“You hear that?” McElhatten said to his wife, incredulous. “Some nut is going to go the old way. Eighteen years in ’tween space! When all you have to do—”
“BE QUIET,” Ruth said, furiously, trying to listen.
“—be here to greet this Mr. Applebaum,” President Omar Jones intoned in clowning solemnity. “Banners, vox-pop streamers . . . we should have a population of between, well, say, one billion then, but still plenty of land. We can take up to two billion, you know, and still leave plenty of room. So come on and join us; cross over and be here to celebrate Flying Dutchman Day, folks.” He waved, and, it seemed to Jack McElhatten, this man at Whale’s Mouth was waving directly to him. And, within him, the yearning grew.
The frontier, he thought. Their neighbors in the tiny cramped conapt with which they shared a bathroom . . . or had, up until last month, at which point the Pattersons had emigrated to Whale’s Mouth. The vid-sig letters from Jerome Patterson; god, they had raved about conditions across on the other side. If anything, the info spots—ads, to be exact—had understated the beauty of the real-sit over there. The beauty—and the opportunity.
“We need men,” President Omar Jones was declaring. “Good strong men who can do any kind of work. Are you that man? Able, willing, and get-up-and-go, over eighteen years of age? Willing to start a new life, using your mind and your hands, the skills God gave you? Think about it. What are you doing with those hands, those skills, right now?”
Doing quality-control on an autofac line, McElhatten thought to himself bitterly; a job which a pigeon could do better; fact was, a pigeon did do so, to check his work.
“Can you imagine,” he said to his wife, “holding down a job where a pigeon has a better eye than you for mis-tolerances?” And that was exactly his situation; he ejected parts which were not properly aligned, and, when he missed, the pigeon noted the miss, the defective part allowed to pass; it picked out the misaligned part, pecked a reject-button which kicked the part from the moving belt. And, as they quit and emigrated, the quality control men at Krino Associates were, one by one, replaced by pigeons.
He stayed on now, really, only because the union to which he belonged was strong enough to insist that his seniority made it mandatory for Krino to keep him on. But once he quit, once he left—
“Then,” he said to Ruth, “the pigeon moves in. Okay, let it; we’re going across to Whale’s Mouth, and from then on I won’t be competing with birds.” Competing, he thought, and losing. Offering my employers the poorer showing. “And Krino will be glad,” he said, with misery.
“I just wish,” Ruth said, “that you had a particular job lined up over there at Newcolonizedland. I mean, they talk about ‘all the jobs,’ but you can’t take ‘all the jobs.’ What one job are you—” She hesitated. “Skilled for?” After all, he had worked for Krino Associates for ten years.
“I’m going to farm.”
She stared at him.
“They’ll give us twenty acres. We’ll buy sheep here, those black-faced ones. Suffolk. Take six across, five ewes and a ram, put up fences, build ourselves a house out of prefab sections—” He knew he could do it. Others had, as they had described—not in impersonal ads—but in letters vid-signaled back and then transcribed by Vidphone Corporation and posted on the bulletin board of the conapt building.
“But if we don’t like it,” Ruth murmured apprehensively, “we won’t be able to come back; I mean, that seems so strange. Those teleportation machines . . . working one way only.”
“The extra-galactic nebulae,” he said patiently. “The recession of matter outward; the universe is exploding, growing; the Telpor relates your molecules as energy configurations in this outflow—”
“I don’t understand,” Ruth said. “But I do know this,” she said, and, from her purse, brought a leaflet.
Studying the leaflet, McElhatten scowled. “Cranks. This is hate literature, Ruth. Don’t accept it.” He began to crumple it up.
“They don’t call themselves by a hating name. ‘Friends of a United People.’ They’re a small group of worried, dedicated people, opposed to—”
“I know what they’re opposed to,” McElhatten said. Several of them worked at Krino Associates. “They say we Terrans should stay within the Sol system. Stick together. Listen.” He crumpled up the leaflet. “The history of man has been one vast migration. This to Whale’s Mouth; it’s the greatest yet—twenty-four light-years! We ought to be proud.” But naturally there’d be a few idiots and cranks opposing history.
