Michael Swanwick - Radiant Doors.pdf - Michael Swanwick - Amiga78

Radiant Doors by Michael Swanwick This story first appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, September 1998

Radiant Doors by Michael Swanwick This story first appeared in Asimov's

Science Fiction, September 1998. Nominated for Best Short Story.

The doors began opening on a Tuesday in early March. Only a few at

first–flickering and uncertain because they were operating at the extreme end of

their temporal range–and those few from the earliest days of the exodus, releasing

fugitives who were unstarved and healthy, the privileged scientists and

technicians who had created or appropriated the devices that made their escape

possible. We processed about a hundred a week, in comfortable isolation and

relative secrecy. There were videocams taping everything, and our own best

people madly scribbling notes and holding seminars and teleconferences where

they debated the revelations.

Those were, in retrospect, the good old days.

In April the floodgates swung wide. Radiant doors opened everywhere,

disgorging torrents of ragged and fearful refugees. There were millions of them

and they had every one, to the least and smallest child, been horribly, horribly

abused. The stories they told were enough to sicken anyone. I know.

We did what we could. We set up camps. We dug latrines. We ladled out soup. It

was a terrible financial burden to the host governments, but what else could they

do? The refugees were our descendants. In a very real sense, they were our

children.

Throughout that spring and summer, the flow of refugees continued to grow. As

the cumulative worldwide total ran up into the tens of millions, the authorities

were beginning to panic–was this going to go on forever, a plague of human

locusts that would double and triple and quadruple the population, overrunning

the land and devouring all the food? What measures might we be forced to take if

this kept up? The planet was within a lifetime of its loading capacity as it was. It

couldn't take much more. Then in August the doors simply ceased. Somebody up

in the future had put an absolute and final end to them.

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Radiant Doors by Michael Swanwick This story first appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, September 1998

It didn't bear thinking what became of those who hadn't made it through.

"More tales from the burn ward," Shriver said, ducking through the door flap.

That was what he called atrocity stories. He dumped the files on my desk and

leaned forward so he could leer down my blouse. I scowled him back a step.

"Anything useful in them?"

"Not a scrap. But that's not my determination, is it? You have to read each and

every word in each and every report so that you can swear and attest that they

contain nothing the Commission needs to know."

"Right." I ran a scanner over the universals for each of the files, and dumped the

lot in the circular file. Touched a thumb to one of the new pads–better security

devices were the very first benefit we'd gotten from all that influx of future

tech–and said, "Done."

Then I linked my hands behind my neck and leaned back in the chair. The air

smelled of canvas. Sometimes it seemed that the entire universe smelled of

canvas. "So how are things with you?"

"About what you'd expect. I spent the morning interviewing vics."

"Better you than me. I'm applying for a transfer to Publications. Out of these

tents, out of the camps, into a nice little editorship somewhere, writing press

releases and articles for the Sunday magazines. Cushy job, my very own cubby,

and the satisfaction of knowing I'm doing some good for a change."

"It won't work," Shriver said. "All these stories simply blunt the capacity for

feeling. There's even a term for it. It's called compassion fatigue. After a certain

point you begin to blame the vic for making you hear about it."

I wriggled in the chair, as if trying to make myself more comfortable, and stuck

out my breasts a little bit more. Shriver sucked in his breath. Quietly, though–I'm

absolutely sure he thought I didn't notice. I said, "Hadn't you better get back to

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Radiant Doors by Michael Swanwick This story first appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, September 1998

work?"

Shriver exhaled. "Yeah, yeah, I hear you." Looking unhappy, he ducked under the

flap out into the corridor. A second later his head popped back in, grinning. "Oh,

hey, Ginny–almost forgot. Huong is on sick roster. Gevorkian said to tell you

you're covering for her this afternoon, debriefing vics."

"Bastard!"

He chuckled, and was gone.

