Georgia on My Mind and Other Places (29 page)

“You and two other crew members, in the forepart of the ship, were rendered senseless. The rest of the crew were killed outright. Three of the Shimmies were killed also, while the other three—including Skip—were unharmed. But the ship was disintegrating, losing air.
‘Chest hurt,’
as one Shimmy told us,
‘Ship die
—
breaking. Five man die, three Shimmies die. Three man sleep, three Shimmies wake. Ship dying, breaking.’
That is a clear statement of the situation. It was left to the three Shimmies—intelligent or not, we won’t argue that point now—to save themselves and the three unconscious humans.

“Skip and the others must have tried, but unfortunately it couldn’t be done. The ship was doomed, and although the pinnace was intact—
‘Little ship, little ship fly,’
as Skip told us—it didn’t have enough fuel and power. Not for three men and three Shimmies. It could just carry the mass of two men and no Shimmies, or one man and one Shimmy, and squeak through to Horus. But no more. The Shimmies could have stuffed two humans into the pinnace and stayed behind themselves, but that wouldn’t solve anything, because the men were all unconscious and they couldn’t fly it. Again, Skip told us the whole thing:
‘One man yes, two man yes, three man no. But need Shimmy. Three man sleep, three man small, two Shimmy die, one Shimmy fly. Sad, sorry. Only answer.’

“In other words, the pinnace could carry
one
Shimmy, to fly it, with three men—but
three men small
—three unconscious men whose mass had been surgically reduced as far as possible, to the approximate total mass of
one
man.
‘Sad, sorry. Only answer,’
said Skip. Not a nice answer, but to the three Shimmies, the
only
answer. They could not bear the thought of killing a human, of allowing a human to die who might somehow be saved. So they performed that awful surgery, on Captain Grenville and the other two crew members. Then two Shimmies stayed behind, to die on the ship. The other Shimmy—Skip, the most able of them all—piloted the pinnace, and just made it to Horus with, to quote the captain, the ‘last dregs of power.’ The three human passengers survived.”

Leon Karst allowed his eyes to roam slowly over the hushed but restive courtroom. “
That,
my friends, is the true story behind the loss of the ship, the mutilation of the crew, and Captain Grenville’s improbable survival. The Shimmies were not murderers. They were saviors, who gave their own lives so that three humans—”

“Objection.” Deirdre Walsh was on her feet, speaking in a suddenly turbulent court. “Your Honor, this has gone on far too long. This is not evidence. We do not know how those messages originated, or who created them. We have been listening to something that is less than hearsay! It is pure fabrication. I ask that the last speech from the plaintiff’s counsel be removed from the record.”

Judge Williams acknowledged her with a nod, but his attention was on Grenville. “Captain.” He spoke through the noise, not trying to silence it. “If your ship suffered an accident, as Mr. Karst has suggested, what is the chance that it will ever be recovered?”

“Out near the Egyptian Cluster? Very small. Negligible.”

“Do you accept the counsel for the plaintiff’s reconstruction of events?”

“I—think not.” After Karst’s analysis, Russell Grenville had become hesitant. His eyes were blinking rapidly. “There—there could be many other scenarios that fit such a message.”

Grenville’s sober manner carried great moral authority. The judge nodded. “Mr. Karst, based on the captain’s comments I am forced to concur with the defendant’s counsel. Ingenious as your speculations—”

“Your Honor.” Leon Karst was breaking one of the first rules of legal practice; never interrupt a judge. “Before you make that decision, I beg you to consider one more item of evidence. It will take only a moment.”

“Has it been introduced as an exhibit in this case?”

“Not yet. It could not be. It arrived only early this morning from Horus. We have had no time to make it available to the defendant, though of course they will receive a copy.”

“Describe its nature.”

“It is a recording made by one of the miners, of the execution of Skip—”

“Objection!”

“—of the death of the Shimmy, Skip, on Horus.”

Judge Williams glanced to the other two tribunal members, but it was a formality. His own curiosity had been roused. “If it is brief, you may proceed.”

