MUDDLE EARTH Read online

  Table of Contents

  DEDICATION

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  CONTENTS

  ZERO

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  MUDDLE EARTH

  John Brunner

  I dedicate this book

  To LiYi

  because before her

  it had been long and long

  since last I felt like laughing

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  If some of the jokes herein seem funnier than average, that’s probably thanks to Dave Wood

  Contents

  TRACKING WITH HICCUPS..................Some bits

  Discontents

  THE HICCUPING WORLD.....................Most bits

  Malcontents

  … oh, the hell with it

  ZERO

  SOME OF WHAT RINPOCHE GIBBS WOULD HAVE LEARNED IF HE HAD TAKEN HIS ORIENTATION LECTURE—SERIOUSLY

  Among the selling points that secured the Earth contract for the Yelignese was their undertaking to revive the cryonuts1 of California. By the time the fad for freezing petered out—partly because no one had yet been thawed without terminal damage, partly because most people who could still have afforded it had left for deep space and the chance to live two or three centuries anyway, and partly because the state was under several centimeters of snow—the tombs of the undead occupied ten percent of the land and the cost of liquid nitrogen had become the single largest item in the continental budget. As everyone agreed, this was ridiculous. In the upshot, therefore, generations passed without any attempt being made actually to pay for the stuff. It was taken for granted that some Californians manufactured it, others hauled sleds across the tundra to deliver it on site, others still poured it into the vaults, and then the same thing happened again the following week. Meantime each of the parties concerned handed credit vouchers to the others certifying the job had been done, and against these frayed, grimy scraps of paper they obtained food, drink, and lodging. There was no obvious reason why such a system should not continue indefinitely, except that (a) the vouchers were dissolving into shreds, (b) the sea was beginning to freeze, and (c) the whole setup had proved offensive to an influential group of mystical economists. These latter held that something had to be done to underpin a currency, and passing bits of paper from hand to hand didn’t count. The fact that the galactic economy had survived for aeons on nothing more substantial than an occasional exchange of nudged neutrettos signally failed to impress them.

  Also there were grumbles among the hungry to the effect that an awful lot of protein was going to waste. Which was true enough, but raised the hackles of relatives and descendants of the frozen. Therefore the Yelignese offer was accepted, and their rivals—most of whom had proposed superior and in some cases cheaper schemes for the rehabilitation of the planet—retired to nurse their grudge among the stars.

  Leaving the Yelignese to nurse theirs on Earth.

  However, despite having declined from their glory days they were not a totally inefficient species. They automated cryonut recovery from the start, and the operation went smoothly enough for the climate of California to revert more or less to what it had been in the twentieth century, and to provide a sizable labor pool for the Los Angeles Re-enactment Zone. Indeed, after initial problems due to excessive reliance on what proved to be fictional rather than historical data—thereby wasting rather a lot of time on projects designed to ensure that adequate supplies of fresh blood would be available for the resurrectees, tradition indicating this would be their sole sustenance—raising the dead became such a routine matter that when one of the inevitable glitches did occur it was sometimes overlooked for quite a while…

  “The computers suggest that we do WHAT?”

  ONE

  CONCERNING THE DISTILLATION OF RESURRECTION BITTERS

  “However sympathetic I may or may not be,” said the Chief Bureaucrat, “toward your plan to reclaim the Earth from humans and allow the dinosaurs a second chance, my hands are tied.”

  He displayed them. They were. In a granny knot, naturally, so they could easily be pulled apart again.

  At that focus of the Ground of Being that is the consciousness engendered by a human brain:

  A sparkle, brilliant as a diamond. A point of infinitesimal smallness became a nucleus, an expanding shell, a—

  Well, no. Not a Big Bang. A bang as tiny as it is possible for any bang to be. Not even a tremor in the fabric of spacetime. A hint of a shiver of a flash.

  To be succeeded by a gleam, reflective as anthracite is reflective when cleft correctly down the perfect plane.

  Replaced in turn by a dull sheen like graphite, smeared as it were on the brown paper of a parcel intended for a different address.

  And ultimately by another concept also fundamentally carbonaceous, though a lot less organized than even the lead of a pencil. Figuratively speaking, that’s to say. There was nothing strictly physical, though an awful lot of energy, corresponding to the concept that galvanised/infused/pervaded the minuscule, pointlike, neutrinoesque location of what would in a little while again start to think of itself as Rinpoche Gibbs: not because it wanted to, but because it couldn’t be helped, and never mind how unwelcome the fact might be. Said high-in-but-not-exclusively-composed-of-carbon concept ran:

  Oh, shit.

  And was followed a moment later by the qualification:

  Still, at least I’m not bathed in smoky red light, so it can’t be the Bardo Thödol shtick. I couldn’t have put up with that.

  On the other hand, what was happening instead was far from pleasant. Once his lungs had begun to fill and empty, his legs started jerking back and forth, first left, then right; moments later his arms did the same, fingers curling and uncurling. A tube was forced between his teeth and, bypassing his attempts to swallow, discharged warm thick liquid into his stomach. Almost at once there ensued a resounding fit of borborygmus. He tried to protest at such cavalier treatment, but the resuscitation process had not yet extended to his vocal cords.

