Why Do Birds

CHAPTER 31

The Cube Team was having its regular Monday morning session.

"How are we coming on the Cube concept, Kevin?"

"Pretty well. Putting the structure up is fairly straightforward, but loading fast enough is a real bitch. Our rough projections show if we're going to make the deadline, figuring a target date of twenty oh five for start of construction, we've got to load approximately two million a day while construction is going on. Now to do that, we've either got to build a scaffold a mile high, or load with helicopters, or else build the Cube into the side of a mountain. Our feeling now is the mountain is the way to go. We sink a mile-wide shaft into the mountainside, and build roads up to the top, and a conveyor system that transports the loads at high speed to the level you're working on. Every time you fill a level, the conveyor system can be shortened, and the loading gets faster instead of slower."

"I think that makes sense. Now, what about the suspended animation gadgets, George?"

"According to Ed, the aliens are supposed to furnish those, but I don't know if they're thinking of just enough to put people into S.A. at the site, or if we're going to have enough to use them worldwide, or what, and I don't see how we can plan our system until we do know. Now there's a group in Japan that's developed an S.A. system of their own, and if that checks out, I think we ought to use it and not wait for the aliens. Because transport will be a lot easier if we can put people into boxes at the source and ship them that way."

"You say if it checks out?"

"Well, so far they haven't been able to get their experimental animals out of S.A. They've got some gerbils that have been laying there looking good as new for six months, but unless you revive them how can you tell? So I'm not sure, but it seems to me if the aliens have a system like 1 his, they must know how to tum it off, and it may be we're going to have to go that way just because we don't have enough time."

Sunday morning he called her from Istanbul. "Hey, did you see the news? There was a flash flood in Afghanistan, killed three hundred people."

"So?"

"So don't you remember, about the story in the magazine? That was the date I told you about, July six, the tidal wave."

"But this wasn't a tidal wave, was it?"

"Spoilsport," he said, and hung up.

The Cube Team was meeting again.

"What about people that have got heirlooms, old jewelry, paintings that can't be replaced? Are they going to have to leave all that behind?"

"And national treasures. Okay, there's room in those boxes for more than just the body, especially if it's a young child. The fact that we're standardizing the boxes means that in the case of small people, and children, there's going to be a lot of extra space. Why not let them fill that space with favorite possessions, anything they can't bear to leave behind? We'd have a hard time talking them out of it, anyway. They can take money if they want to, or jewels, bullion, whatever valuables they have."

"Some of them might want to take food, to make sure they have something to eat when they get there."

"Just as a digression, what are we going to eat when we get to the other planet?"

"I don't know. "

"Well, some people might want to take seeds. That would be a good idea, and they don't need much space."

"And books, or at least cubes. Cube players, holos. Musical instruments."

"Musical instruments take up a lot of space. Pianos, for instance."

"Okay, then plans for musical instruments. And all kinds of other things. Tools."

"That makes sense to me. They can stuff in whatever the box will hold, and that will add to the weight but not the cubic. People with a lot of kids will have an advantage, and if they're poor people, hey, they can sell space to rich people."

That winter there were ice storms from Boston to I\or-folk, flooding in Bangladesh, a new volcano in Iceland and another one in Hawaii. Stone was home again in late March, and they had three days together.

One afternoon they were alone in the living room, idly watching the holonews and playing Scrabble. " . . . reports of a huge flapping black thing in the sky," the talking head was saying. "And in Cleveland, a bizarre rain of cats fell in an outlying district this morning. Scientists say that rains of frogs and fish have been recorded before, but this is a first for cats. In Algiers ..."

That reminded her of something, and she asked him, "Could you draw me a picture of an alien?"

"I don't know. I'm no artist."

"Try it, anyway."

Stone found a piece of paper and a scriber, painstakingly drew something that looked like a child's picture, with a round head, oval body, and six sausages for arms.

"That isn't very good. Let's try the computer." She sat down in front of the terminal, asked for a menu and selected CAD. "You can draw on those things, too?" he said, looking over her shoulder.

"Sure." She put together some spheres and ovoids to make a yellow head, body, arms. "Let's work on the head first. Eyes? Are there two?"

"Yeah."

She added the eyes. "Are these the right shape?"

"No, rounder than that. And bigger."

She made the changes. "This where they go?"

"No, lower. And the forehead should be more like bulgier."

They worked on the face until Stone was satisfied. The last step was the spines, that made the face look like a sea creature's. Then they did the body, the arms, fingers. "Hey, that's pretty good," Stone said.

She stared at the image broodingly. "Is this the right color?"

"I don't know, the light was funny. Maybe a little browner."

She made the adjustment, saved the image. She printed out a copy, folded it up and put it in her bag.

"What did you want that for?" he asked.

"I don't know. Something to look at."

"How did it make you feel?"

"Scared. And something else, I don't know what."

"Bad news about the suspended animation gadgets. I sent Tom over there to take a look, and he says not only they can't get their gerbils out of S.A., but they can't move them."

"They can't move them? How come?"

"I don't understand it myself. They say their apparatus generates a cryonic field of over a billion hertz, okay, and what it does, apparently it rotates the object in the field through an infinite series of parallel universes. So, every picosecond, instead of the gerbil you started with, you've got another gerbil that's right where it was on that worldline when you turned the current on. So you can't move it, because even if you could do it in a picosecond, the next picosecond it would be right back where it started. They took the apparatus away, and the gerbil just hung there in the middle of the air. They gave Tom a hammer and asked him to hit the gerbil. He said it almost broke his wrists. Didn't even muss the gerbil's hair. "

"Can't they just tum the current off?"

"Sure, they can cut the circuit, but don't you see, the gerbil you're getting every picosecond is the same one that was in the field before you turned it off. They-"

"Wait a minute. Just wait a minute. You turn off the current and the thing still works? That doesn't make sense.''

