We do a lot of stuff here, so we always have protesters. But I’m getting tired of those nuts claiming we’ve got God bottled up in there. They’re spooky!
—Security guard, MMFF
With a sour and harried expression on his face, Keller wadded up the formal invitation and threw it at the motel room wastebasket. An invitation to speak to a Congressional hearing on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence project. SETI wanted him to talk about “communicating with alien beings”—they had their gall, especially now!
He flopped back on the hard bed. It probably wouldn’t be long before the reporters found him again—Livermore had only a few motels, and those were used mostly by out-of-town job interviewees and DOE contractors. Judging by the stories they ended up printing in their newspapers, the reporters never seemed to listen to his answers to their questions anyway, but they were damned persistent in trying to track him down.
He knotted his fingers in the bedspread. He could hide from the reporters, the decisions, the publicity—but he couldn’t hide from the problem.
The thing in the plasma had stopped communicating. Or rather, as the careful side of him liked to point out, the plasma “wasn’t spontaneously initiating any controlled instabilities” anymore. The glitches showed it was still there, still living within the fusion chamber, staring at itself in the magnetic mirror. Like Alice unable to get into Wonderland.
Keller could not fathom why the thing didn’t treasure every bit of communication, why it didn’t eagerly anticipate every new mathematical challenge. It was trapped within its huge chamber, unchanging, unable to come out. It had nothing to do but listen, and talk.
The Congressional invitation caught his eye. He hated to talk in front of people. Yet, it was the most logical thing in the world for SETI to ask him to speak on their behalf, since he was the only human being ever to “successfully” communicate with an alien intelligence.
But what in the hell was Keller supposed to say to the SETI people? Should he confess that he’d always thought their project was basically a waste of time and effort? Sure, he believed there were other civilizations Out There, but the nearest star was five light-years away, the nearest galaxy 2.2 million light-years away—as the photon flies. How in the blessed world were you supposed to hold a conversation?
If they were to receive a message from Andromeda tomorrow, it would have been sent twenty thousand centuries before Australopithecus africanus had just begun to make his first tool, just begun to chase woolly mammoths while wondering why it was getting so cold even in the summertime … and no one on Earth then had even the slightest desire to build a satellite antenna to listen for extraterrestrial signals. And if SETI were to acknowledge that message, how many millions of years in its grave would be the civilization that had initiated the conversation? It was all a matter of perspective on time.
And here he was, Dr. F. Gordon Keller, separated from an alien intelligence by only a thin wall of stainless steel, but he couldn’t communicate with the thing either—and he didn’t have the incredible time differential working against him. But something was very wrong with the creature in the plasma. It didn’t seem to want to communicate anymore.
Then it hit him like a load of bricks falling on his head.
How many times did he have to stare at something before the obvious answer reached out and bit him on the ass? Time scales of tenths of nanoseconds were critical to a plasma: in a second, a plasma could undergo thousands of millions of interactions. A second to Keller would be billions of times longer to something that lived on a plasma time scale.
A strange sense of horror began to grow in the pit of his stomach, and Keller even found himself feeling sorry for the thing.
Imagine being alone, trapped inside the fusion chamber for what was—to the thing—an absolute eternity. Even when Keller was communicating with it, tapping icons on the touch-sensitive screen or rapidly keying in commands—centuries would have seemed to pass between each individual finger stroke. The thing had been alive and aware for a million centuries, without a break to the monotony.
Keller remembered his mother dying, in a coma “with no sense of time,” connected to the life-sustaining machines as an oscilloscope displayed her life as a pattern on a screen.
Electrical patterns in a plasma. Putting it out of its misery would be like switching off a light. But he would be destroying the world’s oldest living thing. He would be killing a living being.
A million centuries alone and in silence, without another living being to talk to. Something wrenched in his stomach as the implications pounded themselves home. The thing was immortal, chained to an utterly useless life, unable to die as long as the MMFF remained running.
