Why Do Birds

CHAPTER 32

The Cube Team had been officially renamed; it was now the United States Consulting Service (USCS) , and it had a commanding voice in the Council of the International Human Rescue Corporation (IHRC) in Berlin. But it still met every Monday in Washington, where it called itself by its old name.

On a rainy day in April, when the winds were whipping diseased cherry blossoms down the avenue, Sam Cooper said, "We were thinking of Tsu Jin Shan, northeast of Nlan-jing, but it turns out it's only fifteen hundred feet, and even if it was taller, with gerbil construction we really don't need a mountain. We can put up a mile-high building right outside Shanghai, no weight at all and absolutely solid. And that's better than the mountain, because we can have multiple tracks that converge on the building as it goes up.

"Okay, now the only problem is, is the folks in the capsules are going to have a hell of a ride. There might be a lot of screaming in there, so we think the best thing is to give them something that knocks them out cold as soon as they get in the capsule."

"What would that be, an injection?"

"No, needles scare some people, and besides it takes too long. We were thinking more along the lines of a harmless knockout gas released into the capsule when you close the lid. So, anyway, as soon as each capsule gets to the right place, it closes a contact that turns on the gerbil field, and we can easily load two point five million a day, so we're in like Flynn."

The sound copter roared overhead, dropping a blizzard of bulletins. Linda Lavalle picked one up from the pavement. It said:

DON'T BE LEFT BEHIND!!!

Noted psychic, Dr. Wallace Bird, Ph.D. tells us that there MAY NOT BE ENOUGH ROOM! FOR EVERYONE! in the Cube. Those who get in first will be carried to the New Planet! Those who are LEIT BEHIND may PERISH!

Use this handy form to SIGN UP for the Cube Lottery

NOW!!! DON'T BE LEFT BEHIND!!!!

When she gave it to Stone, he said, "Yeah, well, that's the way they set it up. You don't have to worry about it for another seven or eight years, but you might as well sign anyway. You can always back out if you want to."

''I'll sign when you do."

"Okay."

That evening Sylvia said, "I talked to my shrink today about getting into the Cube?"

"Yeah, and?"

"Well, she says people are either sarcophiles or sarcophobes."

"She does, huh? What does that mean?"

"Either they want to get into those coffins, or else they'd do anything in the world to stay out of them."

"Oh. Okay, which are you?"

"I'm a sarcophobe. I want to be cremated."

"Well, if Ed's right, you will be."

"Thanks a lot. "

Stone spent a week in Washington, came back to New York for a few days, then was gone again. He was in Africa, Australia, Indonesia, shaking hands with presidents and prime ministers. The world economy was booming; fleets of passenger ships were under construction in yards from Seattle to Arkhangelsk.

After work Lavalle went directly to the penthouse and walked into the private apartment where Stone was waiting. He kissed her. "Hi, how was your day?"

"Not too bad. When did you get in?"

"About an hour ago. Sit down, have a drink." He picked up a sweating cold jug, poured the martini into a chilled glass, added olives, handed it to her.

She sipped it. "You're getting better. "

He was pouring rye into a glass, adding ginger ale. "Listen, there's somebody I want you to meet. I brought him down from Washington with me. He can't stay long, but I just want you to see him."

"Okay, where is he?"

"Wait a minute, I'll get him." He walked behind her.

She kicked off her shoes, leaned back and took another slow sip of the martini. After a moment she heard a sound and turned to look. Stone was standing there with a funny expression on his face. A few feet behind him, Stone was watching.

She yelped and stood up, spilling the glass.

"What do you think?" said Stone, the second one. The first one said nothing, but his smile broadened.

"Don't do that to me!" she said, with one hand on her heart. She had stepped on her shoe in getting up, and the drink had spilled on her skirt.

"Linda, this is Bob Eberhardt," the second Stone said.

The man put out his hand, and she took it. "Heard a lot about you," he said in a clear tenor.

"Thanks, I guess." Now that she looked closely, she could see the differences: Eberhardt's eyes were not quite the same color, his nose was a little broader, but the two men were dressed just alike, and the resemblance was amazing. They sat down and looked at her.

"See," Stone said, "I've got all these functions I've got to go to, and I can't be in two places at once, so they dreamed this up. I've got three guys made over to look like me. This is Medium Bob, and then there's Big Bob and Little Bob."

"I can't talk much," said Eberhardt, "because the voice isn't right yet. So I can't go on holo, or meet heads of state, or anything. But I can meet mayors, and go in parades, and just wave." He grinned. "It's fun."

Her heart was slowing down. "Pour me another drink, for God's sake. Do you think three is going to be enough?"

