The Best of Bova: Volume 1

by Ben Bova

  He looked past their admiring gazes, to the display screen and the pinpoints of stars staring steadily back at him. An emission nebula gleamed off in one corner of the view. He felt a thrill that he hadn’t experienced in many, many years. It’s beautiful, Ignatiev thought. The universe is so unbelievably, so heart-brimmingly beautiful: mysterious, challenging, endlessly full of wonders.

  There’s so much to learn, he thought. So much to explore. He smiled at the youngsters crowding around him. I have some good years left. I’ll spend them well.

  PRIORITIES

  After spending nearly a dozen years trying to convince skeptical government and business bureaucrats that funding research is necessary, valuable and esthetically pleasing, this little story just bubbled up to the surface and practically wrote itself—during a particularly nasty budgetary cutback, of course.

  * * *

  Dr. Ira Lefko sat rigidly nervous on the edge of the plastic-cushioned chair. He was a slight man, thin, bald, almost timid-looking. Even his voice was gentle and reedy, like the fine, thin tone of an English horn.

  And just as the English horn is a sadly misnamed woodwind, Dr. Ira Lefko was actually neither timid nor particularly gentle. At this precise moment he was close to mayhem.

  “Ten years of work,” he was saying, with a barely controlled tremor in his voice. “You’re going to wipe out ten years of work with a shake of your head.”

  The man shaking his head was sitting behind the metal desk that Lefko sat in front of. His name was Harrison Bower. His title and name were prominently displayed on a handsome plate atop the desk. Harrison Bower kept a very neat desktop. All the papers were primly stacked and the in and out baskets were empty.

  “Can’t be helped,” said Harrison Bower, with a tight smile that was supposed to be sympathetic and understanding. “Everyone’s got to tighten the belt. Reordering priorities, you know. There are many research programs going by the boards. New times, new problems, new priorities. You’re not the only one to be affected.”

  With his somber face and dark suit Bower looked like a funeral director—which he was. In the vast apparatus of Government, his job was to bury research projects that had run out of money. It was just about the only thing on Earth that made him smile.

  The third man in the poorly ventilated little Washington office was Major Robert Shawn, from the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories. In uniform, Major Shawn looked an awful lot like Hollywood’s idea of a jet pilot. In the casual slacks and sportcoat he was wearing now, he somehow gave the vague impression of being an engineer, or perhaps even a far-eyed scientist.

  He was something of all three.

  Dr. Lefko was getting red in the face. “But you can’t cancel the program now! We’ve tentatively identified six stars within twenty parsecs of us that have . . .”

  “Yes. I know, it’s all in the reports,” Bower interrupted, “and you’ve told me about it several times this afternoon. It’s interesting, but it’s hardly practical, now is it?”

  “Practical? Finding evidence of high technology on other planets, not practical?”

  Bower raised his eyes toward the cracked ceiling, as if in supplication to the Chief Bureaucrat. “Really, Dr. Lefko. I’ve admitted that it’s interesting. But it’s not within our restructured priority rating. You’re not going to help ease pollution or solve population problems, now are you?”

  Lefko’s only answer was a half-strangled growl.

  Bower turned to Major Shawn. “Really, Major, I would have thought that you could make Dr. Lefko understand the realities of the funding situation.”

  Shaking his head, the major answered, “I agree with Dr. Lefko completely. I think his work is the most important piece of research going on in the world today.”

  “Honestly!” Bower seemed shocked. “Major, you know that the Department of Defense can’t fund research that’s not directly related to a military mission.”

  “But the Air Force owns all the big microwave equipment!” Lefko shouted. “You can’t get time on the university facilities, and they’re too small anyway!”

  Bower waggled a finger at him. “Dr. Lefko, you can’t have DOD funds. Even if there were funds for your research available, it’s not pertinent work. You must apply for research support from another branch of the government.”

  “I’ve tried that every year! None of the other agencies have any money for new programs. Damnit, you’ve signed the letters rejecting my applications!”