"I know, but that's what they told me. You turn off the current, the machine stops working, okay, but that gerbil was in the field when the machine was working, and you can't go back and change that. So you just keep on getting more gerbils."

"Forever?"

"Yeah, I guess so. I mean, if you've got an infinite number of gerbils, you just don't run out. Anyway, I was starting to say, they gave Tom another demonstration-they put a laser on the gerbil to measure its height above the floor, and then they brought in a goddamn anvil and hung it from the gerbil's ear. Gerbil didn't move. So, partly this is good news and partly it's bad news. The good news is, is if we go with this system we won't need any structural supports in the Cube, because there won't be any gravity load. The bad news is, is we can't zap people into S.A. and then move them in container ships, we've got to ship them live, and not only that, we can't zap them until they're in place in the Cube. So that's a whole new system, and we've got to redesign everything from scratch."

"Who's going to get the bid for the construction?'.

"Farbenwerke, probably."

"Do they know about this?"

"Yeah, and they're not happy."

"You didn't mention another thing. If you can't move the people in the Cube, how are the aliens going to pick it up?"

"That's their problem. We've got to assume they can do things we can't do, right? If they want us to do this some other way, they can come and tell us about it."

Sunday just before dinnertime, Lavalle and Wellafield found themselves alone in the living room. Lavalle was drinking a Gibson; Wellafield had a ginger ale. She said, "Doc, I've been having some funny feelings lately. I just wondered-"

"What kind of feelings, Linda?" He leaned forward and smiled reassuringly.

"Well, it's hard to explain, but sometimes I seem to know what Ed is thinking about."

"Uh-huh. Well, that seems to happen to couples sometimes. My wife-Unh!"

He closed his eyes and opened them again. "Where was I? Oh, uh, telepathy isn't very scientific, you know, but there is what we call a rapport that people get when they are very close to someone. Now, is there something about these episodes that bothers you?"

She hesitated. ''Just that- I don't know, I'm having dreams that I never had before. But there's something else, too. I think I'm starting to feel the way he does about the aliens. I mean, I love them and I'm afraid of them, the way he is. I don't see how that could happen just by being around somebody. "

"No, perhaps not, perhaps not." He sat back and looked at the ceiling for a moment. "Well, there is another explanation. You know Ed says himself that the aliens put something in his brain."

"He hasn't got any scar-"

Wellafield waved his hand. "Microsurgery, perhaps. Or maybe he's wrong about their putting it in his brain, maybe it's somewhere else. But let's suppose it's what we call an implant, that is, something that releases a neurochemical agent of some sort into the bloodstream."

"Okay."

"And so his body fluids would contain this substance, and, ah, when you have intimate relations-I hope this doesn't embarrass you-"

"No, I get it." To her surprise, she felt herself flushing. "Thanks, Doc."

"Don't mention it, my dear."

After a really interesting lunch of curried crab and apricots, the Cube Team had a presentation from the Council of American Commercial Advertisers. The presenter was a large, aggressively cheerful man named Rodney ("Call me Rod") Singleton.

"We've got to sell this just like any other product," Rod told them, "and it will be the biggest ad campaign of all times because it's worldwide and we've got to reach everybody. Now how do we sell something that might look bizarre at first glance to everybody in the world? There are five ways, and we'll use them all. Number one, a promise of benefits. You'll have a better life if you use our product. Number two, peer pressure. Everybody who is anybody is using this product. Number three, glamour. Celebrities use this product. Number four, sex. Lots of great-looking models demonstrating the product. Number five, risk. You're taking your life in your hands when you use this product."

"Excuse me, isn't that a negative pitch?"

"You'd think so, wouldn't you? But studies have shown again and again that people are attracted by the risk of death. Like the skull-faces that showed up in ice cubes in liquor ads in the seventies and eighties? They sold booze like crazy, and the skull and crossbones on cigarettes work almost the same way. Incidentally, I've seen some of the sketches for the life capsules, and I understand there's some concern that they look too much like caskets. I'd like to go over this with the design group-I think there's a definite point where they're going to look just enough like caskets."

"Wait a minute, are you saying that if the capsule doesn't obviously look like a casket, people are going to want to get in it because of some subliminal, what, death wish?"

"That's very well put, and I think we should be alert to take advantage of that. Now, moving along, the next point is saturation. Everywhere you look, you're going to see our ads. On billboards, on halo, in newspapers and magazines. You're going to see Cube games and Cube toys for the kiddies. We'll have essay contests for school-children: 'Why I Want to Go to Our New Planet.' You'll see the ceremonies when people actually get into the life capsules and get their pictures taken. You won't be able to get away from this, because it'll be everywhere . Preachers will talk about it in their sermons. Teachers in their classes. The President will talk about it, the Mayor will talk about it, and I guarantee you we can tum this bizarre idea into something everybody takes for granted.''

"About the sex, that won't work in Islamic countries, will it?"

"Not the same way; no bikinis, but believe me, sex sells to Muslims too. That's an important point, though, cultural differences. We can't run this whole thing like an American campaign; it's got to be tailored to every group. That means we've got to have input from an army of anthropologists and media people. No problem. We've done the same thing with cigarettes."

"How about different religions, though?"

"We've got to have the religious leaders behind us, no question. Well, for every religion there's some kind of a handle. With Christians it's heaven, with Muslims it's paradise, same difference. The Chinese and Japanese and Scientologists are going to join their ancestors, the Indians are going to achieve nirvana. For starving people, they're going to a place where they'll never have to be hungry again.''

"Is that true?"

"Well, who knows if it's true? We're selling a product, and we're making certain claims for it. If we had to find out if the claims are true, how could you ever sell anything?"