The Winds of Altair

by Ben Bova

  Still, he turned away the committee from Stockholm when they visited him. Politely, he told them that he could not accept a Nobel if it was offered, because the neuro-electronic probe was as much a curse as a blessing. They tried to argue him out of his remorse, but once they realized it was genuine, they withdrew, telling each other that Carbo is still very young, and the Prize can be granted him ten, twenty, even thirty years later.

  It was only by chance that Carbo learned of the starflight missions. He had been seeking solace in the arms of beautiful women, and one night as he and his current amour lay side by side on his warm, enveloping waterbed, she said languidly:

  "I will have to say farewell to you tomorrow, Francesco."

  A pang of alarm tightened his chest. "Farewell? But why?"

  "Tomorrow I leave . . ."

  "Leave Rome? You?"

  He turned to look at her and saw, in the shadows, that she was smiling sadly. "I am leaving Earth. I am going out to a distant star. I will be gone for three years, at the very least. Perhaps I will never return."

  She expected him to be shocked, to try to argue her out of it, perhaps even to cry at their separation. Instead, he was silent. She had prepared herself for an angry scene or for the tenderest kind of parting. She was totally unprepared for silence. It infuriated her and she left the next day still seething with resentment.

  Carbo flew that same day to the World Capital, in Messina, and ploughed through seven layers of bureaucrats and secretaries before he found the man in charge of the star missions. He was an American, of course, and his assistant was a Russian woman of middle years who sat in a corner of the American's office, stolid as a cow, suspicious as a policeman.

  "So you're interested in helping to colonize the stars, are you?" the American asked jovially. He was a big man, with a loud voice and a wide smile.

  Carbo said in English, "I would like to learn more about your plans, yes."

  He knew that the American did not recognize his name, but the computer files had produced a complete background of Dr. Carbo, and the American kept glancing at his computer terminal's screen as he harangued his visitor.

  Carbo sat patiently through the whole lecture. The American behaved like a low-class real estate salesman trying to palm off some worthless acreage on a gullible foreigner.

  "But before we colonize the stars," he finished, "we must tame the planets for the colonists to come."

  "I see," Carbo said.

  "Now then," the American hunched forward and leaned both arms on his desk, "we have a very interesting videotape presentation that will show you the planets that are going to be targeted . . ."

  "That won't be necessary, thank you," Dr. Carbo said. "I think I understand the situation now. You have been most helpful. Thank you."

  The American shrugged. "Let me send the tape to your home anyway. Just in case you think of some questions after you leave."

  Carbo nodded.

  "Are you interested in joining one of the missions?" the Russian woman asked, in a midwestern American accent that exactly mimicked her boss.

  "Yes, I am," Carbo heard himself say.

  "Which one?"

  "The next one to leave."

  "No matter where it is going?"

  He shook his head. "It doesn't matter."

  The American's grin became dazzling. He touched a button on his computer keyboard, and a single sheet of paper slid noiselessly from its printer slot.

  "Sign here," he said, pushing the contract across his desk toward this slightly crazy visitor.

  On the plane back to Rome, Carbo told himself that it really did not matter where they sent him. The important thing was that colonizing the stars would help to solve the real problems of Earth, the problems that his neuro-electronic stimulator had only swept under the rug. The poor would at last get their chance for a new life, on a new world. And he would help them to succeed.

  He could not believe the medieval Catholicism of his Jesuit mentors. Or so he thought. But the moral imperatives were ingrained in him nevertheless. He finally felt as if there was something to live for, as the plane carried him back to dirty, teeming Rome.

  Now he leaned deep into his relaxer chair and it tilted far back for him, becoming almost a couch. He stared up through the window at the stars that hung like brilliant diamonds in the darkness beyond the ship. The room was softly lit, like the early twilight of a springtime evening back in Rome, An odor of fresh blossoms wafted on gentle currents of air. If he liked, Carbo could change the room's scent to jungle perfume or the tangy snap of the sea, merely by touching a button. Another of the luxuries that Foy and his Elders frowned upon.

  With another reluctant sigh he slid his right hand to the control keyboard set into the recliner's armrest. But not to change the room's scent or lighting.

  On the far side of the curving wall his desktop view-screen glowed to life and a green light winked on to signify that his computer terminal was waiting for his input.

  "Data for the record," he murmured, knowing that even a whisper would be picked up by the microphone built into his chair. "Put in the correct date and time, eh?"

  A glance at the screen showed him that the time and date had been entered, in glowing yellow letters.

  He hesitated before starting, then said, "Let me see all the physiological data on today's test subject."

  He sat up, and the chair moved with him so that its soft fabric never left his back. The computer screen showed a complex graph with intricate curves of various colors to indicate Jeff Holman's heart rate, brain rhythms, breathing, and other vital functions.

  "Bene. Next."

  The screen's picture flicked to show another graph, more curves.

  Dr. Carbo studied the information for a long while, going through graph after graph. Then he watched a replay of the tapes that showed what the wolfcat saw when Jeff was in contact with it.

  He cleared his throat as the tape ended and the screen went blank.

