Relativity Read online

  Of course, the gravitational attraction on any point on the interior of a hollow sphere is zero. When we lived inside the sphere, the only gravity we felt was the pull from our sun, gently tugging things upwards. Here, on the outside of the sphere, the gravitational pull is downward, toward the sphere’s surface—and the sun at its center.

  I continued. “Although Kobost thinks human muscle could perhaps be built up enough to withstand such an overwhelming gravity, his own studies prove that the globe described in the myth can’t be our homeworld.”

  “Why not?” asked Tadders.

  “Because of the chickens. There are several ancient texts that show that chickens have been essentially the same since before our ancestors built the Dyson sphere. But with an acceleration due to gravity of five bodylengths per heartbeat squared, their wings wouldn’t be strong enough to let them fly. So that globe in the myth couldn’t possibly have been our ancestral home.”

  “Well, I agree that’s puzzling about the chickens,” said Tadders, “but wherever our ancestors came from, you have to admit it wasn’t another Dyson sphere. And the inside of a Dyson sphere forms a very special kind of sky. Remember what it was like when we lived in there? Wherever you looked over your head, you saw—well, you saw the sun, of course, if you looked directly overhead. But everywhere else, you saw other parts of the sphere. Some of those parts are a long, long way off—the far side of the sphere is a hundred and fifty billion bodylengths away, isn’t it? But, regardless, wherever you looked, you saw either the sun or the surface of the sphere.”

  “So?”

  “So the surface of the sphere is reflective—even the dull, grass-covered parts reflect back a lot of light. Indeed, on average the surface reflects back about a third of the light it receives from the sun, making the whole sky glaringly bright.”

  People in there did have a tendency to float facing the ground instead of the sky. I nodded for her to go on.

  “Well, our eyes didn’t evolve here,” continued Tadders. “If we did come from a rocky world, the sun would have been seen against an empty, non-reflective sky. It must be much, much brighter inside the Dyson sphere than it ever was on the original homeworld.”

  “Surely our eyes would have adapted to deal with the brighter light here.”

  “How?” asked Tadders. “Even after the great war, we regained a measure of civilization fairly quickly. There was no period during which we were reduced to survival of the fittest. Human beings haven’t undergone any appreciable evolution since long before our ancestors built the sphere. Which means our eyes are as they originally were: suited for much dimmer light. Of course, the ancients may have had drugs or other things that made the interior light seem more comfortable to them, but whatever they used must have been lost in the war.”

  “I suppose,” I said.

  “But you, me, and everyone else in our settlement who has lived inside the sphere—we’ve damaged our retinas, without even knowing it.”

  I saw what she was getting at. “But the children—the children born here, on the outside of the sphere—”

  She nodded. “The children born here, after we left the interior, have never been exposed to the brightness inside, and so they see just as well in the dark as our distant, distant ancestors did, back on the homeworld. The points of light the children are seeing really do exist, but they’re simply too faint to register on the damaged retinas we adults have.”

  My head was swimming. “Maybe,” I said. “Maybe. But—but what are those lights?”

  Tadders pursed her lips, then lifted her shoulders a bit. “You want my best guess? I think they’re other suns, like the one our ancestors encased in the sphere, but so incredibly far away that they’re all but invisible.” She looked up, out the clear roof of the dome covering our town, out at the uniform blackness, which was all either of us could make out. She then used one of the words I’d taught her, a word transliterated from the ancient texts—a word we could pronounce but whose meaning we’d never really understood. “I think,” she said, “that the points of light are stars.”

  There were thousands of documents stored in the ancient computers; my job was to try to make sense of as many of them as I could. And I made much progress as Dalt continued to grow up. Eventually, he and the other children were able to match the patterns of stars they could see in the sky to those depicted in ancient charts I’d found. The patterns didn’t correspond exactly; the stars had apparently drifted in relation to each other since the charts had been made. But the kids—the adolescents, now—were indeed able to discern the constellations shown in the old texts; ironically, this was easier to do, they said, when some of the lights of our frontier town were left on, drowning out all but the brightest stars.

  According to the charts, our sun—the sun enclosed in the Dyson sphere—was the star the ancients had called Tau Ceti. It was not the original home to humanity, though; our ancestors were apparently unwilling to cannibalize the worlds of their own system to make their Dyson sphere. Instead, they—we—had come from another star, the closest similar one that wasn’t part of a multiple system, a sun our ancestors had called Sol.

  And the planet—that was the term—we had evolved on was, in the infinite humility of our wise ancestors, called by a simple, unassuming name, one I could easily translate: Dirt.

  Old folks like me couldn’t live on Dirt now, of course. Our muscles—including our hearts—were weak compared to what our ancestors must have had, growing up under the stupendous gravity of that tiny, rocky world.

  But—

  But locked in our genes, as if for safekeeping, were all the potentials we’d ever had as a species. The ability to see dim sources of light, and—

  Yes, it must be there, too, still preserved in our DNA.

  The ability to produce muscles strong enough to withstand much, much higher gravity.

