by John Barnes
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Finity
By John Barnes
Scanned & Proofed By MadMaxAU
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I
am not an imaginative or adventurous person. I am uncomfortable with change of any kind, and most so with highly unpredictable dramatic change. So even though I was looking forward to it, when the morning of my interview at ConTech arrived, I was keyed up and tense. I already knew something unusual would happen to me, something extraordinary could happen to me, and something utterly life-changing just might happen to me.
Had I had the remotest notion of what might happen, I would have assigned it an infinitesimally small probability; had I had any idea of what would actually happen, I’d have done my best to avoid it.
My name is Lyle Peripart, and until that particular morning— it was May 30, 2062, a Friday, and therefore the uncelebrated holiday of Memorial Day—I had lived all my life, except for brief jaunts and vacations around the South Pacific, in the American expatriate community in Auckland, New Zealand. My father’s parents had been Nineteeners—that is, they had come to the Auckland Americatown during the last brief period when the American Reich had opened the door for emigration, in 2019. My mother’s family were directly descended from MacArthur’s Remnant, but as they were by then extremely poor, they were happy to see my mother marry into a family of better-off parvenus.
In 2062 the part of Auckland where I had grown up and still lived was called Little San Diego and supposedly bore some resemblance to the California city destroyed, along with the battered remnant of the Pacific fleet, by a suicide U-boat toting a hundred megatons in 1944; I was sufficiently remote from national history so that as a child I always imagined that I would rather see San Diego as it was now—a very nearly circular bay reaching miles inland from the old coast, the bottom still covered with fragments of glass—than the poor copy that my hometown was said to be.
My childhood was almost embarrassingly uneventful and stereotypical. The American expat settlement was making itself a comfortable, affluent place and an important part of the Enzy economy during those years, and with prosperity came smooth emerald lawns, white picket fences, low brick homes with long straight driveways and basketball hoops on every garage, and everything else it was possible to copy from old movies and photographs, all made out of plastic or nylon. I barely remembered the scruffy settlement of my early childhood, let alone the eternal rusting refugee camp in which my mother had grown up.
By the time I was in my midteens I was like every American expat of my generation: I wanted to assimilate and be a full Kiwi, but I was fiercely proud of the family’s American past. I got my dual citizenship on my eighteenth birthday and took my four-year turn in Her Majesty’s Navy, but every Bataan Day I went down to the Remnant’s Graveyard and said the pledge to Old Glory, then swore the oath, once again, that we would someday, somehow, carry out MacArthur’s unfulfilled promise. My eyes were as apt to get damp at “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” as at “God Save the Queen.”
In due time, having been a quiet, studious kid, I turned into a good science student, and from a good science student into a competent but not particularly accomplished scientist. Since the global detente of the 2050s arrived just as I entered graduate school in physics, I was able to join in humanity’s return to the long-interrupted pursuit of pure research. After taking my specialty in graduate school I became an astronomer with an appointment at New Marcus Whitman College in Auckland, moved to a house of my own in Little San Diego, and started to date Helen Perdita, a historian, also an American expat, in our history department.
As I said, Friday, May 30, 2062, started off with at least a promise of being unusual and interesting. It was bright and sunny, and better still, I would be avoiding work today. I was taking a personal day from teaching classes in order to interview for a job that I wanted and thought I was likely to get, and even if I didn’t it was an excuse to run up to Surabaya and enjoy the day there. I hadn’t had the Studebaker Skyjump out of her slip at the harbor in at least two months, which was a very long time to go without that particular pleasure, and though it was hours till takeoff I was already excited at the thought of making a flight.
The Overseas Times was lying in the driveway, about halfway down, as always. This morning I would have time to read as much as I cared to, since my appointment was not until one o’clock.
The main headline was HENRY X TO VISIT AUCKLAND—it had been a while since the Australian king had come to town. Below the fold, the main headline was EFL TO EXPAND TO CHRISTCHURCH, PERTH. I shrugged; I had dutifully learned the rules to American football, but I hadn’t been able to make myself feel any enthusiasm for it. Even the most enthusiastic fans said that the Expat League had been unimpressive lately.
As I was carrying the paper back into the house, my mind already on the frozen breakfast I was going to heat, I stumbled for an instant. When I looked back there was nothing there, but as I regathered the paper under my arm, a small piece of blue paper dropped to the driveway. I bent and picked it up, expecting an advertising flyer, and instead read:
Dear Lyle Peripart,
You ought to stay away from Iphwin. He’s more dangerous than he seems. Take Helen to Saigon, have a nice weekend, and then come back to your regular job.
I’m really telling you this as a friend.
My first thought was that the note might be from Utterword, the department chairman, who had a tendency to use phrases like “I’m really telling you this as a friend.” But Utterword’s style was more to catch you and drag you to his office—what administrator with any political sense was going to put anything like this on paper, even unsigned?
