Roger Zelazny - Keys To December.pdf

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file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Roger%20Zelazny%20-%20Keys%20To%20December.txt
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Roger Zelazny. The Keys to December
BORN OF MAN and woman, in accordance with Catform Y7 requirements,
Coldworld Class (modified per Alyonal), 3.2-E, G.M.I. option, Jarry Dark was
not suited for existence anywhere in the universe which had guaranteed him a
niche. This was either a blessing or a curse, depending on how you looked at
it.
So look at it however you would, here is the story:
It is likely that his parents could have afforded the temperature
control unit, but not much more than that. (Jarry required a
temperature of at least -50 C. to be comfortable.)
It is unlikely that his parents could have provided for the air
pressure control and gas mixture equipment required to maintain his life.
Nothing could be done in the way of 3.2-E grav-simulation, so daily
medication and physiotherapy were required. It is unlikely that his parents
could have provided for this.
The much-maligned option took care of him, however. It safe-guarded his
health. It provided for his education. It assured his economic welfare and
physical well-being.
It might be argued that Jarry Dark would not have been a homeless
Coldworld Catform (modified per Alyonal) had it not been for General Mining,
Incorporated, which had held the option. But then it must be borne in mind
that no one could have foreseen the nova which destroyed Alyonal.
When his parents had presented themselves at the Public Health Planned
Parenthood Center and requested advice and medication pending offspring,
they had been informed as to the available worlds and the bodyform
requirements for them. They had selected Alyonal, which had recently been
purchased by General Mining for purposes of mineral exploitation. Wisely,
they had elected the option; that is to say, they had signed a contract on
behalf of their anticipated offspring, who would be eminently qualified to
inhabit that world, agreeing that he would work as an employee of General
Mining until he achieved his majority, at which time he would be free to
depart and seek employment wherever he might choose (though his choices
would admittedly be limited). In return for this guarantee, General Mining
agreed to assure his health, education and continuing welfare for so long as
he remained in their employ.
When Alyonal caught fire and went away, those Coldworld Catforms
covered by the option who were scattered about the crowded galaxy were, by
virtue of the agreement, wards of General Mining.
This is why Jarry grew up in a hermetically sealed room containing
temperature and atmosphere controls, and why he received a first-class
closed circuit education, along with his physiotherapy and medicine. This is
also why Jarry bore some resemblance to a large gray ocelot without a tail,
had webbing between his fingers and could not go outside to watch the
traffic unless he wore a pressurized refrigeration suit and took extra
medication.
All over the swarming galaxy, people took the advice of Public Health
Planned Parenthood Centers, and many others had chosen as had Jarry's
parents. Twenty-eight thousand, five hundred sixty-six of them, to be exact.
In any group of over twenty-eight thousand five hundred sixty, there are
bound to be a few talented individuals. Jarry was one of them. He had a
knack for making money. Most of his General Mining pension check was
invested in well-chosen stocks of a speculative nature. (In fact, after a
time he came to own considerable stock in General Mining.)
When the man from the Galactic Civil Liberties Union had come around,
expressing concern over the pre-birth contracts involved in the option and
explaining that the Alyonal Catforms would make a good test case (especially
since Jarry's parents lived within jurisdiction of the 877th Circuit, where
they would be assured favorable courtroom atmosphere), Jarry's parents had
demurred, for fear of jeopardizing the General Mining pension. Later on,
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Jarry himself dismissed the notion also. A favorable decision could not make
him an E-world Normform, and what else mattered? He was not vindictive.
Also, he owned considerable stock in G.M. by then.
He loafed in his methane tank and purred, which meant that he was
thinking. He operated his cryo-computer as he purred and thought. He was
computing the total net worth of all the Catforms in the recently organized
December Club.
He stopped purring and considered a sub-total, stretched, shook his
head slowly. Then he returned to his calculations.
