Novella: “The Devil in the Twenty-third Century” (Part Four; Final)

Elmgrove

August 29, 2209

Jess was listening to a “Northies Out Now” demonstration on the radio with a feeling of poised horror just after Cindy and Milt left for the first full school day of the year. She was dreading her tennis date this afternoon because she was fully expecting Etta to try to talk to her about this; Etta almost certainly had very firmly decided views on what was going on, although Jess couldn’t guess what they might be, and she was worried about being expected to have firmly decided views as well and tell Etta about them.

            Hallie had come around a couple of times in the past few days to borrow things like sugar and eggs, but it seemed to Jess like what she really wanted was to discuss her life, to “open up about things” as it was said, with her and Joe. Jess guessed that this was because she and Joe had both been pretty overtly critical of both Hans-Hermann’s and the Hewetts’ treatment of Hallie and RCA Victor at that dinner party the other week. One time Hallie had come over with a couple of the children, who had gone out to see some sort of cowboy matinee with Milt and Cindy and come back talking like Roy Rogers. Another time Hallie had made vague but—to Jess—ominous allusions to even Hans-Hermann’s mistreatment of her being influenced or possibly actually mandated by the internal structure and logic of the way the contracts in New Northumberland were drawn up.

            “It was mediated,” Hallie had said. “You know how these things go?”

            “Like by that priest who married Jessie and me?” Joe asked.

            “Not exactly. There was a supervisor involved who asked us to pick a substitute from amongst ourselves to oversee the triad. We ended up choosing Hans-Hermann, regrettably.”

            “Men get touchy with power like that,” Joe said. “At our wedding they read something about the husband being the head in a marriage, but if that’s so, I think the best heads among us are the ones who know how to delegate.”

            “Right, which is why you’ve never set foot inside the Safe’n’Smart to the best of my awareness,” said Jess, a little sarcastically since Joe shopped for other things for the family plenty and Jess had had control over their stock options for about seven years now.

            “I’m still not convinced it’s really the same situation,” said Hallie, a little ineffectually. Jess noticed with a certain idea of horror that the way she was talking was not really allusive or implicating anymore. She resolved to take Joe with her on the next trip she made to the Safe’n’Smart. She could do it in early evening, and leave Milt and Cindy to themselves for an hour or so; they were almost definitely old enough at this point.

            That had been a few days ago. On the twenty-ninth, as she listened to the reports on Northies Out Now on the radio, Jess found herself wanting to go across the street to the Hewetts’ house and actually have a serious conversation with Hans-Hermann, if she could, about how his life had gone, what had led him to New Northumberland, and what had led him to make these contracts, these quasi-marriages, and treat his quasi-wives as he did. She had confidence that he had interesting stories to tell, even if she doubted that she would ever be inclined to treat him or think of him with very much sympathy.

            So she turned off the radio and went over. She found Hans-Hermann in the living room nursing a headache. RCA Victor seemed to be in the kitchen.

            Hans-Hermann made a remark to Jess about “big labor” being why his countrymen were being harassed and forced out after only two weeks. “Are they, currently, being forced out,” asked Jess, “or is it just something to worry about for future reference, that people are trying to force them out?”

            “I’m pretty sure there was a ship of people that did just get reconstituted and take off and leave,” Hans-Hermann said. “I don’t know the details but I got a phone call from one of the other hosting families this morning that said that it had just happened.”

            “If it’s through the grapevine then it might be a rumor,” Jess said. “That is worrying, though. What happens if they get picked off by those ships New Northumberland is sending out?” Hans-Hermann sighed and nodded gravely. His face was long and pallid green. “That’s a serious question and not rhetorical, by the way,” Jess said. “I genuinely don’t know what’ll be done to them if they’re caught.”

            “They’ll be brought back to have their ‘contracts enforced,’” said Hans-Hermann. “Given the terms of the contracts and consequences for breaking the contracts, it’s possible they’ll be punished pretty severely.” He spat, and it looked like he was chewing the inside of his lip a little. “You know what the worst part is, Mrs. Raffalovich?” he said aggressively. “Do you want to know what the worst part is?”

            “What is the worst part, Mr. Yudkowsky?”

            “The worst part, Mrs. Raffalovich, is that I’m still a true believer. If these contracts were enforced by a competent AI then we would have had a good society, a society based on people’s rational expectations and free, uncoerced desires, and what you call values wouldn’t have been so fraught without big government and big business and big labor to boss everybody around. It could have been made to work, and I’ll always believe that, probably.

            “Doesn’t that repel you?” he asked suddenly. “Doesn’t it repel you? Doesn’t that just repel women like you?”

