David Brin - Uplift 1 - Sundiver

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SUNDIVER
A Bantam Book / February 1980
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1980 by David Brin.
e-book ver. 1.0
To my brothers Dan and Stan,
to Arglebargle the IVth ...
and to somebody else.
PART I
... it is reasonable to hope
that in the not too distant future
we shall be competent to understand
so simple a thing as a star.
A. S. Eddington, 1926
1.
OUT OF THE WHALE-DREAM
"Makakai, are you ready?"
Jacob ignored the tiny whirrings of motors and valves in his metal cocoon. He lay still. The
water lapped gently against the bulbous nose of his mechanical whale, as he waited for an answer.
One more time he checked the tiny indicators on his helmet display. Yes, the radio was working.
The occupant of the other' waldo whale, lying half submerged a few meters away, had heard every
word.
The water was exceptionally clear today. Facing downward, he could see a small leopard shark
swim lazily past, a bit out of place here in the deeper water offshore.
"Makakai... are you ready?"
He tried not to sound impatient, or betray the tension he felt building in the back of his neck
as he waited. He closed his eyes and made the delinquent muscles relax, one by one. Still, he
waited for his pupil to speak.
"Yesss . . . let'sss do it!" came the warbling, squeaky voice, at last. The words sounded
breathless, as if spoken grudgingly, in lieu of inhalation.
A nice long speech for Makakai. He could see the young dolphin's training machine next to his,
its image reflected in the mirrors that rimmed his faceplate. Its gray metal flukes lifted and
fell slightly with the swell. Feebly, without their power, her artificial fins moved, sluggishly
under the transient, serrated surface of the water.
She's as ready as she'll ever be, he thought. If technology can wean a dolphin of the Whale-
Dream, now's the time we'll find out.
He chinned the microphone switch again. "All right, Makakai. You know how the waldo works. It
will amplify any action you make, but if you want the rockets to cut in, you'll have to give the
command in English. Just to be fair, I have to whistle in trinary to make mine work."
"Yesss!" she hissed. Her "waldo's gray flukes thrashed up once and down with a boom and a spray
of saltwater.
With a ..half muttered prayer to the Dreamer, he touched a switch releasing the amplifiers on
both Makakai's waldo and his own, then cautiously turned his arms to set the fins into motion. He
flexed his legs, the massive flukes thrust back jerkily in response, and his machine immediately
rolled over and sank.
Jacob tried to correct but overcompensated, making the waldo tumble even worse. The beating of
his fins momentarily made the area around him a churning mass of bubbles, until patiently, by
trial and error, he got himself righted.
He pushed off again, carefully, to get some headway, then arched his back and kicked out. The
waldo responded with a great tail-slashing leap into the air.
The dolphin was almost a kilometer off. As he reached the top of his arc, Jacob saw her fall
gracefully from a height of ten meters to slice smoothly into the swell below.
He pointed his helmet beak at the water and the sea came at him like a green wall. The impact
made his helmet ring as he tore through tendrils of floating kelp, sending a golden Garibaldi
darting away. In panic as he drove downwards.
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He was going in too steep. He swore and kicked twice to straighten out. The machine's massive
metal flukes beat at, the water to the rhythmic push of his feet, each beat sending a tremor up
his spine, pressing him against the suit's heavy padding. When the time was right, he arched and
kicked again. The machine ripped out of the water.
Sunlight flashed like a missile in his left window, its glare drowning the dim glow of his tiny
instrument panel. The helmet computer chuckled softly as he twisted, beak down, to crash into the
bright water once again.
As a school of tiny silver anchovies scattered before him, Jacob hooted out loud with
exhilaration.
His hands slipped along the controls to the rocket verniers, and at the top of his next arc he
whistled a code in trinary. Motors hummed, as the exoskeleton extended winglets along its sides.
Then the boosters cut in with a savage burst, pressing the padded headpiece upward with the sudden
acceleration, pinching the back of his skull as the waves swept past, just below his hurtling
craft.
He came down near Makakai with a great splash. She whistled a shrill trinary welcome. Jacob let
the rockets shut off automatically and resumed the purely mechanical leaping beside her.
For a time they moved in unison. With each leap Makakai grew more daring, performing twists and
pirouettes during the long seconds before they struck the water. Once, in midair, she rattled off
a dirty limerick in dolphin, a low piece of work, but Jacob hoped they'd recorded it back at the
chase boat. He'd missed the punch line at the crashing end of the aerial cycle.
The rest of the training team followed behind them on the hovercraft. During each leap he caught
sight of the large vessel, diminished, now, by distance, until his impact cut off everything but
the sounds of splitting water, Makakai's sonar squeaking, and the rushing, phosphorescent blue-
green past his windows.
Jacob's chronometer indicated that ten minutes had passed. He wouldn't be able to keep up with
Makakai for more than a half hour, no matter how much amplification he used. A man's muscles and
nervous system weren't designed for this leap-and-crash routine.