Yes, it was history and he wanted to be part of it. First it had been New England, then Australia, Alaska, and then the try—and failure—on Luna, then on Mars and Venus, and now—success. At last. And if he waited too long he would be too old and there would be too many expatriates so free land would no longer be available; the government at Newcolonizedland might withdraw its land offer any time, because after all, every day people streamed over. The Telpor offices were swamped.
“You want me to go?” he asked Ruth. “Go first—and send a message back, once I have the land and am ready to begin building? And then you and the kids can come?”
Nervously, she said, “I hate to be parted from you.”
“Make up your mind.”
“I guess,” she said, “we should go together. If we go at all. But these—letters. They’re just impulses onto energy lines.”
“Like telephone or vidphone or telegraph or TV messages. Has been for one hundred years.”
“If only real letters came back.”
“You have,” he said derisively, “a superstitious fear.”
“Maybe so,” Ruth admitted. But it was a real fear nonetheless. A deep and abiding fear of a one-way trip from which they could never return, except, she thought, eighteen years from now, when that ship reaches the Fomalhaut system.
She picked up the evening ’pape, examined the article, jeering in tone, about this ship, the Omphalos. Capable of transporting five hundred, but this time carrying one sole man: the ship’s owner. And, the article said, he was fleeing to escape his creditors; that was his motive.
But, she thought, he can come back from Whale’s Mouth.
She envied—without understanding why—that man. Rachmael ben Applebaum, the ’pape said. If we could cross over now with you, she thought, if we asked—
Her husband said quietly, “If you won’t go, Ruth, I’m going alone. I’m not going to sit there day after day at that quality-control station, feeling that pigeon breathing down the back of my neck.”
She sighed. And wandered into the common kitchen which they shared with their right-hand neighbors, the Shorts, to see if there was anything left of their monthly ration of what the bill of lading called cof-bz. Synthetic coffee beans.
There was not. So, instead, she morosely fixed herself a cup of synthetic tea. Meanwhile, the Shorts—who were noisy—came and went, in and out of the kitchen. And, in her living room, her husband sat before the TV set, an enraptured child, listening to, following with devout and absorbed full attention the nightly report from Whale’s Mouth. Watching the new, the next, world.
I guess, she thought, he’s right.
But something deep and instinctive within her still objected. And she wondered queerly why. And she thought, then, once more of Rachmael ben Applebaum, who, the ’pape said, was attempting the eighteen-year trip without deep-sleep equipment; he had tried and failed to obtain it, the ’pape said gleefully; the guy was so marginal an operator, such a fly-by-nighter, that he had no credit, pos or otherwise. The poor man, she thought. Conscious and alone for eighteen whole years; couldn’t the company that makes those deep-sleep units donate the equipment he needs?
The TV set in the living room declared, “Remember, folks, it’s Old Mother Hubbard there on Terra, and the Old Woman who lived in a shoe; you’ve got so many children, folks, and just what do you plan to do?”
Emigrate, Ruth decided, without enthusiasm. Apparently.
And—soon.
/>
SIX
Against Rachmael ben Applebaum’s tiny flapple the great hull of his one asset of economic value—and that attached through the courts—bumped in the darkness, and at once automatic mechanisms came into operation. A hatch whined open; inner locks shut and then retired as air passed into vacuum and replaced it, and, on his console, a green light lit. A good one.
He could safely pass from his meager rented flapple into the Omphalos, as it hung in powerless orbit around Mars at .003 astronomical units.
