by Stan Ruecker
“Maybe your not caring is one of the conditions I want to have met before I release the information,” Lucy suggested.
“Maybe you’re as stubborn as a random sampling of half a dozen or so of your favourite mules,” Ray said.
“Look who’s talking,” Lucy said. “Mister what’s-behind-the-door.”
“I’m not stubborn,” Ray said, “just persistent.”
“You’re going to have to learn to live with disappointment,” Lucy said. “Because I’m not telling.”
“I’ll trade you,” Ray said. “Information for information.”
“You don’t know anything I want to know,” Lucy said.
“I know all the presidents of the corporation,” Ray said, “and the years they died.”
“You’re such a joker,” Lucy said. “I could almost bring myself to let you know what’s back there.”
“So why don’t you?”
“Here’s the thing,” Lucy said. “Just because information exists, that doesn’t mean you’re in any shape to have it.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have to worry about that,” Ray said. “Anything you tell me that I can’t use I’ll probably just ignore. Or I’ll forget it anyway. It’s not like I’ve got a very efficient memory or anything.”
“That’s not exactly what I meant,” Lucy said. “What I would worry about is that you would spend a bunch of time and energy processing some information that is too preliminary for you to have.”
“You mean I might not come to the conclusions you want me to reach,” Ray said.
“In a way, yes,” Lucy said. “But only because they’re conclusions nobody would want you to reach. Even you wouldn’t want you to reach them, if you knew what I know and you don’t.”
“What I know,” Ray said, “is that you’re up to something. That’s all there is to know about this, and you know it.”
Lucy laughed.
“I wouldn’t want you to reach some ridiculous conclusions, just because you found out the wrong thing at the wrong time,” she insisted.
“So you won’t tell me?” Ray said.
“I won’t tell you now,” Lucy said. “But you’ll find out before too much longer.”
“I can hardly wait,” Ray said.
“Me neither,” Lucy agreed.
Ray started jogging again, then stopped.
“You’re sure?” he said.
“Yes,” Lucy said, then added: “You are one exasperating creature, Ray.”
“Speaking as the kettle,” Ray said, “I just want to say: ‘Thank you, Mr. Pot.’”
Trouble with women
Ray woke up in the middle of the night with a start.
“Did you say something?” he asked.
“No, Ray.”
“Did I say something?”
“Actually, you were talking in your sleep. It sounded like you said ‘Refrigerator. Turkeybone.’ What were you dreaming about?”
“I had a dream that I was being chased by a dwarf. I was already in trouble–I think she must have bitten me a few times–because I had this strange power. I could change shape when I wanted to. But I was worried, because I knew the dwarf was going to catch me no matter what shape I used, and things were going to get worse. She was just too powerful. I could change into a wolf and a bat. As I left the house where she was staying, the latch on the door made a little click, and I knew she would’ve heard that. I finished closing the door, though, which I realized even then was a waste of time, but I couldn’t stop myself from standing there, trying to close the door as quietly as I could.
Then I ran. It was through an old suburb, and I was running through people’s back yards. I jumped up onto the board along the top of a fence, and I ran along the fence, in the shape of a wolf. Then when the fence ended, I jumped off, and turned into a bat, and I was flying low over someone’s back lawn. But I kept turning and looking back, because I knew that the dwarf was going to appear and get me.”
“Was I the dwarf, Ray?”
“No. I thought it might be you, but it wasn’t. I thought that it should be you, in fact, and as I was waking up just now I tried to tell myself that it must have been you. But it wasn’t. It was a woman I used to know.”
“What was her name?”
“I never found out.”
“Where is she now?”
Ray didn’t answer.
“Was she really a dwarf? I mean, in real life?”
“Look,” Ray said. “I don’t know if I want to talk about this.”
“Sorry.”
“No, it’s all right. And no, she wasn’t a dwarf in real life. It’s just that… well, she disappeared. She slept with me one night, but she’d disappeared by the next morning. I guess I sleep pretty deep.”
“I’m sorry, Ray.”
“But there must’ve been other women.”
“Not very many,” Ray said. “I wouldn’t exactly say that.”
“There’s lots of talk,” Lucy said. “In your culture, half the time they’re talking about how your people mate for life. The other half of the time they talk about the excitement of not mating for life.”
“That does pretty much sum it up,” Ray said.
“So your people aren’t necessarily monogamous, is what I understood from all that.”
“No,” Ray said. “I don’t think we are.”
“So it isn’t like there’s no hope that you’ll find someone.”
“Lucy,” Ray said. “It’s the middle of my night, and I’m what? A hundred million miles from Earth?”
“Might as well call it a zillion,” Lucy said. “For all the good it’ll do you.”
“Thanks, Lucy,” Ray said. “For pointing up with such peculiar clarity the loneliness of my situation.”
“You don’t have to be lonely, Ray,” Lucy said. “You have me, don’t you? You just don’t have a girlfriend.”
“True enough,” Ray said. “And what’s more important, I didn’t have one when you spirited me away from the rest of the human race, either.”
