Read Georgia on My Mind and Other Places Online

Authors: Charles Sheffield

Tags: #Science Fiction, #General, #Short Stories, #Fiction

Georgia on My Mind and Other Places (53 page)

BOOK: Georgia on My Mind and Other Places
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* * *

His words meant more to me after I had done some reading. The southern seas of the Roaring Forties cause no shivers today, but a hundred years ago they were a legend to all sailing men, a region of cruel storms, monstrous waves, and deadly winds. They were worst of all in the Drake Passage, but that wild easterly route had been Luke Derwent’s choice. It was quicker, and he was a man for whom time was running out.

While I did my reading, Bill was making travel plans.

Were we going to South Georgia? Of course we were, although any rational process in my brain told me, more strongly than ever, that we would find nothing there. Luke and Louisa Derwent never reached the island. They had died, as so many others had died, in attempting that terrible southern passage below Cape Horn.

There was surely nothing to be found. We knew that. But still we drained our savings, and Bill completed our travel plans. We would fly to Buenos Aires, then on to the Falkland Islands. After that came the final eight hundred miles to South Georgia, by boat, carrying the tiny two-person survey aircraft whose final assembly must be done on the island itself.

Already we knew the terrain of South Georgia as well as anyone had ever known it. I had ordered a couple of spot satellite images of the island, good cloud-free pictures with ten meter resolution. I went over them again and again, marking anomalies that we wanted to investigate.

Bill did the same. But at that point, oddly enough, our individual agendas diverged. His objective was the Analytical Engine, which had dominated his life for the past few months. He had written out, in full, the sequence of events that led to his discoveries in New Zealand, and to our activities afterward. He described the location and nature of all the materials at Little House. He sent copies of everything, dated, signed, and sealed, to the library of his own university, to the British Museum, to the Library of Congress, and to the Reed Collection of rare books and manuscripts in the Dunedin Public Library. The discovery of the Analytical Engine—or of any part of it—somewhere on South Georgia Island would validate and render undeniable everything in the written record.

And I? I wanted to find evidence of Louisa Derwent’s Analytical Engine, and even more so of the Heteromorphs. But beyond that, my thoughts turned again and again to Luke Derwent, in his search for the “great perhaps.”

He had told Louisa that their journey was undertaken to bring Christianity to the cold-loving people; but I knew better. Deep in his heart he had another, more selfish motive. He cared less about the conversion of the Heteromorphs than about access to their great medical powers. Why else would he carry with him, for trading purposes, Louisa’s wondrous construct, the “marvel for this and every age”—a clanking mechanical computer, to beings who possessed machines small and powerful enough to serve as portable language translators.

I understood Luke Derwent completely, in those final days before he sailed east. The love of his life was dying, and he was desperate. Would he, for a chance to save her, have risked death on the wild southern ocean? Would he have sacrificed himself, his whole crew, and his own immortal soul, for the one-in-a-thousand chance of restoring her to health? Would
anyone
take such a risk?

I can answer that. Anyone would take the risk, and count himself blessed by the gods to be given the opportunity.

I want to find the Analytical Engine on South Georgia, and I want to find the Heteromorphs. But more than either of those, I want to find evidence that Luke Derwent
succeeded
in his final, reckless gamble. I want him to have beaten the odds. I want to find Louisa Derwent, frozen but alive in the still glaciers of the island, awaiting her resurrection and restoration to health.

I have a chance to test the kindness of reality. For in just two days, Bill and I fly south and seek our evidence, our own “great perhaps.” Then I will know.

But now, at the last moment, when we are all prepared, events have taken a more complex turn. And I am not sure if what is happening will help us, or hinder us.

Back in Christchurch, Bill had worried about what I would tell people when we looked for help in the States. I told him that I would say as little as we could get away with, and I kept my word. No one was given more than a small part of the whole story, and the main groups involved were separated by the width of the continent.

But we were dealing with some of the world’s smartest people. And today, physical distance means nothing. People talk constantly across the computer nets. Somewhere, in the swirling depths of GEnie, or across the invisible web of an Ethernet, a critical connection was made. And then the inevitable cross-talk began.

