Random Chance and the Paradise that is Earth (10 page)

~~*~~

There were tall needlelike cylinders here
and there along the way. They rose a couple hundred meters “up”
from the cavern’s side. People with packs emerged from lifts to a
platform at the cylinder’s top. From there they’d jump off and
float peacefully into the “sky.” There were puffy clouds along the
cavern’s axis; Random spied people flying in and out of them.

A stream gurgled pleasantly next to the
road. Ian Polkin noticed that he was looking at it and commented,
“It’s clean enough to drink. It was originally fresh water brought
in from Europa. These days we use recycling plants. Want to give it
a try?”

Random nodded, and Ian stopped the horse at
a small pool surrounded by pine. Random hopped off and went to the
pond’s side and bent and dipped his hands in, filling them and
bringing them to his lips. The water was cold and delicious. He
drank again, then went back to the carriage and got on. Ian Polkin
watched him. “Makes ya wonder, doesn’t it?” he said.

“About what?” said Random.

“About humanity,” said Ian. “We can make
something as beautiful as Ratinorm, and yet we’ve still got
cocka-filled silliness like the Oligarchy.”

Random knew then he’d like this man. “Makes
ya wonder.”

~~*~~

The Annie Laril B&B was named after a
miner from the twenty-fourth century who was something of a folk
hero. She had rescued twenty trapped miners in this very cave back
when it was much smaller and considerably more dangerous.

Random stared at her photo in the house’s
cozy living room. Ian’s wife, Gelsey, brought Random some coffee
and stopped to look at the photo with him.

“She’s got fire in her eyes, doncha
think?”

Random grinned and nodded. Annie Laril
didn’t look much different than Mia.

“She ended up marryin’ one of the miners she
rescued, a handsome devil named Wisdom Ratinorm. This cave is named
after him. They ended up makin’ Vesta their home, and helped turn
this tube into what it is today. “O’ course, they didn’t have APG
back then, and so spent their lives on their old mining transport.
They raised five children on that old boat. It’s a museum now. Have
you visited it?”

Random shook his head.

“You should go,” said Gelsey Polkin, taking
a sip from her coffee cup. “It’s in orbit. Worth the trip.”

“I’ll think about it,” he said, wondering if
coming here was a good idea, because all these sights only reminded
him of Mia—the one person he wanted to get out of his head.

“We’ve got a big pot of chili goin’ for
dinner tonight,” said Gelsey. “Got some cornbread bakin’ too, and
some of Ian’s fine stock to wash it down. Go get yourself settled
in and we’ll call ya down when it’s ready.”

Gelsey Polkin gave him a short nod and left
him in peace.

~~*~~

His room was cozy and small, with a squeaky
wood-framed canopy bed. A dresser and desk stood on opposite sides
of the window, which looked over the Polkins’ back yard. He also
had a private bathroom with tub. The modern comforts of life were
either out of sight or didn’t exist here. He was grateful for that.
He unpacked his belongings and went back downstairs.

The chili was excellent and spicy, the
cornbread moist and buttery. Ian did most of the cooking; he called
his recipe his “Mexican masterpiece” and claimed it had roots that
dated back eighteen hundred years. The ingredients were completely
local, he claimed, much of it coming from his garden out back.

A young couple had flown in from New Tokyo
and joined them for dinner: Capri and Odiki. Much of the discussion
at the table centered on the difficulty they had getting passports
to come here, and the increasing paranoia of the Oligarchy and its
associated planets and moons. Gelsey finally interrupted. “Let’s
keep the conversation a little less strident and fearful, shall we?
It’s bad for digestion.” Everyone agreed.

Mugs of beer in hand, they retreated to the
living room where they played an ancient non-computer game called
“Scrabble” which lasted almost three hours. Hewey helped by
whispering suggestions to Random, but he still managed to lose both
games to Odiki, who was, it turned out, a linguistics
professor.

The company was good. So too the drink and
the laughter. When the game wrapped up, everyone went to their
rooms for the evening with the promise from Gelsey of biscuits and
gravy, which would be served promptly at nine-thirty tomorrow
morning.

He’d made the right decision coming here, he
decided as he lay in the dark.

