Infinity One (12 page)

“He can think?”

“Oh yes." The old woman rocked back and forth. “Think and talk. The standing ones are put on a platform with the extra equipment in it so they can move about, while the seated ones just have it built into their chairs. Now Kitty here,” she leaned over and stroked the cat, “was a special job just for me, and the extra equipment is let into the floor under her; but they don’t often do animals.”

“If they can think and move,” the social worker asked, “how is it different from being alive?” She answered her own question. “Alive, but crippled perhaps, like someone who has to use a wheel chair.”

“Now you’ve hit it,” the old woman said. She was putting away her knitting. “It’s the memory, my dear. You see, the moment-to-moment memories a person has are electrical, as you might say, in their nature. But the permanent ones, the things a person recalls more than just five or ten minutes, are due to changes in the molecules that make up one’s brain. With the Packerhaus method, since the brain isn’t alive it can’t change itself that way.” She waved a hand, pleased with her explanation. “That’s why Papa can’t remember that he can’t smoke, for example.”

“Stomach cramps."

“Yes, just like you. Col. Packerhaus had them too, but though I do love having people around me I don’t have him here, of course. The company has him down in the lobby of the Packerhaus Mortuary Number One where the bereaved can talk to him. He’s still quite a good salesman, you know, and very comforting.” The old woman stood up, stowing the knitting under her rocker. “It’s interesting, too, to see how long his memory span is; it seems to improve with age. I was about to say that it almost seemed his brain had learned to make the moment-to-moment kind last longer—but that would be silly, wouldn’t it? I mean since after the resin hardens it can’t learn at nil. But you’ll see for yourself.”

“I want to go home,” the social worker said.

“You can’t, dear,” the old woman told her gently. “But it was nice of you to come around to visit an old lady.” She bent quickly and kissed the social worker on the forehead. “And,” she added when she had straightened up again, “I have some lovely news for you: when I go myself I’m going to have it done too. It’s all in my will. Then we can just sit and talk all the time. You and I and Papa, and of course Frank, when Frank wants to talk. And the new girl they’re sending to look in on me. There’s a note on the outside front door, but if you remember you might tell her that there’s a cup set out for her with a tea bag already in it, and hot water on the stove. I have to go to the store, but I’ll be back soon.”

“Meow,” said the cat.

The social worker leaned forward to stroke it, but found she could not leave her chair. The clock ticked. A slow horror filled her, and there was an agonizing tightness in her throat. She should be crying, she knew; but there was no moisture in her eyes.

One of the front doors opened and a man in uniform rapped gently on the varnished frame. “Meter reader, lady.”

“You’re Frank, aren’t you?” The clock ticked.

The other front door opened and a new social worker came in. She looked the part, with brown, sensible hair, round-lensed glasses and large, kind, short eyes.

“You have short eyes,” the social worker said.

The new social worker smiled. “Short sighted, you mean. Yes, that’s why I have to wear these awful things.” She tapped her glasses with a forefinger.

“Meow,” said the cat.

“I’m the meter reader,” said Frank. “Sometimes I look in too; old people get lonely you know.”

“Charmed,” said the new social worker. “I do hope you folks don’t mind my barging in like this. There was a note on the door saying I’d find tea on the stove. I didn’t realize the old lady already had company.” She went into the kitchen.

“You’re very kind, aren’t you?" the social worker said to Frank. The clock ticked.

The new social worker came back, carrying a cup of tea and smiling. “There’s an elderly gentleman in the kitchen,” she said. “He’s cursing his cigar.”

The social worker dropped Frank’s hand. “I was either to tell you to drink that tea, or not to drink it; but I can’t recall which. And he’s behind you.”

“Oh?” said the new social worker, and turned around.

Grandfather had followed her from the kitchen, and he asked the new social worker for a light for his cigar. “I’ve been trying to light if from the stove,” he complained, “but it won’t draw.”

The clocked ticked.