He would be giving it peace. Something in the world deserved peace.
It was the dead of night, with only a skeleton crew in the control room. Nothing had changed for days. A security guard checked Keller’s badge at the gate, and then another let him pass into the control room. He wasn’t going to break in and shut down the experiment … he was going to walk in and shut it down. He would free the living being that had been trapped inside, bottled up for eternity by Keller’s wonderful mirrors. He moved with brisk and determined steps to the MMFF control room. Every moment he delayed meant another year of suffering for the thing.
“No change, Gordon,” one of the operators said, seeing him as he walked purposefully into the room.
Without acknowledging, Keller went to a vacant bank of computer screens and stared at the jagged display of glitches on one of them. Even as he stared, even as his heart beat, years were ticking away for the thing imprisoned in the chamber. It could only bounce back and forth and exist for millions of its years, unable to escape and see the world outside. Keller felt his eyes sting, almost with tears, at the unspeakable loneliness.
But what about himself? He’d thrown away his marriage working on this damned project, trying to push and work and achieve so that he could hold an accomplishment up before himself to prove that his life was worthwhile. Like his PhD, getting the degree for a trophy. Was he trying to commit career suicide this time? The MMFF success had been the pinnacle of his research, but the living thing he had created was unexpected, a blessing, a curse. Keller had hidden from the publicity, passing the responsibility to others. But no one else would see the responsibility he had now, the imperative goal to free the creature he had trapped between the magnetic mirrors. It was time for Gordon Keller to stop hiding.
Keller stared at the red switch. Emergency shutdown—the only hardwired switch in the entire computer-screen-driven control room. It would be simple. Keller held out the palm of his hand—the razor blade against his wrist, the oscilloscope in his mother’s hospital room, even the stake on the movie vampire’s chest.
With a quick thrust of his arm, he shut the MMFF down.
He would have more time for Shelley now, and Justin. He’d try to call her, and maybe—maybe—she would even admire what he had done, tell him he’d been brave. He could write a book, Memoirs of a Modern-Day Frankenstein. Or maybe Zel’dovich would consult him about how the next generation of fusion chambers could be built without spawning a new life form.
As it died, and before anyone could act or any alarms could sound, Keller thought he felt a tingling rush through his skin—a flash of dissipating electricity. But it was only his imagination, or just the release of some of the psychological weight on his shoulders. With a sigh, he slowly eased himself into a chair as the shouting started.
Greg Benford and I spent many months extrapolating a possible epic future of Siberia, with geopolitical forces in conflict, resources in question, and colonization of the last great frontier on Earth. As an offshoot of these plans, we came up with a grand scheme for cloning mammoths—an idea that’s not so far-fetched. In fact, several research teams are currently at work on the concept, as it is described in the following novella. And radical protest groups are already up in arms, writing scathing letters to the San Fr
ancisco Chronicle, science magazines, and other venues. Even some of the museum curators and scientists we talked to as research for this story reacted with knee-jerk resistance, fearing the very idea of bringing back an extinct species—even if that species was wiped out not by any natural process but due to the efforts of mankind.
“Mammoth Dawn” is only the prologue to a projected novel. Unfortunately, the reality of this concept is sweeping down upon us with the speed of a stampeding woolly herd. We released the novella, our full detailed outline for the novel, and several technical articles about the process of cloning mammoths in the book Mammoth Dawn (WordFire Press).
Mammoth Dawn
(WRITTEN WITH GREGORY BENFORD)
If only the protesters’ intellect matched their verbal cleverness, Alex thought, the Helyx Corporation wouldn’t have any problems at the gate.
It’s Not Nice to Fool with Mother Nature! said one of the waving signs displayed on a securitycam window projected on the surface of his desk. The usual. Alex Pierce had stopped trying to understand the Evos’ odd point of view, had ceased even being bemused by their antics. He had a company to run.
