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head, but I wonder if anyone ever gets really good at it.
"So he's working on immortality?" I asked.
"Of a sort. The oldest people around now are pushing three
hundred. Most people think there's a limit on how long the
human brain can be patched up in one way or another. But if you
could make a perfect record of everything a human being is, and
dump it into another brain . . ."
"Yeah . . . but Andrew is dead. This thing . . . even if
it was a better copy, it still wouldn't be Andrew. Would it?"
"Hey, Hildy," Andrew said. When I turned to face him I got
a big glob of cold, canned beef stew right in the kisser.
He never looked more like an ape as he capered around his
cell, hugging himself, bent over with laughter. It showed no
signs of stopping. And the funny thing was, after a brief flash
of homicidal intent, I found it impossible to hate him.
Whatever the CC had left out of this man, he was not evil, as I
had first thought. He was childish and completely impulsive.
Some sort of governor had not been copied right; his conscience
had been smudged in transmission, there was static in his
self-control. Think of it, do it. A simple philosophy.
"Come on next door," Smith said, after giving me some help
getting the worst mess off me. "You can clean up there, and I
have something to show you."
So we went through the null-field again--Andrew was still
laughing--walked eight or nine steps further to cell #9, and
stepped in.
And who should I see there but Aladdin, he of the magic
lungs, standing on this side of a barred cell identical to the
one we'd just left. Only this one was not occupied, and the
door stood open.
"Who's this one for?" I asked. "And what's Aladdin doing
here?" Some days I'm quick, but this didn't seem to be one of
them.
"There's no assigned occupant yet, Hildy," Smith said,
displaying something that had once been a flashlight but had
now folded out into what just had to be a Heinleiner weapon--it
had that gimcrack look. "We're going to ask you some questions.
Not many, but the answers may take a while, so get comfortable.
Aladdin's here to remove your null-suit generator if we don't
like the answers."
There was a long, awkward silence. Being held at gunpoint
is not something any of us had much experience of, from either
end of the gun. It's a social situation you don't run into
often. Try it at your next party, see how the guests handle it.
To their credit, I don't think they liked it much more
than me.
"What do you want to know?"
"Start with all your dealings with the Central Computer
over the last three years."
So I told them everything.
#
Gretel, that sweet child, would have invited me in the
first weekend, as it turned out. It was Smith and his friends
who held up the approval. They were checking me out, and their
resources for doing so were formidable. I'd been watched in
Texas. My background had been researched. As I went along there
were a few times when I missed this or that detail, and I was
always corrected. To lie would have been futile . . . and
besides, I didn't want to lie. If anyone had the answers to the
questions I'd been asking myself about the CC, it was surely
these people. I wanted to help them by telling everything I
knew.
I don't want to make this sound more dire than it actually
was. Fairly early we all relaxed. The flashlight was re-folded
and put away. If they'd been really suspicious of me I'd have
been brought here on my first visit, but after the things they
had told me it was only prudent for them to interrogate me in
the way they did.
The thing that had upset them was my suicide attempt on
the surface. It had left behind physical evidence, in the form
of a ruptured faceplate, and set them to wondering if I had
really died up there.
And as I continued talking about it a disturbing thing
occurred to me: what if I had?
How could I ever know, really? If the CC could record my
memories and play them back into a cloned body, would I feel
any different than I did then? I couldn't think of a test to
check it, not one I could do myself. I found myself hoping they
had one. No such luck.
"I'm not worried about that, Hildy," Smith said, when I
brought it up. In retrospect, maybe that wasn't a smart thing
to do, pointing out that they couldn't be sure of me, either,
but it didn't matter, since they'd already thought of it and
made up their minds. "If the CC has gotten that good, then
we're licked already."
"Besides," Aladdin put in, "if he's that good, what
difference would it make?"
"It could be important if he'd left a posthypnotic
suggestion," Smith said. "A perfect copy of Hildy, with a
buried injunction to spy on us and spill her guts when she went
back to King City."
"I hadn't thought of that," Aladdin said, looking as if he
wished the flashlight hadn't been put away so hastily.
"As I said, if he's that good we might as well give up."
He stood, and stretched. "No, my friends. At some point you
have to stop the tests. At some point you just have to go with
your feelings. I'm very sorry to have done this to you, Hildy,
it's against all I believe in. Your personal life should be
your own. But we're engaged in a quiet war here. No battles
have been fought, but the enemy is constantly feeling us out.
The best we can do is be like a turtle, pull into a shell he
can't penetrate. I'm sorry."
"It's okay. I wanted to talk about it, anyway."
He held out his hand, and I took it, and for the first
time in many, many years, I felt like I belonged to something.
I wanted to shout "Death to the CC!" Unfortunately, the
Heinleiners were short on slogans, membership badges, that sort
of thing. I sort of doubted I'd be offered a uniform.
Hell, they didn't even have a secret handshake. But I
accepted the ordinary one I was offered gratefully. I was in.
=*= =*= =*= =*=
What did you do during the Big Glitch?
It's an interesting question from several angles. If I'd
asked what you were doing when you heard Silvio had been
assassinated, I'd get back a variety of answers, but a minute
after you heard ninety-nine percent of you were glued to the
newspad (twenty-seven percent to the Nipple). It's the same for
other large, important events, the kind that shape our lives.
But each of you will have a different story about the Glitch.
The story will start like this:
Something major in your life suffered a malfunction of
some kind. Depending on what it was, you called the
repair-person or the police or simply started screaming bloody
murder. The next thing you did (99.99 percent of you, anyway),
was turn on your newspad to see what the hell was happening.
You turned it on, and you got . . . nothing.
Our age is not simply information-rich. It's
information-saturated. We expect that information to be
delivered as regularly as the oxygen we breathe, and tend to
forget the delivery is as much at the mercy of fallible
machines as is the air. We view it as only slightly less
important than air. Two seconds of down-time on one of the
major pads will generate hundreds of thousands of complaints.
Irate calls, furious threats to cancel subscriptions.
Frightened calls. Panicky calls. To turn on the pad and get
nothing but white noise and fuzz is Luna's equivalent of a
planet-wide earthquake. We expect our info-nets to be
comprehensive, ubiquitous, and global, and we expect it right
now.
To this day, the Big Glitch is the mainstay of the
counseling industry in Luna. Those who deal in crisis
management have found it a fabulous meal ticket that shows no
signs of expiring. They rate it higher, in terms of stress
produced, than being the victim of violent assault, or the loss
of a parent.
One of the things that made it so stressful was that
everyone's experience was different. When your world-view, your
opinions and the "facts" you base them on, the events that have
shaped our collective consciousness, what you like (because
everyone else does) and what you don't like (ditto), all come
over that all-pervasive newspad, you're a bit at sea when the
pad goes down and you suddenly have to react for yourself. No
news of how people in Arkytown are taking it. No endless
replays of the highlights. No pundits to tell you what to think
about it, what people are doing about it (so you can do the
same). You're on your own, pal. Good luck. Oh, and by the way,
if you choose wrong, it can kill you, buddy.
The Glitch is the one big event where nobody saw the whole
thing in an overview provided by experts whose job it is to
trim the story down to a size that will fit a pad. Everybody
saw just a little piece of it, their own piece. Almost none of
those pieces really mattered in the larger scheme of things.
Mine didn't, either, though I was closer to the "center" of the
story, if it had a center, than most of you. Only a handful of
experts who finally brought it under control ever really knew
what was going on. Read their accounts, if you're qualified, if
you want to know what really went on. I've tried, and if you
can explain it to me please send a synopsis, twentyfive words
or less, all entries to be scrupulously ignored.
So know going in that I'm not going to provide many
technical details. Know that I'm not going to tell you much
about what went on behind the scenes; I'm as ignorant of it as
anyone else.
No, this is simply what happened to me during the Big
Glitch . . .
#
Afterwards, when it became necessary to talk about
Delambre and the colony of weirdos in residence there, the
newspads had to come up with a term everyone would recognize,
some sort of shorthand term for the place and the people. As
usual in these situations, there was a period of casting about
and market research, listening to what the people themselves
were calling it. I heard the place called a village, a warren,
and a refuge. My particular favorite was "termitarium." It
aptly described the random burrows in the Delambre trash heap.
Pads who didn't like the Heinleiners called the residents
a cabal. Pads who admired them referred to Delambre and the
ship as a Citadel. There was even confusion about the term
"Heinleiner." It meant, depending on who you were talking
about, either a political philosophy, a seriously crackpot
religion (eventually known as "Organized Heinleiners"), or the
practitioners of scientific civil disobedience loosely led by
V.M. Smith and a few others.
Simplicity eventually won out, and the R.A.H., the trash
pile adjacent to it, and certain caves and corridors that
linked the whole complex to the more orderly world came to be
called "Heinlein Town."
Simplicity has its virtues, but to call it a town was
stretching the definition.
There were forces other than the Heinleiners' militant
contrariness that worked against Heinlein Town ever fielding a
softball team, electing a dog catcher, or putting up signs at
the city limits-wherever those might be--saying Watch Us Grow!