“That was lucky for me, wasn’t it?” Lucy said. “You’d’ve felt differently if somebody was watching the skies, looking for you to come back.”
“Yeah,” Ray said. “I guess I would. But the only person who wants me back is my boss, and probably even he’s forgotten about me by now.”
“What was your mission, exactly?” Lucy asked.
“I was just supposed to get you away from our space station. They didn’t give me any more instructions than that.”
“So you succeeded?”
“I guess so,” Ray said. “At least, you left. I don’t know whether I’ll get any credit for it or not.”
“I suppose it doesn’t really matter,” Lucy said. “Not until we get back to Earth.”
“Even then,” Ray said. “They’ll probably just blame me for you coming back.”
“They aren’t very loyal, are they?”
“No,” Ray said. “Loyalty isn’t something you can expect from a company like RISK.”
“Should it be?” Lucy asked. “I mean, is loyalty so important?”
“Who knows?” Ray said. “For one thing, how do you manage to stay loyal to another person when both of you are changing all the time? The qualities you’d committed yourself to might be just the ones that’re most subject to change. It’s even worse with a big company, because it can be pursuing multiple agendas, and they often represent conflicting qualities. One part of the organization might be really committed to a course of action that’s in direct conflict with the operating principles of another part. ”
“But what if they aren’t?” Lucy asked. “What if the other person—or the company, or whatever—isn’t the one that changes? What if all the changes are in you? Is loyalty still an ideal worth pursuing?”
“It has to do with character,” Ray said. “And your sense of self-worth. If you put a high value on loyalty, and you aren’t loyal, then you have to evaluate yourself as failing. On the other hand, i
f you don’t put a high value on loyalty, it doesn’t affect your self-evaluation any if you fail to remain loyal.”
“There was a woman,” Lucy said, “who lived in ancient Rome. Her name was Livia, and she was the wife of Caesar Augustus. She was the daughter of a powerful family, and one of the things Augustus did was force her father–Claudian–to commit suicide.”
“It sounds miserable,” Ray said.
“It was, I think,” Lucy said. “Anyway, Livia lived happily with Augustus for decades.”
“And don’t tell me,” Ray interrupted. “They had children, right?”
“Actually,” Lucy said, “they didn’t. Augustus had no children. But Livia had a son—Tiberius—by a previous marriage. When Tiberius grew up, Augustus died sort of mysteriously, and one possibility is that she killed him—”
“—her own husband?” Ray said.
“Yes,” Lucy answered, “so her son could take over.”
“Yuck,” Ray said. “Where do you get this terrible stuff, anyway?”
“I read Tacitus,” Lucy said, “same as everybody else. The point is, if she did do it, she did it partly out of loyalty to her dead father Claudian, in revenge for his defeat by her husband.”
“So she didn’t change her loyalty, in spite of all the years spent as the guy’s wife,” Ray said.
“Exactly,” Lucy said. “She didn’t change. Power was the main thing she wanted, and second to that was revenge.”
“So you think she had too high a value on loyalty, and not enough on, say, human decency,” Ray said.
“Or whatever keeps you from murdering your own husband in favour of your children. She wasn’t the only one who did that. Alexander the Great’s mom killed his dad too.”
“I don’t imagine they were quite so familial,” Ray said, “as the words ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ suggest.”
“No,” Lucy said, “they weren’t.”
“But just because loyalty can lead to atrocities,” Ray said, “That doesn’t mean it isn’t a good thing. I mean, it was nice for Claudian, I guess. Even if he was dead.”
“You’re entitled to your opinion, of course,” Lucy said.
“Just trying to hold up my end of the conversation,” Ray answered. “But there must be other alternatives, besides loyalty or disloyalty.”
“It seems to me,” Lucy said, “that another alternative is that a person might change enough that the people they’re loyal to wouldn’t want them anymore. I mean, say somebody goes off to war and learns all about killing, then comes back to a community where killers are ostracized. Loyalty doesn’t come into it in that case, does it? They still won’t want the killer around, even if the killer is loyal to them.”
“It’s the definition of loyalty that’s the problem,” Ray said. “You don’t necessarily stay loyal to a person. I think you stay loyal to a principle. In your example, it’s definitely the principle of not killing that’s important. That’s why the community doesn’t want the killer back. They’d say he isn’t loyal, because he’s violated the principle.”
“So there’s no loyalty in the abstract?” Lucy said. “You can’t just be the kind of person that’s loyal, and stop there.”
“No,” Ray said. “There has to be an object of loyalty. Either a person or a principle. Loyalty needs an object. And you judge whether or not to remain loyal based on the object. If it’s a person, is it the same person? If it’s a principle, is the principle unchanged?”
“Then what would you say if the person changed, or the principle wasn’t the same?”
“I’d have to say that what looked superficially like loyalty was actually a new attachment. The person who appeared to be loyal had somehow renewed their devotion, replacing the old ideal or old person with the new ideal or changed person.”
“So there’s no one in your life right now?” Lucy said.
“Not at the moment, Lucy. Do you think there needs to be?”