“Meow,” said the cat.

“That cat’s shedding,” said the new social worker. “In fact I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cat shedding quite so much. The hair’s coming out of her in quite a remarkable way.”

The clock ticked.

The clock ticked.

The clock ticked.

“Ah,” said the old woman. “AH my little circle gathered together. Did the new girl come?”

“New girl?” asked the social worker. There was a gagging sound from another room.

“I think she must have gone into a bedroom to lie down,” said the old woman. “Perhaps she has gas.”

“I thought it was the plumbing,” said Grandfather.

“We have news for you,” said the social worker. “Good news, I hope, though it means I won’t be coming to see you any more—at least not in an official capacity.”

The old woman was getting out her knitting. “Wonderful,” she said.

“Meow,” said the cat.

“Frank and I are getting married. We wanted you to be the first to know.” The social worker sat primly, knees together, hands in lap.

“Wonderful!” exclaimed the old woman. “Marvelous! Of course,” she added in a more serious tone, “you know what this means. We’ll have to invite the minister—for tea.”

“Come on,” said Grandfather, taking Frank by the elbow. “We’d best leave these women to plan the wedding. Got a match on you?”

The social worker gulped. “They don’t walk,” she said. “Frank was riding on a sort of little cart. Haven’t I noticed that before?”

“It’s the Packerhaus method,” the old woman said. “Perhaps you’ve heard of it?”

“Mmmh,” the social worker replied, looking troubled.

“Meow,” said the cat

Sitting there, watching the Earth below him from the panel of Station Six, Christian Praeger suddenly felt embarrassed by the planet’s beauty. For the last eight hours he had watched the great storm develop in the Pacific, and he had wanted to share the view with someone, tell someone how beautiful he thought it was. He had told it to himself now for the fiftieth time.

The storm was a physical evil, a spinning hell that might with luck reach the Asian mainland and kill thousands of starving billions. They would get a warning, for all the good that would do. Since the turn of the century there had been dozens of such storms, developing in places way off from the traditional storm cradles.

He looked at the delicate pinwheel. It was a part of the planet’s ecology—whatever state that was in now. The arms of the storm reminded him of the theory which held the galaxy to be a kind of organized storm system which sucked in gas and dust at its center and sent it all out into the vast arms to condense into stars. And the stars were stormy laboratories building the stuff of the universe in the direction of huge molecules, from the inanimate and crystalline to the living and conscious. In the slowness of time it all looked stable, Praeger thought, but almost certainly all storms run down and die.

He looked at the clock above the center screen. There were six clocks around the watch room, one above each 
screen. The clock on the ceiling gave station time. His watch would be over in half an hour.

He looked at the sun screen. There all the dangerous rays were filtered out. He turned up the electronic magnification and for a long time watched the prominences flare up and die. He looked at the cancerous sunspots. The sight was hypnotic and frightening no matter how many times he had seen it. He put his hand out to the computer panel and punched in the routine information. Then he looked at the spectroscopic screens, small rectangles beneath the earth watch monitors. He checked the time, and set the automatic release for the ozone scatter-cannisters to be dropped into the atmosphere. A few minutes later he watched them drop away from the station, following their fall until they broke in the upper atmosphere, releasing the precious ozone that would protect Earth’s masses from the sun’s deadly radiation. Early in the twentieth century a good deal of the natural ozone layer in the upper atmosphere had been stripped away as a result of atomic testing, resulting in much genetic damage in the late eighties and nineties. But soon now the ozone layer would be back up to snuff.

When his watch ended ten minutes later, Praeger was glad to get away from the visual barrage of the screens. He made his way into one of the jutting spokes of the station where his sleep cubicle was located. Here it was a comfortable half-g all the time. He settled himself into his bunk, and pushed the music button at his side, leaving his small observation and com screen on the ceiling turned off. Gradually the music seemed to fill the room and he closed his eyes. Mahler’s weary song of earth’s misery enveloped his consciousness with pity and weariness, and love. Before he fell asleep he wished he might feel the earth’s atmosphere the way he felt his own skin.

