Earth

by Ben Bova

  “That’s hard to believe,” Tray blurted.

  That launched a long exposition by Rigel Charpentier. He spoke nonstop about the human race’s level of understanding of the universe, the capabilities of modern astronomical technology, the completeness of current astronomical theories.

  Obviously bored, Loris left the two men and disappeared into the crowd. Tray could easily follow what Charpentier was rattling on about, and he felt glad that the big fellow was so eager to talk about his work. His self-important monologue meant Tray didn’t have to say a word.

  Gradually a small group of people began to gather around them, listening to Charpentier’s nonstop sermonizing.

  But all too soon the astrophysicist said, “Enough about my work. What happened to the Saviour? How did you survive the catastrophe?”

  SURVIVAL

  “I wasn’t on the Saviour when it exploded,” Tray answered. “I was on a scoutship on the other side of the planetary system.”

  “Lucky you,” said one of the women.

  Lucky, Tray thought. Lucky to be alive, when all the others of the crew are dead. All of them, including Felicia Cantore. She and Tray had decided to ask Captain Uhlenbeck to marry them once Tray returned to the Saviour.

  “All gone,” Tray murmured. “I was the only one to survive.”

  “What caused the explosion?” asked one of the stylishly dressed young men.

  Tray shook his head. “Unknown. There wasn’t enough of the ship left to determine.”

  “I heard it was a swarm of miniature asteroids,” someone said.

  “Maybe,” Tray half-agreed. “That’s the leading theory.”

  “More than two thousand people,” said one of the young men. “Wiped out like that.” He snapped his fingers.

  “What a shame.”

  “A tragedy.”

  Tray saw that Loris had rejoined the group. She stood toward the rear of the gathering, her luminous blue eyes focused on him, her face etched with concern.

  “What happened to the primitive natives that the Saviour was supposed to protect from the Death Wave?”

  A surge of guilt engulfed Tray. “They all died, too. By the time the rescue ship reached the Raman star system, the Death Wave had swept past. It killed everything on the planet.”

  “But you survived,” someone said. Tray heard a tone almost of accusation in his voice.

  “The ship’s systems put me into cryosleep and activated the screening that protected me from the Death Wave,” he told them. “The rescue ship revived me, once it arrived.”

  “Four hundred years later.”

  “Not quite four,” Tray corrected automatically.

  “You were damned lucky.”

  “I guess I was.” But Tray thought, Lucky to be alive when all the others died. Felicia and all the others. All dead. In the blink of an eye.

  As if she sensed Tray’s inner anguish, Loris pushed to the front of the little crowd, saying, “That’s enough. Let’s change the subject.”

  The crowd began to disperse. Loris grasped Tray’s arm. “Are you all right?”

  He nodded dumbly.

  “I’m sorry,” Loris said. “I didn’t realize how powerful those memories are for you.”

  Forcing himself to stand straighter, Tray muttered, “It’s okay. I’m all right.”

  She led Tray through the crowded room and out onto the balcony. In the clear air of the Colorado evening the stars glittered like jewels scattered across the sky. The Moon had just climbed above the rolling flatland of the Great Prairie, casting a soft radiance on the sawtoothed horizon of the Rockies, to the west.

  Tray said, “It’s pretty, isn’t it?”

  Loris smiled at him. “Wouldn’t feel so pretty if this balcony wasn’t heated.”

  Tray extended his hand. “It’s not glassed in.”

  “Energy screen. Keeps the cold air out.”

  He nodded. Another gift from the Predecessors, not a discovery by human scientists.

  In a low voice, Loris said, “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For letting them gang up on you like that. I didn’t realize … I mean, I just found out that your fiancée died in the ship’s explosion.”

  Tray blinked at her. “You were looking up my history?”

  Biting her lip, Loris nodded. “I should have checked it out before I let those vultures loose on you.”

  With what he hoped was a careless shrug, Tray replied, “It’s okay. They were curious. Curiosity is the foundation of knowledge.”

