John Varley - The Ophiuchi Hotline

To My Mother

Author's Note

To answer your first question... it's pronounced off-e-YOO-ki , from Ophiuchus, the serpent-holder or doctor, a constellation that just missed fame by being a few degrees away from the zodiac.

Daily Legal Bulletin , published by the Intersystem Office of Criminal Control Research. Aquarius 14, 568 O.E.

Case of Lilo-Alexandr-Calypso vs. The People of Luna.

(Legal Summary—For immediate release)

The State charges that Lilo-Alexandr-Calypso, during the period of time 1/3/556 to 12/18/567, did willfully and knowingly conduct experiments upon human genetic material with the intent of artificially inducing mutations in said material. The State further alleges that defendant did produce human blastocysts and embryos reflecting potential structures atypical of the permitted spectrum of Humanity, in violation of the Unified Code of the Eight Worlds Confederation, Article Three (Crimes Against Humanity) Section Seven (Genetic Crimes). The State asks the penalty of permanent death.

(Class I read-rating)

The file was started on Lilo when CCR computers noticed she had been dealing with Ophiuchi Hotline data tagged by analysis as probably related to human DNA. Crimcon agents obtained a warrant to investigate her subscription records and use-charts with StarLine, Inc., principal broker for processed Hotline data. The grand jury data bank authorized further surveillance both by computer model projection and human operatives. A warrant was granted 11/10/567 pertaining to her home, places of work, and personal property, including her body.

(Class II read-rating)

Crimcon G-cops will tell you, "Lilo was tough. Crafty. Thought we'd struck ice when we broke down the door at Biosystems Research. No joy. We were punching holos. Tapes, notes, all wiped clean when we touched them. Code crackers at CCR chewed and split: Zip. Phi. Nothing. Rerun that for her house; we were chewing vac. But she had money. Ten years back, gene patents on Banana-meat Trees ©. Made a bundle. Checked her travel records. Access! Five trips to Janus. Hopped a 3gee tank-tripper and busted down the door, lasers ready. Nobody home, but one of her booby traps fritzed. Came home with two grams of mutated meat. Her ass was in the recycler now. X rays were pure no-go, but we opened her anyway and what do you think we found? A billion and one bits of data wrapped around her spinal cord! Eat death, gene trasher! The Hole waits!" Crimson G-cops will tell you, crime does not pay.

(Illiterate read-rating)

Photocomics and holotapes attached.

Prisons are not what they used to be. I did a little reading on the subject when it occurred to me that my work might cause me to see the inside of one. Some of the prisons of Old Earth were pretty barbaric.

My cell was nothing like that. It was better than the average run of workers' warren apartments. There were three rooms, well furnished. I had a vidphone, if I didn't mind the warden listening in. I didn't use it.

What the cell had in common with old prisons was the most basic thing of all: The door would not open to my command. Beyond that door were dozens of others, all closed to me. There was a camera in each room that followed my movements.

I was in the Terminal Institute for Enemies of Humanity, three kilometers beneath Ptolemaeus, on the Nearside. I had been there just over a year. Six month's of that was consumed in the gathering of evidence against me. The trial was held in a few milliseconds of computer time one morning while I was still asleep. I was told of the results — no surprises — and scheduled for execution the following morning. Then my lawyer got a six-month stay.

I had no illusions. The stay had been granted, most likely, because my execution was to come before the end of the semester. The Institute was running short on Enemies of Humanity, and there were theses to be completed. Twice a day one of the walls of my cell changed color and began to glow. On the other side of the wall a professor was lecturing a psych class. If I put my face up close I could see ranks of students sitting in the lecture hall. But I quickly tired of looking.

About once a week I was visited by teams of graduate students. They would sit on my sofa and fidget, a series of girls and boys with earnest faces, brows furrowed in concentration. They would interview me for an hour, plainly not knowing what to think of me. At first, I thought up bizarre answers to their questions, but I tired of that, too. Sometimes I just sat there for the whole hour.

My life crawled toward its termination.

Lilo-Alexandr-Calypso sat in her cell and waited for morning. She still had not decided if she could bear to mount those lonely stairs. A year ago, when it hadn't been so goddamn imminent , it had been easy to be brave. Now she could see that her bravado had come from the deep inner conviction that no one would actually kill her. But she had had plenty of time to think.

Gas chamber, gallows. Electric chair, stake, firing squad. Hang by the neck till you're dead, dead, dead, and may God recycle your soul.

Imaginative as those devices had been, they had an extremely simple purpose. They were intended to stop a human heart from beating. Later, the criterion for determining death was brain activity.

That was no longer enough. The sad fact was that it was no longer possible to kill someone and be absolutely sure the person would not show up again. Lilo's execution in the morning was therefore largely symbolic, from the viewpoint of society.

From Lilo's viewpoint, it was much more than that. She was toying with an idea she had entertained only once before in her life: six months earlier, just before her stay of execution. She was thinking of committing suicide.

"And why not?" she asked herself, a little startled when she realized she had said it aloud.

Why not, indeed? A few years earlier she could have given a thousand reasons why not. She had been in her early fifties, still young, with her life stretching endlessly in front of her. But now she was fifty-seven, and suddenly ancient. Soon she would be dead. Dead. You can't get any more ancient than that.

Physically, Lilo was twenty-five. It was a popular age to be, and though Lilo did not like to ape popular trends, she had never felt good looking any older than that. Her body was largely her own, with a few surgical modifications. Her hair was light brown, her eyes were set far apart to accommodate a wide, slightly flat nose. She was tall and slim, and it suited her.

Her one vanity was her legs. She had added ten centimeters to her leg bones, making her two point two meters tall, slightly above average height. She wore fine brown hair, like chinchilla, from midway down her calves to the tops of her feet.

She got up and restlessly paced the room. What amazed her was that, once she had accepted that she was going to die, suicide began to seem like an attractive possibility. The State of Luna did not care if she killed herself; she was going to The Hole in the morning, dead or alive. No attempt had been made to clear her cell of harmful tools.

The tool she was examining now was a knife. It was a lovely thing. Stainless steel, mirror-bright—it had a symmetry of line she found appealing. Cross-hatched grooves wound around the handle, giving a sure grip on cool metal. She drew it across her throat, keeping her mind blank. Her hand shook as she brought her fingers up to her neck. No blood.

She thought about the two alternatives facing her.

Tomorrow would be an emotional moment. She was sure nothing could possibly match the anticipation of mounting the stairs over The Hole. She had a horror of breaking down completely, of having to be restrained and thrown over the brink rather than stepping off by her own volition.