“If we could reduce the lighting level . . .” Leon Karst nodded to Sally, who had the recorder ready to run a projection onto the courtroom wall.

She switched on with a shiver. Leon was risking everything on the next sixty seconds, winnowed by Sally out of an hour of recording received from Horus. She had warned him that she found the modified sign language used on Grenville’s ship unintelligible, but Leon must feel that this was his last chance to save the case.

The picture had been recorded by an amateur and transmitted over a low-bandwidth channel. Grainy and noisy, it showed a surging group of men in miners’ close-fitting black suits. They were floating in the low-gravity enclosure of an outside asteroid chamber. Their faces were angry and pitiless. In their midst hung a Shimmy, his brown fur marked by cuts and patches of blood, and one of his legs bent at a strange angle. They were treating him roughly, forcing him toward an airlock.

“Murdering monkey,” said a loud voice from the group. “Get in there, and go straight to hell.”

“Captain Grenville.” Leon Karst spoke over the noise of the recording and the rising tumult in the courtroom. “Did any of the miners on Horus understand Shimmy sign language?”

“I doubt it. Why should they?” Grenville spoke quietly, nervously.

“Then can you tell us what Skip is saying?”

For the Shimmy, battered and bleeding, was gesturing frantically at the men as he was dragged and pushed closer to the lock entrance. They were taking no notice of his frenzied signals, interrupting them with blows and slaps.

“I think I can,” said Grenville. “If I can just get a good look . . . Uh. I think . . .
Not
—
kill. Never
—
kill
—
man. Save
—
man. Save man. Skip save man
.”

Then the Shimmy was being handled so roughly that he could make no more gestures. He was flung violently into the lock by a dozen miners, bounced off the outer metal wall, and hung alone covering his head with his hands. After a few seconds he turned to face his executioners. In the bare, functional chamber, with vacuum only a few moments away, his expression changed. It became calm and resigned, almost peaceful. And as the door slid closed he made another set of gestures, over and over.

“Captain Grenville?” said Leon Karst. The captain was staring at the screen, white-faced and silent. “Sir? Can you read them?”

But Grenville had lowered his head. Tears were trickling down his cheeks, and he seemed to be speaking only to himself.

The courtroom froze. And as the whispered words reached her, Sally knew that the case was over.

“Skip
—
forgive you,”
Russell Grenville was saying.
“You not know
—
what you do. Skip forgive. Skip forgive. Skip forgive.”
He looked up, beyond the tribunal and beyond the courtroom. “Great God in Heaven. Skip, can you forgive us all?”

Afterword to “Humanity Test”

I’ve heard writers at conventions envying the first generation of science fiction writers. There were all these neat fresh ideas, you see, waiting to be written about
for the very first time
. So it isn’t fair for the rest of us who came along later, because we don’t have that virgin intellectual forest waiting to be explored.

That thought makes about as much sense as envying Newton or Maxwell because the laws of gravity and electromagnetism were sitting about waiting for somebody to discover them. The creative process was probably
harder
then than now, since many tools that make work easier today had not been developed.

The problem is a real one, though. What does a writer do when someone has already had the basic idea and written the classic story? One answer is, have a different idea and write a different story.

Another answer is to take the same idea, and push it one step forward.

Tom Godwin’s “The Cold Equations” is a science fiction classic. A young stowaway on a spaceship must be jettisoned, because the added mass that she gives to the ship will make its mission impossible. The story was chilling; once read, never forgotten.

But was it the only answer? I decided that it was not, and wrote “Humanity Test”—a solution to the insoluble problem set up in Tom Godwin’s story.

Poul Anderson’s
Tau Zero
is another absolute classic, a story that can be written only once and seems to be the logical end of the line. I tried to go beyond it in
At the Eschaton
, a novella that will be coming out from Tor Books in the next year or so. I’m sure I can’t top
Tau Zero
, but it was certainly fun to try.

That Strain Again . . .

Dear Werner,

I see what you meant about Vega IV. After the places I’ve been posted for the past three years, it’s Paradise. An atmosphere you can breathe, and people who seem like humans (only, dare I say it, nicer)—what more could you ask for?

