Bruce Sterling - Crystal Express

"Ignorant," Hillis muttered, as the two of us pulled his limp arms over our shoulders. "Slaves to machines! Those wards-handcuffs! I invented all that... I killed the scientific tradition." He began weeping freely "Twenty-six hundred years since Socrates and then, me. He glared and his head rolled like a flower on a stalk. "Take your hands off me, you decadent weasels!"

"We're trying to help you, Doctor," Somps said, frightened and exasperated.

"Not a cent out of me, Somps," the old man raved weakly. "It's all in the book."

I then remembered what Leona had told me about the old man's book, to be published on his suicide. "Oh, no," I said. "He's going to disgrace us all and disgrace himself."

"Not a penny, Somps. You failed me. You and your stupid toys."

We dropped him back onto the bed. "It's horrible," Somps said, trembling. "We're ruined."

It was typical of Somps that he should think of himself at a moment like that. Anyone of spirit would have considered the greater interests of society. It was unthinkable that this titan of the age should die in such squalid circumstances. It would give no one happiness, and would cause pain and disillusion to uncounted millions I pride myself that I rose to the challenge. My brain roared with sudden inspiration. It was the most sublime moment of my life.

Somps and I had a brief, fierce argument. Perhaps logic was not on my side, but I ground him down with the sheer passion of my conscience. By the time I had returned with our clothes and shoes, Somps had fixed the door and disposed of the evidence of drugs. We dressed with frantic haste.

By now the old man's lips were bluish and his limbs were like wax. We hustled him into his wheelchair, wedging him in with his buffalo robe. I ran ahead, checking that we were not seen, while Somps wheeled the dying man along behind me. Luckily there was a moon out. It helped us on the trail to the Throne of Adonis. It was a long exhausting climb, but Somps and I were men possessed.

Roseate summer dawn was touching the horizon by the time we had the Dragonfly ready and the old man strapped in. He was still breathing shallowly, and his eyelids fluttered. We wrapped his gnarled hands around the joysticks.

When the first golden rim of the sunlight touched the horizon, Somps flicked on the engine. I jammed the aircraft's narrow tail beneath my arm, braced like a lance. Then I ran forward and shoved her off into the cold air of dawn!

MacLuhan, I'm almost sure that the rushing chilly air of the descent revived him briefly. As the aircraft fell toward the roiling waters below, she began to pitch and buck like a live thing. I feel in my heart that Hillis, that seminal genius of our age, revived and fought for life in his last instants. I think he went like a hero. Some campers below saw him hit. They, too, swore he was fighting to the last.

The rest you know. They found the wreckage miles downstream, in the Global Park, next day. You may have seen Somps and myself on television. I assure you, my tears were not feigned; they came from the heart.

Our story told it as it should have happened. The insistence of Dr. Hillis that he pilot the craft, that he restore the fair name of his industries. We helped him unwillingly, but we could not refuse the great man's wishes.

I admit the hint of scandal. His grave illness was common knowledge, and the autopsy machines showed the drugs in his body. Luckily, his doctor admitted that Hillis had been using them for months to fight the pain.

I think there is little doubt in most people's minds that he meant to crash. But it is all in the spirit of the age, my dear MacLuhan. People are generous to the sublime gesture. Dr. Hillis went down fighting, struggling with a machine on the cutting edge of science. He went down defending his good name.

As for Somps and myself, the response has been noble. The mailnet has been full of messages. Some condemn me for giving in to the old man. But most thank me for helping to make his last moments beautiful.

I last saw poor Somps as he and Claire Berger were departing for Osaka. I'm afraid he still feels some bitterness. "Maybe it was best," he told me grudgingly as we shook hands. "People keep telling me so. But I'll never forget the horror of those last moments."

"I'm sorry about the aircraft," I said. "When the notoriety wears off, I'm sure it will be a great success."

"I'll have to find another backer," he said. "And then put it into production. It won't be easy. Probably take years."

"It's the yin and yang," I told him. "Once poets labored in garrets while engineers had the run of the land. Things change, that's all. If one goes against the grain, one pays the price."

My words, meant to cheer him, seemed to scald him instead. "You're so damned smug," he almost snarled. "Damn it, Claire and I build things, we shape the world, we try for real understanding! We don't just do each other's nails and hold hands in the moonlight!"

He is a stubborn man. Maybe the pendulum will one day swing his way again, if he lives as long as Dr. Hillis did. In the meantime he has a woman to stand by him and assure him that he is persecuted. So maybe he will find, in the good fight, some narrow kind of sublimity.

So, my dear MacLuhan, love has triumphed. Leona and I will shortly return to my beloved Seattle, where she will rent the suite next to my own. I feel that very soon we will take the great step of abandoning carezza and confronting true physical satisfaction. If all goes well then, I will propose marriage! And then, perhaps, even children.

In any case, I promise you, you will be the first to know.

Yours as always, de K.

First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September 1984.

Monsieur Benoit de Maillet, formerly His Majesty's grand consul in Egypt, now retired, tottered down the slope of the beach on the arm of his manservant, Torquetil. When they reached the usual spot beside the great striped rock, de Maillet leaned on his cane, breathing heavily. The walk was a hard one for a man in his eighties. De Maillet's wig was askew, and his wise old face was pinched with concealed suffering. Torquetil unfolded the campstool. De Maillet sat on it with a brief sigh of relief. Torquetil set up the parasol. It was an immense and gaudy parting gift from the Sultan of Egypt, and de Maillet was particularly proud of it. The servant set a wicker basket of provisions by the old philosopher's swollen knees. "Will there be anything else, monsieur?"

"When you get back, have the carriage master come and examine those straps," de Maillet said firmly. He opened his wicker box and pulled out a black-ribboned pair of spectacles. He sat upright again with an effort and put his hand to the side of his substantial paunch. "And tell the cook -- no more curries!"

"Very well, monsieur." The young Breton bounded back up the slope toward the carriage.

De Maillet balanced the spectacles on his large and fleshy nose. He reached into the basket for a letter, and broke its wax seal with his thumb.

Pont Gardeau, Suriname February 12, 1737

To the Sieur Benoit de Maillet, Grand Consul and Envoy Plenipotentiary, ret'd., in Marseille.

Cher Monsieur:

Please forgive this execrable handwriting, which, I know, is almost as bad as your own. It seems that my secretary has fallen ill with one of the manifold agues of this pestilential region. Without the aid of this invaluable boy my studies of natural theology have fallen into a lamentable state. I myself am not so well as I should be; but it is nothing serious. I imagine that neither of us can claim the vigor we had in those faraway days in Egypt.

I regret that I am unable to send you the samples of rock you requested; during the past several months I have been upriver, in the interior, humbly struggling for the propagation of His Catholic Majesty's most perfect Faith. During such time I collected a number of very curious worms and insects, with which I hope to confound the pedantic System of the infidel Linnaeus.