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Tom Purdom: Romance in Extended Time
I didn’t hear the three missiles strike when they landed on the rear wheel of our vehicle. The
missiles were drops of plastic with just enough mass to make it through the air and they were
moving at a relatively low speed–about ninety meters per second, I would guess. On a
low-gravity planet like Mercury, a modest muzzle velocity will give you all the range you need for
most practical purposes.
At the moment the missiles hit, I was lounging on a reclining chair, under an awning that
protected me from bird droppings, falling insects, and other woodland indignities. I was taking
some pleasure in the fact that my accommodations were a sizable improvement over the closets
spaceships offer their passengers.
I was traveling at a leisurely pace through an idealized temperate-zone forest composed of well
spaced, aesthetically varied three-hundred-meter trees. My conveyance had been purchased
from an owner who had stocked the refrigerator and the wine chest with a connoisseur’s
selection of prefabricated food and wine. The fabrication unit situated near the rear wheel had
been equipped with programs that could produce several hundred items that were supposed to
be just as palatable as the champagne I was currently holding in my hand.
On my left–where I could give it an occasional politely conversational glance–there was a face
that displayed an intriguing interplay of two themes: sensuality and alertness. Ling Chime’s
features were round and fleshy, but her genetic designer had tempered the fleshiness with a sharp
nose, high cheekbones, and eyes that seemed to be constantly dancing around the landscape.
On my right the Elector–Ling’s employer–was dispensing genuinely entertaining gossip about the
world of the arts. I was even willing to admit that the Elector was just as attractive as Ling was, in
her large-scaled, arm-waving way.
The whole scene was permeated, in addition, with a pleasant touch of the exotic–the light that
created peculiar, inconsistent shadows under the trees. The ecodesigners had created a park-like
environment, but the light was a constant reminder that the only thing protecting us from the full
blast of the sun was a wall that was so thick and milky it diffused the small percentage of the
sunlight that slipped past its molecules.
At that time–it was 2089, according to my records–the Mercury habitat was still something of a
wonder. On the Moon, people still lived in stand-alone cities dug into the rims of craters. On Mars,
they were still arguing about the rights and wrongs of full scale terraforming. On Mercury, I could
peer through the trees and observe the giant towers that supported a globe-circling greenhouse,
three kilometers high and twenty kilometers wide. From space the habitat had looked like a thin
white band that circled the planet at a sixty degree angle to the equator. Eventually, according
to the developers, the urbs built into the towers were supposed to house a billion people.
"My drive wheel has developed structural defects," the car said. "I am instituting repair
procedures."
Ling was the Elector’s business manager–the factotum who took care of her employer’s practical
affairs, while the Elector concentrated on the creative efforts she considered the primary purpose
of her life. Ling didn’t miss a beat as she turned around in her chair and rested her finger on the
car’s main screen.
"Give us the details," Ling said.
The car had already slowed to a stop. "The drive wheel has developed three large cracks," the car
reported. "Continued stress could result in collapse."
The Elector threw back her head. The electronic bracelets on her left arm flickered and rainbowed
as she gestured at the landscape.
 
"I thought you told us this was a new vehicle, Joseph."
"How long will the repairs take?" Ling asked.
"Approximately ten minutes."
A small, single passenger three-wheeler lurched off the road on our right and bumped across a
tree root as it jockeyed past us. The transportation modes lining up behind our rear wheel
included riding animals, two-passenger carts, and four hikers who were being followed by a
motorized baggage hauler. The "road" was a narrow strip that was covered with a hard mat of
surface grass. It had been designed so two vehicles going in opposite directions could just
squeeze past each other.
By Mercury standards, the traffic on the road was uncomfortably dense. The high speed vacuum
rail had been shut down at the worst possible time. This section of the planet was approaching
the beginning of its thousand-hour night. Half the people who lived in this part of the habitat had
headed for the forest and a last minute rendezvous with the pleasures of "outdoor life." Now all
that recreational traffic had been inflated by the people who had decided to use the road net
when the rail system had stopped operating.
Ling had jumped off the car and started examining the rear wheel. Her finger traced one of the
cracks. She turned around and peered through the trees. She was wearing a close fitting
jacket-and-pants outfit and her businesslike movements accented her slimness.
"My repair system has detected the presence of destructive molecular entities," the car said.
"Remedial action is underway."
The Elector’s bracelets shimmered again. "Is that thing telling us we’re being attacked? "
Ling hopped back on the car and bent over the fabrication unit. She ran her hands across the
unit’s interface and I realized she was searching its external databanks.
"I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised," Ling said. "You were willing to come all the way to Mercury
just to cast one vote. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised somebody might be willing to engage
in a little violence just to stop one vote."
"A little violence!" the Elector orated. "Do you really consider this a little violence, Ling? Have you
any idea what a clump of those things would have done if they’d landed on one of us? "
A red light flashed on top of the fabricator. The time strip on the side of the unit produced a 7:17
and held it.
"There’s a car parked around that last bend," Ling said. "You can see it through the trees–right
where they could have fired at us. I think there’s four people in it."
"And once the repairs are made," I said, "they’ll just follow us until they find another spot where
they’ve got a good shot. And hold us up another ten minutes."
Ling gave me a quick glance of approval–the kind of glance that still evokes a foolish rush of
pleasure, no matter how many times a woman who’s captured my fancy bestows it on me.
"Are you telling me they merely have to stop us four times?" the Elector said.
Ling pointed at the time strip on the fabricator. "In seven minutes and seventeen seconds we can
have our own version of the same kind of weapon they probably used–two minutes to
download the fabrication program, five minutes and seventeen seconds to fabricate it. If you’ll
put your expense program on your notescreen, you can see just how much it will cost you, along
with the price of half a dozen smoke bombs. The missiles we’ll be firing should be the same type
they’re using–low impact devices equipped with moles that snip breaks in the long chain
 