Did you know that their name for themselves translates as “The Ethical People”? It seems to apply a lot better than “The Wise People”—homo sapiens—ever fitted us. Maybe it’s the Garden of Eden,
before
the Fall. You know, just a little dull, all the days the same length, and no change in the weather. It takes some getting used to, but I’m adapting.

One other thing. Remember the way that Captain Kirwin described the Vegans’ reaction when he first landed here? “They were surprised to see us, and they seemed to be both relieved and rejoicing at our arrival.” A lot of people have puzzled over Kirwin’s words—and today I found out why he sensed that reaction. The Vegans
were
relieved, and they were surprised when we appeared. You see, they’d made an expedition to Earth themselves, just a few years ago.

Sorrel has been translating the diary of that expedition for us, and he gave it to me today. I’m enclosing part of it here. To make it easier to read, I have translated the times and places into terrestrial terms. Otherwise, it’s just as they wrote it.

* * *

September 12th. All arrived safely. The transmitter worked perfectly and has deposited us in an unpopulated forest area of the northern hemisphere. We will make no attempt to look for a native civilization until we have settled in. Gathor’s warning is being well-heeded. We are watching closely for evidence of infection from alien bacteria and microorganisms. So far, no problem and we are all in good health.

* * *

September 23rd. All goes well. A beautiful and fertile planet this, but a strange one. Surface gravity is only five-sixths of ours and we all feel as strong as giants.

This world is tilted on its axis, so days and nights are not all the same length. This has caused some confusion in our sleeping habits, but we are adjusting satisfactorily.

* * *

October 8th. Strange things are happening. The trees all around us look less healthy, with a strange blight spreading over their leaves. We thought at first that it was a trick of illumination when the sun is lower in the sky, but now we are sure it is real.

* * *

October 20th. We must return to Vega IV. Gathor was right, in an unexpected and terrible way. Alien microorganisms have not harmed us—but we have infected Earth. All around us the great blight spreads. Everywhere we look the Earth is dying. We are contagion and bear guilt for the murder of this world. Tomorrow we must transmit home.

* * *

—and they came home, Werner, back to Vega IV. Do you see what I mean about “The Ethical People”? I’ve looked up the climate records, and I find that fall in Vermont was exceptionally beautiful that year, all glorious reds and browns and yellows. It made me think. Somewhere out there we are going to run into a planet with as big a shock in store for us as our seasons were to the Vegans. I just hope we can come out of it as well as they did....

Afterword to “That Strain Again . . .”

See Afterword to “Millennium.”

Destroyer of Worlds

“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” Those words were not penned by a dedicated employee of the United States Postal Service. They were written by Herodotus, in about 450 B.C., and he was talking about the postal system of the Persians.

The first postage stamps in the world came long after the first postal service. They were introduced in Great Britain, in 1840. They were the “Penny Black” and the “Twopenny Blue,” and the picture on their face was based on the 1837 medal portrait of Queen Victoria engraved by W. Wyon.

A
reprint
is a stamp printed from the original plate after that stamp is no longer valid for use as postage. Its existence tends to depreciate the price to collectors of the original stamps.

Philately
, as a term used to describe the collecting of postage stamps, was a word coined in 1865 by a Frenchman, Monsieur Herpin. Before that, stamp collecting was known by the less complimentary term of
timbromania
.

Everyone in the world knows these things. Don’t they? That’s what Tom Walton seemed to believe when I first met him.

I went to his shop on 15th Street in downtown Washington in early May, on a warm and pleasant midafternoon. A reporter friend of mine had given me his name and the address of his store, and assured me that he knew more about stamps than any ten other people combined. To tell the truth, it was only faith in my friend Jill’s opinions that persuaded me to go into that shop. The storefront was a hefty metal grating over dirty glass, and behind it on display in the window I saw nothing but a couple of battered leather books and a metal roller. It was a dump, the sort of shop you walk past without even noticing it’s there.