  “Regrettable,” Bower said stiffly. “Perhaps in a few years, when the foreign situation settles down and the pollution problems are solved.”

  Lefko was clenching his fists when Major Shawn put a hand on his frail-looking shoulder. “It’s no use, Ira. We’ve lost. Come on, I’ll buy you a drink.”

  Out in the shabby corridor that led to the underground garage, Lefko started to tremble in earnest.

  “A chance to find other intelligent races in the heavens. Gone. Wiped out. The richest nation in the world. Oh, my God . . .”

  The major took him by the arm and towed him to their rented car. In fifteen minutes they were inside the cool shadows of the airport bar.

  “They’ve reordered the priorities,” the major said as he stared into his glass. “For five hundred years and more, Western civilization has made the pursuit of knowledge a respectable goal in its own right. Now it’s got to be practical.”

  Dr. Lefko was already halfway through his second rye and soda. “Nobody asked Galileo to be practical,” he muttered. “Or Newton. Or Einstein.”

  “Yeah, people did. They’ve always wanted immediate results and practical benefits. But the system was spongy enough to let guys like Newton and Planck and even little fish we never hear about—let ’em tinker around on their own, follow their noses, see what they could find.”

  “‘Madam, of what use is a newborn baby?’” Lefko quoted thickly.

  “What?”

  “Faraday.”

  “Oh.”

  “Six of them.” Lefko whispered. “Six point sources of intense microwave radiation. Close enough to separate from their parent stars. Six little planets, orbiting around their stars, with high-technology microwave equipment on them.”

  “Maybe the Astronomical Union will help you get more funding.”

  Lefko shook his head. “You saw the reception my paper got. They think we’re crazy. Not enough evidence. And worse still. I’m associated with the evil Air Force. I’m a pariah. And I don’t have enough evidence to convince them. It takes more evidence when you’re a pariah.”

  “I’m convinced,” Major Shawn said.

  “Thank you, my boy. But you are an Air Force officer, a mindless napalmer of oriental babies, by definition. Your degrees in astronomy and electronics notwithstanding.”

  Shawn sighed heavily. “Yeah.”

  Looking up from the bar, past the clacking color TV, toward the heavily draped windows across the darkened room, Lefko said, “I know they’re there. Civilizations like ours. With radios and televisions and radars, turning their planets into microwave beacons. Just as we must be an anomalously bright microwave object to them. Maybe . . . maybe they’ll find us! Maybe they’ll contact us!”

  The major started to smile.

  “If only it happens in our lifetime, Bob. If only they find us! Find us . . . and blow us to Hell! We deserve it for being so stupid!”

  Tor Kranta stood in the clear night chill, staring at the stars. From inside the sleeping chamber his wife called, “Tor . . . stop tormenting yourself.”

  “The fools,” he muttered. “To stop the work because of the priests’ objections. To prevent us from trying to contact another intelligent race, circling another star. Idiocy. Sheer idiocy.”

  “Accept what must be accepted. Tor: Come to bed.”

  He shook his blue-maned head. “I only hope that the other intelligent races of the universe aren’t as blind as we are.”

  TO BE OR NOT TO BE

  When it comes to
making science fiction films, Hollywood has two big shortcomings: (1) no understanding of the scientific concepts that underlie science fiction, and (2) no originality. Here’s a story that makes full use of both.

  * * *

  Year: 2057 AD

  NOBEL PRIZE FOR PHYSICAL ENGINEERING:

  Albert Robertus Leoh, for application

  of simultaneity effect to interstellar flight

  OSCAR/EMMY AWARD:

  Best dramatic film, The Godfather, Part XXVI

  PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION:

  Ernestine Wilson, The Devil Made Me

  Al Lubbock and Frank Troy shared an office. Not the largest in Southern California’s entertainment industry, but adequate for their needs. Ankle-deep carpeting. Holographic displays instead of windows. Earthquake-proof building.

  Al looked like a rangy, middle-aged cowboy in his rumpled blue jumpsuit. Frank wore a traditional Wall Street vested suit of golden brown, neat and precise as an accountant’s entry. His handsome face was tanned; his body had the trimness of an inveterate tennis player.

