Are You There and Other Stories

by Jack Skillingstead

  Getting from the top of the armadillo to the bottom wasn’t easy without a visa. And the Command structure—headed by Laird Ulin—was disinclined to issue me one. Perhaps it had something to do with my recent attempts to go AWOL in the County (okay, the last one was nine years ago, but that’s still recent by my standards). As usual, Laird had located me with uncanny ease and hauled me back upstairs.

  He had been my ticket to the stars, but for these nine years I’d been little more than a pampered prisoner—a walking organ sack, always at Ulin’s service. I guess he was afraid to die. Tough. Everybody’s afraid of something.

  So I built a virus and named it George. Then I conducted a conversation with Infinity’s superquantum computer and arranged for the first sneeze to occur in Venice. I made sure I was in Cinzano shade for the event.

  Presently came the sound of magnetic locks releasing. A panel opened in the velvet blackness before which the image of the canal had resided moments ago.

  I moved quickly. My perusal of the ship’s design database had informed me that from this point I would be very near the port to a kilometers-long access tube running from the Command level all the way to the floor of the County. Orienting myself, I turned right and followed a corridor between bulkheads until I came to a wider place and a hatch recessed into the deck.

  I knelt on the deck and retracted the hatch by turning a hand-operated wheel. The purpose of this tube, as well as several others located throughout Infinity, was to provide direct access between levels in the event of a catastrophic systems failure. At such a time one might also assume a loss of gravity, which would make traveling the tube a somewhat less harrowing matter than it was likely to be now, with full gravity—full gravity on Infinity being roughly eighty-eight percent Earth normal. It was a very long way down to the County.

  The tube was three meters in diameter and there were three platforms, each large enough to accommodate a single passenger. The platforms were attached to pairs of skinny rails on the side of the tube. They were powerless contraptions operated on an elaborate arrangement of counter-weights and had been built with no very great expectation of ever being utilized.

  I stepped onto one, secured myself with a strap, released the lock, held on tight and began utilizing the hell out of it.

  I dropped at a moderate rate. Amber light illuminated the tube. Looking up made me feel like I was inside a giant straw slipping back after the big suck. My stomach was fluttering with anticipation. It had been a while since I’d rubbed elbows with humanity. I wondered how my people skills had held up. Actually I had one person in particular in mind.

  After ten minutes or so the lights began to flicker. Was George making his broader acquaintance with Infinity’s intimate architecture?

  The lights stuttered a final time and went out. It wasn’t too bad at first, but after a while a flashlight would have been nice. The long, black fall gave me an uneasy feeling. I hadn’t planned on any lights going out. Perhaps George had some plans of his own. Perhaps “plan” was the wrong word altogether. All I’d wanted to do was unlock some doors and disrupt a few non-essential functions. Make it hard for Laird to find me. Eventually he would find me, of course, but I’d deal with that when the time came.

  I was certain of only one thing: I was through with surgery. Ever since my incredible longevity had become known back on Earth I’d been subjected to endless examinations, proddings, and probings, the extraction of various and sundry specimens, the harvesting of my organs, the minute examination of my genetic code, and the dissection of my psyche. No one wanted to believe God would just flat out make an error in my favor. Surely He wouldn’t have chosen such a smartass.

  When Laird Ulin conceived his starship and brought it into being by mean force of will, billions of dollars (he designed the first superquantum computers), and an international consortium, he offered me passage to a new world. I was optimistic enough to think it might be a better world (even if it was named after Ulin). Or at least one where I would find my privacy restored. Some suggested I was running away. One such suggester was the guy who looked back at me every morning when I shaved.

  I’ve already described the price of my ticket.

  The platform encountered a pneumatic brake and shushed to an uneventful halt. I locked the platform, fumbled my safety strap loose, and began groping for the exit.

  *

  The little girl with choppy yellow hair pointed and said, “The sky’s broken.”

  Infinity was a ship full of skies, especially on the County level. They made everyone feel better about being sealed inside the world’s biggest tin can for the duration.

