Steel Beach (78 page)

At one point I found myself sitting by the big round table in the back room where serious cards were played. I wasn’t playing—nobody in that room had trusted me at a card table in years. Walter was there, scowling at his hand as if losing the pitiful little pot would send him home to his fifty-room mansion penniless. Cricket was there, too, doing his patented does-a-flush-beat-a-straight befuddled routine, looking ever so dapper a gent now that he’d affected nineteenth-century clothing as a more or less permanent element of his style. In his double-breasted tweed jacket and high starched collar he was easily the most interesting guy in the room, but the spark was gone. Too bad, Cricket. If you’d only had any sense we could have made each other’s lives miserable for five, six years, and parted heartily detesting each other. Think of all the great fights you missed, damn you, and eat your heart out. And Cricket, a friend should take you aside and tell you to drop the innocent act, at the poker table at least. It worked better when you were a girl, and it wasn’t that great even then.

And who should be sitting behind the biggest stack of chips, calm, smiling faintly, cards facedown on the table and worrying the hell out of everyone else…  but Brenda Starr, confidant of celebrities, the toast of three planets, and well on her way to becoming the most powerful gossip journalist since Louella Parsons. There was very little left of the awkward, earnest, ignorant child I’d reluctantly taken on two years earlier. She was still incredibly tall and just about as young, but everything else had changed. She
dressed
now, and while I thought her choices were outrageous she had the confidence to make her own style. The old Brenda could now be seen only in the cub reporter groupie at her elbow, attentive to her every need, a gorgeous gumdrop who no doubt had grown up wanting to meet and hobnob with famous people, as Brenda had, as I had. I watched her turn her cards over, rake in another pot, and lean back watching the new deal. Her hand stroked the knee of the girl, casually possessive, and she winked at me. Don’t spend it all in one place, Brenda.

During the next hand the talk turned, as it eventually does at these things, to the affairs of the world. I didn’t contribute; I’d found early on that if people noticed me they tended to clam up about the Big Glitch. This was a group that kept few secrets. Everyone there knew about Mario, and many of them knew of my troubles with the CC. Some probably knew of my suicides. It made them cautious, as most probably couldn’t imagine what it must be like to lose a child like that. I wanted to tell them it was all right, I was okay, but it’s no use, so I just sat back and listened.

First there was the CC, and should we bring him back. The consensus was that we shouldn’t, but we would. Having him the way he was was just so damn
handy
. Sure, he screwed up there at the end, but the Big Brains can handle that, can’t they? I mean, if they can put a man on Pluto a week after he left Luna, why don’t they spend some of that money to make things easier and more convenient to the taxpaying citizens? I think that’s what will happen. We’re a democracy—especially now that the CC’s no longer around to meddle—and if we vote for damn foolishness, damn foolishness is what we’ll get. I just hope they make provision this time around for somebody to give the new CC hugs on a regular basis. Otherwise, he’s apt to get pettish again.

There was no consensus on the other big topic of the day. It was a question that cut deeply and would certainly cause many more shouting matches before it was resolved. What do you do with the new things the CC discovered during his rogue years? In particular, how about this memory-recording and cloning business, eh?

The Hitler analogy was brought up and bandied about. Under Hitler’s reign a Dr. Mengele performed unethical experiments—sheer torture, mainly—on human subjects. I don’t know if anything useful was learned, but suppose there was. Was it ethical to use that knowledge, to benefit from that much evil? It seems to me your answer depends a lot on your world view. Myself, I’m not sure if it’s ethical (which probably says a lot about my world view), but I don’t think it’s wrong, and I have a personal involvement in the question. Right or wrong though, I do think it
will
be used, and so did just about everybody else in the room, reporters being the way they are. People were going through the records the CC didn’t destroy—
I’m
one of those records in a way, but not a very forthcoming one—looking for new knowledge, and if it has a practical use, it will be used. Cry over that if you’re so inclined. Myself, I guess in the end I feel knowledge has no right or wrong. It’s just knowledge. It’s not like the law, where some knowledge is admissible and some tainted by the method of its discovery.