  You’d have to grow up under such a gravity, have to live with it from birth, said Dr. Tadders, to really be comfortable with it, but if you did—

  I’d seen Kobost’s computer animation showing how we might have moved under a much greater gravity, how we might have deployed our bodies vertically, how our spines would have supported the weight of our heads, how our legs might have worked back and forth, hinging at knee and ankle, producing sustained forward locomotion. It all seemed so bizarre, and so inefficient compared to spending most of one’s life floating, but—

  But there were new worlds to explore, and old ones, too, and to fully experience them would require being able to stand on their surfaces.

  Dalt was growing up to be a fine young man. There wasn’t a lot of choice for careers in a small community: he could have apprenticed with his mother, Delar, who worked as our banker, or with me. He chose me, and so I did my best to teach him how to read the ancient texts.

  “I’ve finished translating that file you gave me,” he said on one occasion. “It was what you suspected: just a boring list of supplies.” I guess he saw that I was only half-listening to him. “What’s got you so intrigued?” he asked.

  I looked up, and smiled at his face, with its bits of fuzz; I’d have to teach him how to shave soon. “Sorry,” I said. “I’ve found some documents related to the pyramid. But there are several words I haven’t encountered before.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as this one,” I said, pointing at a string of eight letters on the computer screen. “‘Starship.’ The first part is obviously the word for those lights you can see in the sky: stars. And the second part, hip, well—” I slapped my haunch—“that’s their name for where the leg joins the torso. They often made compound words in this fashion, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what a ‘stars hip’ might be.”

  I always say nothing is better than a fresh set of eyes. “Yes, they often used that hissing sound for plurals,” said Dalt. “But those two letters there—can’t they also be transliterated jointly as shuh, instead of separately as ess and hih?”

  I nodded.


  “So maybe it’s not ‘stars hip,’” he said. “Maybe it’s ‘star ship.’”

  “Ship,” I repeated. “Ship, ship, ship—I’ve seen that word before.” I riffled through a collection of papers, searching my notes; the sheets fluttered around the room, and Dalt dutifully began collecting them for me. “Ship!” I exclaimed. “Here it is: ‘a kind of vehicle that could float on water.’”

  “Why would you want to float on water when you can float on air?” asked Dalt.

  “On the homeworld,” I said, “water didn’t splash up in great clouds every time you touched it. It stayed in place.” I frowned. “Star ship. Starship. A—a vehicle of stars?” And then I got it. “No,” I said, grabbing my son’s arm in excitement. “No—a vehicle for traveling to the stars!”

  Dalt and Suzto eventually married, to no one’s surprise.

  But I was surprised by my son’s arms. He and Suzto had been exercising for ages now, and when Dalt bent his arm at the elbow, the upper part of it bulged. Doc Tadders said she’d never seen anything like it, but assured us it wasn’t a tumor. It was meat. It was muscle.

  Dalt’s legs were also much, much thicker than mine. Suzto hadn’t bulked up quite as much, but she, too, had developed great strength.

  I knew what they were up to, of course. I admired them both for it, but I had one profound regret.

  Suzto had gotten pregnant shortly after she and Dalt had married—at least, they told me that the conception had occurred after the wedding, and, as a parent, it’s my prerogative to believe them. But I’d never know for sure. And that was my great regret: I’d never get to see my own grandchild.

  Dalt and Suzto would be able to stand on Dirt, and, indeed, would be able to endure the journey there. The starship was designed to accelerate at a rate of five bodylengths per heartbeat squared, simulating Dirt’s gravity. It would accelerate for half its journey, reaching a phenomenal speed by so doing, then it would turn around and decelerate for the other half.

  They were the logical choices to go. Dalt knew the ancient language as well as I did now; if there were any records left behind by our ancestors on the homeworld, he should be able to read them.

  He and Suzto had to leave soon, said Doc Tadders; it would be best for the child if it developed under the fake gravity of the starship’s acceleration. Dalt and Suzto would be able to survive on Dirt, but their child should actually be comfortable there.

  My wife and I came to see them off, of course—as did everyone else in our settlement. We wondered what people in the sphere would make of it when the pyramid lifted off—it would do so with a kick that would doubtless be detectable on the other side of the shell.

  “I’ll miss you, son,” I said to Dalt. Tears were welling in my eyes. I hugged him, and he hugged me back, so much harder than I could manage.

  “And, Suzto,” I said, moving to my daughter-in-law, while my wife moved to hug our son. “I’ll miss you, too.” I hugged her, as well. “I love you both.”

  “We love you, too,” Suzto said.

  And they entered the pyramid.

  I was hovering over a field, harvesting radishes. It was tricky work; if you pulled too hard, you’d get the radish out, all right, but then you and it would go sailing up into the air.

  “Rodal! Rodal!”

  I looked in the direction of the voice. It was old Doc Tadders, hurtling toward me, a white-haired projectile. At her age, she should be more careful—she could break her bones slamming into even a padded wall at that speed.

  “Rodal!”

  “Yes?”

  “Come! Come quickly! A message has been received from Dirt!”

  I kicked off the ground, sailing toward the communication station next to the access tube that used to lead to the starship. Tadders managed to turn around without killing herself and she flew there alongside me.

  A sizable crowd had already gathered by the time we arrived.