He relegated the securitycam image to the background and brought more important documents forward. Datascreens and email lists cluttered his table-sized desktop screen as much as memos and paper messages had once done.
Earlier that morning he’d woken up in Miami with a hangover. He’d downed three drinks too many at yet another fancy fund-raiser dinner—this one to preempt birth defects through parental genetic screening. Before midday he had choppered back to the main lab administration offices in rural Montana. For a worldwide corporation, business hours lasted all day long, and it was always time for the boss to get back to work.
His wife Susan had stayed home on the ranch. She disliked black-tie functions like the one in Miami, though she could be devastating in a cocktail dress, the barest breath of jewels implying wealth far better than gaudiness did. But too often the diplomats and VIPs treated Alex as the only important face in the room, and Susan the gorgeous trophy wife rather than a talented scientist in her own right. She hated the attitude, and Alex had made appropriate excuses for her.
But Susan’s real reason was that she wanted to stay with her mammoths.
As his company had grown from a fledgling startup with one biotech product—a symbiotic microorganism that could fend off strange E. coli in the human digestive system—to a corporate leviathan that spent most of its resources just figuring out how to receive and manage the enormous profits, Alex had learned to multi-process. While taking care of corporate details, answering vidmessages, and delegating responsibilities, a calm and meditative part of his mind was anticipating an evening of campfires and peace with his wife, out near the herd.…
“We got another fence-jumper,” Ralph Duncan said on the secure phone, interrupting a dozen separate trains of thought and delivering a problem of his own. “Got him cold.”
Alex’s autosecretary instantly knew this was important, captured the call, and transferred the security man’s weathered image to the upper corner of the desk. “Remember that li’l hint we got on the acoustics? Tracked him in the woods up along the eastern ridgeline. Ambitious bastard.”
Alex was glad to be interrupted from pharmaceutical statistics, Third World traveler health records—dull, even if they did point to continued success. “Another Evo type?”
“They don’t carry some kinda ideology tag, Boss, but you can bet he was trying to get a look at the mammoths. Should I tell the sheriff?”
“No, he’ll just process the guy, slap him on the wrist, and let him back out to cause more mischief.” Alex rubbed his fingers over thin lips. “Usually only the hardcore ones try to get past the fences. How’s he outfitted?”
“Pretty fancy. Overnight gear, one of those microbags for sleepin’, videocam with close-up fittings. Five kilometers inside the fence, easy. No question about boundaries and jurisdictions.” Ralph snorted.
By now, the questions came automatically to Alex. The ranch often had intruders. “No weapon?”
“Nope. Except for tryin’ to run at first, gave us no trouble.”
As he dealt with the conversation, Alex finished some routine computer work, forwarded several inquiries to Susan’s mailbox, bumped a set of interview questions to his PR squad (who knew all the right answers anyway), and keyed out, using his thumbprint to secure. At no point did Ralph ever notice that he didn’t have Alex’s full attention.
“If you ask me, this guy wanted to be caught. Claims he knows you professionally.” Ralph’s sun-grizzled face showed just a hint of amusement. “His ID says Geoffrey Kinsman.”
Now Alex paid attention. “Damn! I think I know him. Spelled with a G?”
“Yep.”
“What’s a good biologist doing with that bunch of Luddites?”
“Says he’ll talk only to you, Boss.”
Alex shut down the other operations in the office, signaling all his staff distributed around the world that he was not presently available. “Bring him to the Hospital, not here.”
Ralph had an intuitive sense of Alex’s moods, born of a decade’s close collaboration. But now the security man seemed surprised. “Show and tell, Boss? For one of those clowns?”
“The Evos are always more afraid of what they imagine than what they actually see.” He put on a pair of spex and tested the uplink as he headed out of the office, his boots clomping down the varnished wooden stairs, and out onto the plank porch. “Stall him for five, Ralph. Give me time to profile him.”
