Billions & Billions (34 page)

—

It had begun in 1974 at a dinner party given by Nora Ephron in New York City. I remember how handsome Carl was with his shirtsleeves rolled up and his dazzling smile. We talked about baseball and capitalism and it thrilled me that I could make him laugh so helplessly. But Carl was married and I was committed to another man. We socialized as couples. The four of us grew closer and we began to work together. There were times when Carl and I were alone with each other and the atmosphere was euphoric and highly charged, but neither of us made any sign to the other of our true feelings. It was unthinkable.

In the early spring of 1977, Carl was invited by NASA to assemble a committee to select the contents of a phonograph record that would be affixed to each of the
Voyager 1
and
2
spacecraft. Upon completion of their ambitious reconnaissance of the outermost planets and their moons, the two spacecraft would be gravitationally expelled from the Solar System. Here was an opportunity to send a message to possible beings of other worlds and times. It could be far more complex than the plaque that Carl and Carl’s wife, Linda Salzman, and astronomer Frank Drake had attached to
Pioneer 10
. That was a breakthrough, but it was essentially a license plate. The
Voyager
record would include greetings in sixty human languages and one whale language, an evolutionary audio essay, 116 pictures of life on Earth and ninety minutes of music from a glorious diversity of the world’s cultures. The engineers projected a one-billion-year shelf life for the golden phonograph records.

How long is a billion years? In a billion years the continents of Earth would be so altered that we would not recognize the surface of our own planet. One thousand million years ago, the most complex life forms on Earth were bacteria. In the midst of the nuclear arms race, our future, even in the short term, seemed a dubious prospect. Those of us privileged to work on the making of the
Voyager
message did so with a sense of sacred purpose. It was conceivable that, Noah-like, we were assembling the ark of human culture, the only artifact that would survive into the unimaginably far distant future.

In the course of my daunting search for the single most worthy piece of Chinese music, I phoned Carl and left a message at his hotel in Tucson where he was giving a talk. An hour later the phone rang in my apartment in Manhattan. I picked it up and heard a voice say: “I got back to my room and found a message that said ‘Annie called.’ And I asked myself, why didn’t you leave me that message ten years ago?”

Bluffing, joking, I responded lightheartedly. “Well, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that, Carl.” And then, more soberly, “Do you mean for keeps?”

“Yes, for keeps,” he said tenderly. “Let’s get married.”

“Yes,” I said and that moment we felt we knew what it must be like to discover a new law of nature. It was a “eureka,” a moment in which a great truth was revealed, one that would be reaffirmed through countless independent lines of evidence over the next twenty years. But it was also the assumption of an unlimited liability. Once you were allowed into this wonder-world, how could you ever again be content outside of it? It was June 1, our love’s Holy Day. Thereafter, anytime one of us was being unreasonable with the other, the invocation of June 1 would usually bring the offender to his or her senses.

Earlier I had asked Carl if those putative extraterrestrials of a billion years from now could conceivably interpret the brain waves of a meditator. “Who knows? A billion years is a long, long time,” was his reply. “On the chance that it might be possible why don’t we give it a try?”

Two days after our life-changing phone call, I entered a laboratory at Bellevue Hospital in New York City and was hooked up to a computer that turned all the data from my brain and heart into sound. I had a one-hour mental itinerary of the information I wished to convey. I began by thinking about the history of Earth and the life it sustains. To the best of my abilities I tried to think something of the history of ideas and human social organization. I thought about the predicament that our civilization finds itself in and about the violence and poverty that make this planet a hell for so many of its inhabitants. Toward the end I permitted myself a personal statement of what it was like to fall in love.

—

Now Carl’s fever raged. I kept kissing him and rubbing my face against his burning, unshaven cheek. The heat of his skin was oddly reassuring. I wanted to do it enough so that his vibrant, physical self would become an indelibly etched sensory memory. I was torn between exhorting him to fight on and wanting him freed from the torture apparatus of life support and the demon that had tormented him for two years.

I called his sister, Cari, who had given so much of herself to prevent this outcome, and his grown sons, Dorion, Jeremy, and Nicholas, and grandson, Tonio. Our whole family had celebrated Thanksgiving together at our house in Ithaca just weeks before. By unanimous acclaim it had been the best Thanksgiving we’d
ever had. We all came away from it with a kind of glow. There had been an authenticity and a closeness in this gathering that had given us a greater sense of unity. Now I placed the phone near Carl’s ear so that he could hear, one by one, their good-byes.

