Far Thoughts and Pale Gods

by Greg Bear

  “That doesn’t make sense. We’ve only got an hour and a half left. She should be playing the situation for all it’s worth. Listen, LG, I received a weak signal from Psyche several minutes ago. It could have been a freak, but I don’t think so. I’m going to move back to where I picked it up.”

  “Negative, Porter. You’ll need all your reaction mass in case Plan A doesn’t go off properly.”

  “I’ve got plenty to spare, LG. I have a bad feeling about this. Something’s gone wrong on Psyche.” It was clear to him the instant he said it. “Jesus Christ, LG, the signal must have come from Turco’s area! I lost it just when I passed out of line-of-sight from her bubble.”

  Lunar Guidance was silent for a long moment. “Okay, Porter, we’ve got clearance for you to regain that signal.”

  “Thank you, LG.” He pushed the ship out of its rough alignment and coasted slowly away from Psyche until he could see the equatorial ring of domes and bubbles. Abruptly his receiver again picked up the weak signal. He locked his tracking antenna to it, boosted it, and cut in the communications processor to interpolate through the hash.

  “This is Turco. William Porter, listen to me! This is Turco. I’m locked out. Something has malfunctioned in the control bubble. I’m locked out …”

  “I’m receiving you, Turco,” he said. “Look for me above the Vlasseg pole. I’m in line-of-sight again.” If her suit was a standard model, her transmissions would strengthen in the direction she was facing.

  “God bless you, Porter. I see you. Everything’s gone wrong down here. I can’t get back in.”

  “Try again, Turco. Do you have any tools with you?”

  “That’s what started all this, breaking in with a chisel and a pry bar. It must have weakened something, and now the whole mechanism is frozen. No, I left the bar inside. No tools. Jesus, this is awful.”

  “Calm down. Keep trying to get in. I’m relaying your signal to Lunar Guidance and Earth.” That settled it. There was no time to waste now. If she didn’t turn on the positioning motors soon, any miss would be too close for comfort. He had to set off the internal charges within an hour and a half for the best effect.

  “She’s outside?” Lunar Guidance asked when the transmissions were relayed. “Can’t get back in?”

  “That’s it,” Porter said.

  “That cocks it, Porter. Ignore her and get back into position. Don’t bother lining up with the Vlasseg pole, however. Circle around to the Janacki pole bore hole and line up for code broadcast there. You’ll have a better chance of getting the code through, and you can prepare for any further action.”

  “I’ll be cooked, LG.”

  “Negative—you’re to relay code from an additional thousand kilometers and boost yourself out of the path just before detonation. That will occur—let’s see—about four point three seconds after the charges receive the code. Program your computer for sequencing; you’ll be too busy.”

  “I’m moving, LG.” He returned to Turco’s wavelength. “It’s out of your hands now,” he said. “We’re blowing the charges. They may not be enough, so I’m preparing to detonate myself against the Janacki pole crater. Congratulations, Turco.”

  “I still can’t get back in, Porter.”

  “I said, congratulations. You’ve killed both of us and ruined Psyche for any future projects. You know that she’ll go to pieces when she drops below Roche’s limit? Even if she misses, she’ll be too close to survive. You know, they might have gotten it all straightened out in a few administrations. Politicos die, or get booted out of office—even Naderites. I say you’ve cocked it good. Be happy, Turco.” He flipped the switch viciously and concentrated on his approach program display.

  Farmer Kollert was slumped in his chair, eyes closed but still awake, half-listening to the murmurs in the control room. Someone tapped him on the shoulder, and he jerked up in his seat.

  “I had to be with you, Farmer.” Gestina stood over him, a nervous smile making her dimples obvious. “They brought me here to be with you.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  Her voice shook. “Because our house was destroyed. I got out just in time. What’s happening, Farmer? Why do they want to kill me? What did I do?”

  The team officer standing beside her held out a piece of paper, and Kollert took it. Violence had broken out in half a dozen Hexamon centers, and numerous officials had had to be evacuated. Geshels weren’t the only ones involved—Naderites of all classes seemed to share indignation and rage at what was happening. The outbreaks weren’t organized—and that was even more disturbing. Wherever transmissions had reached the unofficial grapevines, people were reacting.