When Helyx had purchased an isolated chunk of northern Montana, Alex kept the original ranch buildings, letting them fade and weather from bleached white to an ash gray like raw silver. The primary genetics labs were in the old pine-log barn, which Susan had dubbed the Pleistocene Hospital.
“Full database search,” he subvocalized into the spex as he walked. “Summarize relevant information on Dr. Geoffrey Kinsman. Reference point: He was in my lab around fifteen years ago. Apply context filters.”
With a big drive-in bay and concealed windows, the hospital barn looked like an equipment garage. Inside, the crisp antiseptic air mixed with the moist organic odors of feathers and fur, droppings and feed—a contrast to the smelly oil drums just outside on the loading dock.
Lounging in his jeans against the split rail that bounded the old barn, Alex read a data summary that scrolled across the spex. All he needed to know about Geoffrey Kinsman: a man with just a bit too much clout and education to dismiss as simply a misled Luddite, as Alex had always considered the Evos to be.
For years, Kinsman had associated with political activism, starting with Ruckus Society training camps, where bright-eyed kids learned street protest tactics. His molecular biology research had produced over a hundred papers, recently with an angle toward genetics and species preservation. Another “clean genes” guy. Unarmed, a routine lab type, Kinsman did not seem dangerous. Maybe that didn’t include the threat of being bored to death.
Alex bit his lip in annoyance. He wished they had a network of sympathetic locals who would warn Helyx before a guy got this far in. He had endured the backwoods suspicions, had expected them because he’d grown up just over the Idaho border. For the first few years, the locals had given him a narrow-eyed appraisal. In fact, for a while an ugly rumor had spread that he was here to recruit locals as organ donors for sinister Helyx experiments.
But when his staff offered only day work and some well-paid farmhand jobs, the people were disappointed—until the area economy picked up and kept growing. Within a year Alex Pierce could walk into any bar and get his beer paid for, because Helyx Ranch pumped in a goodly share of the county’s revenue.
Alex pursed his lips, pondering. A lot of the locals might agree with the protesters’ views, even help them out a little. A bitter truth—he hadn’t won the war of ideas even here, in home country. He knew these people, shared many of their gut responses. But he had not lived in their
world, really lived in it, for a good long while. Ralph was the real thing—and looked it in his rough pants and boots as he came through the door with his captive.
The man walking next to him was a dapper, compact item, fresh from an upscale outfitter: olive green Gore-Tex jacket, trim all-weather leggings, a big hiker’s watch with a global positioning readout. He looked as out of place as a chicken in church. A bit heavier than Alex remembered, but the tight mouth was the same.
Geoffrey Kinsman’s voice was as hard and flat as a stove lid. “Dr. Pierce.” East Coast accent, mid-Atlantic state. He held out a hand, and Alex ignored it. “You don’t remember me?”
“I remember. Just read the data squirt about you, Dr. Kinsman. All the good stuff.” He decided to have some fun with him. “You seem to have strayed a bit out of your way.”
“Might as well admit the obvious,” Ralph growled, playing the tough cop. “You wanted to create some disturbance—give the Feds a pretext to come in here.”
Kinsman glanced at the old security chief as if he were some kind of lab specimen. “You overestimate my powers.”
“That’s just what you did at that animal experimentation facility outside Topeka, five years ago,” Alex said. It sometimes put these people off-balance if you could demonstrate up front that you knew all about them.
But Kinsman didn’t even blink. “That was coincidence.”
Ralph snorted, and Alex grinned. Kinsman was not going to be any trouble, he judged; he didn’t even have a cover story. “We’ll be fine, Ralph. Thank you.” As the security man turned to leave, Alex scowled back at Kinsman. “So why, exactly, was it so important to break through my fences and trespass on my private property?”
The man allowed himself a small, dry chuckle, but his eyes were a brittle gray, like chips of slate, as he said, “To talk some sense into you. I consider that constructive, not destructive.”
Selected Stories: Volume 1 Page 22
