Strings

by Dave Duncan

  Oh, bliss!

  She decided that for once Eccles Pandora Pendor might just eat a hot breakfast, and damn the diet. She headed for the bedroom to freshen up and change.

  “Call from Dr. Frazer Franklin,” the com announced.

  Pandora stopped with one foot in the air. What could possibly be inspiring F.F. to be awake at this time of day?

  Worry?

  And why would he be calling her? Could it be a surrender? The white flag? She could think of nothing that he could have left to lay on the table. By tomorrow she would be the unquestioned queen of WSHB News. Frankie was going to be back doing cook shows. She would pick up a Pulitzer and the Nobel Prize for Espionage and crush his skull between them.

  On the other hand…

  On the other hand the timing was suspicious as hell. The codes would have kept the Institute out, but of course Razy-Frazy Frankie had friends in high places in WSHB. He might have been monitoring her com all night. So he called her now, right after Klaus did?

  Pandora backed up, made one more check of that adorable reflection, and said, “Accept!”

  And right behind the window was the famous elm desk, in the exact center of Frankie’s opulent and garishly overdecorated office. Behind the famous desk was the famous face. Despite the barbarous hour, he was as smartly dressed as always, freshly shaved and dangerously confident. The deep tan was likely newly touched-up, and so perhaps was the trace of scarring on the cheekbones, the mark of the manly type who spends too much time outdoors. F.F. never went outdoors. His blond hair was most artfully coiffured—of course. Leaning expensive sleeves forward, he was wearing Grave Concern, one of his most effective expressions, normally reserved for minor flooding, or discouraging news on the latest disease.

  “Good morning, Panda dearie.” He knew how she detested that name.

  She registered Bright Amusement. “Hello, Frank. You’re up early. Bladder trouble again?”

  “Well, I’m a little concerned. Have you completed those negotiations you were fretting about?” He had switched to Polite Interest Only, but he knew the answer. He even knew she knew he knew the answer.

  “Oh, those?” She shrugged a Little Importance. “Yes, all done.”

  “Ah.” He conveyed Trace of Regret. “How soon would you be able to actually use any of the stuff?”

  Pandora fanned through a dozen scenarios in her mind. She could not quite discount the possibility that F.F. or someone in his faction might try to intercept Klaus. It would be treason, of course, but internal gut-spilling could sometimes be carried beyond proper limits. Some things should not be done inside the corporate family, but sometimes some things were.

  So don’t answer the question.

  “Oh, we’ll have to decide that at the conferences later today. I’m sure I can count on your cooperation…”

  He raised an exquisitely manicured hand. “But the deal is complete? The money is gone? It’s too late to back out now?”

  Pandora felt the ice of terror meet the fire of fury, and did not know which one was going to win. It was like having dangerous revelations emerge during a live interview. Automatically she assumed a Mild Distaste.

  “What are you getting at, Frankie?”

  Frazer’s infinitely spurious face wore an expression that could only be classed as Pontifical Infallibility. “The news conference. It’s set for noon. I plan to attend, of course.”

  Ice won in a landslide. Pandora’s hand found the back of a chrome and cryspex chair, and she deflated onto it. “What news conference?”

  For a tiny fraction of a second authentic emotion showed in Frazer’s eyes. It was very nasty. Then blandness returned.

  “Oh, had you not heard?”

  “Heard what, Frankie?”

  “The director herself! Old Mother Hubbard’s invited the media to a reception. Her first news conference in twenty years. I confess I am curious to hear what the old coot has to say.”

  Klaus might arrive before noon, but there was no hope on Earth that Pandora could have the story ready to spin before then. All she could do was to follow news of the press conference with a stock “usually reliable sources believe that she will report…”

  Ten million hectos, and Pandora had bought a couple of hours’ rumor—which the other networks would steal away from her at once.

  There could be no doubt why Hubbard had called a press conference. Pandora had already researched the figures and knew them by heart. In thirty years 4-I had contacted over fifty thousand worlds. About fifteen hundred had borne life of some form or other, but none had proved in the end to be human habitable. Nor had the Institute turned up any trace of sentience—until that stone ax. Only one of those two possible discoveries could justify a public announcement by the old woman herself, and they could hardly both happen in the same week, not after thirty years.