Not all the "citizens" were engaged in the type of forbidden
research done by Smith and his offspring. Some were there
simply because they preferred to be isolated from a society
they found too constricting. But because a lot of illegal
things were going on, there had to be security, and the only
kind the Heinleiners would put up with was that afforded by
Smith's null-field barriers: the elect could just walk right
through it, while the un-washed found it impenetrable.
But the security also entailed some things even an
anarchist would find inconvenient.
The constriction most of these people were fleeing could
be summed up in two words: Central Computer. They didn't trust
it. They didn't like it peering into their lives twenty-four
hours a day. And the only way to keep it out was to keep it
completely out. The only thing that could do that was the
null-field and the related technologies it spun off, arcane
arts to which the CC had no key.
But no matter what your opinion of the CC, it is damn
useful. For instance, whatever line of work you are in, I'd be
willing to bet it would be difficult to do it without a
telephone. There were no telephones in Heinlein Town, or none
that reached the outside world, anyway. There was no way to
reach the planet-wide data net in any fashion, because all
methods of interfacing with it were as useful coming in as
going out. If Heinlein Town had one hard and fast rule it was
this: The CC shall extend no tentacle into the Delambre Enclave
(my own term for the loose community of trash-dwellers).
Hey, folks, people have to work. People who live
completely away from the traditional municipal services have an
even stronger work imperative. There was no oxygen dole in
Heinlein Town. If you stayed, and couldn't pay your air
assessment, you could damn well learn to breathe vacuum.
One result was that eighty percent of "Heinlein Town"
residents were no more resident than I was. I was a weekender
because I didn't want to give up my home and my place in Texas.
Most weekenders lived in King City and spent all their free
time in Delambre because they had to pay the bills and found it
impossible to earn any money in Heinlein Town. There were not
many full-time economic niches available, a fact that galled
the Heinleiners no end.
Heinlein Town? Here's what it was really like:
There were half a dozen places with enough people living
close by to qualify as towns or villages. The largest of these
was Virginia City, which had as many as five hundred residents.
Strangeland was almost as big. Both towns had sprung up because
of an accident of the process of waste disposal: a few score
very large tin cans had been jumbled together at these
locations, and they were useful for living and farming. By
large, I mean up to a thousand meters in length, half that in
diameter. I think they had been strap-on fuel tanks at one
time. The Heinleiners had bored holes to connect them,
pressurized them, and moved in like poor relations. Instant
slum.
You couldn't help being reminded of Bedrock, though these
people were often quite prosperous. There were no zoning
regulations that didn't relate to health and safety. Sewage
treatment was taken seriously, for instance, not only because
they didn't want the place to stink like Bedrock but because
they didn't have access to the bounty of King City municipal
water. What they had had been trucked in, and it was endlessly
re-used. But they didn't understand the concept of a public
eyesore. If you wanted to string a line across one of the tanks
and hang your laundry on it, it's a free country, ain't it? If
you thought manufacturing toxic gases in your kitchen was a
good idea, go ahead, cobber, but don't have an accident,
because civil liability in Heinlein Town could include the
death penalty.
Nobody really owned land in Delambre, in the sense of
having a deed or title (hold on, Mr. H., don't spin in your
grave yet), but if you moved into a place nobody was using, it
was yours. If you wanted to call an entire million-gallon tank
home, that was fine. Just put up a sign saying KEEP OUT and it
had the force of law. There was plenty of space to go around.
Everything was private enterprise, often a cooperative of
some kind. I met three people who made a living by running the
sewers in the three biggest enclaves, and selling water and
fertilizer to farmers. You paid through the nose to hook up,
and it was worth it, because who wants to handle every detail
of daily life? Many of the largest roads were tollways. Oxygen
was un-metered, but paid for by a monthly fee to the only real
civic agency the Heinleiners tolerated: the Oxygen Board.
Electricity was so cheap it was free. Just hook a line
into the main.
And here's the real secret of Mr. Smith's success, the
reason a fairly unlikable man like him was held in such high
esteem in the community. He didn't charge for the null-field
jig-saw network that hermetically sealed Heinlein Town off from
the rest of Luna--that had made their way of life possible. If
you wanted to homestead a new area of Delambre, you first
rented a tunneling machine from the people who found, repaired,
and maintained them. When you had your tunnel, you installed
the tanks, solar panels, and heaters of the ALU's every hundred
meters, then you went to Mr. Smith for the null-field
generators. He handed them out free.
He had every right to charge for them, of course, and nary
a Heinleiner would have complained. But just so you don't think
he was a goddamcommunist, I should point out that while he gave
away the units, he didn't give away the science. The first
thing he told you when he handed you a generator was, "You fuck
with this, you go boom." Years ago somebody hadn't believed
him, had tried to open one up and see what made the pretty
music, and sort of fell inside the generator. There was a
witness, who swore the fellow was quickly spit back out--and
how he ever fell into a device no bigger than a football was a
source of wonder in itself--but when he came out, he was
inverted, sort of like a dirty sock. He actually lived for a
little while, and they put him in the public square of Virginia
City as a demonstration of the fruits of hubris.
So there you have the economic, technical, and behavioral
forces that shaped the little hamlet of Virginia City, as
surely as rivers, harbors, railroads and climate shaped cities
of Old Earth. Since no pictures of the place have yet been
allowed out by the residents, since I've gathered that, to most
people, "Heinlein Town" conjures thoughts of either troglodyte
caverns dripping slime and infested with bats or of some
superslick, super-efficient techno-wonderland, I thought I
should set the record straight.
To visualize the public square in Virginia City, think of
a brighter, cleaner version of Robinson Park in Bedrock. On a
smaller scale. There was the same curving roof, the same stingy
acre of grass and trees in the center, and the same jumble of
packing crates stacked higgledypiggledy around the green acre.
Both of them just grew that way--Robinson Park in spite of the
law, Virginia City because of the lack of it. In both places
squatters appropriated discarded shipping containers, cut
windows and doors, and hung their hats in them. There and in
Bedrock the residents didn't give a hoot for stacking the damn
thing warehouse-fashion, in neat, squared-up rows. The result
was sort of like a pueblo mud dwelling, but not nearly so
orderly, with long crates spanning empty space or jutting out
crazily, ladders leaning everywhere.
There the resemblance ended. Inside the Bedrock hovels
you'd be lucky to find a burlap rug and spare pair of socks;
the Heinleiner modules were gaily painted and furnished, with
here a window box full of geraniums and there a rooftop pigeon
pen. The lawn in Virginia City was golfgreen trim and trash
free. Bedrockers tended to stack themselves twenty or thirty
deep, until whole impromptu skyscrapers toppled. None of the
Virginia City dwellings were more than six crates from the
floor.
The square was the hub of commerce in Delambre, with more
shops and cottage industry than anywhere else. I usually went
there first on my weekend visits because it was a good place to
meet people, and because my peripatetic guides and shameless
mooches, Hansel, Gretel, and Libby, were sure to pass through
on a Saturday morning and see if they could hit up good ol'
Hildy for a Double-fudge 'n' Rum Raisin Banana Split at Aunt
Hazel's Ice Cream Emporium and While-U-Wait Surgery Shoppe.
On the day in question, the day of the Big Glitch, I had
parked my by-now quite considerable tuchis in one of the canvas
chairs set out on the public walk at that establishment. I
nursed a cup of coffee. There would be plenty of ice cream to
eat when the children arrived, and I had no particular taste
for it. I'd made worse sacrifices in pursuit of a story.
Each of the four tables at Hazel's had a canvas umbrella
sprouting from the center, very useful for keeping off the rain
and the sun. I scanned the skies, looking for signs of a
cloudburst. Nope, looked like another day of curved metal roofs
and suspended arc-lights. You can't beat the weather inside an
abandoned fuel tank.
I looked out over the square. In the center was a statue,
a bit larger than life-size, of a cat, sitting on a low stone
plinth. I had no idea what that was all about. The only other
item of civic works visible was a lot less obscure. It was a
gallows, sitting off to one side of the square. I'd been told
it had only been used once. I was glad to hear the event had
not been wellattended. Some aspects of Heinleinism were easier
to like than others.
"What the hell are you doing here, Hildy?" I heard myself
say. Someone at a neighboring table looked up, then back down
at her sundae. So the pregnant lady was muttering to herself;
so what? It's a free planet. From beneath the table I heard a
familiar wet smacking sound, looked down, saw Winston had
lifted one bleary eye to see if food was coming. I nudged him
with my toe and he sprawled sybaritically on his back, inviting
more intimacy than I had any intention of giving. When no more
attention came, he went to sleep in that position.
"Let's look this situation over," I said. This time
neither Winston nor the lover of hot fudge looked up, but I
decided to continue my monologue internally, and it went
something like this:
What with umpty-ump suicide attempts, Hildy, it's been
what you might call a bad year.
You greeted the appearance of the Silver Girl with the
loud hosannas of a Lost Soul who has Seen The Light.
You brought her to ground, using fine journalistic
instincts honed by more years than you care to remember--helped
by the fact that she wasn't exactly trying to stay hidden.
And--yea verily!--she was what you'd hoped she'd be: the
key to a place where people were not content to coast along,
year to year, in the little puddle of light and heat known as
the Solar System, evicted from our home planet, cozened by a
grand Fairy Godfather of our own creation who made life easier
for us than it had ever been in the history of the species, and
who was capable of things few of us knew or cared about. Let me
hear you say amen!
