Charles Sheffield - Starfire

Clones of Bill Gates, Queen Victoria, Announce Plans to Marry

“True love knows no boundaries of space or time,” declares the smitten pair.

Energy from Nothing, Electricity “Too Cheap to Meter”

Inventor Raoul Segura today revealed a new form of engine that draws its power directly from the cosmic consciousness. He promises an era of “endless plenty and universal wealth” as soon as final tests are completed and government backing is guaranteed.

The Missing Money: Where Did It Go?

Officials of the Golden Ring consortium Fortune Today pronounce themselves baffled by vanished assets that apparently exceed the total net worth of the organization. They promise a full investigation and a worldwide search for missing financial executive Lloyd Persil.

In truth, we (the species we) can tolerate but a little reality. I wonder if we (the individual we that is I) can tolerate much more.

In the last eight days, Paula and Amity reached menarche, apparently simultaneously; Gloria announced her undying love for and intention to marry Michael O’Brien, a witless seventeen-year-old from Derrybeg; and Beth, Dawn, and Willa disappeared from the castle.

For Paula and Amity it was a natural and irreversible event. In the case of Gloria, I suspected that sanity would reassert itself in a month or two-she so surpasses her professed lifelong love in wit and intellect that it would be like marrying a monkey.

Therefore, the last must be first. I had to concentrate on Beth, Dawn, and Willa. It was not until midday that I realized the three ten-year-olds were not present at lunch. Missing a meal was, especially for Willa, an unprecedented event and one that immediately caused me concern.

For most people in the world, this was a problem with a simple and immediate solution. If I forwarded the girls’ digital DNA records to GSARS, the Global Search-And-Rescue System would tune its network to those signatures and use the body resonance patterns to locate each missing person to within twenty feet.

There were, however, obvious problems. GSARS was integrated into GGDB, the General Global Data Base, and the complete DNA patterns of my darlings might already be stored there. What alarm bells would go off if the genome of a ten-year-old matched, nucleotide base by nucleotide base, the genome of a pubescent girl who had been murdered more than thirty years ago?

I dared not take that risk. After a hurried lunch the other girls fanned out across the countryside to begin the search. I stayed behind, filled with my own presentiments. Had I made a mistake? Should I have asked for help from GSARS?

The call, when it came, was as good and yet as bad as it could be.

“We found ’em. They’re all right, but they’ve got stuck on the cliffs. We’ll need a rope.” It was Gloria, red hair darkened by rain and eyebrows beaded with droplets. “Come on. Be sure to put your coat on-it’s pissing down out there.”

I had never told the girls of my irrational fear of heights. They would expect my immediate presence and assistance. I donned coat and hat and left the castle by the scullery entrance on the seaward side. Otranto Castle is thick-walled and solid, and when I stepped from its sheltering bulk I realized for the first time the severity of the weather. A strong westerly was blowing, driving sheets of rain at me horizontally. As I walked west it was almost impossible to see where I was going.

That was, I suspect, the only thing that allowed me to walk as far as I did. I knew that ahead stood the three-hundred-foot headland with its sheer drop to the waters of the Atlantic. I told myself that it was not yet close; I had a long way to go before I got to the edge.

In certain areas, however, I lack the power of self-deception. I came to a point where, try as I might, I could not force my legs to carry me forward. I could hear the wind, howling as it breasted the cliff after its three-thousand-mile journey across the open Atlantic. I could smell brine and seaweed. I struggled to take another step, failed, and sank down on the sodden turf. It took a supreme effort even to look forward. I peered into the driving rain and saw my darlings, a tight cluster of them, perilously close to the edge of the precipice. They were perhaps two hundred yards away, and I could not discern what they were doing.

I stood up, resolved to take one more step, and again sank to the ground. My thoughts, like my legs, lost the power to move. An endless interval passed before I heard Bridget’s voice.

“We got ’em,” she said cheerfully. “Hauled ’em up one at a time on the rope. They’d been bird-nesting, the idiots. They ought to have had more sense in this weather.”

I recalled the cluster of girls I had seen at work. “You all pulled? That’s what I saw you doing?”

“All except Paula and Amity. They’ve started their period and they’re having cramps.” Bridget reached out. “Here, let me give you a hand. You came quite a long way.”

She is perhaps the strongest of all my darlings. She reached out and hoisted me easily to my feet.

I felt a great weariness. “I’m sorry. You don’t know this, but I have a real problem with heights.”

She stared at me. “Of course we know you can’t stand heights. We’ve all known that for years.”

I was saved from a reply by the arrival of the other girls in a great chattering throng. Dawn, Willa, and Beth were loudly defensive, insisting that they could have easily climbed back up the cliff by themselves anytime they wanted to. The others complained about being dragged out into the rain to save a set of senseless dummies.

I walked along in the middle of them. No one spoke to me, and I spoke to no one. But I noticed that they all watched me closely until we were safely inside the castle.

“Hot drinks all round, I think,” Paula said. And then to me, “You didn’t call GSARS, did you?”

“I did not.”

“Good. I bet they’d have made us all fill out their stupid reports. None of us wanted that. You go on into your study. One of us will bring your drink.”

She was humoring me. She knew about GSARS, which I had not realized. Gloria had insisted that I put on my coat before I left the castle. Bridget had kindly told me that I had come “quite a long way” toward the cliff. Yes, they indeed knew of my terror of heights.

These were my darlings, sheltered from reality all of their short lives. I wondered, what else did they know?

It is late on the evening of the same day.

When the excitement of the rescue at last died down I felt infinitely weary. My brain felt as though it was simply ticking over, barely able to keep my vital functions in operation. I lay back in my favorite chair and thought about Beth, Dawn, and Willa, and of the Global Search-And-Rescue System that I had chosen not to use.

The modern search-and-rescue system is a direct descendant of one introduced almost a hundred years ago. In its original form, a constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit picked up signals sent out by stranded travelers or others in distress on land or sea. By analyzing frequency shifts and travel times, the location of the emitted signal could be determined and a rescue party dispatched. The old system was a passive one — the spacecraft flew overhead and listened for a signal.

Suppose, however, that the person in trouble could not send a distress signal because they lacked the necessary equipment, or because that equipment had been damaged. With the original system, such a person could not be located.

The modern version of search-and-rescue came into worldwide use twenty years before the supernova {it languished, not surprisingly, for ten years after Alpha C, when all low-orbit satellites ceased to operate). Rather than a passive system, requiring that a distress signal be sent out, today’s is an active one. The satellites, sweeping around the Earth, send out tuned signals of their own. These are designed to stimulate a response from a human body — a specific human body. The return signal indicates the exact location of that body. It is no longer necessary to carry a transmitter in order to use the Global Search-and-Rescue System.