"Makakai, it's time to try the rockets. Let me know if you're ready and we'll use them on the
following jump."
They both came down into the sea and he worked his flukes in the frothy water to prepare for the
next leap. They jumped again.
"Makakai, I'm serious now. Are you ready?"
They sailed high together. He could see her tiny eye behind a plastic window as her Waldo-
machine twisted before slicing into the water. He followed an instant later.
"Okay, Makakai. If you don't answer me, we'll just have to stop right now."
Blue water swept past, along with a cloud of bubbles, as he pushed along beside his pupil.
Makakai twisted around and dove down instead of rising for another leap. She chattered something
almost too fast to follow in trinary . . . about how he shouldn't be a spoilsport.
Jacob let his machine rise slowly to the surface. "Come dear, use the King's English. You'll
need it if you ever want your children to go into space. And it's so expressive! Come on. Tell
Jacob what you think of him."
There were a few seconds of silence. Then he saw something move very fast below him. It streaked
upward and, just before it hit the surface, he heard Makakai's voice shrilly taunt:
"Ch-chase me, ch-chump! I fly-y-y!"
With the last word, her mechanical flukes snapped back and she leaped out of the water on a
column of flame.
Laughing, he dove to give himself headway and then launched into the air after his pupil.
Gloria handed him the strip chart as soon as he finished his second cup of coffee. Jacob tried
to make his eyes focus on the squiggly lines, but they swam back and forth like ocean swells. He
handed the chart back.
"I'll look at the data later. Can you just give me a summary? And I'll take one of those
sandwiches now, too, if you'll let me clean up."
She tossed him a tuna on rye and sat on the countertop, her hands on the edges to compensate for
the swaying of the boat. As usual, she was wearing next to nothing. Pretty, well endowed, and with
long black hair, the young biologist wore next to nothing very well.
"I think we have the brainwave information we need now, Jacob. I don't know how you did it, but
Makakai's attention span in English was at least twice normal. Manfred thinks he's found enough
associated synaptic clusters to give him a boost in his next set of experimental mutations. There
are a couple of nodes that he wants to expand in the left cerebral lobe of Makakai's offspring.
"My group is happy enough with the present. Makakai's facility with the waldo-whale proves that
the current generation can use machines."
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Jacob sighed. "If you're hoping these results will persuade the Confederacy to cancel the next
generation of mutations, don't count on it. They're running scared. They don't want to have to
rely forever on poetry and music to prove that dolphins are intelligent. They want a race of
analytical tool users, and giving codewords to activate a rocket waldo just won't qualify. Twenty
to one Manfred gets to cut."
Gloria reddened. "Cutting! They're people, a people with a beautiful dream. We'll carve them
into engineers and lose a race of poets!"
Jacob put down the crust of his sandwich. He brushed crumbs away from his chest. Already, he
regretted having said anything.
"I know, I know. I wish things could go a little slower, too. But look at it this way. Maybe the
fins'll be able to put the Whale-Dream into words someday. We won't need trinary to discuss the
weather, or Aborigine-pidgin to talk philosophy. They'll be able to join the chimps, thumbing
their metaphorical noses at the Galactics while we put on an act of being dignified adults."
"But..."
Jacob raised his hand to cut her off. "Can we discuss this later? I'd like to stretch out for a
little while, and then go down and visit with our girl."
Gloria frowned for a moment,, then smiled openly. "I'm sorry, Jacob. You must really be tired.
But at least today, finally, everything worked."
Jacob allowed himself to return her grin. On his broad face the toothy smile brought out lines
around his mouth and eyes.
"Yes," he said, rising to his feet. "Today everything worked."
"Oh by the way, while you were down, there was a call for you. It was an Eatee! Johnny was so
excited about it that he barely remembered to take a message. I think it's around here somewhere."
She pushed aside the lunch dishes and plucked up a slip of paper. She handed it to him.
Jacob's bushy eyebrows knotted together as he looked down at the message. His skin was taut and
dark from a mixture of ancestry and exposure to sun and saltwater. The brown eyes tended to narrow
to fine slits when he concentrated. He brought a calloused hand to the side of his hooked, amerind
nose and struggled with the radio operator's handwriting.
"I guess we all knew that you worked with Eatees," Gloria said. "But I sure didn't expect to get
one on the horn out here! Especially one that looks like a giant broccoli sprout and talks like a
Minister of Protocol!"
Jacob's head jerked up.
"A Kanten called? Here? Did he leave his name?"
"It should be down there. Is that what it was? A Kanten? I'm afraid I don't know my aliens that
well. I'd recognize a Cynthian or a Tymbrimi, but this one was new to me."
"Um . . . I'm going to have to call somebody. I'll clean up the dishes later so don't you touch
them! Tell Manfred and Johnny I'll be down in a little while to visit with Makakai. And thanks
again." He smiled and touched her shoulder lightly, but as he turned his expression quickly
relapsed to one of worried preoccupation.
