Hot Sleep: The Worthing Chronicle

by Orson Scott Card

  And then he realized that he would remember nothing of Arran Handully beyond the actress he had seen in the lifeloops. A shallow, seductive, empty woman who mouthed insincere words and made phony love to paying lovers. Not the woman who had come to him in his prison and asked for his help in escaping her (suddenly their) enemies. He wouldn't remember the heart–stopping moment when she had descended past him on the ladder, hysterically closing her eyes and plunging deeper into the smoke of the exhaust duct. She wouldn't remember, either, nor would she recall whose voice had called her to come back up. Whose hand had led her to safety.

  It was a little harder to say What the hell now.

  As abruptly as it had gone out, the sun lit up again, and the light was dazzling. Hop closed his eyes entirely, as all around him he could hear people beginning to call out to each other again. Given their vision, they found their voices, and began calling out names.

  Hop left his eyes closed. He would have closed his ears, too, since he wished very much to be alone, but the sounds of the crowd wouldn't leave him alone. Snatches of grief, worry, anger — "What right do they have!" said one, and the answer, "We are traitors, after all." (How philosophical.)

  "I have three children! Do they ever think of that?" (Do you? Hop thought. Doubtless she was on somec — it was unlikely that a conspiracy made up of somec users would include a non–sleeper. How much did she think of her children as the drug took her away from them for years at a time?

  And then a voice calling, from a distance, "Hop!" and then closer, saying, "Hop, there you are, I've looked everywhere."

  He opened his eyes. Arran was at the foot of the tree.

  "Hi," he said stupidly.

  "What are you doing up there, Hop? I couldn't find you. I walked by here a dozen times at least —"

  "I think I was hiding," Hop said. He pushed off and jumped to the ground, landing awkwardly on all fours.

  "Hop," Arran was saying, as he got to his feet, "Hop, I had to find you, I had to talk to you — why didn't you stay with me? — never mind, nobody could expect you to follow along like a pet or a husband or something — Hop, they've posted a roster at the doors. All the colonists, in their groups of ten and hundred."

  "And?"

  "Well, for one thing, you're a mayor of three hundred, Hop."

  "Me?" Hop laughed. "What a joke! Just what I was cut out for."

  "Well, I'm an alderman, which is just as funny. In your group, for luck! But Hop — it's the captain."

  "Who is it? Anybody I know?" As if it would be.

  "It's Jazz Worthing, Hop. Jason Harper Worthing."

  And Hop couldn't think of anything to say to that.

  "Hop, he's supposed to be crazy."

  "That's all right. We're supposed to be sane."

  "Don't you see, Hop? He's your friend. The notice said that anyone with a question could sign up for an appointment to see him. I signed us up, and it's only fifteen minutes or so from now." "What do you want to see him for?" "Us, Hop! We've got to see him. He's got to arrange it for us." "Arrange what?"

  "To keep our memories, Hop! If they take away my memory of this waking, I won't love you. I won't even know you. You'll just be the manager of that despicable bastard Jazz Worthing, and I'll be a disgusting, cheap little tart."

  And suddenly Hop felt very good. She wanted to remember him. He took Arran's hand, and she led him along to the door. On the way it occurred to him that he would see Jazz again — that it had been two days since he last saw him — that the world had changed since then — that he and Jazz were now on opposite sides of a very high fence. Would they be friends? Had they ever been? (Is there anything that can't be called into question, eventually?)

  It is ironic that science itself, so long the graverobber of all the gods, should have proved conclusively the existence of the soul. It was certainly not intended, and judging from the acute embarrassment of the team the developed somec when they subsequently discovered the soul effect, they would have avoided discovery at all, if that had been possible. But somec had first been used to prolong the lives of the mortally ill in hopes of a cure for them. It was only afterward that somec's memory–erasing effect was noticed, leaving the first somec sleepers as mindless vegetables. George Rines was the first to make the connection between the new braintaping techniques and the disaster of ignorant and premature use of somec. When he tried to resurrect the sleepers by playing someone else's tape into their heads, the result was madness within a few days. There is something not part of memory (and therefore not learned but rather innate in the individual) that remains even after the somec has taken everything else, something that refuses to accept the implanted memories of another person for the simple reason that the new memories are of actions and decisions that the wakened sleeper himself would never have done or made. Rines reported that as an inevitable reaction: The wakened sleepers invariably said, "I remember doing it, but I would never have done it." They could not accept memories that they had no way of knowing were not their own. For lack of a better word, Rines whimsically named this property of the human individual the soul. Doubtless he meant to be ironic. But further research has borne out the fact that his irony was really accuracy.

