Strings
Page 37
“Ah!” Cedric said, as though in sudden divine revelation. “He picked the sort of work she’d hate most?”
“Very likely. She tried to make up. She offered him a whole new planet—for him and his bride.”
“Oak?”
“Oak. And it killed him.”
A soft breath of wind brought a sudden odor of cooking wafting over the grassland. Sounds of children and distant singing or prayer came drifting up from the valley.
“And?” Cedric asked softly.
“She doesn’t like failure—I told you.”
“She tried again?”
“She tried again. She had a tissue sample on file. She had him cloned.”
The dim blur that was Cedric’s face nodded in the gloom. “So that was why Devlin insisted you go on the Nile trip? He wanted you along as insurance?”
“I guess so.”
“Then…then Hastings Willoughby’s your biological father? What did he say?”
“He doesn’t know. She never told him what she’d done. I found out from System, but of course I couldn’t tell anyone, even him, or they’d have wanted to know how I knew. When she did tell me—not very long ago—I decided not to bug him. He was too old to be interesting. He was a worse father than she was a mother, anyway.”
“That’s crazy! He must have seen you in the holo. The Marigold expedition? Or Buzzard. I knew you! Everyone knows your face!”
Abel sighed. “He’s old. He has no interest in other worlds. And he hardly knew his son—John, the first version. They seem to have met about twice after John grew up. I told you—he wasn’t much of a father. You’re not the only orphan in the family.”
“She wasn’t much of a grandmother to me,” Cedric said ruefully. “Even at a distance. I can’t imagine her rearing a son.”
“Oh, I fought, too! But not as bad, maybe. She’d learned a few things about mothering. I think my gawdawful sense of humor was my defense—it really used to rile her.”
More silence, then Cedric said, “But…”
“But what?”
“But if Oak killed John, how’d she ever let you be party leader for this Tiber planting?”
Jeez! This kid was a leopard in drag! “When you’re as old as I am, son,” Abel said, as calmly as he could manage, “you’ll learn that women are never predictable.”
“Mmph?” Cedric muttered, his voice oily with suspicion. “It wouldn’t have been because System was doing the evaluations, would it? That maybe none of the other candidates measured up—according to System? That you were the only possible choice—according to System?”
“Oh, I doubt that.”
Cedric chuckled dryly. “I think I know now who was really pulling the strings, though. Well…” He held out a hand. “Good night, er, Dad?”
“’Night, son,” Abel said. “See you in the morning.”
“Yeah.”
“Give Alya my love.”
“Not findangle likely! She’s got all of mine, and that’s as much as any woman can handle.” Hubbard Cedric stalked off into the dark, humming contentedly, and no doubt wearing that stupid grin again.
Postscript
YES, VIRGINIA, THERE is a superstring theory. In fact there are several, and they disagree on how many dimensions there really are—I wish the physicists would get their facts straight so I could know what I’m twisting. Nevertheless, if you want to buy a transmensor, I suggest you check with your local hyperdrive dealer.
There are string theories in cosmology, too, but they’re different. That’s one type of string I didn’t manage to weave into the story.
The environmental stuff, unfortunately, is a lot more probable. I began this book in 1987, which turned out to be the warmest year on record, and moved the problem of atmospheric degradation out of the SF ghetto into the popular press. I’m writing these final lines near the end of 1988, which is going to be either the warmest or second warmest. By the time you read this, we’ll know about 1989. I’m very glad I’ll not be around to know 2050.
And without a transmensor, there’s no way out.
About the Author
DAVE DUNCAN was born in Scotland in 1933 and educated at Dundee High School and the University of St. Andrews. He moved to Canada in 1955 and has lived in Calgary ever since. He is married and has three grown-up children.
Unlike most writers, he did not experiment beforehand with a wide variety of careers. Apart from a brief entrepreneurial digression into founding—and then quickly selling—a computerized data-sorting business, he spent thirty years as a petroleum geologist. His recreational interests, however, have included at one time or another astronomy, acting, statistics, history, painting, hiking, model ship building, photography, parakeet breeding, carpentry, tropical plants, classical music, computer programming, chess, genealogy, and stock market speculation.
An attempt to add writing to this list backfired—he met with enough encouragement that he took up writing full-time. Now his hobby is geology.