When he had finished, he dictated a message into his speech-tube, to
Sanza Barati, President of December and his betrothed:
"Dearest Sanza--the funds available, as I have suspected, leave much to
be desired. All the more reason to begin immediately. Kindly submit the
proposal to the business committee, outline my qualifications and seek
immediate endorsement. I've finished drafting the general statement to the
membership. (Copy attached.) From these figures, it will take me between
five and ten years, if at least eighty percent of the membership backs me.
So push hard, beloved. I'd like to meet you someday, in a place where the
sky is purple. Yours, always, Jarry Dark, Treasurer. P.S. I'm pleased you
were pleased with the ring."
Two years later, Jarry had doubled the net worth of December,
Incorporated.
A year and a half after that, he had doubled it again.
When he received the following letter from Sanza, he leapt onto his
trampoline, bounded into the air, landed upon his feet at the opposite end
of his quarters, returned to his viewer and replayed it:
Dear Jarry,
Attached are specifications and prices for five more
worlds. The research staff likes the last one. So do I.
What do you think? Alyonal II? If so, how about the price?
When could we afford that much? The staff also says that an
hundred Worldchange units could alter it to what we want in
5-6 centuries. Will forward costs of this machinery shortly.
Come live with me and be my love, in a place where there
are no walls....
Sanza
"One year," he replied, "and I'll buy you a world! Hurry up with the
costs of the machinery and transport...." When the figures arrived Jarry
wept icy tears. One hundred machines, capable of altering the environment of
a world, plus twenty-eight thousand coldsleep bunkers, plus transportation
costs for the machinery and his people, plus...Too high! He did a rapid
calculation.
He spoke into the speech-tube:
"...Fifteen additional years is too long to wait, Pussycat. Have them
figure the time-span if we were to purchase only twenty Worldchange units.
Love and kisses, Jarry."
During the days which followed, he stalked above his chamber, erect at
first, then on all fours as his mood deepened.
"Approximately three thousand years," came the reply. "May your coat be
ever shiny--Sanza."
"Let's put it to a vote, Greeneyes," he said.
Quick, a world in 300 words or less! Picture this...
One land mass, really, containing three black and brackish looking
seas; gray plains and yellow plains and skies the color of dry sand; shallow
forests with trees like mushrooms which have been swabbed with iodine; no
mountains, just hills brown, yellow, white, lavender; green birds with wings
like parachutes, bills like sickles, feathers like oak leaves, an inside-out
umbrella behind; six very distant moons, like spots before the eyes in
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daytime; grass like mustard in the moister valleys; mists like white fire on
windless mornings, albino serpents when the air's astir; radiating chasms,
like fractures in frosted windowpanes; hidden caverns, like chains of dark
bubbles; seventeen known dangerous predators, ranging from one to six meters
in length, excessively furred and fanged; sudden hailstorms, like hurled
hammerheads from a clear sky; an icecap like a blue beret at either
flattened pole; nervous bipeds a meter and a half in height, short on
cerebrum, which wander the shallow forests and prey upon the giant
caterpillar's larva, as well as the giant caterpillar, the green bird, the
blind burrower, and the offal-eating murkbeast; seventeen mighty rivers;
clouds like pregnant purple cows, which quickly cross the land to lie-in
beyond the visible east; stands of windblasted stones like frozen music;
nights like soot, to obscure the lesser stars; valleys which flow like the
torsos of women or instruments of music; perpetual frost in places of
shadow; sounds in the morning like the cracking of ice, the trembling of
tin, the snapping of steel strands...
They knew they would turn it to heaven.
The vanguard arrived, decked out in refrigeration suits, installed ten
Worldchange units in either hemisphere, began setting up cold-sleep bunkers
in several of the larger caverns.
Then came the members of December down from the sand-colored sky.
They came and they saw, decided it was almost heaven, then entered
their caverns and slept. Over twenty-eight thousand Coldworld Catforms
(modified per Alyonal) came into their own world to sleep for a season in
silence the sleep of ice and of stone, to inherit the new Alyonal. There is
no dreaming in that sleep. But had there been, their dreams might have been
as the thoughts of those yet awake.