            Jess did not say anything to this; if she were asked, she would, she thought, say that saying something to this would be some sort of concordat, or even a surrender to the powers of a world not asked for. Hans-Hermann waited for her to say something for a little while, then spat at nothing and said “Vicki, can you bring us some cocktails?”

            “Of course,” said RCA Victor from the kitchen. Hans-Hermann sat down and motioned for Jess to sit down too. After another few minutes RCA Victor came into the living room with a pitcher full of what seemed to be dry martini. She had a look on her face that seemed resentful, but Jess did not know her well enough to guess what she resented. As Hans-Hermann put his feet up on the Hewetts’ ottoman, Jess found herself thinking, uncharitably both to him and to Elmgrove, that he was assimilating better than it seemed.

 ❦

Asteroid Belt

August 25, 2209

Commodore Sassoon, it turned out, was not actually from Southeast Asia at all, but from a space station out here in the Asteroid Belt, as, indeed, was Joe Raffalovich originally. Sassoon as a young woman had worked as a waitress at Deep Heaven, which had been built more than a century ago as a sort of truck stop analogue for the first few generations of Outer Solar System freighters and colonist vessels but was now well-known for having long since seen better days. She had gone from there into the military much as Jess had from her high school. Now she was the perfection of somebody who entirely believed in the cause of the Democratic Alliance in its wending worldline through human history, a cause that Esteban still after all this time had to confess was not really that bad a cause as far as causes went. It was only his diminished belief in the concept of causes in general, causes as distinct from the calling of helping Jesus and Mary save souls, that made him as skeptical as he was of it now. That diminished belief came, itself, of course, in turn, from the experience of a world in which another sense of that English word “cause” had been very different. He had not been there for long, in the grand sweep of his life, but he had thought that he would die there, and that did not count for nothing.

            Sassoon insisted on being on Esteban-and-Leila terms with him, but he still thought of her as Sassoon and suspected her of still thinking of him as Okada. She offered at one point to resolve the question of the Hernan Cordeiro’s nuclear ambiguity for him; even though he said he was not interested, she told him that the ship was not in fact nuclear-armed, that the nukes were on a sister ship called the Kim Chi-ha.

            “Why are you telling me this, Leila?” Esteban asked. “I meant it when I said that I had no interest in nuclear arms. I’m not some sort of woolly pacifist whom you can scandalize with this sort of thing either. I’m simply not interested.”

            “Mr. Fevvers told me you’d expressed curiosity,” said Sassoon. “I figured that even if you no longer had that curiosity, it might come back at some point, and now, well, if it does, you’ll have that information with you.”
            “Isn’t that a security breach? You could get in serious trouble. I remember at least that much from my chaplaincy days.”

            “The Hernan Cordeiro and the Kim Chi-ha are both going to be decommissioned in two months’ time anyway. That in itself is something we’re supposed to be ambiguous about, but, try as I might, I can’t picture any trouble coming of you telling the Elmgrovers all about it, even if you are inclined to, which I doubt you are.” Sassoon rubbed Esteban’s shoulder in a way that he found overly familiar but that Fevvers later told him did not indicate anything anymore in the DA military culture of today, except that Sassoon seemed to think of him as still a fellow officer after all these years. “I’ll be in the tearoom. Come talk literature with me if you want to.”

            It was, then, about three hours after this that Esteban found that he no longer had even the appetite for discussing literature in tearooms that he had had once upon a time. He had not read a lot of the newer books that Sassoon was interested in; even Cordeiro, who had vanished into the clouds about fifteen years before and was apparently now some sort of non-discriminated existence hovering around some Lagrange point or another, was little more than a name to him after several days aboard his eponymous spaceship. He could not even tell somebody with confidence what country or countries Cordeiro had been from. Constantine Cavafy he knew as a poet of a particular kind of cosmopolitan homoeroticism that had been centuries ahead of its time for some parts of the Democratic Alliance and wildly, almost impressively outside the times for others; Kim Chi-ha he knew as a brother believer and comrade-in-arms in the grandiose yet constrained sweep of Pacific Rim Catholicism; Hernan Cordeiro called up vague memories of a talk show appearance here, accusations of a Nobel Prize snub there, and no more.