  Scuppered!

  Double-cross? How had the Institute known that WSHB knew?

  “Do you want to come along with me, Panda dear?” Frazer Franklin asked, drooling syrup. “Or will you be laboring to deliver your billion-dollar baby?”

  7

  Nauc, April 7

  “GIMME YOUR WATCH!”

  “Huh?”

  The chopper was still heading southeast with its sinister escort swooping around high overhead. Despite a hollow-eyed shortage of sleep, Cedric had been staring out the window with steadily growing excitement. Holos gave sight and sound, but reality was so much more—smells and vibration and the sense of motion. He marveled at the greenness of grass and leaves below the gray drizzle; it made Meadowdale seem like a desert. He had just registered that there was no new building in progress here. The towns were not abandoned, but they had a seedy, neglected look to them, so probably they did not have long to go. Then he had caught a whiff of an unfamiliar scent and decided that it must be the sea.

  “You heard me, dummy. Your watch.” The thick man had been brooding in silence for a long time and was glowering at Cedric’s wrist.

  Puzzled and distrustful, Cedric unclipped his watch and passed it over. Bagshaw put both thumbs on it and squeezed, setting his teeth with effort. The watch bent and split, and then spilled parts. Ignoring Cedric’s yell of complaint, Bagshaw tossed it into a corner.

  “What the hell, mister? Gran sent me that for my—”

  The bull grunted. “Babysitter.”

  Cedric’s fair skin tended to flush easily. He felt it do so now. Three times in the last year he had gone over the screens at Meadowdale—small wonder that his freedom had always been so short-lived. “Tracer? That was how you found me last night?”

  Hooded eyes gleamed mockingly. “No. I do my own babysitting.”

  Cedric worked that out and it was even worse. He had behaved exactly as expected—likely they had not even had to call on System for a psychoplot. Sucker! How could he have been so stupid? He felt like a circus animal. He was going to meet his grandmother face to face at last, and now he wondered how he would hold up his head.

  So full of shame that he could taste it, he went back to watching the landscape unrolling below, but the magic had gone clammy and sour. Sucker! Sucker! Sucker!

  But if he had not ruined everything, what did Gran have planned for him? She had refused to be specific on the com, saying only that there was a job waiting. Rangers must need a long training program, and she had not mentioned training.

  Bagshaw had gone back to his brooding, staring malevolently at the shimmer of oil rainbows in a dished floor panel.

  Now the land was stark and wasted. The farthest reach of storm tides was marked by long ridges of debris, the remains of buildings and machinery. Cedric reminded himself that those had been people’s homes, people’s cars and possessions, hopes and dreams. Tree trunks, shattered asphalt, concrete rubble—those told of other damage. In places the piled refuse still smoked. He knew it was fired as soon as it dried out, because it always contained animal carcasses. Or worse. Every storm moved the ridges farther inland…and storms were s
till growing more frequent.

  The desolation became worse—barren, salt-soaked flats where nothing grew. Lonely concrete ruins stood in forlorn defiance between oddly rectangular patches of swamp marking choked cellars. In places the ground had been stripped to bare bedrock.

  “Why are we coming here?” Cedric demanded suspiciously. This could certainly not be the way to Headquarters.

  Bagshaw roused himself from his scowling reverie and gestured idly northward. “Earthfirsters have a missile post there-abouts. Easier just to go around it.”

  Cedric gaped at him, trying to decide if Bagshaw was stringing him along. “They’d shoot at us?”

  “At anything going in or coming out.”

  “They can get away with that?”

  “Sure they can—until we get mad enough to send in gunships and burn their nest. Then they open up another. Crazy bone-heads!”

  Cedric swallowed his last crumb of pride. “Last night there was no fog on the holo. I saw things I’d never seen done before. I mean like sex. And the news had no foggy bits, either.”

  Bagshaw glanced at him and just nodded. Then he went back to staring at the floor, a hummock in a blanket.