Amen!
So then . . . so then . . .
Once you've got the story a certain postreportoral
depression always sets in. You have a smoke, pull on your
shoes, go home. You start looking for the next story. You don't
try to live in the story.
And why not? Because covering any story, whether it be the
Flacks and Silvio or V.M. Smith and his merry band, just showed
you more people, and I was beginning to fear that my problem
was simply that I'd had it with people. I'd set out looking for
a sign, and what I'd found was a story. The Angel Moroni
materialized out of good old flash powder, and was held up with
wires. The burning bush smelled of kerosene. Ezekiel's wheel,
flashing across the sky? Look closely. Is that bits of pie
crust on it, or what?
How can you say that, Hildy? I protested. (And the lady
with the sundae got up and moved to another table, so maybe the
monologue wasn't as interior as I had hoped. Maybe it was about
to get positively Shakespearean and I would stand up on my
chair and commit a soliloquy. To be or not to be!) After all (I
went on, more calmly), he's building a starship.
Well . . . yeah. And his daughter is building pigs with
wings, and maybe they'll both fly, but my money was on needing
protection from falling pigshit before I held an interstellar
boarding pass in my hand.
Yeah, but . . . well, they're resisting in here. They
don't kow-tow to the CC. Not two weeks ago you were moved
almost to tears to be accepted among them. Now we'll do
something about the CC, you thought.
Sure. One of these days.
Two things had come clear to me once the fuzzyheaded
camaraderie had worn off and my cynicism reasserted itself. One
was that the Heinleiners were as capable of lollygagging
procrastination as anyone else. Aladdin had admitted to me that
the resistance was mostly a passive thing, keeping the CC out
rather than bearding him in his lair, mostly because no one had
much of a clue as to how to go about the latter. So they all
figured they'd take the fight to him . . . when they felt like
it. Meantime, they did what we all did about insurmountable
problems: they didn't think about it.
The second thing I realized was that, if the CC wanted to
be in Heinlein Town, he would be in Heinlein Town.
I wasn't privy to all their secrets. I didn't know
anything of the machinations that had brought the
MacDonald-clone to Minamata, nor much of anything else about
just how hard the CC was trying to penetrate the little
Heinleiner enclave. But even such as me could tell it would be
easy to get a spy in here. Hell, Liz had visited the previous
week-end, with me, and had been admitted solely on the strength
of her reputation as a person of known Heinleiner tendencies.
Some sorts of checks were run, I'm sure, but I would bet
anything the CC could get around them if he wanted to
infiltrate a spy.
No, the CC was surely curious about these people, and no
doubt frustrated, but the CC was a strange being. Whatever
cryogenic turmoil was currently animating his massive brain was
and probably would remain a mystery to me. It was clear that
things were going wrong, or he'd never have been able to
over-ride his programming and do the things he'd done to me.
But it was equally clear that most of his programming was still
intact, or he'd simply have kicked down the front door of this
place and marched everyone off for trial.
Having said all that, why the disillusion, Hildy?
Two reasons. Unreasonable expectations: in spite of all
good sense, I had hoped these people would be somehow better
than other people. They weren't. They just had different ideas.
And two, I didn't fit. They didn't need reporters in here.
Gossip sufficed. Teaching was taken very seriously; no
dilettantes need apply. The only other thing I was interested
in was building a starship, and I'd be about as useful as a
kewpie with a slide rule.
"Three reasons," I said. "You're depressed, too."
"Don't be," Libby said. "I'm here."
I looked up and saw him sit down after first carefully
placing a dish oozing with chocolate, caramel, and melting ice
cream on the table in front of him. He reached down and
scratched Winston's head. The dog licked his nose, sniffed, and
went back to sleep, ice cream being one of the few foodstuffs
he had little interest in. Libby grinned at me.
"Hope I didn't keep you waiting too long," he said.
"No problem. Where's H & G?"
"They said they'd be along later. Liz is back, though." I
saw her approaching across the village green. She had a bottle
in one hand. The Heinleiners made their own booze, naturally,
and Liz had professed to like it on her earlier visit. Probably
that little dab of kerosene they added for flavor.
"Can't stay, folks, can't stay, gotta run," she said, just
as if I'd urged her to stick around. She produced a folding cup
from her gunbelt and poured a shot of pure Virginia City
Bonded, tossed it down. It wasn't the first of the day.
That's right, I said gunbelt. Liz had taken to Heinlein
Town from the first moment I brought her in, because it was the
only place outside of the movie studios where she worked that
she could wear a gun. But in here she could load it with real
bullets. She currently sported a matched pair of Colt .45's,
with pearl handles.
"I was hoping we could go do some shooting," Libby said.
"Not today, sweetie. I just dropped by to get a bottle,
and retrieve my dog. Next weekend, I promise. But you buy the
lead."
"Sure."
"Has he been a good dog?" Liz cooed, crouching down and
scratching his back, almost toppling over in the process. She
was probably talking to Winston, but I told her he'd been good,
anyway. She didn't seem to hear.
Libby leaned a little closer to me and looked at me with
concern.
"Are you really feeling depressed?" he asked. He put his
hand on mine.
All I really needed at that point in my life was another
case of puppy love, but that's just what had happened. At the
rate he was going, pretty soon he'd be humping my leg, like
Winston.
For pity sake, Hildy, give it a rest.
"Just a little blue," I said, putting on a smile for him.
"How come?"
"Wondering where my life is going."
He looked blankly at me. I'd seen the same expression on
Brenda's face when I said something incomprehensible to one who
sees nothing but endless, unlimited vistas stretching ahead.
Charitably, I didn't kick him. Instead, I removed my hand from
under his, patted his hand, and finally noticed the disturbance
going on under the table.
"Problems, Liz?" I asked.
"I think he wants to stay here." She had attached a leash
to his collar and was tugging on it, but he had planted his
forepaws and dug in. Forget mules; if you want a metaphor for
stubbornness, you need look no farther than the English
Bulldog.
"You could pick him up," Libby suggested.
"If I had no further use for my face," she agreed. "Also
arms, legs, and ass. Winston's slow to anger, but he's worth
seeing when he gets there." She stood, hands on hips in
frustration, and her dog rolled over on his back and went to
sleep again. "Damn, Hildy, he surely must like you."
I thought what he liked was hunting live prey-horses and
cows, mostly, though recently a kewpie had gone missing. But I
didn't mention that. Not for Libby's tender ears.
"It's okay, Liz," I said. "He's not much trouble. I'll
just keep him this weekend and drop him by your place on my way
home."
"Well, sure, but . . . I mean I'd planned to . . ." She
groped around a little more, then poured herself another drink
and made it vanish.
"Right," she said. "See you later, Hildy." She slapped my
shoulder in passing, then took off across the green.
"What was that all about?" Libby asked.
"You never know with Liz."
"Is she really the Queen of England?"
"Yep. And I am the ruler of the Queen's navee!"
He got that blank look, field-tested and honed to
perfection by Brenda, then shrugged and applied himself to
demolishing the melting mess in front of him. I guess Gilbert
and Sullivan was too much even for a Heinleiner youth.
"Well . . ." he said, wiping his mouth on the back of his
hand, "she sure can shoot, I've gotta say that."
"I wouldn't get into a fistfight with her either, if I was
you."
"But she drinks too much."
"Amen to that. I'd hate to have to pay her
liver-replacement tab."
He leaned back in his chair, looking well satisfied with
life.
"So. You taking me back to Texas this Sunday evening?"
In a weak moment I'd promised to show all three children
where I lived. Hansel and Gretel seemed to have forgotten about
it, but not Libby. I'd have taken him, but I was pretty sure
I'd spend most of my time fighting him off, and I just wasn't
up to it.
"Afraid not. I've got too many test papers to grade. All
this traveling to and from Delambre's gotten me far behind in
my teaching duties."
He tried not to show his disappointment.
"Next time," I told him.
"Sure," he said. "Then what do you want to do today?"
"I really don't know, Libby. I've seen the stardrive, and
I didn't understand it. I've seen the farm, and Minamata, and
I've seen the spider people." I'd seen even more wonders than
that, some of them unmentioned here because of promises I made,
others for reasons of security, and most because they simply
weren't that interesting. Even a community of wild-eyed genius
experimenters is going to lay some eggs. "What do you think we
should do?"
He thought it over.
"There's a baseball game over in Strangeland in about an
hour."
I laughed.
"Sure," I said. "I haven't watched one in years."
"You can watch if you want," he said. "I meant, we sort of
choose up sides, you know, depending on how many people show up
. . ."
"A pick-up game. I thought you meant, like--"
"No, we don't have--"
"--the Heinleiner Tanstaafl's against the King City--"
"--that many people in here."
"Forgive me. I'm still a big-city girl, I guess. You need
an umpire?" I smacked my bloated belly. "I brought my own
pads."
He grinned, opened his mouth, and said "We could everybody
freeze, and nobody will get hurt."
At least that's what it sounded like to me, for a split
second, before the synapses sorted themselves out and I saw the
last seven words had come from a tall, bulky party in an
alarming but effective costume, holding a rifle in one hand and
a bullhorn in the other.