molecules that make up the plastic in the wheel. If Joe will give me some help when the time
comes, I think we can arrange things so they have to sit around waiting for repairs while we put
some distance between us."
* * *
The Elector wasn’t really called the Elector. That was only a title I had bestowed on her in the
privacy of my own mind. Her full name was Katrinka Yamioto Oldaf-Li and the only thing she
elected was the winners of a set of ten prizes. The prizes were awarded by an organization called
the All-Mercury Coalition of Documented Creative Specialists and they were presented to their
proud recipients once every eighty-eight-day Mercury year.
The Elector was a well-known creator of the kind of simulated habitats the less sophisticated
members of the human community like to surround themselves with when they’re forced to
endure a few minutes of inactivity. (Not famous, please note–just well known. There’s no reason
you should feel culturally deficient if you’ve never encountered her name before.) I had sampled
one of her creations during the voyage to Mercury and it had been the kind of vision I tend to
favor–an imaginary world in which people spent their lives dancing in elegant settings and
browsing through gardens populated by citizens who dressed themselves with understated (but
unmistakable) refinement. She liked clothes that flattered tall, slender men, but that was, from my
viewpoint, the only serious flaw in her work.
Citizen Oldaf-Li had been living on Mercury when she had placed her first simulation on the
market. She had spent most of the last ten years enjoying the pleasures of the Earth-orbiting cities,
but she had maintained her membership in the All-Mercury Coalition of Documented Creative
Specialists.
Now she was apparently one of the leaders in a faction that was trying to unseat the current
officers. It was hard to believe anyone would spend three months in a spaceship for such a minor
cause, but I had learned at a very early age that there were no limits to the absurdities humans
would commit once they began joining organizations.
If you look through the databanks, you will find several entries in which journalists and other
members of the pseudo-employed compare me to the eighteenth century adventurer Giacomo
Casanova. I read all twelve volumes of Casanova’s memoirs during a down period in my
finances when I was in my sixties. He lived in the eighteenth century and I live in the twenty-first,
but we would have given similar answers to certain questions if some time traveling psychologist
had bedeviled us with the same personality assessment program. We would both have agreed
that sexual encounters are a flat experience if they aren’t combined with romantic feelings. We
had both decided, at a very young age, that we would spend our lives following the impulses of
our hearts. I had been seven years old the first time I had been awakened by the strange feelings
a member of the other sex could evoke. I had been sixteen–and obsessively fascinated with a
woman ten years older–when I had promised myself I would make those feelings the central
concern of my life. I didn’t want to waste one hour of my life listening to committee reports.
I had boarded the ship as the devoted companion of a flamehaired, amusing woman who was
emigrating to Mercury to escape a burdensome grown son. I had believed we could keep each
other diverted for the entire ninety-three days we were going to be imprisoned in the ship.
Instead, I had discovered that I had exhausted her capacity for entertaining exchanges in the first
five days of our liaison. On the forty-first day of the voyage–fifty-two days before we were
scheduled to reach Mercury–I had placed my investments under the total control of my alter
program and put myself into deep sleep.
And then, five minutes after I trudged through the disembarkation tunnel, while I was still feeling
numb and semi-conscious–I turned my head as I maneuvered through the passenger lounge and
saw Ling Chime sitting in front of a panoramic screen that displayed the craters and hard
shadows of the real Mercury on the other side of the wall. She was sitting at a small,
 