Bill learned of this almost by accident, discussing with a travel agent the flights to Buenos Aires. Since then I have followed it systematically.

We are not the only people heading for South Georgia Island. I know of at least three other groups, and I will bet that there are more.

Half the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory seems to be flying south. So is a substantial fraction of the Stanford Computer Science Department, with additions from Lawrence Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore. And from southern California, predictably, comes an active group centered on Los Angeles. Niven, Pournelle, Forward, Benford, and Brin cannot be reached. A number of JPL staff members are mysteriously missing. Certain other scientists and writers from all over the country do not return telephone calls.

What are they all doing? It is not difficult to guess. We are talking about individuals with endless curiosity, and lots of disposable income. Knowing their style, I would not be surprised if the
Queen Mary
were refurbished in her home at Long Beach, and headed south.

Except that they, like everyone else, will be in a hurry, and go by air. No one wants to miss the party. These are the people, remember, who did not hesitate to fly to Pasadena for the Voyager close flybys of the outer planets, or to Hawaii and Mexico to see a total solar eclipse. Can you imagine them missing a chance to be in on the discovery of the century, of any century? Not only to
observe
it, but maybe to become part of the discovery process itself. They will converge on South Georgia in their dozens—their scores—their hundreds, with their powerful laptop computers and GPS terminals and their private planes and advanced sensing equipment.

Logic must tell them, as it tells me, that they will find absolutely nothing. Luke and Louisa Derwent are a century dead, deep beneath the icy waters of the Drake Passage. With them, if the machine ever existed, lie the rusting remnants of Louisa’s Analytical Engine. The Heteromorphs, if they were ever on South Georgia Island, are long gone.

I know all that. So does Bill. But win or lose, Bill and I are going. So are all the others.

And win or lose, I know one other thing. After we, and our converging, energetic, curious, ingenious, sympathetic horde, are finished, South Georgia will never be the same.

* * *

This is for Garry Tee

who is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Auckland;


who is a mathematician, computer specialist, and historian of science;


who discovered parts of Babbage’s Difference Machine in Dunedin, New Zealand;


who programmed the deuce computer in the late 1950s, and has been a colleague and friend since that time;


who is no more Bill Rigley than I am the narrator of this story.

Charles Sheffield, December 31, 1991.

Afterword to “Georgia on My Mind”

This is the way that stories
really
get written. In December, 1991, I had lunch in New York with Stan Schmidt and Tina Lee of
Analog
magazine. Stan said he could use a good novelette about 10,000 words long. Since I had eaten lunch at his expense, I more or less promised him one and even gave him a title, “Georgia on My Mind.” Then I had to write the story.

It came out as a strange mixture of autobiography and fiction. I felt when writing as though I was inventing very little. Almost every name is that of a real person. “Gene” in the story is Professor Gene Golub of Stanford, an old friend and for my money the world’s best numerical analyst. Marvin Minsky is probably the world’s top authority on Artificial Intelligence. Danny Hillis is Chief Scientist of Thinking Machines Corporation and the designer of the Connection Machine, and I was indeed introduced to him by Marvin Minsky in Pasadena at the Neptune flyby, just as the story says. “Bill Wrigley” is Garry Tee, who discovered bits of Babbage’s Difference Machine in Dunedin, New Zealand; however, his physical appearance in the story matches that of another mathematician, Charles Broyden. The sf writers in the story are of course all real. deuce was an early and intractable digital computer, dear to the hearts of anyone who programmed it. Although the narrator of the story is not the same as its author, the two in this case are too close for comfort.

I finished the story on December 31st, 1991. It came out as 17,000 words, not 10,000. On the strength of that, I could claim that Stan Schmidt still owes me 7/10 of a lunch. On the other hand, since the story won the 1993 Nebula Award for Best Novelette, maybe I owe him one.

That is where this Afterword was supposed to end, but I have to say one other thing. Writing parts of this story caused me much personal pain and misery, what Kipling refers to as “the joy of an old wound waking.” It is a depressing thought that internal bleeding may be the price of an honest story.

BOOK: Georgia on My Mind and Other Places
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