  "Okay, for the record." His voice became louder, firmer, as if he were talking to an auditorium full of students. He had spoken nothing but English for nearly six months now, and even though the computer could automatically translate from Italian, it was English he spoke now.

  "Since all our tests with members of the staff resulted in failure, we decided to investigate the use of one or more of the students to make contact with the animals on the surface.

  "This decision was not made lightly. Deep hypnotic interrogation of the staff members who failed to establish neuro-electronic contact with the animals revealed that their minds withdrew instinctively from the 'mind-sharing' effect that such contact entails. Psychological analysis indicates that a fully-formed adult personality is too rigid to accept the mindsharing. Adults will not—and probably cannot—allow their personas to mingle with that of an alien animal."

  Carbo examined his words as they were printed on the computer viewscreen. He made a couple of minor editorial changes, then continued:

  "The psychology committee, after lengthy discussion . . ." he grinned, remembering the furious arguments among them, " . . . accepted my suggestion of testing one or more of the students as a contactor. My reasoning was that if an adult personality fails to establish neuro-electronic contact, then perhaps a younger, more malleable personality would be better suited to the task. We have more than four hundred such personalities aboard this ship: the students."

  Carbo stopped and peered at the words for several long minutes. That sounds pretty damned supercilious, he said to himself. On the other hand, it is perfectly true. With a barely detectable shrug of his shoulders, he resumed:

  "The first two test subjects, one male and one female—computer, fill in their names and ages—were both failures. The reasons are still being studied by the psychologists. The third test subject . . ." he hesitated, then remembered, ". . . Jeffrey Holman, age 23, was an unqualified success."

  Carbo paused again. He thought, Now we can start pushing the young man and see h
ow much he can do for us. See the big genius scientist lean on the lowly graduate student.

  The robot probes had reported that Altair VI was sufficiently Earthlike for colonization. It was slightly smaller than Earth, and had a slightly lower gravitational pull. Its chemical composition was very Earthlike and there was liquid water on its surface in copious amounts. It was covered with a global, perpetual deck of thick cloud, but that helped to shield the land below from the merciless glare of Altair, a star ten times brighter than the Sun.

  What Carbo and his fellow scientists found when they reached Altair VI was a planet whose "Earthlike" air was laced with a lethal level of methane, a world covered by acid clouds that blanketed the land and seas in eternal inky blackness despite the fact that the ground was slightly fluorescent. And the abundant water was frothing with ammonia and other chemicals that made it useless for humans.

  Captain Gunnerson laughed bitterly when he realized what the ship's instruments were telling them. "Smog in the air and poison in the water. This planet is naturally polluted. It doesn't need us to foul it up!" Then he bid them good-bye, with a bitterly cheerful prediction: "You'll never tame this planet, no matter how hard you try."

  The staff directors and Church Elders met in Bishop Foy's conference room, a narrow, austere chamber bare of decorations.

  With all the enthusiasm of a mortician, Foy told them grimly, "We are here. The Church has spent an enormous sum of money to send us here. Even more money and effort is being spent to send shiploads of converts here to colonize this planet. It would be sinful to waste all that money by giving up on Altair VI without even trying to prepare it for colonization."

  They all gloomily, reluctantly agreed.

  "Very well, then," Bishop Foy said firmly. "Let us begin our task with a prayer."

  Martin Foy was the fourth son in a family of eight children, all but the last two being boys. He had grown up on a ranch in the dry scrubland of eastern New Mexico, where it took an acre of semidesert to support a single cow. Despite the laser-drilled deep wells and fusion-powered desalted water pumped all the way from the Gulf of California, Martin watched his father grow poorer and more desperate each year as the price of beef sank in the face of genetically-engineered meat substitutes. Finally, the same day that Martin received his First Communion, the corporation that owned the ranch sent his father written confirmation of his worst fears: the ranch was being converted into a housing development for lower-class city folks who were being resettled by the government.

  Martin had always been a good Church member; his parents insisted that all their children be Believers. When he found that he would not be allowed to attend college because his father could not afford it, he enrolled in the nearest Church seminary. While his brothers and two sisters accepted whatever jobs they could find, while his mother wasted away and finally died of cancer and his father withdrew into a private world within his own mind and had to be shipped off to a state hospital, Martin lived the austere but secure life of a novice, then curate, and finally the pastor of a small mission in Bangladesh.

  It was there in his sweaty, fetid cubbyhole of an office, behind a ramshackle building that passed for a mission church, that he read about the colonization of the stars. The star missions were enormously expensive, but his Church was going to fund one of the first ones, to a world called Altair VI, and the Church was looking for qualified ministers to lead the way.

  Wise in the ways of the world, the Church offered an inducement to volunteers: they would own the new world they helped to redeem. Right and title to the land would be given to those who volunteered to prepare the way for colonists.

  The temptation overpowered Foy. He left his pitiful mission in Bangladesh with unseemly haste, qualified for leadership of the expedition to Altair VI by sheer tenacity and force of will, and accepted a promotion to Bishop, effective the day the starship left Earth orbit.