  “They censored our holo? Why?”

  The blanket moved in a shrug. “Kids are easier to handle if you keep their minds off that stuff. Especially big kids.”

  Cedric clung tight to his new humility. “But the news? I never knew that Earthfirsters besieged the Institute. I’ve almost never heard of Earthfirsters.”

  Bagshaw gave him a curiously opaque stare. “There’s probably a lot of things you don’t know, Sprout.”

  “Like what?”

  “It’d be quicker to list what you do know. Did they teach you anything other than skeet lasering?”

  “Lots of things. Like farming and riding…canoeing and woodsmanship. Like rock climbing.”

  “You still got forests out west?”

  “Some. In the drier parts. Desert trees resist UV, they say. The rain doesn’t hurt alkali soils as bad.”

  “Not like forests used to be, I’ll bet.” Bagshaw scratched himself. “What good is all this outdoorsy stuff going to be to you? You going to be a cowboy when all the grass has died? More and more food has to be synthetic.”

  “I want to be a ranger,” Cedric began, and wished he had not when he saw Bagshaw’s lip twist.

  “Ranger? Rangers don’t go outdoors, sonny. They stay inside their skivs. Been watching too many holos, you have. Stone of the Institute? Or maybe Ranger Stone and the Killer Cheese. ‘You will thrill as fearless Stone Craig battles the—’”

  “Awright! What—”

  But Bagshaw was enjoying himself. “You know what skiv means?”

  “Self-Contained Investigatory Vehicle.”

  “So? Self-contained! No sane ranger leaves his skiv unless he must. He reads dials and keeps the equipment running and that’s all.”

  “Tell Devlin Grant that!” Cedric said hotly. “Or Baker Abel! Or Jackson Wilbur!”

  “Okay. A few. But I know a lot o’ rangers. Mostly they’re a dull bunch. They’re only cabbies for the big shots—the planetologists, geologists, and so on. The rangers spend most of their duty time lying around watching holo coins or playing craps. Believe me, I have that on good authority. Can you read?”

  “Of course!” But Cedric felt his face warm up again.

  Bagshaw wrinkled his dermsym in wry amusement. “And write?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, or just so-so?”

  “Well! Well enough!” But Cedric knew he could not compare with Madge, say, or Ben, at reading and writing. He was much better than most of the kids at Meadowdale, though. No one had ever taught him. He had picked up reading from watching holo, and big words really bothered him. He could write his name and not much more, picking out the keys with one finger. He had always meant to start practicing in earnest, but somehow there had just never been time.

  Bagshaw looked skeptical and laughed.

  “What of it?” Cedric demanded, angry that the big man could so easily make him feel angry. “I saw a Frazer Frankie special last week that said half the Ph.D.s in the country can’t read’n’write.”

  “Including that slime Frazer himself, I’d think.”

  Cedric turned back to the window. The copter was curving over the sea, a wide bay dotted with ruins.

  “Ranger’s gotta be able to read, though,” Bagshaw said, “because a skiv can’t carry much of a System. Ranging’s chicken work, Sprout. It’s not exciting and dangerous; it’s just dull and dangerous. Stay home and watch it on the holos—you’ll see as much as they do from the skivs, anyway. And it’s risky.”

  “Yeah, but how risky?” Cedric was skeptical. “Really—how risky?”

  “About one party in fifty.”

  “Bull!”

  “No bull. Not killer cheddar, just broken strings. Next window comes due, and the techs punch in the numbers, and there’s nothing there, no world at those coordinates. It happens. Tough if you happen to be overnighting!”

  “Maybe overnighting’s risky,” Cedric conceded. “But how often do they overnight, though? Surely that’s only done if a planet’s really got something exciting?”

  Bagshaw shrugged. “It’s done a lot oftener than they let out. But even quickies can be dangerous. Suddenly there’s instability—and if you don’t get your ass back here real fast, the window may be gone. And that’s it, Sprout! They never find a broken string again. When a world’s lost, it’s lost. Creepin’ rotten way to die.”

