by Ben Bova
Years ago I had made a note about the curious incident of the forest fire that Henry David Thoreau started. You can read some of Thoreau’s account of what happened at the beginning of chapter 14 in “Burn,” but suffice it to say that after accidently setting the Walden woods ablaze—some estimates hold that more than three hundred acres were consumed—our First Naturalist repaired to the top of Fair Haven Hill to admire his own private conflagration. I thought folks ought to know about this. You see, as a student I was force-fed Walden and much of it disagreed with me. I will admit that never has the Luddite point of view been advanced quite so eloquently. And while I agree that simplicity can be a virtue and that cultivation of one’s inner resources is necessary for the good life, it seems clear to me that the habit of thought which Thoreau urges on us is antithetical to the enterprise of science fiction. Thoreau had little use for the technology of his own time, dismissing both the telegraph and the railroad. I can imagine his horror at the spread of our own asphalt and information superhighways. Hey, I’m all for spirituality, but not if it means I can’t check my e-mail.
I know more about the Thousand Worlds than I have told in “Burn.” I was surprised that once I got into the book, I had no trouble reaching twenty-five thousand words, then thirty thousand, then thirty-five thousand. As my deadline loomed, I had to make some strategic decisions about the shape of the book. I decided to leave out stuff, in order to keep a tight focus on my main character and his problems, some of which open out into the larger concerns of his world and the galactic culture, but some of which are as personal as who will pick the apples or play the outfield. I think this reflects the kind of life that I’m living. I’m concerned about global warming and the pointless war in Iraq, but the dishes still have to go into the dishwasher and the grass is growing. Maybe it’s time to strap on the headphones and load Walden into my MP3 player. I can listen to Thoreau lecture me about men leading lives of quiet desperation while I mow the lawn.
BURN
JAMES PATRICK KELLY
For H. D. T., a timeless visionary, and for my children, Maura, Jamie, and John
We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes. This was not the light in which I hoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?
—WALDEN
ONE
For the hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.
—WALDEN
Spur was in the nightmare again. It always began in the burn. The front of the burn took on a liquid quality and oozed like lava toward him. It licked at boulders and scorched the trees in the forest he had sworn to protect. There was nothing he could do to fight it; in the nightmare, he wasn’t wearing his splash pack. Or his fireproof field jacket. Fear pinned him against an oak until he could feel the skin on his face start to cook. Then he tore himself away and ran. But now the burn leapt after him, following like a fiery shadow. It chased him through a stand of pine; trees exploded like firecrackers. Sparks bit through his civvies and stung him. He could smell burning hair. His hair. In a panic he dodged into a stream choked with dead fish and poached frogs. But the water scalded his legs. He scrambled up the bank of the stream, weeping. He knew he shouldn’t be afraid; he was a veteran of the firefight. Still he felt as if something were squeezing him. A whimpering gosdog bolted across his path, its feathers singed, eyes wide. He could feel the burn dive under the forest and burrow ahead of him in every direction. The ground was hot beneath his feet and the dark humus smoked and stank. In the nightmare there was just one way out, but his brother-in-law Vic was blocking it. Only in the nightmare Vic was a pukpuk, one of the human torches who had started the burn. Vic had not yet set himself on fire, although his baseball jersey was smoking in the heat. He beckoned and for a moment Spur thought it might not be Vic after all as the anguished face shimmered in the heat of the burn. Vic wouldn’t betray them, would he? But by then Spur had to dance to keep his shoes from catching fire, and he had no escape, no choice, no time. The torch spread his arms wide and Spur stumbled into his embrace and with an angry whoosh they exploded together into flame. Spur felt his skin crackle….
“That’s enough for now.” A sharp voice cut through the nightmare. Spur gasped with relief when he realized that there was no burn. Not here anyway. He felt a cold hand brush against his forehead like a blessing and knew that he was in the hospital. He had just been in the sim that the upsiders were using to heal his soul.
“You’ve got to stop thrashing around like that,” said the docbot. “Unless you want me to nail the leads to your head.”
