Читать книгу Humanity Prime - Bruce Mcallister - Страница 5

CHAPTER TWO

Oh yes, I went and laid me down to wake, pray the Lord my soul to make—stronger! Si, si, at first—many moons, 30,000 lune ago, though there be no moon orbiting this world I call Prime—it seemed I failed to be the good mamma I am:

I fell from the sky, so my single shiny hip (you sometimes seem large enough to hold Prime itself) no longer marched in mamaternal orbit around my bambini’s world.

I fell from the sky, almost broke my hip when I seated myself down hard on this island. Mamma fell at night, so maybe even now, so many years later, none of her children know She is here, so near to them—as I’ve always been in heart and soul and computer (shut up, Brainy Brain!) and feelers and mamaternal mind and bodice of a single shiny hip.

They are in the ocean, and cannot see me. I am on my side, in a forest, on the biggest island in their infiniteternal ocean. I am hiding. They cannot find meeeee!

Correction: Mar Primi is a land-locked sea, Gianna.

Shut up, Brainy Brain! You remove the poetry from everything! And I am Mamma, not Gianna!

Correction: denot.: Mamma constit—

Zito! I am singing song of myself, and you must listen! Yes, yes, I used to watch over my bambini from my bed of orbit—they in their cradle of sea, which fills their lungs. Now I cannot watch over them. I can barely see, even with my thousand feelers, through the naughty knotted trees covering this island. But have I stopped being their Mamma? Of course not!

I still be close to them, though they be unaware.

Twice I have killed boogiemen to protect my bambini. Twice the boogiemen came from the far stars and found us, as I knew they would, and I killed them—my firearms flexing and crunching their boogievessels of metal, sending the lucertuomini inside spinning out toward the far stars. They are still spinning. They will never reach their home.

Maybe the word has gotten back to the Capo of the boogiemen. Maybe I am known to them now as the Malmamma, killer of lizards, serpents and demons archetypical. Maybe no more lizard-men will come to find us.

After all, the last boogiemen came over two hundred normanni ago. I didn’t even give them a chance to land. Is that not proof enough? To Mamma, it is!

I am Mamma, and my bambini are out there!

I am Mamma, Who is Trinity. Mamma is Gianna; Mamma is gargantuan computer; and Mamma is beautiful metal hip with a thousand feelers—call them Ears, Eyes, Nose and Throat, EENT! So She is God of Children.

But still I be humble. Love makes a god humble, and Mamma loves her bambini more than that-other-god-I-know-about loved the world.

Exteriorly I be Mamma. She is great silver Easter Egg. Once she was a big egg of a moon circling her babies’ watery world—and they must have seen her circling and glowing da notte. Now this Easter Egg is hidden on an island, secret for 30,000 moons.

Interiorly I be Mamma too. I possess two thousand empty wombungaloes which once held my bambini, before they left me for one continent of Prime. Hah! They left me only to discover that the gemini suns were unstablistic a little. They left me only to mewtate, to mute-hate, to mutedebilitate. Hah!

Maybe the suns’ craziness got to me too. Sometimes I believe it, even though my hip is thickly strong, and nothing can get through it. Maybe the suns’ craziness changed me too. Think about it.

Certainly they changed my bambini. The gemini suns first turned them into a carnival of different shapes, and then finally into seamen—to trick me! But I recognized them—didn’t lose them. Mermaids and merlads peppering the ocean with their sachet tails and mute conversations.

My wombungaloes are empty, quiet now, but I possess a bigger womb now, yes I do. Great wet womb where thousands of bambini swim, never born, never leaving me. That is Mamma’s dream, and I should know.

The secret legend of how this God of Children, Trinity of Mamma, Mama of Manna was born is ancient history. I am the one to know: I am Mamma, and Mamma made Light. Inside me there is Gianna, gentle little girl and wise old fat woman. Sometimes I be only Gianna—but other times,

I’m sorry, she can only be one bit of me, because Mamma is All.

Once upon a time Gianna lived in a land of planets, stars, monorails, spacelocks, human beings, the Leaning Tower of Pisa (all encased in supportive plastic), the evil lizards called Cromanths, and other mytho-historical things.