  Cedric was gazing out at the bay but not seeing much. He was thinking of parents he could not remember. He always felt guilty about that, always felt that there should be something there, some vague baby memory of giant smiling faces. But there was nothing.

  “So maybe ranging isn’t romantic,” he said, and felt like a traitor as he did so. “But it’s important! We’ve got to find a Class One world. Even if the worst of the troubles is over—”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Holo did. Cedric had gotten his own set when Clyde left and he became eldest, and he had been watching all kinds of educational stuff. “The ozone’s started to come back—”

  “Wrong. The ozone’s stopped getting less. That’s not the same thing at all.”

  Why should this beef tub know anything about that? “The ozone was destroyed mostly by fluorocarbons,” Cedric said firmly. “And we stopped using them a long time ago.”

  “True, but all the junk they put up there back last century is still there—still hard at work, catalyzing merrily. We’re down to a basic equilibrium now. If it’s going up at all, it’s going up so slowly it’ll take centuries to get us back to where we were.”

  The copter had crossed the bay and was over land again, rows of shabby houses, each set in a patch of bare mud or rank weeds. Cedric looked away quickly. “And the transmensor’s done away with fossil fuels, so we’re not stuffing all that CO2 in the air anymore.”

  “Oh, yes,” Bagshaw said. “Thank God for the transmensor. But it’s too late now, Sprout. The damage is done. The CO2 caused the greenhouse effect, and that screwed up the weather and melted the ice.” His voice grew angrier and louder, although he had already been shouting over the engine. “And it feeds on itself now. Plants are the only thing that can take CO2 out of the air, at least on our time scale, and look what we’ve done to plant life! Zapped it with ultraviolet, burned it with acid rain, starved it with soil erosion, poisoned it with pollution, shriveled it with drought, drowned it with too much rain there, cut down the forests…”

  “Tropical forests just ran a rot and grow cycle and—”

  Cedric was shouted down.

  “But those forests weathered the rocks they grew on, and that gets the carbon out of the air, and they held down a lot of soil that’s mostly gone into the sea now, and the seas took a lot of CO2 out of circulation, too, and we’re still poisoning the seas. The weather’s gone mad, and every storm removes s
ome more plant life or more soil for it to grow in. Hurricanes in January? Any change in climate hurts vegetation, laddie! Species after species is just giving up, and each one takes others with it. So the CO2 level’s still rising, and there’s enough of it in the air to do a powerful lot more damage. The ocean’s going to keep on rising. We still don’t know when the Earth’s going to find a new equilibrium, or where. It’ll take thousands of years to get back to where we were.

  “Furthermore—” He thumped a fingertip on Cedric’s chest. “—the fall in population isn’t matching the drop in arable land, and the Cancer Curve keeps—”

  He stopped suddenly—the copilot had twisted around to watch, then grinned and turned away again. Bagshaw scowled like a constipated gorilla.

  “So where did you learn all this?” Cedric demanded, trying not to believe as much as he did. Real world now—don’t trust anyone!

  Bagshaw grunted. He seemed ashamed of his outburst.

  “That’s one of the things they kept from us at Meadowdale?” Cedric asked.

  “Naw. It’s kept from most everyone. Talk like that and you’re called an alarmist.”

  “The Institute?”

  “Not many even there,” Bagshaw muttered. “See, I’m—I was—pairing with an ecologist. Till recently. She told me. They don’t like to frighten people, but she told me.”

  His manner had changed completely, and Cedric sensed something left unsaid. “It’s that bad?”

  Bagshaw nodded in silence.

  “So we need a Class One world desperately!”

  The motor changed its note. The copter was starting to lose altitude.

  “Guess so.” The sneer crawled back into place. “Then they’ll send for you to do the canoeing. Maybe that’s the job your grannie’s got in mind for you.”

  Cedric turned his head to watch the fast-approaching ground. There were still six billion people left on earth, though. Transmensor windows were always short, and eventually any string ran out. How many people could you move to your Class One world if you found it?

  And which ones?

  “What’s that?” He pointed down at high wire fences and watch towers. Armed guards were inspecting vehicles at a gate.