He passed on through the forward hatch, clutching the message. Gloria looked after him for a
moment She picked up the data charts and wished she knew what it would take to hold the man's
interest for more than an hour, or a night.
Jacob's cabin was barely a closet with a narrow fold-down bunk, but it offered enough privacy.
He pulled his portable teli out of a cabinet near the door and set it on the bunk.
There was no reason to assume that Fagin had called for any other purpose than to be sociable.
He had, after all, a deep interest in the work with dolphins.
There had been a few times, though, when the alien's messages had led to nothing but trouble.
Jacob considered not returning the Kanten's call.
After a moment's hesitation, he punched out a code on the face of the teli and settled back to
compose himself. When he came right- down to it, he couldn't resist an opportunity to talk with an
E.T., anywhere, anytime.
A line of binary flashed on the screen, giving the location of the portable unit he was calling.
The Baja E.T. Reserve. Makes sense, Jacob thought. That's where the Library is. There was the
standard warning against contact with aliens by Probationary Personalities. Jacob looked away with
distaste. Bright points of static filled the space above the blankets and in front of the screen,
and then Fagin stood, en-replica, a few inches away.
The E.T. did look somewhat like a giant sprout of broccoli. Rounded blue and green shoots formed
symmetrical, spherical balls of growth around a gnarled, striated trunk. Here and there tiny
crystalline flakes tipped a few of the branches, forming a cluster near the top around an
invisible blowhole.
The foliage swayed and the crystals near the top tinkled from the passage of air the creature
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exhaled.
"Hello, Jacob," Fagin's voice came tinnily out of midair. "I greet you with gladness and
gratitude and with the austere lack of formality upon which you so frequently and forcefully
insist."
Jacob fought back a laugh. Fagin reminded him of an ancient Mandarin, as much for the fluting
quality of his accent as for the convoluted protocol he used with even his closest human friends.
"I greet you, Friend-Fagin, and wish you well with all respect. And now that that's over, and
before you say even a word, the answer is no."
The crystals tinkled softly. "Jacob! You are so young and yet so perspicacious! I admire your
insight and ability to divine my purpose in calling you I"
Jacob shook his head.
"Neither flattery nor thickly veiled sarcasm, Fagin; I insist on speaking colloquial English
with you because it's the only way I have a chance of avoiding getting screwed whenever I deal
with you. And you know very well what I'm talking about!"
The alien shook, giving a parody of a shrug.
"Ah, Jacob, I must bow to your will and use the highly esteemed honesty of which your species
should be so proud. It is true that there is a slight favor for which I had the temerity to ask.
But now that you have given me your answer . . . based no doubt on certain past unpleasant
occurrences, most of which nevertheless turned out for the best ... I shall simply drop the
subject.
"Would it be possible to inquire how your work with the proud Client species 'porpoise'
proceeds?"
"Uh, yes, the work is going very well. We had a breakthrough today."
"That is excellent, I am certain that it could not have happened without your intervention. I
heard that your work there was indispensable!"
Jacob shook his head to clear it. Somehow Fagin had taken the initiative again.
"Well, it's true I was able to help out early on with the Water-Sphinx problem, but since then
my part hasn't been all that special. Hell, anyone could have done what I've been doing here
lately."
"Oh, that is something that I find very hard to believe!" Jacob frowned. Unfortunately it was
true. And from now on the work here at the Center for Uplift would be even more routine.
A hundred experts, some more qualified in porp-psych than he, were waiting to step in. The
Center would probably keep him on, partly out of gratitude, but did he really want to stay? Much
as he loved dolphins and the sea, he'd found himself more and more restless lately.
"Fagin, I'm sorry I was so rude at first. I'd like to hear what you called me about . . .
provided you understand that the answer is still probably no."
Fagin's foliage rustled.
"I had the intention of inviting you to a small and amicable meeting with some worthy beings of
diverse species, to discuss an important problem of a purely intellectual nature. The meeting will
be held this Thursday, at the Visitors Center in Ensenada, at eleven o'clock. You will be
committed to nothing if you attend."
Jacob chewed on the idea for a moment.
"E.T.'s, you say? Who are they? What's this meeting about?"
"Alas, Jacob, I am not at liberty to say, at least not by teli. The details will have to wait
until you come, if you come, on Thursday."
Jacob immediately became suspicious. "Say, this 'problem' isn't political, is it? You're being
awfully close."
The image of the alien was very still. It's verdant mass rippled slowly, as if in contemplation.
"I have never understood, Jacob," the fluting voice finally resumed, "why a man of your
background takes so little interest in the interplay of emotions and needs which you call
'politics.' Were the metaphor appropriate, I would say that politics is 'in my blood.' It
certainly is in yours."
"You leave my family out of this! I only want to know why it's necessary to wait until Thursday
to find out what all of this is about!"
