The Hard SF Renaissance

by David G. Hartwell

  “Hush,” Laurinda answered as low. “Wait. We were told this wouldn’t be our 1900. Here may be the only York Minster in all of Gaia.”

  He nodded stiffly. It was clear that the node had never attempted a perfect reproduction of any past milieu—impossible, and pointless to boot. Often, though not necessarily always, she took an approximation as a starting point; but it never went on to the same destiny. What were the roots of this day?

  “Relax,” Laurinda urged. “It’s beautiful.”

  He did his best, and indeed the Roman Catholic mass at the hour of tierce sang some tranquility into his heart.

  After the Nunc Dimittis, when clergy and laity had departed, the two could wander around and savor. Emerging at last, they spent a while looking upon the carven tawny limestone of the front. This was no Parthenon; it was a different upsurging of the same miracle. But around it lay a world to discover. With half a sigh and half a smile, they set forth.

  The delightful narrow “gates,” walled in with half-timbered houses, lured them. More modern streets and buildings, above all the people therein, captured them. York was a living town, a market town, core of a wide hinterland, node of a nation. It racketed, it bustled.

  The half smile faded. A wholly foreign setting would not have felt as wrong as one that was half homelike.

  Clothing styles were not radically unlike what pictures and historical dramas had once shown; but they were not identical. The English chatter was in no dialect of English known to Christian or Laurinda, and repeatedly they heard versions of German. A small, high-stacked steam locomotive pulled a train into a station of somehow Teutonic architecture. No early automobiles stuttered along the thoroughfares. Horsedrawn vehicles moved crowdedly, but the pavements were clean and the smell of dung faint because the animals wore a kind of diapers. A flag above a post office (?), fluttering in the wind, displayed a cross of St. Andrew on which was superimposed a two-headed gold eagle. A man with a megaphone bellowed at the throng to stand aside and make way for a military squadron. In blue uniforms, rifles on shoulders, they quick-marched to commands barked in German. Individual soldiers, presumably on leave, were everywhere. A boy went by, shrilly hawking newspapers, and Christian saw WAR in a headline.

  “Listen, amulet,” he muttered finally, “where can we get a beer?”

  “A public house will admit you if you go in by the couples’ entrance,” replied the soundless voice.

  So, no unescorted women allowed. Well, Christian thought vaguely, hadn’t that been the case in his Edwardian years, at any rate in respectable taverns? A signboard jutting from a Tudor façade read GEORGE AND DRAGON. The wainscotted room inside felt equally English.

  Custom was plentiful and noisy, tobacco smoke thick, but he and Laurinda found a table in a corner where they could talk without anybody else paying attention. The brew that a barmaid fetched was of Continental character. He didn’t give it the heed it deserved.

  “I don’t think we’ve found our peaceful world after all,” he said.

  Laurinda looked beyond him, into distances where he could not follow. “Will we ever?” she wondered. “Can any be, if it’s human?”

  He grimaced. “Well, let’s find out what the hell’s going on here.”

  “You can have a detailed explanation if you wish,” said the voice in their heads. “You would be better advised to accept a bare outline, as you did before.”

  “Instead of loading ourselves down with the background of a world that never was,” he mumbled.

  “That never was ours,” Laurinda corrected him.

  “Carry on.”

  “This sequence was generated as of its fifteenth century A.D.,” said the voice. “The conciliar movement was made to succeed, rather than failing as it did in your history.”

  “Uh, conciliar movement?”

  “The ecclesiastical councils of Constance and later of Basel attempted to heal the Great Schism and reform the government of the Church. Here they accomplished it, giving back to the bishops some of the power that over the centuries had accrued to the popes, working out a reconciliation with the Hussites, and making other important changes. As a result, no Protestant breakaway occurred, nor wars of religion, and the Church remained a counterbalance to the state, preventing the rise of absolute monarchies.”

  “Why, that’s wonderful,” Laurinda whispered.

  “Not too wonderful by now,” Christian said grimly. “What happened?”