Directly he had crossed through the lock-series—without use of a pressure suit or oxygen gear—Al Dosker said to him, eyeing him and with laser pistol in hand, “I thought it might be a simulacrum, supplied by THL. But the EEG and EKG machines say you’re not.” He held out his hand; and Rachmael shook. “So you’re making the trip anyhow, without the deep-sleep components. And you think, after eighteen years, you’ll be sane? I wouldn’t be.” His dark, sharp-cut face was filled with compassion. “Can’t you induce some fray to come along? One other person, and what a difference, especially if she’s—”
“And quarrel,” Rachmael said, “and wind up with one corpse. I’m taking an enormous edu-tape library; by the time I reach Fomalhaut I’ll be speaking Attic Greek, Latin, Russian, Italian—I’ll be reading alchemical texts from the Middle Ages and Chinese classics in the original from the sixth century.” He smiled, but it was an empty, frozen smile; he was not fooling Dosker, who knew what it was like to try an inter-system run without deep-sleep. Because Dosker had made the three-year trip to Proxima. And, on the journey back, had insisted, from his experience, on deep-sleep.
“What gets me,” Rachmael said, “is that THL has gotten to the black market. That they’re even able to dry up illegal supplies of minned parts.” But—the chance had been missed in the restaurant; the components had been within reach, five thousand poscreds’ worth. And—that was that.
“You know,” Dosker said slowly, “that one of Lies, Incorporated’s experienced field reps is crossing, using a regular Telpor terminal, like the average fella. So we may be contacting the Omphalos within the next week; you may be able to turn back; we may save you the eighteen years going, and, or have you forgotten, the eighteen years returning?”
“I’m not sure,” Rachmael said, “if I make it I’ll come back.” He was not fooling himself; after the trip to Fomalhaut he might be physically unable to start back—whatever conditions obtained at Whale’s Mouth he might stay there because he had to. The body had its limits. So did the mind.
Anyhow they now had more to go on. Not only the failure of the old time capsule ever to reach the Sol system—and conveniently forgotten by the media—but the Vidphone Corporation of Wes-Dem’s absolute refusal, under direct, legal request by Matson Glazer-Holliday, to reactivate its Prince Albert B-y satellite orbiting Fomalhaut. This one fact alone, Rachmael reflected, should have frightened the rational citizen. But—
The people did not know. The media had not reported it.
Matson, however, had leaked the info to the small, militant, anti-emigration org, the Friends of a United People. Mostly they were old-fashioned, elderly and fearful, whose distrust of emigration by means of Telpor was based on neurotic reasons. But—they did print pamphlets. And Vidphone Corp’s refusal had duly been noted immediately in one of their Terra-wide broad-sheets.
But how many persons had seen it—that Rachmael did not know. He had the intuition, however, that very few people had. And—emigration continued.
As Matson said, the footprints leading into the predator’s lair continued to increase in number. And still none led out.
Dosker said, “All right, I am now officially, formally surrendering the Omphalos back to you. She appears to check out through every system, so you should have nothing to fear.” His dark eyes glinted. “I tell you what, ben Applebaum. During your eighteen years of null-deep-sleep you can amuse yourself as I’ve been, during the last week.” He reached to a table, picked up a leather-backed book. “You can,” he said quietly, “keep a diary.”
“Of what?”
“Of a mind,” Dosker said, “deteriorating. It’ll be of psychiatric interest.” Now he did not seem to be joking.
“So even you,” Rachmael said, “consider me—”
“Without deep-sleep equipment to drop your metabolism you’re making a terrible mistake to go. So maybe the diary won’t be a transcript of human deterioration; maybe that’s already taken place.”
Wordlessly, Rachmael watched the dark, lithe man step through the lock, disappear, out of the Omphalos and into the tiny rented flapple.
The lock clanged shut. A red light flicked on above it and he was alone, here in this, his giant passenger liner, as he would be for eighteen years and maybe, he thought, maybe Dosker is right.
But still he intended to make the trip.
At three o’clock a.m. Matson Glazer-Holliday was awakened by one of his staff of automatic villa servants. “Your lord, a message from a Mr. Bergen Phillips. From Newcolonizedland. Just received. And you asked—”
“Yes.” Matson sat up, spilling the covers from Freya, who slept on; he grabbed his robe, slippers. “Let’s have it.”
The message, typed out by routine printers of the Vidphone Corp, read:
BOUGHT MY FIRST ORANGE TREE. LOOKS LIKE A BIG CROP. COME ON JOIN MOLLY AND ME.
