Джек Макдевитт - Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt

“No, Michael. We don’t have the technology. Yet. I’m saying it could be done. Almost certainly has been done.”

Nick had brightened numerous evenings in the old days with quantum stories. We were a family of stockbrokers and financial experts. He used to come home and go on about objects that exist simultaneously in two places, or move backward in time, or wink in and out of existence. Father had occasionally described Nick’s mind in much the same terms.

“All right,” I said. “If you went out into your kitchen tonight, and cooked one of these things up, what would happen to us when it let go?”

“Probably nothing. The blast would create a new space-time continuum. The lights might dim a little. Maybe the room would even shake. But that would be about all.”

I let him refill my glass. “Well,” I said, “whatever.” Even for Nick, that one was off the wall. “What has any of this got to do with—?” I hesitated.

“—With David?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know. What connection has it with your hiding out up here?”

His eyes were very round, and very hard. “Let me take you a step further, Michael. We’ve gone beyond the quantum world now. Anyone with the technology to manufacture a new cosmos would also be able to set the parameters for the universe that would result. In fact, they would almost certainly have to, or they’d get nothing more than cosmic sludge.”

“Explain, please.”

He leaped to his feet, knocked over a stack of books on an end table, and threw open the glass doors. The city lights blazed beneath a crescent moon and cold, distant stars. “Unless you were very lucky, Michael— incredibly lucky—unless a world of constants balanced very precisely, and a multitude of physical laws came out just right, there would be no moon hung in this sky, no distant suns to brighten the night. And certainly no eyes to see the difference.” He strode out onto the terrace and advanced toward the edge of the roof. Uncertain what he might do in his agitated state, I hurried after him. “ But, ” he continued, “with a little ingenuity, we can create whatever we wish. Flowers. Galaxies. An immortal race.”

“The Creator did not see fit to do that,” I said firmly.

He swung round. “No, He did not.” He raised his face to the stars. “Indeed, He did not. Certainly, He did not lack the imagination. Everything around us demonstrates that. But He chose to show us the possibilities of existence, to let us taste love, and to snatch it away. To create transients in this marvellous place. What are our lives, finally, but a long march toward a dusty end? Michael—.” His eyes widened, and his voice sank, “the stars were created not in love, but in malice. If you could create angels, would you make men ?”

“That’s not my call,” I said.

“Isn’t it? You and I are victims , Michael. If not us, then who?”

The wind blew across the rooftop.

“ Think , Michael: what kind of being would give us death when He had life in His hands?”

The temperature was dropping. Lights moved against the stars, headed in the general direction of Seattle-Tacoma International. “ If you’re correct, Nick,—and I say if —the kind of Deity you’re describing might take offense.” It was really an effort to lighten the mood. It didn’t.

“Thunderbolt out of a clear sky? No: we are safely beyond His reach.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Once He released the cosmic seed, we expanded into a universe other than His. He can’t touch us. That’s the way it works. We’re alone, Michael. No need to worry.” He began to giggle. The laughter bubbled out of his throat but stopped when he rammed a fist into the waist-high brick wall at the edge of the roof.

He did not cry out but only stood with blood pouring between clenched fingers. His hysteria broke off, and I took him back inside, sat him down, and got the Mercurochrome. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I really shouldn’t have loaded all that on you.”

“That’s true.” Our eyes met. “And not on yourself.”

A storm blew out of the Pacific that night. It carried no rain, but there was electricity, and it dumped a lot of hail into the area. I lay awake through much of it, watching the light in the bedroom curtains alternately brighten and fade, listening to the rhythmic breathing of my wife. At one point I got up and wandered through the house, checking the kids.

And, for the first time in many years, I prayed. But the familiar words sounded empty.

I could not take Nick’s ideas seriously. But I kept thinking: surely, a Technician who could wire gravity into the universe could manage a mechanism to dispose of malcontents. In spite of common sense, I was worried.

I called him in the morning, got no answer, waited an hour, and tried the lab. Cord picked up the phone. “Yes,” he said. “He’s here. Did you want to talk to him?”

“No,” I said. “Is he okay?”

“Far as I can tell. Why? Did something happen?”

So there had been no bolts. Nothing had come in the night to carry him off.

He remains in that gloomy tower. Occasionally, I can see him up there, framed in the light of a single lamp. Staring across the city. Across the world.

And it has occurred to me that there are subtler ways than lightning bolts.

I’ve never believed in the supernatural. The universe is too subtle, too rational, to permit entry to gods or devils. There’s no room for the paranormal. No fortune telling. No messages from beyond. No divine retribution.

But I am not sure how to explain certain entries in my father’s diary, which came into my hands recently after his death in the Jersey Event. On the surface, I have no choice but to conclude that there is either a hoax or a coincidence of unimaginable proportions. Still, it is my father’s handwriting, and the final entry is dated the day before he died. If there is deception, I cannot imagine how it has been accomplished.

I found the diary locked in the upper right hand drawer of his oak desk. The keys were in a small glass jar atop the desk, obviating the point of the lock, but my father was never one to concern himself with consistency. He would have put it in there himself: my mother had died many years before, and he lived alone. The desk was intact when I got to it after the disaster, although it had been ruined by rain.

Nobody will ever be sure how many died when the rock came down off the Jersey coast. Conservative estimates put the figure at a million and a half. A hundred thousand simply vanished, probably washed out to sea by the giant tidal waves. Others died in the quakes, storms, power disruptions, and epidemics that followed the strike.

That night was, of course, the kind of seminal event that marks everyone who lives through it. No family in the country was untouched by this worst natural disaster in recorded history. What were you doing when the meteor fell?

I was a thousand miles away, watching Great Railway Journeys with my family when they broke in with the initial reports. I spent the balance of the evening trying to call my father, or anyone else I knew who lived in the South Jersey-Philadelphia area. But there was no phone service.

So now I have this cryptic document, stretching back into 1961. It is less a diary than a journal, a record of political, literary, and social opinions. My father was a dentist. He was good with kids and with nervous adults. A sign in his waiting room advertised: WE CATER TO COWARDS. But his interests extended far beyond his office. He was alert to every scientific and political trend, a student of the arts, a champion of the afflicted. He was a Renaissance dentist. He was capable of sulfurous explosions when he detected some particularly outrageous piece of hypocrisy or venality. He was a sworn enemy of politicians, lawyers, and professional athletes who charge kids twenty bucks an autograph. He instinctively distrusted people in power.