Again, the Kanten hesitated.
"There are . . . aspects of this matter which would best not be spoken over the ether. Several
of the more thalamic of the contesting factions in your culture might misuse the knowledge if they
... overheard. However, let me assure you that your part would be purely technical. It is your
knowledge we wish to tap, and the skills you have been using at the Center."
Bull! Jacob thought. You want more than that.
He knew Fagin. If he attended this meeting the Kanten undoubtedly would try to use it as a wedge
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to get him involved in some ridiculously complicated and dangerous adventure. The alien had
already done it to him on three occasions in the past.
The first two times Jacob hadn't minded. But he'd been a different sort of person then, the kind
who loved that sort of thing.
Then came the Needle. The trauma in Ecuador had changed his life completely. He had no desire to
go through anything like it again.
And yet, Jacob felt a powerful reluctance to disappoint the old Kanten. Fagin had never actually
lied to him, and he was the only E.T. he'd met who was unabashedly an admirer of human culture and
history. Physically the most alien creature he knew, Fagin was also the one extraterrestrial who
tried hardest to understand Earthmen.
I should be safe if I simply tell Fagin the truth, Jacob thought If he starts applying too much
pressure I'll let him know about my mental state—the experiments with self-hypnosis and the weird
results I've been getting. He won't push too hard if I appeal to his sense of fair play.
"All right," he sighed. "You win, Fagin. I'll be there. Just don't expect me to be the star of
the show."
Fagin's laughter whistled with a flavor of woodwinds. "Do not be concerned about that, Friend-
Jacob! In this particular show no one will mistake you for the star!"
The Sun was still above the horizon as he walked along the upper deck toward Makakai's quarters.
It loomed, dim and orange among the sparse clouds in the west—a benign, featureless orb. He
stopped at the rail for a moment to appreciate the colors of the sunset and the smell of the sea.
He closed his eyes and allowed the sunlight to warm his face, the rays penetrating his skin with
gentle, browning insistence. Finally, he swung both legs over the rail and dropped to the lower
deck. A taut, energized feeling had almost replaced the day's exhaustion. He began to hum a
fragment of a tune— out of key, of course.
A tired dolphin drifted to the edge of the pool when he arrived. Makakai greeted him with a
trinary poem too quick to catch, but it sounded amiably nasty. Something about his sex life.
Dolphins had been telling humans dirty jokes for thousands of years before men finally started
breeding them for brains and for speech, and began to understand. Makakai might be a lot smarter
than her ancestors, Jacob thought, but her sense of humor was strictly dolphin.
"Well," he said. "Guess who's had a busy day."
She splashed at him, more weakly than usual, and said something that sounded a lot like "Br-r-a-
a-a-p you!"
But she moved in closer when he hunkered down to put his hand into the water and say hello.
2.
SHIRTS AND SKINS
The old North American governments had razed the Border Strip years ago, to control movements to
and from Mexico. A desert was made where two cities once touched.
Since the Overturn, and the destruction of the oppressive "Bureaucracy" of the old syndical
governments, Confederacy authorities had maintained the area as parklands. The border zone between
San Diego and Tijuana was now one of the largest forested areas south of Pendleton Park.
But that was changing. As he drove his rented car southward on the elevated highway, Jacob saw
signs that the belt was returning to its old purpose. Crews worked on both sides of the road,
cutting down trees and erecting slender, candy-striped poles at hundred-yard intervals to the west
and east. The poles were shameful. He looked away.
A large green and white sign loomed where the line of poles crossed the highway.
New Boundary: Baja Extraterrestrial Reserve
Tijuana Residents Who Are Non-Citizens
Report to City Hall for Your Generous
Resettlement Bonus!
Jacob shook his head and grunted, "Oderint Dum Metuant." Let them hate, so long as they fear. So
what if a person has lived in a town his entire life. If he hasn't got the vote, he's got to move
out of the way when progress comes along.
Tijuana, Honolulu, Oslo, and half a dozen other cities were to be included when the E.T.
Reserves expanded again. Fifty or sixty thousand Probationers, both permanent and temporary, would
have to move to make those cities "safe" for perhaps a thousand aliens. The actual hardship would
be small, of course. Most of Earth was still barred to E.T.'s, and non-Citizens still had plenty
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of room. The government offered large reparations as well.
But once again there were refugees on Earth.
The city suddenly resumed at the southern edge of the Strip. Many of the structures followed a
Spanish or Spanish-Revival style, but overall the city showed the architectural experimentation
typical of a modern Mexican town. Here the buildings ran in whites and blues. Traffic on both
sides of the highway filled the air with a faint electric whine.
All over the town, green and white metallic signs, like the one at the border, heralded the
coming change. But one, near the highway, had been defaced with black spray paint. Before it
passed out of sight, Jacob caught a glimpse of the raggedly written words "Occupation" and
"Invasion."