  “It can be painful, though.”

  “Sometimes,” Tray agreed.

  She stood there on the balcony with him, close enough to touch. Close enough to kiss.

  “So this is where you are!”

  Turning abruptly, Tray saw Mance Bricknell stepping through the doorway from the room full of partygoers.

  With an almost accusing look, Bricknell said to Tray, “Are you trying to make time with my girl?”

  Before Tray could think of an answer, Loris snapped, “You don’t own me, Mance.”

  He stepped up beside her and slid an arm around her waist. Tray saw that Loris stiffened and carefully stepped out of his grasp.

  “I think I’d better be going,” Tray said.

  “It’s early,” Loris countered. “Dinner won’t be ready for an hour.”

  Thinking of how painful another hour with this crowd would be, Tray temporized, “Early for you. I haven’t been up this late for a long time.” It was a lie, but he hoped it would work.

  It did. Loris, with Bricknell at her side, walked Tray to the apartment’s foyer, where he said good night to them both.

  But as he rode the elevator down to the street level, Tray couldn’t help grinning to himself. The most beautiful woman at the party spent enough time with me to make her boyfriend jealous. Not bad.

  INVITATION

  The following morning, Tray was plowing through a debriefing questionnaire, with Para sitting across the dining table from him, when the phone implanted in his skull thrummed.

  “Loris De Mayne,” said Para.

  Tray felt his pulse quicken. He nodded to the android and Loris’s form took shape in the middle of the apartment’s sitting room. She was wearing a formfitting athletic suit, her arms and long legs bare, her dark hair tied up atop her head. Her bare skin glistened with beads of perspiration.

  “Good morning!” she said cheerfully. “I hope I’m not calling too early.”

  Shaking his head, Tray replied, “Para and I have been up for hours.”

  Loris smiled at the android; to Tray it looked forced, not natural: a formality, a ritual. Para inclined its chin once, almost solemnly.

  “Am I calling at an inconvenient time?” she asked. “Did I interrupt something important?”

  Tray started to reply that he was merely going through a debriefing about last night’s party, but hesitated. Instead he answered, “Nothing that can’t be interrupted. How are you? How long did the party last?”

  Loris hiked her eyebrows and said, “Oh, it went on for hours after you left. Most of the people were disappointed that you didn’t stay longer, though.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tray said. “I … well, I just felt sort of … uncomfortable, out of place. All those people asking me questions, like I was some sort of exhibit.”

  Her lovely face looked stricken. “Oh! I didn’t realize! How stupid of me! Unfeeling!”

  Tray instantly tied to soothe her. “Oh no! It’s not your fault! It’s just that … this is all new to me. I’ve been jumped more than a thousand years into the future of the time when I was born. I’m trying to get accustomed to it, to fit in somehow.”

  “Of course you are,” Loris replied. “I should have understood that right away. I’m sorry, Tray.”

  “There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

  “Can you forgive me?”

  “There’s nothing to forgive.”

  Loris hesitated a moment, then said,
“Look, Mance is dying to show you the work he’s been doing. Would you like to come to his studio? It’ll be just the three of us. No crowds.”

  Thinking he’d prefer it to be just the two of them, Tray heard himself reply, “Sure, I’d be happy to.”

  “Wonderful!”

  “What kind of work is he doing?”

  Loris’s smile lit up the room. “He’s a historical architect. He studies the past … ancient civilizations, that sort of thing.”

  Tray nodded to her. “Sounds interesting.”

  “I’ll pick you up this afternoon,” Loris said, beaming with satisfaction.

  With a glance at Para, who nodded approval, Tray asked, “Two o’clock?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Para can beam directions to your car.”

  “Wonderful,” she repeated.

  * * *

  At ten minutes before two Tray and Para left the luncheon cafeteria on the top floor of the medical building where he lived and went down to its entrance. Outside, it was a warm, sunlit afternoon with just a hint of chill sliding down from the distant mountains.

