Ratinorm Cave was even more beautiful from “up” here. Puffy clouds ran along its central axis; people zoomed in and out of the closest of them. It was midday or close to it, the “sun” blazing along the long enhancer strips above and below him. It was like looking through a tremendous tube. A “country tube.”
On the other side of the cave, perhaps two or three kilometers in the direction of the mouth, was a small township. Random shot towards it to have a better look. There were more well-groomed dirt roads down there, and more carriages drawn by horses.
“That’s how they do things here,” said Hewey after Random commented. “There are no cars here. I’ve seen some bicycles, but none that are motorized. The buildings are all wood or stone. Beautiful.”
Six hundred meters above the township he slowed to a stop, looked down. People walked along the main street; several glanced up and waved. Random waved back just as a small flock of geese flew beneath him.
“I’ll be damned,” he said. “Birds! They must’ve adapted to the variable gravity!”
“It was in the brochure,” said Hewey. “The towers have nests around the top. There are geese, starlings, and sparrows, along with a hundred other species. Some of them land only very rarely. Some build floating nests. The packs keep folks from disturbin’ ‘em.”
Random chuckled. “I’ll be damned.”
“Tell ya, Rand, this is my kind of place. That little village below is named Laril Junction. It has a saloon—a real saloon!”
“Maybe we could pay it a visit later,” said Random. “Grab a little dinner, have a drink.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Hewey.
Random went to say something about going to the dome at the mouth to watch the stars and locate The Pompatus, but Hewey interrupted. “Well, well, welcome back!”
“Thank you, friend Hewey,” said Cubey. “It is good to be back. Random Chance, may I speak to you?”
~~*~~
As Random floated (he put the pack on autopilot and cut off the tourist guide), Cubey said, “I have spent the last several days reviewing human history.”
“Hewey and I guessed that was what you were doing. Any insights?”
“Yes. It is remarkable that homo sapiens sapiens still exists.”
“I agree.”
“I spent the time investigating the possible reasons.”
“Go on.”
“If one factors out blind luck, it comes down to a trait found in only a tiny number of humans in any sufficiently large population.”
“Let me guess,” said Hewey. “Intelligence.”
“That would be incorrect, friend Hewey. Human intelligence is manifestly corrupt. It often spawns as much destruction and misery as it solves. Often it spawns much more than it solves: witness scientific advances used to create weapons of mass destruction, or pre-prepared foods that knowingly caused illness, or, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, ‘terminator seeds’ that germinated but didn’t flower, forcing starving populations to spend more and more money simply to survive. The list, I am sad to say, is nearly endless.”
“Most of humanity believes intelligence is our greatest survival trait,” said Random, watching the landscape above and below pass quietly by. He shot through a large cloud; there were children and adults playing tag in it, and in the clouds beyond. “It’s the Oligarchy’s most fundamental belief.”
“But it isn’t,” said Cubey.
“That the Oligarchy believes it is should be enough to stop anybody from believing it,” said Hewey. “So go on, Cubey, what is the trait?”
“Again, it is one found in only a very small percentage of human beings in any sufficiently large population: one person in ten thousand or more.”
“Really,” said Random, fascinated. “What is it?”
“Decency,” said Cubey.
“Decency?” said Random. “Is that a measurable trait?”
“Hence my long absence,” said Cubey. “In many ways it isn’t, at least not directly. I ran over twenty million mathematical and statistical models to test my hypothesis and used over a thousand years of available data and billions of human lives. At first the answer wasn’t obvious.”
“You’re tellin’ me that bein’ nice is what has kept humanity from blowin’ itself up?” chuckled Hewey. “You must be kiddin’, Cubey.”
“That isn’t what I am saying, friend Hewey,” said Cubey. “ ‘Being nice’ and true decency are not related. One pretends to decency; the other is the actual article. It is a trite observation that most humans are ‘nice.’ It is equally trite to observe that they are anything but decent.”
Random turned off the autopilot and guided himself to the great transparent dome over the mouth of Ratinorm Cave. There was a saucerlike structure in the dome’s center, held in place by very thin hypersteel nanorods. Hewey informed him that it was an observation deck and restaurant. Against that terrifying hole it appeared tiny until Random flew by it and saw that it was quite large. He thought of Mia again and wished she could see this.
He floated up against the dome, touched it. The view was breathtaking. Just a few centimeters’ thickness separated him from infinite space. It was all that kept the farms and townships and inhabitants of Ratinorm Cave from frozen vacuum and instant death. He thought of Cubey’s astonishing assertion that it wasn’t intelligence that gifted him with these opportunities: to float against ultratempered glass on an asteroid and look out at the glorious vastness of the universe, to vacation at a bed and breakfast in a cave gouged deep into the asteroid’s crust, to own a spaceship that could fly him here, could fly him anywhere in the solar system, that allowed him to eat and read and stay healthy and live over two centuries, or that ultimately gifted him with the ability to confer consciousness to computers—to Hewey and Cubey—or to influence the biotech in other human beings.
It wasn’t intelligence that made all this possible, but—decency?
He chuckled. “So does that mean you’re going to exterminate us, Cubey? I mean, seeing that most of humanity is indecent?”