  Then he felt his eyes open, though for the first few seconds he could not focus properly. He felt his ears pop. He felt saliva ooze into his mouth, which had been as dry as the cardboard tube inside a toilet roll. He felt an electric tingling pass clear through his body from scalp to soles. After that he saw, but did not clearly understand, what was reviving him: a many-faceted machine glowing with ice-blue radiance, floating ten centimeters above the floor and currently retracting numerous and illogical appendages within its carapace. As it vanished, the last of them shed a drop of bright red blood—but only one drop, promptly wiped away.

  Meantime a confusing medley of emotions flashed through his brain: delight, despair, surprise, alarm, excitement, switched on and off with such compartmented neatness that even in his befuddled state he realized they must be artificially induced. Not until anger put in its appearance did he feel that any of these emotions reflected his real state of mind. Even then the anger was muted, more like a mild and diffuse annoyance than the screaming fury he really wanted to give vent to. No doubt he was being chemically soothed. Why should that be a matter of routine? Granted, some people might resent being revived, especially if they hadn’t wanted to be frozen…

  Hang on a moment. That’s me!

  But there was no time to pursue the matter. The machine spoke.

  “Can you hear me?”

  Muscles that had
not been used in—how long? Centuries?—moved with surprisingly little stiffness. Rinpoche heard what emerged from his mouth as a croak, but it was indisputably a word.

  “Yes.”

  “Can you see me?”

  “Yes.”

  All of a sudden his eyes were focusing perfectly. He was able to see that on the front of the machine there hung a label. It read:

  THEODOR

  Surgeon

  “Can you stand up?”

  He realized he was lying on a kind of padded table rather below waist height. With barely a trace of giddiness he lowered his legs to the floor, noting from the lower edge of his vision that his unclad body appeared neither older nor younger than he remembered it, and eased himself into an upright posture. He was startled by how clearly he could see the floor; he had been used to wearing glasses before—

  But why in the name of all the countless Tibetan hells had he been frozen in the first place? (The second place, this one, was amazingly uninteresting, considering that it was offering his introductory glimpse of the future: a long, vague room containing rows of anonymous cabinets with numbered tags hanging from their door handles. In the middle distance he discerned another identical machine, doubtless awaiting orders for its next resurrection.)

  He tried as hard as he could to summon the full force of honest rage, but it was no use.

  “Can you walk?”

  Rinpoche essayed a few steps with tolerable success.

  “Can you dress yourself?”

  He blinked. For an instant he was poised to counter, “What in?” Then he realized that a package wrapped in clear plastic was being extruded from the side of the machine. Taking it, he saw that it held underwear, socks, slippers, slacks, a sweatshirt, and a pair of dark glasses. If this were truly a time long after his own—as he was bound to assume because he felt none of the lassitude that had accompanied his decline into leukemia, implying that he had in fact been cured—why were these garments so familiar in cut, in color, even texture?

  Oh, maybe the people here were trying to make him feel at home!

  He donned the clothes. They fitted fine. The machine waited until the shoes were on. Then it said, “You have been cured of all infirmities. Do you regard yourself as enjoying normal functionality?”

  “Uh… I guess so. Not that I’ve had much chance to find out as yet.”

  “That concurs with my readings. You are now required by law to confirm that you have been well and truly restored to the status of a cognizant human being responsible for all debts public and private. Details of relevant costs including supervision, maintenance, and the supply of liquid nitrogen are herewith furnished to you. Sign, please. Any recognized terrestrial script will do.”

  A strip of paper like the lolling tongue of a terminally anemic dog spewed out of a frontal orifice. A pen thrust itself into Rinpoche’s temporarily nerveless hand. He scrawled his name as instructed because arguing felt like too much trouble. He was briefly tempted to use Tibetan writing but settled peaceably for the Roman alphabet.

  The machine’s appendages folded the paper, tucked it neatly into an envelope, and handed it over. “Please,” it said, “present this to the emissions officer, who may be located by following the signs.”

  Thereupon it retreated to the wall and became motionless.

  Docilely, Rinpoche looked for the promised signs. They proved to be a series of green arrows that led him along a windowless corridor—featureless, too, but for the many closed doors on either side. Eventually it debouched into a wide, low-ceilinged hall with glass doors at the far end. Through them he glimpsed grass, trees, flower beds, a skyful of scudding clouds… Perhaps being brought back to life wouldn’t be so bad after all, no matter that he had really deserved at least a thousand years of nonexistence after the ordeal he had undergone in his latest incarnation.

  And then his attention fell on a personage who sat at a horseshoe desk in the middle of the hall, halfway between where he stood and the threshold of the outer world. The said individual was clad in a green surgical gown and calf-high white rubber boots. Above plump apple-red cheeks twinkled bright blue eyes. A shock of white hair surmounted his freckled forehead. For a long moment he seemed unaware of Rinpoche’s approach; then teeth even whiter than his hair were exposed as he parted his lips in a broad smile of welcome.