  “In brief, Germany was spared the devastation of the Thirty Years’ War and a long-lasting division into quarrelsome principalities. It was unified in the seventeenth century and soon became the dominant European power, colonizing and conquering eastward. Religious and cultural differences from the Slavs proved irreconcilable. As the harsh imperium provoked increasing restlessness, it perforce grew more severe, causing more rebellion. Meanwhile it decayed within, until today it has broken apart and the Russians are advancing on Berlin.”

  “I see. What about science and technology?”

  “They have developed more slowly than in your history, although you have noted the existence of a fossil-fueled industry and inferred an approximately Lagrangian level of theory.”

  “The really brilliant eras were when all hell broke loose, weren’t they?” Christian mused. “This Europe went through less agony, and invented and discovered less. Coincidence?”

  “What about government?” Laurinda asked.

  “For a time, parliaments flourished, more powerful than kings, emperors, or popes,” said the voice. “In most Western countries they still wield considerable influence.”

  “As the creatures of special interests, I’ll bet,” Christian rasped. “All right, what comes next?”

  Gaia knew. He sat in a reactivation of something she probably played to a finish thousands of years ago.

  “Scientific and technological advance proceeds, accelerating, through a long period of general turbulence. At the termination point—”

  “Never mind!” Oblivion might be better than a nuclear war.

  Silence fell at the table. The life that filled the pub with its noise felt remote, unreal.

  “We dare not weep,” Laurinda finally said. “Not yet.”

  Christian shook himself. “Europe was never the whole of Earth,” he growled. “How many worlds has Gaia made?”

  “Many,” the voice told him.

  “Show us one that’s really foreign. If you agree, Laurinda.”

  She squared her shoulders. “Yes, do.” After a moment: “Not here. If we disappeared it would shock them. It might change the whole future.”

  “Hardly enough to notice,” Christian said. “And would it matter in the long run? But, yeh, let’s be off.”

  They wandered out, among marvels gone meaningless, until they found steps leading up onto the medieval wall. Thence they looked across roofs and river and Yorkshire beyond, finding they were alone.

  “Now take us away,” Christian ordered.

  “You have not specified any type of world,” said the voice.

  “Surprise us.”

  Transfer.

  The sky stood enormous, bleached blue, breezes warm underneath. A bluff overlooked a wide brown river. Trees grew close to its edge, tall, pale of bark, leaves silver-green and shivery. Christian recognized them, cottonwoods. He was somewhere in west central North America, then. Uneasy shadows lent camouflage if he and Laurinda kept still. Across the river the land reached broad, roads twisting their way through cultivation—mainly wheat and Indian corn—that seemed to be parceled out among small farms, each with its buildings, house, barn, occasional stable or workshop. The sweeping lines of the ruddy-tiled roofs looked Asian. He spied oxcarts and a few horseback riders on the roads, workers in the fields, but at their distance he couldn’t identify race or garb. Above yonder horizon thrust clustered towers that also suggested the Orient. If they belonged to a city, it must be compact, not sprawling over the countryside but neatly drawn into itself.

  O
ne road ran along the farther riverbank. A procession went upon it. An elephant led, as richly caparisoned as the man under the silk awning of a howdah. Shaven-headed men in yellow robes walked after, flanked by horsemen who bore poles from which pennons streamed scarlet and gold. The sound of slowly beaten gongs and minor-key chanting came faint through the wind.

  Christian snapped his fingers. “Stupid me!” he muttered. “Give us a couple of opticals.”

  Immediately he and Laurinda held the devices. From his era, they fitted into the palm but projected an image at any magnification desired, with no lenses off which light could glint to betray. He peered back and forth for minutes. Yes, the appearance was quite Chinese, or Chinese-derived, except that a number of the individuals he studied had more of an American countenance and the leader on the elephant wore a feather bonnet above his robe.

  “How quiet here,” Laurinda said.

  “You are at the height of the Great Peace,” the amulet voice answered.

  “How many like that were there ever?” Christian wondered. “Where, when, how?”

