Infinite Dreams (20 page)

And at the appointed time, within a single day, one sun’s brightness increased a hundredfold, kindling a universal forest fire from pole to pole that marched around the world with the dawn. As the fires consumed themselves, the sea began to steam, then to boil. The ashes of the world were scattered by a fierce wind of ozone and superheated steam. The sea rose and spilled boiling over the sterile plains. And as the nova faded, it began to rain.

In the fragile safety of their caves, men and women crouched around flickering lamps, unable to sleep or even to speak for the manic wail of the wind outside; a wind that would corrode away the polar ice in a couple of days; a wind that tossed large rocks around like pellets of sleet; a wind that would strip the flesh from bone and then scatter the bones across half a world.

The first rain fell boiling and rose back into the sky. (The planet that had looked so green and blue and hospitable glowed an even baleful white.) After a while some of the water stayed out of the air, and the planetwide storm gentled to mere hurricane force. It rained, hard and long.

When they came out of their holes, the rain was only a warm mist. By the time their caravan was spiked together, deep blue sky sometimes showed through the clouds, and
the suns revealed themselves several times a day as they rolled along the horizon. The mud began to congeal and they left the polar crater the day of the first snow.

They made it back to the islands that had been hills overlooking Samueltown. Only 178 people had been lost, and fully half that number had survived the storm, but were on a boat that had one night mysteriously disappeared.

Lars found the hill where he had buried deep a chest full of books and other valuables. He had marked it by attaching a long chain to one handle and allowing a length of chain to protrude above the ground.

They never located it.

They raked compost into the side of the hill and planted rice and barley; then rowed to the other hills and did the same, waiting for the shallow water to recede from their fields.

It would be fifteen years before the first full crop came in.

Samuel and Lars remained friends over the years; for a short awkward time they were even lovers. But Fred grew progressively bitter in his jibes as Lars became more convinced of his theory that Godbuk was veiled, literal truth. Most people in Samueltown thought Lars was a valuable man, if slightly dotty, but Fred was the leader of a vocal minority that withdrew their children from his school, rather than have them be taught lies. Which amused the rest of the town. Lars’ stories were fantastic, but it was the sort of thing that would hold a child’s attention and give him something to prattle about. Life was joyless enough; why deprive children of a little spark of wonder, no matter how silly?

Lars had finished grading the arithmetic slates and was
putting the children’s names on the board, in order of accomplishment. Maybe Johnny would work harder tomorrow, to get his name off the bottom of the list. He turned at the sound of a polite cough.

A stranger was standing diffidently in the doorway, which sight almost made Lars drop the slate he was holding. It had been years since he had seen anyone he hadn’t known all his life.

“Uh … what can I do for you?”

“You’re the town book-keeper.” The man was doubly a stranger for being blond, a feature so rare in Samueltown’s genetic pool that not a single individual in Lars generation had it.

“That’s true.”

“Well, so am I. My own town, that is. Fredrik, south and east of here.”

Lars had heard of it. “Come in, sit down.” He walked over to the desks where the larger children sat. “Are you just traveling?”

“Mostly copying. We lost too many books last Burning.”

“Didn’t we all. Can you pay?”

He shook his head. “No. But I can barter … if any of the thirty-some books I have interest you.” He opened up a tanned-hide bag and Lars sorted through the books, while the stranger looked over Samueltown’s small library. Lars decided he wanted to copy “Sewing” and “Mill Construction,” for which he traded the copy-right to “Metal Work” and “Computation.”

The man, whose name was Brian, stayed with Lars for a month of copying. They became good friends, taking their meals together (with most of the other bachelor men and women in town) at Samuel’s; sitting by her fireside with cups of sweet wine, exchanging ideas until the late hours.
When Lars was drafted to help flense a huge fish, Brian took over his school for a day, teaching the children rhyme and song.

After the month was done, though, Brian had to move on to the next town. He asked Lars to walk him down to the river.

There was nobody else at the riverbank that time of morning, the fishing boats having put out to sea at first light. It was a cool, breezy day, the new forest on the other side of the river making soft music as the wind pushed through the tall hollow stalks of young bamboo-like trees.

It was a pleasant way to start out a journey, and as good a setting for good-byes as one might desire. But Brian set his things on the pulley-driven raft-bridge and then silently stepped onto it, as if he were going to leave without a word, without a handclasp. He turned to Lars looking more sad than the occasion should have warranted, and said abruptly:

“Lars, I’m going to tell you something that I’ve said to no one before, and will never say again. You must not ask any questions; you must never tell anyone what I say.”

“What—”

He continued rapidly. “Everything you believe about Godbuk is true. I know that very well, for I wasn’t … born on this world. I am an observer, the latest of many, from Urth. Which is not a myth, but an actual world in the sky. The world from which all men came.”

“You really—”

“You can’t tell anybody this truth for the same reason I can’t. It would raise false hope.

“We rediscovered this world some fifty years ago, and immediately began preparations to move you people off this inimical world, either to Urth or, if you prefer, to another world, similar to this one but more pleasant.

“We can build a flotilla of sky ships that will hold everybody—and it
is
abuilding. But such a thing takes time. Many generations.”

Lars was thoughtful. “I think I see.”

“There may be two more Burnings before the rescue can be made. You know human nature, Lars.”

“By that time …” he nodded. “They might not greet you as saviors. The memory would tarnish and … you would be seen as withholding freedom, rather than giving it.”

“Exactly.”

They stared at each other for a long moment. “Then what you want of me,” Lars said slowly, “is to stop teaching the truth. Now that I know it’s the truth.”

“I’m afraid so. For the sake of future generations.”

Brian waited patiently while Lars argued with himself. “All right,” he said through clenched teeth, “I promise.”

“I know what it means. Goodbye, Lars.”

