Worldmakers

by Gardner Dozois

  When Alyonal caught fire and went away, those Coldworld Catforms covered by the option who were scattered about the crowded galaxy were, by virtue of the agreement, wards of General Mining.

  This is why Jarry grew up in a hermetically sealed room containing temperature and atmosphere controls, and why he received a first-class closed-circuit education, along with his physiotherapy and medicine. This is also why Jarry bore some resemblance to a large gray ocelot without a tail, had webbing between his fingers and could not go outside to watch the traffic unless he wore a pressurized refrigeration suit and took extra medication.

  All over the swarming galaxy, people took the advice of Public Health Planned Parenthood Centers, and many others had chosen as had Jarry’s parents. Twenty-eight thousand, five hundred sixty-six of them, to be exact. In any group of over twenty-eight thousand five hundred sixty, there are bound to be a few talented individuals. Jarry was one of them. He had a knack for making money. Most of his General Mining pension check was invested in well-chosen stocks of a speculative nature. (In fact, after a time he came to own considerable stock in General Mining.)

  When the man from the Galactic Civil Liberties Union had come around, expressing concern over the prebirth contracts involved in the option and explaining that the Alyonal Catforms would make a good test case (especially since Jarry’s parents lived within jurisdiction of the 877th Circuit, where they would be assured a favorable courtroom atmosphere), Jarry’s parents had demurred, for fear of jeopardizing the General Mining pension. Later on, Jarry himself dismissed the notion also. A favorable decision could not make him an E-world Normform, and what else mattered? He was not vindictive. Also, he owned considerable stock in G.M. by then.

  He loafed in his methane tank and purred, which meant that he was thinking. He operated his cryo-computer as he purred and thought. He was computing the total net worth of all the Catforms in the recently organized December Club.

  He stopped purring and considered a subtotal, stretched, shook his head slowly. Then he returned to his calculations.

  When he had finished, he dictated a message into his speech-tube, to Sanza Barati, President of December and his betrothed:

  “Dearest Sanza—The funds available, as I suspected, leave much to be desired. All the more reason to begin immediately. Kindly submit the proposal to the business committee, outline my qualifications and seek immediate endorsement. I’ve finished drafting the general statement to the membership. (Copy attached.) From these figures, it will take me between five and ten years, if at least eighty percent of the membership backs me. So push hard, beloved. I’d like to meet you someday, in a place where the sky is purple. Yours, always, Jarry Dark, Treasurer. PS. I’m pleased you were pleased with the ring.”

  Two years later, Jarry had doubled the net worth of December, Incorporated.

  A year and a half after that, he had doubled it again.

  When he received the following letter from Sanza, he leapt onto his trampoline, bounded into the air, landed upon his feet at the opposite end of his quarters, returned to his viewer and replayed it:

  Dear Jarry,

  Attached are specifications and prices for five more worlds. The research staff likes the last one. So do I. What do you think? Alyonal II? If so, how about the price? When could we afford that much? The staff also says that an hundred Worldchange units could alter it to what we want in 5–6 centuries. Will forward costs of this machinery shortly.

  Come live with me and be my love, in a place where there are no walls … .

  Sanza

  “One year,” he replied, “and I’ll buy you a world! Hurry up with the costs of machinery and transport … .”

  When the figures arrived Jarry wept icy tears. One hundred machines, capable of altering the environment of a world, plus twenty-eight thousand coldsleep bunkers, plus transportation costs for the machinery and his people, plus … Too high! He did a rapid calculation.

  He spoke into the speech-tube:

  “ … Fifteen additional years is too long to wait, Pussycat. Have them figure the time-span if we were to purchase only twenty Worldchange units. Love and kisses, Jarry.”

  During the days which followed, he stalked above his chamber, erect at first, then on all fours as his mood deepened.

  “Approximately three thousand years,” came the reply. “May your coat be ever shiny—Sanza.”.

  “Let’s put it to a vote, Greeneyes,” he said.

  Quick, a world in three hundred words or less! Picture this … .