  Gestina’s large eyes regarded him without comprehension, much less sympathy. “I had to be with you, Farmer,” she repeated. “They wouldn’t let me stay.”

  “Quiet, please,” another officer said. “More transmissions coming in.”

  “Yes,” Kollert said softly. “Quiet. That’s what we wanted. Quiet and peace and sanity. Safety for our children to come.”

  “I think something big is happening,” Gestina said. “What is it?”

  Porter checked the alignment again, put up his visual shields, and instructed the processor to broadcast the coded signal. With no distinguishable pause, the ship’s engines started to move him out of the path of the particle blast.

  Meanwhile Giani Turco worked at the hatch with a bit of metal bracing she had broken off her suitpack. The sharp edge just barely fit into the crevice, and by gouging and prying she had managed to force the door up half a centimeter. The evacuation mechanism hadn’t been activated, so frosted air hissed from the crack, making the work doubly difficult. The Moon was rising above the Janacki pole.

  Deep below her, seven prebalanced but unchecked charges, mounted on massive fittings in their chambers, began to whir. Four processors checked the timings, concurred, and released safety shields.

  Six of the charges went off at once. The seventh was late by ten thousandths of a second, its blast muted as the casing melted prematurely. The particle shock waves streamed out through the bore holes, now pressure release valves, and formed a long neck and tail of flame and ionized particles that grew steadily for a thousand kilometers, then faded. The tail from the Vlasseg pole was thinner and shorter, but no less spectacular. The asteroid shuddered, vibrations rising from deep inside to pull the ground away from Turco’s boots, then swing it back to kick her away from the bubble and hatch. She floated in space, disoriented, ripped free of the guide wires, her back to the asteroid, faceplate aimed at peaceful stars, turning slowly as she reached the top of her arc.

  Her leisurely descent gave her plenty of time to see the secondary plume of purple and white and red forming around the Janacki pole. The stars were blanked out by its brilliance. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she was nearer the ground, and her faceplate had polarized against the sudden brightness. She saw the bubble still intact, and the hatch wide open now. It had been jarred free. Everything was vibrating … and with shock she realized the asteroid was slowly moving out from beneath her. Her fall became a drawn-out curve, taking her away from the bubble toward a ridge of lead-gray rock, without guide wires, where she would bounce and continue on unchecked. To her left, one dome ruptured and sent a feathery wipe of debris into space. Pieces of rock and dust floated past her, shaken from Psyche’s weak surface grip. Then her hand was only a few meters from a guide wire torn free and swinging outward. It came closer like a dancing snake, hesitated, rippled again, and looped within reach. She grabbed it and pulled herself down.

  “Porter, this is Lunar Guidance. Something went wrong. Earth says the charges weren’t enough.”

  “She held together, LG,” Porter said in disbelief. “Psyche didn’t break up. I’ve got a fireworks show like you’ve never seen before.”

  “Porter, listen. She isn’t moving fast enough. She’ll still impact.”

  “I heard you, LG,” Porter shouted. “I heard! Leave me alone t
o get things done.” Nothing more was said between them.

  Turco reached the hatch and crawled into the airlock, exhausted. She closed the outer door and waited for equalization before opening the inner. Her helmet was off and floating behind as she walked and bounced and guided herself into the control room. If the motors were still functional, she’d fire them. She had no second thoughts now. Something had gone wrong, and the situation was completely different.

  In the middle of the kilometers-wide crater at the Janacki pole, the bore hole was still spewing debris and ionized particles. But around the perimeter, other forces were at work. Canisters of reaction mass were flying to a point three kilometers above the crater floor. The Beckmann drive engines rotated on their mountings, aiming their nodes at the canister’s rendezvous point.