I sat interviewing a woman whose face was a mask etched with the aftermath of

horror. She was absolutely cooperative. They all were. Terrifyingly so. They were

grateful for anything and everything. Sometimes I wanted to strike the poor

bastards in the face, just to see if I could get a human reaction out of them. But

they'd probably kiss my hand for not doing anything worse.

"What do you know about midpoint-based engineering? Gnat relays? Sub-local

mathematics?"

Down this week's checklist I went, and with each item she shook her head.

"Prigogine engines? SVAT trance status? Lepton soliloquies?" Nothing, nothing,

nothing. "Phlenaria? The Toledo incident? 'Third Martyr' theory? Science

Investigatory Group G?"

"They took my daughter," she said to this last. "They did things to her."

"I didn't ask you that. If you know anything about their military organization,

their machines, their drugs, their research techniques–fine. But I don't want to

hear about people."

"They did things." Her dead eyes bored into mine. "They–"

"Don't tell me."

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Radiant Doors by Michael Swanwick This story first appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, September 1998

"–returned her to us midway through. They said they were understaffed. They

sterilized our kitchen and gave us a list of more things to do to her. Terrible

things. And a checklist like yours to write down her reactions."

"Please."

"We didn't want to, but they left a device so we'd obey. Her father killed himself.

He wanted to kill her too, but the device wouldn't let him. After he died, they

changed the settings so I couldn't kill myself too. I tried."

"God damn." This was something new. I tapped my pen twice, activating its

piezochronic function, so that it began recording fifteen seconds earlier. "Do you

remember anything about this device? How large was it? What did the controls

look like?" Knowing how unlikely it was that she'd give us anything usable. The

average refugee knew no more about their technology than the average here-and-

now citizen knows about television and computers. You turn them on and they do

things. They break down and you buy a new one.

Still, my job was to probe for clues. Every little bit contributed to the big picture.

Eventually they'd add up. That was the theory, anyway. "Did it have an internal or

external power source? Did you ever see anybody servicing it?"

"I brought it with me," the woman said. She reached into her filthy clothing and

removed a fist-sized chunk of quicksilver with small, multicolored highlights.

"Here."

She dumped it in my lap.

It was automation that did it or, rather, hyperautomation. That old bugaboo of

fifty years ago had finally come to fruition. People were no longer needed to

mine, farm, or manufacture. Machines made better administrators, more attentive

servants. Only a very small elite–the vics called them simply their Owners–were

required to order and ordain. Which left a lot of people who were just taking up

space.

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Radiant Doors by Michael Swanwick This story first appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, September 1998

There had to be something to do with them.

As it turned out, there was.

That's my theory, anyway. Or, rather, one of them. I've got a million:

Hyperautomation. Cumulative hardening of the collective conscience. Circular

determinism. The implicitly aggressive nature of hierarchic structures.

Compassion fatigue. The banality of evil.

Maybe people are just no damn good. That's what Shriver would have said.

The next day I went zombie, pretty much. Going through the motions, connecting

the dots. LaShana in Requisitions noticed it right away. "You ought to take the

day off," she said, when I dropped by to see about getting a replacement

PzC(15)/pencorder. "Get away from here, take a walk in the woods, maybe play a

little golf."

"Golf," I said. It seemed the most alien thing in the universe, hitting a ball with a

stick. I couldn't see the point of it.

"Don't say it like that. You love golf. You've told me so a hundred times."

"I guess I have." I swung my purse up on the desk, slid my hand inside, and

gently stroked the device. It was cool to the touch and vibrated ever so faintly

under my fingers. I withdrew my hand. "Not today, though."

LaShana noticed. "What's that you have in there?"

"Nothing." I whipped the purse away from her. "Nothing at all." Then, a little too

loud, a little too blustery, "So how about that pencorder?"

"It's yours." She got out the device, activated it, and let me pick it up. Now only I

could operate the thing. Wonderful how fast we were picking up the technology.

"How'd you lose your old one, anyway?"

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Michael Swanwick - Radiant Doors.pdf

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