"For now, but we can recruit some more, right, Bob?"

"Right. I've got a cousin who'd like to give it a try."

"Rye and ginger, Bob?"

Eberhardt made a face. "No, I've got to run. Nice meeting you, Ms. Lavalle."

"You too. Good luck. "

When he was gone, she looked at Stone. "You son of a bitch," she said.

"Would you of known it wasn't me, if I hadn't been standing right there?"

"Maybe not. Are you feeling okay? You look rotten."

He took a long swallow of his highball. "I'm tired. Maybe these Bobs will take some of the pressure off.'' He shook his head. "I'm worried, though."

"What about?"

"I know somebody's working against me, and I don't know who. It could be Rottenstern, he's the German, but Schwartzmann means black man, and that could be anybody in about sixty countries. It could be Svartschev in Russia. Or it could even be Rong."

"Oh, come on."

"He's been acting funny lately. I think he's got some kind of a deal on the side."

"You really think everything that happens has something to do with the story in that magazine?"

"Not everything, but the main characters. You, me, and Frank, that's three, but there's one more, and I don't know who he is. I know he's out there."

"We're talking to Clint Goldberg in Lexington, Kentucky. Mr. Goldberg, you've told people you're not going to the new planet. Why not?"

"Well, son, I raise beef cattle for a living. Some people seem to think that's a bad thing to do, but my idea is, if they don't like what I do, they can go somewheres else where I'm not a-doing it. Now it may be so that we're all going to get in that box and wake up in some other universe with rolls of thousand-dollar bills in our pocket, although I somehow doubt it. But I know one thing for damn sure, you can't get a herd of beef cattle in them boxes."

"Some people are speculating that we'll find herds of cattle on the other planet when we get there. Or something like cattle."

"Yes, well, and some people speculate that they'll get pie in the sky when they die. I don't say nothing against that, but I believe I'll stay here and take my chances."

"Who's going to eat your beef cattle, Mr. Goldberg?"

"As long as people are living on this planet, they'll be some that eats beef."

"We're in Ames, Iowa, talking to Mrs. Dorene Volmer. Mrs. Volmer, you're planning to go to the new planet, is that right?"

"That is right, Dave. Our minister is going to lead the whole congregation into the Cube, I mean everybody except one person, Stephen Orr, and we're trying to talk him around. Because we'd like to be one hundred percent. And it would be so nice, when we get to the new planet, if we could look around and see that everybody else was there, too. Some families are being broken up by this, not in our congregation but other places. I think that's so sad."

"So you don't have any doubt that you've made the right decision?"

"Oh, no. It's going to be just wonderful, and I wish everybody could understand that. "

"Why do you think some people don't understand it, Mrs. Volmer?"

"Their eyes have been darkened by Satan, Dave."

"One thing about his story impresses me. The collections he talks about-all kinds of plants and animals."

"Yes? Why?"

"Well, it makes sense. If you ask yourself what the aliens came here for-"

"To rescue us before the Earth is destroyed."

"Well, that too, maybe, but what were they doing out there in the first place? They didn't know we even existed until they came. In other words, what could they find on other planets that would be worth the cost of the trip? Now Ed isn't a scientist; he's not even an educated man. If he had made this story up, he probably would have thought of something simpler. Metal ores or something like that, that wouldn't make any sense at all. The only thing that does make sense is biologicals. There are so many possible organic compounds that it would take you forever to synthesize every one and find out if there was any use for it. So you go to planets and take samples of things that are already being used. We've been doing the same thing for thousands of years on our own planet. Any working organic chemical might have hundreds of other uses. You might find something in cats' saliva that would cure a disease we never heard of. Or you could splice in genes from an oak tree to modify some other organism. That's the real gold in interstellar exploration-everything else is nonsense."

"The idea is that we clear out South America, and Central America and the Caribbean, then we go over to southern Africa and clear that out up to here, leaving just the countries along the northern coast-"

"Why stop there?"

"Because it makes more sense to get them from the Mediterranean side when we do western Europe and the Middle East. Okay, and then we get southwestern and eastern Europe and the Slavos, then India and so on, and then North America starting with Mexico, then northwestern Europe, then Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand, then the Pacific islands, then the Philippines, Japan and Korea, and China last."

"Haven't you got North America and Western Europe out of order?"

"Right, and they say that's because most of the industrial plant and technical stuff is there, and most of the food stockpiles too, but I think there's something else going on. There was some heavy lobbying by the multinationals."

"What for, do you think?"

"I don't know, unless they think something's going to happen to the Cube Project."