  “You are in North America, in the twenty-second century by your reckoning. Chinese navigators arrived on the Pacific shore seven hundred years ago, and colonists followed.”

  In this world, Christian thought, Europe and Africa were surely a sketch, mere geography, holding a few primitive tribes at most, unless nothing was there but ocean. Simplify, simplify.

  “Given the distances to sail and the dangers, the process was slow,” the voice went on. “While the newcomers displaced or subjugated the natives wherever they settled, most remained free for a long time, acquired the technology, and also developed resistance to introduced diseases. Eventually, being on roughly equal terms, the races began to mingle, genetically and culturally. The settlers mitigated the savagery of the religions they had encountered, but learned from the societies, as well as teaching. You behold the outcome.”

  “The Way of the Buddha?” Laurinda asked very softly.

  “As influenced by Daoism and local nature cults. It is a harmonious faith, without sects or heresies, pervading the civilization.”

  “Everything can’t be pure loving-kindness,” Christian said.

  “Certainly not. But the peace that the Emperor Wei Zhi-fu brought about has lasted for a century and will for another two. If you travel, you will find superb achievements in the arts and in graciousness.”

  “Another couple of centuries.” Laurinda’s tones wavered the least bit. “Afterward?”

  “It doesn’t last,” Christian predicted. “These are humans too. And—tell me—do they ever get to a real science?”

  “No,” said the presence. “Their genius lies in other realms. But the era of warfare to come will drive the development of a remarkable empirical technology.”

  “What era?”

  “China never recognized the independence that this country proclaimed for itself, nor approved of its miscegenation. A militant dynasty will arise, which overruns a western hemisphere weakened by the religious and secular quarrels that do at last break out.”

  “And the conquerors will fall in their turn. Unless Gaia makes an end first. She does—she did—sometime, didn’t she?”

  “All things are finite. Her creations too.”

  The leaves rustled through muteness.

  “Do you wish to go into the city and look about?” asked the presence. “It can be arranged for you to meet some famous persons.”

  “No,” Christian said. “Not yet, anyway. Maybe later.”

  Laurinda sighed. “We’d rather go home now and rest.”

  “And think,” Christian said. “Yes.”

  Transfer.

  The sun over England seemed milder than for America. Westering, it sent rays through windows to glow in wood, caress marble and the leather bindings of books, explode into rainbows where they met cut glass, evoke flower aromas from a jar of potpourri.

  Laurinda opened a bureau drawer. She slipped the chain of her amulet over her head and tossed the disc in. Christian blinked, nodded, and followed suit. She closed the drawer.

  “We do need to be by ourselves for a while,” she said. “This hasn’t been a dreadful day like, like before, but I am so tired.”

  “Understandable,” he replied.

  “You?”

  “I will be soon, no doubt.”

  “Those worlds—already they feel like dreams I’ve wakened from.”

  “An emotional retreat from them, I suppose. Not cowardice, no, no, just a necessary, temporary rest. You shared their pain. You’re too sweet for your own good, Laurinda.”

  She smiled. “How you misjudge me. I’m not quite ready to collapse yet, if you aren’t.”

  “Thunder, no.”

  She took crystal glasses out of a cabinet, poured from a decanter on a sideboard, and gestured invitation. The port fondled their tongues. They stayed on their feet, look meeting look.

  “I daresay we’d be presumptuous and foolish to try finding any pattern, this early in our search,” she ventured. “Those peeks we’ve had, out of who knows how many worlds—each as real as we are.” She shivered.

  “I may have a hunch,” he said slowly.

  “A what?”

  “An intimation, an impression, a wordless kind of guess. Why has Gaia been doing it? I can’t believe it’s nothing but pastime.”

  “Nor I. Nor can I believe she would let such terrible things happen if she could prevent them. How can an intellect, a soul, like hers be anything but good?”

  So Laurinda thought, Christian reflected; but she was an avatar of Gaia. He didn’t suppose that affected the fairness of her conscious mind; he had come to know her rather well. But neither did it prove the nature, the ultimate intent, of Earth’s node. It merely showed that the living Laurinda Ashcroft had been a decent person.

