Joe Haldeman - Worlds Enough and Time

In talking with her daughter, O’Hara came to realize that there was a component of fear in her own feelings toward those people. Susceptible to this kind of weird behavior, what other kinds of behavior might they be capable of? Could inexplicable passivity explode into inexplicable violence? The Psych people she talked to cautiously said no. But on the other hand, they were at a loss to explain why so many aboard were vulnerable to this specific variety of dissociation. It was like a kind of existential virus. Could a normal person catch it? Could O’Hara?

It didn’t seem likely. Though Psych no longer had extensive profiles of everybody, they were able to interview acquaintances and sometimes family relations of the people possessed by the Church of the Eternal Now, and it seemed that certain patterns of personality were favored. Coworkers used terms like scatterbrained, sullen, hard to train, unimaginative, lazy. Family members tended to preface their interviews with a sigh, and then work on some variation of “He was such a nice little boy.” Most of them had been in and out of various religions, tending toward the wholist and fundamentalist. Seven Nowers had once been proselytizing atheists, a combination both odd and annoying, since almost three quarters of ’Home’s population already adhered to unbelief in some degree. (John had worked with one of the antifaithful in the Deucalion reclamation project, almost twenty years before, and had confounded him by claiming to be a “fundamentalist Syncretic,” borrowing from various friends jewelry presenting cross, crescent, flower, and Star of David, switching from week to week, enlivening the lunch hour with haphazard but passionate pronouncements about the pope, Muhammed, Baha’u’llah, and Moses. John didn’t know much about religion, but the fanatic knew less.)

The net result was that ’Home experienced no significant decline in work accomplished by losing them. The eighty-eight people gone off to wherever the Church of the Eternal Now was had added to and subtracted from productivity in about equal measure.

15 October 2108 [1 Lao Tse 315]—What do they feed those children, sex hormones? Sandra’s starting to sprout breasts. Talking about menarche. Put a cork in it, girl. She hasn’t even had time to be a girl!

Of course she’s anxious about being the youngest. The oldest of the Old Guard are ancient crones of ten. But how could worrying about that cause her to grow breasts? (Evy says the record age is eight, so I guess I should be thankful for small favors.)

Mother was such a bitch about the way I delayed menarche. Trying not to overcompensate. Sure, honey, if you want to go from blocks to cocks in seven years, what business is it of mine?

Let’s separate this out into factors:

1. Concern about my own age. I’m not old enough to have a pubescent daughter. Me a potential grandmother? (And what if Sandra elects for parthenogenesis? A hall of mirrors.)

2. Concern about her emotional maturity. She’s so moody now, quick to laugh or cry. I think a boy could hurt her deeply without knowing it, without meaning to.

3. Concern about her studies. She’s not all that interested in academics, and will be much less so once she starts with boys. (Footnote—a constant and increasing disappointment, but be fair. She might be as bookish as I was, if she had as many books.)

4. It’s perverse. It really is, little girls and little boys. If everybody’s doing it, then everybody’s perverse!

5. Selfishness. I don’t want to share her love more than I already do. Bad enough that she loves Uncle John more than me. But who wouldn’t?

Maybe it’s mortality rather than age as such. I don’t think I mind being older. It makes a lot of things easier. But as she moves toward the marriage bed, I move toward the grave.

How poetical. I’ll leave it, though.

Newhome continually checked a wide range of frequencies sternward, hoping for a message or even some manmade electronic noise from New New. On 19 October 2108 [6 Lao Tse 315], they got a sudden strong message at the 25.7-centimeter line (which was the standard 21-centimeter line, redshifted by their velocity relative to Earth), but not from New New.

Sixty seconds of warbling carrier wave, then this message repeated ten times:

Earth calling the starship. Earth calling the starship. This is Key West, Florida, station WROK, broadcasting at a frequency they call the water hole, 1420 megahertz, 21 centimeters. This message will be repeated ten times, and then we will switch to tightbeam video flatscreen on a composite signal from 54 to 60 megahertz, audio backup at 1420. We’ll repeat the whole thing for a couple of weeks, and will expect a reply in a couple of years, same frequencies.Earth calling the starship…

When the flatscreen flickered to life, it showed a cadaverous balding man, staring nervously into the camera. Behind him, palm trees swayed in a light breeze, seagulls floated.

STORM: I hope you all are getting this. We don’t know how much power it takes to get out there or how good we’re focused on you.

My name’s Storm. I’m the mayor of Key West and the governor of Dixie. That’s basically Florida and what used to be Georgia and Miss’ippi.

(Nods to somebody OFF)

Yeah, and part of Lou’siana too, but we ain’t heard from them in months. They were gettin’ flooded.

This is sometime in October 2107. It’s a long story as to why we don’t know exactly what the date is.

Anyhow, more about that later. We got things pretty much up and running. Even power to spare for this kinda thing, though most people don’t think there’s no one up there.

What the hell happened to New New York? If you know. They stopped broadcasting here about ten, eleven years ago—

(Someone OFF speaks; Storm says, “Yeah, yeah .”) Exactly one year after you left, if we were counting right. So it must of had something to do with you. Maybe you did it, somehow. Hope not. Anyhow, we could sure use their help now, so if you know anything about it, let us know.

Anyhow, this here’s Healer. He’s the one who started this whole thing.

The camera pans around jerkily to a big man in his late fifties, sunbaked skin dark against a shock of white beard and long, flowing white hair. There’s a radio telescope dish in the background.

HAWKINGS: My actual name is Jeff Hawkings. With any luck, I should know one of you. Hi, Marianne. Long time no see.

Key West was an oasis after the war, with water, food, and power independent of the American mainland. The ubiquitous biological agent, what we called the “death,” was here as everywhere, until New New York sent us the antigen that wiped it out. I brought it down south; that’s why they call me Healer.

Not that simple, actually. There was unrest, a power struggle, a bizarre belief system that took over most of Dixie and still has its adherents. Guess I told you about them back in ’90, ’91, when 1 got through to Marianne from Plant City. The Mansonites; they’re still around, but on the wane. Fortunately. Murder and cannibalism are sacraments to them. We try to stay out of their way.

We need help. Trying to rebuild the world here; trying not to repeat too many mistakes. Reinventing the wheel several times a week, I’m sure.

As you know, the death killed almost all adults; the only grown-ups who survived were giants like me, people with acromegaly. Most of us are mentally retarded. I may be the only person on this planet with a bachelor’s degree.

Which is why we so desperately need you. Information. Training. We’re surrounded by technological wonders and nobody knows how they work, let alone how to fix them if they break.