Spur opened his eyes but all he could see was mist and shimmer. He tried to answer the docbot but he could barely find his tongue in his own mouth. A brightness to his left gradually resolved into the sunny window of the hospital room. Spur could feel the firm and not unpleasant pressure of the restraints, which bound him to the bed: broad straps across his ankles, thighs, wrists and torso. The docbot peeled the leads off his temples and then lifted Spur’s head to get the one at the base of his skull.
“So do you remember your name?” it said.
Spur stretched his head against the pillow, trying to loosen the stiffness in his neck.
“I’m over here, son. This way.”
He turned and stared into a glowing blue eye, which strobed briefly.
“Pupil dilatation normal,” the docbot muttered, probably not to Spur. It paused for a moment and then spoke again. “So about that name?”
“Spur.”
The docbot stroked Spur’s palm with its med finger, collecting some of his sweat. It stuck the sample into its mouth. “That may be what your friends call you,” it said, “but what I’m asking is the name on your ID.”
The words chased each other across the ceiling for a moment before they sank in. Spur wouldn’t have had such a problem understanding if the docbot were a person, with lips and a real mouth instead of the oblong intake. The doctor controlling this bot was somewhere else. Dr. Niss was an upsider whom Spur had never actually met. “Prosper Gregory Leung,” he said.
“A fine Walden name,” said the docbot, and then muttered, “Self ID 27.4 seconds from initial request.”
“Is that good?”
It hummed to itself, ignoring his question. “The electrolytes in your sweat have settled down nicely,” it said at last. “So tell me about the sim.”
“I was in the burn and the fire was after me. All around, Dr. Niss. There was a pukpuk, one of the torches, he grabbed me. I couldn’t get away.”
“You remembered my name, son.” The docbot’s top plate glowed with an approving amber light. “So did you die?”
Spur shook his head. “But I was on fire.”
“Experience fear vectors unrelated to the burn? Monsters, for instance? Your mom? Dad?”
“No.”
“Lost loves? Dead friends? Childhood pets?”
“No.” He had a fleeting image of the twisted grimace on Vic’s face at that last moment, but how could he tell this upsider that his wife’s brother had been a traitor to the Transcendent State? “Nothing.” Spur was getting used to lying to Dr. Niss, although he worried what it was doing to his soul.
“Check and double check. It’s almost as if I knew what I was doing, eh?” The docbot began releasing the straps that held Spur down. “I’d say your soul is on the mend, Citizen Leung. You’ll have some psychic scarring, but if you steer clear of complex moral dilemmas and women, you should be fine.” It paused, then snapped its fingers. “Just for the record, son, that was a joke.”
“Yes, sir.” Spur forced a smile. “Sorry, sir.” Was getting the jokes part of
the cure? The way this upsider talked at once baffled and fascinated Spur.
“So let’s have a look at those burns,” said the docbot.
Spur rolled onto his stomach and folded his arms under his chin. The docbot pulled the hospital gown up. Spur could feel its medfinger pricking the dermal grafts that covered most of his back and his buttocks. “Dr. Niss?” said Spur.
“Speak up,” said the docbot. “That doesn’t hurt, does it?”
“No, sir.” Spur lifted his head and tried to look back over his shoulder. “But it’s really itchy.”
“Dermal regeneration eighty-three percent,” it muttered. “Itchy is alive, son. Itchy is growing.”
“Sir, I was just wondering, where are you exactly?”
“Right here.” The docbot began to flow warm dermslix to the grafts from its medfinger. “Where else would I be?”
Spur chuckled, hoping that was a joke. He could remember a time when he used to tell jokes. “No, I mean your body.”
“The shell? Why?” The docbot paused. “You don’t really want to be asking about qics and the cognisphere, do you? The less you know about the upside, the better, son.”