single-pedestal work table and she was staring at her notescreen as if she were planning a move
in a championship game tournament.
The Elector had spent most of her time on the ship working at her trade. Ling had been less work
oriented but she had spent several hours each ship day superintending the Elector’s business
interests. I had seen her a few times during the first half of the voyage and her face had always
left me with an after-image that floated in my mind for several hours. But that had been all there
had been to it.
So why had I responded with such a rush when I had seen Ling sitting in front of the panorama?
Had it been the atmosphere created by the hard-shadowed desert behind her? Had it been the
fact that she was focusing her entire attention on her notescreen and I was getting my first look
at the intense competence she brought to everything she did?
I didn’t know. I never would know. I just knew she had ignited the emotion that was, for me, the
wine and the salt and the cream of life.
In Ling’s case there was a small drawback–as there frequently is. I had picked up some
information on Ling’s background when I had been exploring the Elector’s organizational antics.
Ling had earned three doctorates and she still hadn’t celebrated her thirty-second birthday.
The age entry had given me a mild shock. I can usually tell people’s ages to within twenty years,
no matter what they’ve done to keep their physiology and their appearance in peak condition.
A woman of eighty and a woman of twenty-five may look almost exactly alike, but the older
person will normally carry herself with an authority and sophistication that can’t be simulated. I
had watched Ling guide the Elector through one of the mandatory social rituals that had
opened the voyage. She had been so self-possessed I had automatically assumed she was at
least twice as old as she really was.
There had been a time when the discrepancy in ages wouldn’t have troubled me. The older
male, younger female pairing is a combination as old as the species. I didn’t have any problem
with the reverse situation either. When you’re in your nineties, the fact that a woman is twenty
years older than you doesn’t make that much difference.
But that was my attitude. It was already becoming obvious some of the younger members of our
species were developing a different outlook.
I have been living with technological upheavals since I was old enough to regard the world with
some measure of understanding. I was one of the first people to implant a musical performance
system in my nervous system. I’ve struggled with the possibilities created by personality
modification technology. I watched molecular technology flower into a major force after
decades in which it looked like it was destined to be one of those tantalizing daydreams that
remain permanently out of reach. Nothing, in my opinion, has changed the world more than the
ability to modify human genes.
Moles have given us things like personal fabrication units and projects that could circle Mercury
with a fully enclosed habitat in six Earth years. Genetic technology changed what we are . Ling
could awe me with her competence because she had a brain and a nervous system that her
parents had ordered for her in exactly the same way I had ordered my clothes. She could remain
cool under stress because they had chosen a set of glands that equipped her with that kind of
temperament.
So why was someone like Ling working as a personal assistant to someone like the Elector? What
did she think when she looked at someone like me? Was I just a primitive life form to her? An old
man fumbling around the Solar System with an outmoded set of physical components?
The woman who had drawn me to Mercury had been fleeing a son who was six years younger
than Ling. Her son apparently believed men and women my age were the ultimate enemy–a
 
group that was going to sit on society and block every channel of advancement for centuries
into the future. I gave him everything I could, his mother had said. A forty percent intelligence
enhancement. Looks. A coordination component that would have made him a professional
athlete when you and I were young. Aggressiveness. And what do I get? A son who tells me I’m
as obsolete as a piece of thirty-year- old software.
The Elector started gesturing and emoting as soon as she realized I was steering myself across the
lounge toward Ling’s work table. It didn’t take me long to find out why Ling was working with
such intensity. The Elector had planned to hop out of the orbit-to-surface shuttle and board one
of the high speed rail vehicles that raced through the vacuum just outside the habitat. She would
arrive, according to her calculations, three hours before the deadline for casting her vote.
Unfortunately, the governing body of Mercury–the Conclave of Talents–had once again decided
it had to worry about the safety and long term well being of the people it was supposed to
serve. The Talents had decided this section of the rail system needed some special maintenance
work. It would be six hours before a vehicle glided down the rails.
Ling was looking for a road vehicle the Elector could buy or rent. If she could find one sometime
in the next half hour, they could drive past four stations and board a functioning rail vehicle. I
watched Ling work at her notescreen while the Elector paced out big circles behind us. Then I
slipped away to another table and opened my own notescreen.
My financial program updated its statement on my current worth and I asked it for a list of the
current bids for road vehicles. The top bid on the list had been posted by Ling and it had been
totally ignored. As I had expected, most of the people who already owned road vehicles weren’t
interested in selling.
I stared at the figures on my screen. If I doubled Ling’s offer, I would be eating up almost 25
percent of the profits my alter had earned for me while I had been asleep. . . .
Most of the immediate responses came from idlers who apparently thought I was some kind of
ignorant off-worlder. Five people advised me I could turn right as I left the disembarkation lounge
and find a shop with a large-scale fabrication unit that could produce any vehicle I wanted
within five hours.
In case you haven’t noticed, one wit expounded, you’re living in a society in which you can have
anything you want for the price of a little energy, some cheap raw materials, and a small
payment to the people who designed the product and wrote the fabrication program. I realize
you’ve just landed on our planet. But we have more of the civilized conveniences than you may
think.
I said I need it immediately, I replied. IMMEDIATELY .
It was a reckless thing to do–an invitation to squeeze me until I strangled. But it brought results.
An image of a three-wheeler bounced onto my screen seconds after I finished writing. The list of
accessories indicated the owner had been planning a romantic trip of her own. The asking price
was 30 percent higher than the amount I had offered.
Ling was still hunting down possibilities when I hurried back to her table. "Please excuse me for
interfering in your problems," I said. "I have just been reassessing my own plans. As it happens, I
ordered a touring road vehicle before we left Earth. If you would be willing to share my
accommodations for the next few hours. . . ."
* * *
Ling pulled two sections of a weapon out of the fabrication unit and fitted them together. Her
new possession was a practical-looking device with a skinny barrel and a wide, bulky stock.
"There’s five smoke bombs in the fabricator, Joe. Can you drop two of them over the side when I
 

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