3001 The Final Odyssey

chapter 9 Skyland
'There were mice in my bedroom last night,' Poole complained, only half seriously. 'Is there any chance you could find me a cat?'

Dr Wallace looked puzzled, then started to laugh.

'You must have heard one of the cleaning microts - I'll get the programming checked so they don't disturb you. Try not to step on one if you catch it at work; if you do, it will call for help, and all its friends will come to pick up the pieces.'

So much to learn - so little time! No, that wasn't true, Poole reminded himself. He might well have a century ahead of him, thanks to the medical science of this age. The thought was already beginning to fill him with apprehension rather than pleasure.

At least he was now able to follow most conversations easily, and had learned to pronounce words so that Indra was not the only person who could understand him. He was very glad that Anglish was now the world language, though French, Russian and Mandarin still flourished.

'I've another problem, Indra - and I guess you're the only person who can help. When I say "God", why do people look embarrassed?'

Indra did not look at all embarrassed; in fact, she laughed.

'That's a very complicated story. I wish my old friend Dr Khan was here to explain it to you - but he's on Ganymede, curing any remaining True Believers he can find there. When all the old religions were discredited - let me tell you about Pope Pius XX sometime - one of the greatest men in history! - we still needed a word for the Prime Cause, or the Creator of the Universe - if there is one...'

'There were lots of suggestions - Deo - Theo - Jove - Brahma - they were all tried, and some of them are still around - especially Einstein's favourite, "The Old One". But Deus seems to be the fashion nowadays.'

'I'll try to remember; but it still seems silly to me.'

'You'll get used to it: I'll teach you some other reasonably polite expletives, to use when you want to express your feelings...'

'You said that all the old religions have been discredited. So what do people believe nowadays?'

'As little as possible. We're all either Deists or Theists.'

'You've lost me. Definitions, please.'

'They were slightly different in your time, but here are the latest versions. Theists believe there's not more than one God; Deists that there is not less than one God.'

'I'm afraid the distinction's too subtle for me.'

'Not for everyone; you'd be amazed at the bitter controversies it's aroused. Five centuries ago, someone used what's known as surreal mathematics to prove there's an infinite number of grades between Theists and Deists. Of course, like most dabblers with infinity, he went insane. By the way, the best-known Deists were Americans - Washington, Franklin, Jefferson.'

'A little before my time - though you'd be surprised how many people don't realize it.'

'Now I've some good news. Joe - Prof. Anderson - has finally given his - what was the phrase? - OK. You're fit enough to go for a little trip upstairs... to the Lunar Level.'

'Wonderful. How far is that?'

'Oh, about twelve thousand kilometres.'

'Twelve thousand! That will take hours!'

Indra looked surprised at his remark: then she smiled.

'Not as long as you think. No - we don't have a Star Trek Transporter yet - though I believe they're still working on it! But you'll need new clothes, and someone to show you how to wear them. And to help you with the hundreds of little everyday jobs that can waste so much time. So we've taken the liberty of arranging a human personal assistant for you Come in, Danil.'

Danil was a small, light-brown man in his mid-thirties, who surprised Poole by not giving him the usual palm-top salute, with its automatic exchange of information.

Indeed, it soon appeared that Danil did not possess an Ident: whenever it was needed, he produced a small rectangle of plastic that apparently served the same purpose as the twenty-first century's 'smart cards'.

'Danil will also be your guide and what was that word? - I can never remember - rhymes with "ballet". He's been specially trained for the job. I'm sure you'll find him completely satisfactory.'

Though Poole appreciated this gesture, it made him feel a little uncomfortable. A valet, indeed! He could not recall ever meeting one; in his time, they were already a rare and endangered species. He began to feel like a character from an early-twentieth-century English novel.

'You have a choice,' said Indra, 'though I know which one you'll take. We can go up on an external elevator, and admire the view - or an interior one, and enjoy a meal and some light entertainment.'

'I can't imagine anyone wanting to stay inside.'

'You'd be surprised. It's too vertiginous for some people - especially visitors from down below. Even mountain climbers who say they've got a head for heights may start to turn green - when the heights are measured in thousands of kilometres, instead of metres.'

'I'll risk it,' Poole answered with a smile. 'I've been higher.'

When they had passed through a double set of airlocks in the exterior wall of the Tower (was it imagination, or did he feel a curious sense of disorientation then?) they entered what might have been the auditorium of a very small theatre. Rows of ten seats were banked up in five tiers: they all faced towards one of the huge picture windows which Poole still found disconcerting, as he could never quite forget the hundreds of tons of air pressure, striving to blast it out into space.