Spur felt a prickle of resentment. What stories were upsiders telling each other about Walden? That the citizens of the Transcendent State were backward fanatics who had simplified themselves into savagery? “I wasn’t asking about the upside, exactly. I was asking about you. I mean…you saved me, Dr. Niss.” It wasn’t at all what Spur had expected to say, although it was certainly true. “If it wasn’t for you, it…I was burned all over, probably going crazy. And I thought…” His throat was suddenly so tight that he could hardly speak. “I wanted to…you know, thank you.”
“Quite unnecessary,” said the docbot. “After all, the Chairman is paying me to take care of all of you, bless his pockets.” It tugged at Spur’s hospital gown with its gripper arm. “I prefer the kind of thanks I can bank, son. Everything else is just used air.”
“Yes, but…”
“Yes, but?” It finished pulling the gown back into place. “‘Yes, but’ are dangerous words. Don’t forget that you people lead a privileged life here—courtesy of Jack Winter’s bounty and your parents’ luck.”
Spur had never heard anyone call the Chairman Jack. “It was my grandparents who won the lottery, sir,” he said. “But yes, I know I’m lucky to live on Walden.”
“So why do you want to know what kind of creature would puree his mind into a smear of quantum foam and entangle it with a bot brain a hundred and thirty–some light-years away? Sit up, son.”
Spur didn’t know what to say. He had imagined that Dr. Niss must be posted nearby, somewhere here at the upsiders’ compound at Concord, or perhaps in orbit.
“You do realize that the stars are very far away?”
“We’re not simple here, Dr. Niss.” He could feel the blood rushing in his cheeks. “We practice simplicity.”
“Which complicates things.” The docbot twisted off its medfinger and popped it into the sterilizer. “Say you greet your girlfriend on the tell. You have a girlfriend?”
“I’m married,” said Spur, although he and Comfort had separated months before he left for the firefight and, now that Vic was dead, he couldn’t imagine how they would ever get back together.
“So you’re away with your squad and your wife is home in your village mowing the goats or whatever she does with her time. But when you talk on the tell it’s like you’re sitting next to each other. Where are you then? At home with her? Inside the tell?”
“Of course not.”
“For you, of course not. That’s why you live on Walden, protected from life on the upside. But where I come from, it’s a matter of perspective. I believe I’m right here, even though the shell I’m saved in is elsewhere.” The sterilizer twittered. “I’m inhabiting this bot in this room with you.” The docbot opened the lid of the sterilizer, retrieved the medfinger with its gripper and pressed it into place on the bulkhead with the other instruments. “We’re done here,” it said abruptly. “Busy, busy, other souls to heal, don’t you know? Which reminds me: We need your bed, son, so we’re moving your release date up. You’ll be leaving us the day after tomorrow. I’m authorizing a week of rehabilitation before you have to go back to your squad. What’s rehab called on this world again?”
“Civic refreshment.”
“Right.” The docbot parked itself at its station beside the door to the examining room. “Refresh yourself.” Its headplate dimmed and went dark.
Spur slid off the examination table, wriggled out of the hospital gown and pulled his uniform pants off the hanger in the closet. As he was buttoning his shirt, the docbot lit its eye. “You’re welcome, son.” Its laugh was like a door slamming. “Took me a moment to understand what you were trying to say. I keep forgetting what it’s like to be anchored.”
“Anchored?” said Spur.
“Don’t be asking so many questions.” The docbot tapped its dome. “Not good for the soul.” The blue light in its eye winked out.
TWO
Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
—WALDEN
Spur was in no hurry to be discharged from the hospital, even if it was to go home for a week. He knew all too well what was waiting for him. He’d find his father trying to do the work of two men in his absence. Gandy Joy would bring him communion and then drag him into every parlor in Littleton. He’d be wined and dined and honored and possibly seduced and be acclaimed by all a hero. He didn’t feel like a hero and he surely didn’t want to be trapped into telling the grandmas and ten-year-old boys stories about the horrors of the firefight.