"It is bitter, Sanza."
"Yes, but only for a time--"
"...To have each other and our own world, and still to go forth like
divers at the bottom of the sea. To have to crawl when you want to leap..."
"It is only for a short time, Jarry, as the sense will reckon it."
"But it is really three thousand years! An ice age will come to pass as
we doze. Our former worlds will change so that we would not know them were
we to go back for a visit--and none will remember us."
"Visit what? Our former cells? Let the rest of the worlds go by! Let us
be forgotten in the lands of our birth! We are a people apart and we have
found our home. What else matters?"
"True...It will be but a few years, and we shall stand our tours of
wakefulness and watching together."
"When is the first?"
"Two and a half centuries from now--three months of wakefulness."
"What will it be like then?"
"I don't know. Less warm..."
"Then let us return and sleep. Tomorrow will be a better day."
"Yes."
"Oh! See the green bird! It drifts like a dream..."
When they awakened that first time, they stayed within the Worldchange
installation at the place called Deadland. The world was already
colder and the edges of the sky were tinted with pink. The metal
walls of the great installation were black and rimed with frost. The
atmosphere was still lethal and the temperature far too high. They
remained within their special chambers for most of the time, venturing
outside mainly to make necessary tests and to inspect the structure of
their home.
Deadland...Rocks and sand. No trees, no marks of life at all.
The time of terrible winds was still upon the land, as the world fought
back against the fields of the machines. At night, great clouds of real
estate smoothed and sculpted the stands of stone, and when the winds
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departed the desert would shimmer as if fresh-painted and the stones would
stand like flames within the morning and its singing. After the sun came up
into the sky and hung there for a time, the winds would begin again and a
dun-colored fog would curtain the day. When the morning winds departed,
Jarry and Sanza would stare out across the Deadland through the east window
of the installation, for that was their favorite--the one on the third
floor--where the stone that looked like a gnarly Normform waved to them, and
they would lie upon the green couch they had moved up from the first floor,
and would sometimes make love as they listened for the winds to rise again,
or Sanza would sing and Jarry would write in the log or read back through
it, the scribblings of friends and unknowns through the centuries, and they
would purr often but never laugh, because they did not know how.
One morning, as they watched, they saw one of the biped creatures of
the iodine forests moving across the land. It fell several times, picked
itself up, fell once more, lay still.
"What is it doing this far from its home?" asked Sanza.
"Dying," said Jarry. "Let's go outside."
They crossed a catwalk, descended to the first floor, donned their
protective suits and departed the installation.
The creature had risen to its feet and was staggering once again. It
was covered with a reddish down, had dark eyes and a long, wide nose, lacked
a true forehead. It had four brief digits, clawed, upon each hand and foot.
When it saw them emerge from the Worldchange unit, it stopped and
stared at them. Then it fell.
They moved to its side and studied it where it lay.
It continued to stare at them, its dark eyes wide, as it lay there
shivering.
"It will die if we leave it here," said Sanza.
"...And it will die if we take it inside," said Jarry.
It raised a forelimb toward them, let it fall again. Its eyes narrowed,
then closed.
Jarry reached out and touched it with the toe of his boot. There was no
response.
"It's dead," he said.
"What will we do?"
"Leave it here. The sands will cover it."
They returned to the installation, and Jarry entered the event in the
log.
During their last month of duty, Sanza asked him, "Will everything die
here but us? The green birds and the big eaters of flesh? The funny little
trees and the hairy caterpillar?"
"I hope not," said Jarry. "I've been reading back through the
biologists' notes. I think life might adapt. Once it gets a start anywhere,
it'll do anything it can to keep going. It's probably better for the
creatures of this planet we could afford only twenty Worldchangers That way
they have three millennia to grow more hair and learn to breathe our air and
drink our water. With a hundred units we might have wiped them out and had
to import coldworld creatures or breed them. This way, the ones who live
here might be able to make it."