The dozen or so other passengers, who had probably never given the matter any thought, seemed perfectly at ease. They all smiled as they recognized him, nodded politely, then turned away to admire the view.

'Welcome to Skylounge,' said the inevitable autovoice. 'Ascent begins in five minutes. You will find refreshments and toilets on the lower floor.'

Just how long will this trip last? Poole wondered. We're going to travel over twenty thousand klicks, there and back: this will be like no elevator ride I've ever known on Earth...

While he was waiting for the ascent to begin, he enjoyed the stunning panorama laid out two thousand kilometres below. It was winter in the northern hemisphere, but the climate had indeed changed drastically, for there was little snow south of the Arctic Circle.

Europe was almost cloud-free, and there was so much detail that the eye was overwhelmed. One by one he identified the great cities whose names had echoed down the centuries; they had been shrinking even in his time, as the communications revolution changed the face of the world, and had now dwindled still further. There were also some bodies of water in improbable places - the northern Sahara's Lake Saladin was almost a small sea.

Poole was so engrossed by the view that he had forgotten the passage of time. Suddenly he realized that much more than five minutes had passed - yet the elevator was still stationary. Had something gone wrong - or were they waiting for late arrivals?

And then he noticed something so extraordinary that at first he refused to believe the evidence of his eyes. The panorama had expanded, as if he had already risen hundreds of kilometres! Even as he watched, he noticed new features of the planet below creeping into the frame of the window.

Then Poole laughed, as the obvious explanation occurred to him.

'You could have fooled me, Indra! I thought this was real - not a video projection!'

Indra looked back at him with a quizzical smile.

'Think again, Frank. We started to move about ten minutes ago. By now we must be climbing at, oh - at least a thousand kilometres an hour. Though I'm told these elevators can reach a hundred gee at maximum acceleration, we won't touch more than ten, on this short run.'

'That's impossible! Six is the maximum they ever gave me in the centrifuge, and I didn't enjoy weighing half a ton. I know we haven't moved since we stepped inside.'

Poole had raised his voice slightly, and suddenly became aware that the other passengers were pretending not to notice.

'I don't understand how it's done, Frank, but it's called an inertial field. Or sometimes a Sharp one - the "S" stands for a famous Russian scientist, Sakharov - I don't know who the others were.'

Slowly, understanding dawned in Poole's mind - and also a sense of awe-struck wonder. Here indeed was a 'technology indistinguishable from magic'.

'Some of my friends used to dream of "space drives" - energy fields that could replace rockets, and allow movement without any feeling of acceleration, Most of us thought they were crazy - but it seems they were right! I can still hardly believe it... and unless I'm mistaken, we're starting to lose weight.'

'Yes - it's adjusting to the lunar value. When we step out, you'll feel we're on the Moon. But for goodness' sake, Frank - forget you're an engineer, and simply enjoy the view.'

It was good advice, but even as he watched the whole of Africa, Europe and much of Asia flow into his field of vision, Poole could not tear his mind away from this astonishing revelation. Yet he should not have been wholly surprised: he knew that there had been major breakthroughs in space propulsion systems since his time, but had not realized that they would have such dramatic applications to everyday life - if that term could be applied to existence in a thirty-six-thousand-kilometre-high skyscraper.

And the age of the rocket must have been over, centuries ago. All his knowledge of propellant systems and combustion chambers, ion thrusters and fusion reactors, was totally obsolete. Of course, that no longer mattered - but he understood the sadness that the skipper of a windjammer must have felt, when sail gave way to steam.

His mood changed abruptly, and he could not help smiling, when the robovoice announced, 'Arriving in two minutes. Please make sure that you do not leave any of your personal belongings behind.'

How often he had heard that announcement, on some commercial flight? He looked at his watch, and was surprised to see that they had been ascending for less than half an hour So that meant an average speed of at least twenty thousand kilometres an hour, yet they might never have moved. What was even stranger - for the last ten minutes or more they must actually have been decelerating so rapidly that by rights they should all have been standing on the roof, heads pointing towards Earth!

The doors opened silently, and as Poole stepped out he again felt the slight disorientation he had noticed on entering the elevator lounge. This time, however, he knew what it meant: he was moving through the transition zone where the inertial field overlapped with gravity - at this level, equal to the Moon's.

Indra and Danil followed him, walking carefully now at a third of their customary weight, as they went forward to meet the next of the day's wonders.

Though the view of the receding Earth had been awesome, even for an astronaut, there was nothing unexpected or surprising about it. But who would have imagined a gigantic chamber, apparently occupying the entire width of the Tower, so that the far wall was more than five kilometres away? Perhaps by this time there were larger enclosed volumes on the Moon and Mars, but this must surely be one of the largest in space itself.