Once I spotted him, I quickly saw about a dozen others
like him and the same number of King City police, moving across
the square in a ragged skirmish line. The cops had drawn
handguns, something seldom seen on Luna. The others had big
projectile weapons or hand-held lasers.
"What the hell are they?" Libby asked. We'd both stood up,
like most of the other people I could see.
"I'd guess they were soldiers," I said.
"But that's crazy. Luna doesn't have an army."
"Looks like we got one when we weren't looking."
And quite a bunch they were, too. The KC cops were equally
men and women, the "soldiers" were all male, and all large.
They wore black: jumpsuits, equipment belts, huge ornate crash
helmets with tinted visors, boots. The belts were hung with
things that might have been hand grenades, ammunition clips, or
high-tech pencil sharpeners, for all I could tell.
It later turned out they were mostly props. The costumes
had been rented from a film studio, since the non-existent Army
of Luna had nothing to offer in the way of super-macho display.
They came in our general direction. When they encountered
people they pushed them to the floor and the cops started
patting them down for weapons, and slipping on handcuffs. The
soldiers kept on moving, swinging the muzzles of their weapons
this way and that, looking quite pleased with themselves, all
to the booming accompaniment of more orders from the bullhorn.
"What should we do, Hildy?" Libby asked, his voice
shaking.
"I think it's best if we do what they say," I said,
quietly, patting his shoulder to settle him down. "Don't worry,
I know a good lawyer."
"Are they going to arrest us?"
"Looks like it."
A cop and a soldier marched up to us and the soldier
looked at a datapad in his hand, then at my face.
"Are you Maria Cabrini, also known as Hildegarde Johnson?"
"I'm Hildy Johnson."
"Cuff her," he told the cop. He turned away as the
policewoman started toward me, and as Libby moved to put
himself between me and the cop.
"You keep your hands off her," Libby said, and the soldier
pivoted easily and brought up the butt of his gun and smashed
it into the side of Libby's face. I could hear his jaw shatter.
He fell to the ground, totally limp. As I stared down at him,
Winston waddled out from under the table and sniffed his face.
The cop was saying something angry to the soldier, but I
was too stunned to hear what it was.
"Just do it," the soldier snarled at her, and I started to
kneel beside Libby but the cop grabbed my arm and pulled me up.
She snapped one cuff over my left wrist, still looking at the
retreating back of the soldier.
"He can't get away with that," she said, more to herself
than to me. She reached for my other hand and it finally sunk
in that this was more than a normal arrest situation, that
things were out of joint, and that maybe I ought to resist,
because if a big ape could just club a young boy senseless
something was going on here that I didn't understand.
So I yanked my right hand away and started to run but she
was way ahead of me, twisting my left hand hard until I ended
up bent over the table with her behind me, pressing my face
into the remains of Libby's sundae. I kept fighting to keep my
right hand free and she jerked me upright by my hair, and she
screamed, and let go of me.
They tell me Winston came off the ground like a squat
rocket, that great vise of a jaw open wide, and clamped it shut
on her forearm, breaking her grip on me and knocking her to the
ground. I fell over myself, and landed on my butt, from which
position I watched in horrified fascination as Winston made
every effort to tear the limb from its socket.
I hope I never see anything like that again. Winston
couldn't have massed a seventh as much as the policewoman, but
he jerked her around like a rag doll. His jaws opened only
enough to get a better grip in a different place. Even over the
sound of her screams I could hear the bones crunching.
Now the soldier was coming back, raising his rifle as he
came, and now a shot rang out and blood sprayed from the front
of his chest, and again, and once more, and he fell on his
face, hard, and didn't move. Then everybody was firing at once
and I crawled under the metal table as lead slugs screamed all
around me.
The fire was concentrated at first on a window high in the
stack of apartment crates surrounding the square. Part of the
wall vanished in plastic splinters, then a red line thrust into
the wreckage and something bloomed orange flame. I saw more gun
barrels sticking out of more windows, saw another soldier go
down with the lower part of his leg blown off, saw him turn as
he fell and start firing at another window.
In seconds it seemed I was the only person there who
didn't have a weapon. I saw a Heinleiner crouched behind the
gallows, snapping off shots with a handgun. His null-suit was
turned on, coating him in silver. I saw him hit by a half a
clip from an automatic rifle. He froze. I don't mean he stood
still; he froze, like a chromium statue, toppled with bullets
still whanging off of him, rolled over on his back, still in
the same attitude. Then his null-suit switched off and he tried
to get up, but was hit by three more bullets. His skin had
turned lobster-red.
I didn't understand that, and I didn't have time to think
about it. People were still running for cover, so I did, too,
past overturned tables and chairs and the dead body of a King
City policeman, into Aunt Hazel's shop. I scurried around and
crouched behind the counter, intending to stay there until
someone came to explain what the hell was going on.
But the itch is buried deep, and makes you do stupid
things when you least expect it. If you've never been a
reporter, you wouldn't understand. I raised my head and looked
over the counter.
I can replay the tape from my holocam and say exactly what
happened, in what order, who did what to whom, but you don't
live it that way. You retain some very vivid impressions, in no
particular order, with gaps between when you don't have any
idea what happened. I saw people running. I saw people cut
almost in half by lasers, ripped by bullets. I heard screams
and shouts and explosions, and I smelled gunpowder and burning
plastic. I suppose every battlefield has looked and sounded and
smelled pretty much the same.
I couldn't see Libby, didn't know if he was dead or alive.
He wasn't where he had fallen. I did see more cops and soldiers
arriving from some of the feeder tunnels.
Something crashed through the windows in front, something
large, and tumbled over the ice cream freezers there, turning
one of them over. I crouched down, and when I looked up again
there was the policewoman, Winston still attached to her arm,
which was in danger of coming off.
It was a scene from hell. Crazed by pain, the woman was
swinging her arm wildly, trying to get the dog to let go.
Winston was having none of it. Bleeding from many cuts, he
ignored everything but his inexorable grip. He'd been bred to
grab a bull by the nose and never let go; a K.C. policewoman
wasn't about to get free.
But now she was scrabbling for her holster, forgotten in
her fear and panic. She got her gun out and aimed it toward the
dog. Her first shot went wild, killing nothing but an ice cream
freezer. The second shot hit Winston in the left hind leg,
where it was thickest, and still the beast didn't let go. If
anything, he fought all the harder.
Her last shot hit him in the belly. He went
limp--everything but his jaw. Even in death he wasn't going to
let go.
She took aim at his head, and then slumped over, passed
out at last. It was probably for the best, because I think she
would have blown her own arm off, the way she had the gun
pointed.
Later, I felt sorry for her. At the time I was simply too
confused to feel much of anything but fear. I mourned Winston
later, too. He'd been trying to protect me, though I recall
thinking at the time that he'd over-reacted. She'd only been
trying to handcuff me, hadn't she?
And what about the soldiers? It had looked to me as if the
Heinleiners had fired the first shot. All sane reasoning would
lead me to think that, if that first soldier hadn't been hit,
this could all have ended peacefully at the jailhouse with a
lot of lawyers arguing, charges brought, countersuits filed.
I'd have been out on bail within a few hours.
Which was still what I'd have liked to have done, and
would have, but any fool could see things had gone too far for
that. If I stepped out waving a white flag I was pretty sure
I'd be killed, apologies sent to the next of kin. So Hildy, I
told myself, your first priority is to get out of here without
getting shot. Let the lawyers sort it out later, when the
bullets aren't flying.
With that end in mind, I started crawling toward the door.
My intent was to stick my head out, low, and see what stood
between me and the nearest exit. Which turned out to be a black
boot planted solidly in the doorway, almost under my nose by
the time I got there. I looked up the black-clad leg and into
the menacing face of a soldier. He was pointing a weapon at me,
some great bulky thing I thought might be a machine gun, whose
muzzle looked wide enough to spit baseballs.
"I'm unarmed," I said.
"That's the way I like 'em," he said, and flipped up his
visor with his thumb. There was something in his eyes I didn't
like. I mean, beyond everything else I didn't like about the
situation. Just a little touch of madness, I think.
He was a big man with a broad face entirely innocent of
any evidence of thought. But now a thought did flicker behind
those eyes, and his brow wrinkled.
"What's your name?"
"H . . . Helga Smith."
"Nah," he said, and dug into a pocket for a datapad, which
he scanned with a thumb control until my lovely phiz smiled
back at us. He returned the smile, but I didn't, because his
smile was the worst news I'd had so far in a day filled with
bad news. "You're Hildy Johnson," he said, "and you're on the
death list so it don't matter what happens here, see?" And he
started working on his belt, one-handed, the other hand keeping
the gun pointed at my forehead.
I found myself getting detached from events. Maybe it was
a reflex action, something to distance oneself from an
abomination about to happen. Or maybe it was just too many
things that couldn't be happening. This can't be happening. I'd
silently shrieked it one too many times and now a mental
numbness was setting in. I ought to be thinking of something to
do. I ought to be talking to him, asking questions. Anything.
Instead, I just sat there, squatting on my heels, and felt as
if I'd like to go to sleep.
But my senses were heightened. They must have been,
because with all the shooting going on outside (how could he do
this in the middle of a war?), and over the scream of a dying
"So he's working on immortality?" I asked.
