leaving his homework at the dining-room table. “Hey, there’s been hundreds of you guys comin’ by here. For months.”

  The Gack blinked and abruptly made the sound that had given the aliens their name—a tight, barking sneeze. Something in Earth’s air irritated their large red noses. “Apologies, dear ignorant natives, from a humble proselyte of the One Patriarch.”

  Dad said edgily, “Look, we already heard about your god and how he made the galaxy so you Gacks could spread his holy word and all, so—”

  “Oh, let the poor thing finish its spiel, Howard,” Mom said, wiping her hands on a towel as she came in from the kitchen.

  “Hell, the Dodgers’ game’ll be on soon—”

  “C’mon, Dad,” Junior said. “You know that’s the only way to get ’em to go away.”

  The Gack sniffed appreciatively at Junior and started its rehearsed lecture. “Wondrous news, O Benighted Natives! I have voyaged countless of your years to bring…”

  The family tuned out the recital. As Dad stood in the doorway he could see dozens of Gack ships orbiting in the night sky. They were like small brown moons, asteroid-sized starships that had arrived in a flurry of fiery orange explosions. Each had a big flat plate at one end. They were slow, awkwardly shaped, clunky—like the Gacks themselves.

  They had come from a distant yellow star and all they wanted was free rein to “speak to the unknowing,” as their emissary had put it. In return they had offered their technology.

  Dad had been enthusiastic about that, and so had every government on Earth. Dad’s half interest in the Electronic Wonderland store downtown had been paying very little these last few years. An infusion of alien technology, whole new racy product lines, could be a bonanza.

  But the Gacks had nothing worth using. Their ships had spanned the stars using the simplest possible method. They dumped small nuclear bombs out the back and set them off. The ship then rode the blast wave, with the flat plate on one end smoothing out the push, like a giant shock absorber.

  And inside the Gack asteroid ships were electronics that used vacuum tubes, hand-cranked computers, old-fashioned AM radio…nothing that humans hadn’t invented already.

  So there would be no wonder machines from the stars. The sad fact was that the aliens were dumb. They had labored centuries to make their starships, and then ridden them for millennia to reach other stars.

  The Gack ended ponderously with, “Gather now into the outstretched loving grasp of the One True Vision!”

  The Gack’s polite, expectant gaze fell in turn on each of the family.

  Mom said, “Well, that was very nice. You’re certainly one of the best I’ve heard, wouldn’t you agree, Howard?”

  Dad hated it, how she always made him get rid of the Gacks. He began, “Look, we’ve been patient—”

  “They’re the patient ones, Dad,” Junior said. “Sittin’ in those rocks all those years, just so they could knock on doors and hand out literature.” Junior laughed.

  The Gack was still looking expectantly at them, waiting for them to convert to his One Galactic Faith. One of its four oddly shaped hands held forth crudely printed pamphlets.

  “Now, now,” Mom said. “We shouldn’t make fun of another creature’s beliefs. This poor thing is just doing what our Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses do. You wouldn’t laugh at them, would you?”

  Dad could hold it no longer. The night air was cold and he was getting chilled, standing there. “No thanks!” he said loudly, and slammed the door.

  “Howard!” Mom cried.

  “Hey, right on, Dad!” Junior clapped his hands.

  “Just shut the door in its faith,” Dad said, making a little smile.

  “I still say we should always be polite,” Mom persisted. “Who would’ve believed that when the aliens came, their only outstanding quality would be patience? The patience to travel to other stars. We could learn a thing or two from them,” she added sternly.

  Dad was already looking in TV Guide. “We should’ve guessed that even before the Gacks came. After all, who comes visiting in this neighborhood? Not that snooty astronomer two blocks over, right? No, we get hot-eyed guys in black suits, looking for converts. So it’s no surprise that those are the only kinds of aliens who’re damn fool enough to spend all their time flying to the stars, too. Not explorers. Not scientists. Fundamentalists!”

  As if to punctuate his words, a hollow thump made the house creak. They all looked to the front door, but the sound wasn’t a knock.

  Another boom came down from the sky and rattled the windows.

  When they went outside, the night sky was alive with darting ships and lurid orange explosions.

  Junior cried, “The Gack ships! See, they’re all blown up.”

  “My, I hope they aren’t hurt or anything,” Mom said. “They’re such nice creatures, truly.”

  Among the tumbling brown remnants of the Gack fleet darted sleek, shiny vessels. They dived like quick-silver barracuda, sending missiles that ripped open the fat bellies of the last few asteroid ships.

  Dad felt a pang. “They were kinda pleasant,” he said grudgingly. “Not my type of person, maybe, and their technology was a laugh, but still—”

  “Look!” Junior cried.

  A sleek ship skimmed across the sky. A bone-rattling boom crashed down from it.

  “Now that’s what an alien starship oughtta look like,” Junior said. “Lookit those wings! The blue exhaust—”

  Behind the swift craft huge letters of gauzy blue unfurled across the upper atmosphere. The phosphorescent words loomed with hard, clear purpose:

  GREET THE CLEANSING BLADE OF THE ONE ETERNAL TRUTH!

  “Huh?” Junior frowned. Dad’s face went white.

  “We thought the Mormons were bad,” he said grimly. “Whoever thought there might be Moslems?”r />
  Matter’s End

  (1989)

  When Dr. Samuel Johnson felt himself getting tied up in an argument over Bishop Berkeley’s ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that everything in the universe is merely ideal, he kicked a large stone and answered, “I refute it thus.” Just what that action assured him of is not very obvious, but apparently he found it comforting.

  —Sir Arthur Eddington

  India came to him first as a breeze like soured buttermilk, rich yet tainted. A door banged somewhere, sending gusts sweeping through the Bangalore airport, slicing through the 4 a.m. silences.

  Since the Free State of Bombay had left India, Bangalore had become an international airport. Yet the damp caress seemed to erase the sterile signatures that made all big airports alike, even giving a stippled texture to the cool enamel glow of the fluorescents.

  The moist air clasped Robert Clay like a stranger’s sweaty palm. The ripe, fleshy aroma of a continent enfolded him, swarming up his nostrils and soaking his lungs with sullen spice. He put down his carry-on bag and showed the immigration clerk his passport. The man gave him a piercing, ferocious stare—then mutely slammed a rubber stamp onto the pages and handed it back.

  A hand snagged him as he headed toward baggage claim.

  “Professor Clay?” The face was dark olive with intelligent eyes riding above sharp cheekbones. A sudden white grin flashed as Clay nodded. “Ah, good. I am Dr. Sudarshan Patil. Please come this way.”

  Dr. Patil’s tone was polite, but his hands impatiently pulled Clay away from the sluggish lines, through a battered wooden side door. The heavy-lidded immigration guards were carefully looking in other directions, hands held behind their backs. Apparently they had been paid off and would ignore this odd exit. Clay was still groggy from trying to sleep on the flight from London. He shook his head as Patil led him into the gloom of a baggage storeroom.