But there is something pleading in the evil one’s tone, a cold fearfulness. Cal looks at the dwarf for direction, and he makes an eloquent upward stabbing motion with his fish pin.
“Death is the absolute end!” cries Satan.
“Depart from this dwelling!” counters Bishop Marlin.
Philip and Cal stab the President from below, and a confounding explosion rocks everything in Von Braunville.
Blackness rushes in. Airlessness rushes in. The Moon asserts itself around these people like a great white mouth.
Cal’s consciousness—his memories of Lia, Mr. K., Viking, the Bonners, Lone Boy, Miss Grace, the Brezhnev bears, and everything else—flies apart, dissipating into the void along with every other temporal or material trace of Von Braunville.
Into nothingness or plenitude…
Coda
THI BOI LOAN, night-shift foreman at Revolutionary NanoTech in Hanoi, United Republic of Vietnam, paused outside the main entrance of the industrial complex to study the Moon. It was pinwheeling through a series of ruby, emerald, sapphire, and amethyst strobes—as if on the verge of exploding and showering fragments of Choral rind and hidden lunar rock all over the sky. The windshields of nearby automobiles and the glass facades of government skyscrapers were reflecting this show in ways that dizzied Loan pleasantly. He blinked and entered the assembly plant.
“Sir, you’re late,” said Ngo Pham Lan, his assistant. “Our visitors have been here fifteen minutes already.”
He checked his watch. “Then they were fourteen minutes early, Lan. My tardiness is negligible.”
In his office, Loan found the Americans docilely biding their time. He knew the man, Harmon Bertholt, as President Jordan’s national security advisor and the woman as Bertholt’s wife, Grace Rennet, a former film actress who had once actively championed her country’s illicit involvement in the conflict between Vietnamese nationalists and the toadies of Western colonialism. Apparently, her marriage to Bertholt, along with certain other historic events, had tempered both her xenophobia and her zealous anti-communism. A good thing, too. Such a person would be lost in a world under the joint rule of every legitimate state entity and the benevolent eye of the Choir from Mira Ceti.
With the couple were two burly Secret Service men. They wore—tactlessly, Loan felt—the green berets that had identified their barbarous special unit in the ill-advised U.S. effort in the late war. A war that had concluded a decade ago.
Also in the room was the Bertholts’ nine-year-old son, “Master Bryerly”. Loan, himself a parent, looked twice at the boy. He was pale and hangdog, more like an abused urchin from a Dickens novel than a fun-loving Mississippi lad from a book by Twain. Clutched to Master Bryerly’s chest was a canvas satchel that he appeared to value at least as much as his own life.
“Welcome, Mr. Security Advisor,” Loan said in English, politely bowing. “Welcome, Miss Rennet.” But, he knew, almost any greeting would have been wasted on the boy.
“My title’s an anachronism,” Bertholt said. “Nowadays, you’d do better to call me an advisor on technological progress than on state security. Unfortunately, old terminology dies hard.”
Loan pointed his guests toward the plant’s broad floor. But a problem immediately arose. Master Bryerly begged to be allowed to stay in Loan’s office; he wanted to read. To meet this antisocial whim, one of the Secret Service men would have to remain with him. What a shame, thought Loan. The boy would learn so much more from this tour than from whatever trivial reading matter he has dragged over here from the States.
Only a moment later, Loan was walking Mr. and Mrs. Bertholt and their bodyguard past the window-riven stainless steel vats in which programmed molecular assemblers—machines invisible to the unaided eye—were “growing” lightweight tractor, car, jet, and even rocket engines in canny mixes of protein-rich fluid. Labyrinths of pipes carried needed materials into these vats, while water-cooled heat exchangers kept them from becoming untouchable furnaces. Loan conferred with the operators “feeding” the vats, then introduced his guests to one of the molecular programmers who had laid out the agenda for tonight’s nanotechnological miracles.
Miss Rennet, Loan could tell, was amazed by the supple devices taking shape beyond the windows in the vats. She watched them forming as attentively as any wide-eyed movie fan would watch a favorite Hollywood star on a theater screen. And Thi Boi Loan, despite the fact that the Choir from Mira Ceti had bestowed this technology on his country as a free gift, felt a deep sense of pride and accomplishment.
