Cascade Point

Of the aftermath there is little that isn't common knowledge. Though the Lifeline Experiment carried no legal weight whatsoever, it was very clearly the rallying point for the final successful drive that established the Fetal Rights Amendment in the Constitution. But the bitter struggle that surrounded the issue made it a Pyrrhic victory at best, threatening at times to tear the country apart as had no issue since the Vietnam War. It was too much for Dan to bear at close range, and for eight years after the experiment he remained outside the country, living in self-imposed seclusion in Australia. I think that the only thing that got him through that period was the knowledge that he had seen humanity in those tiny bits of new life, and that whatever the cost he had done the right thing. Eventually things settled down, the proabortion forces gradually losing strength as grudging acceptance of the new law grew, until they became the vocal but powerless minority of the present day. And I wish with all my heart the controversy could be left alone to continue its slow death.

But it can't.

—

I enclose the following excerpt from Dan's papers with a feeling of dread, remembering the agony of the past two decades as few others remember it and knowing that my action is likely to rekindle the fires again. But above all other things Dan prized his reputation for honesty, and it is solely because of this that I quote here the last entry from his private journal, made just two days before the car accident that took his life. I believe that, given the time, he would have come to the same conclusion.

October 18, 2009: I have been sitting here since the sky first began to show the colors of sunset, wondering how to write this. The stars now shine brightly where I watched the sun go down, and I am no nearer to finding a way to ease the shock of what my seven- year study has shown me... to finding a less brutal way to confess what I have unwittingly done to all the people who trusted me.

There can be no further doubt as to what I have done. Linda

Grant, whose mother was nine months pregnant at the experiment,

shows virtually none of the traits I myself showed as a teenager; at

the other end of the scale Tom Remington, whose mother was only

five weeks along, is so like me it is agonizing to watch him. Only

today I learned that, while he has my passionate love of basketball,

he does not intend to try out for the school team, despite his skill

and height. There is no reason why he would not do well at the

game... except that I was a mere five foot six at his age and

convinced I could never play. All the rest of them fell somewhere

between these two extremes, their individual degrees of mimicry

directly correlated with their ages at the experiment... and for what

I've done to these children alone I owe a debt I'll never be able to

repay. What I've done to the country and the millions of women

whose lives my naivete had changed—I can't even comprehend the

enormity of my crime.

My crime. The word is harsh, unforgiving. But I can't justify it as anything else. In my foolish arrogance I assumed the universe was simple, that its secrets were absolute and could be had for the asking. Worse yet, I assumed it would bend its own rules just for my convenience.

The experimenter influences his experiment. How long has that truth been known? Close to a hundred years, I'm sure, at least since the earliest begi

The Lifeline Experiment was doomed from the very begi

And in the meantime I have helped to force what is essentially an arbitrary decision on the country. What should I do with this knowledge? Do I keep it to myself and allow the lie to continue, or do I speak out and risk tearing the society apart once again?

I wish I knew the answer.

Afterword

The abortion issue is one of a growing list of topics these days in which middle ground is increasingly hard to find. Both extremes are vocal, organized, and often—in my opinion—inconsistent in their overall world views, and I had little doubt that "Lifeline" would generate a minor avalanche of hate mail from both ends of the target range.

And I was wrong. I got a couple of letters, Analog printed a couple more, and all of them were polite enough as they springboarded off the story to state their own views on the topic.

Heartening? Certainly. It may imply that SF readers tend to be, by and large, reasonable people; less inclined than the average American, perhaps, to let emotions or national spokespersons define their thoughts for them. But then again, people who like idea- oriented literature are, almost by definition, more likely to try and treat abortion as an intellectual problem. An intellectual problem, with an intellectual solution.

So did I default on my own responsibility as a writer of idea- oriented fiction by, in effect, straddling the fence? I don't think so. The abortion issue simply has too much of a philosophical, religious nature embedded in it to yield to a simple, logical solution, much as I might wish otherwise.

Cascade Point

In retrospect, I suppose I should have realized my number had come up on the universe's list right from the very start, right from the moment it became clear that I was going to be stuck with the job of welcoming the Aura Dancer's latest batch of passengers aboard. Still, I suppose it's just as well it was me and not Tobbar who let Rik Bradley and his psychiatrist onto my ship. There are some things that a captain should have no one to blame for but himself, and this was definitely in that category.

Right away I suppose that generates a lot of false impressions. A star liner captain, resplendent in white and gold, smiling toothily at elegantly dressed men and women as the ramp carries them through the polished entry portal—forget all of that. A tramp starmer isn't polished anywhere it doesn't absolutely have to be, the captain is lucky if he's got a clean jumpsuit—let alone some pseudo-military Christmas tree frippery—and the passengers we get are the steerage of the star- traveling community. And look it.

Don't get me wrong; I have nothing against passengers aboard my ship. As a matter of fact, putting extra cabins in the Dancer had been my idea to start with, and they'd all too often made the difference between profit and loss in our always marginal business. But one of the reasons I had gone into space in the first place was to avoid having to make small talk with strangers, and I would rather solo through four cascade points in a row than spend those agonizing minutes at the entry portal. In this case, though, I had no choice. Tobbar, our master of drivel— and thus the man unofficially in charge of civilian small talk—was up to his elbows in grease and balky hydraulics; and my second choice, Alana Keal, had finally gotten through to an equally balky tower controller who wanted to bump us ten ships back in the lift pattern. Which left exactly one person—me—because there was no one else I'd trust with giving a good first impression of my ship to paying customers. And so I was the one standing on the ramp when Bradley and his eleven fellow passengers hoved into sight.