Earth

by Ben Bova

Out of the corner of his eye Tray saw Para—still standing by the door—lift its chin a notch. The Predecessors were the race of intelligent machines that had first warned humankind of the approaching Death Wave.

  “The Predecessors,” Tray repeated.

  Dr. Ramesh explained, “They shared with us their development of positronic brain probes.”

  “Which they had developed when they decided to create the humanoids that eventually made contact with us,” Ferguson finished for her.

  Tray shook his head. “This is getting deep.”

  Smiling benignly, Dr. Atkins took control of the explanation. “The salient point is that we learned about positronic brain probes from the Predecessors and developed the technology to perfect our memory erasure technique.”

  “And it works fine,” Ferguson said firmly. “No worries.”

  No worries, Tray thought. It’s not his brain they want to invade.

  “So there you are,” Atkins said, with a spread of his liver-spotted hands. “We probe your brain, remove the memories associated with Felicia Cantore, and you’re free of the inhibitory trauma that’s crippling your personality.”

  “Remove all my memories of Felicia?”

  “Yes. Total eradication. It will be as if you’d never known her.”

  “But I don’t want to have my memories of Felicia erased!”

  “It’s for your own good,” Dr. Ramesh said, earnestly.

  “I want to remember her!” Tray insisted. “I think of her every day. Every night.”

  “And that’s crippling your emotional development,” snapped Dr. Ferguson.

  “I don’t care!” Tray half-shouted. “I won’t give up my memories of Felicia!”

  Ferguson stared at him for a disappointed moment, then turned to Dr. Atkins. Dr. Ramesh look as if she wanted to say something, but instead turned her head and also looked toward Atkins.

  The chief of the Psychotech Department shook his head like a sadly disappointed grandfather, then said gently, “I’m afraid that decision is not entirely yours to make. We are required to make our own recommendation to the medical division’s board of governors. You will probably be required to submit to the memory erasure procedure.”

  Tray stared at the old man, too stunned and angry to reply. But he was thinking, Like hell I will!

  INVITATION

  With Para at his side, Tray left the meeting and—fuming—went down the elevator and out onto the sunny, busy boulevard.

  For hours they strode in silence through the crowds of pedestrians, Tray telling himself he should cool down, drown his anger. But he muttered irritably, “Nobody’s going to erase my memories.”

  Para did not respond. It merely walked at Tray’s side, in silence.

  Para never argues with me, Tray realized. It just goes along until I’ve calmed down, and then tries to reason with me. With an inner grumble, Tray told himself, Well, this is one time reasoning isn’t going to work. I don’t want to forget Felicia, and that’s that!

  Finally they stood before the building that housed Tray’s apartment. They went up an elevator, then along a moving carpeted hallway to Tray’s quarters.

  “I will wait here in the corridor while you change into a fresh outfit,” said Para.

  “No,” Tray countered. “Come in with me. Keep me company.”

  “Are you certain…?”

  “I’m not angry with you, Para. It’s Atkins and his knuckleheaded assistants that I’m sore with.”

  Para was incapable of sighing, but the android gave every appearance of being distressed. “Dr. Atkins has the authority to command you to undergo a memory erasure procedure.”

  Grimly, Tray replied, “He can command it. But can he make me obey his command?”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to a confrontation,” said Para.

  Tray opened the door to his apartment. Para hesitated.

  With a ghost of a smile, Tray said, “You’re the closest thing I have to a friend, Para. Come in with me, please.”

  Para knew that Trayvon had been introduced to a small army of people his own age: medical personnel, human relations experts, other patients. He had been polite with them, even social. He had attended parties with them, joined them in outings beyond the medical facility’s grounds, spent long evenings in earnest discussions with small, intimate groups. But he had formed no lasting relationships, made no real friends, had no sexual encounters.

  It was as if Trayvon Williamson was himself an android: human in appearance and behavior, but incapable of truly human interactions.