  “A historical architect,” Tray said to his mentor. “That must be interesting.”

  Para nodded minimally. “I can show you some of his work, if you’d like to see it.”

  Realizing he was far more interested in seeing Loris than architecture, Tray temporized, “Uh, no. No thanks. I’d rather let him show his work to me the way he wants to present it.”

  Para nodded, but Tray couldn’t help feeling that the android was suppressing an urge to laugh at him.

  He heard himself ask, “Do you ever laugh, Para?”

  “Yes, if the occasion calls for such a response.”

  Tray thought about that for a moment. “Same as I do.”

  “We try to be as human as possible.”

  Before Tray could formulate a response to that, a long, low-slung vehicle pulled up almost silently to the curb in front of them and settled on its barely visible tires. A door swung upward and Loris De Mayne climbed out of the car’s shadowy interior.

  “Hello, Tray!” she called as she stepped toward him.

  She was wearing a formfitting white outfit, bare arms and legs, her hair coiled up atop her head. In his hospital-issued tan sports coat and darker slacks, Tray felt only slightly shabby.

  For an awkward moment Tray didn’t know if he should shake her hand, kiss her cheek, or wrap his arms around her in a loving embrace.

  Loris solved his problem by placing both her hands on his shoulders and giving him a peck on the lips.

  “Right on time,” she said cheerfully. “Punctuality: the pride of princes.”

  Tray gaped at her, awkward and confused.

  Turning slightly toward Para, Loris said, “I’m afraid there’s only room for two in my car. You’ll have to follow us in a cab.”

  Tray pulled his wits together. “That’s all right. Para can stay here and monitor me remotely. Right, Para?”

  “Of course,” said the android.

  “Fine,” Loris said happily. She gestured Tray into the low-slung car, slid in next to him, pulled the door down, and ordered the vehicle to take off. It rose a few centimeters off the pavement, its tires folding inward, and flew off toward the highway in almost absolute silence.

  Para stood on the sidewalk alone and watched the car disappear in the distance.

  HISTORICAL ARCHITECTURE

  “This car can scoot along at nearly five hundred klicks per hour,” Loris said happily.

  Sitting beside her in the tight two-seated compartment, Tray wondered why the machine was built for such speed. Here along the aerial guideway traffic was automated, controlled by the citywide guidance system. They were zooming along at considerable speed, he saw, but while all the cars on the guideway were moving equally fast, they all kept their places: no one was allowed to maneuver past or around the other cars.

  His eyes on the traffic surrounding them, Tray asked, “Have you driven that fast?”

  “Now and then,” Loris replied. “On race tracks, where there’s no imposed speed limit and you can drive the beast manually.”

  “Do you enjoy that?”

  She bobbed her dark-haired head up and down. “It’s a blast. You’re in control of the car and the devil take the hindmost!”

  “Aren’t there accidents?”

  “Now and then. Nobody gets hurt, though. The automated safety systems protect the drivers.”

  “So there’s no risk.”

  “Not much. But a lot of excitement, fun.”

  Tray sat back, with the protective seat curling around him. Excitement, he thought. Fun. It’s all make-believe, really.

  “Mance really mangled up his car last year. They had to pry him out with the big tongs, but he didn’t have anything worse than a few bruises.”

  “Lucky for him.”

  Loris giggled delightedly. “He showed off those bruises for a week or more. Wherever he went, he’d roll up his sleeve and display his badges of honor.”

  Tray nodded wordlessly.

  * * *

  They reached the university campus and parked the car at the entrance of a multistory garage. Tray watched with interest as the garage’s automated systems hoisted the car to a parking space overhead. Then they walked for less than five minutes in the warm afternoon sunshine to the building that housed Bricknell’s—his what? Tray wondered. Laboratory? Workshop? Studio?

  It was none of those. Loris led Tray to a third-floor office with Bricknell’s name outlined on the door’s electronic nameplate. She rapped once and opened the door without waiting for an answer.