A Permanent Probationer did that, he thought. A Citizen wasn't likely to do anything so kinky,
with hundreds of legal ways to express his opinion. And a Temporary Probie, sentenced to probation
for a crime, wouldn't want his sentence lengthened. A Temporary would recognize the certainty of
being caught.
No doubt some poor Permanent facing eviction, had vented his feelings, not caring about the
consequences. Jacob sympathized. The P.P. was probably in custody by now.
Although he was not particularly interested in politics, Jacob came from a political family. Two
of his grandparents had been heroes in the Overturn, when a small group of technocrats had
succeeded in bringing the Bureaucracy tumbling down. The family policy toward the Probation Laws
was one of vehement opposition.
Jacob had been of a habit, the last few years, of avoiding memories of the past. Now, though, an
image came forcefully to mind.
Summer school in the Alvarez Clan compound in the hills above Caracas ... in the very house
where Joseph Alvarez and his friends had made their plans thirty years before ... there was Uncle
Jeremey lecturing while Jacob's cousins and adopted cousins listened, all respectful expressions
on the outside and seething summer boredom within. And Jacob fidgeted in the back corner, wishing
he could get back to his room and the "secret equipment" he and his stepsister Alice had put
together.
Suave and confident, Jeremey was then still in early middle age, a rising voice in the
Confederacy Assembly. Soon he would b« leader of the Alvarez clan, edging aside his older brother
James.
Uncle Jeremey was telling about how the old Bureaucracy had decreed that everyone alive would be
tested for "violent tendencies" and that all who failed would from then on be under constant
surveillance—Probation.
Jacob could remember the exact words his uncle had spoken that afternoon, when Alice had come
sneaking into the Library, excitement radiating from her twelve-year-old face like something about
to go nova.
". . . They went to great efforts to convince the populace," Jeremey said in a low rumbling
voice, "that the laws would cut down on crime. And they did have that effect. Individuals with
radio transmitters in their rumps often think twice about causing trouble to their neighbors.
"Then, as now, the Citizens loved the Probation Laws. They had no trouble forgetting the fact
that they cut through every traditional Constitutional guarantee of due process. Most of them
lived in countries that had never had such niceties anyway.
"And when a fluke in those laws allowed Joseph Alvarez and his friends to turn the Bureaucrats
themselves out on their ears—well, the jubilant Citizens just loved Probation testing even more.
It did the leaders of the Overturn no good to push the issue at the time. They were having enough
trouble setting lip the Confederacy...."
Jacob thought he would scream. Here was old Uncle Jeremey gabbing on and on about all that old
nonsense, and Alice—lucky Alice whose turn it was to risk the oldsters' ire and listen in on the
tap they'd placed on the house deepspace receiver—what was it she had heard!
It had to be a starship! It would be only the third of the great slow vessels ever to come back!
That was the only possible explanation for the call up of the Space Reserves OF for all the
excitement in the east wing, where the adults kept their labs and offices.
Jeremey was still expounding on the public's continuing lack of compassion, but Jacob neither
saw nor heard him. He kept his face rigid and still as Alice leaned over to whisper—no, gasp in
her excitement—into his ear.
". . . Aliens, Jacob! They're bringing extraterrestrials! In their own ships! Oh, Jake, the
Vesarius is bringing home Eatees!" '
It was the first time Jacob had ever heard that word. He had often wondered if Alice was the one
to coin it. 'At ten years of age, he recalled, he had wondered if "eatee" implied that someone
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else was to be designated "eaten."'
As he drove above the streets of Tijuana, it occurred to him that the question still hadn't been
answered.
In several major intersections one corner edifice had been removed and a rainbow-colored "E.T.
Comfort Station Kiosk" installed. Jacob saw several of the new low open-decked busses equipped to
carry humans and aliens who slithered, or walked three meters tall.
As he passed City Hall, Jacob saw about a dozen "Skins" picketing. At least they looked like
Skins: people wearing furs and waving toy plastic spears.
Who else would dress that way in this sort of weather?
He turned up the volume on the car's radio and pressed the voice-select.
"Local news," he said. "Key words: Skins, City Hall, picketing."
After only a moment of delay a mechanical voice spoke from behind the dashboard with the
slightly flawed inflection of a computer-generated news report. Jacob wondered if they'd ever get
the voice tone right.
"Newsbrief summary." The artificial voice had an Oxford accent. "Precis: today, January 12,
2248, oh-nine forty one, good morning. Thirty seven persons are picketing the Tijuana City Hall in
a legal manner. Their registered grievance is, summarized in abstract, the expansion of the
Extraterrestrial Reserve. Please interrupt if you wish a fax or verbal presentation of their
registered protest manifesto."
The machine paused. Jacob said nothing, already wondering if he wanted to hear the rest of the
precis. He was already well acquainted with the Skins' protest against the implication of the
Reserves: that some humans, at least, weren't fit to associate with aliens.