  But this sky was broken: A large, irregular section had gone black. All around this black wound, horizon to horizon, a high blue and fleecy white summer was in progress. It was impossible to distinguish the real clouds from the holographic facsimiles. Down here Infinity generated her own limited weather phenomenon, the rest was vivid illusion. However, embedded in my virus was a tutorial on storm craft, which I had hoped to see manifested shortly after my arrival and—fingers crossed—reunion. Just a mild thunderstorm, a little sound, not much fury. It was the romantic in me. Tinkering around with the idea I’d felt positively Byronesque.

  It was hot. I had come upon the girl in the Town Square of Bedford Falls, sitting on a bench in a red jumpsuit eating a vanilla ice-cream cone. I guessed she was about six. She made such a pretty picture that I approached her and said hi. It had been quite a while since I’d last seen a child. Up close this one looked familiar. As soon as I greeted her she got a look on her face and started pointing at the sky, pale lips puckered worriedly.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’s probably just a minor malfunction. Hey, watch out, you’re melting all over the place.” I sat beside her. She wouldn’t stop staring up. Those eyes.

  “The sky’s wrong,” she said.

  “What flavor’s your cone?”

  “Huh?”

  “I said what flavor’s your cone?”

  “What flavor does it look like?” she asked.

  “Strawberry?”

  “It’s vanilla.”

  “That was going to be my next guess. What’s your name?”

  “Alice Greene.”

  I nodded. “I bet I know your mom’s name.”

  “Bet you don’t.”

  “Delilah.”

  She licked her cone. “Everybody knows everybody.”

  “Yeah? You don’t know me.”

  She shrugged, then shouted: “Mommy!”

  A woman had stepped out of the Bedford Falls Hotel and was crossing quickly in our direction. The resemblance was obvious, the hair, especially the violet eyes.

  “There’s my girl,” she said, picking Alice up and holding her.

  “Something’s wrong with the sky,” Alice said.

  “Don’t look at it, Honey.”

  “Why not? Will it unbreak if I don’t look?”

  “I’m sure it’s just a minor glitch,” I said. “Hello, Delilah.”

  She stared, bestowing upon me the same stupefied gawk her daughter had given the broken sky.

  “Ellis—”

  “I was on my way over when I bumped into your daughter.”

  “On your way over. It’s been ten years, Ellis.”

  “Nine, actually. But it feels like ten to me, too, dear.”

  “Mommy I wanna go inside now,” Alice said.

  “Just a minute, baby.”

  “Cute kid,” I said.

  Delilah gave me a measuring look. “Ellis, what are you doing here?”

  “Hey, I thought absence was supposed to cause various internal organs to grow fonder.”

  “You haven’t changed a bit.”

  “Naturally not. Neither have you. Beautiful as ever.”

  She smiled, but said: “Yes, I have. Changed.” She didn’t mean the crow’s feet, which I hated myself for noticing.

  A hot breeze scurried through the square. Since I had arrived the
ambient temperature had risen by at least five degrees. That was at ground level. I estimated it was a lot cooler a kilometer or so above, where George was playing with alterations in the atmosphere, orchestrating temperature and pressures changes. Real clouds formed rapidly over the County. There was something disturbingly aggressive about it. I thought of dark tubes and black wounds slashed into the sky.

  “It might not be a bad idea for you to get inside,” I said to Delilah.

  “Go inside, Mom!”

  “What’s happening, Ellis?”

  “I’m not sure. All I had in mind was a little wind and a rumble or two. This feels bigger.”

  She regarded me strangely, her fair brow was misted with sweat. “Come inside with us.”

  “I think I’ll sit and watch for a while.”

  Delilah hesitated a moment longer, glanced at the sky, then turned and walked swiftly toward the hotel. Alice hung over her shoulder and dripped a trail of creamy yellow-white spots, in case she wanted to find her way back to Uncle Ellis.