  Along the front edge of his desktop—which was bare apart from a jar of pink capsules—a luminous sign identified:

  WRONG GHOULART

  Emissions

  “Congratulations on your successful resuscitation!” this personage exclaimed. “Welcome to your new lease of life!”

  “Uh—thank you,” Rinpoche muttered, unable to rid himself of the suspicion that the other had been in some way activated when he crossed some invisible line, or electronic beam, or whatever.

  “It is my invariable custom to minimize the shock of awakening by telling a few traditional jokes. Have you heard the one about the isolated head?” He broke into two distinct voices. “ ‘Were you a head of state?’ ‘No, head of traffic control.’ ‘Ah, a sleeping policeman!’ ‘Yes, the jams were awful.’ ‘Really? What fruit were they made of?’ Good, that’s out of the way. May I have your documentation, please? Thank you.”

  He took and ripped open the envelope. Glancing rapidly down the paper within, he said, “That appears to be in order, Mr. Verdi. Now all you have to do is— Just a second!”

  Rinpoche blinked at him.

  “Mr. Verdi, why have you signed this document with the name of Rinpoche Gibbs?”

  “Because that’s who I am,” was the bewildered answer.

  “And by what right do you claim not to be who you actually are?” The blue eyes were no longer twinkling, but flashing ire. Rinpoche hoped for a pang of genuine alarm, a sign perhaps that the dullness of his reactions might be wearing off, but all he managed to feel was a hint of mild anxiety.

  “Do you deny that this account is made out to Guido Sansepolcro Verdi?”

  “Is it? I can’t say I’d noticed.”

  “Then notice now!” Ghoulart invited sarcastically, practically spiking the paper on the end of Rinpoche’s nose. But the name at the top wasn’t what seized his attention. That was usurped by the bottom line.

  Three hundred and sixty-five BILLION crunits?

  Whatever a crunit might be, it wasn’t likely to be Monopoly money—not in any society that really could revive the dead! And he’d signed the account, if not in the correct name… but with so large a sum at stake surely they would find a way around that minor obstacle!

  Casting about desperately for a way of escape (I never asked to be frozen in the first place, it was done completely against my will, can’t you send me back to sleep until humanity evolves far enough to manage without money?), Rinpoche suddenly saw the paper snatched by a thin pale hand on a thin pale wrist sticking out of a black sleeve. A voice said, “Don’t worry, nonno! I’ve taken care of this!”

  “The hell you say! He’s mine!” boomed a resonant bass.

  “Too late to argue! I just transferred enough credit to—”

  “But I paid in advance!”

  Professionally urbane once more, Ghoulart donned a tolerant smile. “That is correct,” he said. “But it is a matter of the greatest possible indifference who pays Mr. Verdi’s fees, or—come to that—how many times. My compliments, Mr. Verdi. You are free of all debt. And that, for someone who has spent so long in freeze, is quite remarkable.”

  But I’m not called Verdi… Rinpoche bit back the words. It did indeed seem like rather a good idea not to be in debt to the tune of several billion crunits. But who were these—these Good Samaritans, who weren’t looking the least bit pleased about their charitable deed?

  On his left were three persons dressed identically in black hats, jackets, trousers, shirts, socks, and shoes, the whole ensemble highlighted solely by white neckties. At first he assumed they were all men; a second glance revealed that one who hung back a trifle was in fact a
woman.

  Confronting them was a tall, bulky, white male human wearing an iridescent kilt and matching ankle boots, a costume scanty enough to reveal that he boasted wobbly pads of fat wherever there ought to have been muscles. But it was not this person on whom Rinpoche’s eyes dwelt in horrified fascination. It was his companion.

  Who had an awful lot of blue tentacles—eighteen or nineteen, at a guess—and an awful lot of mouth, fuller of teeth than any mouth had a right to be, plus an awful lot of what might possibly be a tongue but put Rinpoche more in mind of a lamprey, being tubular, with rasps.

  Yes, this is the future, he concluded. He wished he could summon up at least a shiver of awe.

  The black-garbed trio stepped back, reaching in unison inside their jackets, presumably for concealed weapons.

  The fat man snatched from his right boot something that gleamed and sizzled as he used it to carve a luminous arc in the air. To Rinpoche it resembled nothing so much as a battery-powered butcher’s knife. Meantime, his—his… the thing that had come with him, anyway, did nothing except look even more repulsive, if that were possible.

  “Gentlebeings!” Ghoulart exclaimed, rising to his feet with both hands on the desk and a shocked expression on his face. “Such behavior is unseemly!”

  “You stay out of this!” barked the leader of the three in black. “This is human business!”

  “But if it weren’t for us,” Ghoulart countered, “there wouldn’t be any wrecks for you to argue over!”

  Us? Wrecks? Rinpoche blinked at the man in green and realized that he was in fact looking at a projection of a man, that up to this point had been tolerably convincing but now had started to waver. Disguised by it was—was…