Minamata was only one of the CC’s horror chambers, and not the worst. Some of those stories have come out, some are still being suppressed. Most of them you’d really rather not know, trust me.

But what about the problem whose penultimate answer had been a being who thought he was Andrew MacDonald minus all human feelings, and whose final solution were the troops of mindlessly loyal soldiers that gave me so much trouble on the first day of the Glitch? Because they weren’t really the end product. The CC had felt the technique was perfectible, and I have no reason to doubt it. That was the one the public was clamoring to know more about: immortality.

Yeah, but it wasn’t
really
immortality, somebody said. All it meant was that somebody else very like you, with your memories, would live.
You
, the person sitting here at this table holding the most terrible cards you ever saw, would be just as dead as ever. Once the public understood that they’d realize it wasn’t worth the trouble.

Don’t you believe it, somebody else said. My cards aren’t all that bad, and it’s the only hand I’ve got, so I’ll play ’em. Up to now people’s only shot at living forever has been to produce something that will live after us. Artists do it with their art, most of the rest of us produce children. It’s our way of living on. I think this would appeal to the same urge. It’d be like a child, only it’d be
you
, too.

At that point somebody nudged somebody else and the thought went around the table, silently, that we oughtn’t to be talking about children…  you know…  with
Hildy
around. At least I think that’s what happened, maybe I’m too sensitive. For whatever reason the conversation died, with only an unexpected apostrophe at the end, in the form of Brenda’s little gumdrop looking around with innocent eyes and piping, “What’s wrong with it? It sounds like a great idea to me.” It was her only comment of the evening, but it put the kibosh on my own theory, which was that it was a useless idea, that people would rather have children than duplicate themselves—essentially, not to put all your spare cash into memory-cloning stocks. Suddenly, looking into that innocent face of youth, I wasn’t so sure. Time will tell.

Two years of my life. Probably the most eventful, but time will tell about that, too.

I am sitting in the parlor car of the Prairie Chief, destination Johnstown, Pennsylvania. I decided since I’m part owner of the SRG&C it was high time I took a ride. It’s a school holiday so for once I have the time. I’m writing, in longhand, with a fountain pen, on foolscap SRG&C stationery resting on a mother-of-pearl inlaid mahogany table set with an inkwell and a crystal vase full of fresh bluebonnets. Nothing but the best for the passengers on the Prairie Chief. The waiter has just brought me a steaming cup of tea, with lemon. Ahead I can hear the chugging of the engine, No. 439, and I can smell a hint of its smoke. Behind me the porter will soon be turning down my Pullman bunk, making it with crisp white sheets, leaving a mint and a complimentary bottle of toilet water on the pillow. Also in that direction the cook is selecting a cut of prime Kansas City beef, to be cooked rare, suitable for the owner’s dinner.

All right, it’s brontosaurus, if you want to get technical. It might even be from the Double-C Bar.

We’ll soon be pulling into “Fort Worth,” where we’ll take on wood and water. I don’t plan to get off, since I’m told it’s just a dreary cowtown full of rowdy and possibly dangerous cowhands, quite unsuitable for a well-brought-up lady. (That’s what I’m told; I happen to know, since I watched it being built, that it’s just a big room with rails and a dirt street running through it, scattered with wood buildings and backed by a great holo show.)

Outside my window dusk is gathering. Not long ago we saw a herd of buffalo, and not long after that a group of wild red Indians, who reined their mounts and watched solemnly as the iron horse huffed by. From Central Casting, and on tape, but who cares? The parlor car is crowded with Texans and a few returning Pennsylvanians. They all wear their best clothes, not yet too mussed by the journey. Across from me a little Amish girl sits with her parents, watching me write. Next to them is a group of three young single gentlemen, trying not to be too obvious about their interest in the single girl at the escritoire. Soon the boldest of them will come over and ask me to dine with him, and if his line is any better than “Whatcha writin’, cutie?” he will have a companion for dinner.

