But it’s beautiful. And strong.
Something a man is not.
One could learn from it too.
I’m cold.
There’s a song my grandfather taught me to sing:
The body perishes, the heart stays young.
The platter wears away with serving food.
No log retains its bark when old,
No lover peaceful while the rival weeps.
Oh, my children! I never taught you that song. It’s a song for the old and the dying, and I thought I would sing it for you when I grew old.
But now I won’t. You’ll never learn it. And you won’t know a man is not a man until he walks with a lion.
Soon everyone will forget that. And it’s a thing someone should remember.
VARIATION K: JUGGERNAUT
(ANIMATO)
(ANIMATEDLY)
CONTACT: NOVEMBER 2078
Recorded video-burst transmission from Dr. Shanta Mukerjhee (Hydroponics Services, Heaven) to John Mukerjhee (San Francisco, CA):
They tell me you haven’t checked to see if I’m alive.
We’ve been under strict orders up here for the last few days, not to call friends and relatives to say we’re all right. For the first few hours after the construction workers were killed, all the radio bands were clogged with people trying to get messages back home, interfering with emergency communications; so Laughing Dragon clamped down and said no outgoing calls. Incoming calls were taken by the main communications center, and answered curtly: “Yes, she’s alive and well.” “No, we haven’t located him yet.”
You’d know this if you called. But you didn’t. I suppose you were too busy getting injunctions against mining companies that want to despoil the pristine Martian landscape; your mother isn’t environmentally relevant.
That’s a cheap shot. I’m sorry.
Anyway, things are returning to normal. We’re each being allowed one ten-minute transmission to anywhere in the solar system, all expenses paid by Laughing Dragon. And I wanted to tell you I’m safe; our hydroponics dome was nowhere near the accident, and I didn’t lose so much as a bean plant.
There. Well. I guess I still have nine minutes of free air time.
This is hard for me.
Look, John, there’s something I want to tell you. Show you. It’s important.
I’ll just get the camera turned…okay. You’re looking at one of the hydroponics chambers up here. Leaf lettuce on the right, radishes on the left. Good growth, I’m sure you can see that. We’ve built quite a sophisticated system, very productive. I know you look down on me because I’m growing salad for rich tourists when I could be feeding the poor, but really—Laughing Dragon has given us a substantial research budget. Some of the designs we’ve developed could improve the yield of hydroponics systems everywhere, make more food for everyone….
I promised myself I wouldn’t keep apologizing to you. I’ve done important work up here. I don’t have to feel guilty I’m not fighting drought in Africa. We can’t all live up to your standards, John.
The plants you’re looking at are normal strains, designed for Earth-normal gravity. I suppose you’ve read that Heaven’s gravity is almost exactly equal to Earth’s: within a few thousandths of a percent of gravity at sea level on the equator. It’s touted as the greatest engineering feat in the construction of Heaven: getting the right density and distribution of mass to mimic one Earth G, over almost the entire surface.
Well. You’ll see.
Now I’m taking the camera into the next room. This is an experimental chamber—black-eyed peas biologically engineered for growth in the Luna colonies. Laughing Dragon lets each of us senior researchers conduct small personal experiments; we get publications out of it and Laughing Dragon basks in any resulting prestige. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s no different from a university or a…
I’m apologizing again. Sorry.
All right, you can see the peas are growing well. Good greenery, excellent pod production. I never expected anything like this. After all, these are low gravity plants; I only set up this chamber because I wanted to experiment with the design of water delivery systems, and I never thought I’d get significant yields. You just shouldn’t see this kind of growth under Earth-normal gravity.
Now, watch as I drop this pencil.
No, I didn’t change the camera to slow motion. That’s precisely the speed things fall in this chamber. I haven’t done any elaborate tests, but I’m fairly certain we have lunar gravity in here.
Needless to say, this is none of my doing. A month ago, I would have said it was impossible to have gravity like Earth in one room and like Luna right next door. But now let me go into the next chamber. I’ll just…you can probably see the camera bouncing, because I’m bouncing as I walk. Have you ever been to the moon colonies, John? Walking in here is exactly like walking down the streets of Tycho. I suppose it would be fun, if it weren’t so bewildering. And scary.
All right, through the hatch to the next room and…yes, I’m floating toward the ceiling. Weightless. I’ve got zero-G soybeans growing in this chamber—you know, engineered for nonspinning orbitals. Zero-G plants, zero-G chamber.
Believe me, the gravity here was Earth-normal two months ago. Back then, these beans could scarcely germinate. But over the course of a few days, the gravity dropped to nothing. Just dropped of its own accord. To precisely the level the plants found ideal.
It gives me the creeps, John. It did the first time I noticed, and it still does now. I haven’t told anyone about this because it’s too spooky to talk about.
Do you know what I think is happening? It’s a feedback loop between these plants and Heaven. Heaven is artificially controlling the gravity on every square millimeter of its surface, in accordance with the preferences of those affected. In here, the soybeans want it weightless. Out on the rest of the surface…well, I don’t think it’s an accident the gravity is exactly what humans like it to be.
Laughing Dragon didn’t engineer the gravity here; Heaven is doing this itself.
I get cold chills just thinking about it, John. Heaven can’t be human-made. Humans don’t know how to play games with gravity. Humans don’t know how to establish this kind of feedback communication with plants.
And I haven’t told you yet about the dreams. More and more people up here are having vivid dreams…and coherent ones, not the usual sort of vague, disjointed images. The dreams leave a lingering feeling of…I guess the word is spirituality. “Like touching the mind of God,” one of the other researchers said this morning…which I’m sure you’ll dismiss as maudlin sentimentality, but if you ever had one of these dreams yourself…a sort of quiet wonder…
No, I’m not going to tell you what I’ve dreamt about. I’m tired of you sneering at me.
But the point is, I don’t think these dreams are just coincidence. This thing we’re on, what Laughing Dragon calls Heaven—I don’t know whether it’s touching our minds or we’re touching it, but if there’s such a thing as telepathy with soybeans, why not with humans?
I don’t sound much like a professional scientist, do I? No detachment. I can’t feel detached when I’m constantly swinging between extremes of fear and awe. Because even if this creature sends inspiring dreams and nurtures our gardens, it killed dozens of people when it casually opened its wings.
It’s like…do you know what the juggernaut is? I never tried to teach you the old ways, but maybe your grandmother told you. The juggernaut is a wagon used to carry a huge statue of Krishna Jagannatha through the city of Puri during the Rathayatra festival. The wagon is gigantic—it takes several hundred people to drag it along. On one hand, the juggernaut is beautiful and serene: it’s decorated with flowers and surrounded by pilgrims singing hymns, not to mention that it carries the statue of the compassionate Lord Krishna; but on the other hand, a huge crowd mills uncontrollably around the wagon, and all too often, someone falls under the wheels. People even throw themselves under. The juggernaut doesn’t stop; it represents benevolence and goodwill, but it can leave crushed bodies in its wake.