They were standing on a viewing platform, fifty metres up on the outer wall, looking across an astonishingly varied panorama. Obviously, an attempt had been made to reproduce a whole range of terrestrial biomes. Immediately beneath them was a group of slender trees which Poole could not at first identify: then he realized that they were oaks, adapted to one-sixth of their normal gravity. What, he wondered, would palm frees look like here? Giant reeds, probably...

In the middle-distance there was a small lake, fed by a river that meandered across a grassy plain, then disappeared into something that looked like a single gigantic banyan tree. What was the source of the water? Poole had become aware of a faint drumming sound, and as he swept his gaze along the gently curving wall, he discovered a miniature Niagara, with a perfect rainbow hovering in the spray above it.

He could have stood here for hours, admiring the view and still not exhausting all the wonders of this complex and brilliantly contrived simulation of the planet below. As it spread out into new and hostile environments, perhaps the human race felt an ever-increasing need to remember its origins. Of course, even in his own time every city had its parks as - usually feeble - reminders of Nature. The same impulse must be acting here, on a much grander scale. Central Park, Africa Tower!

'Let's go down,' said Indra. 'There's so much to see, and I don't come here as often as I'd like.'

Followed by the silent but ever-present Danil, who always seemed to know when he was needed but otherwise kept out of the way, they began a leisurely exploration of this oasis in space. Though walking was almost effortless in this low gravity, from time to time they took advantage of a small monorail, and stopped once for refreshments at a cafe´, cunningly concealed in the trunk of a redwood that must have been at least a quarter of a kilometre tall.

There were very few other people about - their fellow passengers had long since disappeared into the landscape - so it was as if they had all this wonderland to themselves.

Everything was so beautifully maintained, presumably by armies of robots, that from time to time Poole was reminded of a visit he had made to Disney World as a small boy. But this was even better: there were no crowds, and indeed very little reminder of the human race and its artefacts.

They were admiring a superb collection of orchids, some of enormous size, when Poole had one of the biggest shocks of his life. As they walked past a typical small gardener's shed, the door opened - and the gardener emerged.

Frank Poole had always prided himself on his self-control, and never imagined that as a full-grown adult he would give a cry of pure fright. But like every boy of his generation, he had seen all the 'Jurassic' movies - and he knew a raptor when he met one eye to eye.

'I'm terribly sorry,' said Indra, with obvious concern. 'I never thought of warning you.'

Poole's jangling nerves returned to normal. Of course, there could be no danger, in this perhaps too-well-ordered world: but still...!

The dinosaur returned his stare with apparent total disinterest, then doubled back into the shed and emerged again with a rake and a pair of garden shears, which it dropped into a bag hanging over one shoulder. It walked away from them with a bird-like gait, never looking back as it disappeared behind some ten-metre-high sunflowers.

'I should explain,' said Indra contritely. 'We like to use bio-organisms when we can, rather than robots - I suppose it's carbon chauvinism! Now, there are only a few animals that have any manual dexterity, and we've used them all at one time or another.'

'And here's a mystery that no one's been able to solve. You'd think that enhanced herbivores like orangutans and gorillas would be good at this sort of work. Well, they're not; they don't have the patience for it.'

'Yet carnivores like our friend here are excellent, and easily trained. What's more - here's another paradox! -after they've been modified they're docile and good-natured. Of course, there's almost a thousand years of genetic engineering behind them, and look what primitive man did to the wolf, merely by trial and error!'

Indra laughed and continued: 'You may not believe this, Frank, but they also make good baby-sitters - children love them! There's a five-hundred-year-old joke: "Would you trust your kids to a dinosaur?" "What - and risk injuring it?"'

Poole joined in the laughter, partly in shame-faced reaction to his own fright. To change the subject, he asked Indra the question that was still worrying him.

'All this,' he said, 'it's wonderful - but why go to so much trouble, when anyone in the Tower can reach the real thing, just as quickly?'

Indra looked at him thoughtfully, weighing her words. 'That's not quite true. It's uncomfortable - even dangerous - for anyone who lives above the half-gee level to go down to Earth, even in a hoverchair. So it has to be this -or, as you used to say, Virtual Reality.'

(Now I begin to understand, Poole told himself bleakly. That explains Anderson's evasiveness, and all the tests he's been doing to see if I've regained my strength. I've come all the way back from Jupiter, to within two thousand kilometres of Earth - but I may never again walk on the surface of my home planet. I'm not sure how I will be able to handle this...)