It didn’t seem like a friendly note—the tone was more like a veiled threat. Yet I had no enemies.
I slipped the package of frozen breakfast into the warmer and flipped it on.
I didn’t even know of anyone who disliked me, much, or anyone I had annoyed.
The warmer chimed and the package slid back out.
Now that I thought of it—I stopped to shovel the soft eggs onto the toast, drop the chipped ham and Velveeta over it, sprinkle it with the small packet of A-1, and push the whole mess onto my plate—now that I thought of it, who, besides me, a few clerks at ConTech, and Geoffrey Iphwin himself, knew that I had even applied for a job at ConTech, let alone had an interview today?
The more I thought about it the more acutely it became a puzzle. Maybe someone who was mad at Iphwin? Or maybe at ConTech, trying to keep me from joining up with them? But Iphwin was only offering me the post of “personal statistician” (whatever that might be) and I couldn’t see how that could matter enough for anyone to go to the trouble of sending me a note.
As usual the Overseas Times was blissfully devoid of real news and filled with commentaries on things that did not matter in the slightest. I enjoyed my breakfast sandwich as much as ever, and I treated myself to reading, in full, a discussion of whether too much emphasis was placed on sports in the public schools; an account of how the police had tracked down and captured a mildly deranged man who was sending obscene messages to female ruggers via computer network; a discussion of the politics of converting an underused golf course to a more general outdoor recreation area; and all the other things that reminded me why I liked living in Enzy, a country with “no more history than necessary” as I liked to remark to my fellow expats.
The last bite of the sandwich went down as I was contemplating a spate of letters to the editor about the closing down of the last Christian church within city limits; a few of its little band of elderly parishioners had written, the week before, to admonish everyone that they were at risk of hellfire, and this had sufficiently tickled the Kiwi sense of humor (as deadly seriousness always did) so that there was now a bombard
ment of sarcastic and silly letters mocking them. I spent a while lingering over these, trying to decide which I liked best; the phrase “rabbi on a stick” had its appeal, but the proposal to treat the entire congregation with aphrodisiacs conjured a more interesting image ...
I skipped the letters to the sports page, which were generally rancorous, and allowed myself the guilty pleasure of skipping the arts page. I knew that I really should stay in better touch with the arts—after all they were just about the only arena left in the world in which Americans really functioned as Americans—but I found it harder and harder to tolerate it every year. Almost all of what everyone was doing seemed to be nothing but rehashes of things done with far more energy and nuance a century before.
I glanced at the clock. I still had some time to spare, but on the other hand there was not much to do here. And after so long in the slip the Skyjump really should have a more thorough checkout. I made sure everything in the kitchen was off, put on my sport coat, carried my luggage out, locked the front door, and strolled down the driveway.
I had an odd thought: why did I have a driveway? I had no car, nor did anyone I knew. There were perhaps a hundred cars among all the expats in all of Auckland, all of them ceremonial in one sense or another. Only the government, the very largest businesses, and a few of the hereditary wealthy would have them. Why did everyone have a driveway? Of course everyone would have told me that it had been an American folk custom, and part of our identity, but after all, when the Occupation began, only about one in three American households had a car. Was it, perhaps, that only the armed forces overseas, plus the financially well-off, had been able to escape, and the well-off had owned the cars?
It gave me something to think over while I waited for the cab, my suitcase beside me on the curb. Not that I needed much diversion; the bright, perfect fall day was really more than enough all by itself.
The cab turned up a couple of minutes later. Three doors down it was ambushed by a crowd of neighborhood children, who saw a chance for the delightful old game of torment-the-cab. Since the cab wasn’t allowed to move with any object at body temperature in front of it, they could stop the cab by jumping in front of it, and then pin it down indefinitely by forming a circle of linked hands around it. I sighed, picked up my suitcase, and started walking toward the cab.
As I got closer I could hear it pleading to be let alone, and threatening to record all their pictures as they darted in and out and wrote dirty words on it. The poor things are programmed for such complete courtesy that it could only phrase it as “Now, please, if you don’t mind, I shall have to take your picture and give it to the cab company if you write bad words on me, which I really wish you would not do, please, and have a pleasant day.”
When I got close enough the kids scattered—it was a game I had played often enough as a child, and I was still in no hurry, so I wasn’t particularly angry. I just wanted my cab and was annoyed at having to walk forty yards or so to get it.
“Are you Mr. Lyle Peripart, sir, and if you are, sir, shall I take you to your jump boat, sir?” the cab asked plaintively, as I approached ii.
“Yes and yes,” I said. “Two bags to load into your boot.”
The cab popped its boot open and asked, “Shall I deploy my rear lift, sir?”
“Not needed,” I said, and swung my computer and my small suitcase in.
“Sir,” the car added, “your house informs me that you may have left the thermostat set to a warmer temperature than is needed while you are away, sir. Sir, your marina has confirmed that you won’t be bringing back your jump boat until Sunday noon, sir. Sir, would it be possible, sir, for the house to set the thermostat lower, and thereby conserve your fuel bill and our nation’s fuel, sir?”