“I don’t understand the mechanics of this,” the woman said.
Cao Thu, the nanoprogrammer, began an explanation in his native Vietnamese, Loan translated.
“In the middle of the base plate of each vat rests an invisible ‘germ’. This is actually a molecule-sized computer containing the blueprints for whatever item the nanoconstructors in each vat will finally build. These molecular constructors—assemblers, you see—stick to the ‘germ’, and the ‘germ’ gives their inbuilt computers the information they need to start ‘generating’ the item. Every single assembler in the chemical-rich fluid ‘knows’ where it is in relation to all others. After a time, from this liquid turmoil, a variety of ‘assembler-crystal’ emerges, which directs the further sculpting of the template—whether rocket engine or helicraft body or solar oven. Later, to shorten my explaining, we drain the milky fluid, leaving behind this template, which through the window will appear to be made of clear white plastic. The nanoconstructors yet in the vat are fed by fluid again and begin to build the very item represented by the see-through model hovering within. Eventually, again to be brief, the assemblers complete their work, the vat is a second time emptied, and the product itself—not the template—is hoisted out. To dry and soon enough to use.”
“Incredible,” Harmon Bertholt said. He reached out and shook Cao Thu’s hand. Thu was embarrassed by the American’s enthusiasm and dropped his chin to his chest. A humble posture that, somewhat surprisingly, reminded Loan of the Bertholt’s son.
Loan glanced toward his office. Through its wide window, he could see Master Bryerly sitting at his desk poring over a book or magazine. Thought Loan, His parents should have made him come on my tour. But, like too many indulgent Westerners, they worry more about placating their children than about guiding them. Not even the Choir have been able to change that…
Irritated, Loan led the Bertholts and their guard away from the assembler vats to show them some of the finished engines suspended over the floor in the drying area. He pointed out that they were seamless, resilient, durable, and so light that Miss Rennet could carry a nanoconstructed tractor engine all by herself. He had her reach up and tap one of the engines, an opalescent thing more like a large jewel than a piece of machinery. The engine, swaying in its harness, rang like a goblet of crystal. Loan explained that it was made of aluminum oxide and interthreaded fibers of carbon, all nanocomputer-designed to reduce mass and increase strength.
“Why did they give you this technology?” Miss Rennet blurted.
Loan recoiled from her question as if she had slapped him, and Bertholt said, “For God’s sake, Grace, don’t start in.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, not genuinely contrite. “I just don’t understand the rationale behind the Choir’s handouts. Why these people? Why not the Australians or the Filipinos or anybody else with some respect for human freedom and dignity?”
“Damn it, Grace!”
Loan stepped back toward the woman. “Each country has received different things from the Choir, Miss Rennet. Vietnam, because we lacked true industrial development, received the knowledge to begin Revolutionary NanoTech. The US has received other boons—faster, cleaner, and less costly transportation, for example. And all of us have received the promise of brand-new spiritual knowledge.” Not that it would do a tactless woman like you any good, he thought.
Aloud, Loan added, “And, of course, once we have perfected the gifts bestowed on us, we must pas
s them on to every other people on our planet. A gift from the Choir to one country is, ultimately, a gift to all countries.”
“That’s why we’ve come,” Bertholt told Miss Rennet. To claim our share in the technology that Mr. Loan and his compatriots have developed here in Hanoi.”
These explanations silenced the former actress, but she walked through the remainder of the tour in a sour mood that was palpably oppressive. Loan had to struggle to remain courteous to her. Back in his office, however, the resentment that she felt toward him and every other Vietnamese was directed at her son: “Bryerly, pick up all your trash and come on. We’re going back to the hotel.”
Loan got in a final subtle dig: “Happy Easter, Miss Rennet and Master Bryerly.” The hidden implication, which they had probably not even registered, was that professing Christians ought to behave in a more loving manner than Miss Rennet had just done. Tomorrow was the ostensible anniversary of her Savior’s Resurrection, but she acted as if she had no deep belief in that debatable historical event. Possibly, in fact, she had none; consequently, his dig had failed to wound her.