"Of a sort. The oldest people around now are pushing three
hundred. Most people think there's a limit on how long the
human brain can be patched up in one way or another. But if you
could make a perfect record of everything a human being is, and
dump it into another brain . . ."
"Yeah . . . but Andrew is dead. This thing . . . even if
it was a better copy, it still wouldn't be Andrew. Would it?"
"Hey, Hildy," Andrew said. When I turned to face him I got
a big glob of cold, canned beef stew right in the kisser.
He never looked more like an ape as he capered around his
cell, hugging himself, bent over with laughter. It showed no
signs of stopping. And the funny thing was, after a brief flash
of homicidal intent, I found it impossible to hate him.
Whatever the CC had left out of this man, he was not evil, as I
had first thought. He was childish and completely impulsive.
Some sort of governor had not been copied right; his conscience
had been smudged in transmission, there was static in his
self-control. Think of it, do it. A simple philosophy.
"Come on next door," Smith said, after giving me some help
getting the worst mess off me. "You can clean up there, and I
have something to show you."
So we went through the null-field again--Andrew was still
laughing--walked eight or nine steps further to cell #9, and
stepped in.
And who should I see there but Aladdin, he of the magic
lungs, standing on this side of a barred cell identical to the
one we'd just left. Only this one was not occupied, and the
door stood open.
"Who's this one for?" I asked. "And what's Aladdin doing
here?" Some days I'm quick, but this didn't seem to be one of
them.
"There's no assigned occupant yet, Hildy," Smith said,
displaying something that had once been a flashlight but had
now folded out into what just had to be a Heinleiner weapon--it
had that gimcrack look. "We're going to ask you some questions.
Not many, but the answers may take a while, so get comfortable.
Aladdin's here to remove your null-suit generator if we don't
like the answers."
There was a long, awkward silence. Being held at gunpoint
is not something any of us had much experience of, from either
end of the gun. It's a social situation you don't run into
often. Try it at your next party, see how the guests handle it.
To their credit, I don't think they liked it much more
than me.
"What do you want to know?"
"Start with all your dealings with the Central Computer
over the last three years."
So I told them everything.
#
Gretel, that sweet child, would have invited me in the
first weekend, as it turned out. It was Smith and his friends
who held up the approval. They were checking me out, and their
resources for doing so were formidable. I'd been watched in
Texas. My background had been researched. As I went along there
were a few times when I missed this or that detail, and I was
always corrected. To lie would have been futile . . . and
besides, I didn't want to lie. If anyone had the answers to the
questions I'd been asking myself about the CC, it was surely
these people. I wanted to help them by telling everything I
knew.
I don't want to make this sound more dire than it actually
was. Fairly early we all relaxed. The flashlight was re-folded
and put away. If they'd been really suspicious of me I'd have
been brought here on my first visit, but after the things they
had told me it was only prudent for them to interrogate me in
the way they did.
The thing that had upset them was my suicide attempt on
the surface. It had left behind physical evidence, in the form
of a ruptured faceplate, and set them to wondering if I had
really died up there.
And as I continued talking about it a disturbing thing
occurred to me: what if I had?
How could I ever know, really? If the CC could record my
memories and play them back into a cloned body, would I feel
any different than I did then? I couldn't think of a test to
check it, not one I could do myself. I found myself hoping they
had one. No such luck.
"I'm not worried about that, Hildy," Smith said, when I
brought it up. In retrospect, maybe that wasn't a smart thing
to do, pointing out that they couldn't be sure of me, either,
but it didn't matter, since they'd already thought of it and
made up their minds. "If the CC has gotten that good, then
we're licked already."
"Besides," Aladdin put in, "if he's that good, what
difference would it make?"
"It could be important if he'd left a posthypnotic
suggestion," Smith said. "A perfect copy of Hildy, with a
buried injunction to spy on us and spill her guts when she went
back to King City."
"I hadn't thought of that," Aladdin said, looking as if he
wished the flashlight hadn't been put away so hastily.
"As I said, if he's that good we might as well give up."
He stood, and stretched. "No, my friends. At some point you
have to stop the tests. At some point you just have to go with
your feelings. I'm very sorry to have done this to you, Hildy,
it's against all I believe in. Your personal life should be
your own. But we're engaged in a quiet war here. No battles
have been fought, but the enemy is constantly feeling us out.
The best we can do is be like a turtle, pull into a shell he
can't penetrate. I'm sorry."
"It's okay. I wanted to talk about it, anyway."
He held out his hand, and I took it, and for the first
time in many, many years, I felt like I belonged to something.
I wanted to shout "Death to the CC!" Unfortunately, the
Heinleiners were short on slogans, membership badges, that sort
of thing. I sort of doubted I'd be offered a uniform.
Hell, they didn't even have a secret handshake. But I
accepted the ordinary one I was offered gratefully. I was in.
=*= =*= =*= =*=
What did you do during the Big Glitch?
It's an interesting question from several angles. If I'd
asked what you were doing when you heard Silvio had been
assassinated, I'd get back a variety of answers, but a minute
after you heard ninety-nine percent of you were glued to the
newspad (twenty-seven percent to the Nipple). It's the same for
other large, important events, the kind that shape our lives.
But each of you will have a different story about the Glitch.
The story will start like this:
Something major in your life suffered a malfunction of
some kind. Depending on what it was, you called the
repair-person or the police or simply started screaming bloody
murder. The next thing you did (99.99 percent of you, anyway),
was turn on your newspad to see what the hell was happening.
You turned it on, and you got . . . nothing.
Our age is not simply information-rich. It's
information-saturated. We expect that information to be
delivered as regularly as the oxygen we breathe, and tend to
forget the delivery is as much at the mercy of fallible
machines as is the air. We view it as only slightly less
important than air. Two seconds of down-time on one of the
major pads will generate hundreds of thousands of complaints.
Irate calls, furious threats to cancel subscriptions.
Frightened calls. Panicky calls. To turn on the pad and get
nothing but white noise and fuzz is Luna's equivalent of a
planet-wide earthquake. We expect our info-nets to be
comprehensive, ubiquitous, and global, and we expect it right
now.
To this day, the Big Glitch is the mainstay of the
counseling industry in Luna. Those who deal in crisis
management have found it a fabulous meal ticket that shows no
signs of expiring. They rate it higher, in terms of stress
produced, than being the victim of violent assault, or the loss
of a parent.
One of the things that made it so stressful was that
everyone's experience was different. When your world-view, your
opinions and the "facts" you base them on, the events that have
shaped our collective consciousness, what you like (because
everyone else does) and what you don't like (ditto), all come
over that all-pervasive newspad, you're a bit at sea when the
pad goes down and you suddenly have to react for yourself. No
news of how people in Arkytown are taking it. No endless
replays of the highlights. No pundits to tell you what to think
about it, what people are doing about it (so you can do the
same). You're on your own, pal. Good luck. Oh, and by the way,
if you choose wrong, it can kill you, buddy.
The Glitch is the one big event where nobody saw the whole
thing in an overview provided by experts whose job it is to
trim the story down to a size that will fit a pad. Everybody
saw just a little piece of it, their own piece. Almost none of
those pieces really mattered in the larger scheme of things.
Mine didn't, either, though I was closer to the "center" of the
story, if it had a center, than most of you. Only a handful of
experts who finally brought it under control ever really knew
what was going on. Read their accounts, if you're qualified, if
you want to know what really went on. I've tried, and if you
can explain it to me please send a synopsis, twentyfive words
or less, all entries to be scrupulously ignored.
So know going in that I'm not going to provide many
technical details. Know that I'm not going to tell you much
about what went on behind the scenes; I'm as ignorant of it as
anyone else.
No, this is simply what happened to me during the Big
Glitch . . .
#
Afterwards, when it became necessary to talk about
Delambre and the colony of weirdos in residence there, the
newspads had to come up with a term everyone would recognize,
some sort of shorthand term for the place and the people. As
usual in these situations, there was a period of casting about
and market research, listening to what the people themselves
were calling it. I heard the place called a village, a warren,
and a refuge. My particular favorite was "termitarium." It
aptly described the random burrows in the Delambre trash heap.
Pads who didn't like the Heinleiners called the residents
a cabal. Pads who admired them referred to Delambre and the
ship as a Citadel. There was even confusion about the term
"Heinleiner." It meant, depending on who you were talking
about, either a political philosophy, a seriously crackpot
religion (eventually known as "Organized Heinleiners"), or the
practitioners of scientific civil disobedience loosely led by
V.M. Smith and a few others.
Simplicity eventually won out, and the R.A.H., the trash
pile adjacent to it, and certain caves and corridors that
linked the whole complex to the more orderly world came to be
called "Heinlein Town."
Simplicity has its virtues, but to call it a town was
stretching the definition.
There were forces other than the Heinleiners' militant
contrariness that worked against Heinlein Town ever fielding a
softball team, electing a dog catcher, or putting up signs at
the city limits-wherever those might be--saying Watch Us Grow!