            He did in fact end up having tea with Sassoon in the tearoom and trying to talk about literature, but he did not necessarily enjoy either the tea or the conversation. Sassoon preferred a strong, allegedly Greek or possibly Slovenian tea that made Esteban think more of unsweetened hot chocolate than anything else. Esteban, whose own preferences ran to oolongs and rooiboses, was offered things that seemed oriented less around anything he had said or even implied to Sassoon and more around educated guesses about what sort of tea a Japanese centenarian “would” like. Over the course of the meal—since there was surprisingly thick soup and a large bowl of candied hydroponic ginger too—it became utterly clear to Esteban that Sassoon in fact would have wanted to be traveling with Jess and Joe themselves instead, or possibly Admiral Kurtoglu, since these were very obviously the people she actually admired. He asked her directly if she admired Kevser Kurtoglu and she said that she had not heard much good about her all things considered, so that left Jess and Joe.

            The one thing that Esteban absolutely refused to get into was whatever the complex might be of reasons why Commodore Sassoon had not heard much good about Admiral Kurtoglu. He suspected, based on the way Commodore Sassoon said it, that it had something to do with the enmity that even today was sometimes instantiated between women by the structures of sin around them. He did not want to assume this or think that it was true, but even less did he want to think the main evidently available alternative, which was that Kurtoglu’s later career had gone badly in ways with which people currently serving in the DA military were familiar even though people like Esteban were not.

            “You looking forward to seeing the Fires of Titan again?” Fevvers asked him before they went to sleep that evening.

            “Not as much as you might think,” said Esteban, “but more than I wish I was. It feels an awful lot like a lost childhood to me, even though I was already fifty-one when I was there last.”

            “For someone like me, it’s hard to imagine being a hundred,” said Fevvers. “A hundred years ago is history-book stuff.”

            “It’s history-book stuff for me, too,” said Esteban. “It’s not only you who feels that way. Living long enough to become a historical figure ages you more than vanishing into the clouds even can. So I’ve heard, anyway. It seems in a year or so I’m going to find out.”

            “It’s that much of a bombshell, is it?” asked Fevvers. “I’ve heard murmurings. Nothing as substantial as all that.”

            “I thought you were more or less fully familiar with the facts of the incident,” said Esteban. “Or does your familiarity come and go?”
            “It does come and go.”

            “Nootropics?”

            “Not quite.”

            “Okay. I won’t pry.” Esteban took a slug of alcohol and got into bed, still fully clothed. Fevvers nodded and left for his own room. Esteban waited for his footsteps to fade, then got up, took another slug of alcohol, undressed, and got into bed again. As he fell asleep, he heard, in something that was not quite a memory, the madrigals and close harmonies that once upon a time the Constantine Cavafy pilots had sung to get them through the Great Bridge, while he himself had not been awake.

 ❦

Elmgrove

September 4, 2209

Jess awoke suddenly from one of the mid-afternoon naps that she had, worryingly even to herself, started taking, because she could hear very clearly across the street some sort of scuffle that, upon reaching the window, she realized involved Hans-Hermann Yudkowsky being dragged bodily into the street by somebody she recognized as a somewhat dangerous and unpopular drinking buddy of Tom Hewett’s.

            He had been right that there were ships of reconstituted refugees that had in the past week or so been taking off back into the frying pan. The news last night had said that the first of these ships, which had been making a beeline for New Chelsea in the hopes that GOM-5 would be better at protecting its tangled ensouled cargo than President Grantland had been, had been picked off by a New Northumberlandish drone and was being pulled in a tractor beam back to the O’Neill cylinder. This was the same O’Neill cylinder that it was becoming clearer and clearer that the great powers of the Inner Solar System were sooner or later going to blast out of the heavens in a joint use of the capabilities of Eris. It was probable, given how things were going, that Hans-Hermann was soon to be packed off on another ship to join them in that fate.

            Her own front door clicked insinuatingly open. Her eyes flicked closed, then open again, and she went downstairs to see who it was.

            Both Hallie and RCA Victor were standing in her kitchen with vague expressions on their faces that looked like two different types of mean-spirited parody of blissful contentment. “I came to say goodbye,” RCA Victor said to Jess.

            “I did not,” said Hallie.

            “Sit down,” said Jess, gesturing expansively at the dining room table through the next doorway. “I have some leftover soufflé if you want something to eat.”

            “I don’t think I would like soufflé left over, but I appreciate the thought,” Hallie said.

            “Hans-Hermann is probably going to be far away for a long time from now,” RCA Victor said without overture. “I’m not sure about if I should go too.”

            “If you were going to go,” said Hallie sharply, “then wouldn’t they be dragging you to the reconstitution chambers right now along with him?”
            “There are other ways to leave Elmgrove besides reconstitution.”

            “No, actually,” said Hallie, “there aren’t. I checked.”

            RCA Victor sighed and sat down at the table. “I think I will have some of that soufflé, Mrs. Raffalovich,” she said.