She dragged the startled Bryerly from Loan’s desk while the boy was still trying to stuff pamphlets into his satchel. Accompanied by Ngo Pham Lan and the larger Secret Service agent, mother and son flounced out of the plant, bound for the Ho Chi Minh Hilton.
Bertholt apologized for his wife’s behavior (“She’s badly jet-lagged”), thanked Loan profusely for the tour (“It was a genuine eye-opener”), and sat down to read a hard-copy macrofacsimile of a nanocomputer program for vatassembling a communications satellite from the protein in rice hulls and water-buffalo dung (“This sort of pollution-free manufacture could well be the redemption of our planet”). The ebullience of the “security adviser” had a tonic effect on Loan, and he was feeling much better about the Americans’ visit by the time Bertholt took his leave.
Alone again, Thi Boi Loan sat down at his desk to check which vats would be yielding product before dawn. His foot slid across something foreign. He stooped, retrieved the item, and found that it was a comic book.
A decadent capitalist fantasy for children. A superhero in a funny-looking suit. A series of action-packed panels of American street crime and its resolution through physical mayhem.
The Choir have been here eight years, Loan thought. Tomorrow they plan to reveal the names of the seven human families who will journey to their home world to meet God. So why do they yet allow this nauseating drivel—he struck the comic with the edge of his hand—to poison the minds of impressionable Western children like Master Bryerly?
Having no ready answer to this question, Loan knocked the comic into the trash can beside his desk.
Twenty-five minutes later, after checking to see if anyone were likely to see him, he lifted Master Bryerly’s book from the trash can, opened his desk drawer, slid the pamphlet inside, and guiltily perused its pages.
Although in 1974 (two years after the defeat of the colonial puppets in the south) he had studied English in Ho Chi Minh City, much of the vocabulary in this comic was unfamiliar to Loan. He would have to take it home and study it.
My interest, he told himself, is academic. What is the allure of such trash for Western children? Is mere greed enough for grown men and women to involve themselves in the production of such power fantasies? And what will the Choir do to direct our species away from such lamentable enterprises and interests?
Mulling these questions, Loan went deeper and deeper into the adventures of the red-suited hero sprinting and karate-kicking his way through the pages of Bryerly Bertholt’s comic…
Leah heard the twins coming before Dolf had his eyes open. It was scarcely light, but she could see puffs of vapor escaping her nostrils in the cold room.
Ordinarily, the last Sunday in April—this year it fell on the thirty-seventh—marked the beginning of springlike weather for the people of Walsenburg, Gardner, and Snowy Falls. This winter had been a harsh one, though, and, weeks after the vernal equinox, snow was still sifting down on the Sangre de Cristo range and the towns huddled in or near it.
“Wake up, Mommy! Wake up, Daddy!”
“Wake up! Wake up!”
Eldred came bursting through their bedroom door first, closely pursued by his sister, Karina. They were clad in flannel pj’s with cutesy-poo animal decals and sewn-in feet with reinforced soles. Dolf kept saying that five was too damn old for them to be running around in such tacky nursery-school garb, but the sewn-in feet were definitely winter necessities and Dolf’s daddy, Reece, had picked out these pajamas himself. The elder Packards bought so many clothes for the twins that Leah sometimes thought they usurped her maternal prerogative. But, my God, it was a real financial help, she had to admit…
“Get up, get up!” Eldred cried, tugging on Leah’s autothermic blanket in hopes of exposing her to the cold.
“Yeah. Time to see about opening our presents.” Karina began to work on Dolf, who turned to his belly and pulled a pillow over his head. “Come on, Daddy. After we open presents, the Choragus is gonna announce Lottery winners.”
“All right, all right,” Leah said. “We’re coming.”
“No, we’re not,” Dolf mumbled.
But, inevitably, even Daddy gave in, and the four of them—Dolf by far the least enthusiastic—bundled into robes and descended the A-frame’s cedar stairs into the living room. The wall-sized window fronting Big Sheep Mountain revealed a grainy dawn full of drifting flakes and ghostly evergreens. A huge magpie was perched on the rearview mirror of the blanketed pickup truck that Dolf had driven home yesterday from Earl Rudd’s ranch, and the monorail joining the towns of eastern Colorado to the high plains near the Great Divide flashed by in the dazzle like a coruscating beam of laser light. Leah shivered.