  So he led the prayer that began the immense task of redeeming Altair VI. Bishop Foy knew well that if the planet was not ready for colonization in three years, he would be replaced. He would lose his share of the wealth that this colony would someday generate. His career would be finished.

  The other staff members had no desire to lose their share of the colony's eventual wealth. With the exception of Dr. Carbo, each scientist, social technician, and minister had little on Earth to return to. Yet, strangely, it was Carbo more than any of the others who led the work to tame Altair VI.

  They had a huge task facing them, and they knew it. They had to alter an entire planet, almost the size of Earth, enough to make it livable for millions of colonists. If they succeeded, they would become rich. If they failed, they would return to Earth empty-handed, three years older, with nothing to show for their efforts except defeat.

  Change the air. Purify the water. Alter the climate. Turn hell into Eden.

  They tried.

  But they soon found that humans could not work down on the planet's surface. Even in their sturdiest pressure suits, it was too dark and dangerous to remain there for more than a few hours at a time. Robot machinery, controlled from orbit, fared little better. The corrosive air and stubborn plant life knocked the machines out of commission too quickly for them to do any good.

  Then Carbo got his chance for personal salvation. There were huge, powerful animals on the planet. Use them. Implant neuro-electronic probes in. their brains and control them from the ship. The staff agreed, and excitement ran high. Landing crews of pressure-suited men stunned several animals and implanted the probes in their skulls. Two of the men were seriously injured. All of the animals, with the exception of one wolfcat, died within a few days of the implantations.

  Then it turned out that no one on the staff could establish contact with the implanted beast. Carbo's heart sank, and the entire staff turned funereal. Reluctantly, Carbo suggested testing the students. The staff argued against it, but in the end it was either the students or total failure.

  Two months almost to the day after they first established orbit around Altair VI, Jeffrey Holman scored their first success by making solid contact with the wolfcat.

  CHAPTER 4

  The tubes that connected one globe of the Village with another were thickly green with foliage. It was like walking through a miniature forest. The floor was grass, soft underfoot and fragrant. The curving tube walls were lined with shrubs and stunted trees, many of them bearing edible fruit. In addition to providing a share of the Village's food and a large part of its oxygen, the greenpaths provided something even more important to the people who lived inside this artificial world: beauty.

  The greenery also helped to camouflage one of the disconcerting things about the Village. The globes were clustered together tinker-toy fashion, with no particular respect to direction, either front-to-back or up-and-down. Since gravity inside the Village was artificially generated and controlled, it always felt as if you were walking along a straight and level path under normal Earth gravity. But the tubes actually made strange turns and bends, like the tracks of a roller coaster, plunging sickeningly downward at one point, arrowing up at an impossible angle somewhere else. Even though you could not feel it as you walked along, your visual sense would send up wild alarm signals when it saw your path suddenly veer sharply to the left and drop out of sight. The shrubs and greenery kept you from seeing ahead far enough to frighten your inner mind.

  Jeff and Laura were strolling slowly through one of the greenpaths along a trail that wound past a lush garden of flowering shrubs and oriental trees. Neither of them realized that the sounds of an Earthly forest were missing: there were no birds singing, no insects, no water splashing. Only the faint pervasive background hum of the ship's electrical power systems which provided the heat and light necessary for life.

  Taking her arm, Jeff led Laura off the trail, pushing through the shrubbery toward the all-but-hidden curving metal wall of the tube. Finally they found what they were seeking, a viewport that looked down on the planet below them.
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  "It looks so bright," Laura said.

  Jeff nodded wordlessly. The planet hung outside, seemingly motionless, enormously massive and brilliant in the harsh light of Altair. Its surface was a featureless disk of white clouds, as smooth and unbroken as a seamless veil. It shone beautifully against the darkness of space.

  "That's going to be our home," Laura said.

  "When we get it tamed."

  She looked up at him. "When you get it tamed."

  "It's not . . ." He stopped, feeling flustered and flattered at the same time.

  Laura smiled at him, as if she knew something that he didn't. Jeff wanted to hold her, to pull her close and lie down with her and forget about those who watched. But he could see, peeking at them from between the gnarled branches of a dwarf tree, the unblinking red eye of a security camera.

  Trying to control the urges burning within him, Jeff said, "It's funny, you know. Like, it's not really me anymore. When I was with that wolfcat . . . it's . . . I can run as fast as a rocket . . . I'm strong . . ."

  Laura stepped close and rested her head against his shoulder. He put his arm around her and stroked her flame-red hair.

  "You've always been strong, Jeff."

  "Not like that!"

  "I don't mean muscles," she said, almost in a whisper. "Any gorilla like Petrocelli can have muscles. I mean you're strong where it's important—when you set out to do something, it gets done."

  "Yeah . . . well, maybe."

  "No maybes. You're the only one who's made this crazy thing work, aren't you? I knew that if anybody could make contact with those animals down there, you could. The scientists couldn't, could they? But you did."

  "I'm just lucky."

  "No you're not. You're not afraid of it. You like it. You enjoyed being in contact with that animal, didn't you?"