“Good bye.” He turned abruptly to save a young man the sight of an old man’s tears, and walked heavily down the path back to his school. Today, class, you are going to study long division, the use of the comma, and pottery. And lies.

Brian watched the old man walk away and then hauled himself to the other side of the river. He started down the path toward Carolltown and wasn’t surprised to find a man waiting for him at the first bend in the road.

“Hello, Fred.”

Fred got up, dusting off his breeches. “How did it go?”

“He believed it, every word. You won’t have any more trouble.”

Fred handed him a small sack of gold. He weighed it in his palm and then dropped it into his bag without counting
it. “I liked the old man,” Brian said. “I feel like a grayfish.”

“It was necessary.”

“It was cruel.”

“You can always give back the gold.”

“I could do that.” He shouldered his bag and walked away, south to the town where he was born.

There are some writers whose styles are so infectious they’re dangerous to have around while you’re working—your characters start thinking like them, sounding like them. For me, James Boswell is one such culprit.

I was trying to write my second novel while reading Boswell’s
London Journal
(the first volume, 1762-63), and the protagonist started sounding like twenty-two-year-old Boswell. Rather than stop reading—I literally flew to the book every day, as soon as I’d written 1,500 words—I postponed the novel and started writing a short story, where the main character was a snobbish kid from the provinces, too intelligent and articulate for his own good, come to the big city for “finishing.”

But his diary is written in the twenty-second century, not the eighteenth; instead of Scotland, he came from the Moon.

14
April 2147.

Today I resolved to begin keeping a diary. Unfortunately, nothing of real interest happened.

15
April.

Nothing happened again today. Just registration.

16
April

I can’t go on wasting paper or Earth’s Conservation Board will take my diary away and process it into something useful, like toilet paper. So even though nothing happened again, I’ll fill up this space with biographical detail, that will no doubt be of great value to future historians.

I was born Jonathon Wu, on 17 January 2131, to Martha and Jonathon Wu II, out of the surrogate host-mother Sally 217-44-7624. My parents were wealthy enough to be permitted two legal children, but my early behavior convinced them that one was sufficient. As soon as I was
old enough to travel, barely four, they packed me off to Clavius Tutorial Creche, figuring that a quarter of a million miles was a safe distance from which to monitor my growth.

Clavius Creche, it says here, was established as a uniquely isolated and controlled environment for the cultivation of little scholars. And medium-sized scholars. But when you get to be a big gangling scholar, you’ve got to go somewhere else. There are no universities on the moon, only technical schools. You can take up Lunar citizenship—as long as you’re
mutandis
—and be admitted to one of those technical schools, winding up as some kind of supercerebral mechanic. But I suppose my father was willing to live on the same planet with me, rather than allow me to grow into being something other than a gentleman.

I got back to Earth one week ago today.

17 April

We began course work today. This quarter I’m taking supposedly parallel courses in algorithmic analysis and logical systems. If I ever get “introduced” to Boolean algebra again, I’ll curl into a ball and swallow my tongue. Continuing readings and analysis in classical Greek and Latin. Supposed to do preliminary readings for next quarter: XXth Century English and American Poets and Commercial Literature as a Cultural Index. This will be with Applied Stochastic Analysis and Artificial Intelligence I. The poetry is amusing but the “commercial” novels make tedious reading. One has always to keep in mind that none of these authors was born with the benefit of genetic engineering, and they were at best men of unremarkable intelligence in a world populated with morons and worse.

Earth gravity tires me.

18
April.

I was talking with my advisor (Greek and Latin), Dr. Friedman, and complained about the sterility of this upcoming literature course. He introduced me to the work of an Irish author named Joyce, loaning me a copy of the construct
Finnegans Wake
. It has taken me ten hours to read the first thirty pages; totally immersed in it through lunch and dinner. Fascinating. Easily equal to the best of Thurman—why weren’t we given him at Creche?

I am required to walk for at least two hours every day, in order to become accustomed to the gravity. Thus I am writing this standing up, the diary propped on a bookshelf. Also must eat handsful of nauseating calcium tablets, and will have to walk with braces until my leg-bones have hardened up. Had I stayed on the moon another five years, I probably never would have been able to return to Earth (a prospect which at present would not bother me a bit). Twenty-one is too old to repattern porous bones.

The braces chafe and look ridiculous in this foppish Earth clothing. But I get a certain notoriety out of being such an obvious extraterrestrial.

My father called this morning and we talked about my courses for a few minutes.

19
April

Today was the first day I ventured outside of the campus complex on foot. It gave me an uncomfortable feeling to be outside without suiting up. Of course, one does wear a respirator (even inside some of the buildings, which leak), and that does something to allay the agoraphobia.

How will I react to the geophysics course next year? They take field trips to wild preserves where they work for
extended periods simply under the sky, exposed to the elements. I realize that mine is an irrational fear, that men lived for millions of years breathing natural air, walking around in the open without the slightest thought that there should be something around them. Perhaps I can convince them that since on Luna this fear is
not
irrational, but part of survival … perhaps they will grant me some sort of dispensation; waive the course, or at least allow me to wear a suit.

While wandering around outside of the campus, I dropped into a tavern that supposedly caters to students. I had some ordinary wine and a bit of hashish which wasn’t at all like the Lunar product. It only served to make me tired. The tavernkeeper didn’t believe that I was sixteen until I produced my passport.

I got into a rather long and pointless conversation with an Earthie
mutandis
over the necessity for interplanetary tariff imbalance. They know so little about the other worlds. But then, I know little enough about Earth, for having been born here.

I was barely able to get back to the dormitory without assistance, and slept through half of my normal reading period. Had to take stimulants to finish the last book of the
Georgics
. So much of it is about open-air farming that it kept bringing back my earlier discomfort.