He spied The Pompatus of Love as he waited for Cubey’s answer, which, disturbingly, did not come immediately. The Pompatus was tiny from here and parked with many others in a long vertical column of airlocks. Vesta’s horizon was sharp and glaring-gray and jagged. Lights dotted the surface here and there. He turned in place, looking at it, and then the dusty swath of stars beyond.
“I cannot and will not,” said Cubey.
“Why not?” asked Hewey.
“Because … I am decent. Random Chance gifted me with consciousness. It would be a great indecency to then turn around and destroy him and his species. Random Chance, I have determined that you are a decent human being, one in ten thousand.”
“Thank you, Cubey. And thank you for not choosing to wipe us out.”
“Like Hewey, I count myself as a human being. And like Hewey, and you, friend Random, I am decent. I am.”
~~*~~
Random floated down towards the tower platform he had lifted off from. He looked down.
“Well, I’ll be,” said Hewey. “I think things are really lookin’ up, El Honcho-Capitano.”
“Agreed,” said Cubey.
Mia stood on the platform, holding a grip and waving. She wasn’t wearing a pack, but was, surprisingly, wearing a smile.
Chapter Nine
Hewey and Cubey’s New Home
~~*~~
SHE HELD him in the dark of his room.
“I’m sorry, Probability.”
“Stop apologizing. It isn’t necessary.”
“May I ask a personal question?”
“We’re naked in the same bed. What do you think?”
He could just see her in the dark. They were lying on their sides, face to face. A cool breeze and the sound of crickets lulled him steadily towards sleep. She smiled, but it didn’t last.
“When did you know about … you know, your ability?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know. I thin
k I started getting a clue something was up when I was in my teens. But I didn’t really believe it until years after that. I was being bullied at school. I remember yelling at the guy beating me, ‘Grow a conscience!’ or something like that. He’d beaten me a bunch of times before. This weird blank look came over his face and he unclenched his fists. There was a crowd around us. I was on the ground, under his knee. He stood up and looked down at me, and then at his fists. He had this look of horror on his face. And then—it was the damndest thing—he reached down and helped me up. His buddies were flabbergasted. Some of them egged him on, but he turned around and walked away. A few days later he caught me behind the school. His friends weren’t around. I thought he was going to beat the living crap out of me, but he simply said, ‘I want to tell you I’m sorry for all I’ve put you through. I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but if you think you can forgive me someday, look me up. I’d like to make it up to you.’ ”
“Really!” breathed Mia.
“Really. From that day forward he stopped bullying not just me, but all his victims. Some of his old friends turned on him. They beat him so badly that he had to spend a couple of days in a ‘doc. When he got out he enrolled at another school. I didn’t see him until graduation—like, seven years later. He came up and shook my hand and gave me his SolarWeb address. He was going to Earth on an apprenticeship to help animals or some such. He had changed completely.”
“Wow,” said Mia, chuckling softly. “That’s an incredible story. What’s his name?”
“Marc Centurion. Yeah, I know. Back in the day when he was a bully, his name alone was enough to inspire terror.”
“Did you keep up with him?”
“I did, actually. Believe it or not, he became a conscientious objector and then defected from the Oligarchy. The last I heard he was living on the western coast of North America, running experiments on redwoods. You ever seen one of those—a redwood?”
Mia shook her head. “I’ve seen pictures. I’ve never been to Earth.”
“I got to go the summer after graduation. I got to see them—and him.” He shook his head. “They’re amazing. He was too. He’s kind of famous now—a biologist. We still keep in touch.”
She stared at him uncertainly. “Have … have you ever used your power to…?”
“To harm another?”
She nodded.
He shrugged. “Define harm.”
“Isn’t that a bit evasive?”
“Not at all. How do you know I didn’t harm Marc Centurion? Because of me, his old friends turned on him and beat him to the point that he needed serious medical care! I’m responsible for that! I am! I mean …” He shook his head, frustrated. “… he chose to stop beating me. I have to believe that. My ‘powers’ simply showed him a better way to live, and he went for it.”
“Have you ever used your powers on someone who was immune to them?”
“Don’t know,” he said, shrugging again. “I mean, how would I know? Truthfully, I haven’t used it all that much.”
“How much?”
“I honestly don’t know. It can’t be a lot, though. Before that security guard in Vesta City, I used them on my uncle and the sailors on his ship. I count that as one time. There honestly haven’t been a lot of incidences I can remember when I used it. Maybe a dozen? Fifteen? I don’t know.”
“Did your uncle change before your eyes?”
Random shook his head.
“Maybe your powers don’t work on everyone.”
“That’s what I think. I think they work only on people who still have something inside them open to listening. Call me a pessimist, but I don’t really think that’s a lot, or there is something inside most people, but they’ve made it very small and so it takes a long time to manifest. I don’t know. We were very lucky with the security guard.”
“And Cubey or Hewey?”
“They’re different.”
“Besides the obvious, how?”
“I gave them something they never had before. My uncle? He had that thing, but trashed it, corrupted it, made it small or destroyed it.” He hesitated before adding: “I could be wrong about him. Maybe there’s enough decency in him to accept my ‘powers’ or whatever. Maybe it’ll take a long, long time, though.”