  “What does the message say?” I asked the person closest to the computer monitor.

  He looked at me in irritation; the ancient computer had displayed the text, naturally enough, in the ancient script, and few besides me could understand that. He moved aside and I consulted the screen, reading aloud for the benefit of everyone.

  “It says, ‘Greetings! We have arrived safely at Dirt.’”

  The crowd broke into cheers and applause. I couldn’t help reading ahead a bit while waiting for them to quiet down, so I was already misty-eyed when I continued. “It goes on to say, ‘Tell Rodal and Delar that they have a grandson; we’ve named him Madar.’”

  My wife had passed on some time ago—but she would have been delighted at the choice of Madar; that had been her father’s name.

  “‘Dirt is beautiful, full of plants and huge bodies of water,’” I read. “‘And there are other human beings living here. It seems those people interested in technology moved to the Dyson sphere, but a small group who preferred a pastoral lifestyle stayed on the homeworld. We’re mastering their language—it’s deviated a fair bit from the one in the ancient texts—and are already great friends with them.’”

  “Amazing,” said Doc Tadders.

  I smiled at her, wiped my eyes, then went on: “‘We will send much more information later, but we can clear up at least one enduring mystery right now.’” I grinned as I read the next part. “‘Chickens can’t fly here. Apparently, just because you have wings doesn’t mean you were meant to fly.’”

  That was the end of the message. I looked up at the dark sky, wishing I could make out Sol, or any star. “And just because you don’t have wings,” I said, thinking of my son and his wife and my grandchild, far, far away, “doesn’t mean you weren’t.”

  The Hand You’re Dealt

  Edward E. Kramer is one of my favorite editors; he always asks me for something challenging. But when he approached me to contribute to a libertarian science-fiction anthology he was co-editing with Brad Linaweaver, I said, Ed, baby, I’m a Canadian—I don’t think it’s technically possible to be both a Canadian and a libertarian. As he always does, Ed said a few magic words: “Well, you could write a story that shows potential problems with libertarianism—we’re looking for a balanced book.” And, lo and behold, “The Hand You’re Dealt” was created.

  And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

  —John 8:32

  “Got a new case for you,” said my boss, Raymond Chen. “Homicide.”

  My heart started pounding. Mendelia habitat is supposed to be a utopia. Murder is almost unheard of here.

  Chen was fat—never exercised, loved rich foods. He knew his lifestyle would take decades off his life, but, hey, that was his choice. “Somebody offed a soothsayer, over in Wheel Four,” he said, wheezing slightly. “Baranski’s on the scene now.”

  My eyebrows went up. A dead soothsayer? This could be very interesting indeed.

  I took my pocket forensic scanner and exited The Cop Shop. That was its real name—no taxes in Mendelia, after all. You needed a cop, you hired one. In this case, Chen had said, we were being paid by the Soothsayers’ Guild. That meant we could run up as big a bill as necessary—the SG was stinking rich. One of the few laws in Mendelia was that everyone had to use soothsayers.

  Mendelia consisted of five modules, each looking like a wagon wheel with spokes leading in to a central hub. The hubs were all joined together by a long axle, and separate travel tubes connected the outer edges of the wheels. The whole thing spun to simulate gravity out at the rims, and the travel tubes saved you having to go down to the zero-g of the axle to move from one wheel to the next.

  The Cop Shop was in Wheel Two. All the wheel rims were hollow, with buildings growing up toward the axle from the outer interior wall. Plenty of open spaces in Mendelia—it wouldn’t be much of a utopia without those. But our sky was a hologram, projected on the convex inner wall of the rim, above our heads. The Cop Shop’s entrance was right by Wheel Two’s transit loop, a series of maglev tracks a
long which robocabs ran. I hailed one, flashed my debit card at an unblinking eye, and the cab headed out. The Carling family, who owned the taxi concession, was one of the oldest and richest families in Mendelia.

  The ride took fifteen minutes. Suzanne Baranski was waiting outside for me. She was a good cop, but too green to handle a homicide alone. Still, she’d get a big cut of the fee for being the original responding officer—after all, the cop who responds to a call never knows who, if anyone, is going to pick up the tab. When there is money to be had, first-responders get a disproportionate share.

  I’d worked with Suze a couple of times before, and had even gone to see her play cello with the symphony once. Perfect example of what Mendelia’s all about, that. Suze Baranski had blue-collar parents. They’d worked as welders on the building of Wheel Five; not the kind who’d normally send a daughter for music lessons. But just after she’d been born, their soothsayer had said that Suze had musical talent. Not enough to make a living at it—that’s why she’s a cop by day—but still sufficient that it would be a shame not to let her develop it.

  “Hi, Toby,” Suze said to me. She had short red hair and big green eyes, and, of course, was in plain clothes—you wanted a uniformed cop, you called our competitors, Spitpolish, Inc.

  “Howdy, Suze,” I said, walking toward her. She led me over to the door, which had been locked off in the open position. A holographic sign next to it proclaimed:

  Skye Hissock

  Soothsayer

  Let Me Reveal Your Future!

  Fully Qualified for Infant and Adult Readings