  Bricknell was seated at a wide, sweeping desk near the office’s ceiling-high window. The walls seemed to be viewscreens, glowing faintly. No laboratory apparatus, no workbenches, just a pair of comfortable-looking armchairs in front of the dark faux-wood desk.

  Bricknell popped up from his desk chair as Loris and Tray stepped in.

  “Hello,” he said, with a pleased smile. He started to come around the desk, saw that Loris quickly seated herself, and hesitated. His smile fading, he said to Tray, “Welcome to my command center.”

  “Thank you,” said Tray. He shook Bricknell’s proffered hand, then sat down beside Loris.

  There was an awkward silence until Loris said, “I thought Tray would be interested in your historical analyses.”

  Bricknell nodded earnestly. “The study of history is important. You can’t know where you’re heading unless you understand where you’ve been.”

  Tray nodded back. “That sounds about right.”

  Warming slightly, Bricknell said, “Very well, then. Where have we been?” He reached out a hand and momentarily held it over his desktop keyboard. The office’s lights dimmed, the window went dark, and the wall screens began to glow more intently.

  HUMAN HISTORY

  In the darkened office, Bricknell asked Tray, “You do have an implanted communicator, don’t you?”

  Tray nodded as he replied, “Yes. They put it into my skull the day I arrived here. I’m still not completely accustomed to it, though. Sometimes the images seem—”

  “That’s perfectly all right,” Bricknell interrupted with an airy wave of his hand. “Your communicator can pick up the signals I’ll broadcast.”

  With a slightly nervous glance at Loris, who looked totally at ease, Tray said, “That’s good.”

  “Better than good,” said Bricknell. “The communicator will allow you to experience human history.”

  “Experience it? I don’t understand.”

  “You’ll see.”

  Bricknell danced his fingers above the symbols etched into the top of his desk while Tray sat tensely in the softly yielding armchair. The room seemed to grow darker. Tray could barely make out Loris, sitting next to him.

  He heard Bricknell murmur, “The projection depends on sensory manipulation, sort of like hypnosis.”

  Hypnosis? Tray wondered.

  The office melte
d away. Tray blinked as Loris, Bricknell, everything in the office faded from his sight. For an instant he was in total darkness, then suddenly the world lit up all around him.

  He was on a city street, crowded with strangers carried along narrow moving lanes of slidewalks. The sky was clear blue. The weather was pleasantly warm, with golden sunshine pouring down on everyone.

  Suddenly someone on the slidewalk pointed skyward. “What’s that?” she asked, in a loud, frightened voice.

  In his mind, Tray heard a voice saying, “The war began with an unprovoked nuclear strike on cities all across the Northern Hemisphere…”

  The world exploded. The people, the crowd, the city transformed into a hellish glare of heat and agony. Tray felt his flesh melting, bubbling, flayed from his crumbling bones.

  But there was no pain. Suddenly he seemed to be high above the Earth, staring down at a blackened, smoking wasteland that stretched as far as he could see. A whole continent, reduced to smoldering ashes.

  “The final war,” said a calm, deep voice in Tray’s mind, “reduced Earth’s population to a scant few survivors, lucky enough to be in deep underground shelters when the nuclear bombs were unleashed.”

  Horrified, fascinated, Tray watched wordlessly as humankind’s off-world societies came to the rescue of the original home of humanity. Relief missions from the Moon, from Mars, from the scattered bases of the rock rats strewn across the Asteroid Belt, from the research centers orbiting Jupiter and Saturn streamed Earthward, carrying medicines, food, building supplies, hope.

  With dizzying speed, Tray saw Earth’s civilization rebuilt, the survivors of the nuclear holocaust and their off-world brethren working together to build a new world, without war, without immense disparities between rich and poor, without hunger and disease and pain.

  Out of nuclear devastation rose a new civilization, uniting the societies on the Moon, Mars, the other planets, and the far-flung worldlets of the Asteroid Belt. A human society, wiser and kinder, flayed with the memory of war and devastation.