"Twenty-six of the thirty-seven members of the protest group carry probation transmitters," the
report continued. "The rest are, of course, Citizens. This compares to a ratio of one probationer
per hundred and twenty-four Citizens in Tijuana in general. By their demeanor and dress the
protestors can be tentatively described as proponents of the so-called Neolithic Ethic,
colloquially, 'Skins.' As none of the citizens has invoked privacy privilege, it can be said for
certain that thirty of the thirty-seven are residents of Tijuana and the rest are visitors ..."
Jacob stabbed the cutoff button and the voice died in mid-sentence. The scene at City Hall had
long ago passed out of sight and it was an old story anyway.
The controversy over the expansion of the E.T. Reserve reminded him, though, that it had been
almost two months since he last visited his Uncle James in Santa Barbara. The old bombast was
probably up to his protruding ears, by now, In lawsuits on behalf of half of the probies in
Tijuana. Still, he would notice if Jacob left on a long trip without saying good-bye, either to
him or to the other uncles, aunts, and cousins of the rambling, rambunctious Alvarez clan.
Long trip? What long trip? Jacob thought suddenly. I'm not going anywhere!
But that corner of his mind he'd set aside for such things had caught scent of something in this
meeting Fagin had called. He felt a sense of anticipation, and simultaneously a wish to suppress
it. The feelings would have been intriguing, if they weren't already so familiar.
He rode on for a time in silence. Soon the city gave way to open countryside, and traffic
reduced to a trickle. For the next twenty kilometers he drove with the sunshine warm on his arm
and a pattern of doubts playing tag in his mind.
In spite of the restlessness he had felt recently, he was reluctant to admit that it was time to
leave the Center for Uplift. The work with dolphins and chimps was fascinating, and far more
equable (after the first tumultuous weeks during the Water-Sphinx affair) than his old profession
as a scientific-crime investigator had been. The staff at the Center was dedicated and, unlike so
many other scientific enterprises on Earth these days, they had high morale. They were doing work
that had tremendous intrinsic value and would not be made instantly obsolete when the Branch
Library in La Paz became completely operational.
But most important, he had made friends, and those friends had been supportive during the last
year or so as he began the slow process of knitting together the schismed portions of his mind.
Gloria especially. I'm going to have to do something about her if I stay, Jacob thought. And
more than the comradely heavy breathing we've done so far. The girl's feelings were becoming
obvious.
Before the disaster in Ecuador, the loss that had brought him to the Center in the first place
seeking work and peace, he would have known what to do and had the courage to do it. Now his
feelings were a morass. He wondered If he would ever again consider more than a casual love
relationship.
It had been a long two years since Tania's death. It had been lonely, at times, in spite of his
work, his friends, and the ever fascinating games he played with his mind.
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The ground became hilly and brown. Watching the cacti go by, Jacob sat back to enjoy the slow
rhythm of the ride. Even now, his body swayed slightly with the motion as if he were still at sea.
The ocean glistened blue beyond the hills. The nearer the curving road took him to the meeting
place, the more he wished he was aboard a boat out there: watching for the first hunched back and
raised fluke of the year's Grey Migration, listening for the whale's Song of the Leader.
He rounded one hill to find the parking strips on both sides of the road lined solid with little
electric runabouts like his own. On the crests of the hills up ahead were scores of people.
Jacob pulled his vehicle over into the automatic guideway on the right, where he could cruise
slowly and take his eyes off the highway. What was going on here? Two adults and several children
unloaded a car by the left side of the road, taking out picnic baskets and binoculars. They were
clearly excited. They looked like a typical family on a weekday outing, except that all of them
wore bright silver robes and golden amulets. Most of the people on the hill above them were
similarly garbed. Many had small telescopes, aimed up the road at something that was obscured from
Jacob's view by the hill on the right
The crowd on that hill wore their caveman gear with panache. These Compleat Cro-Magnons
compromised. They had their own telescopes, as well as wristwatches, radios, and megaphones, to
back up their flint axes and spears.
It wasn't surprising that the two groups settled on opposite hilltops. The only thing that the
Shirts and Skins ever agreed on was their hatred of the Extraterrestrial Quarantine.
A huge sign spanned the highway at the crest between the two hills.
BAJA CALIFORNIA EXTRATERRESTRIAL
RESERVE
Probationaries Not Admitted Without
Authorization
First Time Visitors Please Stop At The
Information Center
No Fetishes Or Neolithic Garments
Please Check "Skins" in at Information Center.
Jacob smiled. The "papers" had had a field day with that last command. There were cartoons on
every channel, which depicted visitors to the Reserve being forced to peel off their dermis, while
a pair of snakelike E.T.'s looked on approvingly.
The parked cars jammed together at the top. When Jacob's car reached that point, the Barrier
came into view.
In a wide swatch of barren ground that stretched from east to west, another line of barber poles
ran, this one complete. The colors had faded from many of the smooth posts. Dust coated the round
lamps that capped the tops.