  Al played tennis, too, but he won games instead of losing weight.

  The walls of their office were covered with plaques and shelves bearing row after row of awards—a glittering array of silver and gold plated statuettes. But as they slumped in the foam chairs behind their double desk, they stared despondently at each other.

  “Ole buddy,” Al said, still affecting a Texas drawl, “I’m fresh out of ideas, dammit.”

  “This whole town’s fresh out of ideas,” Frank said sadly.

  “Nobody’s got any creativity anymore.”

  “I’m awfully tired of having to write our own scripts,” Frank said. “You’d think there would be at least one creative writer in this industry.”

  “I haven’t seen a decent script in three years,” Al grumbled.

  “Or a treatment.”

  “An idea, even.” Al reached for one of his nonhallucinogenic cigarettes. It came alight the instant it touched his lips.

  “Do you suppose,” he asked, blowing out blue smoke, “that there’s anything to this squawk about pollution damaging people’s brains?”

  Frowning, Frank reached for the air-circulation control knob on his side of the desk and edged it up a bit. “I don’t know,” he answered.

  “It’d affect the lower income brackets most,” Al said.

  “That is where the writers come from,” Frank admitted slowly.

  For a long moment they sat in gloomy silence.

  “Damn!” Al said at last. “We’ve just got to find some creative writers.”

  “But where?”

  “Maybe we could make a few. You know, clone one of the old-timers who used to be good.”

  Frank shook his head carefully, as if he was afraid of making an emotional investment. “That doesn’t work. Look at the Astaire clone they tried. All it does is fall down a lot.”

  “Well, you can’t raise a tap dancer in a movie studio,” Al said. “They should have known that. It takes more than an exact copy of his genes to make an Astaire. They should have reproduced his environment, too. His whole family. Especially his sister.”

  “And raised him in New York City during World War I?” Frank asked. “You know no one can reproduce a man’s whole childhood environment. It just can’t be done.”

  Al gave a loose-jointed shrug. “Yeah. I guess cloning won’t work. That Brando clone didn’t pan out either.”

  Frank shuddered. “It just huddles in a corner and picks its nose.”

  “But where can we get writers with creative talent?” Al demanded.

  There was no answer.

  Year: 2062 AD

  NOBEL PRIZE FOR SCIENCE AND/OR MEDICINE:

  Jefferson Mohammed X, for developing technique

  of recreating fossilized DNA

  OSCAR/EMMY/TONY AWARD:

  Best entertainment series, The Plutonium Hour

  PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION OR DRAMA:

  No award

  It was at a party aboard the ITT-MGM orbital station that Al and Frank met the real estate man. The party was floating along in the station’s zero-gravity section, where the women had to wear pants but didn’t need bras. A thousand or so guests drifted around in three dimensions, sucking drinks from plastic globes, making conversation over the piped-in music, standing in midair up, down, or sideways as they pleased.

  The real-estate man was a small, owlish-looking youngster of thirty, thirty-five. “Actually, my field is astrophysics,” he told Al and Frank. Both of them looked quite distinguished in iridescent gold formal suits and stylishly graying temples. Yet Al still managed to appear slightly mussed, while Frank’s suit had creases even on the sleeves.

  “Astrophysics, eh?” Al said, with a happy-go-lucky grin. “Gee, way back in college I got my Ph.D. in molecular genetics.”

  “And mine in social psychology,” Frank added. “But there weren’t any jobs for scientists then.”

  “That’s how we became TV producers,” Al said.

  “There still aren’t any jobs for scientists,” said the astrophysicist/real-estate man. “And I know all about the two of you. I looked you up in the IRS’ Who’s Who. That’s why I inveigled my way into this party. I just had to meet you both.”

  Frank shot Al a worried glance.

  “You know the Heinlein Drive has opened the stars to humankind,” said the astro-realtor rhetorically. “This means whole new worlds are available to colonize. It’s the biggest opportunity since the Louisiana Purchase. Dozens of new Earthlike planets, unoccupied, uninhabited, pristine! Ours for the taking!”

