James Tiptree Jr. - The Only Neat Thing to Do.pdf - James Tiptree Jr - margozap

THE ONLY

NEAT THING

TO DO

James Tiptree, Jr.

We journey now to the far future and the far

reaches of space, past the boundaries of

exploration to the Great North Rift that lies

between arms of the galaxy. The protagonist is

sixteen-year-old Coati Cass, who wants to become

an explorer and who ventures into that unknown

space. She finds more than her share of adventure.

James Tiptree, Jr.'s most recent novel is

Brightness Falls From the Air.

Heroes of space! Explorers of the starfields!

Reader, here is your problem:

Given one kid, yellow-head, snub-nose-freckles,

green-eyes-that-stare-at-you-level, rich-brat,

girl-type, fifteen-year-old. And all she's dreamed of,

since she was old enough to push a hologram

button, are heroes of the First Contacts, explorers of

far stars, the great names of Humanity's budding

Star Age. She can name you the crew of every

Discovery Mission; she can sketch you a pretty

accurate map of Federation Space and number the

Frontier Bases; she can tell you who first contacted

every one of the fifty-odd races known; and she

knows by heart the last words of Han Lu Han when,

himself no more than sixteen, he ran through alien

flame-weapons to drag his captain and pilot to

safety on Lyrae 91-Beta. She does a little math, too;

it's easy for her. And she haunts the spaceport and

makes friends with everybody who'll talk to her, and

begs rides, and knows the controls of fourteen

models of craft. She's a late bloomer, which means

the nubbins on her little chest could almost pass for

a boy's; and love, great Love, to her is just

something pointless that adults do, despite her

physical instruction. But she can get into her junior

space suit in seventy seconds flat, including safety

hooks.

So you take this girl, this Coati Cass—her full

name is Coatillia Canada Cass, but everyone calls

her Coati—

And you give her a sturdy little space-coupe for

her sixteenth birthday.

Now, here is your problem:

Does she use it to jaunt around the star-crowded

home sector, visiting her classmates and her

family's friends, as her mother expects, and

sometimes showing off by running a vortex beacon

or two, as her father fears?

Does she? Really?

Or—does she head straight for the nearest

ship-fitters and blow most of her credit balance

loading extra fuel tanks and long-range sensors

onto the coupe, fuel it to the nozzles, and

then—before the family's accountant can raise

questions—hightail for the nearest Federation

frontier, which is the Great North Rift beyond

FedBase 900, where you can look right out at

unknown space and stars?

That wasn't much of a problem, was it?

The exec of FedBase 900 watches the yellow head

bobbing down his main view corridor.

"We ought to signal her folks c-skip collect," he

mutters. "I gather they're rich enough to stand it."

"On what basis?" his deputy inquires.

They both watch the little straight-backed figure

marching away. A tall patrol captain passes in the

throng; they see the girl spin to stare at him, not

with womanly appreciation but with the open-eyed

unselfconscious adoration of a kid. Then she turns

back to the dazzling splendor of the view beyond the

port. The end of the Rift is just visible from this side

of the asteroid Base 900 is dug into.

"On the basis that I have a hunch that that infant

is trouble looking for a place to happen," Exec says

mournfully. "On the basis that I don't believe her

story, I guess. Oh, her ident's all in order—I've no

doubt she owns that ship and knows how to run it,

and knows the regs; and it's her right to get cleared

for where she wants to go—by a couple of days. But

I cannot believe her parents consented to her

tooting out here just to take a look at unknown

stars. ... On the basis that if they did, they're

certifiable imbeciles. If she were my daughter—"

His voice trails off. He knows he's overreacting

emotionally; he has no adequate excuse for

signaling her folks. "They must have agreed," his

deputy says soothingly. "Look at those extra fuel

tanks and long-range mechs they gave her."

(Coati hadn't actually lied. She'd told him that

her parents raised no objection to her coming out

here—true, since they'd never dreamed of it—and

added artlessly, "See the extra fuel tanks they put

on my ship so I'll be sure to get home for long trips?