The ubiquitous P-trackers acted here as a visible sieve, allowing Citizens to pass freely in and
out of the E.T. Reserve but warning probationers to stay out, and aliens to stay within. It was a
crude reminder of a fact that most people carefully ignored: that a large part of humanity wore
imbedded transmitters because the larger part didn't trust them. The majority didn't want contact
between extraterrestrials and those deemed "prone to violence" by a psychological test.
Apparently, the Barrier did its job well. The crowds on both sides grew thicker up ahead, and
the costumes wilder, but the mob stopped in a clump just north of the line of P-posts. Some of the
Shirts and Skins were probably Citizens, but they kept on this side with their friends—out of
politeness or perhaps as a protest.
The crowds were thickest just north of the Barrier. Here the Shirts and Skins shoved signs at
quickly passing motorists.
Jacob kept in the guideway and looked about, shading his eyes from the glare and enjoying the
show.
A young man on the left, wrapped in silver sateen from throat to toe, held up a placard that
said, "Man-kind Was Uplifted Too: Let Our E.T. Cousins Out!"
Just across the roadway from him a woman held a banner tacked to a spearshaft: "We did it
Ourselves ... Eatees off Earth!"
There was the controversy in a nutshell. The whole world waited to see If the believers in
Darwin, or those who followed Von Daniken, were right. The Skins and Shirts were only the more
fanatical fringes of a split that had divided humanity into two philosophical camps. The issue:
how did Homo-Sapiens originate as a thinking being?
Or was that all the Shirts and Skins represented?
The former group took their love of aliens to almost a pseudo-religious frenzy. Hysterical
Xenophilia?
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The Neoliths, with their love of caveman garb and ancient lore; were their cries for
"independence from E.T. influence" based on something more basic—fear of the unknown, the
powerfully alien? Xenophobia?
Of one thing Jacob was sure. The Shirts and Skins shared resentment. Resentment of the
Confederacy's cautious compromise policy towards E.T.'s. Resentment of the Probation Laws which
kept so many of them in a form of Coventry. Resentment of a world in which no man any longer knew
his roots for certain.
An old, unshaven man caught Jacob's eye. He squatted by the road, hopped up and down and pointed
at the ground between his legs, shouting in the dust kicked up. by the crowd. Jacob slowed down as
he approached.
The man wore a fur jacket and hand-sewn leather breeches. His shouting and jumping grew more
frenzied as Jacob neared.
"Doo-Doo!" He screamed, as if delivering a terrible insult. Froth appeared on his lips and he
again pointed to the ground.
"Doo-Doo! Doo-Doo!"
Puzzled, Jacob slowed the car almost to a stop.
Something flew past his face from the left and cracked against the window on the passenger side.
There was a bang on the roof and within seconds a fusillade of small pebbles was striking the car,
making a drumming that pounded in his ears.
He ran up the window on his left side, yanked the car out of automatic, and surged ahead. The
flimsy metal and plastic of the runabout dimpled every time a missile struck it. Suddenly there
were faces leering in Jacob's side windows; young tough faces with drooping moustaches. The youths
ran along, the side of the car as it sluggishly accelerated, hammering on it with fists and
shouting.
With the Barrier only a few meters away, Jacob laughed and decided to find out what they wanted.
He eased off a trifle on the accelerator and turned to mouth a question at the man who ran next to
him, an adolescent dressed as a twentieth-century science fiction hero. The crowd by the side of
the road was a blur of placards and costumes.
Before he could speak the car was shaken by a jolting bang. A hole had appeared in his
windshield and a burning smell filled the little cab.
Jacob gunned the car toward the Barrier. The row of barber poles whizzed by and suddenly he was
alone. In his rearview mirror he saw his entourage gather together. The youths shouted as he drove
off, raising fists from the sleeves of futuristic robes. He grinned and opened the window to wave
back.
How am I going to explain this to the rental company? he thought. Shall I say that I was
attacked by forces of the Imperial Ming or do you think they'll believe the truth?
There was no question of calling the police. The local constabulary would be unable to make a
move without starting with a P-Search. And a few P-Transmitters among so many would be lost for
sure. Besides, Fagin had asked him to be discreet in coming to this meeting.
He rolled down the windows to let a breeze carry away the smoke. He poked at the bullet hole in
his windshield with the tip of his small finger and smiled bemusedly.
You actually enjoyed that, didn't you? he thought
It was one thing to let the adrenalin flow, and quite another to laugh at danger. His sense of
elation during the fracas at the Barrier worried a part of Jacob more than the mysterious violence
of the crowd did ... a symptom out of his past.
A minute or two passed, then a tone sounded from the dashboard.
He looked up. A hitchhiker? Out here? Down the road, less than half of a kilometer away, a man
by the curb held his watch out into the path of the guidebeam. Two satchels rested on the ground
beside him.