  Para stepped into the three-room apartment’s sitting room. Tray headed for the bedroom to shower and change for dinner. The android had been in the room many times before. It was neatly decorated with comfortable furniture and electronic wall hangings that could be changed by voice command. At present they showed views of great architecture: the Pyramids, the Great Wall of China, the Survivors’ Plinth in drowned Manhattan, the Geodesic Dome that protected Florence.

  All unchanged since the day Trayvon had first stepped into this apartment, Para saw.

  One corner of the sitting room was filled with Tray’s musical assembly, noisemakers of various pitches and timbres, covered with a thin coating of dust. Untouched for weeks on end, obviously.

  As it listened to the sounds of rushing water from the bathroom shower, Para wondered how it could break through the iron barrier Tray had built around himself. The android had hoped that the visit to Mesa Verde might have begun to open Tray’s barricaded personality. Apparently not. The young man remained behind the protective walls he had built, alone with his feelings of guilt.

  Is memory erasure the only way to help him? Para wondered.

  At last Tray came in from his bedroom, dressed in a crisp new outfit of silver jacket, slacks, and a collarless shirt of glittering blue, nearly the color of his eyes.

  “Where shall we have dinner?” he asked, almost eagerly. “I’m tired of the restaurants here in the center. Let’s go into town for something interesting.”

  Para imitated a human reaction: It nodded. “You have been invited to a reception at the World Council regional center—”

  Tray felt his face twist with distaste. “A diplomatic reception? One of those stuffed-shirt affairs? Why in the world—”

  “It’s being given to honor Jordan Kell. It’s his birthday.”

  “Jordan Kell?” Tray blinked with disbelief. “I thought he was dead. Or at least retired.”

  Para replied, “Retired, not dead.”

  “He must be a million years old.”

  “Approaching three thousand,” Para said. “Of course, most of that time had been spent in cryonic suspension.”

  “He’s gone on several star missions,” Tray acknowledged.

  “He led the first one, to Sirius. The one where we first met the Predecessors.”

  “And learned about the Death Wave.”

  “He married one of the women he met at Sirius,” Para added.

  Tray nodded. “A human, created by the Predecessors from tissue samples that they took while visiting Earth. Secretly.”

  “It’s a very romantic story.”

  Tray stared at his android guardian for a silent moment, his mind obviously considering the possibilities.

  “If we go to this reception…” he hesitated for a heartbeat, then went on, “do you think we’d actually get to meet Jordan Kell?”

  Para realized that this was the first real enthusiasm it had seen in its charge. “I believe it might be possible to arrange a meeting,” it said, straightfaced.

  Trayvon overlooked the equivocation. “Then let’s go meet him!”

  As it recorded the spark of interest in Tray’s behavior for later study, Para ordered an air taxi.

  JORDAN KELL

  Tray ducked out of the taxi’s door and gaped at the regional headquarters of the World Council.

  It was a massive, imposing building, blazing with lights. Among Denver’s soaring, earthquake-pr
oof mega-towers, the World Council building was a magnificent structure, only a few stories high but sprawling across more than a thousand hectares.

  “Versailles,” Para said as it and Tray stood at the curb gaping at its splendor. “Copied from the French palace near Paris. The original was built by Louis XIV and opened in 1682. It contained 2,300 rooms in a space of 63,154 square meters.”

  “It’s…” Tray fumbled for a word. “… big.”

  Para’s lips curled slightly. “Its purpose was to overawe the nobility and completely humble the peasantry.”

  “I guess it did that.”

  “Yes. But it didn’t prevent the French Revolution. Louis’s grandson, Louis XVI, was executed in 1793, together with his wife. Thousands were guillotined during the Reign of Terror.”

  Tray nodded, remembering his childhood history lessons. He and Para started up a curving walkway toward the palace.

  It stood in the middle of a graceful green park. Tray saw bison munching contentedly on prairie grasses off to one side. Delicate columns flanked the building’s entrance. A handful of people—the men in dark suits, many of them bearing colorful ribbons on their chests, the gowned women glittering with jewelry—were mounting the stone steps of the entrance, attended by robotic servants.