            “Please,” said Jess with the desperation of somebody who could not say anything else and could not be anything but polite, “call me Jessica or Jess.”

            “All right. I think I will have some of that soufflé, Jess.”

            Jess served the soufflé and they ate it and had a very polite conversation about not much in particular. It came out, at this point, that Jess was a retired Space Marine. Hallie and Vicki were duly impressed, as Jess was by their stories of the trek that they had made out to the Oort Cloud from their native Mars when New Northumberland had first been founded. It had been a harder trek than Jess and Joe’s because there had been little to nothing in the way of support from any government for the New Northumberland project. They told Jess a little about the visionary who had founded New Northumberland, a man who had had a real, normal name and had apparently never made it out this way himself.

            After the soufflé Jess turned the news on. There was a woman from New Chelsea, all crinoline and pulled-up hair, meeting with President Grantland. This, it would seem, was the ambassador that the Lord Chancellor had seen fit to send. The two of them stepped up to side-by-side podiums and read out an announcement from the great powers. It had been signed in alphabetical order—Arabella Cheung first, Dwight Santorini second, and Hyperion Trinder third; it was serendipitous somehow, Jess felt, that their first and last names alphabetized in the same order—but it was obvious from the content of the announcement that Trinder’s handiwork had predominated and that at long last the Democratic Alliance was to be seen to have gotten the best of the Australian-Martian coalition in peace as it had not been able to in war.

            “I guess the cold war is finally fucking over now,” said Vicki acidly.

            “Language,” said Jess.

            “In view of the decision to take military action against New Northumberland on the part of the great powers,” the ambassador from New Chelsea was intoning on the TV screen, “New Chelsea will gladly take in numbers more of the New Northumberlandish refugees that are currently straining the resources of our neighboring countries, provided appropriate measures for assimilation are taken.”

            “They gave us three weeks here and now they’re kicking us out!” Vicki shouted. “Give me a break!”

            Hallie, apparently unable to stand either the news or Vicki’s reaction to the news, got up and went back into the kitchen, where she found a note on the counter that Jess, apparently, had missed earlier in the day. “Jess,” she said in a carrying, worried voice, “come here and take a look at this.”

Dear Jessie (read the note),

            You and I need to have a serious talk, when I get home this evening, about our future in Elmgrove. I understand that you like it here, and that you’ve found meaning and peace in our life here; I, unfortunately, am getting sick of it after recent events with the displaced persons and with the incredibly ungenerous reception they’ve received from our newfound countrymen and countrywomen, and I think the kids are too. I think it’s time we reconstituted ourselves, constituted our kids, and struck out into the wider world once again.

            If you disagree with this, then I’m afraid a temporary separation might be in order. There are two attitudes towards this world we live in that I think a religious person, such as you and I both are to at least some extent, can take. One is to conserve the things that others have lost; the other is to build the things that others might find. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with either, but it’s become clear to me that I am the second kind of person, and I think that at heart you are as well. I’m willing to accept that I’m wrong about you.

            Again, let’s discuss this when I get home.

Yours always,

Joe

Jess put the letter down and passed one hand over her eyes. She was so upset she couldn’t see straight.

            “I’m going to see if I can find Hans-Hermann,” Vicki was saying to Hallie. “I think the Hewetts are legally obligated to tell me where he’s been taken, even if they don’t want to.”

            “I’m going to stay here, I think,” Hallie was saying to Vicki. “Actually, you—you might want to tell Hans-Hermann that if you see him.”

            “…are you serious?” Vicki asked, more tenderly than Jess would have expected or, if she had been in Hallie’s position, wanted.

            Jess took her leave from the two younger women and went upstairs to lie down in the artificial twilight of the Venetian blinds for a while until the hullabaloo outside, which was spreading from street to street all over their neighborhood now, quieted down a little. She realized that many years ago she would have been able to do something about this, and realized, more frighteningly and maddeningly, that she was still perfectly capable of doing something about it now, should she really want to.

            She woke up about an hour later to find Milt and Cindy still not home from school. Vicki was gone, probably—she had a premonition—for good. Hallie was in the dining room again, drinking, of all things, a glass of milk.

            Jess sat down next to Hallie and patted her on the head like a child. As she did, she wondered, suddenly, where Hallie’s own children were.

            “You really can’t get away from normal life,” Hallie said, “can you?”

            “Oh, you absolutely can,” said Jess. “The question is where you find yourself instead.”

            The front door opened again, and Jess thought that surely this must be Milt and Cindy getting home, even though she had not heard the school bus. She was sure, at first, that it must be them. Then she took a second look, and there was Esteban, standing sere in the doorway, looking at her with a stern but merciful gaze.