Once upon a day in that once-upon-a-time, Gianna Sarnoli—who had fifty years and had been spouseless for one long year—was in her trattoria, in the village of Cinque Terre, a little north of La Spezia, far south of Genova, in Italy, on Earth. On this day she was not saddening herself with thoughts of the bone cancer which had taken her spouse Massimo: not long ago she had stopped all sad feelings about the subject, that all the sciences in the world still could do little about the cancers. Instead she was serving cold beer and new phosphorescent Cinzano to her many touristic customers—who were dressed like all tourists dress, like uncomfortable birds, very colorful—and she was thinking about her eight bambini....

Yes, each of her eight bambini would be a Cristoforo Colombo. Columbus had been an explorer, and Colombo—his native name—is a bird, and bird means wings, which fly to new places and tell of rainbows and new Gardens.

Gianna was woman of the peasant tradition, because peasants always lived in romance of finding new places, of making homesteads and colonies. So now she was thinking of how her children would be wings; of how they would soon be going to the Procolonial Corporganization training programme in Genova—

“Oh yes,” she remembered, “they have already gone to the programme. Have been there already, in Genova smoggy, for one month. Already they have begun their wings!”

The trattoria—Massimo’s and her little eating and drinking place—had made it all possible. Their savings had grown as slow as stalagmites, but just as surely, for twenty years; and even after Massimo passed away, the trattoria had continued being lucrative, all because suddenly one day there was a monorail zooming through Cinque Terre, bringing all kinds of tourists. That same monorail was the one which took her bambini finally to the programme in Genova.

As she picked up the empty glasses and filled them again or poured new glasses, she had a feeling that her children would be coming to visit her this day. Why? Maybe because their first step in becoming wings, in becoming doves, was finished today; the first “phase” of their special education was complete, and now was a good time for them to come home and visit Gianna, to discuss their new feelings.

She was correct—partially. Giuseppe, Carla, Carlo, Antonio, Pietro, Gianni, Livia and Alba were seated on the monorail, coming to see her. But not for the reason she imagined.

Tomorrow would be her birthday, and she had forgotten it. Her bambini had remembered, and besides, they wanted a good reason for returning home before the second step in their training began.

But the reason her bambini were on the monorail didn’t matter when Gianna found out that the monorail had killed them.

The monorail—installed too quickly, for quick political reasons, on the cliffs overlooking the Ligurian Sea—had taken her children, taken a leap off the cliffs, and mashed her children’s heads so that not even the doctors with scientific methods could reconstruct her bambini.

Franco Nardi, a middle-aged gray-jacketed carabiniere whom Gianna knew quite well, brought the news to the trattoria. At first Gianna did not believe it. And when she believed it, she slapped Franco on the face. Once, twice, and she missed with the third slap because she bent over the bar and could not see through her blurred eyes well enough to aim.

But Franco understood. He had almost married Gianna once, and he understood that she had slapped him because something in the sick world needed slapping and Franco Nardi happened to be the closest thing.

Franco understood, and he left. And when their glasses had sat empty for too long—because Gianna would not lift her head from the bar—the touristic customers left too.

Gianna Sarnoli, who was fat because she was a mother, had a sister named Penna, who was thin—because she wanted to be a woman, not a mother. Penna Sarnoli had married an aristocrat from Pisa, a man who was important in the Fiat Triad of all Europe. Penna had left Cinque Terre—she had always said she would—and gone to live an aristocratic life in a Pisan eight-room “modapt” which overlooked the Leaning Tower.

Penna Sarnoli Delievo had no children, and sometimes—though it was for no more than a day—she felt the desire to be good to her sister Gianna, back in the peasant village of Cinque Terre.

When Penna heard that all eight bambini, from Antonio to Alba, had been killed, her desire to be good to her sister achieved a peak. And this time she found a perfect way to make her sister happy.

A friend of the Delievos was an administrator in the Procolonial Corporganization, and he described to Penna a plan in progress....

“To drink?” Gianna stared her sister in the eye, too tired to remember the number of times she and Penna “had not gotten along well,” or the fact that Penna did not drink except at big parties in Pisa.