In October, 2005, Stone got back from a three-week trip; he had been to London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Vatican City, Warsaw and Moscow. He looked tired, and he was drinking more than usual. He hadn't been sleeping well, Rong said.

"He's not looking at all well," said Mrs. Rooney. They were having tea in the penthouse living room.

"He's looking like puke. He don't sleep enough, and sometime he wakes up yelling."

"Isn't he taking his pills?"

"Yeah, but they don't do him no good. All the travel, you know, that's bad enough all by itself. It's daytime when you think it's dark out, and then you get home and you have to tum around again. So I tell him, man, after one of them trips, take a week to relax before you take another one, but he says no, he's got to keep moving. He got a big map in the plane with markers on it all the places he's been, but there's a hundred he ain't, and he frets about it. The food don't agree with him neither. He's got to go to these breakfasts, these lunches, these banquets, and they're not going to feed him nothing healthy, they're going to spread their-selves because he's important, right, and he's got to eat it because he's a guest. ”

"What can we do?"

"We had them put a gym in the plane, at least he can get a little exercise. That helps some, but the only thing going to make him better is a month off, and he won't take it."

"Can't you let up a little?" Lavalle asked that evening. "I mean, the Cube Project is under way, what more do you want?"

"No, because some of these places, the leadership has changed, and the rest of them, I have to keep going back because I think the stuff in the ring is starting to wear off.

Did you see where Chelmsford denounced me as a charlatan?"

"The ex-prime minister? No."

"Well, he's ex, and they say he's senile anyway, so it's not too bad. But I shook hands with him just a little over three years ago, and that means if I don't keep shaking hands with the same people, there might be a bunch of them turning against me. I can't take the chance."

Wellafield cleared his throat. "It's going to happen anyway, isn't it, Ed? You can't keep up with them all."

"I can try."

Stone was in Europe all through the spring and summer, working with the Oversight Committee of the International Human Rescue Corporation, and consulting with the Farbenwerke engineers who were designing transport mechanisms for the Cube. A pilot project was going up on the floodplain of the Elbe near Hamburg.

The media campaign was in full swing. A virtual sculpture fifty feet tall had been put up in UN Plaza, where Lavalle passed it every day on her way to work: it consisted of a twenty-two-foot white cube and a blue cloud-speckled globe suspended and slowly rotating above it.

Sylvia showed her a present she had just bought for a new nephew: a jack-in-the-box that popped up a globe instead of a clown. For older children there was a toy cube which, when opened, disgorged a vast number of compressible dolls.

Lavalle's boss got rid of all the office furniture and replaced it with cubical desks, cocktail tables, armchairs, end tables. She noticed that most of the stuff she and Sylvia brought home from the supermarket or ordered on the net was in cubical packages.

Every sitcom involved the new planet in some way. The nonfiction best-seller that year was New World Revealed, by Moamaddar Parthava, an Iranian mystic who claimed to have received messages from outer space describing the new planet in great detail. Sylvia, who read the book, said that the new world was called Twonola, and that it was partly covered with trees you could eat and have sex with. There was also a friendly race of stunted humanoids who spoke Finnish and enjoyed working hard for other people.

The holo was called Flash Gordon on the New World. It started off like the old flatfilm, with the planet Mongo approaching the Earth and about to destroy it. In a violent storm, Dr. Zarkov, Flash Gordon, and Dale Arden took off in Zarkov's experimental spaceship. The strange planet loomed nearer. They landed, and then it was all different. They were in a verdant valley dotted with ranch houses and a few high-rise buildings. Zeppelins and gaily colored little airplanes soared overhead. A welcoming committee of tall, smiling people came toward them.

Then they were at a beach where tanned athletic people were sitting under striped umbrellas on a terrace overlooking a calm baby-blue ocean. Down on the beach, fishermen in striped shirts were hauling in an enormous fish, something like a twenty-foot grouper; it was gasping and waving its fins. On the terrace, the people picked up bits of cooked fish on their forks, tucked them into their pink mouths, and smiled.

"Not very exciting," Lavalle said.

"No, because it's paradise. You can't have bad things happen in paradise."

"I'm not sure I want to go there."

The Premier of China, beaming for the cameras, dug a symbolic spadeful of dirt and deposited it in a basket. Following him in order, the other visiting dignitaries did the same. There were speeches; champagne and Chinese wine were drunk, many photographs taken. Then the bulldozers moved in.

The dusty plain northwest of Shanghai had been spread with flower petals, on which the eight hundred twenty-six converging rail tracks gleamed like the stems of a metal bouquet.