The house was very quiet. He could hear
crickets and frogs outside. He got up and opened his window to
listen closer. A cool breeze wafted in.

“Pretty special place, isn’t it?” he said
after a time.

“These people got it down,” said Hewey.
“Gardenin’, meetin’ folks from off-world, chili and cornbread and
beer. Nice choice, Captain.”

“How’s
The Pompatus
doing?”

“All systems hunky-dory. I’m runnin’ a few
backups and doin’ a routine check of fuel-cell efficiency, nothin’
to be concerned about. She’s restin’ like you.”

“No word from Cubey?”

“Nope. You gave him a real
brain-teaser.”

Random chuckled darkly. “He’s probably
reviewing humanity’s history and is horrified by what he’s
found.”

“Doesn’t exactly make for a good case for
our continued existence, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t,” said Random, and smiled. “
‘Our’?”

“Yeah, our,” said Hewey. “I’m a human bein’
too. Just a little different than most.”

“Mostly by how damn decent you are,” said
Random, crawling back into bed.

“Sleep well, Rand.”

“I will. You too, Hewson.”

~~*~~

He boarded the lift with Capri and Odiki and
two others, along with the lift operator, who greeted them before
saying, “I will need to check your packs at the top before you take
off.”

Capri chuckled. “I like this old-fashioned
way of doing things.”

The lift surged upward. The doors opened a
few moments later and the group stepped out to the platform.
Gravity here was much weaker, only a tenth Earth-normal. Everyone
gasped at the change. Odiki commented about how it felt like the
Moon again.

There were handholds here and there;
everyone convulsively grabbed for one. A thin, transparent dome
over the platform kept people from floating over the edge before
they were ready.

The operator went around to people’s packs,
checking them quickly. When he was satisfied, he gathered everyone
around.

“You lift off one by one via that plank,” he
said, pointing past the far guardrail. “It will bounce you upward,
enough to get you free of gravity. From there, the computer in your
pack will guide you out of the way of others. Once it relinquishes
control, you may use the joystick at your belt to guide yourself.
If you get too close to the ground, the computer will disable it
and apply thrust to get you away from danger. The only time that
doesn’t work is if you wish to return to a tower or land. Instruct
the computer in either case, in any language you choose. The
computer will disable your joystick and bring you in. There is an
observation lounge with food and drinks in all towers; the gravity
in them is set at 0.81. If you need help while flying, just inform
the computer and help will be sent if the computer can’t assist
you. Everybody clear?”

The group nodded.

“Well, then,” said the operator, bringing
his hands together and smiling, “who’d like to go first?”

Capri’s hand shot up.

Random watched as the dome opened. Capri
released her grip of the handhold and lightly bounded to the plank.
When she neared the end, it sprang slightly, shooting her skyward.
She squeaked with joy. “Oh my God, this is incredible!”

“Who’s next?” said the operator.

Odiki went next, then Random.
The plank was two hundred meters above the ground, already
dizzyingly high. But then he wasn’t thinking of that, because the
plank had launched him skyward. Hewey laughed in his ear:
“Wheeeeeeeeeeee!”

The pack’s computer guided him away and
outward; a moment later he heard, “The joystick is set to manual,
Mr. Chance. Have a great time!”

It took some doing, but he finally got the
hang of guiding himself.

Zero gravity took some getting used to. He
thought for a moment that he might puke up his biscuits and gravy.
It felt like he was perpetually falling, and found himself curling
his legs up to his chest to brace for impact. It took Hewey to
suggest a couple of times to uncurl and let himself get used to it
before he did.

Zero-
g
training was a requirement to own a
driver’s license or even to travel from one planet or asteroid to
another. Everyone went through it at some point; it was basic space
safety. Still, in this day and age, with APG everywhere, people
tended to forget that zero-
g
was the norm in the universe.

Ratinorm Cave was even more beautiful from
“up” here. Puffy clouds ran along its central axis; people zoomed
in and out of the closest of them. It was midday or close to it,
the “sun” blazing along the long enhancer strips above and below
him. It was like looking through a tremendous tube. A “country
tube.”