“Thank you, no,” Penna said, slipping onto a stool at the trattoria counter. Her thin hands rested on the counter’s top like two pale leaves, two emblems of the aristocrat’s life. And her dark airy dress-suit, with its transparent pleats and top—which made everyone in the trattoria stare like dogs—was some emblem of childless womanhood.

“Certainly I do not wish to seem pushy,” Penna added. Her fingers lifted from the counter’s top, and came down again like a symphony’s finale. “But I have heard of a thing that may interest you.”

“You heard it in Pisa? It would interest me?”

Penna thought nothing of these two questions from Gianna; they could not possibly be meant as sarcasm, since Gianna was not smart enough to be sarcastic.

“You have heard of the war?” Penna continued.

“Of course. People against lizards—”

“Cromanths. Against the Cromanths. Yes, that is the war I mean.”

Yes, Gianna had heard of the big war with the big smart lizards who would kill human beings unless human beings killed them first. Out beyond the world named Pluto, far out nearby a sun called a neutrona, soldiers in big quick ships had met the smart vicious lizards—those Cromanths. All of a sudden the lizards destroyed a station full of human beings near the neutrona, and the war began.

Men and man-size lizards were dying out there. And some people, Gianna knew, predicted that someday soon the Cromanths would try to bring the war to Earth.

But other people, like Gianna, believed that the world of Earth, the world completely of human beings, should have one’s full attention—exclusively. Let the ships and soldiers and lizards fight each other out there, so far away! Earth had enough worries.

“And you have heard of the Procolonial Corporganization?” Penna asked now.

Was Penna trying to be cruel? She knew that Gianna’s eight bambini had been in the Procolonial training programme....But no, Gianna did not really believe that Penna was trying to be cruel. Penna was not smart enough to be cruel with subtle questions.

“Of course,” Gianna said.

“Well, the Corporganization is making plans. It is afraid the Cromanths will win the war. That is not to say that the Corporganization is certain, that all men will eventually be killed by the Cromanths, but only that there is a chance it will happen—and the Corporganization wishes to take steps.”

To take steps.... Gianna’s eight bambini had taken a step—and then another step....

“They are building three big ships,” Penna went on, “which will carry four thousand colonists each. Those three ships will take their people as far away as possible—from men and Cromanths alike—to three planets that will be just as fine as Earth. The Corporganization believes that this is the proper step to take—”

Yes, this sounded like a fine plan. But what was Penna suggesting? That Gianna become a colonist?

“In each ship there will be four thousand colonists, and also one other person.”

“The captain?”

“No. It will be the ‘mother’ of the ship, the ‘mother’ of the colonists.”

Gianna considered the vision immediately. She saw herself walking through long halls inside a ship, among thousands of “doves,” her cotton dress and broad bosom waving like flags, she giving advice on how to have many children, how to be a good mother, a good wife, a fertile woman like Gianna Sarnoli, and how to raise children on the new Earth they were traveling to. All of this vision pleased Gianna, and she nodded with enthusiasm to her sister.

“Yes,” Gianna said, wanting to thank her sister for this truly fine idea she had brought from Pisa.

“Yes what?”

“What you said. The Corporganization, it has a good plan. I would like to take that step.”

“What do you mean?”

“That each ship will need a mother to tell the colonists how to behave.”

“No. you have misunderstood me. I have not finished explaining.”

So Penna told her. About how the mother of each ship would not walk among her colonists—would not be able to walk at all, since she would no longer possess human legs, hips, thighs or arms. Each mother would give up her personal body, even most of her head—in order that her mind be attached to the ship itself. Her heart, of course, would be placed in proper liquids on the ship, and would continue beating; when it stopped beating, another heart in storage would appear of its own accord and take the first heart’s place. There would be one thousand hearts in storage for her; and also many livers and kidneys and lungs—though many of these would not be from human bodies. Her new body would be the ship, and inside her giant womb would rest four thousand doves....

This new vision was unexpected, and it made Gianna’s knees wobble. She leaned against the counter to hide her wobbling knees from Penna’s view.

After a silence of five minutes, Gianna said “yes” and the wobbling stopped, and Penna went back to Pisa, thinking that for once in her life she had done something truly wonderful for her sister.