But what he dreaded most was seeing his estranged wife. It was bad enough that he had let her little brother die after she had made Spur promise to take care of him. Worse yet was that Vic had died a torch. No doubt he had been in secret contact with the pukpuks, had probably passed along information about the Corps of Firefighters—and Spur hadn’t suspected a thing. It didn’t matter that Vic had pushed him away during their time serving together in Gold Squad—at one time they had been best friends. He should have known; he might have been able to save Vic. Spur had already decided that he would have to lie to Comfort and his neighbors in Littleton about what had happened, just as he had lied to Dr. Niss. What was the point in smearing his dead friend now? And Spur couldn’t help the Cooperative root out other pukpuk sympathizers in the Corps; he had no idea who Vic’s contacts had been.
However, Spur had other reasons for wanting to stay right where he was. Even though he could scarcely draw breath without violating simplicity, he loved the comforts of the hospital. For example, the temperature never varied from a scandalous twenty-three degrees Celsius. No matter that outdoors the sun was blistering the rooftops of the upsiders’ Benevolence Park Number 5, indoors was a paradise where neither sweat nor sweaters held sway. And then there was the food. Even though Spur’s father, Capability Roger Leung, was the richest man in Littleton, he had practiced stricter simplicity than most. Spur had grown up on meat, bread, squash and scruff, washed down with cider and applejack pressed from the Leungs’ own apples and the occasional root beer. More recently, he and Rosie would indulge themselves when they had the money, but he was still used to gorging on the fruits of the family orchard during harvest and suffering through preserves and root cellar produce the rest of the year. But here the patients enjoyed the abundance of the Thousand Worlds, prepared in extravagant style. Depending on his appetite, he could order lablabis, dumplings, goulash, salmagundi, soufflés, quiche, phillaje, curry, paella, pasta, mousses, meringues or tarts. And that was just the lunch menu.
But of all the hospital’s guilty pleasures, the tell was his favorite. At home Spur could access the latest bazzat bands and town-tunes from all over Walden plus six hundred years of opera. And on a slow Tuesday night, he and Comfort might play one of the simp
lified chronicles on the tiny screen in Diligence Cottage or watch a spiritual produced by the Institute of Didactic Arts or just read to each other. But the screens of the hospital tells sprawled across entire walls and, despite the Cooperative’s censors, opened like windows onto the universe. What mattered to people on other worlds astonished Spur. Their chronicles made him feel ignorant for the first time in his life and their spirituals were so wickedly materialistic that he felt compelled to close the door to his hospital room when he watched them.
The search engine in particular excited Spur. At home, he could greet anyone in the Transcendent State—as long as he knew their number. But the hospital tell could seemingly find anyone, not only on Walden but anywhere on all the Thousand Worlds of the upside. He put the tell in his room to immediate use, beginning by greeting his father and Gandy Joy, who was the village virtuator. Gandy had always understood him so much better than Comfort ever had. He should have greeted Comfort as well, but he didn’t.
He did greet his pals in the Gold Squad, who were surprised that he had been able to track them down while they were on active duty. They told him that the entire Ninth Regiment had been pulled back from the Motu River burn for two weeks of CR in Prospect. Word was that they were being reassigned to the Cloyce Memorial Forest for some easy fire watch duty. No doubt the Cooperative was yanking the regiment off the front line because Gold Squad had taken almost 40 percent casualties when the burn had flanked their position at Motu. Iron and Bronze Squads had taken a hit as well, fighting their way through the burn to rescue Gold.
To keep from brooding about Vic and the Motu burn and the firefight, Spur looked up friends who had fallen out of his life. He surprised his cousin Land, who was living in Slide Knot in Southeast and working as a tithe assessor. He connected with his childhood friend Handy, whom he hadn’t seen since the Alcazars had moved to Freeport, where Handy’s mom was going to teach pastoral philosophy. She was still at the university and Handy was an electrician. He tracked down his self-reliance school sweetheart, Leaf Benkleman, only to discover that she had emigrated from Walden to Kolo in the Alumar system. Their attempt to catch up was frustrating, however, because the Cooperative’s censors seemed to buzz every fifth word Leaf said. Also, the look on her face whenever he spoke rattled Spur. Was it pity? He was actually relieved when she cut their conversation short.