Oh, sir, I'm calling her the CC-One; will that sound

too much like something official?'') Exec closes the

subject with a pessimistic grunt, and they turn back

into his office, where the patrol captain is waiting.

FedBase 900's best depot supply team is long

overdue, and it is time to declare them officially

missing, and initiate and organize a search.

Coati Cass continues on through the surface

sections of the base to the fueling port. She had to

stop here to get clearance and the holocharts of the

frontier area, and she can top off her tanks. If it

weren't for those charts, she might have risked

going straight on out, for fear they'd stop her. But

now that she's cleared, she's enjoying her first

glimpse of a glamorous Far FedBase-—so long as it

doesn't delay her start for her goal, her true goal, so

long dreamed of: free, unexplored space and

unknown, unnamed stars.

Far Bases are glamorous; the Federation had

learned the hard way that they must be pleasant,

sanity-promoting duty. So, the farther out a base is,

and the longer the tours, the more lavishly it is set

up and maintained. Base 900 is built mostly inside

a big, long-orbit, airless rock, yet it has gardens and

pools that would be the envy of a world's richest

citizen. Coati sees displays for the tiny theater

advertising first-run shows and music, all free to

station personnel; and she passes half a dozen

different exotic little places to eat. Inside the rock

the maps show sports and dance shells, spacious

private quarters, and winding corridors, all nicely

planted and decorated, because it has been found

that stress is greatly reduced if there are plenty of

alternate, private routes for people to travel to their

daily duties.

Building a Far Base is a full-scale Federation job.

But it conserves the Federation's one irreplaceable

resource—her people. Here at FedBase 900 the

people are largely Human, since the other four

spacefaring races are concentrated to the

Federation's south and east. This far north, Coati

has glimpsed only one alien couple, both Swain;

their greenish armor is familiar to her from the

spaceport back home. She won't find really exotic

aliens here.

But what, and who, lives out there on the fringes

of the Rift?—not to speak of its unknown farther

shores? Coati pauses to take a last look before she

turns in to Fuels and Supply. From this port she can

really see the Rift, like a strange irregular black

cloud lying along the northern zenith.

The Rift isn't completely lightless, of course. It is

merely an area that holds comparatively few stars.

The scientists regard it as no great mystery; a

standing wave or turbulence in the density-texture,

a stray chunk of the same gradients that create the

galactic arms with their intervening gaps. Many

other such rifts are seen in uninhabited reaches of

the starfield. This one just happens to form a useful

northern border for the irregular globe of

Federation Space.

Explorers have penetrated it here and there,

enough to know that the usual distribution of star

systems appears to begin again on the farther side.

A few probable planetary systems have been spotted

out there; and once or twice what might be alien

transmissions have been picked up at extreme

range. But nothing and no one has come at them

from the far side, and meanwhile the Federation of

Fifty Races, expanding slowly to the south and east,

has enough on its platter without hunting out new

contacts. Thus, the Rift has been left almost

undisturbed. It is the near presence of the Rift that

made it possible for Coati to get to a real frontier so

fast, from her centrally located home star and her

planet of Cayman's Port.

Coati gives it all one last ardent look, and ducks

into the suiting-up corridor, where her small suit

hangs among the real spacers'. From here she issues

onto a deck over the asteroid surface, and finds

CC-One dwarfed by a new neighbor; a big Patrol

cruiser has come in. She makes her routine shell

inspection with disciplined care despite her

excitement, and presently signals for the tug to slide

her over to the fueling stations. Here she will also

get oxy, water, and food—standard rations only.

She's saved enough credit for a good supply if she

avoids all luxuries.

At Fuels she's outside again, personally checking

every tank. The Fuels chief, a big rosy woman whose

high color glows through her faceplate, grins at the

kid's eagerness. A junior fuelsman is doing the

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