Not all the "citizens" were engaged in the type of forbidden
research done by Smith and his offspring. Some were there
simply because they preferred to be isolated from a society
they found too constricting. But because a lot of illegal
things were going on, there had to be security, and the only
kind the Heinleiners would put up with was that afforded by
Smith's null-field barriers: the elect could just walk right
through it, while the un-washed found it impenetrable.
But the security also entailed some things even an
anarchist would find inconvenient.
The constriction most of these people were fleeing could
be summed up in two words: Central Computer. They didn't trust
it. They didn't like it peering into their lives twenty-four
hours a day. And the only way to keep it out was to keep it
completely out. The only thing that could do that was the
null-field and the related technologies it spun off, arcane
arts to which the CC had no key.
But no matter what your opinion of the CC, it is damn
useful. For instance, whatever line of work you are in, I'd be
willing to bet it would be difficult to do it without a
telephone. There were no telephones in Heinlein Town, or none
that reached the outside world, anyway. There was no way to
reach the planet-wide data net in any fashion, because all
methods of interfacing with it were as useful coming in as
going out. If Heinlein Town had one hard and fast rule it was
this: The CC shall extend no tentacle into the Delambre Enclave
(my own term for the loose community of trash-dwellers).
Hey, folks, people have to work. People who live
completely away from the traditional municipal services have an
even stronger work imperative. There was no oxygen dole in
Heinlein Town. If you stayed, and couldn't pay your air
assessment, you could damn well learn to breathe vacuum.
One result was that eighty percent of "Heinlein Town"
residents were no more resident than I was. I was a weekender
because I didn't want to give up my home and my place in Texas.
Most weekenders lived in King City and spent all their free
time in Delambre because they had to pay the bills and found it
impossible to earn any money in Heinlein Town. There were not
many full-time economic niches available, a fact that galled
the Heinleiners no end.
Heinlein Town? Here's what it was really like:
There were half a dozen places with enough people living
close by to qualify as towns or villages. The largest of these
was Virginia City, which had as many as five hundred residents.
Strangeland was almost as big. Both towns had sprung up because
of an accident of the process of waste disposal: a few score
very large tin cans had been jumbled together at these
locations, and they were useful for living and farming. By
large, I mean up to a thousand meters in length, half that in
diameter. I think they had been strap-on fuel tanks at one
time. The Heinleiners had bored holes to connect them,
pressurized them, and moved in like poor relations. Instant
slum.
You couldn't help being reminded of Bedrock, though these
people were often quite prosperous. There were no zoning
regulations that didn't relate to health and safety. Sewage
treatment was taken seriously, for instance, not only because
they didn't want the place to stink like Bedrock but because
they didn't have access to the bounty of King City municipal
water. What they had had been trucked in, and it was endlessly
re-used. But they didn't understand the concept of a public
eyesore. If you wanted to string a line across one of the tanks
and hang your laundry on it, it's a free country, ain't it? If
you thought manufacturing toxic gases in your kitchen was a
good idea, go ahead, cobber, but don't have an accident,
because civil liability in Heinlein Town could include the
death penalty.
Nobody really owned land in Delambre, in the sense of
having a deed or title (hold on, Mr. H., don't spin in your
grave yet), but if you moved into a place nobody was using, it
was yours. If you wanted to call an entire million-gallon tank
home, that was fine. Just put up a sign saying KEEP OUT and it
had the force of law. There was plenty of space to go around.
Everything was private enterprise, often a cooperative of
some kind. I met three people who made a living by running the
sewers in the three biggest enclaves, and selling water and
fertilizer to farmers. You paid through the nose to hook up,
and it was worth it, because who wants to handle every detail
of daily life? Many of the largest roads were tollways. Oxygen
was un-metered, but paid for by a monthly fee to the only real
civic agency the Heinleiners tolerated: the Oxygen Board.
Electricity was so cheap it was free. Just hook a line
into the main.
And here's the real secret of Mr. Smith's success, the
reason a fairly unlikable man like him was held in such high
esteem in the community. He didn't charge for the null-field
jig-saw network that hermetically sealed Heinlein Town off from
the rest of Luna--that had made their way of life possible. If
you wanted to homestead a new area of Delambre, you first
rented a tunneling machine from the people who found, repaired,
and maintained them. When you had your tunnel, you installed
the tanks, solar panels, and heaters of the ALU's every hundred
meters, then you went to Mr. Smith for the null-field
generators. He handed them out free.
He had every right to charge for them, of course, and nary
a Heinleiner would have complained. But just so you don't think
he was a goddamcommunist, I should point out that while he gave
away the units, he didn't give away the science. The first
thing he told you when he handed you a generator was, "You fuck
with this, you go boom." Years ago somebody hadn't believed
him, had tried to open one up and see what made the pretty
music, and sort of fell inside the generator. There was a
witness, who swore the fellow was quickly spit back out--and
how he ever fell into a device no bigger than a football was a
source of wonder in itself--but when he came out, he was
inverted, sort of like a dirty sock. He actually lived for a
little while, and they put him in the public square of Virginia
City as a demonstration of the fruits of hubris.
So there you have the economic, technical, and behavioral
forces that shaped the little hamlet of Virginia City, as
surely as rivers, harbors, railroads and climate shaped cities
of Old Earth. Since no pictures of the place have yet been
allowed out by the residents, since I've gathered that, to most
people, "Heinlein Town" conjures thoughts of either troglodyte
caverns dripping slime and infested with bats or of some
superslick, super-efficient techno-wonderland, I thought I
should set the record straight.
To visualize the public square in Virginia City, think of
a brighter, cleaner version of Robinson Park in Bedrock. On a
smaller scale. There was the same curving roof, the same stingy
acre of grass and trees in the center, and the same jumble of
packing crates stacked higgledypiggledy around the green acre.
Both of them just grew that way--Robinson Park in spite of the
law, Virginia City because of the lack of it. In both places
squatters appropriated discarded shipping containers, cut
windows and doors, and hung their hats in them. There and in
Bedrock the residents didn't give a hoot for stacking the damn
thing warehouse-fashion, in neat, squared-up rows. The result
was sort of like a pueblo mud dwelling, but not nearly so
orderly, with long crates spanning empty space or jutting out
crazily, ladders leaning everywhere.
There the resemblance ended. Inside the Bedrock hovels
you'd be lucky to find a burlap rug and spare pair of socks;
the Heinleiner modules were gaily painted and furnished, with
here a window box full of geraniums and there a rooftop pigeon
pen. The lawn in Virginia City was golfgreen trim and trash
free. Bedrockers tended to stack themselves twenty or thirty
deep, until whole impromptu skyscrapers toppled. None of the
Virginia City dwellings were more than six crates from the
floor.
The square was the hub of commerce in Delambre, with more
shops and cottage industry than anywhere else. I usually went
there first on my weekend visits because it was a good place to
meet people, and because my peripatetic guides and shameless
mooches, Hansel, Gretel, and Libby, were sure to pass through
on a Saturday morning and see if they could hit up good ol'
Hildy for a Double-fudge 'n' Rum Raisin Banana Split at Aunt
Hazel's Ice Cream Emporium and While-U-Wait Surgery Shoppe.
On the day in question, the day of the Big Glitch, I had
parked my by-now quite considerable tuchis in one of the canvas
chairs set out on the public walk at that establishment. I
nursed a cup of coffee. There would be plenty of ice cream to
eat when the children arrived, and I had no particular taste
for it. I'd made worse sacrifices in pursuit of a story.
Each of the four tables at Hazel's had a canvas umbrella
sprouting from the center, very useful for keeping off the rain
and the sun. I scanned the skies, looking for signs of a
cloudburst. Nope, looked like another day of curved metal roofs
and suspended arc-lights. You can't beat the weather inside an
abandoned fuel tank.
I looked out over the square. In the center was a statue,
a bit larger than life-size, of a cat, sitting on a low stone
plinth. I had no idea what that was all about. The only other
item of civic works visible was a lot less obscure. It was a
gallows, sitting off to one side of the square. I'd been told
it had only been used once. I was glad to hear the event had
not been wellattended. Some aspects of Heinleinism were easier
to like than others.
"What the hell are you doing here, Hildy?" I heard myself
say. Someone at a neighboring table looked up, then back down
at her sundae. So the pregnant lady was muttering to herself;
so what? It's a free planet. From beneath the table I heard a
familiar wet smacking sound, looked down, saw Winston had
lifted one bleary eye to see if food was coming. I nudged him
with my toe and he sprawled sybaritically on his back, inviting
more intimacy than I had any intention of giving. When no more
attention came, he went to sleep in that position.
"Let's look this situation over," I said. This time
neither Winston nor the lover of hot fudge looked up, but I
decided to continue my monologue internally, and it went
something like this:
What with umpty-ump suicide attempts, Hildy, it's been
what you might call a bad year.
You greeted the appearance of the Silver Girl with the
loud hosannas of a Lost Soul who has Seen The Light.
You brought her to ground, using fine journalistic
instincts honed by more years than you care to remember--helped
by the fact that she wasn't exactly trying to stay hidden.
And--yea verily!--she was what you'd hoped she'd be: the
key to a place where people were not content to coast along,
year to year, in the little puddle of light and heat known as
the Solar System, evicted from our home planet, cozened by a
grand Fairy Godfather of our own creation who made life easier
for us than it had ever been in the history of the species, and
who was capable of things few of us knew or cared about. Let me
hear you say amen!