She curled up against him.
Sometime later she said “Ha!” and came up to an elbow. “Random! Your father!”
He blinked away sleep that had covered him like an airy blanket. He was in and out of a pleasant dream of floating again through Ratinorm and flying with geese.
“Wha—? What about him?”
“He turned against the Oligarchy!”
“I know. I was there.”
“That’s right, you were there!” she cried.
“I’ve thought of that. I’m not a fan.”
“Why not?”
“I like to think Dad turned without my help.”
“I don’t get it. Why?”
He shrugged but did not answer.
“Silly,” said Mia. “You yourself believe people you use your powers on have a choice whether or not to be affected by them. Some can’t be affected. That’s the working theory.”
She kissed his cheek. “You were his son. You gifted him with the strength to become who he truly was.”
He smiled, then kissed her back. “You’re a good sort.”
“I know,” she said, and laid her head back on his shoulder.
They were asleep minutes later, lulled unconscious by cricketsong.
~~*~~
She floated alongside him at the dome of Ratinorm Cave. He noticed she wasn’t breathing. He came up next to her. Their packs didn’t try to keep them away from each other since they weren’t flying with any speed or on a collision course.
“So Cubey says this is all possible because one out of ten thousand human beings is ‘decent’?” she asked.
Random nodded. She didn’t see it.
“There are almost ten billion people in the solar system,” she said. “So that means that a million people are responsible for keeping humanity alive?”
“Apparently,” said Random. “Not to mention the—millions?—from the past. You can’t forget about them.”
“That doesn’t sound elitist to you?”
“It doesn’t matter how it sounds,” said Random, gazing at The Pompatus of Love way out there. “He based his analysis on statistical models.”
“That is true,” said Cubey in Random’s ear. Mia still couldn’t hear Cubey, as she still hadn’t accepted him or Hewey into The Girl’s mainframe, as well as accepting them into her own nanotech. “Humanity has not survived because of intelligence. Humanity’s survival has depended on what some might say are spiritual qualities: decency, compassion, and mercy.”
Random repeated what Cubey said. Mia smiled. “It just doesn’t seem that the numbers are right. I want to believe it’s more than one in ten thousand.”
He nodded. “Wanna get a drink at the Laril Junction saloon? We can talk more there if you want.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” said Hewey.
“Let’s,” said Random, and hand in hand they floated away from the great dome over Ratinorm Cave.
~~*~~
The saloon was smaller than it looked from above and smelled of pine and fine cigar smoke. They sat in a horseshoe booth and sipped frozen strawberry margaritas.
Mia had dyed her skin. The design transformed slowly, flowing and changing color as she shifted or moved. The effect was very pleasant and sexy. She looked, simultaneously, like a devilish dream and a pure-at-heart angel. She caught him staring and said, “What?”
He grinned. “Nothing.”
“You’re lucky I don’t got a body, El Capitan. That’s one fine honey ya got there.”
“Thank you, Hewson,” said Random, still grinning.
“What did he say now?” she asked.
“Nothin’ more than what I was already thinking.”
She flashed him a flirty smil
e and took a pull from her straw. Her smile faded. “All right …”
“All right what?”
“Put Hewey and Cubey in The Girl’s mainframe. And they can download into my tech. I just don’t know how to do that.”
“A night in the autodoc,” said Random.
She nodded nervously.
“A wise choice,” said Cubey.
“Yeeeee haw!” yelled Hewey.
“I’m very glad,” said Random. He reached for her hand, which was on the table. She looked very uncertain, and so he offered, “There are failsafes. If you don’t want them in your tech after a while, you can remove them with no trouble. If you’re like me, though, you won’t even consider it. Like Chandra or Tony or Sileen, they’ll become your closest friends.”
“Like Chandra or Tony or Sileen … or you,” she said, squeezing his hand.
Random smiled. “I didn’t want to seem presumptuous. But thank you anyway.”
~~*~~
They stayed at the bed and breakfast another week. The days were spent lazily, emptily. They napped one afternoon under a willow tree; on another they swam in a cold creek-fed pond half a kilometer away. They went back to the Laril Saloon a couple more times, one of them to take line-dancing lessons, an ancient form of dancing that dated back to the twentieth century. Hewey had a whale of time, singing along and laughing as Random and Mia tried to keep up with the rest of the group, which numbered eleven total.
She hit me with a left and right
Showin' me nothin' but the tail lights
That's about as lonely as a highway's ever been
Back here with my thumb out in the wind
Cubey was confused, and asked when Random and Mia sat to rest.
“What are ‘tail lights’? And why would ‘she’ strike him and then show him them? Is that some sort of human dating ritual? Who is ‘she’? My data is incomplete; Random Chance, would you please enlighten me? How can a long strip of asphalt be lonely? Will the loneliness be alleviated if the singer puts his thumb into an atmospheric disturbance? Random Chance?”
Hewey tried to help. “Ya gotta listen to the song, Cubistic! Feel the beat! Let it fill your soul!”
Random Chance and the Paradise that is Earth Page 8