Jacob hesitated. But here inside the Reserve only Citizens were allowed. He pulled over to the
curb, just a few meters past the man.
There was something familiar about the fellow. He was a florid little man in a dark grey
business suit and his paunch jiggled as he heaved two heavy bags to the side of Jacob's car. His
face was perspiring as he bent over the door on the passenger's side and peered in.
"Oh boy, what heat!" he moaned. He spoke standard English with a thick accent.
"No wonder no one uses the guideway," he went on, mopping his brow with a handkerchief. "They
drive so fast to catch a little tiny breeze, don't they? But you are familiar, we must have met
somewhere before. I am Peter LaRoque ... or Pierre, If you wish. I am with Les Mondes."
Jacob started.
"Oh. Yes, LaRoque. We've met before. I'm Jacob Demwa. Hop in, I'm only going as far as the
Information Center, but you can get a bus from there."
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He hoped that his face didn't show his feelings. Why hadn't he recognized LaRoque when he was
still moving? He might not have stopped.
It wasn't that he had anything in particular against the man . . . other than his incredible ego
and his inexhaustible store of opinions, which he would thrust upon anyone at the smallest
opportunity. In many ways he was probably a fascinating personality. He certainly had a following
in the Danikenite press. Jacob had read a number of LaRoque's articles and enjoyed the style, if
not the content.
But LaRoque had been a member of the press corps that had chased him for weeks after he'd solved
the Water-Sphinx mystery, and one of the least tactful at that. The final story in Les Mondes had
been favorable, and beautifully written as well. But it hadn't been worth the trouble.
Jacob was glad that the press hadn't been able to find him after the still earlier Ecuadorian
fiasco, that mess at the Vanilla Needle. At that time LaRoque would have been too much to bear.
Right now he was having trouble believing LaRoque's obviously affected "Origin" accent. It was
even thicker than the last time they'd met, if possible.
"Demwa, ah, of course!" the man said. He stuffed his bags behind the passenger seat and got in.
"The maker and purveyor of aphorisms! The connoisseur of mysteries! You're here maybe to play
puzzle games with our noble interplanetary guests? Or perhaps you are going to consult with the
Great Library in La Paz?"
Jacob re-entered the guideway, wishing he knew who had started the "National Origins Accent"
fad, so he could strangle the man.
"I'm here to do some consultant work and my employers include extraterrestrials, if that's what
you mean. But I can't go into details."
"Ah yes, so very secret!" LaRoque wagged a finger playfully. "You should not tease a journalist
so! Your business I might make my business! But you, you must surely wonder what brings the ace
reporter of Les Mondes to this desolate place, no?"
"Actually," Jacob said, "I'm more interested in how you came to be hitchhiking in the middle of
this desolate place."
LaRoque sighed.
"A desolate place, indeed! How sad it is that the noble aliens who visit us should be stuck here
and in other wastelands such as your Alaska!"
"And Hawaii and Caracas and Sri Lanka, the Confederacy Capitols," Jacob said. "But as to how you
came to be ..."
"How I came to be assigned here? Yes, of course, Demwa! But maybe we can amuse ourselves with
your renowned deductive talents. You perhaps can guess?"
Jacob suppressed a groan. He reached forward to poll the car out of the guideway and put more
weight onto the accelerator pedal.
"I've got a better idea, LaRoque. Since you don't want to tell me why you were standing there in
the middle of nowhere, perhaps you'd be willing to clear up a little mystery for me."
Jacob described the scene at the Barrier. He left out the violent ending, hoping that LaRoque
hadn't noticed the hole in the windshield, but he carefully described the behavior of the
squatting man.
"But of course!" LaRoque cried. "You make it easy for me!
"You know the initials of this phrase you used, 'Permanent Probationer,' that horrible
classification which denies a man his rights, parenthood, the franchise ..."
"Look, I agree already! Save the speech." Jacob thought for a moment. What were the initials?
"Oh ... I think I see."
"Yes, the poor fellow was only striking back! You Citizens, you call him Pee-Pee ... so is it
not simple justice that he accuse you of being Docile and Domesticated? Ergo the doo-doo!"
Jacob laughed, despite himself. The road began to curve.
"I wonder why all those people were gathered at the Barrier? They seemed to be waiting for
somebody."
"At the Barrier?" LaRoque said. "Ah yes. I hear that happens every Thursday. Eatees from the
Center go up to look at non-Citizens and they in turn come down to look at an Eatee. Droll, no?
One doesn't know which side throws the peanuts!"
The road turned around one hill and their destination was in sight.
The Information Center, a few kilometers north of Ensenada, was a sprawling compound of E.T.
quarters, public museums and, hidden around back, barracks for the border patrol. In front of a
broad parking lot stood the main structure where first-time visitors took lessons in Galactic
Protocol.
The station was on a small plateau, between the highway and the ocean, commanding a broad view
over both. Jacob parked the car near the main entrance.
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