"It's funny," she said, "but the thought just occurred to me that we're
doing here what was done to us. They made us for Alyonal, and a nova took it
away. These creatures came to life in this place, and we're taking it away.
We're turning all of life on this planet into what we were on our former
worlds--misfits."
"The difference, however, is that we are taking our time," said Jarry,
"and giving them a chance to get used to the new conditions."
"Still, I feel that all that--outside there"--she gestured toward the
window--"is what this world is becoming: one big Deadland."
"Deadland was here before we came. We haven't created any new deserts."
"All the animals are moving south. The trees are dying. When they get
as far south as they can go and still the temperature drops, and the air
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continues to harm their lungs--then it will be all over for them."
"By then they might have adapted. The trees are spreading, are
developing thicker barks. Life will make it."
"I wonder...."
"Would you prefer to sleep until it's all over?"
"No; I want to be by your side, always."
"Then you must reconcile yourself to the fact that something is always
hurt by any change. If you do this, you will not be hurt yourself."
Then they listened for the winds to rise.
Three days later, in the still of sundown, between the winds of day and
the winds of night, she called him to the window. He climbed to the third
floor and moved to her side. Her breasts were rose in the sundown light and
the places beneath them silver and dark. The fur of her shoulders and
haunches was like an aura of smoke. Her face was expressionless and her
wide, green eyes were not turned toward him.
He looked out.
The first big flakes were falling, blue, through the pink light. They
drifted past the stone and gnarly Normform; some stuck in the thick quartz
windowpane; they fell upon the desert and lay there like blossoms of
cyanide; they swirled as more of them came down and were caught by the first
faint puffs of the terrible winds. Dark clouds had mustered overhead and
from them, now, great cables and nets of blue descended. Now the flakes
flashed past the window like butterflies, and the outline of Deadland
flickered on and off. The pink vanished and there was only blue, blue and
darkening blue, as the first great sigh of evening came into their ears and
the billows suddenly moved sidewise rather than downwards, becoming indigo
as they raced by.
"The machine is never silent," Jarry wrote. "Sometimes I fancy I can
hear voices in its constant humming, its occasional growling, its crackles
of power. I am alone here at the Deadland station. Five centuries have
passed since our arrival. I thought it better to let Sanza sleep out this
tour of duty, lest the prospect be too bleak. (It is.) She will doubtless be
angry. As I lay half-awake this morning, I thought I heard my parents'
voices in the next room. No words. Just the sounds of their voices as I used
to hear them over my old intercom. They must be dead by now, despite all
geriatrics. I wonder if they thought of me much after I left? I couldn't
even shake my father's hand without the gauntlet, or kiss my mother goodbye.
It is strange, the feeling, to be this alone, with only the throb of the
machinery about me as it rearranges the molecules of the atmosphere,
refrigerates the world, here in the middle of the blue place. Deadland.
This, despite the fact that I grew up in a steel cave. I call the other
nineteen stations every afternoon. I am afraid I am becoming something of a
nuisance. I won't call them tomorrow, or perhaps the next day.
"I went outside without my refrig-pack this morning, for a few moments.
It is still deadly hot. I gulped a mouthful of air and choked. Our day is
still far off. But I can notice the difference from the last time I tried
it, two and a half hundred years ago. I wonder what it will be like when we
have finished? --And I, an economist! What will my function be in our new
Alyonal? Whatever, so long as Sanza is happy....
"The Worldchanger stutters and groans. All the land is blue for so far
as I can see. The stones still stand, but their shapes are changed from what
they were. The sky is entirely pink now, and it becomes almost maroon in the
morning and the evening. I guess it's really a wine-color, but I've never
seen wine, so I can't say for certain. The trees have not died. They've
grown hardier. Their barks are thicker, their leaves darker and larger. They
grow much taller now, I've been told. There are no trees in Deadland.
"The caterpillars still live. They seem much larger, I understand, but
it is actually because they have become woollier than they used to be. It
seems that most of the animals have heavier pelts these days. Some
apparently have taken to hibernating. A strange thing: Station Seven
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