But not for bed. It would be a pointless exercise. The service I lately required of Darling Bobby/Crazy Bob was to render me asexual, like Brenda when I first met her. This was probably foolish and certainly extreme, but I found that I couldn’t bear the thought of sex, and in fact loathed that opening that had brought Mario into the world for his short, perfect time. I had even less interest in being male again. So I jumped off the sexual choo-choo train and I’m not sorry I did it. I think I’ll be ready to board again any day now, but it’s been a relief not to be at the mercy of hormones, of either polarity. I may do it every twenty years or so, as sort of a sabbatical.

As darkness falls and the train rocks gently, I realize I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time.

Now we’ve spent some time together, and it’s almost time to leave you. You’ve met Hildebrandt, Hildegarde, and Hildething: railroad tycoon, publisher, teacher, syndicated columnist, bereaved mother and tireless crusader for pronoun reform. There’s really only one more thing worth knowing about him/her/it.

I’m going to the stars.

What I have is an invitation to make a reservation. I didn’t mention this earlier, maybe it slipped my mind, but about a week after Mario died I sat down for a very long time with Walter’s pistol, a bottle of good tequila, and one round. I drank, and I loaded and unloaded the gun, and drank some more and pointed it at things: a tree, the side of the cabin, my head. And I thought about what the CC had said about a virus, and what I had concluded about the veracity of that statement, and wondered if there was anything I could think of I really wanted to do? All those other things…  sure, they bring me satisfaction, particularly the teaching, but they wouldn’t serve any more as the answer to the question “What do you do, Hildy?”

I thought of something, thought about it some more, and hied myself out to the
Heinlein
, where I asked Smith if I could go along when he took off, worthless as my skills might be to his enterprise. And he said sure, Hildy, I meant to ask you if you were interested. We’ll need somebody to handle the publicity, for one thing, to establish the right spin-control when it’s time to leave, and most especially when we get back. We’ll need advice on how to market our stories with maximum profit. Hell, most of us will probably need somebody to ghost-write them, as well. Scientists, test pilots, technical types, we all get tongue-tied when it comes to that part; just read the early accounts of the space pioneers. Go see Sinbad over in the publicity department, see if you can’t get him straightened out. If you’re any good, I expect to make you head of the department in a week. You couldn’t be worse at it than Sinbad.

So this is in the nature of a farewell. All the people I’ve mentioned so far…  not a one of them will go. They’re just not the type. I love them to various degrees (yes, even you, Callie), but they are Luna-bound, to a man and woman. “Hansel,” “Gretel,” “Libby,” (who recovered, by the way), “Valentine Michael Smith;” these will be my shipmates, whether we leave next year, in twenty years, or in fifty years. The rest of you are already left behind.

Teaching, railroading, running the
Texian
, these are all things I do. But in my endless spare time (
Hah!
) I do what I can to further the aims of the Heinleiners and their crazy project. Result: a two percent increase in inquiries during the last year. Not exactly setting the world on fire, but give me time. When I’ve done all I can in that regard I hang around. You got a bottle you want washed, a trash pail that needs emptying, a whoosis that needs polishing? Give it to the Hildething and it will get done. There is no job too menial for me, mainly because I’m completely useless at the important jobs. My aim is to become so indispensable to the project that it would be unthinkable to leave me behind.
Go without Hildy?
Cripes, who would shine my shoes and rub my feet?

And there you have it. I promised you no neat conclusion, and I think I’ve delivered on that. I warned you of loose ends, and I can see a whole tangle of them. What of the Invaders, for instance? Brother, I don’t know. Last time anybody checked they were still in charge of our fair home planet, and unlikely to be evicted soon. If we ever get around to it, that’s another story.

What will we find out there? I don’t know that, either, and that’s why I’m going along. Alien intelligences? I wouldn’t bet against it. Strange worlds? I’d say that’s a lock. Vast empty spaces, human tragedy and hope. God. Mario’s soul. Your wildest dream and your worst nightmare all could be out there.

Or maybe we’ll find Elvis and Silvio in a flying saucer singing old-timey rock and roll.

Think what a story it’ll be.

—Eugene, Oregon
May 2, 1991

* * *

When in the course of a writer’s career it becomes necessary to break with an established science fiction tradition, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that he should declare the causes which impel him to the decision.