Card, Orson Scott - Flux Tales Of Human Futures.txt
FLUX -- TALES OF HUMAN FUTURES
by Orson Scott Card
(c) 1990 Orson Scott Card
v1.2(Jan-24-1998)
If you find and correct errors in the text, please update the version number by
0.1 and redistribute.
STORIES INCLUDED IN THIS COLLECTION:
"A Thousand Deaths"
Omni, December 1978
"Clap Hands and Sing"
Best of Omni #3, 1982
"Dogwalker"
Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, November 1989
"But We Try Not To Act Like It"
Destinies, August 1979
"I Put My Blue Genes On"
Analog, August 1978
"In the Doghouse" (with Jay A. Parry)
Analog, December 1978
"The Originist"
Foundation's Friends, 1989
A THOUSAND DEATHS
"You will make no speeches," said the prosecutor.
"I didn't expect they'd let me," Jerry Crove answered, affecting a confidence he
didn't feel. The prosecutor was not hostile; he seemed more like a high school drama
coach than a man who was seeking Jerry's death.
"They not only won't let you, " the prosecutor said, "but if you try anything, it
will go much worse for you. We have you cold, you know. We don't need anywhere near
as much proof as we have."
"You haven't proved anything."
"We've proved you knew about it," the prosecutor insisted mildly. "No point
arguing now. Knowing about treason and not reporting it is exactly equal to
committing treason."
Jerry shrugged and looked away.
The cell was bare concrete. The door was solid teel. The bed was a hammock hung
from hooks on the wall. The toilet was a can with a removable plastic seat. There
was no conceivable way to escape. Indeed, there was nothing that could conceivably
occupy an intelligent person's mind for more than five minutes. In the three weeks
he had been here, he had memorized every crack in the concrete, every bolt in the
door. He had nothing to look at, except the prosecutor. Jerry reluctantly met the
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man's gaze.
"What do you say when the judge asks you how you plead to the charges?"
"Nolo contendere."
"Very good. It would be much nicer if you'd consent to say 'guilty'," the
prosecutor said.
"I don't like the word."
"Just remember. Three cameras will be pointing at you. The trial will be broadcast
live. To America, you represent all Americans. You must comport yourself with
dignity, quietly accepting the fact that your complicity in the Assassination of
Peter Anderson--"
"Andreyevitch--"
"Anderson has brought you to the point of death, where all depends on the mercy of
the court. And now I'll go have lunch. Tonight we'll see each other again. And
remember. No speeches. Nothing embarrassing."
Jerry nodded. This was not the time to argue. He spent the afternoon practicing
conjugations of Portuguese irregular verbs, wishing that somehow he could go back
and undo the moment when he agreed to speak to the old man who had unfolded all the
plans to assassinate Andreyevitch. "Now I must trust you," said the old man. "Temos
que conflar no senhor americano. You love liberty, no?"
Love liberty? Who knew anymore? What was liberty? Being free to make a buck? The
Russians had been smart enough to know that if they let Americans make money, they
really didn't give a damn which language the government was speaking. And, in fact,
the government spoke English anyway.
The propaganda that they had been feeding him wasn't funny. It was too true. The
United States had never been so peaceful; it was more prosperous than it had been
since the Vietnam War boom thirty years before. And the lazy, complacent American
people were going about business as usual. As if pictures of Lenin on buildings and
billboards were just what they had always wanted.
I was no different, he reminded himself. I sent in my work application, complete
with oath of allegiance. I accepted it meekly when they opted me out for a tutorial
with a high Party official. I even taught his damnable little children for three
years in Rio.
When I should have been writing plays.
But what do I write about? Why not a comedy-- The Yankee and the Commissar, a load
of laughs about a woman commissar who marries an American blue blood who
manufactures typewriters. There are no women commissars, of course, but one must
maintain the illusion of a free and equal society.
"Bruce, my dear," says the commissar in a thick but sexy Russian accent, "your
typewriter company is suspiciously close to making a profit."
"And if it were running at a loss, you'd turn me in, yes, my little noodle?"
(Riotous laughs from the Russians in the audience; the Americans are not amused, but
then, they speak English fluently and don't need broad humor. Besides, the reviews
are all approved by the Party, so we don't have to worry about the critics. Keep the
Russians happy, and screw the American audience.) Dialogue continues:
"All for the sake of Mother Russia."
"Screw Mother Russia."
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"Please do," says Natasha. "Regard me as her personal incarnation."
Oh, but the Russians do love onstage sex. Forbidden in Russia, of course, but
Americans are supposed to be decadent.