  The Soul: Awake in the Age of Sleep, 2433, preface ii.

  The woman was crying, and, as she left, Jazz wondered why he was doing all this. As Doon had so aptly pointed out, any comfort Jazz might give them, any answers to questions he might offer would all be swept away by somec. They'd remember nothing so why waste time trying to help them?

  But Jazz didn't see it that way. Though the memory would be gone, these people were still people. They deserved to be treated humanely. "Memory disappears with death, too," Jazz had pointed out to Doon, "but we still let old people ask questions." So Doon had consented, laughing, and now Jazz found himself unable to help after all. His gift to see into people's minds was no particular boon — in this extremity, they willingly unfolded all their thoughts to him, and he could give them no comfort. The decision was made to wipe out their knowledge of this waking; that decision would stand. Yet that decision was the cause of their distress.

  "Next," Jazz said, bracing himself for another ordeal. But this time, he heard a familiar voice. "Jazz, you hunk of cooler grease! How the hell are you doing?" and then Hop's arms were around him, and Jazz hugged him back, not the artificial, is–everybody–watching kind of hug they had shared at every docking of Jazz's ship, but a sincere embrace of friendship. Out of a long–standing habit, Jazz looked into Hop's mind, and heard there an absurd quotation: "For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found." Jazz found the quotation in his memory — a snatch from on old religious book that still haunted Noyock from the time his mother had drummed it into his head in childhood. Jazz smiled, and finished the passage, though Noyock hadn't spoken it aloud. "And they began to be merry."

  Noyock looked at him, startled, and then suddenly stepped back. Jazz was still listening to

  Hop's mind; he heard Noyock's final, sure realization of what he had come to suspect: Jazz is a Swipe.

  "Of course," Jazz answered. "Didn't I tell you so?"

  Hop's boisterous confidence disappeared. He stepped back, unsure what he should do now. If Jazz could so easily read his thoughts now, that meant that Jazz could have heard every other thought he'd had before. He was embarrassed. He turned to Arran, mumbled something. What he wanted to say was, Let's get out of here.

  "Arran Handully," Jazz said. "With clothes."

  "And Jazz Worthing, with his mind intact," she said. "It looks as though the tables have turned back again, doesn't it?"

  "I try to be a graceful winner," Jazz said. "And I see you have lost none of your grace in losing."

  "It's losing that we've come to talk about," Arran said, and Jazz heard in her mind a puzzlement as to why Hop had suddenly become so reticent. Wasn't it his job to try to influence his friend? "Captain Worthing, Hop and I have found something that we don't want to lose —"<
br />
  "That we don't believe we have to lose —" Hop said, fumbling for words.

  "If you can help us."

  "If you're willing — you see, we —" and Hop gave up the struggle for the right words, quit trying to make sure his words matched the thoughts he knew Jazz was hearing anyway. "Dammit, Jason, you know what I'm trying to say. Save me the pain."

  "You two have decided you love each other,"

  Jazz said, "and in a sudden burst of domesticity you want me to have your memories taped so you can remember."

  "That's it," Arran said, but Hop only turned away, his face red. "Hop," she said, "what's wrong?"

  "He can hear us, dammit. He can hear every word we're thinking. He's a Swipe!"

  Arran half–laughed, turned to look at Jazz, saw a beatific smile on his face, and whirled back to look at Hop. "How do you know!" she demanded.