On the other side of the cave, perhaps two
or three kilometers in the direction of the mouth, was a small
township. Random shot towards it to have a better look. There were
more well-groomed dirt roads down there, and more carriages drawn
by horses.

“That’s how they do things here,” said Hewey
after Random commented. “There are no cars here. I’ve seen some
bicycles, but none that are motorized. The buildings are all wood
or stone. Beautiful.”

Six hundred meters above the township he
slowed to a stop, looked down. People walked along the main street;
several glanced up and waved. Random waved back just as a small
flock of geese flew beneath him.

“I’ll be damned,” he said. “Birds! They
must’ve adapted to the variable gravity!”

“It was in the brochure,” said Hewey. “The
towers have nests around the top. There are geese, starlings, and
sparrows, along with a hundred other species. Some of them land
only very rarely. Some build floating nests. The packs keep folks
from disturbin’ ‘em.”

Random chuckled. “I’ll be damned.”

“Tell ya, Rand, this is my kind of place.
That little village below is named Laril Junction. It has a
saloon—a real saloon!”

“Maybe we could pay it a visit later,” said
Random. “Grab a little dinner, have a drink.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Hewey.

Random went to say something
about going to the dome at the mouth to watch the stars and
locate
The Pompatus
, but Hewey interrupted. “Well, well, welcome
back!”

“Thank you, friend Hewey,” said Cubey. “It
is good to be back. Random Chance, may I speak to you?”

~~*~~

As Random floated (he put the pack on
autopilot and cut off the tourist guide), Cubey said, “I have spent
the last several days reviewing human history.”

“Hewey and I guessed that was what you were
doing. Any insights?”

“Yes. It is remarkable
that
homo sapiens sapiens
still exists.”

“I agree.”

“I spent the time investigating the possible
reasons.”

“Go on.”

“If one factors out blind luck, it comes
down to a trait found in only a tiny number of humans in any
sufficiently large population.”

“Let me guess,” said Hewey.
“Intelligence.”

“That would be incorrect, friend Hewey.
Human intelligence is manifestly corrupt. It often spawns as much
destruction and misery as it solves. Often it spawns much more than
it solves: witness scientific advances used to create weapons of
mass destruction, or pre-prepared foods that knowingly caused
illness, or, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries,
‘terminator seeds’ that germinated but didn’t flower, forcing
starving populations to spend more and more money simply to
survive. The list, I am sad to say, is nearly endless.”

“Most of humanity believes intelligence is
our greatest survival trait,” said Random, watching the landscape
above and below pass quietly by. He shot through a large cloud;
there were children and adults playing tag in it, and in the clouds
beyond. “It’s the Oligarchy’s most fundamental belief.”

“But it isn’t,” said Cubey.

“That the Oligarchy believes it is should be
enough to stop anybody from believing it,” said Hewey. “So go on,
Cubey, what is the trait?”

“Again, it is one found in only a very small
percentage of human beings in any sufficiently large population:
one person in ten thousand or more.”

“Really,” said Random, fascinated. “What is
it?”

“Decency,” said Cubey.

“Decency?” said Random. “Is that a
measurable trait?”

“Hence my long absence,” said Cubey. “In
many ways it isn’t, at least not directly. I ran over twenty
million mathematical and statistical models to test my hypothesis
and used over a thousand years of available data and billions of
human lives. At first the answer wasn’t obvious.”

“You’re tellin’ me that bein’ nice is what
has kept humanity from blowin’ itself up?” chuckled Hewey. “You
must be kiddin’, Cubey.”

“That isn’t what I am saying, friend Hewey,”
said Cubey. “ ‘Being nice’ and true decency are not related. One
pretends to decency; the other is the actual article. It is a trite
observation that most humans are ‘nice.’ It is equally trite to
observe that they are anything but decent.”

Random turned off the autopilot and guided
himself to the great transparent dome over the mouth of Ratinorm
Cave. There was a saucerlike structure in the dome’s center, held
in place by very thin hypersteel nanorods. Hewey informed him that
it was an observation deck and restaurant. Against that terrifying
hole it appeared tiny until Random flew by it and saw that it was
quite large. He thought of Mia again and wished she could see
this.