Now Freya stirred, sat up; her spidersilk nightgown, one strap of it, slipped from her bare, pale shoulder. “What is it?” she murmured.
“The first encoded note from B.P.,” Matson said; he absently tap-tapped the folded message against his knee, pondering.
She sat up fully, reached for her pack of Bering cigarillos. “What does he report, Mat?”
Matson said, “The message is version six.”
“That—things are exactly as depicted.” She was wide-awake, now; she sat lighting her cigarillo, watching him intently.
“Yes. But—THL psychologists, waiting on the far side, could have nabbed the field rep. Washed his brain, gotten everything and then sent this; so it meant nothing. Only a transmission of one of the odd-numbered codes—indicating in various degrees that conditions at Whale’s Mouth were not as depicted—would have been worth anything. Because of course THL psychologists would have no motive to fake those.”
“So,” Freya said, “you know nothing.”
“But maybe he can activate the Prince Albert B-y sat.” One week; it would not be long, and the Omphalos could easily be contacted by then. And, since its solo pilot did not lie in deep-sleep, he could be informed.
However, if after a week—
“If no data came from the sat,” Matson said thoughtfully, “it still proves nothing. Because then Bergen will transmit message n, meaning that the sat has proved inoperative. They will do all that, too, if they have him. So still nothing!” He paced about the bedroom, then took the burning cigarillo from the girl in the rumpled bed, inhaled from it violently, until it heated up and scorched his fingers. “I,” he said, “will not live out eighteen years.” I will never live to know the truth about Whale’s Mouth, he realized. That time-period; it was just too long to wait.
“You’ll be seventy-nine,” Freya said practically. “So you’ll still be alive. But a jerry with artiforgs for natural organs.”
But—I’m just not that patient, Matson realized. A newborn baby grows virtually to adulthood in that time!
Freya retrieved the cigarillo, winced at its temperature. “Well, possibly you can send over—”
“I’m going over,” Matson said.
Staring at him, after a moment she said, “Oh god. God.”
“I won’t be alone. I’ll have a ‘family.’ At every outlet of Trails of Hoffman a Lies, Incorporated commando team—” He possessed two thousand of them, many veterans of the war; they would pass over at the same moment as he, would link up at Whale’s Mouth. And, in their “personal” gear, they would convey enough detection, relay, recording and monitoring equipment to reestabl
ish the private police agency. “So you’re in charge here on Terra,” he told Freya. “Until I get back.” Which would be thirty-six years from now, he thought acidly. When I’m ninety-seven years old . . . no, that’s right: we can obtain deep-sleep mechanisms at Whale’s Mouth because I remember them taking it across; that’s one reason why it’s so short of supply, here. Originally it was thought that if colonization didn’t work they could vacate—roanoke, they called it— they could roanoke back to the Sol system in deep-sleep by ship . . . from giant liners manufactured at Whale’s Mouth from prefab sections passed across by Dr. von Einem’s Telpor teleportation gates.
“A coup,” Freya said, then. “In fact—a coup d’etat.”
Startled, he said, “What? God no; I never—”
“If you take two thousand top reps,” Freya said, “Lies, Incorporated won’t exist here; it’ll be a shade. But over there—it’ll be formidable. And the UN has no army at Whale’s Mouth, Matson. You’re aware of that, at least on an unconscious level. Who could oppose you? Let’s see. The President of Newcolonizedland, Omar Jones, is up for reelection in two years; you’d possibly want to wait—”
“At the first call from Whale’s Mouth,” Matson said harshly, “Omar Jones could have UN troops trotting through every Telpor instrument in the world. And their tactical weapons with them, everything up to cephalotropic missiles.” And he hated—and feared—those.
“If a call came from Whale’s Mouth. But once you’re on the other side, you could handle that. You could be sure no such emergency announcement was sent out. Isn’t that what we’ve been discussing all this time? Isn’t this really why you bought Rachmael’s idea—your knowledge that all communication from the other side can be—managed?” She waited, smoking, watching him with a feminine vigil of intensity and acuity.