  "He's been reading my thoughts since we came in here. And for a dozen wakings before — it all fits together —"

  "A Swipe!" Arran said, then laughed again, nervously. "You can read my —"

  "Yes," Jason answered, quietly. "When I want to. If you had known that about me, you would have known the probe wouldn't work on me. I'm used to having other people's thought patterns imposed on my own. I almost fell asleep under the probe."

  Arran fumbled for the chair. Sat down. Jazz listened as she tried to drain her mind of all the thoughts she didn't want Jazz to hear.

  "You know," he said, "the more you think about what you don't want me to know, the better I can hear it."

  It had taken only thirty seconds, and with that comment Arran was reduced to near–hysteria. "Hop!" she cried out. "Make him stop! Make him get out of my mind!" She was crying. Hop himself was trembling, but he understood what she felt, the insecurity of having no secrets.

  "Jazz, please."

  "I'm not listening right now, if that's all you're worried about," Jazz said. "But you see, don't you, why I never told you I was a Swipe until this waking. It makes other people very nervous. It makes them, in fact, want to kill me."

  "I don't want to kill you," Arran said, regaining some control over her voice. "I just want to get out of here."

  "I'm sorry, Arran," Jazz said. "You won't be able to rejoin the others now. If they knew I was a Swipe, they'd never go under somec at all."

  "We'll promise not to tell," she said, and then she turned back and faced Jazz squarely. "Oh," she said. "You've already answered us, haven't you?"

  "What do you mean?" Hop asked.

  "You stinking Swipe bastard!" she shouted. "Why did you tell us that!"

  Hop stood up, put his arm around her. "Arran, you aren't helping anything —"

  "She's right, Hop," Jazz said, maintaining his calm. "If there were any chance that Abner Doon would let any of you have a memory tape, even you, Hop, I would never have let you know I was a telepath."

  "So now that we know —"

  "I'm sorry. Maybe you'll fall in love again, if that's what you want."

  And now it was Hop's turn to be angry. "Jazz! My friend!" he said, spitting out the words bitterly. "It's not being in love that I want. It's the last forty–eight hours that I want! It's every damned hideous thing we've gone through together! You don't have a right to take that away from me!"

  "I'm sorry," Jazz said. "But I can't change it."

  Hop tried to shout something else, but the words found no articulation, just a roar of fury and grief and loss as he scrambled around the table, striking at Jazz as he had struck at members of rival gangs in the deep slums of Capitol. Go for the eyes, the throat, the testicles, said his reflexes. You can't do this to me, shouted his mind. Weep, said the tears in his eyes, and Jazz overpowered him easily, had him sitting in a chair, sobbing like a child before he was sure of what was happening.

  Now it was Arran's turn to offer a comforting arm, and she softly whispered to him, "Hop, all we can do is think of it as death. We're being murdered, and in our place they'll be resurrecting a new person, the person we were at the beginning of this waking. We're just going to die."

  "That's comfort?" asked Noyock, unable to resist seeing the irony. Jazz chuckled softly. "You can shut up," Arran snapped.

  "You came in to ask me the impossible. When I denied it you hated me."

  "Listen in our minds," said Arran, "and see how much."

  "I was wrong," Jason said, "to give these interviews. False hopes are worse than no hope at all. I'm sorry." He stepped to the door, opened it, said to the guards outside, who were supervising the line of colonists–to–be waiting to plead for their past. "You can all leave," he said. "No more interviews today. Sorry." The people grumbled, cried out in frustration, muttered epithets. But they got up from the chairs where they had been sitting, and left.

  Jazz came back in, closed the door. "I'm sorry," he said again. He heard both Arran and Hop think, "A lot of good that does," and then think again, "What else can he do, either?"

  Aloud, Arran said, "We're all trapped, then, aren't we?"

  "Who is this Abner Doon, anyway?" Hop asked.

  "Just a man who collects people," Jazz answered. "Hundreds were collected today. You were collected centuries ago, Hop. He found out you were brilliant. And you lived to be sixteen years old as the most prominent member of the most prominent gang in the lower corridors. You're a born survivor. So he collected you — and you've been my agent ever since."

  "A puppet master," Arran said, bitterly. "And what does he do with his collection?"