“Look,” Dolf told the kids. “Your first white Easter.”
The Packards’ tree—a tall spruce decorated with polymer lilies and mirror-worked oyster shells—stood directly across the living room from the Resurrection rood that Dolf had built for Leah six years ago. Packages lay beneath both rood and tree. The rood sheltered gifts that a service commune in Denver would later hand out to the prisoners in Canyon City; the tree shaded gifts that the Packards would soon open themselves.
If, thought Leah, I can get the kids to hold out long enough to thank God for this delicious morning. And to let Dolf put a pot of coffee on in the kitchen.
Getting the kids to kneel at the rood wasn’t hard, but keeping them there for more than a minute was impossible, and Dolf was no help at all. As soon as he had the Yubik perking, he found the master remote and clicked on the pool-table-sized tri-D screen that Earl Rudd had given him as a bonus for fieldmarshaling last fall’s roundup in a record three days. This screen took up most of the brick wall under the upstairs bedrooms, and as soon as it began generating images, Eldred and Karina were off their knees, confused about which way to turn. The tri-D or the tree?
“It’s Easter, Dolf. Can’t you forgo your electronic fix?”
Dolf, still watching The Today Show over one shoulder, came out from under the dormitory overhang.
“The President’s about to speak, Leah. Besides, I feel like I have to get… hell, I don’t know, reoriented.”
“Reoriented? What do you mean?” He was always exasperating on Easter morning. He had no patience with the kids’ excitement, and if it weren’t still snowing, and if the holiday didn’t mean so much to her and the twins, he would’ve probably already driven back up to Earl’s to babysit the spring calves.
Dolf pulled her to him and kissed her. Eldred and Karina sat down by the tree like tiny Buddhas. But God knows, thought Leah, they’re too damned antsy to emulate Buddhahood convincingly.
The Today Show announcer yielded to a close-up of President Jordan. The twins scooted toward the screen, and Big Barbara began delivering her Easter message in her lilting female baritone. The sound of it seemed to warm the entire downstairs.
“O my fellow Americans,” she said,
“what an auspicious morning this is. If you’re a Christian, we in the White House wish you all the most joyous blessings of the Savior’s Resurrection. If you’re of some other religious or metaphysical persuasion, the day remains an auspicious one…
“At one o’clock this afternoon, eastern standard time, but four hours from now, the Choragus of the seraphic Choir that homesteaded our Moon nearly eight years ago will announce the names of the seven Earth families chosen to visit their planet of origin in the Mira Ceti binary system. From that wonderful vantage, these lucky folks will witness the beautiful turmoil of Mira Ceti A in the last stages of its stellar evolution—only days before that star, whose diameter is more than four hundred times our own Sun’s, blazes out in supernova.
“The Choragus assures me, and every other world leader, that our human representatives will have full protection from cosmic-ray bombardment. Further, they will return to Earth within a mere six months of their departure. Forget those relativistic effects that would bring them home hundreds of years after all of us who tell them good-bye have died. How the Choir proposes to accomplish this, we do not fully understand—but, it seems, our travelers will be taken to the eighth planet of Mira Ceti B by way of the same paradimensional tunnel that the Choir used to pop into sight near our Moon in 1976.
“Why has the Choragus chosen to announce these Lottery winners on Easter Sunday? Well, those selected to visit Mira Ceti B VIII, the Choir have repeatedly told us, will witness not only the death throes of their binary’s larger sun, but also a tangible appearance of divinity. To be specific, a manifestation of the Holy One who ordained the entire physical cosmos and who sustains it even in the face of cataclysmic galactic violence. This is a boon vouchsafed the intelligent denizens of solar systems doomed to destruction by supernova, but the Choir wish to share it with humanity. Why? For permitting them to take up residence on our Moon and for so readily accepting their advanced technologies and their wise mediation of our many political, economic, and religious conflicts.”
Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas Page 37