  Porter’s ship was following the tail of debris down to the crater floor. He could make out geometric patterns of insulating material. His computers told him something was approaching a few hundred meters below. There wasn’t time for any second guessing. He primed his main cargo and sat back in the seat, lips moving, not in prayer, but repeating some stray, elegant line from the Burgess novel, a final piece of pleasure.

  One of the canisters struck the side of the cargo ship just as the blast began. A brilliant flare spread out above the crater, merging with and twisting the tail of the internal charges. Four canisters were knocked from their course and sent plummeting into space. The remaining six met at the assigned point and were hit by beams from the Beckmann drive nodes. Their matter was stripped down to pure energy.

  All of this, in its lopsided, incomplete way, bounced against the crater floor and drove the asteroid slightly faster.

  When the shaking subsided, Turco let go of a grip bar and asked the computers questions. No answers came back. Everything except minimum life support was out of commission. She thought briefly of returning to her tug, if it was still in position, but there was nowhere to go. So she walked and crawled and floated to a broad view window in the bubble’s dining room. Earth was rising over the Vlasseg pole again, filling half her view, knots of storm and streaks of brown continent twisting slowly before her. She wondered if it had been enough—it hadn’t felt right. There was no way of knowing for sure, but the Earth looked much too close.

  “It’s too close to judge,” the president said, deliberately standing with his back to Kollert. “She’ll pass over Greenland, maybe just hit the upper atmosphere.”

  The terrorist team officers were packing their valises and talking to each other in subdued whispers. Three of the president’s security men looked at the screen with dazed expressions. The screen was blank except for a display of seconds until accession of picture. Gestina was asleep in the chair next to Kollert, her face peaceful, hands wrapped together in her lap.

  “We’ll have relay pictures from Iceland in a few minutes,” the president said. “Should be quite a sight.” Kollert frowned. The man was almost cocky, knowing he would come through it untouched. Even with survival uncertain, his government would be preparing explanations. Kollert could predict the story: a band of lunar terrorists, loosely tied with Giani Turco’s father and his rabid spacefarers, was responsible for the whole thing. It would mean a few months of ill-feeling on the Moon, but at least the Nexus would have found its scapegoats.

  A communicator beeped in the room, and Kollert looked around for its source. One of the security men reached into a pocket and pulled out a small earplug, which he inserted. He listened, frowned, then nodded. The other two gathered close and whispered. Then, quietly, they left the room. The president didn’t notice they were gone, but to Kollert their absence spoke volumes.

  Six Nexus police entered a minute later. One stood by Kollert’s chair, not looking at him. Four waited by the door. Another approached the president and tapped him on the shoulder. The president turned.

  “Sir, fourteen desks have requested your impeachment. We’re instructed to put you under custody, for your own safety.”

  Kollert started to rise, but the officer beside him put a hand on his shoulder.

  “May we stay to watch?” the president asked. No one objected.

  Before the screen was switched on, Kollert asked, “Is anyone going to get Turco, if it misses?”

  The terrorist team leader shrugged when no one else answered. “She may not even be alive.”

  Then, like a crowd of children looking at a horror movie, the men and women in the communications center grouped around the large screen and watched the dark shadow of Psyche blocking out stars.

  From the bubble window, Turco saw the sudden aurorae, the spray of ionized gases from the Earth’s atmosphere, the awesomely rapid passage of the ocean below, and the blur of white as Greenland flashed past. The structure rocked and jerked as the Earth exerted enormous tidal strains on Psyche.

  Sitting in the plastic chair, numb, tightly gripping the arms, Giani looked up—down—at the bright stars, feeling Psyche die beneath her.

  Inside, the still-molten hollows formed by the charges began to collapse. Cracks shot outward to the surface, where they became gaping chasms. Sparks and rays of smoke jumped from the chasms. In minutes the passage was over. Looking closely, she saw roiling storms forming over Earth’s seas and the spreading shock wave of the asteroid’s sudden atmospheric compression. Big winds were blowing, but they’d survive.

  It shouldn’t have gone this far. They should have listened reasonably, admitted their guilt—

  Absolved, girl, she wanted her father to say. She felt him very near. You’ve destroyed everything we worked for—a fine architect of Pyrrhic victories. And now he was at a great distance, receding.