Amen!
So then . . . so then . . .
Once you've got the story a certain postreportoral
depression always sets in. You have a smoke, pull on your
shoes, go home. You start looking for the next story. You don't
try to live in the story.
And why not? Because covering any story, whether it be the
Flacks and Silvio or V.M. Smith and his merry band, just showed
you more people, and I was beginning to fear that my problem
was simply that I'd had it with people. I'd set out looking for
a sign, and what I'd found was a story. The Angel Moroni
materialized out of good old flash powder, and was held up with
wires. The burning bush smelled of kerosene. Ezekiel's wheel,
flashing across the sky? Look closely. Is that bits of pie
crust on it, or what?
How can you say that, Hildy? I protested. (And the lady
with the sundae got up and moved to another table, so maybe the
monologue wasn't as interior as I had hoped. Maybe it was about
to get positively Shakespearean and I would stand up on my
chair and commit a soliloquy. To be or not to be!) After all (I
went on, more calmly), he's building a starship.
Well . . . yeah. And his daughter is building pigs with
wings, and maybe they'll both fly, but my money was on needing
protection from falling pigshit before I held an interstellar
boarding pass in my hand.
Yeah, but . . . well, they're resisting in here. They
don't kow-tow to the CC. Not two weeks ago you were moved
almost to tears to be accepted among them. Now we'll do
something about the CC, you thought.
Sure. One of these days.
Two things had come clear to me once the fuzzyheaded
camaraderie had worn off and my cynicism reasserted itself. One
was that the Heinleiners were as capable of lollygagging
procrastination as anyone else. Aladdin had admitted to me that
the resistance was mostly a passive thing, keeping the CC out
rather than bearding him in his lair, mostly because no one had
much of a clue as to how to go about the latter. So they all
figured they'd take the fight to him . . . when they felt like
it. Meantime, they did what we all did about insurmountable
problems: they didn't think about it.
The second thing I realized was that, if the CC wanted to
be in Heinlein Town, he would be in Heinlein Town.
I wasn't privy to all their secrets. I didn't know
anything of the machinations that had brought the
MacDonald-clone to Minamata, nor much of anything else about
just how hard the CC was trying to penetrate the little
Heinleiner enclave. But even such as me could tell it would be
easy to get a spy in here. Hell, Liz had visited the previous
week-end, with me, and had been admitted solely on the strength
of her reputation as a person of known Heinleiner tendencies.
Some sorts of checks were run, I'm sure, but I would bet
anything the CC could get around them if he wanted to
infiltrate a spy.
No, the CC was surely curious about these people, and no
doubt frustrated, but the CC was a strange being. Whatever
cryogenic turmoil was currently animating his massive brain was
and probably would remain a mystery to me. It was clear that
things were going wrong, or he'd never have been able to
over-ride his programming and do the things he'd done to me.
But it was equally clear that most of his programming was still
intact, or he'd simply have kicked down the front door of this
place and marched everyone off for trial.
Having said all that, why the disillusion, Hildy?
Two reasons. Unreasonable expectations: in spite of all
good sense, I had hoped these people would be somehow better
than other people. They weren't. They just had different ideas.
And two, I didn't fit. They didn't need reporters in here.
Gossip sufficed. Teaching was taken very seriously; no
dilettantes need apply. The only other thing I was interested
in was building a starship, and I'd be about as useful as a
kewpie with a slide rule.
"Three reasons," I said. "You're depressed, too."
"Don't be," Libby said. "I'm here."
I looked up and saw him sit down after first carefully
placing a dish oozing with chocolate, caramel, and melting ice
cream on the table in front of him. He reached down and
scratched Winston's head. The dog licked his nose, sniffed, and
went back to sleep, ice cream being one of the few foodstuffs
he had little interest in. Libby grinned at me.
"Hope I didn't keep you waiting too long," he said.
"No problem. Where's H & G?"
"They said they'd be along later. Liz is back, though." I
saw her approaching across the village green. She had a bottle
in one hand. The Heinleiners made their own booze, naturally,
and Liz had professed to like it on her earlier visit. Probably
that little dab of kerosene they added for flavor.
"Can't stay, folks, can't stay, gotta run," she said, just
as if I'd urged her to stick around. She produced a folding cup
from her gunbelt and poured a shot of pure Virginia City
Bonded, tossed it down. It wasn't the first of the day.
That's right, I said gunbelt. Liz had taken to Heinlein
Town from the first moment I brought her in, because it was the
only place outside of the movie studios where she worked that
she could wear a gun. But in here she could load it with real
bullets. She currently sported a matched pair of Colt .45's,
with pearl handles.
"I was hoping we could go do some shooting," Libby said.
"Not today, sweetie. I just dropped by to get a bottle,
and retrieve my dog. Next weekend, I promise. But you buy the
lead."
"Sure."
"Has he been a good dog?" Liz cooed, crouching down and
scratching his back, almost toppling over in the process. She
was probably talking to Winston, but I told her he'd been good,
anyway. She didn't seem to hear.
Libby leaned a little closer to me and looked at me with
concern.
"Are you really feeling depressed?" he asked. He put his
hand on mine.
All I really needed at that point in my life was another
case of puppy love, but that's just what had happened. At the
rate he was going, pretty soon he'd be humping my leg, like
Winston.
For pity sake, Hildy, give it a rest.
"Just a little blue," I said, putting on a smile for him.
"How come?"
"Wondering where my life is going."
He looked blankly at me. I'd seen the same expression on
Brenda's face when I said something incomprehensible to one who
sees nothing but endless, unlimited vistas stretching ahead.
Charitably, I didn't kick him. Instead, I removed my hand from
under his, patted his hand, and finally noticed the disturbance
going on under the table.
"Problems, Liz?" I asked.
"I think he wants to stay here." She had attached a leash
to his collar and was tugging on it, but he had planted his
forepaws and dug in. Forget mules; if you want a metaphor for
stubbornness, you need look no farther than the English
Bulldog.
"You could pick him up," Libby suggested.
"If I had no further use for my face," she agreed. "Also
arms, legs, and ass. Winston's slow to anger, but he's worth
seeing when he gets there." She stood, hands on hips in
frustration, and her dog rolled over on his back and went to
sleep again. "Damn, Hildy, he surely must like you."
I thought what he liked was hunting live prey-horses and
cows, mostly, though recently a kewpie had gone missing. But I
didn't mention that. Not for Libby's tender ears.
"It's okay, Liz," I said. "He's not much trouble. I'll
just keep him this weekend and drop him by your place on my way
home."
"Well, sure, but . . . I mean I'd planned to . . ." She
groped around a little more, then poured herself another drink
and made it vanish.
"Right," she said. "See you later, Hildy." She slapped my
shoulder in passing, then took off across the green.
"What was that all about?" Libby asked.
"You never know with Liz."
"Is she really the Queen of England?"
"Yep. And I am the ruler of the Queen's navee!"
He got that blank look, field-tested and honed to
perfection by Brenda, then shrugged and applied himself to
demolishing the melting mess in front of him. I guess Gilbert
and Sullivan was too much even for a Heinleiner youth.
"Well . . ." he said, wiping his mouth on the back of his
hand, "she sure can shoot, I've gotta say that."
"I wouldn't get into a fistfight with her either, if I was
you."
"But she drinks too much."
"Amen to that. I'd hate to have to pay her
liver-replacement tab."
He leaned back in his chair, looking well satisfied with
life.
"So. You taking me back to Texas this Sunday evening?"
In a weak moment I'd promised to show all three children
where I lived. Hansel and Gretel seemed to have forgotten about
it, but not Libby. I'd have taken him, but I was pretty sure
I'd spend most of my time fighting him off, and I just wasn't
up to it.
"Afraid not. I've got too many test papers to grade. All
this traveling to and from Delambre's gotten me far behind in
my teaching duties."
He tried not to show his disappointment.
"Next time," I told him.
"Sure," he said. "Then what do you want to do today?"
"I really don't know, Libby. I've seen the stardrive, and
I didn't understand it. I've seen the farm, and Minamata, and
I've seen the spider people." I'd seen even more wonders than
that, some of them unmentioned here because of promises I made,
others for reasons of security, and most because they simply
weren't that interesting. Even a community of wild-eyed genius
experimenters is going to lay some eggs. "What do you think we
should do?"
He thought it over.
"There's a baseball game over in Strangeland in about an
hour."
I laughed.
"Sure," I said. "I haven't watched one in years."
"You can watch if you want," he said. "I meant, we sort of
choose up sides, you know, depending on how many people show up
. . ."
"A pick-up game. I thought you meant, like--"
"No, we don't have--"
"--the Heinleiner Tanstaafl's against the King City--"
"--that many people in here."
"Forgive me. I'm still a big-city girl, I guess. You need
an umpire?" I smacked my bloated belly. "I brought my own
pads."
He grinned, opened his mouth, and said "We could everybody
freeze, and nobody will get hurt."
At least that's what it sounded like to me, for a split
second, before the synapses sorted themselves out and I saw the
last seven words had come from a tall, bulky party in an
alarming but effective costume, holding a rifle in one hand and
a bullhorn in the other.