  She took a deep draught from her glass before going on: “I think, myself, she is in the same position as the traditional God. Being good, she wants to share existence with others, and so creates them. But to make them puppets, automatons, would be senseless. They have to have consciousness and free will. Therefore they are able to sin, and do, all too often.”

  “Why hasn’t she made them morally stronger?”

  “Because she’s chosen to make them human. And what are we but a specialized African ape?” Laurinda’s tone lowered; she stared into the wine. “Specialized to make tools and languages and dreams; but the dreams can be nightmares.”

  In Gaia’s and Alpha’s kind laired no ancient beast, Christian thought. The human elements in them were long since absorbed, tamed, transfigured. His resurrection and hers must be nearly unique.

  Not wanting to hurt her, he shaped his phrases with care. “Your idea is reasonable, but I’m afraid it leaves some questions dangling. Gaia does intervene, again and again. The amulets admit it. When the emulations get too far off track, she changes them and their people.” Until she shuts them down, he did not add. “Why is she doing it, running history after history, experiment after experiment—why?”

  Laurinda winced. “To, to learn about this strange race of ours?”

  He nodded. “Yes, that’s my hunch. Not even she, nor the galactic brain itself, can take first principles and compute what any human situation will lead to. Human affairs are chaotic. But chaotic systems do have structures, attractors, constraints. By letting things happen, through countless variations, you might discover a few general laws, which courses are better and which are worse.” He tilted his goblet. “To what end, though? There are no more humans in the outside universe. There haven’t been for—how many million years? No, unless it actually is callous curiosity, I can’t yet guess what she’s after.”

  “Nor I.” Laurinda finished her drink. “Now I am growing very tired, very fast.”

  “I’m getting that way too.” Christian paused. “How about we go sleep till evening? Then a special dinner, and our heads ought to be more clear.”

  Briefly, she took his hand. �
��Until evening, dear friend.”

  The night was young and gentle. a full moon dappled the garden. Wine had raised a happy mood, barely tinged with wistfulness. Gravel scrunched rhythmically underfoot as Laurinda and Christian danced, humming the waltz melody together. When they were done, they sat down, laughing, by the basin. Brightness from above overflowed it. He had earlier put his amulet back on just long enough to command that a guitar appear for him. Now he took it up. He had never seen anything more beautiful than she was in the moonlight. He sang a song to her that he had made long ago when he was mortal.

  “Lightfoot, Lightfoot, lead the measure

  As we dance the summer in!

  ‘Lifetime is our only treasure.

  Spend it well, on love and pleasure,’

  Warns the lilting violin.

  “If we’ll see the year turn vernal

  Once again, lies all with chance.

  Yes, this ordering’s infernal,

  But we’ll make our own eternal

  Fleeting moment where we dance.

  “So shall we refuse compliance

  When across the green we whirl,

  Giving entropy defiance,

  Strings and winds in our alliance.

  Be a victor. Kiss me, girl!”

  Suddenly she was in his arms.

  8

  Where the hills loomed highest above the river that cut through them, a slope on the left bank rose steep but thinly forested. Kalava directed the lifeboat carrying his party to land. The slaves at the oars grunted with double effort. Sweat sheened on their skins and runneled down the straining bands of muscle; it was a day when the sun blazed from a sky just half clouded. The prow grated on a sandbar in the shallows. Kalava told two of his sailors to stand guard over boat and rowers. With the other four and Ilyandi, he waded ashore and began to climb.

  It went slowly but stiffly. On top they found a crest with a view that snatched a gasp from the woman and a couple of amazed oaths from the men. Northward the terrain fell still more sharply, so that they looked over treetops down to the bottom of the range and across a valley awash with the greens and russets of growth. The river shone through it like a drawn blade, descending from dimly seen foothills and the sawtooth mountains beyond them. Two swordwings hovered on high, watchful for prey. Sunbeams shot past gigantic cloudbanks, filling their whiteness with cavernous shadows. Somehow the air felt cooler here, and the herbal smells gave benediction.