I wish I could hear and feel the motion of gas molecules in the upper air, the whisperings of subtle energy transfers
...

In the Pacific, weather control engineers guided the 
great storm into an electrostatic basket. The storm would provide usable power for the rest of its natural life.

Praeger awoke a quarter of an hour before his watch was due to begin. He thought of his recent vacation earthside, remembering the glowing volcano he had seen in Italy, and how strange the silver shield of the Moon had looked from behind all the atmosphere. He remembered watching his own station six, his post in life, moving slowly across the sky; remembered one of the inner stations as it passed Julian’s station 233, one of the few private satellites, synchronous, fixed for all time over one point on the earth. He should be able to talk to Julian soon, during his next off period. Even though Julian was an artist and a recluse, a water sculptor as he called himself, Julian and he were very much alike. At times he felt they were each other’s conscience, two ex-spacemen in continual retreat from their home world. It was much more beautiful, and bearable from out here. In all this silence he sometimes thought he could hear the universe breathing. It was alive, the whole starry cosmos throbbing.

If I could tear a hole in its body, it would bleed and cry out for a Bandaid
...

He remembered the stifling milieu of Rome’s streets: the great screens which went dead during his vacation, blinding the city, the crowds waiting on the stainless steel squares for the music to resume over the giant audios. They could not work without it. The music pounded its monotonous base, beat: the sound of some imprisoned beast beneath the city. The cab which waited for him w
^r
as a welcome sight: an instrument for fleeing.

In the shuttle craft which brought him back to station six he read the little quotation printed on the back of every seat for the 10,000th time; it told him that the shuttle dated back to the building of the giant earth station system.

.. What we are building now is the nervous system 
of mankind . . . the communications network of which the satellites will be the nodal points. They will enable the consciousness of our grandchildren to flicker like lightning back and forth across the face of the planet..

Praeger got up from his bunk and made his way back to the watch room. He was glad now to get away from his own thoughts and return to the visual stimulation of the watch screens. Soon he would be talking to Julian again; they would share each other’s friendship in the universe of the spoken word as they shared a silent past every rime they looked at each other across the void.

Julian’s large green eyes reminded him each rime of the view out by Neptune, the awesome size of the sea green giant, the ship outlined against it, and the fuel tank near it blossoming into a red rose, silently; the first ship had been tom in half. Julian had been in space, coming over to Praeger’s command ship when it happened, to pick up a spare part for the radio-telescope.
They
blamed Julian because
they
had to blame someone. After all, he had been in command. Chances were that something had already gone wrong, and that nothing could have stopped it; and only one man had been lost.

Julian and Praeger were barred from taking any more missions, unfairly, they thought. There were none coming up that either of them would have been interested in anyway, but at the time they put up a fight. Some fool official said publicly that they were unfit to represent mankind beyond the solar system—a silly thing to say, especially when the UN had just put a ban on extra-solar activities. They were threatened with dishonorable discharges, but they were world heroes; the publicity would have been embarrassing.

Julian believed that most of mankind was unfit for just about everything. With his small fortune and the backing of patrons he built his bubble station, number 233 in the registry; his occupation now was “sculptor,” and the tax people came to talk to him every year. To Julian Earth was a mudball, where ten per cent of the people lived off the labor of the other ninety percent. Oh, the brave ones shine, he told Praeger once, but the initiative that should have taken men to the stars had been ripped out of men’s hearts. The whole star system was rotting, overblown with grasping things living in their own wastes. The promise of ancient myths, three thousand years old, had not been fulfilled ...

In the watch room Praeger watched the delicate clouds which enveloped the earth. He could feel the silence, and the slowness of the changing patterns was reassuring. Given time and left alone, the air would clear itself of all man-made wastes, the rivers would run clear again, and the oceans would regain their abundance of living things.