Once I spotted him, I quickly saw about a dozen others
like him and the same number of King City police, moving across
the square in a ragged skirmish line. The cops had drawn
handguns, something seldom seen on Luna. The others had big
projectile weapons or hand-held lasers.
"What the hell are they?" Libby asked. We'd both stood up,
like most of the other people I could see.
"I'd guess they were soldiers," I said.
"But that's crazy. Luna doesn't have an army."
"Looks like we got one when we weren't looking."
And quite a bunch they were, too. The KC cops were equally
men and women, the "soldiers" were all male, and all large.
They wore black: jumpsuits, equipment belts, huge ornate crash
helmets with tinted visors, boots. The belts were hung with
things that might have been hand grenades, ammunition clips, or
high-tech pencil sharpeners, for all I could tell.
It later turned out they were mostly props. The costumes
had been rented from a film studio, since the non-existent Army
of Luna had nothing to offer in the way of super-macho display.
They came in our general direction. When they encountered
people they pushed them to the floor and the cops started
patting them down for weapons, and slipping on handcuffs. The
soldiers kept on moving, swinging the muzzles of their weapons
this way and that, looking quite pleased with themselves, all
to the booming accompaniment of more orders from the bullhorn.
"What should we do, Hildy?" Libby asked, his voice
shaking.
"I think it's best if we do what they say," I said,
quietly, patting his shoulder to settle him down. "Don't worry,
I know a good lawyer."
"Are they going to arrest us?"
"Looks like it."
A cop and a soldier marched up to us and the soldier
looked at a datapad in his hand, then at my face.
"Are you Maria Cabrini, also known as Hildegarde Johnson?"
"I'm Hildy Johnson."
"Cuff her," he told the cop. He turned away as the
policewoman started toward me, and as Libby moved to put
himself between me and the cop.
"You keep your hands off her," Libby said, and the soldier
pivoted easily and brought up the butt of his gun and smashed
it into the side of Libby's face. I could hear his jaw shatter.
He fell to the ground, totally limp. As I stared down at him,
Winston waddled out from under the table and sniffed his face.
The cop was saying something angry to the soldier, but I
was too stunned to hear what it was.
"Just do it," the soldier snarled at her, and I started to
kneel beside Libby but the cop grabbed my arm and pulled me up.
She snapped one cuff over my left wrist, still looking at the
retreating back of the soldier.
"He can't get away with that," she said, more to herself
than to me. She reached for my other hand and it finally sunk
in that this was more than a normal arrest situation, that
things were out of joint, and that maybe I ought to resist,
because if a big ape could just club a young boy senseless
something was going on here that I didn't understand.
So I yanked my right hand away and started to run but she
was way ahead of me, twisting my left hand hard until I ended
up bent over the table with her behind me, pressing my face
into the remains of Libby's sundae. I kept fighting to keep my
right hand free and she jerked me upright by my hair, and she
screamed, and let go of me.
They tell me Winston came off the ground like a squat
rocket, that great vise of a jaw open wide, and clamped it shut
on her forearm, breaking her grip on me and knocking her to the
ground. I fell over myself, and landed on my butt, from which
position I watched in horrified fascination as Winston made
every effort to tear the limb from its socket.
I hope I never see anything like that again. Winston
couldn't have massed a seventh as much as the policewoman, but
he jerked her around like a rag doll. His jaws opened only
enough to get a better grip in a different place. Even over the
sound of her screams I could hear the bones crunching.
Now the soldier was coming back, raising his rifle as he
came, and now a shot rang out and blood sprayed from the front
of his chest, and again, and once more, and he fell on his
face, hard, and didn't move. Then everybody was firing at once
and I crawled under the metal table as lead slugs screamed all
around me.
The fire was concentrated at first on a window high in the
stack of apartment crates surrounding the square. Part of the
wall vanished in plastic splinters, then a red line thrust into
the wreckage and something bloomed orange flame. I saw more gun
barrels sticking out of more windows, saw another soldier go
down with the lower part of his leg blown off, saw him turn as
he fell and start firing at another window.
In seconds it seemed I was the only person there who
didn't have a weapon. I saw a Heinleiner crouched behind the
gallows, snapping off shots with a handgun. His null-suit was
turned on, coating him in silver. I saw him hit by a half a
clip from an automatic rifle. He froze. I don't mean he stood
still; he froze, like a chromium statue, toppled with bullets
still whanging off of him, rolled over on his back, still in
the same attitude. Then his null-suit switched off and he tried
to get up, but was hit by three more bullets. His skin had
turned lobster-red.
I didn't understand that, and I didn't have time to think
about it. People were still running for cover, so I did, too,
past overturned tables and chairs and the dead body of a King
City policeman, into Aunt Hazel's shop. I scurried around and
crouched behind the counter, intending to stay there until
someone came to explain what the hell was going on.
But the itch is buried deep, and makes you do stupid
things when you least expect it. If you've never been a
reporter, you wouldn't understand. I raised my head and looked
over the counter.
I can replay the tape from my holocam and say exactly what
happened, in what order, who did what to whom, but you don't
live it that way. You retain some very vivid impressions, in no
particular order, with gaps between when you don't have any
idea what happened. I saw people running. I saw people cut
almost in half by lasers, ripped by bullets. I heard screams
and shouts and explosions, and I smelled gunpowder and burning
plastic. I suppose every battlefield has looked and sounded and
smelled pretty much the same.
I couldn't see Libby, didn't know if he was dead or alive.
He wasn't where he had fallen. I did see more cops and soldiers
arriving from some of the feeder tunnels.
Something crashed through the windows in front, something
large, and tumbled over the ice cream freezers there, turning
one of them over. I crouched down, and when I looked up again
there was the policewoman, Winston still attached to her arm,
which was in danger of coming off.
It was a scene from hell. Crazed by pain, the woman was
swinging her arm wildly, trying to get the dog to let go.
Winston was having none of it. Bleeding from many cuts, he
ignored everything but his inexorable grip. He'd been bred to
grab a bull by the nose and never let go; a K.C. policewoman
wasn't about to get free.
But now she was scrabbling for her holster, forgotten in
her fear and panic. She got her gun out and aimed it toward the
dog. Her first shot went wild, killing nothing but an ice cream
freezer. The second shot hit Winston in the left hind leg,
where it was thickest, and still the beast didn't let go. If
anything, he fought all the harder.
Her last shot hit him in the belly. He went
limp--everything but his jaw. Even in death he wasn't going to
let go.
She took aim at his head, and then slumped over, passed
out at last. It was probably for the best, because I think she
would have blown her own arm off, the way she had the gun
pointed.
Later, I felt sorry for her. At the time I was simply too
confused to feel much of anything but fear. I mourned Winston
later, too. He'd been trying to protect me, though I recall
thinking at the time that he'd over-reacted. She'd only been
trying to handcuff me, hadn't she?
And what about the soldiers? It had looked to me as if the
Heinleiners had fired the first shot. All sane reasoning would
lead me to think that, if that first soldier hadn't been hit,
this could all have ended peacefully at the jailhouse with a
lot of lawyers arguing, charges brought, countersuits filed.
I'd have been out on bail within a few hours.
Which was still what I'd have liked to have done, and
would have, but any fool could see things had gone too far for
that. If I stepped out waving a white flag I was pretty sure
I'd be killed, apologies sent to the next of kin. So Hildy, I
told myself, your first priority is to get out of here without
getting shot. Let the lawyers sort it out later, when the
bullets aren't flying.
With that end in mind, I started crawling toward the door.
My intent was to stick my head out, low, and see what stood
between me and the nearest exit. Which turned out to be a black
boot planted solidly in the doorway, almost under my nose by
the time I got there. I looked up the black-clad leg and into
the menacing face of a soldier. He was pointing a weapon at me,
some great bulky thing I thought might be a machine gun, whose
muzzle looked wide enough to spit baseballs.
"I'm unarmed," I said.
"That's the way I like 'em," he said, and flipped up his
visor with his thumb. There was something in his eyes I didn't
like. I mean, beyond everything else I didn't like about the
situation. Just a little touch of madness, I think.
He was a big man with a broad face entirely innocent of
any evidence of thought. But now a thought did flicker behind
those eyes, and his brow wrinkled.
"What's your name?"
"H . . . Helga Smith."
"Nah," he said, and dug into a pocket for a datapad, which
he scanned with a thumb control until my lovely phiz smiled
back at us. He returned the smile, but I didn't, because his
smile was the worst news I'd had so far in a day filled with
bad news. "You're Hildy Johnson," he said, "and you're on the
death list so it don't matter what happens here, see?" And he
started working on his belt, one-handed, the other hand keeping
the gun pointed at my forehead.
I found myself getting detached from events. Maybe it was
a reflex action, something to distance oneself from an
abomination about to happen. Or maybe it was just too many
things that couldn't be happening. This can't be happening. I'd
silently shrieked it one too many times and now a mental
numbness was setting in. I ought to be thinking of something to
do. I ought to be talking to him, asking questions. Anything.
Instead, I just sat there, squatting on my heels, and felt as
if I'd like to go to sleep.
But my senses were heightened. They must have been,
because with all the shooting going on outside (how could he do
this in the middle of a war?), and over the scream of a dying