"We're here," said the voice of the American reporter, "as we have been all morning, waiting for the first capsules to be loaded into the Cube. That event is supposed to take place at noon our time, but it seems there has been a delay. All morning long, German and Chinese engineers have been testing the system, but we are informed that-Ah, now I see that something is happening down at the railheads. Peter, will you come in?"

The view switched to a stage draped with red bunting, where the correspondent Peter Wilkins stood with the wind ruffling his hair. Behind him, people sweating in formal suits were popping in and out of the golden curtains. "Alan," he said, "as you can see from the activity here, we seem to be getting ready to receive our distinguished guests. I am informed that Walter John Perry of the United States of America will have the honor to be the first to enter the capsule. After him, I believe it will be Katya Goldmark of the European Federation, and after her- But I am being signaled to leave the stage, and I believe that means the ceremony is about to begin." He walked off camera.

Below the platform, raucous music burst out. The curtains parted to reveal the open space capsule on a pedestal, gleaming pink-silver under the lights. Standing in front of it was the American rock star in a sequined suit. He bowed; then, to a roll of drums, walked to the capsule and climbed in. Sitting there, he raised his arms in an enfolding gesture, then brought his hands to his mouth and blew kisses. He lay down in the padded interior; as he did so, the halo above the stage came on, displaying an overhead view of the open capsule. Two men came from either side, wheeling carts from which they took small parcels and began packing them in around the singer's body. They moved with effort, as if the parcels were very heavy. The singer squirmed a little to accommodate them.

"Peter, what's in the parcels?"

"Alan, that's his payoff-it is rumored to be a hundred million dollars ' worth of gold bullion. I'm told that he was offered a second capsule to put it in, but he said no thanks; he wants it with him so he'll know it's going to be there when he wakes up."

The two commentators laughed gently. "And they say you can't take it with you!" said the first. "Are they all getting that much, Peter?"

"Yes, Alan, they are. People at this level of fame don't do anything for nothing. But, in a sense, they're doing a public service by demonstrating their confidence in the Cube, and it's worth the money."

"What about all the other VIPs-won't they want to be paid too?"

"My guess is that they'll get a little lulu,just to keep them happy, but by that stage there'll be too much competition for them to hold out. Once this gets started, it's a status thing to be high on the list, and in a couple of weeks it wouldn't surprise me if they were paying to get in early. "

The lid of the capsule came down. The capsule sank through the floor of the platform, reappeared below. Now it was moving slowly on the track, faster now, and now as the camera followed it they could see it speeding toward the construction site two miles away.

"Bye, Walter John," said one of the talking heads.

Professor Rafael Torres y Molina of the University of Lima spent the night at the old hotel on top of Machu Picchu, as he always did. The new hotel at the foot of the mountain was much more commodious, but Torres y Molina liked to sit on the terrace in the early morning and watch the clouds slowly unveil the Andes. The sight never failed to move him. These mountains were unlike other mountains; they went beyond majesty.

Professor Torres y Molina was fifty-two years old. He had devoted half his life to Peruvian archaeology; in his younger days he had clambered all over the Inca Trail, and he had supervised the last ten years of the restoration of Machu Picchu. As he drank his coffee (flash frozen, from Colombia; he considered Peruvian coffee undrinkable) , he gazed alternately at the black spires opposite across the chasm and at the entrance to Machu Picchu itself a hundred yards away, where a solitary llama was hanging around hoping to get in. He was alone on the terrace; the air was cool and fresh.

Presently the first tour bus came up the switchback road and pulled over to the curb. Tourists emerged one by one. A few went into the lobby of the hotel; the rest, following their guide, walked down the path to the entrance.

Torres y Molina waited. The second bus pulled up, and this time only five people got out. Two of them, heavily built men in gray suits, came up the steps and stopped in front of him. "Professor Torres y Molina?" the first one said.

"Yes."

"May I see some ID, please?" He spoke in English with an American accent.

"Certainly, if you will first tell me who you are."

Without changing his expression, the man removed a leather folder from his breast pocket and flipped it open. It contained some sort of badge and a plastic card. In his turn, Torres y Molina took out his wallet and offered his internal passport. The guard examined it carefully, handed it back, and nodded to the others.

The third man came up the steps and put his hand out. "I'm Ed Stone, Professor. Thanks for showing me around."

"I have not done it yet, but you are welcome. Now, to begin with, do you see the peak over there? That is Huayna Picchu. Can you see the goat?" On the side of the peak a white dot was moving, no bigger than a flea. "There is a little temple there. The only way to reach it is by a ridge trail that is so dangerous that only the crazy Germans try it."

"Have you been there?" Stone asked.