  “We’re late,” Tray said.

  “Not really,” Para reassured him. “Kell himself hasn’t arrived yet.”

  Tray started to ask the android how he knew that, then realized that Para’s internal communications equipment linked him intimately with data systems around the world and even out in space.

  Side by side they walked up the steps to the building’s entrance. A single person stood at the open doors, tall and stately, wearing a modern suit of black that reflected the lights from inside the big double doorway. He smiled and nodded at the arriving guests. Tray guessed that it was an android, but it was impossible to be sure, it looked completely human although it wore the dark-jacketed attire of a servant.

  “Trayvon Williamson and Para,” said the greeter, with a fixed smile. Tray realized his guess was correct: It was an android. It had scanned them as they came up the stairs. “Welcome, gentlemen.” It gestured them through the doorway.

  They stepped into a crowded foyer, buzzing with dozens of conversations. Tray knew none of the people there. It was impossible to tell their ages or their backgrounds. They all looked youthful, in the prime of life. Tray felt out of place and badly underdressed in his silver jacket and open-necked shirt.

  “I’m not in the right uniform,” he whispered to Para.

  “It’s perfectly all right,” said the android, its eyes pointing to another young man; this one in a hunter green outfit. “Formal dress is optional.”

  Tray realized that Para had checked the requirements for this dinner before they’d left his apartment. He felt better, but still out of place. Try to relax, he told himself. Nobody cares what you’re wearing. But still he felt uncomfortable.

  The young man in the green jacket and slacks came up to him, a beautiful dark-haired young woman on his arm.

  With a beaming smile, he said, “It’s good to see someone else who isn’t wearing a monkey suit.”

  Tray forced a smile. “I didn’t realize we were coming here until the last minute.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” the man said, with a shake of his well-coiffed light brown hair.

  “You look fine,” said his companion, smiling beautifully. She was the most magnificent woman Tray had ever seen: tall, graceful, utterly lovely. Midnight dark hair tumbling to her bare shoulders. Eyes the color of sapphires.

  “And you look beautiful,” Tray blurted.

  “Thank you, kind sir,” she said, dimpling into a smile.

  The man introduced himself and his companion. “I’m Mance Bricknell, and this is Loris De Mayne. We’re with the Geophysics Department at the university.”

  Tray couldn’t take his eyes off Loris De Mayne. She was nearly his height, clad in a sparkling strapless gown, stunning.

  “And you are…” she prompted.

  “Trayvon Williamson,” Tray gulped. Turning slightly, “And this is Para, my mentor.”

  “Mentor?” Loris De Mayne’s beautiful face contorted slightly into a puzzled frown.

  “I’m a patient at the hospital,” Tray said, feeling foolish, awkward.

  Bricknell’s eyes widened slightly. “You’re the survivor from that starship that blew up!” he realized.

  “Yes,” Tray admitted. “That’s me.”

  “You’ve been on a starship mission,” Loris said, as if it were important.

  “The only survivor,” said Bricknell, almost like an accusation.

  Tray didn’t know what to say, what to do. He wanted the floor to open up beneath his feet and swallow him.

  Para saved the awkwardness by nodding toward the foyer’s entrance. “I believe the guest of honor has just arrived.”

  Everyone was turning toward the entrance as a man of medium stature, clad in a handsome suit of pearl gray, stepped into the crowded foyer. His face was thin: sharp cheekbones, an almost-hawkish aquiline nose, a slim mustache over a smile that looked to Tray to be almost shy, apologetic.

  “Jordan Kell,” said Bricknell, in a whisper that was close to adoring.

  “It’s him,” Tray heard himself say.

  “Yes,” said Para, at his side.

  Kell was not imposing physically, nearly a head shorter than Tray, elegantly slender and lithe. Yet he seemed to radiate confidence, authority. He stood smiling at the doorway as the evening’s guests arranged themselves into a reception line to greet him.