  “For a few billion dollars apiece,” Frank said.

  “That’s small potatoes for a whole world!”

  Al shook his head, a motion that made his whole weightless body start swaying. “Look, fella . . . we’re TV producers, not land barons. Our big problem is finding creative writers.”

  The little man clung to Al tenaciously. “But you’d have a whole new world out there! A fresh, clean, unspoiled new world!”

  “Wait a minute,” Frank said. “Psychologically, maybe a new world is what we need to develop new writers.”

  “Sure,” the astro-realtor agreed.

  A gleam lit Al’s eye. “The hell with new writers. How about recreating old writers?”

  “Like Schulberg?”

  “Like Shakespeare.”

  Year: 2087 AD

  NOBEL PRIZE FOR SCI-MED:

  Cobber McSwayne, for determining

  optimal termination time for geriatrics patients

  OSCAR/EMMY/TONY/HUGO/EDGAR/ET AL. AWARD:

  The California Earthquake

  PULITZER PRIZE FOR WRITING:

  Krissy Jones, Grandson of Captain Kangaroo

  Lubbock & Troy was housed in its own satellite now. The ten-kilometer-long structure included their offices, living quarters, production studios, and the official Hollywood Hall of Fame exhibit hall. Tourists paid for the upkeep, which was a good thing because hardly anyone except children watched new dramatic shows.

  “Everything’s reruns,” Frank complained as he floated weightlessly in their foam-walled office. He was nearly sixty years old, still looked trim and distinguished. Purified air and careful diet helped a lot.

  Al looked a bit older, a bit puffier. His heart had started getting cranky, and the zero-gravity they lived in was a necessary precaution for his health.

  “There aren’t any new ideas,” Al said from up near the office’s padded ceiling. “The whole human race’s creative talents have run dry.” His voice had gotten rather brittle with age. Snappish.

  “I know I can’t think of anything new anymore,” Frank said. He began to drift off his desk chair, pushed himself down and fastened the lap belt.

  “Don’t worry, ol’ buddy. We’ll be hearing from New Stratford one of these days.”

  Frank looked up at his partner. “We’d better, the project is costing us every cent we have.”

  “
I know,” Al answered. “But the Shakespeare World exhibit is pulling in money, isn’t it? The new hotels, the entertainment complex.”

  “They’re all terribly expensive. They’re draining our capital. Besides, that boy in New Stratford is a very expensive proposition. All those actors and everything.”

  “Willie?” Al’s youthful grin broke through his aging face. “He’ll be okay. Don’t worry about him. I supervised that DNA reconstruction myself. Finally got a chance to use my ol’ college education.”

  Frank nodded thoughtfully.

  “That DNA’s perfect,” Al went on, “right down to the last hydrogen atom.” He pushed off the ceiling with one hand and settled slowly down toward Frank, at the desk. “We’ve got an exact copy of William Shakespeare—at least, genetically speaking.”

  “That doesn’t guarantee he’ll write Shakespeare-level plays,” Frank said. “Not unless his environment is a faithful reproduction of the original Shakespeare’s. It takes an exact reproduction of both genetics and environment to make an exact duplicate of the original.”

  “So?” Al said, a trifle impatiently. “You hadda free hand. A whole damned planet to play with. Zillions of dollars. And ten years’ time to set things up.”

  “Yes, but we knew so little about Shakespeare’s boyhood when we started. The research we had to do!”

  Al chuckled to himself. It sounded like a wheezing cackle. “Remember the look on the lawyers’ faces when we told ’em we had to sign the actors to lifetime contracts?”

  Frank smiled back at his partner. “And the construction crews, when they found out that their foremen would be archeologists and historians?”

  Al perched lightly on the desk and worked at catching his breath. Finally he said, more seriously, “I wish the kid would hurry up with his new plays, though.”

  “He’s only fifteen,” Frank said. “He won’t be writing anything for another ten years. You know that. He’s got to be apprenticed, and then go to London and get a job with—”