  The room was cold, and her skin tingled.

  One huge chunk rose to block out the sun. The cabin screamed, and the bubble was filled with sudden flakes of air.

  Afterword

  Researching this story in 1977 led me back to a science article by J.E. Enever, “Giant Meteor Impact,” published in Analog in March of 1966. J. E. Enever—no biography or credentials are given in the magazine, and he published, as far as I can discover, only a couple of items later—started something really big with this piece. To my knowledge, nobody before the mysterious Mr. Enever had ever written realistically about the effects of a large rocky mass striking the Earth. It’s hard to imagine now, but in those years, Catastrophism—the belief that the Earth had ever been subjected to short, sharp shocks—was not in favor in mainstream geology. Most geologists were only beginning to seriously consider the theory of continental drift, espoused by Alfred L. Wegener. It’s possible Enever could not have published this article in any respectable science journal.

  That left John W. Campbell, Jr., and Analog.

  Within a few years, Walter Alvarez would begin thinking about giant asteroids and dinosaur extinction …

  In his 1972 novel, Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke (now Sir Arthur) would propose Spaceguard, a security system designed to watch for meteorites and asteroids that could collide with Earth.

  Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven would write the bestselling Lucifer’s Hammer …

  Gregory Benford and William Rotsler would write Shiva Descending.

  Scientists would begin looking for the Big Ones, the impact craters that would provide the evidence for Alvarez’s hypothesis. They would find several such craters, and the public imagination would be altered forever. We would watch a calved comet fall into Jupiter’s atmosphere, and imagine our own possible fate.

  We would feel very mortal.

  Decades later, Deep Impact and Armageddon would compete for big bucks in the movie marketplace. Nearly every documentary on dinosaurs would show them peering up, squinty-eyed, at that bright light descending from the sky …

  Today (2004), Spaceguard exists, in a rudimentary form. It has been organized by J. R. Tate in the United Kingdom, where it is struggling to procure funding to keep watching the skies.

  All, possibly, because of J. E. Enever.

  Pl
ague of Conscience

  Poul Anderson was a master at building artificial worlds. With his wife, Karen, he devised a system of planets to serve as the setting for a collaborative novel/anthology entitled Murasaki. Fred Pohl, a master of sociology and cultural anticipations, and himself an expert planet-builder (see Jem) provided the cultural underpinnings for the inhabitants of these worlds. Robert Silverberg edited and organized. A number of prominent writers—Anderson, Pohl, Gregory Benford, David Brin, and Nancy Kress—were invited to contribute to the round robin, setting their individuals chapters on these planets.

  “Plague of Conscience” was my portion.

  It may be a little confusing without the other tales to provide background, but I think it works well by itself, though more as a segment of a novel than a complete story. At any rate, it’s worthwhile finding Murasaki and reading the complete cycle.

  The hardest theme in science fiction is that of the alien. The simplest solution of all is in fact quite profound—that the real difficulty lies not in understanding what is alien, but in understanding what is self. We are all aliens to each other, all different and divided. We are even aliens to ourselves at different stages of our lives. Do any of us remember precisely what it was like to be a baby?

  To describe the alien, I tend to take an aspect from my own multiple selves, a manifold of personality traits, and expand upon it. It’s not a bad technique, as long as I’m willing to look very closely at the truth of what I think I see …

  Kammer looked worse than any corpse Philby had seen; much worse, for he was alive and shouldn’t have been. This short wizened man with limbs like gnarled tree branches and skin like leather—what could be seen of his skin beneath the encrustations of brown and green snug—had survived ten Earthly years on Chujo without human contact. He could hardly speak English any more.

  Kammer regarded Philby through eyes paled by some Chujoan biological adaptation—the impossible which had happened to him first, and then had spread so disastrously to the God the Physicist settlers and the Japanese stationed here. Three hundred dead, and it had certainly begun on Kammer’s broken, dying body, pissed on by a Chujoan shaman, that benison, that curse.