  “Come on.” Bricknell tugged at Loris De Mayne’s slim, graceful wrist. “Let’s greet the guest of honor.”

  Tray followed the two of them, with Para at his side.

  “I thought Kell was married to that woman from New Earth,” he said as they stepped into the reception line.

  “She died,” Para half-whispered. “He’s been alone for many years.”

  “He hasn’t remarried?”

  “No.”

  Conversations along the reception line dwindled to hurried whispers as Kell slowly made his way among the guests, smiling, nodding, having a few words with each person before moving along.

  At last he reached Tray.

  As Tray extended his hand, Kell’s smile faded into a serious expression. “You’re Trayvon Williamson, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Tray replied.

  “It’s good to meet you, young man. We have a lot to talk about.”

  Feeling surprised, stunned, Tray gulped, “We do?”

  “Oh, yes indeed,” said Kell. Grasping Tray’s hand firmly, he said, “Later, when these formalities are over.”

  Tray nodded and repeated, “Later.”

  Kell stepped to Para, shook the android’s hand and muttered a few words, then proceeded down the long reception line, smiling and nodding, continuing his brief conversations with each guest.

  Tray followed Kell with his eyes until Loris De Mayne caught his attention with, “Shall we head for the bar?”

  Before Tray could think of a response, Para said, “Roberts’s rules of procedure state that a motion to head for the bar is always in order.”

  Bricknell laughed, took Loris by her braceleted arm, and led the way through the crowd from the foyer to the dining room, where a small squad of android bartenders was busily serving drinks to the guests.

  SPEECHES

  The dinner seemed tedious to Tray.

  He and Para were seated at a table for six, near the dining area’s rear, far from the head table, next to the sliding door that apparently led to the kitchen. Robotic waiters rolled through the doorway, carrying the various dinner courses to the tables arranged across the dining area’s vast floor.

  The room was enormous. Tray thought that half the population of Denver could be seated in it with room to spare. Magnificent draperies hung at the three-story-high windows that lined the side wall
s. Chandeliers dripping with flickering candle-like lights hung from the high, shadowed ceiling.

  Bricknell and Loris De Mayne had been seated at one of the tables up front, near the long, raised head table where Jordon Kell and the other notables sat.

  Tray picked at the salad and then at the meager slice of unidentifiable roast meat that the robots served. Para ate nothing, of course, but sat looking attentively at the head table as speaker after speaker droned on endlessly. Kell sat in the guest-of-honor’s chair, apparently listening thoughtfully to each of the speeches.

  Most of the speakers were men, each of them congratulating themselves on how they had helped the human race survive the Death Wave of lethal gamma radiation that had swept through the Milky Way galaxy.

  “We have survived,” one of the speakers blared triumphantly. “We have faced the worst that nature can throw at us and survived.”

  The audience applauded politely.

  “And more than that,” the speaker thundered on. “We have helped other intelligent species to survive the Death Wave. We have triumphed over death itself!”

  That brought most of the substantial audience to their feet, clapping lustily.

  Once they settled down again, the speaker half-turned toward Kell, seated beside him.

  With a huge, satisfied grin, the speaker announced, “And now it is my privilege and honor to introduce a man who needs no introduction, the man who has led the human race through the emergency to triumph, the former president of the Interplanetary Council—Mr. Jordan Kell!”

  The entire audience rose to its feet as a single creature and rocked the mammoth room with applause. Tray found himself standing, banging his hands together lustily, just as mesmerized by the moment as all the others. Until he noticed that Para, on his feet beside him, was clapping only perfunctorily.

  Once they sat down again, Tray leaned toward the android and asked, “You aren’t impressed with emotional oration?”

  Para made the beginnings of a smile. “I’m afraid that such a reaction is not within my range of capabilities.”

  Tray nodded, then turned his attention to Kell, now standing at the speaker’s podium.