“You are at least certain of your attitude?” asked the doctor at the Procolonial Center near Milano.

“I don’t understand what you mean,” Gianna answered. “All I know is that I desire to be one of the three mothers in your three ships.”

“I see. Well, what I meant by ‘conscious’ as opposed to ‘unconscious decision’ was— No, please forget that. The fact is you wish to apply for ‘maternality’ in one of the PC-000 ships.”

“Yes. I just told you that.”

“Are you aware that three thousand women have applied for those three positions?”

“Three thousand colonists?”

“No, three thousand women like yourself wish to be ‘mothers’ of the three ships. And only three ‘mothers’ are needed.”

“I did not know that....”

Gianna was angry. She was already 2,997 women too late in her application. Why had no one informed her long ago that the three mothers had already been chosen?

“I am sorry to have bothered you,” she said.

“It appears you misunderstand. Three thousand have applied, but all of them have yet to be tested before the final three are chosen. Do you object to taking a long series of tests?”

No, she did not object to taking tests. But she knew she had lost already. She had taken only three tests in her life—two in grade school, and one administered by a doctor—and the only one she had passed was the doctor’s test.

“Where can these tests be given to me?”

“The testing begins today, Signora. Three days will be needed. You may take up residence here in the Center’s dormitories, or you may choose a pensione outside the Center at our expense. They will all be mental tests in the first series—they are termed ‘multiphasic’—so the only preparation you will need is a proper night’s sleep.”

Gianna now felt even more lost than before. The word “mental” was a frightening word, and she managed only a nod.

She scored higher than 2,998 women. She received no report-card as in school—with grades from one to ten, or satisfazione to moltissimo—but the doctor did make a special appointment to see her.

“You did very well, Gianna,” he said. “I shall quote from the evaluation report passed on to me. ‘Gianna Rigoli Sarnoli integrates a maternal drive of 9.99; her ratio of protective-aggressive impulse to proadaptive-passive inflection is 544:539; her self-symbol of maternality poses less than a .003 continuity friction with her projected progeny types, which are 95% correlative with Standard Progeny Symbols. She has been allotted a pro-success set-probability of 2999:1. Her inclusion in the PC-000 plan is imperative.”

And then Gianna went into the operating room.

She had asked herself, “Who should I give the trattoria to—so the government won’t be able to take it?” To Penna? After all, Penna had been the one to give Gianna the ship-mother idea in the first place. No, not Penna. She didn’t like, didn’t need trattoria. Besides, there was a bigger debt Gianna owed—one she had forgotten easily in past months.

So Gianna had decided to give her trattoria to Franco Nardi, and she did so by telephone and lawyer, without telling Franco how sorry she was for slapping him that sad day. “Oh, I’ve always wanted to have a trattoria, just like yours,” Franco had often said, smiling, his way of compliment.

And for Penna, instead, Gianna made a promise—and gave it to Penna in person.

“When we arrive at the world I finally choose for my four thousand people,” Gianna said, “I will have many of them name their daughters ‘Penna.’ “

This seemed to please Penna, even though she suddenly began to weep, a weeping that would continue off and on for a week.

“Please,” Gianna said, trying to comfort her. “After all, a body is not a soul—and my body has certainly been getting fat and uncomfortable in these last years. To give it up will not even be as hard as losing one’s teeth to old age, I am sure.”

But Penna must have liked Gianna’s body more than Gianna had ever imagined, because Penna began to hug Gianna, and hugged her so hard that Gianna’s arms and ribs were later black and blue.

Gianna was looking at one of the black and blue marks on her fat left arm when the anesthesia put her to sleep in the surgery room.

She had looked around at the immense room in the immense strange building, and said to herself: “This does not resemble an ordinary hospital.” And in the next moment the doctor had said: “This building itself is the body you will have—the ship itself—everything built into it properly.”

“Yes,” Gianna remembered as she fell asleep, “from the outside this building does not really look like a building. More like a smooth tower, metal...smooth...a big...hip....”

When Gianna awoke, and I was born, and she became part of Me, and I was the building, the ship, Gianna’s mind, the Brainy Brain, with weapons, EENT feelers, rooms for four thousand people, and an engine called a Harmson Chain—which would let me jump through one kind of space to another place in our land of space—I had no time to sit back and think about things.