  One land mass, really, containing three black and brackish-looking seas; gray plains and yellow plains and skies the color of dry sand; shallow forests with trees like mushrooms which have been swabbed with iodine; no mountains, just hills brown, yellow, white, lavender; green birds with wings like parachutes, bills like sickles, feathers like oak leaves, an inside-out umbrella behind; six very distant moons, like spots before the eyes in daytime, snowflakes at night, drops of blood at dusk and dawn; grass like mustard in the moister valleys; mists like white fire on windless mornings, albino serpents when the air’s astir; radiating chasms, like fractures in frosted windowpanes; hidden caverns, like chains of dark bubbles; seventeen known dangerous predators, ranging from one to six meters in length, excessively furred and fanged; sudden hailstorms, like hurled hammerheads from a clear sky; an icecap like a blue beret at either flattened pole; nervous bipeds a meter and a half in height, short on cerebrum, which wander the shallow forests and prey upon the giant caterpillar’s larva, as well as the giant caterpillar, the green bird, the blind burrower, and the offal-eating murk-beast; seventeen mighty rivers; clouds like pregnant purple cows, which quickly cross the land to lie-in beyond the visible east; stands of windblasted stones like frozen music; nights like soot, to obscure the lesser stars; valleys which flow like the torsos of women or instruments of music; perpetual frost in places of shadow; sounds in the morning like the cracking of ice, the trembling of tin, the snapping of steel strands … .

  They knew they would turn it to heaven.

  The vanguard arrived, decked out in refrigeration suits, installed ten Worldchange units in either hemisphere, began setting up coldsleep bunkers in several of the larger caverns.

  Then came the members of December down from the sand-colored sky.

  They came and they saw, decided it was almost heaven, then entered their caverns and slept. Over twenty-eight thousand Coldworld Catforms (modified per Alyonal) came into their own world to sleep for a season in silence the sleep of ice and of stone, to inherit the new Alyonal. There is no dreaming in that sleep. But had there been, their dreams might have been as the thoughts of those yet awake.

  “It is bitter, Sanza.”

  “Yes, but only for a time—”

  “ … To have each other and our own world, and still to go forth like divers at the bottom of the sea. To have to crawl when you want to leap … .”

  “It is only for a short time, Jarry, as the senses will reckon it.”

  “But it is really three thousand years! An ice age will come to pass as we doze. Our former worlds will change so that we would not know them were we to go back for a visit—and none will remember us.”

  “Visit what? Our former cells? Let the rest of the worlds go by! Let us be forgotten in the lands of our birth! We are a people apart and we have found our home. What else matters?”

  “True … . It will be but a few years, and we shall stand our tours of wakefulness and watching together.”

  “When is the first?”

  “Two and a half centuries from now—three months of wakefulness.”

  “What will it be like then?”

  “I don’t know. Less warm … .”

  “Then let us return and sleep. Tomorrow will be a better day.”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh! See the green bird! It drifts like a dream …”

  When they awakened that first time, they stayed within the Worldchange installation at the place called Deadland
. The world was already colder and the edges of the sky were tinted with pink. The metal walls of the great installation were black and rimed with frost. The atmosphere was still lethal and the temperature far too high. They remained within their special chambers for most of the time, venturing outside mainly to make necessary tests and to inspect the structure of their home.

  Deadland … . Rocks and sand. No trees, no marks of life at all.

  The time of terrible winds was still upon the land, as the world fought back against the fields of the machines. At night, great clouds of real estate smoothed and sculpted the stands of stone, and when the winds departed the desert would shimmer as if fresh-painted and the stones would stand like flames within the morning and its singing. After the sun came up into the sky and hung there for a time, the winds would begin again and a dun-colored fog would curtain the day. When the morning winds departed, Jarry and Sanza would stare out across Deadland through the east window of the installation, for that was their favorite—the one on the third floor—where the stone that looked like a gnarly Normform waved to them, and they would he upon the green couch they had moved up from the first floor, and would sometimes make love as they listened for the winds to rise again, or Sanza would sing and Jarry would write in the log or read back through it, the scribblings of friends and unknowns through the centuries, and they would purr often but never laugh, because they did not know how.