  The square was filling with people. They emerged from storefronts and restaurants and work centers. They halted on the sidewalks, stood straddling bicycles. Bedford Falls was modeled after an idealized small American town of the mid twentieth century, though it was more Main Street Disney than an authentic reproduction. A nice place to raise the kids. The other towns in the County were Waukegan and De Smet. There must have been a literary type on the naming committee. Well, it probably looked good on paper. Being the only one around who had seen both Disneyland and the original De Smet, my observations were more authentic than the molecular-engineered PerfectWood out of which much of these towns were constructed. I’d had a lot of life between 1965 and 2283. Too much life, I sometimes thought.

  People pointed. The sky hung low and threatening, pregnant with storm. The wind picked up. Everyone appeared uneasy. I wanted to pull a Jimmy Stewart, quell the citizenry’s incipient panic. But I didn’t have it in me. Perhaps I needed somebody to quell my incipient panic first.

  More than a few (Bedford Fallsians?) noticed me sitting on the bench looking at them. I was a stranger, so that was to be expected. What made me nervous were the flashes of recognition some of them threw at me. And it wasn’t happy let-me-shake-your-hand recognition, either.

  I got up and followed the drippy trail to the Hotel, keeping my head down.

  Somebody gasped. There were some oh-my-Gods. I looked up from the steps of the hotel. The sky was tinted green. In the distance a narrow funnel cloud probed downward. Jesus.

  I went inside.

  “You’d better see this,” Delilah said. She handed me a palm-sized device. “The alert is running continuously. You seem to be a wanted man.”

  I activated the thing. Laird Ulin’s face swam into focus. What lovely eyes! Too bad his skin had the texture and appearance of cold wax.

  “This man—” Ulin said, and an image insert of yours truly opened in the lower right corner of the screen. “—is Ellis Herrick. He is an unauthorized person in the County, and is personally and solely responsible for the disruptions now occurring. If you encounter Mr. Herrick you must detain him and immediately alert Command Level authorities.”

  I handed the device back. “Feel like turning me in?”

  “Should I?” Delilah said.

  A gust of wind buffeted the building.

  “It might be more useful to point me in the direction of the nearest Core Access Interface. I think I need to turn the weather off.”

  “God makes the weather,” Alice said, shaking her head seriously. Perhaps she was mocking me? I reached down and wiped a daub of ice cream off her chin.

  “Can you do that?” Delilah asked. “Turn the storm off?”

  “Maybe. By the way, where’s Mr. Delilah?”

  She wrinkled her nose in that cute way she had and shook her head. “Waukegan,” she said. “And his name is Ben Roos. Why?”

  “Idle curiosity.”

  “Ellis. You went away. Remember? For a long time. Besides, you knew I had to get pregnant.”

  “Ben’s my gene dad,” Alice piped up. “He’s old.”

  Kids say the darndest things. An ironic consequence of my longevity is that I am sterile. Not that the six year old was trying to be ironic, or rub it in or anything. Even if I hadn’t left her, Delilah would have sought out a sperm donor. That’s the whole point of a generation ship.

  “I bet I’m older than your gene daddy,” I said to Alice.

  “He’s the mayor,” she said back, not sounding too impressed.

  “What a guy.”

  “He’s a water farmer, too.”

  “Now I’m getting all tingly.”

  Alice giggled.

  We were in the apartment behind the front desk of the hotel. A window looked out on the promenade. The light through that window suddenly dimmed, as if a giant shroud had been drawn over the town. There was a roaring. I closed the shades.

  “Hang on!”

  Something monstrous moved over us. The building shuddered. A woman screamed in the next room. My ears popped. Delilah’s face was tense and frightened. She hugged Alice against her breast, and I couldn’t see the child’s face. Then the window exploded. Sucked out the opening, the shade rattled and danced. I felt the breath drawn from my lungs. Outside in the weird purple-green light, a raggedy man swept over the promenade, arms and legs flailing like the limbs of a boneless doll. Son of a bitch!

  In a minute or two it was over.

  The light turned buttery, and shadows fled across the courtyard. I stepped to the window and ripped down what remained of the shade. The sky was blowing clear. Above the shredded clouds a holographic lie of serenity persisted. My hands were trembling, and I made them into fists. There had been nothing in my virus that could have given birth to this. Nothing.