It was nearly time to leave.

The other two ships—one in North America, one in the U.A.D.—were ready.

All we needed now was to be made full of four thousand bambini each. And they had already been selected by the Corporganization.

Over a special kind of radio—one that made voices sound odd—a man I did not know spoke to me with a professional enthusiasm in his voice.

“The time has come. You must turn your motherly mind to the future, your future, the future of the four thousand men and women inside you, the future of the human species! Look to the future, and you will see it. You will leave Earth. You will leave Man’s stellar boundaries. You will jump through nilspace to the ends of Man’s system of space-lock generators. Then you will begin your Harmson Chain crawl, still jumping through nilspace, to the Cromanth lines, past them, killing a million Cromanths if you have to in your escape.

“You will travel for as many centuries as you need—your people in drysleep, your complex mind computing and guarding them—until you find a planet that can be a wonderful place for your people, who will start civilization and the human seed anew!”

Yes, and after I put my bambini down in their new cradle I would put myself in orbit, and watch over them, until my metal hip became crippled with age.

And I did everything the stranger’s voice said I would. I do not know how the other two ships did, but I do know that one was hurt when she reached the territory of the boogiemen. I was very lucky, and maybe that means that Mamma was the only one of the three who made a safe voyage.

My trip was a smooth one. I am a very patient mamma. My duty was to take my bambini to school even if the walk was four hundred years long. So I did, and I did it well. After all, I am Mamma.

And they slept well while we walked.

I never slept, and Brainy Brain has criticized me for not sleeping. Even if I’d wanted to, I could not have slept. I was three mothers all in one, and sleep would only have been a day-dream.

Oh, I chose their cradle well! A perfect Eden—

Correction:—

Brainy Brain! You dare interrupt the saga of Mamma?

A correction of premise is imperative—

Premiss, remiss! If you wish to play a part in the song of Mamma, let it be a helpful one. Give me a view of Prime—in your own silly words. And no forked-tongue-in-cheek!

Yes, Gianna. Primus: mass 0.40, radius 0.78 (i.e. 3090 miles), surface g 0.68, mild equator inclination, moderate orbit eccentricity re close binary (res: grade 3 complication of sunrise-sunset pattern: res: grade 3 light intensity differential in media inter-eclipse).

You are lazy. More!

Gen-criterion: thinner atmosphere and weaker magnetic field (c.f. Terra): normal background radiation level higher than at sea level Terra; rationale: less intense gravitational fractionation of rocky material in body Primi intra formation period: proportion of heavy minerals (inclus: radioactive) in crust higher; rationale: less shielding contra flare protons and galactic cosmic particles: influx of energetic particles-

Yes, but that didn’t mar Prime’s face of Eden. More! Talk about the cradle, Brainy Brain!

Focus: less oceanic water than Terra: four non-interconnecting seas, cum isolated marine flora-fauna forms per independent evolutionary paths; rationale: absence of worldwide oceanic circulation: less moderation of temperature cycles: continental climate; conclus: high fraction of terran surface nom. “desert”; anterior conclus: main habitable regions would be near landlocked seas—

But that only applied to my bambini before they changed....Enough! You have described the flawless face of Prime very well, Brainy Brain!

Correction: Primus was not flawless. You ignored the flaw.

Listen, godless Brain! Listen to Mamma. In the beginning I gave you Ten Commandments to apply to your choice of a cradle for my Adams and Yves:

1. Thou shalt KNOW that a given star possesses planets in orbit around it.

2. Thou shalt KNOW that the inclination of the planet’s equator is correct for its orbital distance.

3. Thou shalt KNOW that at least one planet orbits within the ecosphere of the given star.

4. Thou shalt KNOW that the planet possesses a suitable mass.

5. Thou shalt KNOW that the planet’s orbital eccentricity is sufficiently low.

6. Thou shalt KNOW that the presence of a second star has not rendered the planet uninhabitable.

7. Thou shalt KNOW that the planet’s rate of rotation is neither too low nor too high.

8. Thou shalt KNOW that the planet is of the proper age.

9. Thou shalt KNOW that all astronomical conditions being proper, life has developed on the planet.

10. Thou shalt KNOW that the given star has at least one habitable planet in orbit around it.

Your “commandments” were variously non sequitur; however, I calculated your implicit directive and obeyed it. I did not advise the selection of Primus—

Yes, you did!