Our friend writer/producer Lynda Obst rushed in from Los Angeles to be with us. Lynda was there that first enchanted evening at Nora’s when Carl and I met. She had witnessed firsthand, more than anyone else, both our personal and professional collaborations. As original producer of the motion picture
Contact
, she had worked closely with us for the sixteen years it had taken to guide the project into production.

Lynda had observed that the sustained incandescence of our love exerted a kind of tyranny on those around us who have been less fortunate in their search for a soul mate. However, instead of resenting our relationship, Lynda cherished it as a mathematician would an existence theorem, something that demonstrates a thing is possible. She used to call me Miss Bliss. Carl and I especially treasured those times we spent with her, laughing, talking far into the night about science, philosophy, gossip, popular culture, everything. Now this woman who had soared with us, who had been with me on the giddy day I picked out my wedding gown, was there by our side as we said good-bye forever.

For days and nights Sasha and I had taken turns whispering into Carl’s ear. Sasha told him how much she loved him and all the ways that she would find in her life to honor him. “Brave man, wonderful life,” I said to him over and over. “Well done. With pride and joy in our love, I let you go. Without fear. June 1. June 1. For keeps …”

—

As I make the changes in proof that Carl feared might be necessary, his son Jeremy is upstairs giving Sam his nightly computer
lesson. Sasha is in her room doing homework. The
Voyager
spacecraft, with their revelations of a tiny world graced by music and love, are beyond the outermost planets, making for the open sea of interstellar space. They are hurtling at a speed of forty thousand miles per hour toward the stars and a destiny about which we can only dream. I sit surrounded by cartons of mail from people all over the planet who mourn Carl’s loss. Many of them credit him with their awakenings. Some of them say that Carl’s example has inspired them to work for science and reason against the forces of superstition and fundamentalism. These thoughts comfort me and lift me up out of my heartache. They allow me to feel, without resorting to the supernatural, that Carl lives.

A
NN
D
RUYAN
February 14, 1997
Ithaca, New York

As always, this book has been immeasurably informed and improved by Annie Druyan’s insightful comments, suggestions on content and stylistic felicity, and her writing. When I grow up, I hope to be like her.

Helpful comments on some or all of this book were supplied by many friends and colleagues; I’m most grateful to them all. Among them are David Black, James Hansen, Jonathan Lunine, Geoff Marcy, Richard Turco, and George Wetherill. Others who responded generously to our requests for information include Linden Blue of General Atomics, John Bryson of Southern California Edison, Jane Callen and Jerry Donahoe at the U.S. Department of Commerce, Punam Chuhan and Julie Rickman at the World Bank, Peter Nathanielsz of the Department of Physiology at the School of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell, James Rachels of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Boubacar Touré at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, and Tom Welch at the U.S. Department of Energy. I thank Leslie LaRocco, Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, Cornell University, for translation services in comparing
Parade
with
Ogonyok
versions of “The Common Enemy.”

I appreciate the wisdom and support of Mort Janklow and Cynthia Cannell at Janklow & Nesbit Associates, and Ann Godoff, Harry Evans, Alberto Vitale, Kathy Rosenbloom, and Martha Schwartz at Random House.

I owe a special debt to William Barnett for meticulous transcription, research assistance, proofreading, and for steering the manuscript through its various stages of completion. Bill accomplished all this while I was battling a grave illness. That I felt I could rely on him with complete confidence was a mercy for which I am grateful. Andrea Barnett and Laurel Parker of my Cornell University office provided essential correspondence and research support. I also thank Karenn Gobrecht and Cindi Vita Vogel of Annie’s office for their able assistance.

While all the material in this book is newly revised or new, the nuclei of many chapters have been previously published in
Parade;
I thank Walter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief, and David Currier, Senior Editor, for this and for their unwavering support over the years. Parts of a few chapters have appeared in
American Journal of Physics; Forbes-FYI; Environment in Peril
, Anthony Wolbarst, ed. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press) (from a talk I gave to the Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C.); the
Los Angeles Times
Syndicate; and
Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History
, William Safire, ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992).

Patrick McDonnell has generously agreed to the inclusion of his sketches to illustrate the text. I am also grateful to Carson Productions Group for permission to use a photograph showing me with Johnny Carson; to Barbara Boettcher for graphic artwork; to James Hansen for permission to use graphs in
Chapter 11
; and to Lennart Nilsson for permission to have drawings made after his pioneering photographs of human fetuses
in utero
.

(a few citations and suggestions for further reading)

Chapter 1, Billions and Billions

Chapter 3, Monday-Night Hunters

Chapter 4, The Gaze of God and the Dripping Faucet

Chapter 9, Croesus and Cassandra

Chapter 10, A Piece of the Sky Is Missing

Chapter 11, Ambush: The Warming of the World