  I climbed through the window frame and went to the man. He lay sprawled and twisted. The grass was as vividly green as his blood was red. My hand unsteady, I touched the place on his neck that should have been pulsing and found it wasn’t.

  Behind me, Delilah said, “Ellis—?”

  “This is my fault,” I said.

  Then the man’s eyes fluttered, and I jerked my hand back. Hearts can be tricky things.

  *

  What a nice day for a bicycle ride. Delilah Greene (with Alice riding tandem) pedaled ahead of me on the winding, swooping path through the Oxygen Forest. Duel monorails linked the towns. But with George running amok and the monorails dependent on the centralized computer system, it seemed best to take the scenic route. Also, I wanted to avoid being observed.

  It was an odd-looking forest, the trees engineered for maximum carbon dioxide-to-oxygen conversion, bulgy on top like big, green cartoon poodle puffs. Whimsical. But I wasn’t feeling too whimsical myself. Not like the way I’d felt when I concocted a harmless little thunderstorm.

  We were on our way to Waukegan. There was an old water farmer in town who also happened to be mayor—and in the office of the mayor was a Core Access Interface. The one in Bedford Falls had exploded, unfortunately (Core interface, not water farmer/mayor). A lot of other things had, too. We left behind us a debris field of PerfectWood flinders but—luckily—no bodies. A black pillar of smoke, wind-smudged, climbed over the roofs of Bedford Falls. Whimsey.

  And George was already busy rearranging the atmosphere for round two. Before entering the forest we saw an impressive cell of mini thunderheads, gorgeously mauve and dimly aflicker from within, standing on the phony horizon like purple-robed clerics of Doom.

  Suddenly darkness fell. Like a guillotine. One moment it was afternoon, the next deepest midnight. We stopped riding. I didn’t even bother holding my hand in front of my face, because I already knew I wouldn’t be able to see it. Riding was too dangerous, and even walking was problematical. We left the bicycles and blundered around until we found a soft spot to sit and wait.

  Eventually the stars come on, erratically, in clusters, through the branch tangle and cloud
tatter. Then the clouds thickened, and the stars were lost. Above them, the moon dialed up, preternaturally bright. Moonlight shot through the clouds like milk poured through India ink. It wasn’t enough light to ride by, but we could see well enough to walk. For safety’s sake we held hands. I let it feel good, Delilah’s hand in mine. The first time I let Delilah feel good to me she had been eighteen and I had been thirty-six (two hundred and seventy-four in Herrick years). Now she was pushing thirty. This knowledge tweaked my urge toward isolation, but I held on tight to that hand.

  There was a distant roll of thunder, and Delilah said, “Why a storm? I know you didn’t intend for it to be violent. But why a storm at all?”

  Memory, circa 1983: The girl cuddled under my arm is seventeen. And guess what? So am I. Her name is Connie. Mine is Ellis (some things never change). There had been a rumble of thunder then, too, and the wind had rattled the sash like something that wanted to get in, but we were cozy under the sheets where we made love and plans.

  I told a version of this memory to Delilah.

  “That’s sweet,” she said.

  “It sure was. And we even lived happily ever after. I did, at least. She got old and died. I’ve noticed that happens a lot.”

  “Oh, Ellis.”

  I stopped walking, and since we were holding hands it meant we all three stopped.

  “Listen,” I said. “The way around serial grieving is to stop living fully. Which I did, back on Earth. Then I came out here so I could do it even better. Then I slipped up and got involved with you. And ten years ago, when Laird Ulin came and took me away that last time I didn’t even try to come back—not for a long while did I try. Because it was safer to hang out with a bunch of ageless mechanical men and one waxy bastard who could play chess. Then it occurred to me that I missed you like hell, and everybody grieves. Maybe it had something to do with being locked up in the Command Level, having my choice denied. Whatever. So now I’m the Dr. Manette of the stars, recalled to life.”

  “I thought it was nine years,” Delilah said, and squeezed my hand. Some people just aren’t equipped to appreciate a beautiful speech rife with Dickensian allusions.