I might as well have been a ride designer for Disneyland, Jerry thought. Might as
well have written shtick for vaudeville. Might as well go stick my head in an oven.
But with my luck, it would be electric.
He may have slept. He wasn't sure. But the door opened, and he opened his eyes
with no memory of having heard footsteps approach. The calm before the storm: and
now, the storm.
The soldiers were young, but unslavic. Slavish but definitely American. Slaves to
the Slavs. Put that in a protest poem sometime, he decided, if only there were
someone who wanted to read a protest poem.
The young American soldiers (But the uniforms were wrong. I'm not old enough to
remember the old ones, but these are not made for American bodies.) escorted him
down corridors, up stairs, through doors, until they were outside and they put him
into a heavily armored van. What did they think, he was part of a conspiracy and his
fellows would come to save him? Didn't they know that a man in his position would
have no friends by now?
Jerry had seen it at Yale. Dr. Swick had been very popular. Best damn professor
in the department. He could take the worst drivel and turn it into a play, take
terrible actors and make them look good, take apathetic audiences and make them, of
all things, enthusiastic and hopeful. And then one day the police had broken into
his home and found Swick with four actors putting on a play for a group of mayb
e a
score of friends. What was it-- Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Jerry remembered. A
sad script. A despairing script. But a sharp one, nonetheless, one that showed
despair as being an ugly, destructive thing, one that showed lies as suicide, one
that, in short, made the audience feel that, by God, something was wrong with their
lives, that the peace was illusion, that the prosperity was a fraud, that America's
ambitions had been cut off and that so much that was good and proud was still
undone--
And Jerry realized that he was weeping. The soldiers sitting across from him in
the armored van were looking away. Jerry dried his eyes.
As soon as news got out that Swick was arrested, he was suddenly unknown. Everyone
who had letters or memos or even class papers that bore his name destroyed them. His
name disappeared from address books. His classes were empty as no one showed up. No
one even hoping for a substitute, for the university suddenly had no record that
for sale, his wife had moved, and no one said good-bye. And then, more than a year
later, the CBS news (which always showed official trials then) had shown ten minutes
of Swick weeping and saying, "Nothing has ever been better for America than
Communism. It was just a foolish, immature desire to prove myself by thumbing my
nose at authority. It meant nothing. I was wrong. The government's been kinder to me
than I deserve." And so on. The words were silly. But as Jerry had sat, watching, he
had been utterly convinced. However meaningless the words were, Swick's face was
meaningful: he was utterly sincere.
The van stopped, and the doors in the back opened just as Jerry remembered that he
had burned his copy of Swick's manual on playwriting. Burned it, but not until he
had copied down all the major ideas. Whether Swick knew it or not, he had left
something behind. But what will I leave behind? Jerry wondered.
Two Russian children who now speak fluent English and whose father was blown up in
their front yard right in front of them, his blood spattering their faces, because
Jerry had neglected to warn him? What a legacy.
For a moment he was ashamed. A life is a life, no matter whose or how lived.
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Then he remembered the night when Peter Andreyevitch (no-- Anderson. Pretending to
be American is fashionable nowadays, so long as everyone can tell at a glance that
you're really Russian) had drunkenly sent for Jerry and demanded, as Jerry's
employer (i.e., owner), that Jerry recite his poems to the guests at the party.
Jerry had tried to laugh it off, but Peter was not that drunk: he insisted, and
Jerry went upstairs and got his poems and came down and read them to a group of men
who could not understand the poems, to a group of women who understood them and were
merely amused. Little Andre said afterward, "The poems were good, Jerry," but Jerry
felt like a virgin who had been raped and then given a two-dollar tip by the rapist.
In fact, Peter had given him a bonus. And Jerry had spent it.
Charlie Ridge, Jerry's defense attorney, met him just inside the doors of the
courthouse. "Jerry, old boy, looks like you're taking all this pretty well. Haven't
even lost any weight."
"On a diet of pure starch, I've had to run around my cell all day just to stay
thin." Laughter. Ha ho, what a fun time we're having. What jovial people we are.
"Listen, Jerry, you've got to do this right, you know. They have audience response
measurements. They can judge how sincere you seem. You've got to really mean it."
"Wasn't there once a time when defense attorneys tried to get their clients off?"
Jerry asked.
"Jerry, that kind of attitude isn't going to get you anywhere. These aren't the
good old days when you could get off on a technicality and a lawyer could delay
trial for five years. You're guilty as hell, and so if you cooperate, they won't do
anything to you. They'll just deport you."