Torres y Molina smiled. "Yes. When I was younger. And did you notice the path up the mountainside-not the road you came up by, but the other one?"

"No."

"I have a picture here." He took it out of his breast pocket and showed it to them. "You see, the modem road goes back and forth, back and forth. The Inca path goes straight up the mountain. Well, now let us go into Machu Picchu."

They passed between the thatched guard towers and proceeded down the narrow path beside the terraces that rose to the top of the mountain. The llama, which had got in somehow, was grazing in one of the walled fields below.

"They tell me nobody knows who built this place, is that right?" said Stone.

Torres y Molina turned. "That's true. It was a separate little Inca kingdom, apparently. What you see here is just one part of it. By the time the Spaniards came, all these people were gone. Disease, or maybe their springs dried up and they left because they had no water. All over the continent, there are ruins of civilizations that died, and we don't know why."

Stone looked around and breathed deeply. Clouds were pouring like water over the ridge above; the sun was bright. "It's beautiful here," he said.

"Yes. Did you have any trouble with the altitude?"

"I had a headache in Cuzco and had to lay down awhile, but then I was fine."

They climbed up and down the stone stairways on either side of the central plaza. At the Carceles, Torres showed them the narrow trapezoidal niches in the walls. "We think these were prison cells. They would put a man in each one, close the wooden gate, which of course is not here any more, and then feed him through the window in the back wall. They had many of these cells. We don't know what the crime was, but it was probably disobedience."

Half an hour later, they descended from the battlement walk into a little courtyard, completely enclosed and private. "This is a favorite place of mine," Torres y Molina said. "I think there must have been a great many flowers here. Perhaps it was a place where a certain young woman came to be alone." He smiled. "When you spend enough time here, you think you feel the presence of people who are gone."

In a little nook beside the path, someone had deposited two empty sardine tins and a cigarette package. Torres y Molina looked at them and walked on.

"Why do people do that in a place like this?" Stone asked behind him.

"Perhaps because they are badly brought up," Torres y Molina said over his shoulder. "Or because if one cannot create something, the next best thing is to deface and destroy it? I don't know."

He took them to the Sacred Plaza and the Temple of Three Windows. Stone asked, "How did they fit those stones so close?"

"No one knows that. Another question is, why did they do it? In some places they carved blocks of a uniform size and shape, just as we would, and they even used mortar, but for decorative work it seems that they preferred unusual shapes and a close fit. And of course these walls are very strong, because of the way the pieces lock together."

Stone pushed his hat back and stood staring at the masonry. "We went to that other place yesterday, the fortress."

"Sacsawayman? Outside Cuzco?"

"Yeah. And, you know, I'd seen pictures before, but it wasn't the same."

"Yes, I do know."

"I mean, some of those blocks must be thirty feet high. I don't even know how they could get them there, let alone make them fit that tight."

"I know some engineers who say they would not undertake to do it."

"You think they had antigravity or something?"

"No, I think they used natural methods. There is a theory that they made a template for each face of a block, and used it to carve the next block to an exact fit. It would have been painstaking work. But they had many hands and plenty of time."

After his guests had left, it was too late to inspect the work on the guard towers. Professor Torres y Molina stayed another night, finished his inspection, and took the tourist bus down in the afternoon. On the switchback road, he noticed something peculiar: a narrow silver-gray line, like a horizontal fault, that had certainly not been there before.

"I can't quite imagine it. I mean, we get to this other planet, okay, and maybe it's a great place, but then what? Do we have to cut down trees and build houses? For six billion people?"

"Don't you think they'll probably let us out a few at a time, I mean a few thousand or whatever? So the first ones can do, uh, all that primitive stuff? And then a few thousand more, so you build it up slowly."

"That could be, or maybe they've already built houses for us."

"And cities, right, and water systems and sewers? Highways? Automobiles? Have they got auto factories turning out Toyotas and Ferraris? What about holo factories to make holos? Give me a break. "

"Another thing that worries me, when we get there, is the new planet going to be just as crowded as this one?"

"Maybe it's a bigger planet."

"Then the gravity would be too high, wouldn't it?"

"Not necessarily. Or it could be a planet the same size as Earth but with more land area-not so many oceans."

"Listen, I don't give a puke about all that stuff. What I want to know is, is everybody going to get an even chance or is it going to be just like here? I get the idea the fat cats are going to be just as fat and the poor folks are going to be just as poor."

"Don't you think we'll have something to say about that? I mean, as far as governments are concerned, all bets are off, right? We don't have to have any United States or England or Germany-that would be stupid. We could start over and do everything better. "

"You think we would?"

"Well, if we don't, it's our fault, isn't it?"