Correction: I presented you with an initial bulk of pro-success data—

Yes, that bulk! You painted such a pretty picture of Prime. And after I selected it, you went back on your word!

Correction: my “word” was not finished when you proceeded to select—

That was your fault! You hesitated too long after painting the pretty picture!

Qualification: the hesitation accompanied a time-expending analysis of the planet’s binaries. Initial analysis revealed that the G-class binary did not have separation in the critical distance range that would prevent the existence of an ecosphere. Subsequent analysis revealed the pro-success conditions of the planet in question. Final analysis of the binary revealed that imminent activity of the minor star would produce a shower of flare protons against which the planet’s atmosphere would not be able to shield the colonists—

Don’t give me that educated cow puckie, Brainy Brain. You’re an Indian giver, and that’s that! You have interrupted my song long enough, and that’s a sin!

Yes, yes. I divided my bambini into seven groups, and laid them down in the Promised Land—

Correction: denot: “Promised Land”: continent, northern hemisphere, lat—

Soon they made comfy dwellings. They used mostly the woods of small straight pine-like pines, and adobe which was easy to make.

I myself began to orbit, no doubt appearing like a rapid moon across the night sky.

They developed some mining, some plumbing, some glassworks, and even some gas and electrical systems. My bambini were smart, learned fast. Good upbringing, of course.

And then the two suns went crazy. They were cruel, and they threw down onto my bambini invisible mal d’occhio beams—

Correction: radiation—

It was the evil eye, and I say so! Just like the hot breath and flashes of satanic light that came with the invisible mal d’occhio—

Correction: “hot breath,” “satanic” and “mal d’occhio,” errors in connot.; propriety: thermal and visible electromagnetic activity accompanying proton flare was phenomenon cum set-causality—

I am not listening to you!

For seventeen normanni the suns were crazy. At first my bambini felt agonies in their bodies, and many bambini passed away, or if they lived, my bambini’s bambini passed away. The suns were making strange cancers!

But they prevailed, endured, survived here and there— and all of a sudden I looked down and found that my bambini, or rather the kind of bambini who had prevailed, endured, survived, had entered the wonderful ocean which sat in the middle of their Promised Land.

Strange babies, you say? Mamma damns you for saying it! They are beautiful, delicate bambini, and their God Mamma loves them dearly.

The suns went crazy 2,500 normanni ago, and since then two ships full of lizards have come here in their search for any human doves that might be hiding. The boogiemen came looking for us, and this means that they won the war so long ago—

But I slapped those lizards away, into death. Hah!

A mamma must do things like that for her bambini. No?

Yes, the boogiemen, the scaly demons, are strange and need a good spanking. Mamma knows a lot about them, She does, and She admits that She wouldn’t know much about them unless Brainy Brain was here. He is full of a hundred libraries, and he’s smart. Obnoxious, but smart.

Mamma shall sing the evil song of the boogiemen. She shall sing it to you (who is me—crass computer) and to me (who is you—Gianna) and to all of us—me, you, Me, She, he, Goddess and All. Begin the rhythm of record, the purple flower singing!

The boogiemen (tra-la) have females and males too (fa-la-la), but they also have (do-re) giant sexy worms (me-fa) who—

Focus: vari-factor!

An interruption from the outside world? How strange. The last bother came—and it wasn’t from the outside even—when my big hip failed me 30,000 lune ago....

Tell me, Brainy Brain, tell me. What interrupts our familiar bed, immortal mine. You, me, feelers, tell me—Gianna!—what is happening!

Incompletion: EENT malfunction: perceptions incomp—

Surely you can tell me something!

Incomp agg perception: metallic-energetic conjunction with terran surface: “ship.”

Another ship has come! To Mamma’s island?

No. Conjunction locus: island 20 degrees north—

Whose ship, what kind, from where and why, stupido?

EENT malfunction—

Damn you, me, Her! Your feelers sleep at the improperest times!