  One morning, as they watched, they saw one of the biped creatures of the iodine forests moving across the land. It fell several times, picked itself up, continued, fell once more, lay still.

  “What is it doing this far from its home?” asked Sanza.

  “Dying,” said Jarry. “Let’s go outside.”

  They crossed a catwalk, descended to the first floor, donned their protective suits and departed the installation.

  The creature had risen to its feet and was staggering once again. It was covered with a reddish down, had dark eyes and a long, wide nose, lacked a true forehead. It had four brief digits, clawed, upon each hand and foot.

  When it saw them emerge from the Worldchange unit, it stopped and stared at them. Then it fell.

  They moved to its side and studied it where it lay.

  It continued to stare at them, its dark eyes wide, as it lay there shivering.

  “It will die if we leave it here,” said Sanza.

  “ … And it will die if we take it inside,” said Jarry.

  It raised a forelimb toward them, let it fall again. Its eyes narrowed, then closed.

  Jarry reached out and touched it with the toe of his boot. There was no response.

  “It’s dead,” he said.

  “What will we do?”

  “Leave it here. The sands will cover it.”

  They returned to the installation, and Jarry entered the event in the log.

  During their last month of duty, Sanza asked him, “Will everything die here but us? The green birds and the big eaters of flesh? The funny little trees and the hairy caterpillars?”

  “I hope not,” said Jarry. “I’ve been reading back through the biologists’ notes. I think life might adapt. Once it gets a start anywhere, it’ll do anything it can to keep going. It’s probably better for the creatures of this planet that we could afford only twenty Worldchangers. That way they have three millennia to grow more hair and learn to breathe our air and drink our water. With a hundred units we might have wiped them out and had to import coldworld creatures or breed them. This way, the ones who live here might be able to make it.”

  “It’s funny,” she said, “but the thought just occurred to me that we’re doing here what was done to us. They made us for Alyonal, and a nova took it away. These creatures came to life in this place, and we’re taking it away. We’re turning all of life on this planet into what we were on our former worlds—misfits.”

  “The difference, however, is that we are taking our time,” said Jarry, “and giving them a chance to get used to the new conditions.”

  “Still, I feel that all that—outside there”—she gestured toward the window—“is what this world is becoming: one big Deadland.”

  “Deadland was here before we came. We haven’t created any new deserts.”

  “All the animals are moving south. The trees are dying. When they get as far south as they can go and still the temperature drops, and the air continues to burn in their lungs—then it will be all over for them.”

  “By then they might have adapted. The trees are spreading, are developing thicker barks. Life will make it.”

  “I wonder … .”

  “Would you prefer to sleep until it’s all over?”

  “No; I want to be by your side, always.”

  “Then you must reconcile yourself to the fact that something is always hurt by any change. If you do this, you will not be hurt yourself.”

  Then they listened for the winds to rise.

  Three days later, in the still of sundown, between the winds of day and the winds of night, she called him to the window. He climbed to the third floor and moved to her side. Her breasts were rose in the sundown light and the places beneath them silver and dark. The fur of her shoulders and haunches was like an aura of smoke. Her face was expressionless and her wide, green eyes were not turned toward him.

  He looked out.

  The first big flakes were falling, blue, through the pink light. They drifted past the stone and gnarly Normform; some stuck to the thick quartz windowpane; they fell upon the desert and lay there like blossoms of cyanide; they swirled as more of them came down and were caught by the first faint puffs of the terrible winds. Dark clouds had mustered overhead and from them, now, great cables and nets of blue descended. Now the flakes flashed past the window like butterflies, and the outline of Deadland flickered on and off. The pink vanished and there was only blue, blue and darkening blue, as the first great sigh of evening came into their ears and the billows suddenly moved sidewise rather than downwards, becoming indigo as they raced by.