I got into the open passenger side door and said, “Aw, sure, turn it down. Is there anything else the house would like before I go?”
“Sir, no, sir, except that your house wishes you to have a safe trip, sir.”
“The house is kind. It has a very thoughtful and courteous attitude and its thoroughness is appreciated.” The cab, of course, would relay this to the house, and that was important. Strangely enough, fully thirty years after automated houses, there were still people who didn’t speak kindly to theirs or give them any compliments—and those people lived in cold, drafty, neglectful, apathetic homes. That was senseless when it was so easy to have a pleasant home—a little courtesy and kindness, a few congratulations for a job well done, and the house would learn so much faster and begin to cast about for ways to please you more.
The cab slid the door shut silently beside me, and asked, “Sir, are you comfortable, sir? Sir, will it be all right for me to start moving, sir?”
“Yes and yes,” I said. The cab pulled away from the curb and accelerated smoothly down the block toward the big intersection. Now that there was a passenger, the kids wouldn’t bother it; cabs, like all robots, were inhibited from harming a human being, but passengers weren’t.
“Sir,” the cab said, “the Red Stripe Taxicab Company has instructed me to proffer its apology for my being late, sir.”
“Quite all right,” I said. “I saw that you were attacked. I chased the children away myself. You’re not to blame for a bit of it. They were very rude and cruel to you, and they shouldn’t have done that.”
“Sir, little children are the most precious things there are, sir,” the cab said primly. “Sir, it is the job of everyone, human beings and machines alike, to guard them and keep them safe, sir. Sir, it was an honor to be there and to help in keeping them safe, sir. Sir, all children are very good, and there is never any ground for criticizing the child of any human being, sir.”
I would have liked to think that I detected even the least trace of sarcasm in the voice of that poor persecuted cab, but I knew perfectly well that whatever its real feelings might be—and to be bright enough to handle the cab, there had to be a freethinking part to the brain—all that it would be allowed to speak would be company policy, as set by the Public Relations department. Furthermore, no good could come of saying anything subversive to it; if I encouraged it to think what any thinking being would think, I would merely hasten the day when the contradiction between its thoughts and its required texts pushed it over the edge into madness. Irritating as it was, therefore, it was best to reinforce the poor thing’s accordance with policy. “There is much to what you have said,” I said, “and I will think on it; thinking about it will bring me pleasure. You are a good cab to feel that way.”
“Sir thank you very much sir.”
“And for purposes of your company record,” I added, “let me state that you were in fact surrounded and abused by a crowd of human children, for whom you showed exemplary patience, forbearance, and affection.”
“Sir, thank you, sir,” the cab said, real pleasure in its voice now. My reinforcement was something it was programmed to enjoy, of course, but this also would mean a commendation from the company to add to the array of medals on its dashboard, and cabs were programmed to be ridiculously sensitive to such things.
They also have enough free will to deliberately seek that which is pleasing; the cab immediately found a route that was about forty-five seconds faster and featured considerably better scenery. I thanked and congratulated it again, and I could almost feel it purr like an overgrown cat. Probably it would be right as rain again, psychologically, just as soon as the children’s artwork (the large black FUCK, the red SHELLI IS A HOAR, and the silver CUNT HOLE) got washed off. The robots are blessed with editable memories; it would be able to retain all the positive reinforcement it had gotten and completely forget all the pain.
The cab didn’t have to do it—it could have delivered me to the foot of the pier—but it got clearance and took me right out to the slip where my Skyjump was moored.
I said good-bye to the cab, collected my bags from its boot, and walked down the gangplank into the upper hatch of the Sky-jump. It piped me aboard with a warm simulated voice recorded by
the great American actress Katharine Hepburn almost a century ago. “Good day, Mr. Peripart. Our flight to Surabaya is cleared for eighty-two minutes from now but earlier departures may be available if we’re ready before then. It will take about fourteen minutes to reach the starting point for our jump run, so we must depart no later than sixty-eight minutes from now. Will that be possible, Mr. Peripart?”
“It will,” I said. “It’s good to be aboard again.”
There are lots of other fine jump boats in the world, I’m sure, but there couldn’t possibly be a more beautiful one than the ‘54 Studebaker Skyjump. It had a lean, eager, fierce look, a bit like a miniature Messerschmitt commando launch, but expressed in softer curves like a Volvo Seadancer, and with the same classic proportions as a Rolls or a Mitsubishi yacht. And it was made right in Little San Diego, by the Studebaker company itself—the only expat American vehicle company. Like classic American aircraft, when its wings were fully deployed they were long, thin, and elliptical, unlike the European tendency to deltas or the Japanese love for the squared-off stubby wing; I had no idea what was actually aerodynamically effective but I knew what was graceful.