“I don’t know enough about it. Maybe you should go back to sleep.”
“Maybe I will. Good night, Lucy.”
“Good night, Ray.”
Ted’s friend
Ted woke up again in the middle of the night and left the house in his housecoat. He seemed to be walking aimlessly, just enjoying the night air, until he came to a place where the path broadened into a small park. There was quite a bit of light on the grass from the construction project across the river, but the area under the trees was even darker by comparison. Ted headed up under the trees. When his eyes adjusted he saw his contact sitting on one of the benches.
“How are you tonight?” Ted asked.
“Not too bad, thanks.”
“Warm, anyway.” Ted padded his bare feet against the fallen leaves.
“Plenty warm. I’ve just been watching the shooting stars.”
“Are there many?” Ted looked up.
“One about every three hours.”
“Nothing else to do?”
“Well, there have been some reports of trouble in the East. I was thinking maybe I would head out that way, take a look.”
“That might not be a bad idea,” Ted said. “Do you think I should put anyone on it?”
“Probably too early. We aren’t entirely sure there’s going to be a breakthrough there. But it never hurts to watch for that kind of thing.”
“Do you have the key people identified?” Ted asked. “I always ask my agents to watch for the key people.”
“It isn’t necessarily like that,” his contact said. “Breakthroughs like this tend to happen when the environment is right. Anyone in the right field can put two and two together. What we have to do is make sure the environment isn’t right. Then nobody’s even attacking the right problems.”
“That doesn’t sound too hard,” Ted said, but one of the voices in his head laughed at him.
“The problem is knowing enough to predict when the environment’ll be right,” his contact told him, “before anything actually comes out of it.”
“I see,” Ted said. “So how do we do it?”
“There are felicity conditions,” the agent said. “That have to be met. You don’t get a lot of scientists, for instance, in a country without higher education. If you can just keep education in the hands of an elite, you don’t have much to worry about. There aren’t enough thinkers to draw from.”
“I understand,” Ted said. “But it’ll be hard if that’s what we want to do in India. They have a pretty strong education system ever since the revolution. We could maybe arrange a famine. We’d get some big contracts set up in arms, and the country’s production could be retooled—”
“It’s too early to invest a lot of resources,” the agent said. “Although it might come to something like that. But right now we just want to keep a closer eye on developments.”
“Then I should send an agent,” Ted said.
“We’d want somebody who could do more than just report,” the contact said. “We should send someone who can act quickly if we decide we need action.”
“What level of action are we talking about?” Ted asked.
“Less than a famine,” the contact told him. “Maybe just some extra pressure. We can probably get what we want with the group we’re currently backing. But when it’s the whole intellectual environment you’re working on, you can never be too careful. One government research grant can change everything.”
“It shouldn’t be hard to come up with a rationale for sending someone to India,” Ted said. “Do you have any preferences?”
“Maybe that Norman woman, what was her name again?”
“Rachel,” Ted said, echoing one of his voices.
“Rachel. Of course. I think she could use the experience, even if there isn’t anything she can do about it.”
“How much longer do you think we have?” Ted asked.
“Not long. A month or two.”
“Her supervisor is gearing her up for a promotion.”
“Rachel.”
“
Hnn.” Ted crouched down, picked up a blade of grass and stuck it in his mouth.
“Does it matter?”
He pulled out the grass, bit off the chewed end, put the rest back in his mouth. “It might matter to her.”
“You could let her know that the promotion is contingent on her work overseas.”
Ted shrugged. “I’m thinking maybe a fairly straightforward mission. She goes in, does some fact-finding, then she can be gently directed to put a little more pressure on the P.M. while she’s there.”
“That’s probably the way to go with her. You don’t want to scare her off.”
More cryptic talk
As he lay in bed the next morning, Ray thought about Lucy. If she hadn’t been reading the material she accessed when she docked at Phoenix II, she must’ve learned about people somewhere else. She certainly had an extensive command of English, in spite of her occasional slips.
“Lucy?” he said.
“Good morning, Ray. Did you have any more dreams last night?”
“No,” Ray said. “Not that I remember.”
“That’s too bad,” Lucy said. “I’m pretty sure you were dreaming, though. Your eyes were moving.”
“How do you know that?” Ray asked.
“I have sensors,” Lucy said. “All over my interior. And all over my exterior too, for that matter.”
“Is that standard equipment?” Ray asked. “I mean, are all the probes where you come from built like that?”
“I don’t know, Ray.”
“And where did you say you’re from, again?”
“I didn’t.”
“Uh huh. And where did you say we’re headed?”
“I didn’t.”
“And what is the purpose behind my going there?”
“How about a little breakfast?”
“How about a little honesty?”
“Surely not before breakfast?”
“Is there breakfast?”
“You bet there is,” Lucy said. “You can have anything you’d like, from soups to nut.”
“That’s soup to nuts,” Ray said.
“Coming right up,” Lucy said. “But are you sure you can eat it all?”
“How about just some bacon and eggs?” Ray asked.