  “The machine is never silent,” Jarry wrote. “Sometimes I fancy I can hear voices in its constant humming, its occasional growling, its crackles of power. I am alone here at the Deadland station. Five centuries have passed since our arrival. I thought it better to let Sanza sleep out this tour of duty, lest the prospect be too bleak. (It is.) She will doubtless be angry. As I lay half-awake this morning, I thought I heard my parents’ voices in the next room. No words. Just the sounds of their voices as I used to hear them over my old intercom. They must be dead by now, despite all geriatrics. I wonder if they thought of me much after I left? I couldn’t even shake my father’s hand without my gauntlet, or kiss my mother goodbye. It is strange, the feeling, to be this alone, with only the throb of the machinery about me as it rearranges the molecules of the atmosphere, refrigerates the world, here in the middle of the blue place. Deadland. This, despite the fact that I grew up in a steel cave. I call the other nineteen stations every afternoon. I am afraid I am becoming something of a nuisance. I won’t call them tomorrow, or perhaps the next day.”

  “I went outside without my refrig-pack this morning, for a few moments. It is still deadly hot. I gulped a mouthful of air and choked. Our day is still far off. But I can notice the difference from the last time I tried it, two and a half hundred years ago. I wonder what it will be like when we have finished? —And I, an economist! What will my function be in our new Alyonal? Whatever, so long as Sanza is happy … .”

  “The Worldchanger stutters and groans. All the land is blue for so far as I can see. The stones still stand, but their shapes are changed from what they were. The sky is entirely pink now, and it becomes almost maroon in the morning and the evening. I guess it’s really a wine-color, but I’ve never seen wine, so I can’t say for certain. The trees have not died. They’ve grown hardier. Their barks are thicker, their leaves are darker and larger. They grow much taller now, I’ve been told. There are no trees in Deadland.

  “The caterpillars still live
. They seem much larger, I understand, but it is actually because they have become woollier than they used to be. It seems that most of the animals have heavier pelts these days. Some apparently have taken to hibernating. A strange thing: Station Seven reported that they had thought the bipeds were growing heavier coats. There seem to be quite a few of them in that area, and they often see them off in the distance. They looked to be shaggier. Closer observation, however, revealed that some of them were either carrying or were wrapped in the skins of dead animals! Could it be that they are more intelligent than we have given them credit for? This hardly seems possible, since they were tested quite thoroughly by the Bio Team before we set the machines in operation. Yet, it is very strange.”

  “The winds are still severe. Occasionally, they darken the sky with ash. There has been considerable vulcanism southwest of here. Station Four was relocated because of this. I hear Sanza singing now, within the sounds of the machine. I will let her be awakened the next time. Things should be more settled by then. No, that is not true. It is selfishness. I want her here beside me. I feel as if I were the only living thing in the whole world. The voices on the radio are ghosts. The clock ticks loudly and the silences between the ticks are filled with the humming of the machine, which is a kind of silence, too, because it is constant. Sometimes I think it is not there; I listen for it, I strain my ears, and I do not know whether there is a humming or not. I check the indicators then, and they assure me that the machine is functioning. Or perhaps there is something wrong with the indicators. But they seem to be all right. No. It is me. And the blue of Deadland is a kind of visual silence. In the morning even the rocks are covered with blue frost. Is it beautiful or ugly? There is no response within me. It is a part of the great silence, that’s all. Perhaps I shall become a mystic. Perhaps I shall develop occult powers or achieve something bright and liberating as I sit here at the center of the great silence. Perhaps I shall see visions. Already I hear voices. Are there ghosts in Deadland? No, there was never anything here to be ghosted. Except perhaps for the little biped. Why did it cross Deadland? I wonder. Why did it head for the center of destruction rather than away, as its fellows did? I shall never know. Unless perhaps I have a vision. I think it is time to suit up and take a walk. The polar icecaps are heavier. The glaciation has begun. Soon, soon things will be better. Soon the silence will end, I hope. I wonder, though, whether silence is not the true state of affairs in the universe, our little noises serving only to accentuate it, like a speck of black on a field of blue. Everything was once silence and will be so again—is now, perhaps. Will I ever hear real sounds, or only sounds out of the silence? Sanza is singing again. I wish I could wake her up now, to walk with me, out there. It is beginning to snow.”