"What a pal," Jerry said. "With you on my side, I haven't a worry in the world."
"Exactly right," said Charlie. "And don't you forget it."
The courtroom was crowded with cameras. (Jerry had heard that in the old days of
freedom of the press, cameras had often been barred from courtrooms. But then, in
those days the defendant didn't usually testify and in those days the lawyers didn't
both work from the same script. Still, there was the press, looking for all the
world as if they thought they were free.)
Jerry had nothing to do for nearly half an hour. The audience (Are they paid?
Jerry wondered. In America, they must be.) filed in, and the show began at exactly
eight o'clock. The judge came in looking impressive in his robes, and his voice was
resonant and strong, like a father on television remonstrating his rebellious son.
Everyone who spoke faced the camera with the red light on the top. And Jerry felt
very tired.
He did not waver in his determination to try to turn this trial to his own
advantage, but he seriously wondered what good,it would do. And was it to his own
advantage? They would certainly punish him more severely. Certainly they would be
angry, would cut him off. But he had written his speech as if it were an impassioned
climactic scene in a play (Crove Against the Communists or perhaps Liberty's Last
Cry), and he the hero who would willingly give his life for the chance to instill a
little bit of patriotism (a little bit of intelligence, who gives a damn about
patriotism!) in the hearts and minds of the millions of Americans who would be
watching.
and state your plea. "
Jerry stood up and walked with, he hoped, dignity to the taped X on the floor
where the prosecutor had insisted that he stand. He looked for the camera with the
red light on. He stared into it intently, sincerely, and wondered if, after all, it
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wouldn't be better just to say nolo contendere or even guilty and have an easier
time of it.
"Mr. Crove," intoned the judge, "America is watching. How do you plead?"
America was watching indeed. And Jerry opened his mouth and said not the Latin but
the English he had rehearsed so often in his mind:
"There is a time for courage and a time for cowardice, a time when a man can give
in to those who offer him leniency and a time when he must, instead, resist them for
the sake of a higher goal. America was once a free nation. But as long as they pay
our salaries, we seem content to be slaves! I plead not guilty, because any act that
serves to weaken Russian domination of any nation in the world is a blow for all the
things that make life worth living and against those to whom power is the only god
worth worshiping!"
Ah. Eloquence. But in his rehearsals he had never dreamed he would get even this
far, and yet they still showed no sign of stopping him. He looked away from the
camera. He looked at the prosecutor, who was taking notes on a yellow pad. He looked
at Charlie,
and Charlie was resignedly shaking his head and putting his papers back
in his briefcase. No one seemed to be particularly worried that Jerry was saying
these things over live television. And the broadcasts were live-- they had stressed
that, that he must be careful to do everything correctly the first time because it
was all live--
They were lying, of course. And Jerry stopped his speech and jammed his hands into
his pockets, only to discover that the suit they had provided, for him had no
pockets (save money by avoiding nonessentials, said the slogan), and his hands slid
uselessly down his hips.
The prosecutor looked up in surprise when the judge cleared his throat. "Oh, I beg
your pardon,". he said. "The speeches usually go on much longer. I congratulate you,
Mr. Crove, on your brevity."
Jerry nodded in mock acknowledgment, but he felt no mockery.
"We always have a dry run," said the prosecutor, "just to catch you
last-chancers."
"Everyone knew that?"
"Well, everyone but you, of course, Mr. Crove. All right, everybody, you can go
home now."
The audience arose and quietly shuffled out.
The prosecutor and Charlie got up and walked to the bench. The judge was resting
his chin on his hands, looking not at all fatherly now, just a little bored. "How
much do you want?" the judge asked.
"Unlimited," said the prosecutor.
"Is he really that important?" Jerry might as well have not been there. "After
all, they're doing the actual bombers in Brazil."
"Mr. Crove is an American," said the prosecutor, "who chose to let a Russian
ambassador be assassinated."
"All right, all right," said the judge, and Jerry marveled that the man hadn't the
slightest trace of a Russian accent.
"Gerald Nathan Crove, the court finds you guilty of murder and treason against the
United States of America and its ally, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Do
you have anything to say before sentence is pronounced?"
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"I just wondered," said Jerry, "why you all speak English."
"Because," said the prosecutor icily, "we are in America."
"Why do you even bother with trials?"
"To stop other imbeciles from trying what you did. He just wants to argue, Your
Honor."
The judge slammed down his gavel. "The court sentences Gerald Nathan Crove to be