  "He has a vision," Jazz said. "He saw in his childhood that nothing important had happened to the human race since somec taught us to fear death and sleep through the centuries. He, and those of us who have seen his vision — we're out to wake the sleepers up. Destroy somec. Make people live out their normal threescore and ten, so that perhaps the human race can get back about its business."

  "Destroy somec!" Arran scoffed. "Do you think the sleepers will ever part with it?"

  "No. But we know that those who are denied it will come to the point where they will either have it, or destroy all those who do."

  "Insane," said Arran.

  "And for that you manipulated a thousand of the best people of Capitol, so you could throw them out into space and let them rot," Hop said.

  "Manipulate? Who isn't manipulated? Even you, Arran — you were manipulating Farl Baak. And who was manipulating you? A person who believes with all his heart in Doon's vision, who is willing to go to the colonies, willing to lose his last waking for it —"

  "Fritz Kapock," Arran whispered.

  "There, you see?" Jazz said. "We all know who our manipulators are, once we're willing to admit that we're not really free."

  "But Fritz is such a good, honest man —"

  "So are we all," Jazz said. "Even me."

  They left him then, and the guards took them directly to the tape and tap, so that they could see no other colonist and tell what they had learned. In the tape and tap, however, the attendant was called to the phone, and when he came back, he led Hop and Arran away from the somec table, and sat them in the taping chairs, and put the sleep helmets on their heads. "What does this mean?" Hop asked, knowing what it meant. "Captain Worthing told me to do this," the attendant said, and Hop and Arran wept with joy as they lay back and gave their memories to the whirring film. And when the helmets came off, and they were led to the somec beds, they embraced, and wept again, and smiled and laughed and kept thanking the attendant, who nodded, promising to offer their thanks to Captain Worthing. And then they were put to sleep, and laid in their coffins, and the attendant took the tapes to the colony ship, and gave them to the starpilot, who also thanked him, and paid him the money he had promised.

  Colonists traveled nude, of course, in special boxes that were linked to the life–system of the ship. Because of their shape, these boxes were called coffins, though their purpose was exactly opposite. Instead of guarding a body as it rotted and decomposed, the colony ship coffins kept colonists alive, so that
they didn't age a day as somec helped them sleep their way across the galaxy. As long as the coffins remained absolutely, perfectly sealed, and as long as the ship's life–system kept functioning, human beings placed inside them under somec sleep could, in theory, Jive forever.

  Peopling the Planets: The Colonies, 6559, 11:33.

  The last of the coffins was wheeled through the lock, down through the storage compartments (which, on a military ship, would have held armaments) and on to the passenger section. The A and B tubes were full, sealed, locked, the dials and registers on the doors monitoring the almost infinitesimal but still detectable life–signs of the sleepers. Jazz Worthing and Abner Doon watched as the coffin was wheeled through into the tube. Watched as the silent workmen connected the tubes, wires, and drains that kept the sleepers alive.

  "Back to the womb, back to the placenta," said Doon, and Jason laughed. And as they had done a dozen times before, stretched out in front of the highly illegal and therefore very expensive fireplace in Doon's flat, they began to play their game of archaism. "Western Airlines, the only way to fly," Jazz said. Boon blandly responded, "Go Greyhound, and leave the driving to us." And so it went as they followed the workmen back through the ship. In the storage compartment, Boon paused to pat the oversized coffin that held an ox. "For years," he said, and the joking tone left his voice, "these people have known no other animal, except the rats. For the first time they're going to have to deal with an animal that's guaranteed to be stupider than they are."

  "The sudden proof of superiority will probably bring back a belief in God, don't you think?" Jazz asked.

  "God?" Boon asked. "There's only one God on this ship, and he's already playing his role."

  "I thought you said you didn't claim that title."

  "I don't. But you do."

  "I? I'm part of your collection, remember?"

  "Playing God with your colony, Jason, can be dangerous. Especially when you aren't following a plan. Doing things for sentimental reasons will destroy you and your colony. Sentiment has no place in a man of vision."